Old_Man_Harper

BG3 Durge run - past the point of no return for the final showdown, but it’s beer o’clock now, so I’ll save the last battle for tomorrow. Not sure what I’ll play after that - I bought Kingdom Come 2, but I’m tempted to play a palate cleanser-type game and wait for Avowed.

@Millionski I’ve played it for the last few weeks, so the version I played was after the patch they did at Christmas, but before this patch. It’s fine, not noticeably buggy at all in about 60-70 hours I’ve played. It wasn’t happy with quick resume though, so I got into the habit of saving and fully quitting the game.

NPCs are going to start looting the best gear from corpses… aw, I like waiting in cover while NPCs fight it out and then looting the bodies! It’s a good way to get guns and ammo, especially early on. But it’s obviously what they really would do in the Zone.

It looks good and apparently it is possible to do a playthrough in about 30 hours, which gives good scope for replayability, as by all accounts there’s a lot hidden in what is a quite small world.

@themightyant It does make me wonder why companies (Square Enix notably, but most recently EA) are so quick out of the blocks to declare a game’s sales a disappointment, essentially labelling them a failure, when they quite often keep selling!

@Fiendish-Beaver Not that old yet - I’m 56, but I’m the oldest of my circle of friends, hence the name! Old enough to have played Space Invaders, Galaxian, etc. in arcades back in the day, when they were new and totally thrilling…

Continuing my BG3 Durge run on Series X. Broke into the Devil’s house to nick his hammer. He wasn’t best pleased. A very tough fight ensued (although they are all pretty tough at this point) and I haven’t been able to win it yet. I’ll give it a few more tries, but I saved just before going there, so I might skip it as it’s not really necessary for the endgame - I was just interested to see it.

I have bought and downloaded it and it’s on the ‘to play’ pile. God knows why I do that when I could pick it up cheaper when I’ve finished the other games I’ve still got to play! 🤷‍♂️

I think there will be one more generation of consoles after this one. After that my own interest in gaming is likely to be diminished by the end of my life.

I haven’t read all the comments, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see someone complaining that it isn’t 120fps…

It’s early February and I’ve already got a 2025 game backlog! 😮

Taking a break from Stalker 2 to finish my Durge run on BG3 - I’m now in the city itself so nearing the endgame and learning just why my character has all these violent thoughts…

I am interested in Avowed, Kingdom Come and Lost Records. Quite a lot for a February! I expect a lot of them want to get their games out before GTA6 and the Switch 2 launch and dominate the conversation.

Never played it! Perhaps they could replace it with Tournament Bowls ‘25. Or a birdwatching game.

More Stalker 2. The story has taken me to the west of the map, closer to Pripyat, and safe to say the danger has ramped up. However, I am now much better equipped and armed. Still very much enjoying it - it feels like the Fallout game we clearly won’t get in this console generation.

I feel pretty well set up there for games for the next few months. Stalker 2 will likely last me until Avowed, I’ll also probably buy the new Kingdom Come game, then the three we just saw for April and May. 🙂

I’m sure DA will have a ‘long tail’ sales-wise, but a ten-year gap between releases means that a lot of people nowadays won’t even know much about the series. EA have nobody to blame but themselves for that.

A tough field though - Hannah Telle and Melina Juergens were both brilliant too.

He does a really good job and has some proper Indy lines to deliver. I love the bit where Voss calls him a ‘pathetic little man’ and he replies ‘Better than being a Nazi!’

Starbound looks interesting. And if you haven’t played Case of the Golden Idol yet, I can only re-re-re recommend it, a belter.

More Stalker 2 on Series X - just reached an important decision point. About 60 hours in and still really enjoying myself.

Still Stalking the Zone on Series X, still having a great time. If you’ve been holding off playing after the launch because of the bugs, I’d say you’re good to go now. I haven’t noticed any problems.

I guess it’s a judgement call from the developers. Take the cash up front or hope for the sales. I can think of some games - Tunic, Unpacking and Immortality spring to mind - that probably benefited from the exposure of being on game pass.

I guessed they noticed that lots of people were getting the ‘play 3 game pass games’ reward in less than a minute just by pressing start on them! The rewards website or app is another quick way to accumulate points. I can usually manage 6-7,000 points a month without much effort.

I wouldn’t even know where to go to buy a new physical game now and I live in Leeds which isn’t exactly short of shops. In fact, the last boxed game I bought was Sea of Thieves in 2018.

Not a lot gets released at this time of year. I wonder why smaller/indie game developers don’t release around now (or in summer) and get a clearer run, rather than getting lost among the big release before Christmas.

It was pretty minor and got mediocre reviews, but ‘Open Roads’ was three or four hours that stuck in my head. It’s from some of the people who did ‘Gone Home’ and ‘Tacoma’. A mother and daughter are clearing out their late mother/grandmother’s house and discover she may have had a secret affair… They go on a road trip to get to the bottom of it, which they do.

I also thought Life is Strange Double Exposure was much better than a lot of the reviews it got did.

I assumed that the layout on PlayStation thumb sticks was something that was copyrighted or something, because I can’t see any reason not to make them offset nowadays. It always feels a bit of a hangover from the 90s when many people preferred to use the d-pad and the sticks were an optional extra.

Back to work on Monday, but for the past week I’ve been playing Stalker 2 on Series X. I found it takes a bit of getting into, but now I am, I’m having a great time, in a Fallout-but-tougher way. I enjoy the random element of the Zone, where groups of NPCs sometimes clash fatally and you can help yourself to loot, and on one occasion an NPC squad attacked the same objective I was sneaking up on and did a good part of the job for me!

I haven’t noticed any bugs in the 30+ hours I’ve played, so I think the patches have sorted that, however it is sometimes unhappy with quick resume. I really didn’t care for the English voice acting at all, so I switched to Ukrainian with subtitles.

I’m on to the second game of my Christmas leave (Indy was the first) - Stalker 2. I found the prologue was a bit ‘in at the deep end’ - I had to adjust the brightness because it is very dark - but I’m finding my feet now and enjoying it. I haven’t seen any bugs or glitches, so I guess the numerous patches have tidied it up.

I voted for Hellblade 2, but I hadn’t played Indy at the time as I was saving it for my Christmas leave. I just finished it today and had a thoroughly good time! I’m now heading into the zone for some Stalker 2, another game I saved for Christmas.

Just finishing up with Rise of the Golden Idol - a really great game, very cleverly plotted, after which as I’m now on my Christmas leave, I’ll make a start on Indy which I’ve been saving for this.

All he needs to do is fork his beard and he’ll look like Admiral Tirpitz.

Rise of the Golden Idol on Series X. ‘Case’ on Game Pass was one of my GOTYs - this is more of the same with a 1970s setting, which is fine by me!

Finished Life is Strange Double Exposure last weekend and thought it was way better than a lot of the reviews it got. After next Friday, it’s my Christmas holidays and I’m saving Indy/Stalker until then.

@GeraltWhiteWolf Oh definitely! I’ve got 2 weeks leave booked over Christmas and I’m saving Indy and Stalker 2 until then.

I haven’t tried Stalker 2 or Indy yet, so couldn’t fairly include either, so 1. Hellblade 2, 2 DA Veilguard, 3 LiS Double Exposure.

Next, if they’d been listed would have been Case of the Golden Idol and 7 Days to Die.

I’m shocked that the performance award went to the right person! I was expecting another travesty, like when Manon Gage didn’t win for Immortality, or Erika Mori ended up empty handed for LiS True Colors.

I was amused that they announced a sequel to The Long Dark when they still haven’t released the last chapter of the story mode for the first game yet, seven years after it was released!

That’s pretty cool. I never had the RROD but I did have the less common but equally fatal graphic error thing. I remember thinking that they must have launched the cheap ‘Arcade’ version of the 360 purely so that people could buy one to have something to play on while their regular 360 was getting fixed.

I’m playing Life is Strange: Double Exposure on Series X. You play Max from the first game again, now older and an artist-in-residence at a posh New England college. After her best friend is found dead, she finds she can go into another world where her friend isn’t dead. You have to flick between the ‘live’ and ‘dead’ worlds to pull together clues about what happened. It gets weirder. It’s enjoyable, I’ve liked all the LiS games and it’s a nice change of pace from Veilguard, which I finished last weekend.

Indy, along with Stalker 2 are my Christmas leave activities.

It describes me as ‘turn-based tactician’ which delights me.

My most played games were 7 Days to Die, Fallout 4 (I must have put more hours into the updated version than I remember!) and Baldur’s Gate 3.

I played for 1,006 hours, all on Series X. I’m in the top 3% for time played and the top 1% for gamerscore and achievements. I earned 66,474 reward points and spent 59,800 of them..

I just saw an advert for it! On the side of a bus! It looks like actual marketing for once!

Geometry Wars Retro/Evolved. Still satisfying, I would love a remaster as long as it just upgraded it technically, no need for any gameplay changes.

More Veilguard. I’ve reached the bit where it tells me the next story mission is the endgame, so I’m hoovering up the remaining companion quests and increasing faction strength in preparation for starting it.

If I finish it this weekend, I have Stalker 2 and Death Stranding installed as well as Life is Strange DE and Rise of the Golden Idol. I reckon I’ll go for one of the latter two - something a bit shorter between epics. And I’ve got Monday off. 😄

All games last longer for me. I’m the guy who obeys the traffic laws in GTA V and walks around Thedas rather than running. My Rook has far too much dignity to be seen running.

If its an handheld that can play already existing games then it has a chance. Otherwise, they are entering the Nintendo Death Zone! Remember the Sony PSP? At the time, everyone said it was going to crush the Nintendo DS. Then it didn’t.

I really would like to get started on Stalker 2 - it’s all installed and ready to go - but I am deep into Veilguard now and am going to finish that before I play anything else, so I’ll probably wait for my Christmas fortnight before I head into the zone. I have to say, I’ve enjoyed Veilguard as much as I have any DA game.

I’m looking forward to this more each time I see it. But isn’t Indiana Jones the “next big Game Pass release”?

@OldGamer999 Hurrah for some positivity!

I expect the player count will be even higher once people have finished downloading the flipping thing, it’s enormous!

After wasting my money on the emperor’s-new-clothes experience that was Elden Ring, FromSoftware are never seeing another damn penny of mine, whoever owns them!