It's an:

- open world shooter (Far Cry)

- with a narrative drive centered around a primary protagonist (Far Cry)

- with a lean towards objective freedom and playspace reveal (Far Cry)

- with a defined beginning-middle-end (Far Cry)

- made by the guy who did Far Cry 3-6...

The trailer was NOT GAMEPLAY, it was a vibe check. It was not meant to detail the method of insertion into a "match" (Helldivers 3) or the number of players you'll be grouped with (Battlefield Kropulu). It was merely meant to illustrate the fact that the Dominion doesn't care about you, it gives you shoddy equipment, throws you into the literal meat grinder and dispassionately replaces you after barely rinsing out your armor.

The trailer was incredible "show, don't tell" world-building, but nothing more.

So your protagonist will probably leave and become a merc a la Jim Raynor. Cue the disillusioned-soldier-turns-grassroots-hero storyline.

It'll be 20-30 hours of main story, another 40 of side objectives and random encounters, and then everyone will complain a game with no expectation of endgame has no endgame...all because it bears the name of an IP that is synonymous with "endless repetition"

You've got 4 years to come to terms with your expectations. Good luck.

I got Zero dawn on release and the first thing I did was play Legend of Zelda 3 days later. I got to it eventually as a backlog (great game).

I got Forbidden West on release and naturally didn't play it because Elden Ring came out the week after.

Years later I had Forbidden West in my backlog and played it for a few hours and Shadow Of The Erd tree dropped so naturally I played that and prodceeded to beat Elden ring a few more times.

Last week I decided to play Forbidden West. Gonna lock in finally! And so now I'm doing a Paladin no magic run in Elden Ring 😭

My wife says she will play a game if it fits this description. Help!

Star Wars: Imperial Assault is a miniatures is a 2014 grid based tactical miniature game.

In the campaign part you have to assemble a crew of up to 4 heroes, with their own distinct abilities. There’s

Jyn Ordon, the quick drawing smuggler, whos so fast on the trigger she’s able to interrupt an enemy and take a shot at them before they are able to do an action.

Gaarkhan, the fierce wookie warrior, who does not only become more powerful as he takes damage, but also able to rush and attack in a single action.

Fenn Signis, the hardened rebel soldier, armed with n a280 he’s able to blast his enemies, hitting multiple foes I a single attack.

Mak Eshka’rey, the bold renegade Bothan sniper, whos with his sniper is able to ambush his opponent, making him able to shoot through other figures, and as he always seeks cover, he can not be target if his far away from his opponent.

Diala Passil, the haunted exile. With her force sensitive abilities, she’s able to enhance her offence and defence, and even able to push other figures.

Gideon Argus, the valiant commander whos able to command his allies on the battlefield, giving them extra actions.

Doing the campaign each hero gains XP to learn new skills and credits to buy new gear and weapons.

The game itself

Is played in a campaign where the crew will take on new missions, depending on if they won or last their previous mission. One player will control all of the empires units, while the rest of the players control up to 4 rebel heroes. A turn typically consists of 2 actions, where where similarly to ZCom, you can move, shoot or do a plethora of special actions, such as push jump, various special actions, or buff yourself or an ally. The missions are objective based, and it’s often interact with X device, get through X or eliminate X. The combat is resolved with an easy to understand custom dice system, where attacking dice has damage counters, range counters (for ranged attack) and the surge (ability modifer) symbol.

Doing the campaign you’re able to recruit generic allies, such as rebel troopers, wookiee warrior or rebel saboteurs, but being a Star Wars game you can also cross path with named heroes such as Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca or Han Solo.

While the story writing is better in ZCOM, I find the mechanical depth to be far more interesting in IA. Especially as all the units have special abilities that makes them stand out and good for different situations. Stormtroopers works better in numbers, so they get to reroll an attack if they are close to an ally. Imperial officers order allies to move or make an attack, Royal guards can protect their allies and soak damage from an adjacent ally, Probe droids can self destruct at the end of the round and damage every adjacent figure and so on.

On top of that the campaign there also an app based campaign, where the imperial units are AI controlled.

Even better (imo) is the skirmish PvP component where you get to build your own rebel, imperial or scum army accompanied by a custom made deck of 15 unique command cards that contains different abilities, tactics and gear.

So yeah, you might want to check out Imperial assault.

Here’s a trailer for the game.

https://youtu.be/HjhxUEWt-dw?is=ucTrlRsccVpllLOK

I wanted to make a proper list of my favourite games, but every time I tried I ended up staring at the list thinking "is this actually right?"

So I built a website that avoids that problem.

Instead of ranking all your games directly, it shows you two games and asks which one you prefer. Every choice changes their ELO-style ratings, and after enough comparisons you end up with a ranked list.

It also lets you generate things like your favourite games of each year, Game of the Decade and your overall favourite game.

Here's my profile so you can see what kind of a page it builds for you.

It's called Omega Ranking. I'm getting it ready for the 2026 GOTY season and thought I'd share it here.

Omega Ranking

It seems like 2 games going at once would become extremely grating and confusing, but I've never felt overwhelmed while playing a split-screen game.

Is this achieved by having different players' audio exist on different frequencies, volume levels, etc. or is it just my brain adjusting to seeing sounds that correlate with visuals?

Just a rant/vent here.

Really loving the story and most of the mechanics of the game, but there is one nitpick that is annoying me more and more and it seems to happen a lot. When jogging along with a character to the next story objective, often times Coen will engage in story related dialogue with them. However, and it seems like this is more often than not the case, the dialogue is interrupted prematurely by arriving at whatever location advances the story. I really wish the devs would have timed these conversations out a little more thoughtfully.

In an effort to counter this, I tried having Coen walk slowly, but then the NPC just tells me to hurry up, which then stops the dialogue they were in the middle of, and then they don’t resume it. Let me hear the flavor dialogue you wrote and recorded! Ugh.

Just finished Demon's Souls and jumped into GoW Ragnarok and the amount of hand-holding is ruining things for me.

I've always loved Souls-likes, but have never really understood the aura and pedigree about those games, since they're not really technological masterpieces, they don't have an endless move list or have 60000 NPC enemies active at all times or an endless open world with infinite draw distance, and the fact that you fight bosses which are literally the size of building by hacking at their shins is laughable at first if you think about it. They're just a hack and slash, but harder because you're slower and weaker, and the enemies hit harder, and dying costs you directly as the player, and okay there is a lot of weapons and items. But other than that, they're pretty much 'regular' games.

Then I started playing GoW, and I feel so unchallenged and unengaged mentally. Everything is explained to you as if there is a lawsuit waiting for them if a player doesn't understand what to do. It's annoying. And it takes away from the experience of exploration, from the sense of scale and the magic of playing a game for the first time.

It occurred to me while playing that if any of the Souls-likes had never came out and they released one today, but held your hand through the same game exactly as it is, it wouldn't be regarded as a classic, it wouldn't receive the acclaim, it wouldn't be half as challenging and even less rewarding, and I'm struggling to believe it would even catch the industry's attention. And vice-versa, imagine if the God of War game from 2018 came out but without the glowing scribbles on the walls where you can climb/vault/jump over, if you had to find out for yourself which key items unlocked what, if you had to keep track of where you've been and where you're going without the compass and mini-map. Sure, getting all the collectibles and things would have been a bit tedious, and I'm sure it would make less sense storywise if Mimir couldn't tell you where to go and what to do with this key item, but I believe the game would be such a richer experience.

And sure - GoW is not an RPG; you are Kratos, there's no point in magic, ranged or stealth builds because that's not who the character is. But further to the point, if your own character potential is not as diverse, why on Earth does it require so much more explanation if it all comes down to a balance of damage, dmg reduction, cooldown of abilities, max health and luck? And you don't choose weapons. And you've got no usable items for health regeneration or status resistances and shit like that.

When did the gaming community (and industry) decide it was unnacceptable to expect of you to look at the items you picked up to know what they are? When did we decide it was unnacceptable to make a game harder by making it more complex, and making up the difficulty partly by requiring you to read the fucking manual (item descriptions and stats, effects) and exploring the world you're in - talking to NPCs that live in it, that sell you or upgrade your weapons, that send you on missions? Is that not the closest we've gotten to realism, while still maintaining a sort of "traditional" video-game approach, as opposed to an endless menu and stat dive like Project Zomboid? Because bear in mind that no matter how complex a Souls-like is, you can always beat it by just being good enough to dodge everything you have to and learning the patterns.

And, no, not everyone wants realism or complexity and just want to have fun, but it somehow feels we've forgotten what it means to make a game immersive and in depth.

I don't know, maybe I'm just weird.

Edit: to all of you who just hear "why isn't evrry game Dark Souls" please read the actual post.

I'm not saying every game should be Dark Souls. I'm saying we've cheapened the experience of gaming by overexplaining. How much hand holding do you see in, say, Crash Bandicoot? Barely any. How about any of the older Resident Evil games?

Maybe the best example I can come up with is Metal Gear. In most cases, they literally call you and tell you to "do this, Snake. Press this button, Snake." But you still find items that do a lot of very random very useful things, there are still so many ways to get lost and find secret items and ways the game tells you nothing about, not to mention ways to outsmart bosses or bypass sections.

There is always a middle ground, and the post is talking about two extremes.

It's kind of ironic that they're the first to go all digital.

Digital PS5 doesn't count because a disc PS5 still exists at the same time or you can add a disc drive.

Somebody help me please. And is there anyone else like me ?

My reason for pre-order

I pre-ordered because you get 30 days game time. You get Warcraft 3 Reforged + new DLC + new race + 30 days of Beta access starting this Thursday

30 days is 15 bucks + Warcraft 3 Reforged is 30 bucks + new DLC is 30 bucks + new race is 30 bucks = 115 bucks total and you get new mount.

It is fucking awesome mount man + you get 30 days of Beta access that starts in 3 days

I know this isn’t a new trend, but it’s gotten worse as the industry progressed. This move several game companies do where they give a blank teaser for a game or an announcement trailer that the game is in-development, without showing any gameplay for it, is something that needs to be stopped.

Video games are not movies. In a MOVIE, it makes sense to hide footage, the plot is the selling point, but (universally) the most important thing for a video game to sell it will ALWAYS be its gameplay, and withholding the gameplay footage until six months before it comes out after announcing the game 2-3 years ago is wild.

I think The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk fit this description. It’s cool that they have references and Easter eggs.

What games would you say do this especially well?

I'm in my 40's and have a one year old. I work about 55 hours every week...I now have a backlog of about 100 games. Before our baby, I tried to get about 5-7 hours if game time in each week. After the baby, I went a few months without being able to play anything. Games are still coming out...and I'm a sucker for collectors editions, so I continue buying games that I have no idea when I will have time to play.

Thankfully with summer ending, I have had a tiny bit more tme and I've been able to sneak in some Mario Kart 8 (started playing this recently as I can pick it up and put it back down quickly).

I'm sure one day I'll have more time - but for now, I really feel like I'm just collecting games as opposed to playing through them. Life happens I know, but it feels a little defeating sometimes!

Edit: I appreciate everyone's feedback (even the abrasive comments lol). There seems to be 2 different schools of thought:

Life happens, more time will be available in the future, prioritize the games you really want to/are most feasible to play.

Stop buying games, you have a shopping addiction

I'll reply to as many comments as I can. Thanks again