Ah, I thought consoles were still rolling with 30. Haven’t owned one in years.

Isn’t 30 the standard on console anyway? Doesn’t seem too bad if they’re getting close. Either way, every time the game is delayed it gives me renewed hope that the developer at least cares about getting it right. And hey, if they fuck it up, the modders will have Anomaly 2 or something similar coming down the pipeline within a year or two.

I imagine he spent the entirety of the ban raging like Dennis Reynolds and counting down the days. “IDIIIOOOTS! IDDDIIIIOOOOTSS!!!”

I liked New Vegas quite a lot. I remember not liking it as much as 3 at the time, but looking back years later with a different perspective (and after playing Fallout 1), I appreciate and vibe with it a lot more and can’t wait to play it again… Heavily modded… With Survival Mode on.

I’ve only ever made it roughly 8 hours in, so I have the entire game ahead of me now that I’m starting anew. I’m super stoked.

After watching the Fallout series, I had the itch again so I fired up Fallout 3. I immediately fell in love with that older Bethesda-style dialogue, with so much to discuss and so many skill checks throughout… But the more I played, the more I realized how absurdly easy and jam-packed the game was with weapons, chems, and ammunition. I installed a couple of mods to improve the difficulty and scarcity of items, but it wasn’t enough. Something was missing. I realized that after having played through Fallout 1 a few years ago, my beloved Fallout 3 no longer quite scratched the itch. So I fired up Fallout 2, and I’ve fallen in love with that little game again. I love the slower pace of it all. I love inspecting every little detail of the environment, and the assortment of skills available at my fingertips to apply to my surroundings like a Swiss army knife, if I have the aptitude, of course… (Perhapsh I should join the mage’s college in Winterhold)

Now, I have no hate here for Fallout 3, because the flaws I pointed out above are not why I enjoyed the game in the past. It’s the atmosphere of the DC ruins, the satisfaction of taking shots and exploding heads in VATS, and the haunting melodies of Galaxy News Radio echoing softly from my wrist. I just have to figure out how to make it play a bit more like the classic entries. I want to leave the Super Duper Mart without combat armor, 40 stimpaks, and damn near every weapon in the game.

Conservative? What in the fuck? The game is a soulful, anti-capitalist love letter to the earth, growth, love, hardship, seasons, animals, and personal relationships. The only thing conservative about it is a reverence for small community and a simpler way of life. I’m left-wing as hell and even I long for those things. It’d be different if the villagers were xenophobic or something, or if the main plot was to keep a Sikh family from settling down into the valley…

LOST TO THE ZONE…

… wait…

When it comes to burnout, I think you’ll find that Kirk leaves us all in the dust.

So glad to see it. One of my best friends is working on the upcoming soundtrack for it, which is a dream come true for him as a long-term super fan of the game. He did the music for The Deer God and Mines of Mars too.

STALKER, Stardew Valley, No Man’s Sky, Skyrim, Morrowind, WoW Classic/Vanilla, Mass Effect, Fallout 3/New Vegas.

Same with DAoC. I have so many vivid memories from playing that in my adolescence. It was extemely influential, and the way it made me feel was unmatched. The various town jingles still pop into my head regularly. Especially Cotswold and some of the little Hibernian villages.

I miss sitting out in Salisbury plains during the night cycle with a group of random people, casually chatting and listening to the chattering of insects. Game had great ambience.

The best WoW clone I’ve played was RIFT, hands down. That game was surprisingly well-polished. But unfortunately the last time I had returned to play it, they followed suit with other popular MMOs and nerfed the overworld content into oblivion, effectively ruining the experience.

I did appreciate their angle on the class system, though. By combining Pyromancer and Elementalist, I was able effectively mimic a Fire Wizard from DAoC, but with a bad-ass greater earth elemental as a tank pet. One of the most satisfying characters I’ve ever played in an MMO.

Still, Classic/Vanilla WoW was a better experience overall.

Is the old version better? Is it shit? What’s up with it?

That’s him, all right!

I swear I’ve seen this guy in an old portrait pack for NWN… Holding a mouse close to his face.

There are few things more zen than sitting in your ship, thrusters off, in an undiscovered system on the other side of the galaxy. It’s humbling, isolating, and beautifully zen.

Very well said. Skyrim is incredibly immersive. Vanilla would be difficult for me to feel the same way about it I went back to it now, but with flora mods like Nature of the Wild Lands, grass mods, and environmental audio overhauls like Sounds of Skyrim, the game continues to draw me in like never before. I play the game much more slowly now, and spend more time walking and taking in the sights and sounds. I hope Bethesda can match this on their next title.

I’d really like to play that one. I sucked at BG1 and was never able to get very far without getting my ass handed to me by enemies. Maybe I needed to be better at D&D in general in order to properly execute fights. Either way, I hear I don’t actually need to play those two to pick up 3.

TES books are the best, dude. I’m playing a (heavily modded but largely vanilla+) playthrough of Skyrim right now and just came across a large trove of tomes. I grab whatever I come across that I haven’t read while in dungeons or what have you, and at night when I return to my campsite (Campfire mod) I like to gather wood, roast a meal, and sit down to read through whatever literature I found that day. I have a stash sack full of some too for those nights where I’m feeling too wiped to really get into the game. I can just relax to the sound of crickets or morning birds and catch up on my lore.