New titles that aren't awful!

[Kaptin Keen]

So .. there's all sorts of threads for old games. I started one myself, focussing on roguelikes. But realistically, there must be people out there, even in this day and age, who make non-retro, brand new, shiny games that aren't utter drek.

Right?

The latest actually new games I played, completed and liked are, sadly, Stellaris and Tyranny. Which is ironic, since I consider Paradox to be absolute villains (for their endless-expansions-money-cow business practice).

Can anyone do better, I wonder?

[PraetorDragoon]

Hollow Knight is an amazing metroidvania.

[Hunter Noventa]

Hollow Knight is an amazing metroidvania.

So is Bloodstained.

Battlefleet Gothic is a solid RTS with a solid campaign and fantastic visuals.

There are a lot of decent-looking indie games coming up like Dual Gear and Phantom Brigade.

[danzibr]

Hollow Knight is an amazing metroidvania.

Oh dang. First game that comes to mind for me, and it’s the first comment.

Cosmic Star Heroine came out not too long ago, fun retro RPG.

Beyond that... haven’t been playing any new games.

[warty goblin]

The end of this summer/beginning of fall has been packed with goodness.

Gears 5
I suppose in one sense this is sort of retro, because you don't level anything up, there's no randomly generated loot, and there's a list of like a dozen or so entirely delightfully varied and ridiculous guns. It's hella good though; like the best possible version of a game from 2007. Gorgeous, plays like a dream, is far smarter than a game featuring chainsaw bayoneting a dude in the groin has any right to be, and lays on interesting and spectacular setpiece fights with a degree of competence that makes it look easy.

Age of Wonders: Planetfall
This could also be considered borderline retro, in the sense that it's an update to a quite venerable series, but it does some reasonably bold things in its design. The tactical combat is better than ever, but the strategy map's mechanic of annexing sectors is really excellent. At a stroke this unpacks cities extremely well, makes borders between different empires fairly sensible, and gives you something worth fighting over. Really the only downside is a slightly over-repetitive early game, but by midgame things often get very weird.

Also you can have a fight between Communist space dwarves and violently hostile sexbots. People who said this game has no flavor apparently lack taste buds.


The Surge 2 I don't actually like Soulslike games, and some of my traditional complaints still stand; i.e. resting respawning all the non-boss enemies is deeply immersion breaking. However the combat is excellent as a sort of power-armor fueled techno-Homeric ballet of hyper-carnage, and somebody clearly had a think about the health system and did something interesting. Hitting dudes builds energy, which can be used to charge up a healing device, so your primary form of recuperation is actually jabbing people in the ribs with unpleasantly sharp things. Then somebody tied this to the loot system, since you only get specific loot by targeting and chopping off specific body parts, which draws from the same energy reserve as charging your healing thing. Want that guy's helmet? Better chop his head off. This also adds a delightful bit of risk/reward to the combat, since you can kill a dude faster by targeting an unarmored bodypart, but chopping of a helmetless head won't net you as much cool stuff.

[factotum]

Regarding Paradox, when it comes to scummy business practices, they're a *long* way better than the likes of EA and Activision!

As for new, good, non-retro games, I hear good things about Subnautica, although I won't actually be playing it until the weekend so I can't give you my personal opinion until then. I've also put a *lot* of hours into Grim Dawn, which I don't consider "retro" but I definitely think is worth playing.

[Yora]

I had a lot of fun with Sekiro and Metro Exodus this year, and before that Dark Souls 3. Which is over 3 years old by now.

[Drasius]

Battletech is very solid, though despite being originally a kickstarter project developed by the original Battletech guys who started it 30 odd years ago, it was swallowed up by Paradox last year, so if you don't want another Paradox game, you won't be getting you giant robot action here.

Factorio is one of the highest rated games on steam for a reason. I don't really know how to describe it, but luckily for both of us, they're just crazy enough to have a downloadable demo for you to play. I highly recommend chaecking it out.

As already mentioned, Battlefleet Gothic is quite fun, both for the campaign and just tooling around in random battles.

Also as mentioned, Grim Dawn can be a nice diversion. If you liked Titan Quest, you'll probably like this.

Speaking of, if that's your jam or you ever enjoyed Diablo II, give Path of Exile a go. While the F2P nature might put some off, it got 95% of the polish of a AAA game at this point and is quite easily the leader in the ARPG genre.

Interplanetary is a niche little thing that involves building up you planet with various defences and weapons to then hurl your choice of railgun projectiles, missiles, MIRV's, Laser beams or asteroids at the other chumps foolish enough to have a habitable plant in the same solar system. Definitely something to check out.

Kerbal Space Program isn't new, but is certainly worth a mention for a quirky little one-more-turnlaunch time eater about space exploration.

Middle Earth: Shadows of Mordor was pretty great, with lots of cool things to do and see, a very nice combat system and a neat roster of ork captains with far more personality than they had any right to have for randomly generated NPC's.

Mount and Blade is another really solid niche piece with some seriously good combat and a fun little army building system.

Pillars of Eternity is probably something right up your ally if you liked Tyranny. Story is OK, but the real strength is in the interesting characters IMHO, though a couple of them do have lacklustre endings to their personal quests (YES, I'M LOOKING AT YOU, EDER!).

They are Billions is a sort of odd mix of tower defence and limited RTS ... thing that can be quite addictive.

Vermintide: The End Times / Vermintide 2 are some very solid co-op fun in the warhammer fantasy universe. The gameplay is surprisingly solid, and the maps are interesting and varied but the real thing that sticks with you are the characters and their banter.

If we're allowed to mention console crossovers, then both Valkyria Chronicles and Final Fantasy 15 are excellent additions to your library.

[warty goblin]

As for new, good, non-retro games, I hear good things about Subnautica, although I won't actually be playing it until the weekend so I can't give you my personal opinion until then. I've also put a *lot* of hours into Grim Dawn, which I don't consider "retro" but I definitely think is worth playing.

Subnautica is a good survival crafting game. It's still very much a survival crafting game. Since crafting is about my least favorite game subsystem ever, even giving it a delicious and attractive wrapper did not help.

[Narkis]

I loved Pathfinder: Kingmaker. The last games I liked before that were Darkest Dungeon, Shadowrun and Witcher 3. But how many years back do we go before games stop counting as "new"?

[Rynjin]

Borderlands 3 is good, for a very recent release.

I picked up Noita last night, and it's...interesting. Early Access, but solid. It's like a mix of a Rogue-like dungeon delver with that powder physics game you played in the school's computer lab.

Sony has been pumping out amazing games. God of War's reboot and the Spider-Man game are games that absolutely live up to the hype; most refreshing game experiences I've had in a while.

[Aeson]

How recent is 'new?' Just released this year? Within the past 5 years? Something else?

Regardless, for relatively recently released titles that I've played and enjoyed, Rule the Waves and its sequel are enjoyable build-your-own-navy quasi-historical wargames, Transport Fever's pretty decent if you're into tycoon-type games and Dominions 5 does the megalomaniacal world conquest thing pretty well.

[Kaptin Keen]

So is Bloodstained.

Battlefleet Gothic is a solid RTS with a solid campaign and fantastic visuals.

There are a lot of decent-looking indie games coming up like Dual Gear and Phantom Brigade.

I've been considering Battlefleet Gothic. It's just that I'm fairly crap at keeping track of things in RTS's.

I like indie games, I'll check out those two.

Oh dang. First game that comes to mind for me, and it’s the first comment.

Cosmic Star Heroine came out not too long ago, fun retro RPG.

Beyond that... haven’t been playing any new games.

But .. retro might be new, be is designed to be old-like. It's cheating, for the purposes of this thread =)

The end of this summer/beginning of fall has been packed with goodness.

Gears 5
I suppose in one sense this is sort of retro, because you don't level anything up, there's no randomly generated loot, and there's a list of like a dozen or so entirely delightfully varied and ridiculous guns. It's hella good though; like the best possible version of a game from 2007. Gorgeous, plays like a dream, is far smarter than a game featuring chainsaw bayoneting a dude in the groin has any right to be, and lays on interesting and spectacular setpiece fights with a degree of competence that makes it look easy.

Age of Wonders: Planetfall
This could also be considered borderline retro, in the sense that it's an update to a quite venerable series, but it does some reasonably bold things in its design. The tactical combat is better than ever, but the strategy map's mechanic of annexing sectors is really excellent. At a stroke this unpacks cities extremely well, makes borders between different empires fairly sensible, and gives you something worth fighting over. Really the only downside is a slightly over-repetitive early game, but by midgame things often get very weird.

Also you can have a fight between Communist space dwarves and violently hostile sexbots. People who said this game has no flavor apparently lack taste buds.


The Surge 2 I don't actually like Soulslike games, and some of my traditional complaints still stand; i.e. resting respawning all the non-boss enemies is deeply immersion breaking. However the combat is excellent as a sort of power-armor fueled techno-Homeric ballet of hyper-carnage, and somebody clearly had a think about the health system and did something interesting. Hitting dudes builds energy, which can be used to charge up a healing device, so your primary form of recuperation is actually jabbing people in the ribs with unpleasantly sharp things. Then somebody tied this to the loot system, since you only get specific loot by targeting and chopping off specific body parts, which draws from the same energy reserve as charging your healing thing. Want that guy's helmet? Better chop his head off. This also adds a delightful bit of risk/reward to the combat, since you can kill a dude faster by targeting an unarmored bodypart, but chopping of a helmetless head won't net you as much cool stuff.

Never played any of the Gears games. Maybe I should have, but it feels weird to get on board with the 5th game in the series.

I want Planetfall at some point, it looks neat. Surge, being a Souls-like, is .. unlikely to be any good for me, I'm too old for reaction based gameplay =)

Regarding Paradox, when it comes to scummy business practices, they're a *long* way better than the likes of EA and Activision!

As for new, good, non-retro games, I hear good things about Subnautica, although I won't actually be playing it until the weekend so I can't give you my personal opinion until then. I've also put a *lot* of hours into Grim Dawn, which I don't consider "retro" but I definitely think is worth playing.

Well - EA and Activision I'd never buy a product from, so their moral habitus is less relevant. Also, unlike those two, Paradox make excellent games. Then they fleece you.

I had a lot of fun with Sekiro and Metro Exodus this year, and before that Dark Souls 3. Which is over 3 years old by now.

I was playing the first Metro game, but ... then I got stuck, and lost interest. My save is in an irrecoverable mess, out of gas masks in the middle of nowhere being eaten by some giant monster.

Battletech is very solid, though despite being originally a kickstarter project developed by the original Battletech guys who started it 30 odd years ago, it was swallowed up by Paradox last year, so if you don't want another Paradox game, you won't be getting you giant robot action here.

Factorio is one of the highest rated games on steam for a reason. I don't really know how to describe it, but luckily for both of us, they're just crazy enough to have a downloadable demo for you to play. I highly recommend chaecking it out.

As already mentioned, Battlefleet Gothic is quite fun, both for the campaign and just tooling around in random battles.

Also as mentioned, Grim Dawn can be a nice diversion. If you liked Titan Quest, you'll probably like this.

Speaking of, if that's your jam or you ever enjoyed Diablo II, give Path of Exile a go. While the F2P nature might put some off, it got 95% of the polish of a AAA game at this point and is quite easily the leader in the ARPG genre.

Interplanetary is a niche little thing that involves building up you planet with various defences and weapons to then hurl your choice of railgun projectiles, missiles, MIRV's, Laser beams or asteroids at the other chumps foolish enough to have a habitable plant in the same solar system. Definitely something to check out.

Kerbal Space Program isn't new, but is certainly worth a mention for a quirky little one-more-turnlaunch time eater about space exploration.

Middle Earth: Shadows of Mordor was pretty great, with lots of cool things to do and see, a very nice combat system and a neat roster of ork captains with far more personality than they had any right to have for randomly generated NPC's.

Mount and Blade is another really solid niche piece with some seriously good combat and a fun little army building system.

Pillars of Eternity is probably something right up your ally if you liked Tyranny. Story is OK, but the real strength is in the interesting characters IMHO, though a couple of them do have lacklustre endings to their personal quests (YES, I'M LOOKING AT YOU, EDER!).

They are Billions is a sort of odd mix of tower defence and limited RTS ... thing that can be quite addictive.

Vermintide: The End Times / Vermintide 2 are some very solid co-op fun in the warhammer fantasy universe. The gameplay is surprisingly solid, and the maps are interesting and varied but the real thing that sticks with you are the characters and their banter.

If we're allowed to mention console crossovers, then both Valkyria Chronicles and Final Fantasy 15 are excellent additions to your library.

Final Fantasy hasn't worked for me, except FFIV. Valkyria Chronicles is something I've always been attracted to, but never having dared to try .. cause, I'm afraid it'll disappoint me. I might reconsider that.

Pillars of Eternity is another thing I was afraid of. I had to decide between that, and Divinity - and went with the latter, then never finished. Then bought Divinity 2, and never finished that either. Should have gotten PoE instead, I guess =)

Mount and Blade I know enough of to say the combat doesn't work for me. Vermintide is too pvp focussed - as above, I'm just too old. All the teenagers have better reactions speeds than me =) I will buy Billions eventually though. Tried Shadows of Mordor. Dunno, for some reason I suck at it. Badly so.

I looked at Interplanetary, and figured it would be a lot of fun - but also lose it's attraction quickly.

I have Battletech, though. I forgot about that one in my first post - considering buying the expansion. I think I would pick Rimworld over Factorio. Not that they're similar, but .. still =)

Subnautica is a good survival crafting game. It's still very much a survival crafting game. Since crafting is about my least favorite game subsystem ever, even giving it a delicious and attractive wrapper did not help.

Subnautica I have - but didn't finish.

I loved Pathfinder: Kingmaker. The last games I liked before that were Darkest Dungeon, Shadowrun and Witcher 3. But how many years back do we go before games stop counting as "new"?

Kingmaker I also have - but didn't finish.

Borderlands 3 is good, for a very recent release.

I picked up Noita last night, and it's...interesting. Early Access, but solid. It's like a mix of a Rogue-like dungeon delver with that powder physics game you played in the school's computer lab.

Sony has been pumping out amazing games. God of War's reboot and the Spider-Man game are games that absolutely live up to the hype; most refreshing game experiences I've had in a while.

Borderlands is something I want to love, but .. don't. Maybe it's the old reaction speed thing, again. Maybe I should check out God of War, tho.

How recent is 'new?' Just released this year? Within the past 5 years? Something else?

Regardless, for relatively recently released titles that I've played and enjoyed, Rule the Waves and its sequel are enjoyable build-your-own-navy quasi-historical wargames, Transport Fever's pretty decent if you're into tycoon-type games and Dominions 5 does the megalomaniacal world conquest thing pretty well.

'Reasonably new' is fine. I considered Rule the Waves, but didn't bite.

I know Dominions 5 has a strong following, but the graphics don't really suit me.

But .. good tips all around. Thanks =)

[Aeson]

'Reasonably new' is fine.

'Reasonably new' is ill-defined and subjective.

[Hunter Noventa]

I've been considering Battlefleet Gothic. It's just that I'm fairly crap at keeping track of things in RTS's.

BFG doesn't have as much to keep track of as a traditional RTS like say, Starcraft. There's no base building or resource gathering. Your fleet persists between missions, and you do all your upgrades in between missions. It's also got a slowdown function, so you can reduce the gameplay speed and issue orders to your ships.

[Lord Raziere]

I'll help out:

Dragon Ball Fighter Z
Sekiro Shadows Die Twice
Bloodstained Ritual of the Night
Code Vein
Crosscode
Cat Quests 1 and 2
Shantae Half Genie hero
Wandersong

really your asking a weird question, because its subjective what is or isn't awful, while "not awful" itself is a kind of a low bar question, since awful games aren't something you have some niggling little problem with they have big mechanical problems that make the game unplayable and thus generally aren't played at all, so anything not awful is technically anything well made enough that the mechanics of the game are fun. games are played because their mechanics provide a consistent interactive experience that people enjoy after all.

[Kaptin Keen]

'Reasonably new' is ill-defined and subjective.

Anything you feel is 'reasonably new' is perfectly fine. It's not a test, there are no wrong answers. But there are plenty of threads for great classics.

BFG doesn't have as much to keep track of as a traditional RTS like say, Starcraft. There's no base building or resource gathering. Your fleet persists between missions, and you do all your upgrades in between missions. It's also got a slowdown function, so you can reduce the gameplay speed and issue orders to your ships.

Maybe I really should give it a try. Thanks =)

[tonberrian]

Dragon Quest 11 is everything good about dragonvquest distilled into one game. And if you're going to get it, the Switch version is the way to go, as it has loads of content the other versions do not.

[Magic_Hat]

Indivisible comes out in literally days. If nothing else, the visuals are amazing. I've also heard good thing about River City Girls. Haven't played it yet as I'm waiting for it to go on sale.

[warty goblin]

Never played any of the Gears games. Maybe I should have, but it feels weird to get on board with the 5th game in the series.

I've only ever played Gears 1, and that was about 11 years ago*. I'm definitely missing some bits, but it's not that hard to pick up. There's aliens that look like discount Uruk-Hai. They are evil. You should kill them, with the helpfully provided set of ultra-violent weaponry. If you were willing to put up with the Windows store, you can get Gears 4 on PC there as well, which I think would fill in like 95% of the missing context in 5.

*I used to annoy my college roommate by playing it, and humming Amazing Grace every time I chainsaw bayoneted a dude. Later he had a nervous breakdown and left. I'm pretty sure these are unrelated incidents.

I want Planetfall at some point, it looks neat. Surge, being a Souls-like, is .. unlikely to be any good for me, I'm too old for reaction based gameplay =)

Planetfall is great. Not sure it's better than AoW 3, but AoW 3 is darn near perfect already, so a slightly different take o the same thing is just fine in my book.

Borderlands is something I want to love, but .. don't. Maybe it's the old reaction speed thing, again. Maybe I should check out God of War, tho.

Borderlands to me always felt like they had exactly one good idea - random guns - and strapped it into the most barebones and unambitious open world they could possibly get away with, along with an RPG system remarkable for achieving new heights of completely boring. I had fun with 2 until the random gun novelty wore off (oh look another revolver sniper rifle with like 3 shots) which left me with an endless slog through samey enemies in samey environments. There just wasn't enough actual meat on the bone.

[Zevox]

The best new titles from this year that I've played have been Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Devil May Cry 5. Both wonderful examples of their genres and, in my opinion, the best overall titles in their respective series. Three Houses has much better writing and storytelling than any of its predecessors plus very good (if a bit easy for the series) gameplay, and Devil May Cry 5 is just a wonderfully put together action game with top-notch mechanics and presentation, and some just plain fun moments to see and experience. The final boss fight in particular is fantastic.

Last year had some real treats too. They've all been mentioned already, but three that exceeded my expectations were God of War, Dragon Quest 11, and Spider-Man. I never expected to be able to praise the writing in a God of War game, but I can absolutely do that with that one, and the gameplay's absolutely stellar too, noticeably different from but, IMO, better than its predecessors. Dragon Quest 11 is just a very solid traditional-style JRPG with a variety of very well-done small things that add up over time, and an actually surprising element to the story, particularly if you're expecting more standard fare for the series. And Spider-Man, well, it steals a lot from the Batman: Arkham games, but does it very well and doesn't wind up feeling like a cheap copy of them despite the obvious similarities, instead just learning how to do a good action-based superhero game from them. Rare example of an open-world game where I didn't feel like the open-world elements harmed the experience, either (I normally dislike those, often quite a bit, in case anyone didn't know already).

Last year provided me with three of my favorite games ever too - Dragon Ball FighterZ, BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, and Super Smash Brothers: Ultimate. I still keep coming back to those three as my go-tos for the genre, and expect to for quite some time at this point. Plenty of fun to be had with all of them.

[Giggling Ghast]

Did anyone mention A Plague Tale: Innocence yet? It just came out this year.

[Sermil]

So .. there's all sorts of threads for old games. I started one myself, focussing on roguelikes. But realistically, there must be people out there, even in this day and age, who make non-retro, brand new, shiny games that aren't utter drek.

Right?

The latest actually new games I played, completed and liked are, sadly, Stellaris and Tyranny. Which is ironic, since I consider Paradox to be absolute villains (for their endless-expansions-money-cow business practice).

Can anyone do better, I wonder?

Into the Breach. Also Into the Breach. Last but not least, Into the Breach

[danzibr]

But .. retro might be new, be is designed to be old-like. It's cheating, for the purposes of this thread =)

Hehe, whoops, missed you even said non-retro in the OP. My bad.

Hrm. Alright, well you already addressed not being a FF fan. Right now I'm on FFX remaster. Maybe doesn't count since FFX is old, but the remaster was 6 years ago. FFX's combat system holds up really well.

Oh actually I do have a couple new games I've played. Nobody mentioned Zelda: Breath of the Wild. First Zelda truly of its kind. I overall enjoyed it. Exploration was a ton of fun (which it needed, seeing as the villain was kind of meh).

Also Star Control: Origins came out like last year. I put a lot of hours into that, really enjoyed it. Interest definitely piqued like 3/4 of the way through.

Beyond that... most of the stuff I play is either old or has already been mentioned.

[Varen_Tai]

Speaking of, if that's your jam or you ever enjoyed Diablo II, give Path of Exile a go. While the F2P nature might put some off, it got 95% of the polish of a AAA game at this point and is quite easily the leader in the ARPG genre.

Ok, based off of this recommendation (because I loved Diablo 2), I downloaded all 18 gb of this game. I didn't get to do much before I had to head to bed, but it looks so... PIXELATED. Like, painfully so. Please tell me there's some graphics option to make it look more like a game in 2019 instead of 1999. Diablo 2 looks better. I turned the resolution up all the way and all the graphics still look super blocky.

Now, I'm still totally willing to give it a go, if for no other reason than that amazing looking universal skill tree. But I'd love better graphics if at all possible.

Any ideas?

[Destro_Yersul]

I've been playing a game called Cliff Empire. It's pretty fun, if you like city builders.
The most recent Prey is brilliant, if you've not played that. So is the most recent Doom.
I'll second Factorio. I'd take it over Rimworld any day. Partly because I love factory building and supply-chain logistics, partly because I already have Dwarf Fortress.
Oh, and while it's not exactly new, Slime Rancher is both adorable and relaxing.

[Kaptin Keen]

Borderlands to me always felt like they had exactly one good idea - random guns - and strapped it into the most barebones and unambitious open world they could possibly get away with

That's so funny, because I always felt Borderlands got exactly one thing right - a cool, outback, hot, sweaty frontier desert world .. and then tacked on a pointless grindy weapon progression system for no reason =)

Into the Breach. Also Into the Breach. Last but not least, Into the Breach

The breach is good, and I completed it .. but it's retro, and not really on topic here =)

Hehe, whoops, missed you even said non-retro in the OP. My bad.

Hrm. Alright, well you already addressed not being a FF fan. Right now I'm on FFX remaster. Maybe doesn't count since FFX is old, but the remaster was 6 years ago. FFX's combat system holds up really well.

Oh actually I do have a couple new games I've played. Nobody mentioned Zelda: Breath of the Wild. First Zelda truly of its kind. I overall enjoyed it. Exploration was a ton of fun (which it needed, seeing as the villain was kind of meh).

Also Star Control: Origins came out like last year. I put a lot of hours into that, really enjoyed it. Interest definitely piqued like 3/4 of the way through.

Beyond that... most of the stuff I play is either old or has already been mentioned.

I want to play Breath of the Wild. Yes. Star Control crashes on my machine (curses!!).

I've been playing a game called Cliff Empire. It's pretty fun, if you like city builders.
The most recent Prey is brilliant, if you've not played that. So is the most recent Doom.
I'll second Factorio. I'd take it over Rimworld any day. Partly because I love factory building and supply-chain logistics, partly because I already have Dwarf Fortress.
Oh, and while it's not exactly new, Slime Rancher is both adorable and relaxing.

I keep hearing good things about Slime Rancher, and it's bugging me, cause it looks .. silly. I played the original Prey, but sadly lost interest. Dunno why, really. Maybe I should pick it back up.

[factotum]

That's so funny, because I always felt Borderlands got exactly one thing right - a cool, outback, hot, sweaty frontier desert world .. and then tacked on a pointless grindy weapon progression system for no reason =)

I dunno, I never felt Pandora made much sense. I mean, the idea is that the place was covered in oceans once upon a time, which is why it was colonised in the first place, but then those all went away for reasons--yet somehow both humans and native life still survive on what, to all intents and purposes, should be a dead world? As for the game itself, I always felt Borderlands 2 was too much of a retread of the first game but with the "bullet sponge" setting for enemies turned all the way up--when a brand new game feels like a really large DLC for an old one I think there's a bit of a problem.

I might get Borderlands 3 when it hits Steam purely because it's been a good while since I played a Borderlands game and thus I might be in the mood for it by then!

[Destro_Yersul]

I keep hearing good things about Slime Rancher, and it's bugging me, cause it looks .. silly. I played the original Prey, but sadly lost interest. Dunno why, really. Maybe I should pick it back up.

Well, it is a bit silly. But it's also charming and fun. The slimes have such wonderful expressions.

The most recent Prey, as I understand it, has very little to do with the older ones. It was produced by Arkane, in a similar vein to Dishonoured.

[Rynjin]

I dunno, I never felt Pandora made much sense. I mean, the idea is that the place was covered in oceans once upon a time, which is why it was colonised in the first place, but then those all went away for reasons--yet somehow both humans and native life still survive on what, to all intents and purposes, should be a dead world?

DEEPEST LORE is that Pandora goes through massive shifts when the season changes; these seasons lasting for decades at a time. Spring and Summer are dry, hot, and when all the dangerous creatures like Skags come out of hibernation. Fall and Winter make the place practically a paradise planet as all the dangerous wildlife slumbers, the water replenishes, and greenery grows rampant.

The games take place in the height of Pandoran Summer.

But the place was never colonized because it was nice (it was already Spring by the time Atlas got there), it was colonized because people thought there might be a Vault there. The Vaults are the source of pretty much every single piece of advanced technology in the setting, Eridian tech reverse-engineered by Atlas and then copied/modified by other companies, particularly Dahl (who were a huge reason for the colonization push).

Like I said in the other thread: Borderlands' plots are absurd and stupid. Its D E E P E S T L O R E is weirdly deep and complex and interesting.

It's a conundrum.

As for the game itself, I always felt Borderlands 2 was too much of a retread of the first game but with the "bullet sponge" setting for enemies turned all the way up--when a brand new game feels like a really large DLC for an old one I think there's a bit of a problem.

3 is a big step up; even on New Game+ a max level character can feel like they're making progress. Mayhem modes jack the enemy stats into the stratosphere, but they are now optional, and still not as stupid as the height of BL2's sponginess.

The game itself is a very good spin on the same formula; every character feels unique and interesting again, and I quite liked it. My only real gripe is the bosses kinda suck.