Wiper

8th June should be a banger; Day of the Devs always has a few gems to show off, and Devolver Digital is always worth watching whether or not the games are good.

Hammered TOTK for a week and a bit, then started mainlining System Shock as a change of pace, with occasional Humanity breaks to relieve the tension. It's been a good fortnight!

Honestly, I don't know that anything could have saved 3DFX once they made the wild decision to move without warning from being a card designer with licensed third-party manufacturers, to a fully in-house manufacturer.

Brilliant, thanks both — will definitely give it a watch

I'm interested in Overlord, but slightly put-off by the 'horror' tag. Is it actually horror in the 'large amounts of tension and/or jump scares throughout' sense (e.g. Alien, the Ring, more or less any slasher movie), in which case I won't be able to watch and enjoy it; or is it horror in the 'creepy setting/gory and monstrous but not actually terrifying' sense (e.g. The Thing, Aliens, most Cronenberg films)?

Somewhat spoilery if you've not played the original, but this roundtable with some of the key developers of the first System Shock is great, if you're interested in how the game came to be.

For what it's worth, the Shock engine was very different from Doom's; Doom is built for speed, with virtual 3D in place meaning e.g. you can't have rooms overlapping atop one another — though it does actually have cavernous, tall areas (unlike e.g. Wolfenstein 3D's enforced bunker design). The original System Shock's engine is true 3D; much less performant than Doom (you really needed a Pentium to have a good time with it), but far fewer limitations, and while larger scale would have completely hammered systems of the time, really the scale is in service to the game's atmosphere: it's meant to feel claustrophobic from start to finish. I'd be surprised if they've changed that aspect, if only for that reason. And anyway, Citadel Station is a horrendous warren of employee-unfriendly design decisions, culminating in the least employee-friendly decision of all in the unshackling of SHODAN, so it feeling like a hostile, cramped environment throughout doesn't really push against the fiction!

I learned my lesson from BOTW, and as a result have no idea how any of the characters sound in English. I gather this is for the best, though I'm unsure if it impacts at all on the best voice acting in the game; our intrepid winged reporter's "za-pow!" (also, I have entirely skipped the Josha questline, having accidentally gotten the key item very early on. I may rectify that at some point)

Buy System Shock Be pleasantly surprised that the original's multiple difficulty settings return in all their glory Be tickled by the real-time variant intro (though, to be honest, I prefer the System Shock 1 CD-ROM intro with its fun narration) Be amazed at how well they've translated the aesthetic of the original to a modern engine Be delighted at how well it runs on my 4 year old CPU and midrange GPU (Ryzen 3700X and Intel A750); specifically: never below 60fps at max settings, 3440x1440 Be pleased at how much of the layout remains the same, how much I can progress by memory Be impressed with how much more enjoyable and tactile pipemania 'rewiring' puzzles become when they're fully 'in-game' control, without a separate screen/interface Enjoy cyberspace in all its disorientating glory Be impressed by how much more oppressive and disturbing the game is with snazzier graphics Pause the game before you've made all that much progress because you "need to post on the forum" and not because you are "too scared", actually

FTFY

On the note of the sorting-by-most-used thing — I can't remember who suggested using that sort method upthread, but thank you — it really has made combat item use dramatically more convenient and enjoyable. I'm an idiot for not realising how effective it would be on my own! As for the reviews; well, let's be fair, it's very clear from just this forum that the degrading weapons is a huge negative for many players of BOTW,* and its continued presence in TOTK is likely to be just as game-breaking for them as it was in the first. If it goes completely against what you enjoy in games then, well, it is going to spoil the game for you, and at least some reviews should reflect that perspective. Otherwise we might as well have a single ultimate-objective-reviewer, which would be a bit dull! Personally I always found it a little uncomfortable in BOTW, but completely alleviated in TOTK because it now makes sense from a narrative perspective — I know that sounds ridiculous, but the fact that smithed weapons were depicted as (quite literally) throwaway caused me mild psychic damage. TOTK (almost) entirely handwaves that away with its story, though, so it no longer bothers me. (instead my main narrative bother is that Link is evidently a complete moron. Initially I thought maybe he was just an arsehole, as there inevitably comes an extended point where he clearly ought to know what is going on but isn't telling anyone, but having been forced to go through multiple 'obviously a trap' moments as him I'm coming to the conclusion that all the fights and/or corruption have left him with all the deductive reasoning ability of the average parsnip) Anyway. Progress report (spoilers for equipment/quest aspects): I presume I'm approaching the endgame. And just in time, as I need to reacquaint myself with a certain evil AI courtesy of the delicious-looking System Shock remake that came out today! * comparing it to running out of ammunition is a bit of a false equivalence, as generally recovering ammo in most games is easy and allows you to keep the same weapons on you for most of the game; hard two-weapon limits as in Halo being the exception. It feels very different to continually having to change up your weapon in its entirety

I never use arrows in the depths except for combat. I always have about 400 lightseeds on me, so I'd rather just burn through them by throwing them than waste expensive arrows. Most satisfying is climbing up a mushroom/tree/statue and lobbing them Olympic shotput distances. Though a close second is creeping to the edge of your vision, pulling back your arm, loosing and bam! Lightseed attached to the wall you couldn't see half a metre from your face.

I would literally die. Full-on cardiac arrest within minutes.

Yay! Get out 😠 (System Shock 2 is wonderful, but I'd argue the original is different enough to stand as worthy in its own, different way — less of a straight horror/action hybrid, more an oppressive adventure. But I imagine you're right that its design feels more dated, being as it is a very early example of its genre)

Seeing that screenshot brought home just how destitute my Link is. Arrows 20 rupees Horse 20 rupees Ingredients 50 rupees Lodging 50 rupees Paying a humongous woman to service me my clothes 2,000 rupees someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my kingdom is dying

Can't get enough of them (in fairness, Assassin's Creed does make this list — specifically 2, at 139. It was a series with real promise when it started ) As for the full list, well, it's mostly a source of shame that I maintain such a thing, and it very much is not rebalanced based on modern standards — e.g. TOTK is evidently a better open-world action adventure than Little Bit Adventure 2, but the latter is higher in my list because when I played it was more to me than TOTK is to me now. But here it is: I'd say everything from 96 onwards is a game I'd consider an all-time classic; the games below that are mostly just "extremely good".

Well, it's only a provisional ranking at the moment (as in, it might well go higher; it won't be dropping), but I've had to pop Breath of the Wild out of my top games of all time list* in favour of Tears of the Kingdom, which is currently sitting at 38; just below Shadow of the Colossus, just above Binary Domain. It really is an excessively good game. And yes, currently my game of the year — sorry, Paranormasight * as I only put in my favourite game per series, to keep the list vaguely reasonable in length

Ah, the Ryo Hazuki school I see. I shall avenge my father! After I've adopted this kitten. And finished these arcade games. And collected every gachapon. And bought a Master System. And completed my tape collection.

It is the thing which makes the setting so glorious. In a way, that's what grated the most when impressively misguided writers have made suggestions of Warhammer games ripping off Warcraft/40K games ripping off Gears of War — never mind the complete ass-backwardness, it's the bit where those settings have taken aesthetic aspects of GW settings and removed every iota of humour from them, making them entirely different. Like people watching Starship Troopers and Robocop and missing the satire, only turned up to 11 because how can you possibly miss the intentional stupidity of Warhammer universes. Anyway, here's Bob, my Infiltrator Princeps. Observe his sneaky lightning blue outfit, which he likes to wear while clanking sneakily towards you, sneakily opening fire with his sneaky explosive uzi and sneakily broadcasting horrific noises at you. Also, his (sneaky) servo-skull says hi.

You're all wrong, of course: the only good Messiah is an Omnissiah. Obviously I'm hoping for an Infiltrator sequel/expansion where I can scream around* levels as a mechanical horror, peppering enemies with volleys of explosive flechettes and bursts of handheld heavy stubber fire. I suppose the smurfs will do until then, though. *literally. The Adeptus Mechanicus' approach to 'stealth' is to broadcast so much horrific screeching on every wavelength that enemies can't see or hear them over the pain

Honestly, if it were actually matched to that era of PC resolutions — 640x480 (or 1024x768 if post-3D accelerator) — with a bit of softening and black bars on the sides to keep the aspect ratio right and give it proper mid-late 90s Trek on TV aesthetic, I would absolutely roll with it.

I'm not sure which shrine that would be (shrine order doesn't really mean anything!), but at a guess:

I've got to say, many of the shrines are an absolute delight, but the real surprise to me has been that some of my favourites are combat-oriented:

Quite right you are; and we evidently had insufficient colons in the title, so that rectifies that problem too.

Ooh, I've not seen that tooltip, will definitely give it a try! (I have accidentally whistled with the intention of bringing up the inventory while sneaking up on enemies before; that doesn't go so well)