I just finished Syberia 1 and its remake in parallel. Still a great game.

I’m now moving on to Syberia 2, while also trying to find the time to continue Baldur’s Gate 2 and Icewind Dale.

While we’re griping, and speaking of Console-Itis, does every PC game now need to have an unskippable message telling me that this game has auto save and urging me **not to turn off my PC** when the icon is being displayed? Really? Nobody’s going to do that. Tell me your game is a shitty console port without telling me your game is a shitty console port.

This one, along with “press any button to start”, annoy me so much. There is absolutely no reason to have to press a button before even entering the main menu. If you need it to determine the type of input device, that can be the first press on the menu.

Treat PC games as PC games, even if you make them cross platform.

Syberia 1 and its remake, in parallel. It’s a good story with interesting characters.

The remake is a mixed bag. Overall I do think it’s good. The graphics are beautiful and some quality of life is nice. It also changed some of the puzzles, usually (though not always) for the better. It’s mostly a faithful remake though.

There are two big flaws: the cutscenes were not remastered, and the game became easier.

Cutscenes are only upscaled as far as I can tell, and this is quite jarring compared to the beautiful new graphics. Worse is the difficulty. Syberia was never a hard game, but now it is just too easy. Hotspots are highlighted when your mouse gets near, as are required dialog options. I find this impedes the feeling of discovery.

But despite that, it’s still a pretty good remake.

GW1 and GW2 are very different games. Don’t expect an MMO if you try GW1. You only see other people in cities, the world itself is made up of instanced zones. Only your party is there, and there’s a well-defined mission in each zone. Think of each zone as like a dungeon in an MMO.

That said, it is a great game. I prefer it to GW2, but I would guess that MMO players could be disappointed if they don’t go in with the right expectations.

Either way, he recommended that everyone “freak the fuck out for the next few days and speculate as much as possible until they announce something,”

Advice after my own heart. Freaking out and speculating are always the best move.

its *

Ironically, that’s definitely something AI could check for.

What does Q&A stand for?

At one point he thought I was coming onto him. I shut that down so fast.

The best part was: this was even in the installer! When setting up your sound card, there was a test button. If it worked, you heard “your sound card works perfectly”. But if you kept pressing it, eventually it would say “enjoying yourself?” And if you kept going after that, in an angry voice, “it doesn’t get any better than this!”

Ah old Blizzard, when even the installers had character.

I also love how reincarnation is a fact of life in that world, and souls are a real, almost physical, thing that can be manipulated and used.

Icewind Dale and Baldur’s Gate 2. Same engine and world, yet different enough that they both hold my interest. Baldur’s Gate is quite involved, with tons of quests and NPCs all vying for attention. I literally had a moment where I entered a new area, a bunch of enemies spawned and attacked, and during the fight another NPC spawned and initiated a completely unrelated conversation, ending in removing one of my party members. The quests and characters are interesting, but it can get a bit much when you have so many people telling you about their very urgent problem.

Icewind Dale on the other hand is petty straightforward: go to a new area, fight through it, report back, and repeat. Which doesn’t mean its quests are uninteresting, they are just less complex.

The Icewind Dale party is also much lower level, making fights much simpler, though not always easier.

Thomas Was Alone.

I suck at platformers, and don’t like playing them. But this game, and most especially its narration, made me fall in love with quadrilaterals.

I won’t say more, but if you haven’t tried it please give it a chance.

The Thing: The Game: The Remaster: The Video

From what I heard, they delisted only the premium editions of Avowed because some part of those use Unity. It looks like the same is true for the other games. Even for Pillars they only delisted the definitive edition.

The companion system is definitely a weak point. The companions themselves are fine, but you can’t refuse any and have very limited choice in party composition.

You can disagree with them at some points, and you can influence their story, but the gameplay impact is pretty much nothing.

The impact your choices can have on the world are definitely bigger - and visible in the game itself. I won’t spoil it, but there’s a pretty huge consequence not long after meeting Giatta.

I haven’t decided on a final party yet. In BG1 at one point I noticed I had an all female party, except for one guy - so I gave that guy a certain belt…. I was hoping to get an all female party going again, but I don’t know if it’ll be feasible.

Right now I have my sorcerer, Minsc, Aerie, Jaheira, Nalia, and I just replaced Valygar by Mazzy.

I’ve finished Avowed, and am going back to Baldur’s Gate 2, which I had put aside for it.

I liked Avowed well enough, though it is far from perfect. I would have preferred a classic CRPG like its predecessors, but it was fun to see the Living Lands in 3D - and the graphics really shine at night. It is absolutely gorgeous after sunset. And I loved the ending, although it seemed a bit too positive.

In BG2 I’m only in chapter 2. I just found Mazzy and am continuing to explore the dungeon she’s in.

Shade aside, I do think more developers should make their own engine. Yes it takes time and resources, but those are spent on exactly what you need instead of on getting what you want out of an engine that was made to do everything but focused on nothing.

There were, but we ate them.

If only.

Sadly justwatch doesn’t work for me. It gives the choice between a part of the country that doesn’t offer services where I live, or another country - which doesn’t offer services where I live.

Interesting! I tried from a country that has an eID so it should be trivial to weed out duplicates, yet I got that checkbox.

Oddly, the EU one just has a checkbox that you need to check to confirm that you haven’t signed before. I’m guessing removal of duplicates happens only after closing, along with other data validation.

I thought this strange at first too, but I think it’s because of the disparate identification methods in different countries. If everyone had a digital ID card instant checking would be doable, but note it probably isn’t.

A “best RPGs of all time” list will inevitably include Baldur’s Gate 2, and likely other Infinity Engine games, most of which are definitely not games without difficulty spikes or required side content.

The Wolf Among Us, and I imagine other Telltale games (but that’s the only one I played so far). It felt a lot like Life is Strange in gameplay and storytelling, even though it’s also a lot different.

In a similar vein, point and click adventure games like The Whispered World, The Book of Unwritten Tales, or Syberia. The modern ones usually don’t have a failure state (as opposed to the infamous Sierra games), but unlike LiS you may get stuck on a puzzle.

As someone who played the original Prince of Persia, Sands of Time still feels like “the new one”.

I will continue to defend Andromeda. Yes it has its flaws, but no more than the original trilogy. It could’ve been the start of a cool new trilogy.