GRcade

Jenuall wrote:Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - PC
Having recently replayed both Prey and Dishonored 2 I had an itch for some more immersive sim goodness and decided to return to the latest (and possibly last! ) entry in the DX universe last night.

Now I know that this game is in no way perfect, the story is weak and half finished, there's no decent antagonist, the characters are all a bit dull, it doesn't have enough locations and those it does have are all fairly samey, some of the mechanics are much more inherently "gamey" than they were in the original 2000 DX. But in spite of all that there is just something about the core gameplay loop of this that just taps directly into my pleasure centres!

Put me in an interesting setting with loads of scope for to exploration at my own pace, systems to hack and manipulate, emails to read, enemies to either evade or find clever ways to eliminate, and don't try to hold my hand the whole time and you will see me smiling all day long.

I ended up playing this until silly o'clock in the morning as I just get so absorbed into the experience, as I say there is lots wrong with the game but Prague remains a fantastic hub to explore and the team behind both this and Human Revolution are still some of the best at telling stories through incidental details and world-building. The number of interesting peeks into the world you can discover even before progressing hardly anything main-plot-wise is still impressive, and so much of it can just be learned by really looking around the places you can explore.

With this and the recent Arkane games getting a relatively muted response in terms of sales it does make me sad to think that these types of experiences are going to become more and more rare. Hopefully Cyberpunk will fill some of the void!

Hime wrote:Horizon Zero Dawn
I stopped playing this when God of War came out but fired it up over the weekend. My god this game is good. I say this as someone who really enjoyed AC: Origins but this is a generational leap ahead, the visuals, cut scenes, story and combat are on another level. This is closer to BoTW than your typical cookie cutter open world game.

Gemini73 wrote:

Hime wrote:Horizon Zero Dawn
I stopped playing this when God of War came out but fired it up over the weekend. My god this game is good. I say this as someone who really enjoyed AC: Origins but this is a generational leap ahead, the visuals, cut scenes, story and combat are on another level. This is closer to BoTW than your typical cookie cutter open world game.

It is very good, excellent in places, but a massive downside is not being able to climb anything as you can in the two games you mentioned.

Rapidly-Greying wrote:I've fallen in love with Resogun after buying it in the sale. It's weird because I've never been into shmups. I've just started giving it a bash on the next level up from easy as I'm determined to get gid.

Gemini73 wrote:Been put on X-ray today which can often be quiet for the most part. Some porters like to read a book, (which I have done in the past), do a cross word etc, but today I've taken in the PSP and am continuing with Breath of Fire 3.

Getting paid to play video games.