Brilliant! I love seeing examples of corvid cleverness, blows my mind how smart they are.

I haven’t played it (yet, it’s in my extensive backlog) and I don’t think it’s exactly the same, but have you checked out Slay the Princess?

God I hope the game turns out amazing.

I’ve never actually played through AW1 on Nightmare as I was afraid the challenge would be unfun, but maybe I will in the future based on your testimony. Though I find it increasingly hard to go back and replay games these days with the size of my backlog…

How much of AW2 do you remember? I strongly suggest starting over so you have everything fresh in your forebrain - it’s a game that wants you to pay attention to detail. Same reason I advocated for playing only it in the other thread and not both in parallel. Though you seem to have an impressive capacity for keeping track of multiple story-games at once (something I can’t even begin to relate to) so your mileage may vary.

Thank fuck, that’s definitely one of the game’s more detrimental flaws. I hope they also work on varying their quest design more, as well as mixing up the tone of the writing and acting more frequently.

I enjoyed the beautiful locations, solid combat and often great boss fights, but the game in general was too monotone for me to be truly captivated by it. Towards the end I felt worn out by it, having to mentally steel myself to even finish it. I get that the serious samurai trope is what they’re going for, but while that might work in a 2-hour movie it becomes incredibly one-note over a 50-hour game. Kenji alone is not enough to break up the flow with some variety. Especially with the gameplay being very repetitive too - so many missions are simple walk-and-talk, ride-horse-and-talk and go-to-spot-kill-mongols.

They all must go. You wouldn’t even believe the loss of revenue Nintendo suffers from the mere existence of SNES emulators. Money is being stolen right out of their pockets. Experts say they might never financially recover. ^[1]

I’ll echo this, and I’ll also say that for me personally the story of AW2 kind of demands focus and I myself would not be able to take it in properly if I was splitting attention - particularly splitting it with its predecessor and having to keep track of what happens in each timeline separately.

It’s just a bug.

Now, he may have (probably did) stiff workers in other ways.

He had an immense reputation for this for his whole career as a “businessman”. ^[1](https://usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/06/09/donald-trump-unpaid-bills-republican-president-laswuits/85297274/) ^[2](https://aflcio.org/2016/7/12/when-donald-trump-had-choice-he-chose-nonunion-labor-his-construction-projects-ibew)

I know the main story is about the depressingly baffling incompetence of the cops, but my main takeaway is once again that the war on drugs sure was a huge fucking mistake leading to immeasurable pain, suffering and wasted resources.

Finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution last week, and I while i enjoyed it I didn’t want to jump into Mankind Divided right away. It was a fine game but I felt like going back for more straight away might make me burn out.

Decided instead to finally get through Metro: Last Light. I really enjoyed 2033, but when I started LL right after I just couldn’t get into it. This time it’s going better and I’m having a good time playing it - very immersive on Ranger Hardcore. I still prefer the first game so far though, I think. Still not thrilled about the way checkpoint saving interacts with the moral points system (you sometimes have to sit for minutes on end rewatching the same conversation), but it’s not enough to completely sour me on it. Looking forward to eventually getting to Exodus.

Also playing some Deadlock games, though despite loving the game I’m already noticing it’s not always great for my mood.

Depends on what you’re looking for I think. For a lot of people (me included) 27" 1440p 144hz is the sweet spot. You get good DPI for your viewing distance, not too taxing on your hardware, the price point isn’t ridiculous and you can fit the whole screen in your field of view without having to move your head.

I could definitely see going slightly bigger for immersive games, but I’d have to start making compromises I’m not sure I’d be willing to.

Cass is great, and a lovely nod to Fallout 2 as well which I loved. She was the first companion designed for F:NV so she wasn’t as rushed as all the others. I wish every companion had as much to say as Cass does.

I guess they wanted a change after Keshiks and Camel Archers being completely busted in Civ V.

If you’re worried about bugs I think you should be able to get Mod Organizer 2 running on Steam Deck, and with all the various stability mods installed New Vegas runs fairly well. The Viva New Vegas mod guide is a great place to start, it should have most of what you need to get going.

Alex Casey (the detective from Alan Wake’s books) is essentially Max Payne - they had to change the name when making Alan Wake 1 because Rockstar had bought the IP.

There are callbacks in AW2 in both narration, atmosphere and character design that I really enjoyed, but you won’t miss out on anything story-relevant if you haven’t played it. Watching a couple of minutes of cutscenes from Max Payne 1 on YouTube is probably enough to get most of the references.

To be honest, when Nintendo has gotten to the point where this story sounds perfectly plausible you can’t say they don’t deserve all the hate they get (and more, frankly).

The only thing keeping them below Disney on my shit list is that Nintendo seem to act more like the grumpy out-of-touch old man, while Disney is fine being just overtly evil (see the recent wrongful death lawsuit debacle).

Love it! The level designs are so cool in Lonesome Road, and I agree that the final battle felt very cinematic in a way that a lot of other New Vegas fights don’t.

People love or hate Ulysses but I enjoy him as a character. I think the story as it ties through all the DLCs is very cool and the climactic, desolate journey through LR to cap it off was great for me.

I was planning on picking up Lily but I can’t remember how to get her as a companion.

I think all you need to do is finish the sidequest for the doctor in Jacobstown.

Funding is important, especially if you want to self-publish like they seem to intend to (thank god for no more Epic Exclusives) but I can’t help but feel a bit sad about these news. I hope Tencent won’t be a large enough shareholder to exert any influence over Remedy creatively.