It is… kind of. Hence the half-cheat. First off it’s 3D, but the game is completely centered around the Oldest House, which is the headquarters of the fictional FBC. Like a Metroidvania you explore and backtrack back and forth through it and unlock new areas opening up from previous places. There is also one (although only one) proper ability gate that lets you explore previously unreachable parts of earlier areas once unlocked.

Even if you don’t classify it as a true Metroidvania it’s definitely Metroidvania-inspired.

I don’t know, I played Blasphemous this summer and had a very mixed time with it. I really wanted to love it but it mostly pissed me off. Too much gameplay design specifically intended to waste your time and make you miserable. Which - I guess - is the point because the game is all about the virtue of suffering. I just didn’t find it particularly fun to play.

Great world building, music and art though.

Can I half-cheat and say Control?

Love seeing Blue Prince win awards. Such an inventive, creative and amazing game.

It was a special event route for the Pokewalker, but you can unlock it via connecting your 3DS to a pirate network. The myth of Surfing Pikachu was a whole thing back around Gen 1&2 proper so I think they did this one-time event around the time of HGSS release as a nod to that.

I was just warning them to set their expectations. It’s a sad state of affairs.

Just went and read your other post. Great read. I love HGSS, I know people sometimes complain about the level curve but to me those games were always the peak of the series. So much content, so much charm, just an absolute love letter to Gen 1 and 2, the dual region is still the coolest thing ever and the Pokewalker was a great little gadget. Though I still haven’t gotten my flying or surfing Pikachu from it as those fuckers have like a 2% spawn rate and no pity system.

Even 12GB honestly feels low these days. I have a 4070ti that I regret buying because I still run into VRAM bottlenecks and I don’t even play in 4k. I guess if you’re content with 1080p you might get away with it but I’d be super weary about buying anything with only 8GB.

I’m back to the modding relapse. My playthrough of STALKER: Anomaly has stalled out again as I’m week-deep into a project of modifying the mod that got me playing again in the first place: TALKER (the AI-powered mod that lets you chat with NPCs in game).

What begun as some tweaks to the prompt and minor edits to faction personalities has turned into both some hacky vibe coding and a ton of prose writing as I’m pushing to see how much character description I can feed the model to improve the output.

Even on Normal you can just build defensively and use Maelle with Egide to tank through like 99% of the game even without nailing a single parry or dodge. It’s only maybe the optional superboss that might give you trouble.

I know it never had a chance to win it. It never had a chance to win the soundtrack award either, but a nomination is still something.

I’m assuming Silksong snags the Indie Award but Best Debut Indie should be possible to win perhaps. It’s such a unique, interesting and inventive game and it deserves recognition.

Blue Prince only being nominated for the two indie awards is an expected travesty. Merited a GOTY nomination imo and also a OST award nomination. Sad times.

Perfect for when I shake my current STALKER addiction and get back to actually playing the AW2 DLCs. Bookmarked, thanks for sharing!

Same story for almost every passion industry. I remember being surprised at first to learn how underpaid Formula 1 engineers are when some of them are literal rocket scientists, for example.

There is an alternate universe out there where the N-gage was a smash hit, Nokia is reigning supreme in the handheld market and we’re all rocking gull-wing phones.

I’m more or less done fiddling with mods at this point, and so the last week I’ve been spending my time actually playing STALKER: Anomaly. It’s been an interesting experience, both familiar and different as I’m using several mods that have released since my last playthrough and that completely change the game. Some for the better, some I’m not sure. STALKER players seem to love three things: misery, immersion and realism and while I am one of those too I also recognise that the pursuit of them can sometimes get in the way of enjoyment.

But even with a heavier-than-I’m-used-to Military presence around the starting areas the early game is playing out much the same as always. Grind some simple missions, take the fights you can win, try to loot NPCs kills if possible, abuse any free temporary companions you can get from quests and gradually scavenge your way towards assembling the kit required to move north. Which involves finding a better armoured suit, finding a better helmet with gas mask, finding a scoped rifle or sniper to repair (I got lucky and found an SVT-40), finding a pump-action or semi-automatic shotgun, crafting your entry level tier night vision goggles, getting enough good healing items and anti-radiation meds…

I’m just about setup now and ready for the trek to Dead City where I’ll make my next base of operations I think, but I decided to finish up some missions in the Great Swamps first while I’m still in the south. Despite my initial misgivings about the idea I managed to clear out the military outpost thanks to being able to sneak my way to a perfect cover and some well timed headshots, so now I should be good to actually do some missions in this area.

Despite the bump in difficulty with the new mods I’m having a great time, Anomaly is just such a unique and special experience - the immersiveness, the desolate loneliness, the horror elements, the atmosphere and world design… It’s hard to explain the beauty of it in text, and it definitely isn’t for everyone. But whenever you get that specific itch, there really isn’t a lot else that can scratch it.

I want to finish it some day but I also kind of get sick of it quickly whenever I try to play it for extended periods and actually do main story missions.

Fucking around in the open world and fishing and hunting and all that is great though.

I think OLR is based around circa build 1935, but it’s using stuff from all the early builds and also incorporating material from the design documents heavily.

Anyway, as long as older versions are available it’s fine. At least they aren’t trying to justify those new changes as “lore accurate” and push them on everyone like a certain Skyrim modder who shall not be named, right? Please say yes.

I’m not sure about this honestly as a lot of the community is in russian, but they have the older version up at least so that’s a good sign.

I heard the A-life implementation in 3.0 is very impressive, so there’s that. But yeah it’s kind of unavoidable with projects like this. Same thing goes for the Unofficial Patch of VtM: Bloodlines. Eventually the fan group dev team starts running low on material to restore but want to keep working and so start extrapolating single lines of unimplemented code references into full fledged quests and taking throwaway sentences from design documents and turning them into wholesale mechanics and stuff like that.

You’re welcome, always happy to talk STALKER! If you want to try OLR, make sure you grab the 2.5 version as they apparently started inserting more liberal/fanfictiony changes in version 3+. You can download it here (don’t worry, the installer lets you chose English as language).