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ilitarist posted:Origins sadly has a kind of level gating that can spoil your experience, you have to keep it in mind. Story might look as if the events happen one after another but oh whoops, you have to gain a couple of levels so go into a very specific zone on the map appropriate for your level and providing suitable challenge and rewards. Odyssey is better in that regard as all the low-level content gets upscaled and it never feels like stuff is no longer worth doing. Still it has enemies that will one-shot you just because there are few levels higher, and it's not thanks to better stats but additional buff enemies get for being higher level than you. Valhalla is better about level gating but worse about basically everything else. Fair enough; this is what I *don't* want. I remember Yahtzee talking about it in a ZP years ago. I don't think that specific leveling and so on is really part of the AC experience, and I think that the older style of game is more my cup of tea. Three games in Italy, one in France, one in Britain and one on a pirate ship with a Welshman is a lot of setting and a lot of stabby fun. Thanks for the feedback, everyone.
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Nov 29, 2023 22:19
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Oldstench posted:AC Origins and Odyssey are really good games with great settings. The gameplay is perfect for when you want to just zone out and murder cpu baddies by the truckload. I never really got the backlash that the change in style from older AC to current gets, but then, I never really thought the old style was that remarkable to begin with. I like action games more than following someone around slowly, striking and running. I just picked up Valhalla on the Ubi sale and am pretty sure I'll like that one too. YMMV. ACValiant posted:There's a good bit of that for sure. Odyssey, which is my favorite of the RPG AC formula games, has a good balance of the setting/AC style stabbing/RPG nonsense. Valhalla goes too far into the nonsense for my tastes. Haven't played Mirage yet so can't comment on where lies on the spectrum. That's where I'm at but that's because I never got into the AC games that preceded Origins. Just installed Mirage and am hoping it's like Prince of Persia the Sands of Time or something since it has such a more limited scope.
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Nov 29, 2023 22:44
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Chiming in to say Odyssey is an actual legit really good game, franchise be damned. I was shocked at how much I enjoyed it after not really liking any post-Black Flag games in the series. I haven't played Origins or any of the newer ones but both me and the wife got really into Odyssey, and she doesn't really play games much. It's huge but it's well done.
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Nov 30, 2023 00:21
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The voice actor for Kassandra in Odyssey did an incredible job. It’s a rare voice actor that can take a mediocre game and elevate it like that. Odyssey was a good time. Valhalla had none of the charm and the same paper thin gameplay.
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Nov 30, 2023 00:25
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I was a bit stoked for valhalla as Iike the viking setting but it just sucked the fun out of everything while playing. The combat did a step back from odyssey, there was even less stuff to climb up on, the characters mostly sucked and most importantly the structure was absolute insanity. They kept unlocking parts of england for you to always do the same story parts in, with almost no mainline story progression in between. It was tedious and obviously just game length padding, utterly infuriating. It did have some fun parts tho, the village upgrading kinda owned, but was similarily ruined with the inclusion of constant Microtransaction content. No ubisoft I do now want to buy the special armor of the frost puppy, gently caress you.
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Nov 30, 2023 06:54
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Oldstench posted:I never really got the backlash that the change in style from older AC to current gets, but then, I never really thought the old style was that remarkable to begin with. I like action games more than following someone around slowly, striking and running. I just picked up Valhalla on the Ubi sale and am pretty sure I'll like that one too. YMMV. Personally, I disliked the change to more of an RPG because there's a variety of action RPG games, but if you liked early AC style games you basically had AC, Metal Gear and Hitman. There was practically nothing else. AC isn't really stealth anymore. Metal Gear is now dead. Thief is dead. Splinter Cell is dead. Tenchu has been long dead. System Shock sort of fits the bill, but is dead. Deus Ex also sort of fit, but went more action oriented. Dishonored kind of rides the line between stealth and action, and is also probably dead now. The Last of Us maybe, but I haven't had a console since the PS3/360 so I haven't played 2. The genre is just a ghost town, and has been for a while. So I think it may have been just losing one of the few pillars of stealth gaming that made people mad. On top of that, I just don't think I like the big open world games that much because of the whole 10 miles wide, 1 inch deep thing someone mentioned about Starfield.
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Nov 30, 2023 06:56
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ZombieApostate posted:Metal Gear is now dead. ZombieApostate posted:Splinter Cell is dead. ZombieApostate posted:Tenchu has been long dead. ZombieApostate posted:System Shock sort of fits the bill, but is dead. ZombieApostate posted:Dishonored kind of rides the line between stealth and action, and is also probably dead now. This also doesn't count the various indie takes that are emerging, like Gloomwood, No Sun To Worship, etc.
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Nov 30, 2023 07:50
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It might not quite fit the bill because it's kind of an isometric turn-based stealth game, but Invisible Inc was good. I think a goon may have worked on it also?
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Nov 30, 2023 07:53
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I want to play Sekiro because I love From Software, but haven't yet, and my impression was that it was much more on the action side. Citing rumors and remakes of games I've already played doesn't fill me with a lot of hope, though. I hadn't heard of Gloomwood or No Sun To Worship, so thank you for that. I wish Gloomwood wasn't trying to ape early Thief's aesthetic so hard, though, cause I don't think it's aged well. No Sun To Worship looks like they are trying to ape MGS1's look, and somehow it looks great, but it's supposedly only an hour long. Added both of them to my wishlist. I know there's also Aragami, but it just didn't grab me, so I didn't mention it before. Just griping about how bare the cupboards feel, basically.
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Nov 30, 2023 11:29
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ZombieApostate posted:I hadn't heard of Gloomwood or No Sun To Worship, so thank you for that. I wish Gloomwood wasn't trying to ape early Thief's aesthetic so hard, though, cause I don't think it's aged well. No Sun To Worship looks like they are trying to ape MGS1's look, and somehow it looks great, but it's supposedly only an hour long. Added both of them to my wishlist. Pretty much all genres are cyclical, you've seen retro-style FPSes have their time in the sun and it looks like RTSes are coming back around with Age of Empires getting first-party support and Stormgate looming. I wouldn't be too shocked if stealthy games were next up on the docket.
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Nov 30, 2023 11:36
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ZombieApostate posted:Personally, I disliked the change to more of an RPG because there's a variety of action RPG games, but if you liked early AC style games you basically had AC, Metal Gear and Hitman. There was practically nothing else. AC isn't really stealth anymore. I find this kind of post amusing cause it feels like the opposite is true to me. AC wasn't really a stealth game before Origins. It had highly scripted stealth missions resembling poorly-made stealth sequences in action games that were a staple of the genre for a long time. Stealth was so alien to the formula that games forced you to do stealth by gameover-ing you for being spotted, because you didn't play as an assassin, you played as an angel of death who could murder thousands using simple attack or using any of instakill gadgets from their inventory. Origins and Odyssey were the only games in the franchise where I was incentivised to rely on stealth by the game mechanics. Instead of having dozens of gadgets allowing to effectively skip any stealth challenge you have to vary your approach in Origins/Odyssey. They didn't have gimmicky missions (I think every game in the series has one special mission with so-called "social stealth" where you must use crowds of people instead of bushes) and you can say that the stealth in these games is more like your usual open-world game that allows for stealth. But I'd say that it's because AC, Metal Gear, Hitman and immersive sims have influenced the open world genre and gave it a lot of their DNA. With modern Hitmans being the best the series has ever been and half of open world games trying to be immersive sims I don't see reasons for concern. It's a little bit sad that Deus Ex series and Arcane seem to be sidetracked so you don't see a lot of pure immersive sims nowadays, and a few years back it looked a it more optimistic, but in late 2000's when AC, Metal Gear and Hitman were all you had the genre was in much worse place than it is today. I'm sorry if it sounded like "your taste is wrong!", I agree that newer AC games have a different approach to stealth and it might be something entirely different from what you want. I'm still optimistic about the genre as both the indie and AAA industry is very interested in the genre if you define the genre as a game that StealthGamerBR would make a video about. ilitarist fucked around with this message at 13:30 on Nov 30, 2023 |
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Nov 30, 2023 13:26
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ilitarist posted:I'm sorry if it sounded like "your taste is wrong!", I agree that newer AC games have a different approach to stealth and it might be something entirely different from what you want. I'm still optimistic about the genre as both the indie and AAA industry is very interested in the genre if you define the genre as a game that StealthGamerBR would make a video about. It was kind of threatening to come across that way until you pointed it out, now what am I supposed to get mad about  That might be part of why I am that weirdo that likes AC1 more than the rest of the series. You didn't even have the gadgets to rely on yet. That first appeared in AC2 and I thought the series got progressively more gimmicky as it went along (although I skipped over everything between AC2 and Black Flag) until Origins, which I can see why people like it as a game in a vacuum, but the RPG elements kind of minimized the point of stealth, I guess? Even if you managed to stealth your way to your target, your stealth attack just did a chunk of damage to start the boss fight, so why bother? To me, that just makes it a different genre entirely from where it started. Also, I feel like a game over for being spotted is generally an artifact of a mini-game in a non-stealth game. I wouldn't call Shadow of Rome a stealth game because of the sections where you play as Octavianus, for example. AC1, Hitman, Metal Gear, Tenchu, etc, if you get spotted, your situation gets decidedly worse, and your best option is usually to run and hide until the heat dies down. Origins onward, the stealth is mostly a prelude to getting spotted and/or going full murder hobo. I think that's the main distinction for me, personally, anyway. And a lot of this is just me lamenting that I think having stealth elements in other games just dilutes it too far to be what I'm looking for. That doesn't make them bad games or anything (Ubisoft rehashing the same stale open world formula 15 times in a row makes them bad  ). I just miss having a game once in a while where stealth was the primary focus.
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Nov 30, 2023 15:09
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ZombieApostate posted:Even if you managed to stealth your way to your target, your stealth attack just did a chunk of damage to start the boss fight, so why bother? To me, that just makes it a different genre entirely from where it started. This is true, especially when you consider the way high level enemies are beefed up - if you see a skull you should know that the game just doesn't want you to be there at all. However while this is no OK by any means it still provides great stealth experience in Origins and especially Odyssey. In Odyssey, you can build the character so that you still one-shot everyone from stealth, but even if you are not built for that you can still kill weaker enemies preparing for a confrontation that would be much easier. In previous games you didn't need to do that cause you could just kill everybody, and in Origins/Odyssey you can get swarmed. I think what this game wants to evoke are these story missions where assassination doesn't get through and you have an open fight, and for such "boss" enemies your assassination stats only prepare the prey for the kill. Plus quite often your goal doesn't involve murder at all but rather stealing something. I like the new approach a lot and I worry plenty of people can hear that new games are just RPGs and miss a game they might've enjoyed. You are of course right that stealth is not primary focus there the way it is in Hitman or other games like that. Stealth is much more important in these games than in most AC games because you can't take on enemy stronghold the way you can in most AC games, but it's not a part of the core fantasy these games sell now.
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Nov 30, 2023 16:17
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ZombieApostate posted:I want to play Sekiro because I love From Software, but haven't yet, and my impression was that it was much more on the action side. Sekiro is barely a genre change, and if you love the Souls games you'll love it too. It still has the feel of one, with very familiar level design, encounters, healing system, etc. They removed stamina, the character stats, and equipping melee weapons and armor. They added a parry and poise system for deflecting attacks and getting a deathblow on the enemies. They added a much more sophisticated stealth system. Movement is also improved to appropriate levels of ninja.
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Nov 30, 2023 16:55
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Son of Rodney posted:I was a bit stoked for valhalla as Iike the viking setting but it just sucked the fun out of everything while playing. The characters mostly sucked and most importantly the structure was absolute insanity. They kept unlocking parts of england for you to always do the same story parts in, with almost no mainline story progression in between. It was tedious and obviously just game length padding, utterly infuriating. I never had that experience with a game before like i did with Valhalla; where i go in, enjoy it and then suddenly i just get overwhelmed with boredom, dunno how to explain it. But i litterally just stopped playing one day and uninstalled it without really being able to put my finger on why i felt like that. But you did, so thanks!
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Nov 30, 2023 17:20
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So any free games come out today or nah
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Nov 30, 2023 17:30
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ZombieApostate posted:I want to play Sekiro because I love From Software, but haven't yet, and my impression was that it was much more on the action side. It's much more modular than other Soulsborne games. The levels and enemy placements are designed for stealth. You can't just run into a group and fight and expect to win, you'll get pulvarized. Everyone's approach to games are different, but a lot of my playstyle involved sneaking up on enemies and taking them down one at a time and leave the combat for bigger enemies. Levels have a lot of vertical design and you use a grappling hook a lot to get around or set yourself up for a sneak attack. The combat is heavily focused on parry and poise, so even that feels more methodical than other Souls games. My weak analogy is the Batman Arkham games, where you could do a minimal amount of stealth in a playthrough and just punch your way to the end, or you could play the entire game as a stealth game outside of boss battles. Sekiro is fun and good and has a lot of opportunity for stealth. You should play it.
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Nov 30, 2023 17:39
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Sekiro is divisive and get it cheap because some people like myself love the souls series and loathe Sekiro. Hopefully you like it too. L
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Nov 30, 2023 17:41
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tokin opposition posted:So any free games come out today or nah jitsu squad and mighty fight federation on epic
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Nov 30, 2023 17:44
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GyverMac posted:I never had that experience with a game before like i did with Valhalla; where i go in, enjoy it and then suddenly i just get overwhelmed with boredom, dunno how to explain it. But i litterally just stopped playing one day and uninstalled it without really being able to put my finger on why i felt like that. But you did, so thanks! Yeah, I was super pumped for it, having enjoyed Odyssey a ton, but... It was such a weird feeling, having a lot of fun at first, and then having so much to do that playing the game started to feel like WoW or other MMOs did, where I was playing because I felt obligated to clear everything. No shade on people who like the game, but it does feel good to know I'm not alone in this. Weirdly, this did push me to check out some of the older games, and I really enjoyed AC2 and its sequels, as well as Origin, Syndicate, and Unity immensely, though the newer games are absolutely a different beast from the older ones. Not good or bad, just different, and I can see how folks could dislike one or the other styles of play.
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Nov 30, 2023 18:07
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Franchescanado posted:It's much more modular than other Soulsborne games. The levels and enemy placements are designed for stealth. You can't just run into a group and fight and expect to win, you'll get pulvarized. Everyone's approach to games are different, but a lot of my playstyle involved sneaking up on enemies and taking them down one at a time and leave the combat for bigger enemies. Levels have a lot of vertical design and you use a grappling hook a lot to get around or set yourself up for a sneak attack. The combat is heavily focused on parry and poise, so even that feels more methodical than other Souls games. I loved Sekiro but I have a weird take on it. It's much more akin to a rhythm game more than an "action" game because of the parry system. Once you learn the "rhythm" of an enemies attacks you then parry on those beats and that's how all the fights work out. Jump on the sword lunge, parry, parry, wait, parry, big damage move when their posture meter breaks. I love it but I see why folks are not into it who are normally all about From Soft stuff.
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Nov 30, 2023 18:21
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Yeah there is a lot of like, stealth stuff you can do in Sekiro but I don't know that I'd call it a stealth game per se. The getting-between-levels stuff tends to involve you skulking around to hopefully murder dudes one at a time, since you're at a disadvantage when you're outnumbered, but there's no point where you usually want to actually like, stealth around an entire section or whatever. And the bosses are just outright Fromsoft - I actually prefer them to their other games for the noted rhythm (and more or less rock paper scissors specials) combat, but it's also incredibly hard. If you like the Fromsoft game loop of "oh god I suck" -> "I think I get it?" -> "Ok I definitely get it." -> "I am god" -> massive difficulty spike requiring new tactics -> "oh god I suck" ... etc ...you'll love it. Otherwise, it's probably gonna drive you nuts. I mean it might even drive you nuts then, some bosses are just real bastards.
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Nov 30, 2023 19:19
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ACValiant posted:I loved Sekiro but I have a weird take on it. It's much more akin to a rhythm game more than an "action" game because of the parry system. Once you learn the "rhythm" of an enemies attacks you then parry on those beats and that's how all the fights work out. Jump on the sword lunge, parry, parry, wait, parry, big damage move when their posture meter breaks. I love it but I see why folks are not into it who are normally all about From Soft stuff. Yeah, Sekiro is definitely a rhythm game, once you have "solved" an enemy's rhythm it's just a matter of perfecting the sequence of movements to defeat it. That is why there are people beating the game blind, blind here meaning blindfolded.
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Nov 30, 2023 19:23
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Amazon Prime poo poo for December Dec 7: Deathloop (EGS) Dec 14: Akka Arrh, Aground, SeaOrama: World of Shipping Dec 21: Kombinera (EGS) Dec 28: A Tiny Sticker Tale, Asteroids Recharged (EGS)
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Nov 30, 2023 19:52
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ZombieApostate posted:Personally, I disliked the change to more of an RPG because there's a variety of action RPG games, but if you liked early AC style games you basically had AC, Metal Gear and Hitman. There was practically nothing else. AC isn't really stealth anymore. Metal Gear is now dead. Thief is dead. Splinter Cell is dead. Tenchu has been long dead. System Shock sort of fits the bill, but is dead. Deus Ex also sort of fit, but went more action oriented. Dishonored kind of rides the line between stealth and action, and is also probably dead now. The Last of Us maybe, but I haven't had a console since the PS3/360 so I haven't played 2. I miss Tenchu too, but I would add someone mentioned the SS1 remake this year and the SS2 enhanced edition is coming soon.
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Dec 1, 2023 00:52
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Estel posted:Yeah, Sekiro is definitely a rhythm game, once you have "solved" an enemy's rhythm it's just a matter of perfecting the sequence of movements to defeat it. That is why there are people beating the game blind, blind here meaning blindfolded. I haven't seen these but that sounds awesome.
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Dec 1, 2023 03:29
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To me the companion piece to Sekiro is Metal Gear Rising.
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Dec 1, 2023 11:46
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ACValiant posted:I haven't seen these but that sounds awesome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgKi4yD3wYc This is one and I think someone else did it at the AGDQ charity marathon last year.
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Dec 1, 2023 12:10
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Gigabash and Predecessor are free on Epic Games. Looks like the big holiday season giveaways might begin next week too.
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Dec 7, 2023 21:44
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if you have amazon prime, Deathloop is up now
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Dec 7, 2023 21:58
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They are definitely going to give away all the giant games people want this year.
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Dec 7, 2023 22:42
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GyverMac posted:I never had that experience with a game before like i did with Valhalla; where i go in, enjoy it and then suddenly i just get overwhelmed with boredom, dunno how to explain it. But i litterally just stopped playing one day and uninstalled it without really being able to put my finger on why i felt like that. But you did, so thanks! (Then I played through 'til running into Charles Dickens in the road and went "ugh" and stopped playing again) stringless fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Dec 7, 2023 |
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Dec 7, 2023 23:01
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Cojawfee posted:They are definitely going to give away all the giant games people want this year. I've been surprised a few years but I imagine mostly trash this year. They have to be losing so much money.
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Dec 7, 2023 23:02
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nitsuga posted:Gigabash and Predecessor are free on Epic Games. Looks like the big holiday season giveaways might begin next week too. Are these any good? I don't really play online games, and I don't really get what Predecessor is. I haven't had time to watch anything on YouTube about it, either.
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Dec 7, 2023 23:07
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Suburban Dad posted:I've been surprised a few years but I imagine mostly trash this year. They have to be losing so much money. lego fortnite is popping off so maybe that'll keep the cash flowing for a bit longer 2.2 million concurrent players right now 
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Dec 7, 2023 23:11
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Franchescanado posted:Are these any good? I don't really play online games, and I don't really get what Predecessor is. I haven't had time to watch anything on YouTube about it, either. Gigabash is a 4 player brawler that's competent but not anything unique or amazing. Worth trying a couple rounds of local multiplayer if you have friends over. There's also a singleplayer mode but I didn't touch it.
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Dec 7, 2023 23:34
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FFT posted:It turns out I had a similar experience with Syndicate, because I guess it was free on Epic back in February 2020 and it started me right back up at where I got bored/distracted, near the end of the first mission before getting to London lmao
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Dec 8, 2023 03:40
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There'll probably just be one really big game from a year or two ago at Christmas
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Dec 8, 2023 03:57
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https://nogravitygames.com/switchmas-wonderland/ Free games on switch again
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Dec 8, 2023 04:40
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Suburban Dad posted:I've been surprised a few years but I imagine mostly trash this year. They have to be losing so much money.
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Dec 8, 2023 07:28
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