To each their own, for sure; I loved that sense of progression, but I also play a whole hell of a lot of Destiny, and Vermintide 2's progression system owes nearly as much to Destiny as its basic gameplay does to Left4Dead.

I’d probably be a hair more generous with my grades on some of those, but I’d definitely agree with that general progression. I never played any of the Total War stuff, just because it’s not my genre at all, but I’ve definitely heard really good things there. I also think it’s noteworthy that most of those we’re…

Yeah, you’re hitting a lot of my concerns as well; I didn’t play the beta (I’m a console guy), but even the trailer they dropped for it just looked like ‘Left 4 Dead, but slightly more cartoony, and not really engaging in anything that’s changed in the artform for the past ten years or so’. I’m still definitely going…

Addendum: I’m actually really excited to see how the ‘Left 4 Dead successor-off’ between Darktide and Turtle Rock’s own Back 4 Blood goes.

Yeah, I know, I’m actually super excited about it: Vermintide is one the very, very few titles that, honestly... probably actually improved on its inspiration*, and so I’m super excited to see what Fatshark does with 40k and actual gunplay.

I mean, I don’t know that you’re wrong even if it is coming from an existing IP: Vermintide was pretty much ‘be Left4Dead, but Warhammer fantasy, though’, and Underhive Wars was also just ‘take these tactics ideas from other games and cram them into 40k’. (And just to be clear: none of that is meant as a knock. Taking…

Looks solid to me; I have a weird soft spot for 40k, despite... never having actually played any 40k. I tend to like the all-in, more-is-more aesthetic of Warhammer stuff, even if tabletop gaming isn’t actually something I enjoy; just the whole vibe of ‘we’re embracing the art-airbrushed-onto-the-side-of-a-van nature…

I was going to say something similar; both Tell Me Why and LiS2 missed the mark for me (for entirely different reasons), so in terms of Life is Strange sequels, Deck Nine’s Before the Storm is actually my clear favorite. Definitely excited to have them working on an ‘original’ sequel, given that Before the Storm…

The day/night cycle was actually my favorite part about it, structurally, just because I thought the XP boost at night was really smartly handled - you went from being scared out of your mind at night, to realizing how to play in the dark (using tools like the minimap) and purposefully going out to hunt zombies; it…

Seconded. Especially with a protagonist so obnoxious, bland, and baldly catering to a marketing department’s idea of ‘dudes’ that he makes Chad Hunter Worthington III from Far Cry 3 look nuanced. (At least Far Cry was trying for a self-aware joke, in a generous reading of that particular game, even if they were kind…

I really, really enjoyed it - some of the best transversal mechanics I’ve ever seen in a video game, full stop - and it’s an absolute blast in co-op... but, no. Nothing’s that great, frankly.

I’d tend to agree; I get that the article itself is Playstation specific, but it does seem a little odd that it doesn’t acknowledge even the existence of the Xbox line - even if just to say ‘the shortage is less pronounced for Xboxes because demand (or perceived demand, if we’re going off of forum posts) is relatively…

Cheers! I don’t want to sound too down on it, because, like I said, I had a lot of fun with it, mainly due to the clear vein of nostalgia it’s mining from those older games; it just fits quite into that ‘very deep, but very narrow’ vein where the moment-to-moment gameplay is really very, very satisfying, there’s just…

Savage Planet, to me, is almost the ur-GamePass game: I played it, enjoyed it, and definitely felt like I ‘got my money’s worth out of it’ (ie, just playing that would have justified the cost of GamePass for that month), but it was ultimately a little forgettable, too, a solid B- type thing that I’m not particularly…

Squadrons is... more or less exactly what it says on the tin, really: flight sim combat in the X-Wing/Tie Fighter style (albeit slightly less technical), jammed into a multiplayer lifted more or less straight out of EA’s own Battlefront II. The single player campaign is fine, but it’s very much in that ‘the single…

That seems like a fair analogy to me. I just don’t know how many people that wouldn’t want to play New Vegas or Bloodborne after Fallout 4 or Sekiro wouldn’t also just object to playing older games like New Vegas or Bloodborne, period. (So, in other words, if the older games are just too old for them, they may just be…

Absolutely; some of the games that have wound up being some of my favorites on the service were games I’d never heard of before they hit, like Monster Train, Star Renegades, or Frostpunk - as well as stuff there’s no way I would have bought for myself, like Wasteland 3.

Cheers, I appreciate it! (I actually just left a comment on that post, just because I figured the more attention articles like that got, the more likely it would be to become a regular thing!)

My assumption on that - given what happened relatively shortly therafter - was Rockstar wanted a way to test the interest in Red Dead Online, prior to spinning it off as its own thing. And since Microsoft was probably willing to fork over a truckload of cash even for that four month span, why wouldn’t they?

Seems like a solid line-up to me: Octopath and Empires of Sin are both solidly in that camp of ‘got pretty mixed reviews, but they’re both right up my alley, so I’m excited to give them a go nonetheless’, and Outriders is pretty similar - I enjoyed the demo, but not to the point where I was willing to drop sixty bucks…