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This guy sure does. So this is a little late, since the Kickstarter for M.A.V. successfully concluded just a day ago, in addition to being successfully greenlit for Steam, but regardless, i think it looks pretty exciting. The game is definitely heavily influenced by Chromehounds, so you can probably expect incredibly intricate and freeform mech-building, very complicated damage models, and methodical action with an emphasis on teamwork. There will also be an emphasis on a faction-based metagame, like in Chromehounds, but people will be able to run their own metagames on their own servers. (Apparently even as single-player games against AI, should they wish.) The core gameplay seems to lack the communication gimmicks of Chromehounds, which is understandable, since they really just aren't enforceable in today's gaming environments. The mech lab also seems like it'll do some clever things to prevent a lot of the more broken and exploitative builds that showed up late in Chromehound's lifespan. It will also not be F2P, unlike other recent mech games in the PC space. (The developer has articulated a dislike for the F2P model.) I always felt like Chromehounds tried to do so many interesting things, it was always troubling that From seemed to have no interest in revisiting it, and it was even more troubling when the game shut down in 2010. (After running for four years.) Frankly, i'm glad to see somebody drawing influence from it and trying to build on what it did.

Eidos Montreal is a relatively large studio, isn't it? It's been stated multiple times that they have different internal teams for Deus Ex and Thief. I suspect these layoffs affect the Thief team, rather than the reasonably successful Deus Ex team. (Which is confirmed to be working on another Deus Ex. They're also porting their allegedly totally okay built-for-iOS Deus Ex game to Steam.)

I just finished a playthrough of Earth Defense Force 2025's solo campaign, with a co-op game still in progress and a fair amount of time in on all the classes. That game is a janky mess with a perpetually terrible framerate, and i love it. I love the threadbare mission scripting that allows these insane battles against hundreds of weird and enormous enemies to spiral out of control through these massive, fully-destructable city environments. I find a gleeful kind of catharsis in this game just setting me out in a largely unrestricted arena with my toolbox of weapons and a series of problems for me to solve in any way that toolbox allows. I loved 2017, and i think 2025 is a great successor. The co-op's been very enjoyable, if only mostly functional. The classes are all entertaining enough individually, and together they create some really fun team dynamics. (In co-op, make sure somebody plays as an Air Raider. Probably don't pair up a Fencer with an Air Raider though, if you only have two players.) However, some odd sync issues can crop up with the netcode, though the game doesn't require so much precision that it falls apart. The online campaign has some extra-ridiculous missions that don't appear in the offline game, but both campaigns are quite long. The game is nearly twice as long as 2017, with the first half of the game mostly retreading old ground, and the second half introducing lots of new enemies. Unfortunately, there's a couple mission setups that repeat a few times with virtually no variation. That kind of filler feels out of place in a game that is built around the idea that people will already be playing missions multiple times through higher difficulties to earn better weapons. (You really only see a tiny portion of the available weapons by playing through on the normal difficulty, they get stranger from there on out.) Still, i love it.

Golden Eye just seemed grotesque to me, looking at it through the perspective of having been playing a lot of PC shooters at the time. It just seemed so primordial, the actual gameplay felt like it was in a mindset that PC shooters had already worked through years previously, it was like somebody played Wolfenstein and hadn't looked at anything else since then. This one actually also applies to me, except i'd expand it out to most of those 90's isometric RPG's that everybody loves so intensely. They just never really clicked with me, and i've certainly given them plenty of chances.

Back when i played it, i had said that it really reminded me of a sci-fi episode of an anthology series like The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits. Really loved it a lot.

Kind of an above-water equivalent to the Endless Ocean games? Wandering around some kind of national park, noting the wild-life you come across and seeing the sights and taking in the history of the location? That'd probably be fairly interesting. Oh, i just remembered, there was that Afrika game on the PS3 a few years ago. That probably somewhat fits the requirements of this theoretical game, from what i can remember hearing about it.

I always especially loved the finale in Wind Waker, with Ganondorf painted as a person hopelessly trapped in the past while the world around him looks towards the future. It was an unexpectedly effective thematic conclusion for that game and probably the best story Nintendo's ever told. (Which, to be honest, is not a very high bar i guess.) In the context of long-form games, i don't really want endings to be the final gameplay exam, that should be penultimate dungeon or level or whatever. Instead, I want an end to the journey, I want to see that certain tone set that makes you reflect back on the many previous hours you've spent with the game. The challenge should definitely be mitigated somewhat, because the last thing you want while the game is asking you to be invested in a carefully paced conclusion is to get hung up on a frustrating boss fight.

I'm especially troubled by the way this turned out, given that it's being used as further validation for what Dishonored did, which was not at all what i personally want out of a Thief-style stealth game. For all the issues Thief allegedly has, it at least seems like they held true to the detection systems and the emphasis on limited combat. I'll probably still check this game out when it goes on sale or something. (Or maybe next year when they do a prettied-up bug-fixed re-release, as Eidos seems to do with all their games now.)

I love the original 3 games a whole bunch, Returns didn't really do anything for me.

I take issue with calling System Shock and Deus Ex shooters, they definitely aren't. System Shock, especially, is definitely a straight action RPG that merely exists in the guise of an FPS. There is far more emphasis on its role-playing mechanics than any technical proficiency with its shooting mechanics. Deus Ex, on the other hand, places as much, or more, emphasis on its adventuring and stealth as it does on shooting. BioShock definitely takes significant strides towards being more of a shooter though, and by Infinite, Irrational was really just making Half-Life 2. So i feel like i should chime in on this one since i actually like Ridge Racer, and it doesn't feel like there's a lot of people who do. I used to play those games because they generally had a great sense of speed and some really weird, unique mechanics that don't really exist anywhere else. (The series has a particularly strange implementation of a drifting mechanic that i've always found a lot of fun.) The series peaked years ago with the PSP games though, the subsequent decade is where Namco tanked the series. (The Bugbear reboot also stripped the game of its defining mechanics, so fuck that.) As for my own contributions to this thread, i generally don't completely write off anything, though i'm extremely reluctant to play MMO's or any F2P nonsense. I'm also pretty much done with Call of Duty. I thought CoD2 was a lot of fun way back when, CoD4 was alright, MW2 less so, and then IWard imploded. I've also found the Treyarch games almost offensively terrible. What the series has grown into, with its progression mechanics in competitive play and participation-absent linear campaigns, has come to represent a lot of the things i really loath about modern shooters. I'm probably also done with Assassin's Creed. I actually love the series a lot, i don't have many of the complaints people often raise against it, the annualization is just kiling it for me. I'd like to keep up with the series, but i just can't. They're too time consuming and there's too many of them. Blizzard games, collectively, have never appealed to me at all. Diablo, WarCraft, StarCraft, none of it ever clicked with me. Except for Lost Vikings, that was awesome. Metal Gear Solid is one i kind of love to watch from afar, but have consistently found them to be completely unengaging as games. I appreciated Metal Gear Rising as a glimpse into that universe that also happened to be a game i really enjoyed playing.

There's a thing i've always loved about Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series. You can go in there and have a complete adventure in around ten-twenty hours, if you want. None of the individual quest paths are massive investments of time. There isn't some massive, intimidating 80 hour narrative thread you're always chained to. I will say that i replay games a lot less now that i'm older, but the games that i end up replaying are not actually shorter games, and i wouldn't want them to be shorter. (Not really out of a desire for games to be longer, i just want to see the game be whatever length the developer thought was appropriate.) When i end up replaying a game a bunch of times, it's usually because it either excels at encouraging mastery or encouraging experimentation. I've probably played through both Deus Ex and System Shock 2 each a dozen times or more over the years. Now, yeah, Deus Ex is a 20-40 hour game, so take from that what you will. (While SS2 can easily be completed in around ten hours.) The reason i find these games so immensely replayable is because of what is largely sandbox mission design working with broad sets of systems that allow extremely varied playthroughs, and in the case of Deus Ex, allowing a narrative that even subtly adapts to your choices and actions. (Without, it's probably worth noting, necessarily requiring wildly divergent story paths.) One of the things that is really important to me about these games is that, even though they're absolutely packed with story, they're never bogged down in scripted narrative. You're always expressing some small player action, so you never resent the story being told to you as something taking you out of the game. Now, back to one of those first points, more recent games that i've replayed multiple times? Purely speaking with an eye towards narratively-focused games, it would be the BioShock games and, even more recently, Human Revolution.

Wait, wait, ack! What? Oh, okay. There's no confirmed release date for NA, which is a little concerning if it's nearly out elsewhere. In europe, is it going to be a retail or digital release?

Speaking of the Guild series, the one game from the Guild 01 collection that hadn't been localized was actually just released, now fully localized, on the eShop outside of Japan. "Weapon Shop De Omasse" is the name, but i haven't played it.

It feels like a game designed with a lot of hindsight, one that is now more purposeful in its jankiness. It's subtly improved all-around with a lot of the weird, broken stuff smoothed over in a way that leaves the things still kind of fucked up feeling like they have a reason for being fucked up. I mean, the vehicles are completely viable now, but they still control terribly. It's that kind of game. It didn't suddenly stop being EDF, it was quite overtly made for the people who were already on board with EDF, and i can't imagine such a person being disappointed with what 2025 delivers. It's more of 2017, it's that game, but better and bigger. The massive crowds of enemies, the hugely open-ended and completely destructable environments, and the ridiculous weapons. That's what it still is, and it's awesome. I also really like the new classes, i will add. Returning from the previous games in the series are the Pale Wing/Wing Diver class and the standard Ranger, but there's now also an Air Raider class that can call in air strikes and vehicles, as well as place a variety of support emplacements and stationary weapons. The other new class is the Fencer, which carries four weapons in two dual-wielded sets. The fencer has extremely limited mobility starting out, but some weapons confer various kinds of booster movement, in addition to the Fencer also being able to carry large shields to absorb damage. Set up right, you can go zooming through a large mob taking virtually no damage, tearing apart those enemies with a large pile driver. (I've been using a fencer in the co-op campaign i've been playing and i just got a giant telescoping robot fist, it is weird and awesome.) There are some sync issues in the co-op though, mostly player positions being presented erroneously and creating some frustrating friendly fire accidents. It hasn't usually been an issue, but if you're using weapons that have a wide area of effect, don't necessarily trust what the game is showing you and put some extra space between yourself and your allies. (You would generally want to do this regardless.) 2025 is great though, i love it.

The team itself is relatively obscure, and this version of the team is based on a pretty recent reboot, but the goal of the film seems to be to set up the cosmic side of the Marvel universe and establish Thanos as their primary antagonist. (He won't be the villain in Avengers 2, expect him to be the villain in 3. Marvel has a long-term plan for all this stuff.) As for why the Guardians, Kevin Feige, the producer holding the reins of all the MCU stuff, is apparently a huge fan. I mean, and you can also make the argument that all of the MCU stuff has been built off of pretty b-tier Marvel, things that have only become presently popular because of the movies. Iron Man was never as popular as the X-men or Spider-Man, but old movie licensing deals have cordoned those characters off into different film franchises with different companies. (Deadpool is tied up with the X-men license, so don't count on seeing him in the MCU.)

The last time i looked, Twitch Plays Pokemon had more viewers than the League streams, and its popularity is apparently causing some server load headaches for Twitch. What a weird thing.

The four player classes are all unlocked from the start, and yeah, one of them is the one you're looking for. Jet pack and energy weapons. 2017 had around 45 levels, i think. 2025 apparently has around 85.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTZ2Tp9yXyM

I just spent the last four hours or so playing through the early parts of it with a friend and had a ton of fun with it. It's got online co-op across the entire campaign and holds up well aside from a few sync oddities. The new player classes are really different too. Boosting through mobs of bugs while dual-wielding giant power swords as the Fencer has been a ton of fun. I can't think of much else i would have wanted from a sequel to 2017. My friend, who hasn't played 2017, was also way into it. I really don't think there's anything wrong with the frequency of weapon drops, either. I played a lot of 2017, up into the inferno difficulty, and the frequency feels about the same so far. What might create the wrong impression about that is trying to grind the same levels on lower difficulties over and over for new weapons, because in many cases, a lot of weapons simply won't appear on earlier levels/lower difficulties. That's how it was in 2017, and that's probably how it is in 2025. Really though, 2017's such a little cult darling now, are people forgetting that 2017 was also critically panned on its release? In fact, it was definitely even also regarded as a lazy entry into the EDF series. 2017 dropped a lot of the features that had been introduced with the second game. 2025, by comparison, brings a lot of new and expanded stuff to the game. I mean, and i see people complaining about stuff like the goofy ragdolls, the kinds of things that absolutely shouldn't be changed. The game is definitely very framey, but even there, it's about comparable to 2017. (If not actually a tiny bit smoother.) As for it being too long, it's not exactly a narratively focused adventure. Stop when you want to stop.

This is out today. There's lots of very grumpy, negative reviews going around that nobody will pay attention to because the people who want this game already know exactly what to expect.

Even when Morrowind was new, it got a lot of flak for its largely static NPC's. It never really bothered me at the time, i felt like the world building was so rich that it overcame a lot of the weak systems in the game, but with what Radiant AI subsequently did for Oblivion and Skyrim, i don't think i could go back to Morrowind either. Perhaps the best way to approach Morrowind these days would just be to set out on your own to explore random locations, moving on before the illusion breaks down. There's definitely still a lot of great environmental design in that game. If you're not doing a good job managing your stamina, it really exacerbates the hit/miss rolls in Morrowind. It's good to stick with lighter, lower grade weapons when your skills in a given weapon class are still low. (Less stamina being spent on attacks.) You'll still miss attacks randomly, but not as frequently.

Dubstep gun?

I have a doppelganger!

Starship Damrey seemed to me like an episode of one of those genre anthology shows, like an Outer Limits or a Twilight Zone. Just a really self-contained, bite-sized narrative asking more questions than it has answers for, with a nice little twist at the end.

Space Giraffe is probably a lot harder to get into, it's been a very divisive game. It's a very counter-intuitive game, while TxK is more explicitly a direct follow-up to Minter's Tempest 2000 and Tempest 3000. Space Giraffe, though, is on both Steam and XBLA if you want to give it a shot. (The Steam version cuts back on some of the visuals and loses all the xbox memes, but has more levels.)