Old_Man_Harper

At 57 and with a presumably pretty lucrative career behind him… I’d have an eye on the ‘retirement’ door. I’m the same age as him and I’m definitely thinking about it!

If ‘The Initiative’ hadn’t managed to produce anything worthwhile in seven years then the writing was on the wall. I can feel sympathy when people get laid off if a game isn’t a success, but seven years and no result? There’s the door.

Looking forward to Grounded 2, I had a lot of fun with the first one.

1 KCD2 - a truly great game if you are willing to give it the time it needs.

2 Lost Records: Bloom & Rage - the second part didn’t live up to the first, but it more than made up for last year’s slightly disappointing LiS game.

3 The Precinct - good fun.

I’m enjoying it. Oddly, I prefer the nuts and bolts policing stuff - fining graffiti vandals, running license plate checks, pulling over drivers with outstanding warrants and such - to car chases and shoot outs, although there are plenty of those too.

It would be nice if it could be included on a free play day - I’d be interested to give it a go and make my own mind up.

I’ve been doing some law enforcing on Series X - The Precinct and Police Simulator. I’d say the former is more polished and makes it simpler to make decisions around arrests etc. whereas in the latter it’s quite easy to make mistakes like arresting the wrong person after a traffic accident, or wrecking my patrol car on the day I got it. 😳

Both let you do the deeply satisfying thing where you blip the lights and siren to get a car to pull over. 😁

I’m down to the last few missions in Crime Scene Cleaner which I’m finding very relaxing. I wish I took such satisfaction in tidying up my own place!

After that, I think I’ll have a look at The Alters. Hope everyone has a good weekend. 🙂

Obviously they should really try and get things in as good a state as possible before releasing, but I hate to see the sort of pile-on that it is getting and hope they can sort it out.

It was the developer’s choice to release on Game Pass. Nobody compelled them to do so.

The Alters looks interesting. It occurs to me that the last football game I played (apart from FM) was Match Day on the Spectrum, which came out 41 years ago, so maybe I should see if things have advanced since then! 😄

Grounded 2 was the nicest surprise.

Very excited to see that, I really enjoyed Grounded.

Unexpected, but happy about it because I enjoyed the first game.

I’ve been giving my PS5 at bit of love and replayed Last of Us 2 after watching the recent TV series. Still an all-timer, although I’m pretty familiar with it now. Might try and make inroads into my Game Pass backlog tomorrow with Atomfall, but I’ll see how I feel tomorrow.

Xbox Series X (with Game Pass) is the best console I’ve ever owned and I go back over 45 years to the Atari VCS and the ‘TV games’ before that. It’s fast, quiet, totally reliable and still going strong. Living alone in lockdown, winter 20-21, it was practically a life saver in terms of keeping me sane and occupied.

@themightyant incidentally, if you’ve got the complete edition of KCD, you get a series of ‘ancient maps’ which lead to treasure hidden in graves. They aren’t particularly cryptic and you get good cash and high level gear for the price of a spade. It does make the early game easier.

@themightyant Forging becomes quicker with practice and levelling up. I was ultimately able to produce a masterwork Toledo steel longsword in about 90 seconds. Likewise, potion making improves with experience - eventually you get four potions for every one you brew. Practice makes perfect!

Great, I’m there. I finished it recently (205 hours and I didn’t do a huge number of side quests!) and it’s the best game I’ve played in ages. Totally gripped by it.

When I read the headline I assumed it would be something like Dominos or Pizza Hut, not some micro-chain that doesn’t exist in Europe and isn’t even widespread in the US!

Good to hear that they are getting on with something new. I thought Hellblade 2 was superb in an art house sort of way. I liked the way that the ‘magic’ was drawn from the Icelandic landscape. It really does need to be played with headphones for the full effect.

I recently finished KCD2, which I thought struck just the right balance. It is largely open world with side quests etc. but when the story requires it, it becomes quite linear.

This just seems like an attempt to part PlayStation owners from their money for what is now a pretty old game. I mean it’s still good fun - but there are a lot of corridors and courtyards and everything that was new and wow about it back then has been done to death in other things since.

More KCD2 on Series X. I think I’m getting close to the end now - just had to do a glorious bit where a character, impersonating a Cardinal, has to adjudicate a dispute at a church council, whilst maintaining a sufficient level of drunkenness to speak Latin confidently.

KCD2 is a whopper of a game, but the length of time it’s taken means that I’ve now got a heck of a backlog of good Game Pass stuff, so frankly I can manage without GTAVI.

To paraphrase The Donald, I guess we’ll “have two games instead of 30 games”. 😄

It doesn’t bother me much, as the last first-party Xbox game I bought was Sea of Thieves, after which I got game pass, so the only games I buy now are 3rd party. However, I suppose they’ll go up too.

187 hours(!) into KCD2 and still plenty to do, so everything else is having to wait for a turn, although I did make an exception for the comparatively short Lost Records (very good, I thought).

More KCD2 - around 170 hours in and nearing the end of the story. Still having a great time with this and there are actually a ton of side quests I haven’t done.

I’m 170 hours into KCD2 and during that time an absolutely enormous backlog of games I want to play has developed on game pass alone! Frankly, even if they delay GTA 6 I’ve got more than enough to last the rest of the year.

@Valhura try Gears Tactics, Metal Slug Tactics or Wargroove 2, all on game pass

Some extra gaming days this weekend, so I played tape 2 of Lost Records. Not as good as tape 1, I thought - not as interactive - but I still enjoyed it and hope they make more.

Now back to KCD2.

I picked up the first KCD game with all dlc for less than a tenner. 🙂

Still on with KCD2 on Series X. It’s an immense game! I also a quick look at Blue Prince before adding it to the ever-growing backlog - seems interesting.

Whoah, they are actually promoting the console that they make? Radical thinking from the marketing department there - completely contradicting their previous strategy of ‘the odd tweet about it or nothing at all’!

Oooh, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 for me - 125 hours in and I’m not yet half way through! I really need to do some reading on that period of history, Wenceslas and Sigismund, Zizka and the Hussites.

Also a shout out for Lost Records - Bloom & Rage, which more than made up for last year’s slightly disappointing LiS game. Looking forward to Tape 2 next week and hope it does well enough that they can make this a series of games.

Heh heh. Always entertaining when audiences defy critics. 😁

I spent the entirety of March on KCD2 and will likely be the same in April, so I didn’t vote - I haven’t had the chance to play any of them yet.

I thought Botany Manor was terrific. It’s sort of similar to Obra Dinn/Golden Idol - you must deduce how to grow weird rare plants from clues you find around the manor and grounds. Very engrossing and you can probably complete it in a weekend..

KCD2 on Series X. I’ve reached the Kuttenberg area now, still exploring it and picking up side quests. I tried the photo mode today and was amused to find that after taking a picture and returning to the game, Henry says things like “That’s a good one!” or “What a view that is!”

I played it quite a bit when it came out, but it fell off my radar a few years ago.

KCD2 - I had to go back to a save before the big wedding when it became very clear I wasn’t levelled enough for the ensuing sections! A bit more grinding - including actually learning how to sword fight - and I’m much better levelled and equipped to progress. I really enjoy the pace of the game.

It would have to be Baldur’s Gate 3 for me, I’ve played it through three times, 100+ hours each time, and I still find new things I’ve missed or new ways to approach situations.

I had a lot of fun and put a lot of hours into Grounded as well.

Sounds good to me, although at the rate I’m going, I won’t have finished KCD2 until autumn.

@oopsiezz I played it after the Christmas patch and had no issues.

@GuyinPA75 I’ve played all of them and with the exception of LiS2, which I’ve mentioned (and which is probably the weakest of the series) I’ve never felt I was having an agenda pushed on me. If that had been the case, I’d have definitely found it off-putting.

@GuyinPA75 Not notably. LiS 2 had some fairly heavy-handed commentary on anti-Mexican prejudice. Max is gay and Alex could be so if you wanted her to be, but the LiS games aren’t like (say) Dustborn, which is heart-on-sleeve left wing.

I installed it once - there must have been a fleeting planetary alignment that caused me to think I’d be interested in baseball - but I never played it. I don’t suppose it has much traction outside the US.

I enjoyed it, but it isn’t as good as True Colors. I think it needed quite a bit more work, the male characters in particular seemed two dimensional and forgettable (I couldn't remember the name of any of them) and it didn’t achieve much of a sense of place. If you’ve liked the other LiS games I’d still recommend giving it a try, although Lost Records has the same feel and is a better game than DE.

Yeah, I reckon, I’m pretty happy with Xbox to be honest. Personally speaking, the Series X (with Game Pass) is the best console I’ve ever owned and I’ve owned most of them, starting with the Atari VCS!

More KCD2 on Series X. Got a horse now, which saves on shoe leather and also makes it easier to avoid bandits. Still relatively early in the game, doing side missions today, maybe a main quest mission tomorrow.