It depends on the game, and how aim assist and movement are done.

If a game rewards slow movement, controller tends to be better. For example, in Splinter Cell, your mouse wheel could adjust the speed you move at, and sometimes you really had to slow down to be not heard or seen. Controller does this easier and friendlier, from the angle of the stick. Granted, most FPS games don't really have mechanics deep enough where your movement speed matters or adds up, but it can. Realistic mil-sims for example add a massive muzzle sway for a while after you stop running. So jog-walk-jog-walk was easier, and controller made it simpler.

Aim assist is anther big one. And will get bigger as you get older. If you're still a kid in your brand new body and everything works, treat. Come back to me when you're on the wrong side of 60, with bad eyesight and arthritis. Suddenly mouse ain't so hot no more.

I'll give you a non-FPS example, but Diablo 4 beta was last weekend. I've been playing Diablo since '96 original. Always with keyboard and mouse, the way god intended. In fact, none of the previous Diablo games even had controller support (on PC) out of the box, only D4 does.

So I started with KB+M, of course. And the thing is, I haven't played a Diablo game since '12. And my eyes are not what they used to be. When I click on an enemy that is too far, my character moves towards them by itself, and that messes up my vision, because the movement is unexpected I momentarily lose track of both my character and the enemy. If the enemy is the boss and does a telegraphed swing I'm meant to see in that moment, I'm gonna miss it. I also frequently flat-out lose track of the mouse cursor when there's a ton of shit happening on the screen, explosions, flashes, mobs running around, I have trouble finding the cursor. So I was kinda having a bad time, playable but not great.

So on a whim I plugged in a controller, and BOOM, gamechanger. The biggest thing was, no more unexpected movement. Now my stick is WASD, and I know precisely where my character will go, and at what speed, from walking to sprinting, based on how hard I lean on the stick. Another big advantage was the rumble of the controller. Whenever I stand in fire, controller rumbles violently, so I know I gotta move. I no longer need to see it, or to see my health bar dropping, to realize I need to move. And finally, there's lock-on targeting now, with a right stick press, and easy target cycling. Meaning if I have a priority target, I can lock it, and that's it, I pretty much don't miss after that (soft of like aim assist in FPS). Took the game from manageable to downright pleasant and very accessible.

In short - it depends on a game and your physical state. I've been keyboard gamer the whole time, and started using mice when they started to become popular and games started to support them, in late '80s and early '90s. Hardly ever used controllers. But lately I got a newfound appreciation for controllers, especially in VR. VR controllers are basically regular controller sawed in half, and it also tracks its position and movement in space. And seeing as VR is very likely the future of gaming (if you played Half Life Alyx, you'd see why), controllers are where it's going to be at. You no longer aim with a mouse OR controller, with a motion controller in VR you aim with your actual hands. You turn by actually turning. Your body is the controller. So the whole KB+Mouse vs Controller is kind of becoming a moot point. Once VR hits mainstream, it'll be motion controllers > everything.

I liked 6 more than 5, but I liked 4 out of all the games in the series so far.

FC5 had an absolutely lousy ending. It was so bad I immediately went and got New Dawn in an attempt to wash out the aftertaste of FC5 ending from my mouth. And New Dawn wasn't any better. Slightly, but not much.

FC6 is just generic, without anything groundbreaking or any sharp corners, and with some fun activities like fishing and hunting, and visually pleasing tropical paradise to run around in. Esposito was criminally misused though, the ending was still kinda crap (though nowhere near as bad as FC5) and the writing was trash as usual, an average 9-year-old with a box of crayons could have done better.

Between FC5 and FC6, I would go for FC6. But in the entire series, I would have stopped at FC4 and pretended the rest just never happened.

Half Life for me. It's not BAD, but it is just a really primitive linear shooter, entirely single player, and barely 10-15 hrs long. So nothing really amazing. But everyone is acting like these games were the second coming of Jesus, because you could stack a few boxes on top of each other or play fetch with a robot dog.

It's an acquired taste. Some absolutely love it, for others it just didn't work at all thematically or mechanically.

Zero.

I also never ever ever bought a battle pass in my life. Like, explicitly battle pass. I on occasion bought a bundle or something like that which included a battle pass, but not as an individual purchase for its own sake.

Personally I think you literally have to be brainwashed or brain damaged to buy a battle pass, especially at the prices most companies are asking. The dollar to content value, compared to a core game, is almost always beyond abysmal.

Star Citizen is an obvious one. It went off the rails about 6 years ago by my count, and I just stopped caring. They keep adding stuff for the sake of adding stuff, not even in service of fun or gameplay, but just to see if they can. I'm so past caring now it's not even funny, but I do hope someone wakes me up when it gets full VR support, like they promised in kickstarter campaign...back in 2012. If this game is out, with VR support, before 2032 I'll be very surprised.

It was quite decent. Nothing massively new, nothing particularly exciting, generic and forgettable writing as usual for Ubisoft in general. Nothing catastrophically bad about it either though.

Depends on the game.

In Metro series, for example, whenever the game (usually via NPC) tells you "Come this way!", the correct play is to turn 180 degrees, go around the corner and usually find a huge supply cache, new weapons, etc. The game was absolutely hilarious in this regard. By the end of Metro Last Light (second game in the series) it basically became automatic, whenever the game leads me left, I always go right.

>Aren't people still dying from COVID?

Yep, but we don't care any more, too inconvenient.

Where I am, 2022 was by far the deadliest year for Covid, more people died than in either 2020 or 2021. We just gave up. This year we stopped reporting numbers altogether, so we can only guess at how many we're losing. But it's definitely still here. It was a meme from Trump era, that there's not going to be any cases if we stop testing, but that is exactly what they did just a couple of years later, completely unironically and with a straight face.

I can't really think of anything, but I also cannot argue with results.

We did get into habit of handling mail much more carefully. I still wear a mask religiously, I don't touch my face without washing my hands, etc.

And you know what? Maybe it's a coincidence, but nobody has been ill with anything since 2019. That surpassed ALL records we ever had by such a huge margin that it's not even funny any more. Over 3 years without any flu or sniffle, in a house full of people (no kids though, those crotch goblins are just walking infection vectors, and schools are Petri dishes of Nurgle).

Disease has to come from someplace. Taking precautions really does work. Which is why you see doctors sanitizing their hands, wearing masks and PPE, etc. They wouldn't do it if it didn't work.

One of my earliest, fondest memories is having one of these eggplants, only I thought it was the "nose" and it was way bigger. I wouldn't let my parents cook it, so eventually it went bad.

Currently playing Metro Exodus, and while *technically* it's not totally open world, it's very open-worldish. In the same vein, Dragon Age, Divinity: Original Sin, etc., also can feel quite open world (large, open areas) without actually being a true open world. Because, technically speaking, even Witcher 3 isn't open world, not really, it just has huge open maps, but they're still separate maps (White Orchard, Velen, Skellige, etc, you can't seamlessly travel between them).

Also I feel some MMOs fit the bill, especially the ones where you can play solo. Elder Scrolls Online is amazing, if you liked Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim. Most of the content is easily soloable, all quests are fully voiced, and while it's technically not open world, the map is HONKING HUGE, individual zones are huge, etc. Many of the quests are pretty weak, but quite a few are really well done. And the content of the expansions for it are usually self-contained to that new zone, with an overreaching story arc, which is nice. And even WoW, when played solo, can be nice if you get sucked into the lore and read all the text (I wish WoW had voice acting like ESO does).

And there's also survival games where story isn't their strong point, but the story is still there. Such as The Forest (sequel coming in February).

Somewhat disagree on remake/remaster. As long as they're TRUE TO THE ORIGINAL, I think they're really good. It gives people who missed the original an opportunity to experience it. And people who experienced it sufficiently long ago to revisit it without hassles, and taking advantage of modern tech. These are also not mutually exclusive with new games, we can have both.

My personal hot button is people taking liberties with the "MMO" tag. Whenever someone says something stupid like "Destiny is an MMO", "The Division is an MMO", "Diablo 3 is an MMO", etc., it really gets my goat. EVE Online is an MMO. Fallout 76 is not. EVE has battles with 2,000+ players, Fallout 76 server holds a max of 24 players (iirc). If Battlefield 3, with its 128 players per server, is not being called an MMO, then there's no way in holy hell that Anthem is an MMO. Learn the difference.

Another one is that paid games should have no cash shops, at all, of any kind, including cosmetics. DLCs are OK to be sold separately, but they must only contain SIDE content, not continue the main story of a core game (i.e. not "ending sold separately"). If you want to sell that stuff, that's fine, but the game must be free. You can't have your cake and eat it too. This is mostly because when a game is made with cash shop in mind, its mechanics usually suffer. It is intentionally made painful to get you to spend money to skip the pain. So paying for that, on top of paying to skip, is double-dipping that I refuse to support.

Populous 2: https://youtu.be/7m-nKCEUzZ0

And Alley Cat: https://youtu.be/Ku1RYngwPv0

I find Dead Island 2 to be a highly unlikely pick, personally. I would be very surprised if it can match the original Dying Light. Given how long it was stuck in development hell, I don't expect much from it.

My pick would probably be Baldur's Gate 3.

I wanted to say Starfield, but Bethesda lately has been pretty bad. Same with Diablo 4, monetization in a full-priced game already looks revolting, and they got their beak wet in Diablo Immortal, so they know how many rubes will spend literally billions if you lure them well enough, so they ain't stopping. So I don't expect either to be a masterpiece.

Dead Space remake could be pretty amazing if they stick close to the original, and just give it a facelift and improvements, but I don't know if it qualifies, since it's not a new game.

Also, an unlikely pick, but Ubisoft's Avatar game might be neat. Massive, the studio that's doing it, does absolutely amazing game worlds (they did The Division series, which was very visually pleasing and with solid combat). And Avatar is such an amazing setting that if they just do the world well enough, and combat decent enough, it might be enough to overshadow the usual copy-pasted and written by a 6-year-old Ubisoft bullshit. But I probably choose to believe it, because we lost The Division 3 to this bullshit project, and I want for that to not be in vain.

Homeworld 3 might be great. Though there's not enough shown yet to really know. I just love the series, though I admit most of it is just nostalgia.

Immortals and Deliver us Mars might be great, but too soon to call.

Nightingale could be really special with its world modifiers, but could be just another Fallout 76.

Path of Exile 2 could be good, though I never did get into the original far enough.

I don't expect much out of Hogwarts. Sounds good in theory, but combat looks painfully generic and repetitive right now. I'm not a huge Potterhead though, so that might be a factor.

I keep meaning to, but I'm still reluctant to install yet another launcher. I feel if I install the Epic launcher, Epic wins. I don't want Epic to win.

Yes and no.

For me, the likelihood I will buy a game increases up to and including the day of release. Literally the next day this begins to diminish, and the longer I don't buy it (for reasons such as bugs, stability, low content, etc), the less likely it becomes that I will ever buy it, unless there's an excellent sequel and/or it becomes a cult classic despite the jank. I would strongly prefer to buy games at launch because of this, but the state most games release in makes is an unpleasant experience.

I do like it when I don't "waste" or "ruin" the game for myself by playing it in a bad state. BUT at the same time, this too can be quite fun. Because in "fixing" the game, sometimes too much changes. Recent games like Cyberpunk and Total War: Warhammer 3 changed significantly since launch. Warhammer 3 especially was brutal for the first month because AI was hyper-aggressive towards the player, amongst other things. But this resulted in a very challenging, very memorable campaign. It wasn't the same after the fixes. And same with Cyberpunk, it just didn't feel quite right once they implemented the fixer progression system.

So it cuts both ways for me.

Having said that, lately I've been pretty patient. Too many games are releasing in garbage state (but with fully working in-game cash shop, like Darktide a month ago). So I buy a few years down the line, for $20 or less, instead of paying full price. Not ideal for everyone involved - I hate waiting, and game devs don't get paid the full amount. But as long as game devs insist on releasing broken, unfinished titles, I don't see that I have much of a choice. I certainly don't want to financially support that kind of behaviour.

Don't need to pretend. Oculus Quest 2 VR headset gave me the exact same happy tingle, maybe even better, just recently. Game tech keeps evolving, a lot of people are just sleeping on it. Currently 97% of gamers are still stuck on flat screen in a world where full-fledged VR exists.

Dead Space for me, followed closely by F.E.A.R. The latter really creeped me out at times. There was a moment where a light broke and shadows shifted, and I jumped and emptied half a mag into my own shadow on the wall, before I realized that's what it was. No other game came even close to getting me to jump at my own shadow. Dead Space still wins though, by sheer volume of scares, the Jaws-like sense of isolation and loneliness, excellent sound design (and how it propagated through vibrations in vacuum portions of the game).

I also quite liked Alien Isolation, a few of the Resident Evils, and even Alone in the Dark (A New Nightmare was my favourite). But none of these were too scary. I saw people mention Silent Hill series, I really liked Silent Hill 2, but it was just creepy, not scary to me. Almost melancholy, like Alan Wake.

There were moments in Dying Light that were friggin' terrifying (night time missions vs volatiles when you were still undergeared, or the scripted escape sequences where if you slow down or stop you die). Evil Within had its moments also, but felt too reminiscent of other games to really stand out. Good, but somewhat derivative.

I think the next level of horror will come from Virtual Reality. VR adds a sense of presence and scale that you just don't get on flat screen. Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners is a much more visceral experience when it looks and feels like it's your forwearm a zombie is trying to bite. Alien Isolation VR port, though quite weak, makes it much scarier. And port of RE7 and 8 in VR were superb, if a little jarring. Whenever Dead Space comes out for VR, I'm pretty sure I'll literally poop my pants from fear. VR just takes gaming to a whole new level, and will do marvels for horror genre.

FC4 for me. Much more varied locations, you are not forced to help a specific faction and instead can choose who to help (or help nobody at all, if you choose the secret ending). Because there's multiple factions, there was actual replay value, because missions were mutually exclusive (if you did a mission for A, you can't do that mission for B, and A and B had different goals for the same mission (burn vs steal, capture vs kill)). These things were pretty unique to the series, and much more meaningful than having something as shallow as 3rd person cutscenes in FC6.

Far Cry original was almost story driven horror for most of the game, and it was CryTek, so I almost consider it a different game, much closer to Crysis than Far Cry series.

Far Cry 2 was incredibly immersive - no HUD, no minimap showing enemies around you, weapons were breaking all the time, etc. It was realistic, having to visually locate enemies lurking in the bushes, and very immersive. I'd have loved for someone to port it to VR.

Far Cry 3 updated to a different formula, but was largely derivative. Minimap, marked enemies, weapons don't break, etc. It felt dumbed down, primitive. The only nice thing about it was the tattoo-based character specialization system. It was a nice, simple formula, and decent on-the-rails story with one or two choices along the way. Fewer choices than in FC2 if I remember correctly (buddies, the ending fork choice, etc).

Far Cry 4 was an across-the-board improvement on FC3, and as far as I'm concerned that's where the series peaked. Good story, good character development, good villain, multiple factions to side with, immense replay value compared to any other game in the series because of mutually exclusive missions, etc. Just all around special.

Primal is next, and I kinda liked it. Reminded me of Apocalypto movie, with the different tribes. The perk system from FC3 was back, mostly. Weapons breaking was back from FC2. Animal companions were fine, especially the ones you could ride. The need for winter clothing to go to certain areas and moving from fire to fire so you don't freeze reminded me of the storm mode in The Division. It was fine, I enjoyed it quite a bit. But it still felt like too much of a step back from FC4.

Far Cry 5 was a curious setting and story, but the forced kidnappings and combat scaling of enemies kinda ruined it for me, combined with the mute protagonist and lack of character development. The only thing about it I liked was that you could have 2 companions, and they would talk to each other as well as you, which lead to some interesting and sometimes funny interactions. But it had a REALLY unsatisfying ending. The ending was so bad I went and got New Dawn just to wash the aftertaste of FC5 out of my mouth and get some closure, but enemy scaling was even worse, itemization was vile, campaign was short, the grind to upgrade the settlement just to be allowed to finally finish the game was absurd. The worst game in the series, New Dawn was, for me at least.

And Far Cry 6 was different day, same shit. We lost the combat companions in favour of the amigos who can't talk, so that was a massive step back to a pair of talking NPCs in FC5. Some of the disgusting RPG-like enemy scaling made its way back from New Dawn, as did haphazardly assembled "guerrilla" weapons with jury-rigged silencers that fail. Too many similarities from New Dawn, and too many steps back from FC5. Also Giancarlo Esposito was CRIMINALLY underutilized, which was just a shame. Reminded me of how Bethesda hired John Goodman for Rage, used him for a grand total of 5 mins, and you never see or hear from him again. Like...what was even the point? Just a blatant bait-and-switch.

The original wasn't Ubisoft though, it was CryTek, so it had an entirely different formula and feel. It wasn't truly open world, it was story-driven, time of day was geographically locked for the sake of the storytelling and ambiance, etc. That's what made it special and unique to the series.

When Ubisoft took over for the second game, the selling point was "there arr no f***ing mutants in this game". And from there it was just usual Ubisoft cookie-cutter shameless cut-and-paste, where every zone had the same gun vendor NPC. You could leave his shop, jump into a car, drive like hell across the map, run into another shop and...there he is! They didn't even bother to put a unique NPC vendor in gun shops, that's how copy-pasty the game was.

Though I gotta give Ubi some points for going no-HUD. There was no HUD, no minimap, no nothing. The game was crazy immersive and could have been ported amazingly well into VR today. You actually had to hold a map and a compass and figure where you are, and you couldn't do this and shoot at the same time.

Far Cry 3 was decent, and actually had a fun skill tree system with tattoos. But I feel Far Cry 4 is where the series peaked. The variety of activities and NPC interactions in the world, the story, the "hidden ending", the missions themselves. The usual hallucination thing that Ubi loves so much was still there (reaching Shangri La), but you could also choose which faction to side with (out of the 3, technically, if you include Min). It was pretty damn unique for the series.

And I wouldn't say FC6 was the worst in the series, that one goes to New Dawn. The health bar nonsense in that one was x1000 compared to FC6, they tuned it down considerably in FC6. And they also borrowed a little too much from other games, as usual, such as anti-air missile batteries from Ghost Recon, which made the game less enjoyable and more grindy than it could have been. And the amigos instead of a pair of companions who could banter back and forth with each other, not just the player, like in FC5, was a major step back in FC6. But they added cutscenes with player character in third person as a tradeoff, if the writing wasn't so atrocious it might have been worth it.

I kinda liked Primal's story, it hit the same vibes as Apocalypto movie, sort of, where you had very distinct tribes evolve in different geographic areas. The cannibals suffering from "brain fire" (a variant of kuru?) was interesting, as was the wetlanders' slaver system. I mean, yeah, it's Ubisoft-tier writing, meaning a mentally challenged 8th grader could have done a better job. But it wasn't horrible. It also had some survival mechanics going (like spears breaking or being lost, which forced material farming more than in other FC titles), it felt pretty unusual and not unenjoyable.

That was the general sentiment for relatives of many people who went into adult entertainment. The initial reaction is shock, but as soon as they hear how much money they make, they calm right down. Stigma or no stigma, but when you can comfortably retire at 25-30, it's not that bad.