Back when I ran Windows in a KVM VM for gaming, a lot of anti-cheat systems didn't take kindly to running in a virtualized environment. Turning on HyperV to go KVM->HyperV->Windows effectively 'laundered' my VM signature enough to satisfy the anticheats, though the overall perf hit was ~10-15%.

Back when I was a kid, games were pirated all the time. And when I say all the time, I mean *literally* everybody was pirating games. But TV was almost never pirated, everybody bought the connection Nowadays games are never pirated, traditional TV has become very rare (literally no one I know use that, they are all streaming), and I absolutely know no one who's not using pirated streaming services

@LGUG2Z I do feel a big point of contention for me in a lot of games is that the ending rarely feels properly resolved, especially in sandbox or open-world games, but even in mostly linear ones. So often the solution to "how to make the ending work mechanically" is to retcon the ending immediately and just place the player outside the final boss with the main story completely unresolved because most side-quests wouldn't make sense outside of the context of the main conflict. Ironically it makes going back to do those side-quests a fairly selfish act; robbing those characters of greater security and resolution so the player can complete a checklist. I've actually been getting far greater enjoyment out of *not* doing everything in the games I've been playing. The decision to say "I had a good time, and that's good enough" rather than be a compulsive completionist has resolved a lot of anxiety that came from finishing games.

I want every open world game to hard pivot into life sim after the main storyline is over. I want to live with Yen in Corvo Bianco, with Zelda in Hyrule and just chill out and spend some peaceful, non heroic time in these worlds. I just saved the world, let me watch the effect that had on these communities in real time and forge a new life afterwards.

For whatever reason, Elden ring brought out a new type of player to these games. They love to snark about how “souls vets” will complain about a games mechanics, and just shout them down because “it’s NOT souls!!!” When the actual issue is that no matter what, there’s a certain “feel” in these types of games, and those players have played enough of them to be able to tell when something is off, and just doesn’t feel good. It’s not them saying the game is too hard, it’s them saying that it feels kinda shitty where it doesn’t in other games. It’s stuff that’s easily fixable with a patch. It has ZERO to do with difficulty, but the post-ER can’t stop conflating the two. The challenge isn’t the only thing worth playing this genre for, a good soulslike isn’t something that just cranks up the difficulty to 11 and makes everything else suffer. But that’s what it feels like this new crowd wants. A character feeling clunky shouldn’t be the reason for difficulty. A reminder that the exact same complaints this game is receiving about poise/hyper armor/weight were also made about ER colossal weapons when it first came out. Every single time the comments got spammed with downvotes with people acting like it’s just a skill issue. Then lo and behold, a patch came out addressing the EXACT complaints that were getting shouted down. And now all of a sudden colossal weapons are viable and fun. Maybe people should just listen to the complaints instead of acting like these people that have spent 10+ years playing this genre just don’t know what they’re talking about? You could end up with a better feeling game instead of being resistant just for the sake of difficulty.

One of the things I think Atlus excels at is the gameplay loop. Both Persona and Catherine have “downtime” in between the core gameplay and that’s what makes it addictive. In the case of the Stray Sheep, it’s just a great break from the puzzle gameplay. After a grueling few rounds in the dream it’s nice to just hang out, have a drink, talk with npcs, look at texts, and even play a few rounds of the arcade game. I feel like, if Catherine were nothing but the puzzle gameplay, I’d get burnt out quickly. So having a downtime section made for a very engaging and addictive gameplay loop.

And yes, I'm well aware the game wants to act like Fat Geralt is a different breed of evil to Ellie and Abby. You want to know why people like him? Because he is so over-the-top and cartoonish that his villainy ends up twisting around and endearing him to players. Which is a failing on the game's part. That a character who is, by all forms of morality, pure evil, is more likeable than the characters it spent the last 23 hours trying to make the player like.

A video game is, at its essence, a human-computer interface between a user and a digital ruleset of which the processed results are contextualised & communicated by audiovisual declaration - and an interface is a method of access. All game design -is- accessibility design.

Paid mods is almost never a good thing for the game itself. Almost every mod out there is addressing some (real or perceived) deficiency in the base game. Good game studios look at what's popular and either pull those features into the base game, or work with the modder to do the same. Adding a paid mod system changes that cooperative relationship into an adversarial one, where modders see their revenue stream attacked by the game maker. (Except maybe the make everyone nude mods)

Most people dont get 100% of the story from Vaati’s videos, and don’t pretend they figured out everything themselves Figuring out the lore in details is supposed to be a community effort, what happens when you play the game is that you basically don’t get what is happening exactly but kind of develop a vague idea based on overall vibes, weird dialogues, environments, enemies and all that, then afterwards you go on the internet and follow what the community has figured out exactly of the lore to get a better idea So basically, everyone admits they really get the story and the lore after actually playing the game, but it’s okay because there is no disconnection between that story and everything in the game, it’s immediately clear that the game was actually coherent the whole time, and knowing the details of the story allows the player to recontextualize their actions in the game, which means most people are perfectly okay with how this narrative was built

Basically what the title says. If you are still itching on that season 1 feeling of the paranormal, and the general setting, and you are somewhat of a gamer, give Alan Wake 2 a try. Just got done sinking about 4 hours in it, and I cant help but being remembered of TD-S1 every 10 minutes. Very similar setting of two detectives looking into a cult related murder, with a hint more of the paranormal, and less philosophy thrown in between (thus far, at least). Your main partner gives some pretty solid Rustin Cohle vibes (and Max Payne, ifkyk). With slightly snarky remarks, and being so fed up with everything, without getting too exhausting to be alongside. FBI windbreakers, great graphics of the pacific northwestern forests, a general uneasy ambience with a Stephen King-like horror story beneath. What more can I say? If you have played the first Alan Wake then it feels very similar, but being a lot more developed and updated. Episodic nature, with each chapter ending with its related song. Somewhat of a non linear story, which envelops a mystery which seems impossible to crack at first. Also, for those who are into detective games: its got a great take on the cliché detective-board where you have to connect clues to answer questions and reach conclusions with what you have gathered. Definitely worth giving a look in my opinion. Edit: Also, now that I remember, first Alan Wake was heavily inspired by twin peaks. Im not sure if said influence got carried into Alan Wake 2, since I have not seen the show myself. But felt like mentioning just in case someone was also interested in that kind of vibes.

What I always say about FromSoftware games is that they know they are games, they want to be games- They don't want to be movies. I feel like too many games (going back to when movie cut scenes and voice acting became standard) want to give you a cinematic experience. Games aren't movies. Miyazaki said that the player's actions are the story of Elden Ring. I think that's very telling of how they approach storytelling. People say the story of Elden Ring is all in the lore, in the item descriptions- That's partly true. The backstory is told environmentally and through items and such. But, there's also an effort to focus on gameplay as the story of the game, rather than gameplay being something you do in between the story scenes.

On one mission in Starfield an NPC said to me “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” which made me realize something about the world building that was bugging me - this is a science fiction setting way in the future, but the mannerisms and language everyone uses is from todays era. They don’t have any slang or terminology native to their universe. It’s like the writers have no edge and only know how to write themselves into the story instead of creating an actual setting. A lot of the faction quests don’t even feel plausible, because the writing/context behind them is on the same level as a coloring book. It just seems like the writing/lore is as soft as possible, and nothing has any depth…

I played Breath of the Wild when it originally came out and rage quit on lightning ganon. I recently started playing it earlier this year when my 4 year old son asked to play 'big zelda' (we've already completed Link's Awakening remake together several times). He's really good at Links Awakening and can handle everything apart from a few bosses. I anticipated botw would be too hard and he'd just enjoy exploring the plateau. He's really taken to the concept of freeing the divine beasts and Hyrule. We've been playing on and off for about 6 months and we're up to our last divine beast, the one that has lightning ganon at the end. In a way I feel a strange parallel with the champions in the story who fell 100 years ago. I too, failed last time, but this time I have to prevail!

This suffers from the "Seinfeld isn't funny" syndrome. You'll have seen it all before because this was a pioneering game when it came out ..... on the PS3. There's been many games since which have taken this formula of narrative driven storytelling using cutscenes, and movie-like presentations, and moulded and improved it. It's just one of those things that "at the time" this sort of thing was exceptional and fairly new. Nowadays, this sort of storytelling and gaming is par for the course and has many competitors. It took Sony the best part of 10 years to bring it to PC.

Ape Escape was a big part of what literally launched dual-stick game controllers. The PS1's DualShock was the first major controller to feature dual sticks, and was largely panned by critics who simply couldn't conceptualize what you might use that second stick for. Ape Escape was a huge hit that really showed off how useful and fun the second stick could be. Can you imagine something like Armored Core with the controller buttons alone? Because I don't have to. I lived that. AC pre-dates the DualShock, and by modern standards playing it would be torture. D-pad Up/Down was forward/back movement, Left/Right was turning, and two of the shoulder buttons were dedicated to _looking up and down_. I'm pretty sure that strafing wasn't even in the game, and I'd go further and say that strafing wasn't really a thing in console games at all at that point because the control schemes were already convoluted enough.

I played the shit out of Ape Escape when I was little. We didn’t have a ton of money, so we only really bought a couple games a year and then rented here and there from the video rental store. The games we did buy I knew every nook and cranny of and Ape Escape gave me plenty to chew on.

This game gave me the best catharsis at the worst time of my life. My dad died, four weeks later this game came out, my wonderful lap cat died (also of a stroke like my dad) a week into it, I bashed my brains against this game and the final boss. The joy and exhilaration I felt on completing it is something I have never felt. I suddenly understood the moves and final boss in a way that felt like I was in the matrix. I actually let myself die near the end just to show myself I could block it all or casually step slightly out of the way by replaying it. You can’t summon help, you have to learn the system, there’s only one main weapon and power is largely flat. I feel such an overwhelming sadness and triumph mixed in my body right now just thinking about that time in my life, I became a whole new person (not just because of Sekiro, I also met my wife a week after my dad died)… and I knew I was capable of pushing so much further, being more and doing better in life than I could’ve imagined. I dunno, maybe that sounds stupid, but it is what it is. Everything came together in that moment, and I am so thankful that it all did even if a lot of it was incredibly painful. It had to be Sekiro for the game, I’ve never been pushed like that before or since.

I agree. A lot of clones ramp up the difficulty because they think that's what makes Dark Souls what it is, and in the process they completely lose track of the fact that Dark Souls is about *overcoming* challenge, not the challenge itself. The difficulty is important, but it's a means to an end rather than the end itself.

can't help but feel the $70 price tag has done major damage to the performance of new (or in this case revived) AAA franchises. Callisto, Forspoken, Immortals, Wild Hearts etc may have not been great, but I feel them being $70 made things way worse for their sales numbers. People pay $60 for mid games all the time, they're used to that. But $70 really feels like an insult to the customer if the game isn't pristine. You buy a game for $60 and it's mid, you feel disappointed. You spend $70 and the game is mid? Then you feel *wronged*. Big name AAA games like Spiderman and Final Fantasy do fine because people trust those names, but spending $70 on an unfamiliar IP is a huge gamble for consumers, especially if reviews are less than stellar. Hopefully some find success.

They’re more or less Zombified because they’re naturally immortal (can be killed but won’t die due to age/natural causes) and it’s been hundreds or thousands of years since they’ve had any purpose since the end of the shattering. Godrick just kind of sits around pretending to grow in power but is too cowardly/weak to make another attempt at any other Demigod Rennala is a shell of herself since Radagon left. The Academy turned against her and became insular, locking out all outsiders. Radahn is insane and rotting Morgott is just encamped in Leyndell with the explicit goal of not allowing anything to change Rykard ate most of his followers and is kind of just waiting and slowly gaining power. Mohg has been camped underground since the Shattering waiting for something to happen with Miquella (and others mock him, believing that something will never come to pass) And Melania has been asleep recovering since the shattering. Not to mention Radagon/Marika have been inside the Erdtree since all of this. So you have all these soldiers who have had nothing of substance to do for Centuries. Most have no real active leadership. No unifying Elden Lord or God to look to for direction. None of the other factions are doing anything either (Aside from Morgott trying to slowly stamp out Volcano Manor). So they’ve basically just become shambling husks. Good enough to guard and fight but nothing else that requires the slightest bit of agency, kind of symbolic for the stagnation of the Lands Between.

It would be cool if there was no new images or video to accompany the written previews lmao. I miss ‘99 and early 2000 waiting for any scrap of info on FFIX. I’ll never forget when the entire soundtrack leaked online months before the game was released, but it in some crappy sounding midi form. I listened to Vivi’s Theme like 700 times before the game was released. Oh yeah and all the CG cutscenes leaked online too, but you had to download them on QuickTime. 2mb took a long time to download back in the dial up days. I wish some of you could’ve been there to experience what FF hype was like back in the zenith of its popularity. It was literally the biggest non-platforming franchise. The hype was industry wide. It was on the cover of every gaming magazine (and there were a lot in those days). It was in Entertainment Weekly. It was in The NY Times before they had a dedicated gaming section. And then, just as the hype reached its boiling point, FF(VII, VIII, IX, or X) would finally release. And it would actually manage to *exceed* the hype. Game of the year awards all over the place. Review scores ALL in the 9’s and 10’s. FF is *back*. God I missed it.

I personally think MMOs were a social phenomenon. Their game mechanics were never ground breaking and the stories were never top tier. The internet was this new beast in the late 90s early 2000s. People loved the idea of meeting new people without leaving their house, and so often meeting people with identical interests. The newness of the internet mixed with easy to pick up gameplay got so many people hooked. The way people viewed online relationships back then also is a factor. It's not even a question of the good old day, but just the evolution of gaming. MMOs will hold a soft spot in my heart but I have come to the understanding the genre will never be the juggernaut it once was.

> But to me the fact that the games are not natively supporting Linux and are instead needing a tool like Proton still means that Linux is not ideal for gaming. Just like Mac is not. You’re holding a proof that it isn’t so in your hands and still claim something opposite. The biggest issue with gaming on Linux has always been impossibility of providing a binary build that works everywhere due to lack of a stable kernel API and ABI. Turns out, win32 API is exactly that and works really well on Linux if you put in the work, see proton. IOW Linux is ready for gaming thanks to and because of Windows, not despite it.

I havent played Ragnarok but i put like 30 hours into God of War 2018 and ill likely never play it again. I put almost 300 hours into Elden Ring and ill likely keep replaying it. As an older gamer im stunned, i havent felt like a kid with a game since like Zelda on NES and SNES. You just get put into a world and explore it at your own pace. Everything about the game from head to toe is just amazing. My jaw was constantly dropping on my first playthrough and friends who only play FPS or sports games beat and loved it.

I’m 52 but I’d rather play X hours of Elden Ring than most games. I don’t care about finishing games, just having fun while playing. I find the ‘git gud’ narrative to be an issue, because I just have fun. I explore, try new characters, whatever. Those sweaty types would probably consider me over leveled for each boss, but what do I care? As for Jedi Fallen Order, it’s an OK game but it’s not great, and it doesn’t really reward longterm play. The reason why FromSoft’s games have defined a genre is partly because they’re excellent. DS3 or Elden Ring are infinitely more rewarding than any similar game I’ve played. Nioh 2 is the only other ‘soulslike’ I really enjoy, and that’s more like Yokai Diablo than a soulslike. Just my 2 cents. Now get off my lawn!

After beating Elden Ring, I decided to revisit a few older From Software titles. I've already beaten Sekiro a few times, but for the most part, I haven't touched it since 2020. Now that I've played through it again, I'm absolutely blown away at how good it is, and in my opinion, it's the best game in the entire From Software lineup. The main reason why I believe Sekiro is the best game in the lineup is that the developers were able to laser-focus on the combat system, getting rid of stats and gear to create a pure action-adventure game. When I played through Sekiro, I was enthralled at the way in which every fight with an enemy was an intense, one-on-one duel. Instead of the traditional souls formula of poking a boss and waiting for an opening to attack, Sekiro encourages you to essentially become the "boss fight." The removal of the stamina bar means that you can almost constantly be on the attack, as long as you are paying attention to the boss and realize when you have to deflect. Deflecting an attack is also not a guarantee for an opening; you have to watch the bosses' response carefully to see if they recoil backwards from a deflection, opening them up for attack. In this sense, you create your own attack openings by aggressively attacking and deflecting, rather than playing around the bosses' behavior. There are no iframes in Sekiro's dodge, making it a tool that is best used sparingly rather than abused as it is in other Souls games. I am also a huge fan of the way that you can break a bosses' posture meter long before you deplete their health bar. During my encounter with Lady Butterfly, I got completely destroyed several times while playing passively and trying to figure out her moves. When I decided to play aggressively, I was able to deplete her posture very quickly with a near-constant assault and throwing shurikens when she decided to leap on her threads. At that moment, I realized how absolutely brilliant Sekiro's combat system is. Boss fights are brutally difficult, but can be ended very quickly if you played aggressively and skillfully. Playing passively means that you have to deal with bosses recovering their posture, lengthening the fight and punishing you for being passive. I am a huge fan of Elden Ring and believe that it is one of the best games I've ever played. However, I have to say that the combat of Sekiro elevates it to a completely new level. The combat system in Sekiro is the closest thing to perfection in a melee combat game. It's simple on the surface, but absolutely brilliant in its execution. Elden Ring unfortunately is not able to reach the same level as Sekiro when it comes to thrilling boss fights. While Elden Ring's bosses have incredible spectacle, from a mechanical standpoint, they are almost all identical. Rolling around and poking when you see an opening is not my idea of a thrilling combat system. In Sekiro, each boss fight feels like a true battle where you are locked in near-constant sword clashes, making it in my opinion the pinnacle of the entire From Software lineup.

I won't go back and replay it. It was a phenomenal game at the time and an important part of my childhood but it would be impossible to play it again with the mindset I had back then. I played the original halo in the Mcc bundle and that shiny memory from back in the day lost a little luster, kind of like learning a secret to a magic trick. If you haven't played it before, it will give you a great understanding and appreciation of the evolution and foundation of the series. It won't leave a lasting impact like it will if you were a kid back then but classics need to be remembered.

This is one of the big reasons my whole Team Fortress 2 group can't go back to the game. We played *thousands* of hours together in its early years. At the time, some of us had 100% achievement completion. We played on our local Toronto servers and got to know all the regulars. It's *such* a different game when you play with a community who recognizes player and clan names by sight and develop respect and rivalries. The time when we skilled up enough to contend with the server's top Sniper. The time when the server's best medic attached himself to me for the whole game because he recognized me as the best offensive player on the team. The times when we'd all hop on the same team and other players would switch teams specifically to play with or against us. The times when all talk was enabled and we could hear the other team get demoralized and panicked when they realized that our buddy was playing Spy this game. Checking the server leaderboards after the session and realizing our whole group had broken into the top 100. The feeling that if we went out for a walk and ran into another Team Fortress player on the street, we might actually recognize their user name. Quick play with randos will never be the same.

Exactly. These servers were like bars you'd hang out in. You recognize the regulars, and depending on the server, you'd goof around. Me and my friend had a server in cs: source. It was called sexy but deadly, or strong Belgian dicks. Anyways the acronym was SBD. 16 people could join. At some point we had so many regulars we'd have to kick people to get the regulars in xD. It was just us goofing around. You'd start to get to know people that way. I tried catching that feeling again in cs:go, but it's just not the same. Online gaming pushed everyone away. The social sphere is now on discord instead of the game.

That's taking me back to unreal tournament and games like that. There was a group of servers that I frequented a lot and I loved it. It was so fun I knew everybody and we just had a blast. Every Friday at 7:00 p.m. I knew where to go to just unwind and relax for a couple hours with friends. This random quick multiplayer world that we live in now, I don't want to always be with strangers. I'm older so I don't have a core group that I can game with every night at a set time. But a server that always has the same people and you get to know them, I miss that. Long story short I totally agree with you, good post, brought back a lot of memories!

For those wondering about the game itself, let me explain what the last 10-11 days have been like for me. I'm 36 years old, and my workdays are now spent obsessively researching and making lists for every single thing I want to do when I get home and have time to play. Imagine that sense of wonder and discovery you had when you were a kid. The very same magic that tends to fade as you get older. Playing Elden Ring feels like I'm 12 years old again, loading up Ocarina of Time. On top of that, the game is so incredibly hard and obtuse that overcoming challenges makes you realize the victory was entirely down to your choices (both for your character in the long-term, and in the short-term heat of battle). The rush of adrenaline makes you feel like a damn athlete. I am slowly but surely realizing this may end up being my favorite game ever. I haven't changed up my #1 game since the original FF7 25 years ago. I was born the year the NES released, and I've never played a game that made me feel like this. Especially in my late 30's.

My problem with games like Factorio (and more recently Oxygen no Included), is that after I get addicted and get up past 100 hours of gameplay I start to question what the hell I'm doing with my life. Up until that point it's great fun designing, building, and optimizing, but then a switch in my head flips. I start to become anxious about the fact that I was excited about getting better at skills in a virtual world. Usually around this time I start watching videos of more advanced builds, and then become increasingly depressed about the idea of sinking 1000+ hours into a game, when I could just be building something in the real world, or out riding my bike. This is usually the time I put the game down and never play it again. I think the problem for me is that these games give me the illusion of learning, building, and accomplishing things, which my little engineer brain loves. But once I come out of the haze of addiction, I realize it's nothing more than an illusion, and I just stomach going on.

If you're playing a game for anything but pleasure and not getting paid for it, stop playing the game. If you feel like you "have" to complete 100% of a game's material, despite it being a "mountain of tasks" that are no longer fun, you have an addiction, a compulsion, or both, and need to seek treatment.

I realized that after doing 100% in two games. It felt like I was playing not for fun but for achievement. Same is the case with life tbh. If we are too engrossed in achieving then life passes us by. These days I just take time to appreciate the beauty of the game world and take it easy.

I think a lot of people forget to mention about Persona how fucking genius the calendar is. The idea that the game is not set in some temporary limbo where there’s no concept of time, but instead it makes u have a routine and having the game show you what happens in a day, making you go to school on week days, having no school on the vacation month, the Summer Festival on August 21st. This system plus the ROUTINE it makes you have is probably the most important reason as to why these games are so incredibly immersive. There’s also the little things, like if you make lunch the night before you can go have lunch with someone of your choosing to spend time with them. How pretty is that!! I do absolutely agree, and for some reason it’s not a sentiment i’ve seen much, that the game should totally end after that first supposed ending (not the bad ending). Story-wise, pacing-wise it really doesn’t make any sense for it to keep going, and tbh it made me doubt how clear the themes of the game were laid out for the writers, considering it’s taken into account a lot better in P3 and P5.

I cannot wait until the nursing home lan parties. During pandemic I have rekindled relationships with 2-3 friends, some out of state, and we've played games at least 2x a week. The opportunity for casual interaction (via discord) while focusing on another task (the challenging game), perfectly mimics the environment to build deep longlasting relationships through shared struggle, trust building, communication, feedback, and so on.

My hypothesis is that many game designers have actually forgotten what makes a game fun. Games have become a cargo cult of sorts. Games have character levels, level ups and skill trees but why exactly? Does it make Project Warlock more fun? Certain game traits are replicated without thought. In my opinion games won't "grow up" as a medium if game designers let others shame them into implementing stuff that doesn't make games better. Like, meaningful moral choices, versus a game letting you play in a number of creative ways. Making a fuss about non-lethal approaches to challenges. The more cutscenes and story you add to a game, the more it becomes a graphic novel. Games aren't about telling stories. They're about generating them. That's what games do best and no other medium can come close - not radio, not movies, not books. The best games are the ones with a ton of mods, with a vibrant community, speedrunners inventing challenges and categories by themselves rather than relying on a programmed system of achievements. No one complains about lack of a story in basketball, chess or soccer! Games are more about acting than theatre (playhouse) is. Only a few people act in a play, the rest are watching. In a game, everyone expresses himself through actions. The core of a game is acting, in a simulated world or within a set of rules. Games are not about immersion - you can get immersed in a book or a movie. Immersion is just something many best games do.

I don't think it's cargo culting, as much as it's a generation of gamers who were raised with the expectation of a "progression system". I remember back when EA was ridiculed for their statement about "giving a players a sense of pride and accomplishment" regarding requiring a long grind (or big payment) to unlock the most powerful characters in a Star Wars game. I've seen people beg developers to give them something pointless to grind for because they won't play a game without rewards. I think developers know how to make fun games, but I don't think most players want fun games because they've been conditioned to want addiction simulators with meaningless rewards.

Sekiro is a masterpiece. It's resolutely not for everyone, but pushing myself through the game's pain barrier was the kind of rewarding experience I'd heard about from Bloodborne or Souls players, yet never had myself. Unfortunately, it's also caused a schism in my relationship with singleplayer games. It's led me to instead seek out games that provide a similar buzz for mastering them, and away from the sort of solo experiences I exclusively enjoyed just a couple of years ago. Sekiro's melee combat is the thing that spoiled me. It hits the same part of my brain that the later Jedi Knight games did in the '00s—the hunger for meaningful one-on-one cinematic duels with deadly opponents. In Sekiro, enemies usually kill you in two or three hits, so every parry, slash or dodge matters. It's incredibly exciting once you understand the dynamics of it, but it's also the kind of combat system you'll likely never see replicated wholly in other games, simply because the stakes are too high for most players.

There's a quality to FromSoft games that I love: there's very few cutscenes in them, no QTEs, most of the story is delivered off-handedly, and they're challenging games. All the sick shit your character does? That's on you. You did it. No Nathan Drake bullshit. There's a sense of purity to them that a lot of games lack these days. You can jump into them quickly and just start actually gaming. I tried to play Yakuza 0 or whatever the heck it is called a few months ago and was left with such a sour taste in my mouth with the endless cutscenes and constantly having control taken from me. It pissed me off that I was up to an hour or more into the game and had scarcely played the damn thing for more than 5 minutes. Anyway, have you looked into **Monster Hunter: World?** It is broadly similar in many ways. It is nowhere near as challenging as, say, Sekiro, but it delivers on a lot of the strokes of a FromSoft style game. Fighting the monsters is like fighting bosses all the time. And the weapons are wildly varied and complex. If you do play, make sure you experiment with various weapons to find one you like.

The artsy experiential games never get their fair share, in part because describing an aesthetic experience is like explaining a joke and transitively like dissecting a frog. Discussion distracts from its nature. I had the same experience with Gorogoa. So that's fine. A game will sometimes reach out to people and they will go out and want to experience it firsthand. And that experience is theirs without expectations to constrain their interpretation. I think certain pieces of art should be appreciated in silence. Journey goes for a much more allegorical tale and thus is easier to discuss particularly within the framework of Joseph Campbell, but for the rest, interpretation can often be subjective. I think particularly when it comes to games that approach states of emotional turmoil, mileage varies on how well something resonates, precisely because people don't all experience things like depression the same way. Trying to have that discussion in real life often ends in people just sometimes saying "Yeah, sorry. I just don't get it." I can't fault people for that. I don't think I really would have understood it before going through it myself. But it is nice that some people do at least. Anyway, I'm glad you enjoyed the game.