I could potentially see something along the lines of giving each civ a “canon” path that sets its abilities and having the aesthetic stuff match your chosen civ the whole way through working. So if you pick the USA to start with then you get American visuals / music / names etc the whole way through, but you automatically get the English bonuses in the appropriate era for that
It’s definitely not. Whatever the flaws in the end result, Firaxis do experiment substantially with their formula. Doing that is actually what caused the complaints this article is about
The idea is that it’s split into three ages and you change your aesthetics and bonuses between each one. So you might go Romans > Spanish > Mexicans in the three eras, for example. The intention is honestly a decent one, I think: make it so that games aren’t functionally over and therefore boring by the halfway point. It’s usually clear who has won long before they actually do win, and the fact that basically nobody ever played the late game meant that late game civs and mechanics were a bit of a waste of time. I don’t have VII though, so I can’t say anything about how it feels in practice
AC Competizione is on UE4’s graphics and in-house physics, so I imagine they’re doing something similar here
This exchange just popped back into my head for some reason. Your description of the approach to the flower was spot-on! Turns out it just happens to be a similar approach to Siofra. Took me a few attempts, and fire damage is a bit of a miserable situation for my dex build with a bit of int (level 150, scadutree… 9, I think? Maybe 10?), but I got there. I found that the best thing I could do was actually just to absolutely max out my own durability and accept that I was only getting one attack off per opportunity. I was having a really rough time avoiding the thorn eruption attacks, so the crimson seed talisman basically giving me two extra flasks worth of health was great. So long as I used fire damage and hit it in the “face” I didn’t really need to do anything else to get plenty of damage
I have since gone through the specimen storehouse and found my way into Rauh, which I was absolutely delighted by because it looks exactly like Shadow of the Colossus and I’d been itching to get there ever since I found that waygate that gives you a preview of it
I suppose it makes sense for it to be tough considering that it’s intended as an endgame expansion and it’s also replicating the new character low level experience with the scadu blessing system
I have actually found that the Land of Shadow has heaps of alternate routes to places, they’re just much less obvious than before. The map is so wildly vertical and overlapping that finding a spiritspring or a tunnel or one of those cliffside staircases of protruding gravestones can take you to a whole new area
I have not seen whichever part that is, no. Although it sounds like the same experience as finding Siofra for the first time, which I think was one of my favourite moments in the entire game
Nothing wrong with that! I hit an absolute brick wall with Margit when I first played the base game because I hadn’t played a Souls game in years. I explored around until I found the secret route to Liurnia and did most of that before I even got into Stormveil
There’s one with three phases? That is so absolutely going to catch me out with no flasks left whenever I first get to it, god dammit. I can’t wait
Which one is the third? I’ve done Belurat and Castle Ensis (if it counts?), only just started poking around in Shadow Keep but it looks absolutely wild so far. I also made it to the putrescent knight’s arena but I’ve not tried actually fighting it yet, just jumped in once to see what was going on at the end of a session
The knight was pretty brutal, but fortunately this run has been my “learn to parry” one, so I came basically perfectly equipped to fight any player-model enemy that isn’t using colossal weapons
Oh hey, I grew up playing Gran Turismo as well! I actually dug out the old Playstation 1 when I was seeing family last Christmas and we had a splitscreen session racing each other on the 1997 one. It was a blast
That kind of in-depth career mode is oddly rare in modern sim racers. A lot of them are very online PvP-focussed. And I get that, but still, it’d be nice to have more. Things that come to mind are:
It is a pretty dim time for the single player sim racing experience, but there’s fun to be had!
everything in the modding scene seems to be in order
Putting the blackgaol knight where he is is a frankly hilarious statement of how the DLC is gonna be. I’m good enough at the games to beat everything without cheese or summons (I do think that summoning is fine, I just don’t personally enjoy it unless it’s an NPC I like), but I find that some Elden Ring bosses push the edge of what I have the reaction speed for. Morgott and Maliketh were particularly troublesome for me. I haven’t gotten to anyone in the DLC that has hit that mark of pace yet, but I assume someone will
I’m not super knowledgeable on racing games, but I’m happy to try to help! What have you got available and what do you like?
Mostly Elden Ring and Automobilista 2. I finally got Shadow of the Erdtree but had to take a bit to git gud git less bad again before diving into the Land of Shadow, not helped at all by the fact that the character I wanted to go in with was not at all well-suited to fight Mohg. Still, I’m enjoying it a great deal. The map design is phenomenal, I keep just stopping to look at the landscape for a bit
Automobilista is just the go-to for having a game with some other friends who also like racing sims at the moment. It’s not my favourite in terms of driving physics, but it’s good enough, the car classes being relatively balanced is nice for variety in races, and I’m honestly really enjoying trying out all the South American tracks that I’ve never heard of
Oooh I got started on that recently and then pulled away by other things, but I was enjoying it a great deal. The campaign is bit… ehhh. But that actual gameplay is a blast. I love the sense of scale (as long as you don’t think too hard about the actual numbers it gives you for the weights of things)
It’s normal for CG artists to do their best to make their work look like real life and not CG, though. Death Stranding is clearly attempting to look as realistic as they can manage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJHXe_9uhxw
Here’s the teaser, since they reformed the team with a new name so it might not be easy to find. I think this is the only thing they’ve released about it so far, which doesn’t really tell us much other than that they’re making something, but honestly I’m just excited to see more from them. It being published by Epic suggests to me that it’ll come to PC, which is a relief for me because I don’t have a console
That’s totally fair! I’m very much of the opinion that while From’s soulslikes are great and much less insurmountable (a word I choose carefully — they are difficult, but they can be learned) than their reputation suggests, that still doesn’t mean that everyone will actually find them fun. If the combat isn’t to your taste then that’s an entirely reasonable position. Elden Ring is particularly demanding in terms of the pace of combat compared to the Souls games as well
Shadow of the Colossus is such an incredible game. I think it was the first game I played that showed me that games could do more than just being fun to play. It wasn’t the first to attempt to do that, certainly, but it was the first to show that to me and it has stuck in my memory ever since. The soundtrack is phenomenal too. Have you seen that the dev team teased a new game late last year?
I beat every boss in base game Elden Ring without parrying once, using melee only, and no ashes or player summons either (I summoned NPCs a few times if it was an NPC I liked or an interesting story, which meant summoning them for Morgott, Fire Giant, and the two gargoyles). I even got Malenia, eventually! I don’t say this as a brag, because I am NOT good at these games. I say it to say that if I can do it, basically anyone can.
I think it’s a matter of mindset. You’ve got to go in psychologically prepared to fail a over and over again, and you’ve got to be analytical enough to figure out why you failed. If you’re really struggling with a boss, maybe don’t even try to attack for a couple of runs, just focus on figuring out when to dodge and when you have windows. Maybe your current weapon isn’t the right one for the job because it’s a bit too slow to hit this boss or it does a damage type that the boss resists. Maybe you just need to go somewhere else for a bit and come back with more vigour and a better weapon. Elden Ring is really good for letting you do that.
Obviously that’s not going to be a process that everyone enjoys, and if someone doesn’t enjoy it that’s totally fair enough. It’s a game, we’re all just here to have fun. But the actual skill floor is one almost everyone can achieve if they want to and approach it ready to experiment and learn
I haven’t played the Outer Worlds, but isn’t a whole lot of it about making fun of companies doing this kind of stupid shit?
Based on a quick look at some videos showing off the max settings, it doesn’t even look like it’s doing much with all that demand. It looks like a completely normal big budget game