ampersandrew

I think they're called that because they postdate the "looter shooter" that combined Diablo-esque "action RPGs" with FPS games, like Borderlands and Destiny. "Looter" without the "shooter" is a much better name for Diablo's genre anyway, since we have far too many RPGs that are also action games and have nothing in common with Diablo.

I'm still waiting for the resurgence of the style of shooter that came just after those that inspired this wave of boomer shooter; the likes of Half-Life, Halo, 007, TimeSplitters, and so on. I don't know what subgenre will be assigned to those games when they start to come back around, but that style is also old at this point, so hopefully it doesn't also get assigned the label of "boomer shooter", because then it'll be harder for both audiences to find what they're looking for.

Are you sure you're thinking of the right game? This game lists LAN play on its features and allows you to host private servers. It's been on my radar for precisely those reasons.

I'm back into Final Fantasy VII, which I've never finished before. I've been playing this game off and on over the past several years, and boy is that a rough way to play it. It's very difficult to remember what I was supposed to be doing next, because that game often gives you one line of dialogue about where to go and then has no in-game reminder of it. As a result, I've got a walkthrough handy to reference whenever I'm lost. I just got to the bottom of the mountain after the snowboarding sequence, and those parts of the game where you're trying to navigate the pre-rendered backgrounds are where you can feel its age the most. I'm hoping to finish this one up in the next month or so, ahead of the possible Rebirth PC port that we might be lucky enough to get this year.

I'm replaying Horizon: Zero Dawn on PC ahead of the Forbidden West release as a refresher on the story, though I'm not going to play the sequel on day 1. They made me wait several years for it already. They can keep waiting for my money until it gets a sale down to about $40, maybe this summer. I still really enjoy the combat in that game, especially on higher difficulties, but this is a game that still feels like I'd enjoy it more if I could select missions from a menu rather than going through the open world trappings. It may have made these games cheaper to develop at the same time. Oh well.

I finished The Outer Worlds and its DLC. I highly recommend it. I feel like this game gets overlooked often enough. Did you wish Starfield was better? Play The Outer Worlds. Did you want another Fallout: New Vegas? Play The Outer Worlds.

Now that I've finished The Outer Worlds, another Obsidian game, I'm back to playing some Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. I only progressed one quest a little bit this past week, but I want to keep pushing forward and finish this game before Avowed comes out.

Other than the above, still more Skullgirls grind. My pushblock guard cancel skills have atrophied, and I need to run some drills. Also, Peacock zoning, even when I know the answers, is tough to deal with.

I beat the base game of The Outer Worlds and started the DLC. This game ought to have more eyes on it in the wake of Starfield. It's just a better version of that game. Each settlement you come across might have about 10 NPCs in it, and each one of them is connected to the other ones via quests that help you form a picture of just what happened here before you landed. It's excellent.

I also finished Penny's Big Breakaway. When you hit a flow state in this game, it's so, so good, but a bit of jank in the physics and controls for the game hold it back. Like last week, my recommendation is still to wait a few months to play it, in hopes that patches can square away some of these issues.

And then there's my usual fighting game shenanigans in Street Fighter 6 and Skullgirls, trying to be the FGC equivalent of "swol". The Capcom Cup finals for SF6 were a lot of fun to watch despite there being too many Lukes.

Just play The Outer Worlds if you haven't already. It's Starfield if they threw out all the parts that didn't work, and it's got a sense of humor, too.

I concur. At least the logos for the bad ones have "EA" in the middle of them so that you know which ones to avoid.

Boy, what a dishonest title for what happened here.

You know how most people never heard of this company or care that it exists? My understanding is that they consult on games to make them more inclusive. So you have a gay character written into a game, perhaps the result of this company's contributions or perhaps not, and then a bunch of people complain that Sweet Baby made the game woke or some nonsense. How did I hear of this? Steam forums became a cesspool for people crying about this company. If Suicide Squad bombs, it's because they consulted with Sweet Baby and went woke. Indiana Jones maybe features a woman in the trailer who looks like more than a damsel in distress? Sweet Baby's doing.

There are a lot of benefits to the sequel model in some circumstances. You get to have every permutation of a game and its versions rather than overwriting previous versions of a game that arguably might be better for their own reasons.

Also known as the Daisuke Ishiwatari method.

I know my resistance probably doesn’t accomplish much

It does. Besides not giving that game your time and money, you're instead putting it in some other game that's making what you want, and they probably need your time and money more to keep doing that.

I can tell you from experience that you'll have a better time with plenty of old Assassin's Creed games by not having the DLC in the picture to affect your opinion of the total package.