I’ve been a fan of thatgamecompany since playing the free Flash version of Flow online and reading Jenova Chen’s thesis on how to implement the flow state into gaming.

http://jenovachen.com/flowingames/Flow_in_games_final.pdf

It’s pretty awesome and he’s a very unique individual. Can’t wait to see what they come up with next.

Because it’s a souls-like

The original Metroid on NES was so freaking good back in the day. I’m in my late 40s at this point and I still hear songs or themes that make me go “that reminds me of Metroid”. The music was iconic.

And it’s gotta be said, the original reveal that the hero of the game was a (gasp) girl! I am sure it had an effect on my young impressionable mind. And the good kind of effect, the kind that makes you realize girls can be bad ass too. So awesome!

You know with Android, you can just sideload any app you want. Still not sure why anyone buys Apple products, but hey at least you get different colored chat bubbles!

I remember being so insanely jazzed and proud that I got into the closed beta for SWTOR like VERY early. Wasn’t so fun when the game launched and I was already burnt out on it. lol

To be fair, they didn’t address a lot of the main criticisms from beta so the game predictably sunk into “Free to play” hell not too long after. Shame, it had a lot of potential.

Point is, I specifically did not sign up for this beta for the same reason as you. I think this one is worth waiting for.

Steam seems to be down right now. Wonder if Hades is so popular that it crashed Steam. :-D

EDIT - Back up already of course. lol

The DLC’s add a ton to the game. New storylines, new sectors (more space), new ships and buildings, new mechanics (in some), etc.

Do I think you need them all at the start? Probably not? I don’t know how much things cost at this point since I’ve gotten all the DLC’s when they came out since I got the game so it’s hard for me to say whether it’s “worth it” price wise. But just from a content and fun standpoint? They add a LOT to the game and are worth having for sure.

IMHO, the Split ships are the ones I prefer flying generally, so I would recommend that DLC if nothing else. But every faction has one or two ships that are best in class, it’s balanced nicely that way. I just know that if I had to start the game from scratch without Split ships, I would be sad. :-D

This game scratches an itch for me that very few games do. Starting from nothing but a single scout ship and building and empire with fleets of capital ships and miners and traders… and not just owning stations, but building them module by module. There are so many different ways to play this game, from pirate lord to corporate shill to business mogul. You can follow one of the many story lines or strike out on your own from day one. sigh I really enjoy this game.

And I thought they were done updating it two updates and one DLC ago. Yet here we are with more improvements. How lucky are we?!!

It’s a janky game for sure, but in a charming way. I love it. You get used to all the oddities and they fade into the background. And there is a pretty solid modding community too… lots of mods to help with things you might not like about the game.

IMHO, Xbox is a better console than PS this gen. I was a PS guy all the way but I got both XSX and PS5 when they came out and I barely touch my PS5 compared to the Xbox.

To be fair, most of the reasons I prefer the Xbox are just user experience things. The biggest one is that I think the PS5 controller is horrible. The ergonomics are all weird for me (yeah I realize that everyone’s hands are different) and the fancy trigger buttons are real cool in the one or two games that make use of them but they’re squishy and vague feeling in the other 99% of games. The Xbox controller has better ergonomics, and better feel in the hand with its materials and button feel. Yes, ergonomics and feel preference will vary from person to person but it’s worth mentioning since I never had an issue with PS controllers until the PS5.

The other reasons I prefer the Xbox are things like how much better it is for things on your TV that aren’t gaming (streaming shows, watching movies, etc.), I think Gamepass is WAY better than the Sony version, it has more exclusives I am interested in, etc.

Anyhow, you do you, but you might look into the Xbox a little before blindly just going with the PS5 on the strength of the older consoles. I was surprised by how much I didn’t want to use the PS5. And a little bummed if I’m honest. It was a lot of effort to get one at launch and a lot of money and it mostly just gathers dust.

And to answer your specific question, if you do decide to go with a PS5, just get whatever is available when you are ready to get one. When it comes to tech, there’s always something better coming so you can wait forever because they will never say “okay, all done!”.

as supposed to

Not to be that guy, but it’s “as opposed to”. Hope this helps in the future!

Excuse me while I hold my breath…

I switched to Linux as my daily driver back last summer and have been able to play every game I’ve tried with literally no issues. Admittedly, I had issues at first but then I switched to Pop!_OS, which has built-in support for Nvidia hybrid graphics. That solved the few gaming issues I had.

With how easy it was and how many games work with no issues, I’m genuinely surprised to hear people say they are having issues with it. I’m not even close to a linux expert. I’m not a programmer. I don’t want my OS to be a hobby, I want it to just work. And so far it has.

Oh yeah, I hated the God of War reboot. It was so cool for like 15 minutes. Then I got to the actual combat and I couldn’t stand it. It was nothing like the original, it was hard AF, it used button combinations I’ve never seen before (I think it’s based on Souls games?), etc. It was so disappointing.

Currently, Ace Combat 7’s Pipeline Destruction.

Oof, that was really tough IIRC.

Jedi Fallen Order. I’ve tried a couple times because I really WANT to like the game. But I just can’t stand the fucking souls style of everything comes back when you save. And the boss fights are just too punishing (for me). It’s so frustrating to get stuck on a boss or lost in a zone and come to the realization that I WAS having fun and then the game got in the way of that.

Elden Ring. I had a lot of fun with the game restarting and playing through the first zone on like 6 different characters to try different styles and see what I like. But at some point in the second zone I realized I was just stressed out all the time. It wasn’t fun, it was stressful. I can appreciate the game and I don’t regret spending the money on it, but I realized it just wasn’t for me.

I think I’m done with souls games. They’re just not for me. I really wanted to play Jedi Survivor but I suspect the new cool stuff will just make me more frustrated with the souls aspects, Oh well.

Yeah, the biggest issue I had with D2 when it first came out was how disconnected it felt. It never felt like a full world, it felt like you warped into a map and killed some things with no larger goal, just some “kill x things” or “pickup x drops” mini quests. Then you warped back to base and then picked a new zone to warp to for no particular reason.

D1 at least had a story that propelled you forward, including tons of lore (admittedly poorly implemented lore, but it was there!) and secrets and easter eggs. The story and voice acting was one of the big criticisms at the start so it’s one of the things they worked hard on fixing over the life of the game. So it was REALLY off-putting when D2 went back to no story and lore. (And as I said, they decided to fix it by just putting in the story from D1.)

Thinking on it now, Avengers had that same disconnected feel as D2 once you got thru the campaign. I quite enjoyed the campaign but the game stopped being fun after that. Coincidentally right when it started being like D2.

Yes. When Destiny 1 came out, it was famously… an acquired taste. It took many updates to get it to a point where it lived up to its potential. And by the time Destiny 2 was near, Destiny 1 had grown into one of the best games I’d ever played. Then Destiny 2 came out and it was like they completely threw out everything they learned fixing and growing Destiny 1. It was a HUGE step back in almost every respect. A massive waste of money.

And then just to rub it in, they went F2P pretty quickly because that’s what you do when you charge for a live service game and nobody wants to pay for it because it’s crap.

I went back to it a few years later to see how it was because it had seemed to find a following eventually. They completely reworked the beginning off the game to make it almost exactly the same as the beginning of Destiny 1. That’s how they fixed it. They changed it back to what worked in the first place. Pathetic. Insulting. Infuriating.

Destiny 2 killed one of the best games I’d ever played. Then replaced it with a poor imitation whose main advantage was that it was optimized for predatory MTX. Fuck Bungie.

Destiny 2 wasn’t free when it came out. Those assholes tricked me into paying for that garbage.

Yeah I knew someone was going to respond to my rhetorical “I have no idea” and explain it like I actually care. It’s like saying I have no idea why people buy Microsoft or use Twitter despite them being despicable. Obviously there are lot of things about them that a lot of people like. Obviously not everyone knows about all the despicable things these companies have done and continue to do. Obviously not everyone would care enough to stop using them even if they did know.

But it still frustrates me. I wish the world was a place where companies like VW couldn’t possibly exist because their own employees would never let them do the things they did, much less their customers or the regulators who are supposed to protect us despite ourselves. But, alas, we do not. And I have no idea why. (<— Rhetorical! Nobody has to try to explain why.)