As a game designer, you literally nailed my problem with a lot of trading card games: they’re not particularly great games mechanically unless you’re willing to curate a deck by going out and paying asking price for every card you need or buying randomized booster packs (granted, most strategies tend to rely on…

ASAB

Although their last update on twitter was some time ago, the delay sounded like it was for good reasons because they’ve essentially built out a lot of the sports to be a lot more comprehensive rather than being like minigames. Apparently the tennis component has like a whole career mode or something like that.

I’m not too worried about Silksong long term yet. Hollow Knight is still continuing to sell somehow and has had a surprisingly long tail for an indie game of its size, so unless they ballooned their dev team too much, chances are high that they have a lot of runway left before it’s counted out.

I haven’t paid attention…

It runs pretty well on Steam deck thus far. Some stuff gets a bit hiccupy, but I’m guessing it will either stabilize more with Proton updates or they’ll do the work to make it officially deck verified.

The really wild part is that I have had such few issues playing any game I throw at it that I’ve stopped even paying attention to the verified or playable statuses. In most cases, a game can quickly be made playable by forcing Proton experimental and creating a reasonable control scheme. At this point, I’ve only been…

I think it also makes a lot of sense for a DLC because it adds a pretty weighty new mechanic to the game at a good point without feeling like it should have been incorporated from the beginning (unless it drastically alters core questlines). To be honest, it’s probably for the best that it wasn’t in the shipped build…

Honestly, I feel like these reviews are exactly as expected, especially on the heels of The Evil Within. Evil Within 1 was the unanimous “it’s a mixed bag” game and it made it really easy for them to gain extra points with Evil Within 2, so I have a feeling that this game will have a lot of fun elements, combined with…

Yeah, I just generally think activity on the horse is pretty hit or miss and it’s probably my least like feature of an otherwise phenomenal game. Magic on horseback feels ridiculously stupid because it takes a ton of awkward frames to knock off a shot and most spells need a head-on attack to work, so I find myself…

As a pretty hardcore From Software/Soulslike fan, I am extremely excited about this game because Nioh 1 and 2 already did a lot for the genre and have a bit more of an “arcade/video gamey” vibe than the opaque experiences that From Software titles tend to be (which I also love them for).

Yeah, I’m already addicted to…

I feel like Final Fantasy has always been trashy with its mix of serious high fantasy and “modern rocker” vibes, but I think we were all too wooed by the visuals into thinking it was classy.

With that being said, give me a magic imbued “tribal” lower back tattoo, some leather pants, a vest, no shirt, and one arm’s…

As someone who has done character and environment design, I really appreciate it when people think like you do because this is the line of thinking that many people should be considering when designing their worlds. Yeah, it all ends up becoming aesthetics, but a strong understanding of how things work makes…

CONGRATS ON THE GMG NEGOTIATIONS! It was weird as hell not visiting for this long (I’ve come to realize I aimlessly check GMG sites when I’m trying to re-orient myself to some task), but I stayed away while the strike was on.

If any upper management types read comments, please note that I read these sites because of…

Fortunately, I think I can handle occasional intermittent stuttering (I also feel like people have grown far more sensitive to the notion of stuttering since I was young), but Blight Town was frustrating because many of the elements that made it difficult were also the things impeding performance, which arguably…

I’ve seen a few reviews for it by people who are very upfront about not being typical Soulsborne players and it seems like there’s a more accessible presentation of difficulty compared to From Software’s previous philosophy with those games. One of the biggest complaints from non-hardcore players of From Software…

I probably wouldn’t list Jedi Fallen Order with Soulsborne games because it’s not really in the same league. Yeah, it’s got some similar mechanics and riffs off the vibe, but I’d only suggest it as a light primer for someone who’s afraid to play a Soulsborne game due to the difficulty.

Where you listed Jedi Fallen…

I probably wouldn’t list Jedi Fallen Order with Soulsborne games because it’s not really in the same league. Yeah,…

I feel like this entire IP is so heavily mismanaged because it’s literally about an existential tournament filled with diverse character types, yet the tournament is practically ignored in the movies outside of a few established fights (the most recent movie didn’t even reach the tournament). It really does need a…

One of the things I’ve learned from working with organizations over the years is that orgs with ambiguous or abstract differentiators described as “magic” are typically just dysfunctional organizations that manage to pull things together when pressure is applied. Good organizations understand why certain dynamics…

I have a feeling that, at most, Nintendo will wait until the next console generation to launch a Smash Bros without him. I’m guessing they’re letting him do this all gracefully to let his narrative feel respected, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the next one is some kind of deconstructed branding of Smash or some kind…

I personally believe that Outriders is meant to exist to pave the way for Outriders 2 because it’s a lot of fun to play, but definitely needs one or two iterations to figure out the details. I know PCF haven’t gotten royalties yet on it, so I’m assuming that the game wasn’t an enormous financial success, but maybe…