Templar Knight

Nuclear Throne, this game is addicting AF, even if its bullshit at times in terms of actually giving you a chance to succeed. I got so frustrated with it that it was the first game I've ever edited the game files on to unlock the last playable character (which I only did because by the game's definitions and trophy requisites, I should already have it unlocked, but it refused to give it to me for some reason and won't allow me to reach that point again regardless of how good I play because of the insane RNG of spawns and weapons). As frustrating as it is, still an addicting game. I also got back into playing Sunless Sea and Enter the Gungeon in preparation for their respective DLCs that'll be coming within the next week or two.

HAHAHAHAHA Wow, I guess that swarm of lawsuits against a hundred some-odd Steam users and Valve itself was their last hurrah. How they hell they expected to fight so many cases if a bunch of them actually fought them on it (which Valve certainly would) and NOT run out of money while being an Indie studio was beyond me.

I personally have to agree with you on the reviews aspect of things. I find myself looking towards LPers at times to see how games are before I buy them alongside reviewers. They can show what (funnily enough), most reviewers cannot, which is a "live" and "real" experience of playing a game often for the first time. And with their own unique personalities and tastes, they can be varied in terms of what they think of a game. I mostly use them as a resource at times in conjunction with reviewers on games I'm unsure of (but then the Reviewers I trust and watch can be listed on one hand: Totalbiscuit, Yahtzee, AngryJoe, Ross Scott, and Jim Sterling). Though, there have been cases where I have bought games solely based on what I've seen of LPers, like with Until Dawn where I bought it almost immediately after I made it half way through the first episode of Markiplier's playthrough, or Enter the Gungeon where I bought it immediately after I watched Baertaffy's first episode. They simply feel more informative since not only is the LPer seeing and commenting on all the stuff as they go through it "live", but so can you. I usually never watch a full playthrough of a game (those with endings) unless one of two things is true: 1) That I'm not likely to ever play the game because its not my type of game, or in the near future to the point where I'd remember, or 2) The first impressions of a game left me unsure or distasteful as to what it was trying to be. I believe LPs caught on mostly because of the personalities of the people who created them, and their ability to catch on to a big audience. Otherwise people would have just watched silent playthroughs. I've heard Markiplier describe it as being incredibly hard now to break out as an LPer as a business because of how consolidated fanbases are and how hard it is to give a unique spin to games that audiences actually want to see and enjoy and how much work it would involve just to break out and get noticed.

I would suggest some of Daedalic Entertainment's for production quality (not necessarily easy puzzles in all cases, as TheTron said about Night of the Rabbit, but I still enjoyed that one immensely), I've thoroughly enjoyed all of them, although some are easier than others. Specifically for easy play: The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav (based in the same universe of the German RPG Das Augur Schwartz). I am not an expert at Point and Clicks, and I wasn't by the time I played this game (which was if I remember correctly my 3rd Daedalic Point and Click game). I was able to play through 85% of the game without once having to look something up, which impressed myself since usually I suck at making big logical leaps, but then it may be the case that most of the game doesn't really stray too far into outlandish logic. Its certainly doesn't come close to Rama in terms of alien complexity of logic ever. I also found the art style to be very good (as I do with most Daedalic games), the writing to be humorous when it wants to be and serious when it needs to be, and overall a pretty solid game. Its sequel, Memoria, was also good, but its puzzles are definitely harder and require more insane leaps of logic than Chains of Satinav. The story's still good though, just don't fuck up like I did and trying playing Memoria first, you won't understand the start of the game at all or who some of the characters are. Luckily I realized Chains had to have come first and stopped to beat it. The Whispered World (by the same devs) is another good one, though late game has some pretty damn hard puzzles. The Deponia series is a wild ride and full of Black Comedy if you're into that sort of thing, and I really enjoyed it, but its puzzles can range from ludicrously easy to somewhat challenging to WTF AM I SUPPOSED TO DO!? in terms of a sliding scale. The Sherlock Holmes series is a mixed bag. I really enjoyed Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper and The Awakened was . . . interesting (yeah, let's go with that), and I'd argue they have a steadily increasingly difficulty in terms of puzzle challenges, it starts off fairly easy and then gets hard towards the end.

While it was a towering accomplishment at the time (and on the PS1!) and it hasn't been incorporated to Abe's Oddysee on PC, the issue of quicksaves can be easily sidestepped by emulating those games, which you can do on every PC and phone nowadays. Heck, I think the PS1 version were always superior since the ports were so shitty. I think you can say those games improved as time went on in that regard, although they are still very dated - why can't I can only call one Mudokon at a time? (fixed in Abe's Exoddus) Why do I have to chant for like 10 seconds before I can control a Slig? Why is the fastest and most accurate way to move around is to roll around like a jackass? Don't get me wrong - I love the puzzles which aren't bomb-diffusal, manipulating and running away from Scrabs, etc. But it all has a very clunky movement to it which detracts from the entire experience. It's still good! If you play it on the original XBox, that is. I think the PC port is kind of horrendous, but that might be just a bad experience on my part. But that's game preservation, I don't think I'll mind playing Stranger's Wrath again if given an actual working copy - I meant that Abe's Oddysee/Exoddus and Munch's Oddysee didn't age well. Also, I started a whole game and didn't buy anything so I could have enough moolah to pay the doc during Stranger's only visit to him. I was disappointed, especially since it took quite a bit of grinding to get the moolah out of infinitely spawning outlaws in one of the bosses. True enough, I never played Abe's Oddysee or Exoddus, I've only ever seen them played and seen the synopsis provided in Munch's. I do agree that Munch's Oddysee hasn't aged well either. It feels way more difficult to play than it should be, what with crappy AI (I'm pretty sure I spent at one point 15-20 Mins just in the first section of Vykker's Labs when you first play as Munch just trying to wrangle Fuzzles to the portal), bad controls for some of the moves it asks you to pull of, and bad combat systems mostly because of those two previous problems. The only one I've really enjoyed playing was Stranger's Wrath for Xbox (I think its ported to Playstation as well as Steam now though isn't it?), though I love watching the storylines of all the games. The art design is so iconic.

Might I ask how exactly the story implemented is and does it interfere with roleplaying at all? My concern with narratives written by the developers is that they inherently go against the grain of roleplaying and/or player driven narrative. For instance While the developers' story might say the player is a hero since they can't actually figure out what kind of character the player is going to play as the story inherently becomes dissonant to their actions. There might be something that tries to tie in both story and the player's actions like say an alignment system but that still falls well within the confines of the developers' story which ultimately ends up restricting the player. The story implemented into Viking Conquest is partly a guide through the world and one that can enable you to have a meaningful impact on the actual world map (since you do go basically into freeroam mode after you finish the story). The story will basically take you to all corners of the map doing stuff, and they give you options to side with basically either the Christians or the Vikings. But there's a ton of other choices throughout that effect your honour, how various Story-only companions think of you, your party morale, and all kinds of other things in the moment. I think they could and should have gone more in-depth on some stuff, like there is this one mission at the starting area that encourages you to try and assassinate the Frisian King on the order of a Jarl, but no matter what you do you can never do it and are always forced to move on after fucking up the plot as both the King and said Jarl end up hating you for different reasons. But this can arguably be forgiven since the story also shows you a lot of the mechanics of the mod and acts kinda as a tutorial area. IMO, barring some instances where it does railroad you for the sake of moving the plot elsewhere, the game enables you to roleplay how you wish. At least in my playthrough, the game seems to favour you thinking and playing like a Viking, but I think it also depends on what your party is composed of (since there is a difference between Pagan and Christian Units and Characters, and I definitely favoured more Viking Characters) You just gotta be prepared to live with consequences and some tough fights (seriously some of the fights can be brutally difficult without much forewarning). You die in the story mode, its actually game over, no respawns so you gotta save often. I will say that the ultimate ending kinda sucks, but the ultimate text-ending that describes what happens to your character and party members also has no bearing on your gameplay afterwards since you can just keep going. Some of your choices though do have major impacts on the map and various factions depending on which side you choose, and the stuff you gain through the story in most cases cannot be obtained or obtained as easily in the main game.

You know you've fucked up badly when you get one of those handed to you.

I thought Stranger's Wrath was pretty damn good though, even though it strays from the style of the other Oddworld games, and the endgame difficulty does feel a bit unbalanced. But then again I also set the difficulty high for myself during my first playthrough of the game because I literally tried to save up the 20 grand thinking it would actually make a difference, and sure enough if you buy nothing and are reasonably good you do get 20k by the time you go to see Doc Vykkers again, but then to get to that point you're dealing with some pretty intense difficulty spikes.

The Witcher 3, Mafia II, Kingdom: New Lands, The Final Station, Uncharted 1 and 2 with 3 on the way for a replay fest before doing #4. All of them have pretty good endings, The Final Station's could have been more fleshed out, but then so could the rest of its story. Kingdom: New Lands was a fun expansion and added challenge to the original game that was a treat to beat. The Uncharted games writing is simple, and arguably gets worse as you proceed into the first three games, but IMO the first two were enjoyable to the point where this wasn't a major factor. #3 loses that by having writing that is so bad in a game that isn't as big of an upgrade as 1-2 was that you simply cannot ignore it. Still holds a special place for me since the 1st game was the first game I ever played on PS3. And Witcher 3, what can I say that others haven't said? Awesome game, awesome devs, great expansions, and its won more GOTY awards than any single game in history, so it speaks for itself. Top quality game in basically every respect.

Hopefully Bannerlord improves on some of those aspects. I mean, I loved Viking Conquest because they actually implemented a story into the campaign that you could play over and actually had very discernible effects on the game world.

IMO a technical example of a game that hasn't aged well is Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines I love the game, but the fact that you need to install a community-based mod for it to work on any modern computer (despite the fact that there is no mention of NEEDING the mod for it to work on the store page at all) really just shows me how old a game is, or that it really hasn't transitioned well over the years. Even with the mod, the audio's shit in how it can sound like two voices are talking at the same time in both ears sometimes depending on where your character is standing, other times just wherever the hell the camera is moving (this really pissed me off to the point where I just listened to the whole game with one headphone on, there is no point to two with how weird it sounds). Also ending phases of the game are arguably severely broken depending on how you spent your upgrades. I mean, I spent the whole game without any major problems regarding ammo, blood, or weapons that could actually do sufficient damage, but the last string of missions, I ended up running through and cheesing just because of how much they drain your gear. I was also flush with cash before, went broke buying full stocks for the last few missions, and STILL almost ran completely out of gear by the time I faced The Sheriff (went for Camarilla ending, so no Anarch help, no avoiding the Sheriff fight, and no avoiding the Kuei-jin). Then there were similar moments in the game where the game would just throw ludicrous amounts of difficult stuff at you for certain missions. Really frustrating stuff for an otherwise great game. Fallout also hasn't aged well IMO, since at least the version I have, there are frequently moments you can encounter that literally break your game and you cannot proceed or leave from them so you have to quit out. While the dialogue writing is good, the overall writing could have been a lot better to make you feel like you were actually making a meaningful impact (the later games address this with proper epilogues that actually go into detail about your various choices. New Vegas is my all-time favorite Fallout Game in terms of writing in all respects, it simply felt a lot more polished), it simply doesn't feel up to par with more modern games. Wasteland 2 feels like what Fallout SHOULD have been in terms of modern quality, so I guess we did luck out and get that by the same devs. The Myst Games. I've become a bigger fan of Point and Click puzzle-solving adventure games over the years (The Deponia series and other works of Daedlic really got me hooked), and although I love watching play throughs of the Myst games and their stories, I find them to be INSANELY frustrating to play. The loading times even on more modern systems can be atrocious for such an older game, a bunch of the puzzles require PIN-POINT accuracy or just completely random chance that not even if you're good with a pen and paper can you replicate to the game's satisfaction at times, and even if those aren't the cases then you're left with some puzzles that require insane leaps of logic since you're in a world that doesn't really operate on any logic you're familiar with on Earth. All of this just makes these games feel like a real chore to play compared to modern games of the same genre. Assassin's Creed 1 in terms of gameplay hasn't aged well especially in relation to the other games. The gameplay and controls feel incredibly clunky and slow compared to how smooth and fast paced the latest ones feel, even if it was the shit back when it first released. Story progression is also insanely tedious compared to basically any other game in the series, it really shows how much Assassin's Creed II alone was a massive improvement.

But that's exactly the same problem I stated in my OP. Little details while nice only allude consequence and never let you legitimately experience it. They're just set dressing. For example in Fallout 1 if you kill Killian for Gizmo over at Junktown you don't actually get to see Junktown evolve into the thriving boomtown that Ron Perlman alludes to in the ending. You just have to trust that what Ron Perlman is saying about what happened to Junktown to be true. It's all hearsay, you never get to legitimately experience any sort of consequence for your actions, it's disappointing. I guess that's why character progression always felt more real to me than narrative progression (except for Planescape: Torment and Undertale). It's a given that how you build your character will implicitly impact your gameplay experience. When I was playing Deus Ex GOTY with the GMDX mod I was gritting my teeth when I had to choose between the combat strength augmentation and the combat speed augmentation. Both of them have very legitimate functions which made the decision all the more difficult when I had to choose one over the other and stick with it for the rest of the game. This is my frustration with narrative in most games. There is often no weight and no impact to your choices. In games like Fallout 1 & 2 you accept the illusion of consequence without experiencing it. To put it bluntly it's as if those kinds of choices don't have any balls. Well, let me clarify about the situation. You basically free several townships or workplaces and bring them back to life, and then you can run into the poster elsewhere. Its not like it just happens off-screen and you never see one or the other. The point I was making was I mostly surprised I saw it change elements beyond just the immediate vicinity. That was just one example as well, there's arguably far better ones in the DLC and at other points in the game. I do have to agree with your take on Fallout 1, as I've yet to play 2. Classic though they are, they suck compared to some modern RPGs in terms of actually feeling the impact of your choices having more far-reaching consequences.

I like to think I'm a gentleman in most things, though I've never had a girlfriend to be able to verify that despite my friends telling me I'd make a great boyfriend. Only old folks and strangers I rarely ever see again have told me so.

This. Holy fuck was that "interview" crazy. I'm not a fan of everything Jim says, but he couldn't have been more on the money with these guys than if they'd put fresh bankrolls in front of him. Their behaviour and expectations are simply strange in how they're coupled and I repeatedly had to keep pausing the soundcloud because I was kept facepalming at some of the shit Robert said. But yeah, I browse KIA on reddit and they've been keeping track of it and a handful of the outlets that have talked about the issue so far or others people are trying to branch off of it, it seems like they're actually crazy enough to try this. All the more amazing to me, since I would have thought that (assuming on my part) they'd lost their suit with Jim would have made them just stop. I mean, this was the crew that thought they had "hard evidence" of Jim inciting harassment against them and their company with a clip of a blatantly satirical and overexaggeratedly performed intro to one of his episodes, that has openly harassed users themselves, has censored most critiques and comments in the past, has abused Youtube's systems, and has behaved incredibly childish and petty towards the very concept of a reviewer, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised. I mean, lets face it, there is no way in hell they're ever going to make a significant profit on Steam again without complete and total rebranding (maybe not even that, since trying that before didn't save them) and actually putting some legitimate effort into making games that aren't blatant rip-offs of other more successful ones and aren't total shovelware in terms of quality. They're not going to do that though, instead they're fine to burn into the memories of Steam and all of its users who care to listen a damn good reason not to be anywhere near their content again! I don't think they have any hope against Valve's legion of corporate lawyers, and although I think some users may be intimidated, there no way in hell they're going to just hand over likely everything they have to these crooks who cannot help but be abysmal losers.

This, I was very impressed with Wasteland 2's first tough choice. Similar games I would recommend where you can feel effects of your choices are ones like Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War 2 (it really feels like you're playing a balancing act as the Tyranids slowly become more and more powerful and the costs of your failures in any mission could cost you a lot, though admittedly the ending isn't that great.) The Witcher Series has some amazing diversity in terms of how your choices affect your gameplay, opening and closing opportunities, interactions, items, characters, and quest lines as you go. Though again, arguably the endings are all let-downs since at least in games 1 and 2, the devs are forced to pick a canonical ending of the set they provide, and I'd argue even the endings they provide all could mostly be said to lead to the same final results. The third game has the best endings IMO, with three independently fleshed out epilogues that are each dynamically different on top of all your individual choices. The thing with most choices in the Witcher series do not take immediate effect, you have to wait and see how they play out, leaving you to guess at what happened until then as whether or not you made the right choice. One small choice that had nothing to do with the story though that impressed me immensely was after I cleared most of the west coast and countryside of Velen of Bandits and Cannibals, not only did people return to those areas immediately, but I go back to a town and see that a poster has appeared on a tree calling for people to return to work in those places! It was a very small detail that is very easy to miss, but it was I still felt impressed out because I was like "Hey, I did that!" The King Arthur RPG games are also pretty good at this, and The Banner Saga series when it comes to characters. If you like contemplating this idea though, I also suggest playing The Stanley Parable.

Although I personally hated how much they fucked with the lore, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor takes a lot of mechanics from AC and the Arkham series in terms of gameplay. That you can directly take control of Uruks, prey on their fears, upset the army hierarchy etc. As for games where you're the horror? I can name a bunch. Dead by Daylight is a multiplayer game where you can play as a Killer hunting down four different people who're trying to escape the map. Its inspired by a bunch of slasher films like Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and so on. Party Hard is another one inspired by Friday the 13th and Hotline Miami or Lakeview Cabin in terms of style Dishonored you can pull off some very cool assassinations and tricks and slaughter tons of people even if the game's story mostly encourages you to play non-violent. Check out some videos on youtube if you want on some of the craziness some people have pulled off like getting enemies to shoot their own allies by accident, aiming bolts to precisely rain down on people, or otherwise just pulling off really fast and smooth runs of whole areas. Another simple game, Deadbolt, you can fuck around with enemies by teleporting through vents, knocking on doors to have them open up before blowing their brains out

Well, not quite yet... But hopefully we're on our way there... I generally share this sentiment with you and your teacher... Just want to throw in a couple of thoughts to consider. I don't think we should or have rights to talk of our species' achievements in segregation from all other species on this planet. In a way it's like an apple seed boasting about it's ingenious construction that allows a whole apple tree to grow from it... Forgetting that it took an apple tree (and the whole chain of evolution before it) to produce that little seed in the first place. So - we are standing on the shoulders of giants - from amoebae to elephants and cows and triceratops... We are the product of Earth's life and perhaps it is not so much our achievement but our duty to continue from where the Mother Nature let us go - and that brings me to the next point... Humanity faces problems when we hit the limits - of ourselves or of our environment. The issue of the lack of focus and motivation and sense of purpose is IMHO is just a sign that we've reached one of those limits again. What happens when we reach the limits of our confinement - we break through. And the obvious direction for breaking through, really, is going to space. Not with some remote control toys, but for real. I believe that this is what the "intention" of the life as a whole on Earth is. It created a species which is at last capable of controlling the matter in real time and not in evolutionary timescales... It gave us enough easy-to-reach energy by conserving the sunlight in the form of the fossil fuels for our first steps out of the crib. It kept enough fissionable materials that we can use for venturing farther away... We are the apple seed within an apple and our job is now to move away from the mother tree and plant ourselfves and grow a new tree. Somewhere... anywhere. And until we do that, life will push us subtly with one crisis after another, making us move, think, act... That is all, I think Regards Exactly. By projection, I meant simply the fact that we've been able to leave the surface of our planet and land on objects beyond it or send stuff out into space. Colonization and terraforming will be another story and the next step, since its the only real way to break the ceiling we've currently hit, as you said. And I'd clarify that the species comment isn't taken in segregation of any others on the planet, it simply stating the fact that we're the only living things in history from our planet (that we know of) to have accomplished the feats we have. Could it have been done without the Earth? No, but the point I was making wasn't that we didn't do it without the world and everything else on it, the point is that there is no living species that has ever come close to what we've been able to do, barring potentially extraterrestrials. I believe that as resources become more and more scarce, space will become more and more appealing for actually funding the exploration and colonization of.

IMO, we're a very adaptable species. We've accomplished more than any other living species we know of on Earth simply by the fact that we've projected ourselves off of our own planet. I mean, a professor of mine told me that during my Social History of Truth class and it was kinda mind blowing to think about. No other species on Earth that we know of have been able to do what we have done, and if that's not a testament to human ingenuity and our ability to solve a problem IDK what is. When focused and given a clear and coordinated goal, we have been able to solve major problems that have plagued humanity since our species' inception (smallpox for example). The main problem right now is that we lack that focus, drive, and coordination when trying to tackle stuff like energy or other more social issues. They don't care about it enough to set aside more petty issues, in fact right now seems to be the peak of making petty issues the main concern of the day while ignoring more major issues, which has been the case in other points in history as well for many other civilizations. I believe we're not fucked, I just think things are going to get tougher for a lot of people, and not everyone is going to be able to adapt as quickly to suit those changes. No different than during the time the Black Plague came through in the middle ages (I mean, if you want a best candidate for what should have collapsed civilization and rendered humanity extinct in both natural and theological terms, that should have been it, since it basically matched the 1/3 of the Earth's population dying and other social and climate circumstances as stated in Revelations and completely destroyed Medieval society. The difference being that the Renaissance came out of it rather than the whole world ending and everyone dying as tons of people thought it would at the time.) I mean, just look at jobs, most people have to work at least two jobs to be able to have decent living conditions, spending money, and still save money away with the hope of retirement some day. Or if not two jobs for one person, then with multiple incomes by multiple people, the old reality of a couple with one stay at home parent and another being the bread-winner is almost entirely a fantasy right now, and the days of single life, single jobs are over in most places of modern convenience for those starting out, and those that are unable to adapt to that lifestyle are going to wind up screwed. The same professor I spoke of earlier also told us that the odds are, most people out of University today are not likely to have life-long careers in the same field or job, its just not feasible with less and less companies willing to pay for full-time when they can just go part-time or contracts. More likely, every five years we'll have to change jobs. Its a marketplace that requires the ability to be loose and adaptable, and not everyone is going to be able to do it. And I mean, this is coming from someone who is generally a pessimist about most things.

This is true, the dynamics aren't the same. However, I'd reply to that by saying if that is the case, then still, what's the point? We know its going to fail as a mechanic anyway if the demographics don't like micro transactions or will find no use for them anyway. I mean, CURRENTLY, the micro transactions are only in-game items and Praxis Kits, both of which IMO were relatively easy to get at normal difficulties if you're not speed-running the game, so its not really carving up the game yet (I mean, I found a free Praxis Kit in a fucking wall closet in Golem City trying to get to the head of ARC, not a vault or super hidden place, just a regular closet you could easily miss in plain sight because you think it'd have nothing of value like 50% of them.). And again, I believe Square Enix is very much aware of how touchy the fan base is on this stuff, that's why they did it this way and didn't double down on Augment Your Pre-Order. Its the only think that makes any logical sense, the alternative (which is also likely based on the leak from Eidos) is that SE is just plain stupidly anxious due to their overspending and gets panicked easily about trying to have their games make money at release. In which case, its not really going to matter what we protest, we cannot really help them fix their fiscal management department or the fact that they're going to fall back on the traditional business principle of make a profit at any cost because they're so crappy at spending money wisely. Because if the Deus Ex fanbase is what you claim it to be (and which I hope it mainly is), they're going to lose money regardless, though the reason why could be easily obfuscated by their own financial incompetence, thus leading them to perpetuate their own cycle of bad decisions by continuing to make bad decisions based on their own previous bad decisions that cause them to have misinformation and therefore conclusions that aren't really correct. IDK, that's probably the least conspiratorial or negative version of it.

[snide comment about how star trek is in a generic space fantasy setting] enjoy your warframe clone :^))))) Dark Souls 3 was very strange to me in terms of difficulty. I felt some of the elite enemies were even tougher than most of the bosses, and more than a few of them you cannot avoid. It really ground my gears when I was having more trouble with the Boss' fucking henchmen than the actually bosses themselves, essentially. Though not enough to make me want to quit, usually, unlike DS2. Then with bosses, some are pretty easy but it didn't feel like Dark Souls 2 to me where it just felt like most of the bosses were either throwaways or insanely difficult for single players. To me, a bunch of the bosses in DS2 like Ancient Dragon, Elana The Squalid Queen, Aava The King's Pet (Lud and Zalen I haven't even reached, because fuck the Frigid Outskirts) felt extremely cheap in terms of the moves they could do to completely fuck over a player. I loved the challenge of taking on some bosses solo in Dark Souls 3 though, Abyss Watchers felt like a dance and I loved the feeling of finally getting the steps right to beat them, Iudex Gundyr was similar and I think Champion will be more of the same. Yhorm and Aldrich were epic bosses even though they were relatively easy once you learned the strats, and Ancient Wyvern was just badass. I think for the most part in Dark Souls 3 the devs did a great job in making you WANT to try and beat the bosses regardless of whether they were easy or difficult

Square Enix was going to succeed with this play no matter what. Its a feature they could sneak in without ANYONE noticing before they actually got a physical copy of the full release game, and its a feature they can easily pass off as not even being needed to fully enjoy the game specifically because of how they implemented it. The game is not broken on account of this feature, nor is there anything strictly illegal at all about putting it in. What exactly is the argument other than: "Well, we know you're going to screw us on the next game with a developed version of this feature if we don't fight you on this now!" You think that's going to scare Square Enix into not doing it anyway after the behaviour they showed just to get this feature into the game on the sly? Or that doing it is its own personal reward, even if it garners zero effective results? Also the argument is practically BEGGING Square Enix to simply NOT act retarded and not break the next game on account of micro transactions just to prove everyone is overreacting like a bunch of idiots. Which I'm willing to bet they are paying attention in some capacity if not because of the massive amount of flak they caught for Augment Your Pre-Order, then by the recent leak from inside Eidos Montreal about Square Enix and how it's been handling them and the game. As for the consumer argument, that's assuming that all video game consumers actually give a shit about gaming news or "politics behind games development" as I would call it. The simple fact that pre-orders, piecemeal DLC, and micro transactions still continue to exist is proof that at least more than a few people don't give a shit, and likely because they just don't care. My point is, unless everyone suddenly refunds their games en masse, something which is completely unprecedented in the history of the games industry for a game of this weight and this late after release AFAIK (you can correct me if I'm wrong), there's no point to arguing this because nothing else is going to make a difference. Square Enix has already won this, the question will be whether they're actually stupid enough to completely fuck up the next game to the point where that reaction does happen where they literally try to release a full-price Deus Ex as a paywall mobile game or browser game with required micro transactions just to make significant progress, or if they don't act like complete morons and show everyone up by not going straight to the worst possible next scenario or a progressively worse scenario. That's for the future. In regards to Mankind Divided, I can forgive and forget. Its an enjoyable enough game where you actually can just forget about the fact that there's even micro transactions at all in it, and those micro transactions won't be missed on the day that that store page finally shuts down. They'll go in and out without leaving the slightest trace that they ever effected the game other than maybe a faded out option text.

IMO, you're never going to please everyone on this issue. The "Migrant Crisis" as they've been calling it has mostly produced the result where even nations in Europe that wanted to help as many as they could simply cannot anymore because they've been filled to capacity. Several thousand people alone is tough for any nation to bear suddenly arriving, several hundred thousand or million is insane to cope with logistically. As to why there isn't much action being done against legitimate abusers of these circumstances? There's likely a bunch of factors involved. Those same criminals are likely hiding behind the exact same types of people that are in need because they create the perfect shield and scapegoat for them to be able to slip away and continue their activities. The reality of the situation being that there's inevitably going to be trouble, and the locals are going to blame them all for it. Obviously it would be easier if the migrant communities like this one could self-police themselves and actually turn over the trouble-makers, but that's obviously not the case. This is also a problem with multiple facets. For one thing, not all of the "migrants" arriving are from Syria or places afflicted by war or conflict, Germany and other European nations opening the borders basically said: "Yep, everyone who even looks like they might be Syrian come on in and take advantage of the fact that we basically have no checks on our borders.", all the more telling that most of those same nations have shut their borders again after they realized how stupid it was on a logistical level alone. Second, the fact that many of these migrants, from wherever they are coming from, don't necessarily understand all of the laws of a particular region, or are so desperate to get to safety that they don't give a fuck about breaking laws. That causes trouble either way as they don't understand how to adapt to the new country without some form of guidance. Third, large parts of Europe are in economic trouble right now. There's likely not that much money to go around to everyone, and lots of programs or divisions are probably budgeted. It doesn't help having a small purse when trying to deal with a lot of people coming in. Four, Terrorism has basically made popular France fearful or suspicious of ANYONE they allow into the country. Hollande has declared martial law at least once if I recall, the police and military have had extraordinary powers given to them a couple times, and I wouldn't be surprised if everyone there has been on edge since the Paris attacks and then the later attacks in Brussels and Istanbul. Plus there is the fact that any migrants trying to get to Britain by land have to go through France, and basically have to hijack or hide in trucks to do so, and generally act like criminals. It all coalesces into a situation where migrants of any kind are not looked favorably by the local population regardless of who they are. Then as Golf said, it basically comes down to a choice, does the government care more about immigrants, or citizens? Currently, though I do believe that migrants who need help should get it and that borders shouldn't be shut, I do not believe that any sane government should put the interests of immigrants before its own citizens in these situations. Why add even more confusion and unknown variables to an already complicated situation by pissing off your own citizens who then think they're obligated to take matters into their own hands when the government essentially does nothing?

I've been having a craving for harder games over the last few years, and I've been able to find a bunch. They're not for everyone since they're mostly indies, rogue-likes, or bullet-hells, but they're challenging nonetheless and fairly enjoyable. Nuclear Throne (Probably over 100 plays by me, and I still have not beaten Throne II once, and only beaten the Throne a handful of times) Enter the Gungeon (Getting to Bullet Hell and beating the final boss of this game is brutal) Darkwood (still in development, but this is a very promising and tough horror game) Kingdom (Both classic and New Lands are pretty fun and the challenge is trying to make the 100 days achievement) Darkest Dungeon (This one's a tribute to classic turn-based RPGs and dungeon crawlers with a Lovecraftian style. This one is difficult since it involves a lot of RNG) Heavy Bullets (FPS with a twist and randomly generated levels, but pretty challenging and fun the further in you go.)

Exactly. Its the mindset I basically have in regards to games like Mankind Divided. The way Square Enix put the Micro transactions in, it makes it almost impossible to effectively protest them without ultimately harming Eidos because Square Enix is just their publisher, and they can simply wash their hands of any guilt by simply saying: "Well, you don't need to buy them to enjoy the game." And yea, the whole release reeked of desperation to try and make a more "appealing" game to squeeze more fistfuls of pennies. That's the whole reason "Breach Mode" was added in, they thought players would get bored of the main story line Deus Ex (despite the fact that that is entirely what the franchise is known for), so they added in that mode. Shows you how out of touch SE is with the fanbase if they think they'd get bored that easily of single player. No doubt, I just don't think there is really any way to effectively protest this crap without ultimately hurting Eidos first, when none of the fault was theirs. Square Enix has already shown they don't care in the slightest about pulling scummy plays just to make a buck. And IMO, if you're not actually using the micro transaction market, then isn't that as big of a message to them? "Hey, this feature we added in is not making as much money as we projected it would." From there, one of two things will happen: either they'll cut it out of the next game, or they'll keep it in. The deciding factor to me is how much it actually costs them to put the feature in. I don't know with any certainty, but my gut feeling is that it basically costs them nothing since we're dealing with simply a virtual store front and virtual products. Which to me makes me think that regardless of how well it does, they're still going to continue to put them in anyway because even if they don't make that much, they'd be even more stupid not to try and con the suckers because they don't need to spend much to put them in. The only effective way to protest these would be if they literally broke the game to force you to buy them, like traditional pay walls, because that is ultimately the behaviour that we're trying to avoid or stop in the games industry, right? The problem with Mankind Divided is that the game itself is not broken to force that. You can play the whole game, never touch the storefront, not spend an extra cent, and you still have a very good chance of getting the optimal result in one playthrough, and with new game plus, it basically makes the idea of buying Praxis Kits seem extremely obsolete in the long run, any other gear even less so. I'm nearly 2/3 of the way through and I've maxed out almost every single Aug I want for my kind of playthrough, everything else is just gravy at this point for a give me a challenge ghost non-lethal playthrough. Using the micro transactions breaks the intended experience of the game, without a doubt. But the game itself is not broken to entice you into using those transactions. Since that's the case, I don't think its right to punish Eidos (which IMO would be the only outcome of any effective protest). They made a good game, they didn't break it to make the micro transactions that were thrown down to them from SE fit in, and regardless of what we do, Square Enix is likely to keep doing it anyway. I think the only thing to do is wait until Square Enix actually starts breaking games to do it, because then not only will we all know how bad it is, but then so will basically everyone else who isn't a complete carefree spender with their cash.

Here's the problem though, why the fuck should they pay attention to any message now, when NOTHING was done when this shit has gone on for the past few years in many other games? Or at least nothing significantly enough to cause them to be stopped then. What, all of sudden Deus Ex does it and everyone says this is the last straw and Eidos has to take the fall for it? (Because we all fucking know Square Enix is not going to be effected in the slightest, they'll gut Eidos before they fall, just as EA has gutted numerous companies before without changing their attitudes.) Plus, there was already a massive kickback against Augment Your Pre-Order, yet they still went forward and pulled this shit in a way that consumers wouldn't see until release. There's no point. Square Enix is as Square Enix does, we have about as much hope of making them give a shit about anything other than making money at this stage as EA. Plus, what are we supposed to do? We aren't the ones partaking in the microtransaction market at all, obviously its suckers or people who don't know any better, but those same people are likely the ones who don't pay any attention to gaming news anyway, so good fucking luck trying to change their buying habits. Square Enix will not care so long as there are at least a handful of people basically giving them free money for a feature that likely costs themselves next to nothing to have installed on its own. Also, apparently Eidos Montreal gets treated like crap by SE. They're apparently paid some of the lowest wages in the city, have a huge turnover rate between games (mostly on account of Square Enix's outrageous misspending apparently, word is they have to sell at least 300 million units if I recall correctly just to break even on Mankind Divided). Actually, the misspending may help to explain their actions. Businesses first and foremost care about profit, and Square Enix is desperate to make a profit because they spent so much fucking money on this game. By all accounts I've heard they're just a disaster in terms of managing their finances as publishers, and they take it out on their developer companies, and by extension their games. There's no fixing this issue until Square Enix stops being morons with their money, because to them this is nothing more than a viable honeypot they NEED just to help to break even.