Aja on 27/8/2025 at 15:53

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I started replaying Hollow Knight, and suddenly I'm 10 hours in. I still think the cutesy character art and voice acting are at odds with kind of story it wants to tell and the atmosphere it's trying to establish, but the gameplay and exploration is as addicting as it ever was.

Renault on 27/8/2025 at 17:54

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I started up Hollow Knight recently too, as a refresher and for some nostalgia before Silksong comes out. I kind of had the opposite reaction, I played for about 30 minutes and felt like "well, I know all of these locations like the back of my hand." One of the game's best attributes, exploration, was kind of dead for me and I got bored quickly. So I will very much be looking forward to the new game and some new areas to check out and navigate.

Malf on 28/8/2025 at 08:13

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With all current furore surrounding the "sequel" at the moment, I completed Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines for the first time in a while yesterday.
And with the most up-to-date unofficial patch from (https://www.moddb.com/mods/vtmb-unofficial-patch) ModDB, it's still a spectacular game that I personally don't think has been matched in the very niche genre it occupies, that weird combination of Imm Sim and RPG.

Sure, it's massively janky still, with poor combat and experience point balance.
And it does get a little too combat heavy towards the end.
And the Warrens are still possibly some of the worst levels in gaming history.

But damn, it still packs a massive punch, even when (or maybe especially when) compared to modern releases.
This is the best RPG makers and writers in the industry operating at their peak under incredibly stressful conditions, and still being able to deliver unrivalled, unforgettable conversations and reactivity with facial animations and voice acting that very few games match even to this day.
Sure, Alpha Protocol beats it for conversational reactivity; but the rest of that game doesn't quite hold together in as successful a way as VTMB.

I dropped in to the game that is probably the most similar after completing it, Cyberpunk 2077. And while it's an incredible game, something is missing. I suspect that it's having to play as a pre-defined personality that is annoying me.
I much prefer a protagonist to be one that I've made, one that has its own story in my head.
And probably most interestingly, even though the voice acting in Cyberpunk is incredible, I think I prefer the protagonist not to be voiced. Again, it helps sell the illusion that the character is mine.

Also, while Night City is an incredible place to explore, I suspect VTMB's more compact, hub-based design helps keep things... tight.
It still feels a bit "open world", but its compactness helps it feel more personal. And I suspect that percentage-wise, far more of VTMB's buildings have interiors than Cyberpunk's.

I think modern developers could still learn a lot from VTMB, and that in fact, a lot of important standards it set have actually been abandoned for inferior modern alternatives.
For example, one of my absolute favourite things about VTMB is the crazy coloured fonts showing different options in conversations. It's such a little thing, but it helps set the scene MUCH better than some crappy, colourless, 4-option, D-Pad conversation "wheel."
And I can't think of a single game since that has taken the same approach!

From what I've seen of the "sequel", it looks like an accomplished action-adventure, with some excellent combat and traversal options, very remeniscent of Arkane's games.
But there's barely any role-playing present at all, and it would seem it's much more interested in telling its own story rather than letting the player make their own.

If Paradox and The Chinese Room do actually cave and add the two DLC clans to the base game, I will still probably end up buying it day-one, as the atmosphere does look pretty good.
But I pine for what could have been if they'd let Hard Suit Labs and Brian Mitsoda complete their vision.

Starker on 28/8/2025 at 11:59

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My first replay was as a Malk (after Tremere) and I was fairly disappointed in subsequent replays how little flavour most of the other clans get. But Nosferatu certainly is right there after Malk in how different the interactions can get.

The only game I knew that did anything similar at the time was Fallout, especially with the stupid character playthrough.

EvaUnit02 on 28/8/2025 at 19:33

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Bro and I finished a co-op playthrough of Gears 1 Reloaded last night. We only did Normal difficulty, since we had already done a Hardcore runthrough of Ultimate Edition (the prior remaster to this one) a few months ago. It was a lot more fun for me personally since I could play with KB+M, rather than being stuck with gamepad on Xbox Series X. (Reloaded has full crossplay.)

Visually it does indeed look better but it's still the exact same game at the end of the day. If you're only interested in campaign and I recommend just a Game Pass rental.

PvP MP? Probably still a GP rental cuz I don't think this will maintain a pub playerbase long term really. It'll probably transistion to unplayable high ping Northern Hemisphere only games after 3 months for Oceania people, if I were to be generous with my guesstimate.