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One of the worst launch experiences for me dates all the way back to 1998 when I got Fallout 2, I don't remember if it was for christmas, but around christmas time anyway. The launch version was such a huge buggy mess I couldn't even finish the game. Back then it wasn't as easy to patch a game, and I didn't have as much information on where to even look. I did get a patch eventually but I remember being very disappointed thinking "how can a legit game company willingly release a game in this condition??" when I wasn't as cynical (yet).
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May 8, 2023 15:04
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sebmojo posted:yeah i don't wanna be all sweet summer child here but the golden age of vidoe games sucked asssss compared to now. you must be avoiding recent AAA releases then cause off the top of my head, Jedi Survivor, Redfall, and The Last of Us PC are all completely broken and buggy as hell
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May 8, 2023 15:04
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Upsidads posted:I owned Brink yeah bugs sucked rear end then too Lmao yeah a multiplayer game not working with literally half the gpus on the market is doomed from the start.
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May 8, 2023 15:18
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Original XCOM’s infamous difficulty bug comes to mind. No matter what difficulty you picked, it would reset to the lowest setting after the first mission. The devs never picked up on this, so they took the “game is too easy on the harder difficulties” feedback and made the sequel a loving nightmare.
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May 8, 2023 15:21
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I'm eyeballing FF7R; general consensus seems to be it's pretty good? I was a big fan of the original back in the day but I'm not a purist by any means; at some point I spoiled myself on "the thing" about the remake about the weird time ghosts you punch in the face to change the timeline? And I'm pretty fine with a new take on the story instead of a beat by beat retelling, but I'm Concerned they're gonna Kingdom Hearts it up in the sequels and start throwing out nebulous concepts as enemies (Hearless, Whispers, whatever). Is 7R/the DLC good enough on its own that I can just go 'eh' if they gently caress up the sequels? Also, how anime is it? 
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May 8, 2023 15:27
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It's got some pretty goofy stuff but it's definitely less 'anime' than Advent Children. I'm not a big fan of the voice acting or the dialogue but he latter is better written than the original game's.
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May 8, 2023 15:37
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there's no way a game starring cloud strife could ever be anything less than maximum anime. embrace it.
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May 8, 2023 15:39
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Vengarr posted:Original XCOM’s infamous difficulty bug comes to mind. No matter what difficulty you picked, it would reset to the lowest setting after the first mission. Blood would swap certain difficulty levels to their opposite entry on game load and that bug wasn't fixed until like, two years ago.
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May 8, 2023 15:41
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Biggest problem with FF7R’s dialogue is the ten seconds of dead air after each line as every character needs to make their old lady grunt reactions. The performances and writing are generally very strong though.
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May 8, 2023 15:43
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exquisite tea posted:Biggest problem with FF7R’s dialogue is the ten seconds of dead air after each line as every character needs to make their old lady grunt reactions. I see
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May 8, 2023 15:46
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exquisite tea posted:Biggest problem with FF7R’s dialogue is the ten seconds of dead air after each line as every character needs to make their old lady grunt reactions. The performances and writing are generally very strong though. These are called aizuchi
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May 8, 2023 15:48
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I would've preferred a remake of FF7 with updated graphics and everything else - including the plot - exactly the same, but I can understand why they didn't want to. For me they changed too much, though.
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May 8, 2023 15:54
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Haven't seen anyone talk about it here yet so I wanted to say the new Age of Wonders 4 is an incredible role play experience. Your faction creation screen is as detailed as any character creator in an RPG. You can make your factional exactly as you like to fulfill any type of fantasy race that you're envisioning. All your racial, societal, governmental, cultural, etc. bonuses are fully customizable. Do you want a faction of super religious orc zealots that have a holy inquisition? You can do that. Forest molemen who are legendary hunters with superb archery skills? Yup. Cultist halflings that eventually turn into literal vampires? Yes. Saw a review say it's the biggest role playing game of the year right next to Baldur's Gate 3 and they're probably right.
bamhand fucked around with this message at 16:17 on May 8, 2023 |
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May 8, 2023 16:06
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Bumhead posted:It’s crazy how much Steam has let us all take all this stuff for granted. The Steam Deck and SteamOS are by far the best examples of this and it's actually a little mind boggling how well they work. They're not perfect by any means, but the Deck provides a console-like experience for a ridiculously large number of Steam games, including games that were never intended to work on small screens or that have no controller support at all. It's kind of nuts.
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May 8, 2023 16:08
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Paradoxish posted:The Steam Deck and SteamOS are by far the best examples of this and it's actually a little mind boggling how well they work. They're not perfect by any means, but the Deck provides a console-like experience for a ridiculously large number of Steam games, including games that were never intended to work on small screens or that have no controller support at all. It's kind of nuts. Hell, how long ago was it that "runs on linux" was a selling point for a game? Now the entire Deck runs on it.
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May 8, 2023 16:13
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Games are insanely good right now. there are more good games that come out every single day on steam alone than I will ever have time to play. I don’t even have to go out of my way looking for what to play next anymore, I just throw a few things that look cool on the steam wishlist that I heard about from osmosis and try whichever one grabs me the most as soon as I finish the previous game. Sometimes that’s a game with ten billion dollars of hype like Elden Ring and sometimes that’s Northern Journey. anytime I read cynical comments about how bad games supposedly are now, I just assume those people aren’t looking very hard, their tastes are too narrow, or they refuse to play games below the AAA marketing level (even though this has 0 correlation with quality) which means the pc port of jedi survivor being a mess actually matters to them, while I just check the wishlist and see darkest dungeon 2 came out today and I’ll try that out instead.
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May 8, 2023 16:15
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bamhand posted:Haven't seen anyone talk about it here yet so I wanted to say the new Age of Wonders 4 is an credible role play experience. Your faction creation screen is as detailed as any character creator in an RPG. You can make your factionally exactly as you like to fulfill any type of fantasy race that you're envisioning. All your racial, societal, governmental, cultural, etc. bonuses are fully customizable. Do you want a faction of super religious orc zealots that have a holy inquisition? You can do that. Forest molemen who are legendary hunters with superb archery skills? Yup. Cultist halflings that eventually turn into literal vampires? Yes. Saw a review say it's the biggest role playing game of the year right next to Baldur's Gate 3 and they're probably right. Thank you for your service dear goon, I liked Planetfall and will be checking this out soon.
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May 8, 2023 16:16
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How's Darkest Dungeon 2? People talked about it being light on content when it went up on Epic, but that was ages ago.
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May 8, 2023 16:18
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I’d like AoW 4 better if it didn’t run like absolute rear end on my 2022 laptop with a 6700S
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May 8, 2023 16:18
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Owl Inspector posted:Games are insanely good right now. there are more good games that come out every single day on steam alone than I will ever have time to play. I don’t even have to go out of my way looking for what to play next anymore, I just throw a few things that look cool on the steam wishlist that I heard about from osmosis and try whichever one grabs me the most as soon as I finish the previous game. Sometimes that’s a game with ten billion dollars of hype like Elden Ring and sometimes that’s Northern Journey. Imo those people are doom and glooming but at the same time a common thread is that their preferred kind of games do suck more now, which are social games and especially multiplayer shooters. There are a lot of people who only engage with video games as a medium through which to hang out with their friends, and a lot of the games that cater to that are expensive, bug riddled, microtransaction-heavy messes. Even if those people play single player games it's something they want to do in parallel with their friends which means that if you recommend that your social circle pick up a game it had better be ready for prime time. CuddleCryptid fucked around with this message at 16:21 on May 8, 2023 |
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May 8, 2023 16:19
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CuddleCryptid posted:Imo those people are doom and glooming but at the same time a common thread is that their preferred kind of games do suck more now, which are social games and especially multiplayer shooters. There are a lot of people who only engage with video games as a medium through which to hang out with their friends, and a lot of the games that cater to that are expensive, bug riddled, microtransaction-heavy messes. To be honest, I think this is still the same as it ever was, or possibly even a little bit better nowadays. I grew up with LAN parties and any day where you didn't spend hours troubleshooting someone's issues was a good one. BF1942 was like the defining PC multiplayer game of the early 2000s and it was a buggy disaster because lol DICE. I think part of the issue is an aging gaming population with less time (especially here on SA), and co-op games in particular are very hard to manage if you don't have a group of friends who are just always available every night. Throw in technical issues and it feels frustrating as hell, even though it's not really any worse than before.
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May 8, 2023 16:28
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exquisite tea posted:Thank you for your service dear goon, I liked Planetfall and will be checking this out soon. I guess I can talk a little more about how much love they poured into the game. They replaced the mod system from PF with empire wide buffs. So storm arrows give all your ranged units bonus shock damage. Poison blades give all melee poison on their attack. All of these buffs update the character model with a visual effect. You can also research race transformations based on your school of magic. Forge masters can provide their race with iron skin, druids have leaf skin, etc. These also update the look of all of your units. They also stack, so I had elves with runes on their face, glowing eyes, and angelic wings from multiple race transformations that I applied. They absolutely knocked it out of the park with the level of detail. Also the devs said their overall philosophy for the game is that some stuff will be overpowered. As long as it's not game breaking they want players to just have fun and roleplay. You don't need to min/max to play the game, just pick a vision for how you want your faction to be and go for it. Tiny Timbs posted:I’d like AoW 4 better if it didn’t run like absolute rear end on my 2022 laptop with a 6700S That's a bummer. I don't know much about how well it runs other than it works fine on my rig. bamhand fucked around with this message at 17:06 on May 8, 2023 |
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May 8, 2023 17:03
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Looks like if you're interested in Darkest Dungeon 2 and own the first you can save 25% via the complete-a-bundle.
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May 8, 2023 17:03
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It's out: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1940340/Darkest_Dungeon_II/
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May 8, 2023 17:10
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Everyone buy Tape to Tape if you even remotely like sports games. It's real fun.
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May 8, 2023 17:11
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Is it still as long and grindy as the original and if so does it at least ship with the short mode right out the gate?
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May 8, 2023 17:11
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MMF Freeway posted:Is it still as long and grindy as the original and if so does it at least ship with the short mode right out the gate? It’s a roguelite, the format isn’t comparable
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May 8, 2023 17:16
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Owl Inspector posted:It’s a roguelite, the format isn’t comparable Oh I thought by "roguelike runs" they were referring to the dungeon sections in-between town sections, didn't realize its a whole different structure
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May 8, 2023 17:23
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CuddleCryptid posted:Imo those people are doom and glooming but at the same time a common thread is that their preferred kind of games do suck more now, which are social games and especially multiplayer shooters. There are a lot of people who only engage with video games as a medium through which to hang out with their friends, and a lot of the games that cater to that are expensive, bug riddled, microtransaction-heavy messes. Yeah I'm spoiled for choice with cool poo poo but I do wish there were some good arena shooters like Unreal Tournament. Unfortunately it's all short TTK stuff like CoD or ability-foused games like Overwatch. Some genres are kinda dead.
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May 8, 2023 17:29
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The game does have metaprogression so I guess “is the metaprogression arduous to max out/do you need much of it to have a reasonable chance of winning a run” is a comparable question to DD1’s grindiness. And to that I can’t answer personally yet but have seen a streamer say he thinks the metaprogression is too much and that downloading a save file with everything unlocked isn’t a bad idea if it feels bothersome. I’ll see for myself as soon as I’m done with my current game.
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May 8, 2023 17:30
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Grabbed FF7R, thanks for the input.
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May 8, 2023 17:31
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More demos: Harmony: The Fall of Reverie (June 8th) - Don't Nod.... guys!! You've found it, a presentation style and niche that completely fits your whole vibe. And it's really beautiful, with hand drawn animations for many expressions of each character's portrait (some get as silly as an Ace Attorney game) and a mix of painted and 3D-matted backgrounds. Don't Nod games (yes the space between the words is gone now) have always treaded near Visual Novel territory, but this is the first true VN of theirs. And it is nice to have more VNs outside of Japan that aren't zany. I do have some criticisms though. First, the game by design has violated Flowchart's Law by making nodes inaccessible to you once you've made certain choices, meaning you'll have to replay the game from the beginning to see all the different branches, rather than just hop to another choice. The idea here is that you gain favor with certain gods by making choices and then bank the crystals they give you at the end of the chapter to determine a specific outcome. You can see most of the choices in the chapter from the very beginning of that chapter on the flowchart and plan ahead. But the thing is... without context for what some choices are, I don't know what I'm planning ahead for. But also, I don't see why this has to result in nodes being made unavailable. The game frames what you are doing as a form of time manipulation, so why can't you just alter the past? You change the decision you made, and it affects everything further down the flowchart. This is nothing new for VNs so I don't see why Harmony can't. Also, several people are justifiably going to be nervous about how Harmony handles certain themes based on how they've handled Life is Strange 2 and Tell Me Why. Nothing has felt like a red flag so far, but we'll see. Lena Raine composed the music, and Abigail Thorn (PhilosophyTube) plays the MC's best friend Nora. (I bring these up, not in connection with the previous two sentences, but just because I saw them in the credits while looking up the animation studio responsible for the game's cutscenes and thought 'cool')  Kitsune: the Journey of Adashino (2024) - Best way that I can describe this is... if the translation patch to some unknown PS2 game was released and you ran it in an emulator and installed an HD texture pack. It's got pre-rendered/hand painted/illustrated backgrounds and you move around and talk to people like one would in an RPG of the time, although this is not an RPG. I'm not really sure what I'd call it. Lite-horror? There's an oni that chases you and you have to blind it with sparklers to get away, but it's not exactly scary. Mostly you're talking to inhabitants and lighting up shrines with your flame. The demo was ultimately too short for me to know just how linear the game is and I couldn't interact with anyone more than once. Definitely a ways off still. And that's all the LudoNarraCon demos I wanted to play, so it's back to regular demos:  Elementallis (2023) - What if a top-down Zelda game had rooms that were way too large? Well, it'd take forever to get anywhere, and the pacing would feel slower, and that's sort of what's happening here. Nothing to compensate for the larger screens either, no dash or roll or anything. This possibly even could've been mitigated by zooming in more on the player, but ultimately what's going on in this game is nothing you haven't seen more in one of the various Zelda clones on Steam.  Gravity Heroes ($10) - This might be fine, I just don't think it's for me. It's a one-screen wave-based action game where you can change the center of gravity with a flick of the right stick. Honestly it was a bit too disorienting to swing myself around to be all that fun. The biggest problem is the enemies constantly changing their gravity alignment so I always felt like I was chasing them and never able to get into a good position.  Kraino Reanimated (Feb 2024) - Kind of an odd one. Wants to play like Castlevania or Ghosts & Goblins but man the demo had a really bad UI and the level design was pretty flat/Wonder Boy-esque (and I don't mean the metroidvania ones). The screenshot above is actually an improvement on what it looked like in the demo so I guess it was a really early build.  Interwoven (July) - I might see myself picking this one up if it's super cheap. It strips the JRPG down to its most basic components, as dialog scenes and battles are just nodes on a Mario 3-style world map. So it's real basic and bite-sized. The battles involve an augment system where you can charge up your spell/buff/debuff with a different spell (like adding ice element to a slash attack), I could see that being a pretty interesting experimentation system if they allow all sorts of types of augments.  Mira's Tale (Coming soon) - Honestly, after watching footage of it in a Wholesome Direct and seeing that it was a very early build, Mira's Tale controls better than I expected it to. It feels decent to jump and glide around, you have a grappling hook to swing on orbs in the sky, you can collect blue dots to refill your health (I think?). I didn't play through the whole thing but it seemed fine to me. However, it seems to have been abandoned by the developer in favor of other projects, their most recent of which has been reviewed poorly as being unfinished and abandoned. Oh well! The 7th Guest fucked around with this message at 17:36 on May 8, 2023 |
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May 8, 2023 17:33
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Fruits of the sea posted:Yeah I'm spoiled for choice with cool poo poo but I do wish there were some good arena shooters like Unreal Tournament. Unfortunately it's all short TTK stuff like CoD or ability-foused games like Overwatch. Some genres are kinda dead. There are some that have been working towards this, Splitgate is probably the closest in recent memory, but when your game is designed for tournament circuits you just don't get as fun of gameplay. The children yearn for slow moving OHK rockets, games industry.
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May 8, 2023 17:40
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I have the bandwidth for exactly 1 competitive game at a time and that’s been hunt showdown ever since I picked it up in 2020, so I’m unclear what’s been happening in the competitive space for the last few years. are the kids still playing that fort game?
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May 8, 2023 17:45
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Owl Inspector posted:I have the bandwidth for exactly 1 competitive game at a time and that’s been hunt showdown ever since I picked it up in 2020, so I’m unclear what’s been happening in the competitive space for the last few years. are the kids still playing that fort game? Yes but they have accepted that the building system (the one defining feature of the game other than skins) sucks rear end so its just another bog standard battle royale.
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May 8, 2023 17:48
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Fruits of the sea posted:Yeah I'm spoiled for choice with cool poo poo but I do wish there were some good arena shooters like Unreal Tournament. Unfortunately it's all short TTK stuff like CoD or ability-foused games like Overwatch. Some genres are kinda dead. Yeah, I have an effectively infinite backlog of fantastic games for almost every genre now and new amazing titles keep coming out, but the one that's boring a hole through my heart is the lack of a legit arena shooter.
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May 8, 2023 17:53
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Oh my loving god. Of course they decided to jam metaprogression of the worst kind into Darkest Dungeon 2. You finish your first run, probably dying to the first boss, and you have 10-ish of the metaprog currency and the game presents you with a list of numerical power bonuses, shamelessly not even hiding the fact that you're going to have to grind out a THOUSAND of that currency to unlock all of that. I loving hate modern gaming. Jack Trades fucked around with this message at 18:13 on May 8, 2023 |
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May 8, 2023 18:10
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While “I hate modern gaming” is silly my understanding was that Darkest Dungeon 2 seems to particularly misunderstand what people liked about the first game to an almost spiteful degree.
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May 8, 2023 18:36
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Owl Inspector posted:I have the bandwidth for exactly 1 competitive game at a time and that’s been hunt showdown ever since I picked it up in 2020, so I’m unclear what’s been happening in the competitive space for the last few years. are the kids still playing that fort game? Probably. You picked a good game so you might as well stick with it
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May 8, 2023 19:03
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Jack Trades posted:Oh my loving god.  My main issue with the first one that while it had a really neat presentation and solid enough gameplay, it was way too long in the tooth and seemed to delight in wasting your time. It seems the sequel is gonna go with the same style.
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