That’s a classic negotiation technique abusing the psychological anchoring effect.

It’s as if two completely different studios made these games, and the one behind Syndicate had no idea what made Unity great.

Funny you say that. Unity was developed by Ubisoft Montreal, the primary Ubisoft studio who are responsible for much of the good work they’ve done (think Splinter Cell, Far Cry and AC: Black Flag). Syndicate was developed by Ubisoft Quebec, and it was also that developer’s first AC game.

I’ve heard such disparate opinions of WotR, I’m very interested to see what I feel about it whenever I get to it. I played Kingmaker over Christmas and while I really enjoyed parts of it I was also endlessly frustrated about many things. And some things I’ve heard make me anxious about the sequel too. I’m also very concerned about the scale and scope - I enjoyed the more grounded narrative and setting of KM and worry I’ll have trouble getting onboard with being a Chosen One and battling gods and other epic narratives and whatnot.

I do feel like smartphones are close to essential in modern society. I can’t say I like that, but it is what it is. From all the things you describe to stuff like sending money between each other and paying for services in today’s cashless society you really kind of struggle without one.

For me, I got my first phone at 11 or 12, but back then it was of course not a smartphone but a regular cell phone. Times were different then. Kids still interacted with each other during recess, the best distraction your phone had available was Snake. The internet as we know it wasn’t a thing. The main thing you used your phone for was actually calling people.

I’m sorry. The attention span comment wasn’t directed at you personally, it was reflecting on your point that people would find it too slow and boring with fewer kills. It wasn’t meant as a jab at all.

I think it sounds like we’re mostly in agreement. And yeah, the O’Driscolls spawning in and popping up like whack-a-moles is another great example!

I saw Skald: Against the Black Priory was 40% off and I’ve had my eyes on it for a while, so I just went for it. Have played about 6 hours now and I’m loving it. The only thing I’m unsure of is replayability as it’s feeling fairly linear and with only marginal decision making, but otherwise it’s been really cool. You get the old school late 80s/early 90s RPG look but with a less clunky feel. It doesn’t have the most beautiful sprite work, but I really like the art for the splash screens. The music is great and nostalgic and the display settings emulating period monitors via filters was a lovely touch.

The writing feels solid and the atmosphere of gloomy hopelessness and cosmic horror really works for me. Combat has felt fun enough - though fairly simple - and I don’t think the game is long enough that it will become a problem.

Looking forward to seeing how it ends, but from what I’ve seen so far I’d recommend it to almost anyone. It’s not that expensive either, even at full price.

I don’t really disagree with you about the nature of the story, and I don’t have anything against the overall narrative. I just personally think the story could have been told with fewer bloodbaths and outright massacres and still be compelling. In fact, for me every innocent you kill would feel more impactful morally and narratively if there were fewer of them.

But maybe I’m out of touch with the attention span of the modern mind.

It might well be a me-problem. I had the same issue with Sleeping Dogs that I just finished last week. So I might just have a fundamental problem with the type of gameplay design these kinds of games go for and the fundamental ludonarrative dissonance you have to be able to look past to enjoy them. I just have a hard time squaring off war crime levels of mass murder as “getting into a little too much trouble”. Killing a lawman or two as things get out of hand in Valentine? That’s getting into a bit too much trouble. But Arthur Morgan literally kills hundreds upon hundreds of people and that just breaks my immersion.

I also felt like there was a certain whiff of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace about it, like how years are names after corporate sponsors.

That this has not yet been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature can only be described as a crime against humanity.

I’ll get through the RDR2 story one day. I played it for two stints last year but I just space out and lose immersion every time the main story forces you to kill one hundred lawmen in the middle of a town. For a game that put so much effort into making the open world vibrant, alive and dynamic you face very little consequences for committing what can only be classified as genocide in the main story.

Yeah, Reddit benefits from the traffic regardless of the accuracy of the posts, so this is mostly wasting the time of regular people with issues who are trying to search for an answer.

You’re right, that’s the one! For the uninitiated.

I feel like I’ve seen this before. I think it might be from a short film made in connection with The International some years back? Gabe used to show up in those in some fashion.

I actually don’t know. Maybe? I’ve never used a sandbox before so I’d need an expert opinion. That would be a great solution if it works.

Candy Crush and Clash of Clans were both released in 2012. FarmVille was 2009, years earlier. You could call those two the first wave maybe after the genie was out of the bottle, but FarmVille was the great progenitor.

I’m going to be a little left-field with this one. Yes you could pick some boring obvious answer like Pong, Doom or Minecraft and that’s perfectly valid. I’m not saying those are incorrect.

I’m going to go with FarmVille though. It’s really hard to overstate the impact it has had on the gaming landscape (for the worst, if it needed spelling out). It popularised an all new approach to monetisation and retention systems in games, it heralded the proliferation of microtransactions, Games-As-A-Service models and manipulative skinner boxes designed to extract the most money and attention out of you. It opened the door - by being a “social game not just for gamers” - to an entirely new market whose wallets were previously unavailable. It created this malicious new insight that the best way to make money is not to just make a good game and sell it - it is to create an addiction through psychologically manipulative means, then slowly leech their users’ wallets over time.

FarmVille really fucked us over.

Sifu is more like a fighting game it looks like, but fundamentally the crux of the difficulty will be reacting to input - just like a Souls-like. And well, I feel like the challenge is the fulcrum of a game like Sifu. All I’ve heard about it is that it’s great, but hard, and the virtue of the game is overcoming that difficulty. I don’t know that the story and presentation is good enough that I’d enjoy it on Story difficulty.

Sifu looks good but I’m kind of scared of it. I’m not sure I’m good enough to enjoy it, I might be too old and slow. I’ve stayed away from the Elden Ring DLC for the same reason, and likewise Sekiro.

Are the two DLCs not included and integrated into Mankind Divided? That’s a shame. The DLC for Human Revolution was seamless and maybe the best part of the game (excluding the “you lose all your gear and skills” gimmick that I’m quite fed up with). It’s a shame about the ending of MD though, I hear the game feels like basically 2/3 of a great game and then just ends in a cliffhanger, which hurts knowing it never got continued.

Sounds fine for Infinite. I loved Bioshock one, and I think it’s one of the best games of all time. Bioshock 2 is like an 8/10, it’s essentially just “more Bioshock” but with a worse story. I’d rather they try something different with Infinite than another runback.

Yeah I suspected as much for the old games. Kiwami -> Kiwami 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 5 -> 0 -> 6 is what I was planning on doing, and so it seems I was on the right track. I have heard there is technically some extra content in Kiwami 1&2 you’d only appreciate if you’d already played some of the other games, but I’m not sure it’s worth hunting down and suffering through the original Yakuza 1&2 for those tidbits. Plus it seems awkward to fit in progression wise since you’re replaying the story of 1 and 2… Do you play 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 5 -> 0 -> 6 -> Kiwami -> Kiwami 2 then? Or save 6 for last? And it seems like a lot of effort for marginal gains.