Just to play devil’s advocate, I’d suggest you’re conflating what the star child believes with what the series believes. It stinks that you can’t push back against its belief, but when you have a single-minded AI that refuses to consider any options beyond those it’s already gamed out and you’re bleeding to death....

Wasn’t the walk away ending added in the director’s cut?

I liked the idea behind the original endings, but the execution was terrible. For one thing, they showed the mass relays exploding in the wake of the Catalyst firing which not only ends interstellar travel, but also, thanks to ME2's DLC, we know sterilizes the solar system that housed the relay. So good job killing,…

Blasphemous is pretty great. I just recent;y came back to it - I got it day one after Kickstarting it, only to get his with a bug that erased all the character progression I’d done - new flasks, rosary beads, health upgrades, etc - and left me stuck in what I thought was pretty far into the game. It, uh, wasn’t very…

I barely dipped my toe into Godseeker before deciding it wasn’t for me. I’m glad it’s there for those who like it, but no thank you.

For me, it was Grimm. Triy as I might, I couldn’t beat her. Still managed (after a LONG time) to beat Radiance, so I’m pretty happy about that.

I keep waiting for The Mummy Demastered, which is also supposed to be a great Metroidvania, to go on sale.

Tune and Fairweather has published a couple other books either about Dark Souls or the genre - You Died (an excellent analysis of the first DS) and Soul Arts (a collection of fan concept art for the Souls games plus Sekiro and Elden Ring made with VaatyaVidya) - and while I’m still waiting for my copy of Soul Arts,…

Man, Call of the Sea was great, though I don’t know that it was much of a headscratcher. Maybe it’s because I played it coming off of The Witness, but I thought it was generally straightforward. The only thing I wound up looking up was the star charts near the end of the game, but that was mostly because I figured out…

Yeah. I mean, I can’t go back and play Destiny 2 or Mists of Pandaria or any of a million other live games anymore because development has moved on and built over those launch experiences.

The main thing to change is changing tank mode into a toggle rather than a button hold.

Yeah, but Origins also had TERRIBLE loading times, so unless you were literally going from one end of the city to the other, it seldom saved much, if any, time.

Even the tank battles were a lot of fun (not the stealth tank battles against the Cloudburst and the Knight himself, mind you).

Agreed. City and Origins both had obnoxious limitations to just getting around the city - in Arkham City it was always having to go all the way around Wonder Tower (and the huge chunk of real estate it and its fortifications took up), while in Origins it was having to slog your way across Pioneer Bridge to get between…

I thought they announced a traditional remake, but it was going to be a mobile game sold piecemeal.

I read ‘Winter 2023' and I assume it means December ‘23-Feb ‘24, but that’s just me.

I hate to be the one to point this out, but at this point there have been more Bethesda-style Fallouts than Black Isle-style ones. That’s what the series is now.

I agree that FO4 was the worst of both worlds, but I REALLY think you’re underselling how specific a story Dragon Age 2 is telling.

That’s all very true, but to be honest, if Baskin-Robbins offered a subscription service, I’d be all for it.

Honestly, the whole thing reads like someone read Ready Player One and didn’t realize the OASIS was a nightmarish cultural dystopia. (Granted, Ernest Cline, who wrote the thing, didn’t seem to realize that fact either.)