it will take a bite out of Horizons sales numbers.

Press X to doubt

With the focus on PC and Mobile in China, the big console franchises don’t strike me as super popular over there (based on nothing but feelings).

TBH the layoffs were already yesterday’s news, with basically no one talking about them. I don’t think MS needs any diversion tactics for that, and even then, Silksong wouldn’t be it.

I’ve been playing The First Berserker: Khazan. I’m maybe two-thirds through the game and generally have a good time. It’s basically Nioh with the faster paced combat, loot and mission based level format. For the first two regions, I mainly used the Spear, but recently have switched to the Greatsword. The monster bosses are fine, but some of the human bosses can be extremely infuriating, with how their stamina regenerates so quickly.

It’s mainly just talking to people, but if you want to fight as few times as possible, you probably need to know the game or tons of save-scumming. You’ll also have to be ok with just missing a bunch of stuff, or pick and choose your fights, which again, needs prior knowledge.

I don’t think it’s a good way for a first playthrough.

IIRC there are six fights you always need to do (two of those in the tutorial and another shortly after, although technically you can use glitches to skip these). But if you only wanted to do these fights, you’d basically do an evil playthrough and miss most of the game, especially Act 1 and 3. And if you’re not talking to people, save-reload the correct dialogue choice, you would just sneak around everywhere, trying to avoid enemies, constantly saving and reloading, because you were spotted.

If you add a handful of boss fights, a good run is possible, but still, there’s going to be a lot of sneaking around and save-scumming.

I think you can only be non-lethal, not truly pacifist, if someone cares about this difference. You still need to knock people out and do stuff to them, even if they don’t die by your hand.

I remember playing this on my Voodoo graphics card back in the day.

I always wanted to check it out again, but there are no proper discounts of this game anymore, and the price even increased to 20€ a couple of months back. Who thinks that anybody will buy Descent with DOSBox for 20€ in 2025? Might as well just use my old pirated copy on a burned CD I have somewhere.

I followed this a bit on Reddit, from the original post. It really sucked that there was apparently no reaction from the EGG, until this got picked up by Igor’s Lab (which I didn’t know about).

The OP on Reddit wasn’t even when EGG found out about this. According to a commenter, they were informed in their Discord, replaced the infected file, then did nothing for about two weeks.

It sucks, because I was thinking of getting one of their mice, but now I’m not so sure if I want to support them, if that’s how they handle an issue like this.

Edit: Mentioned in the Igor’s Lab article, that EGG just said in one of their Discord channels, they re-uploaded the file, but nothing about malware.

2XKO will never not sound like a dumb name.

I’m someone who tried a few Fromsoft games, but only really got into Elden Ring and that was the first (and so far only) game of theirs I finished.

If you want more Fromsoft, there’s going to be a lot of overlap with their Souls games, because of how From reuses assets.

Dark Souls 3 will be the most mechanically similar, but depending on what you liked in ER, it might get too similar and just feel the same, or you get frustrated when muscle memory kicks in when you do some Elden Ring move, that doesn’t work in DS3.

Dark Souls 1 might be a nice palate cleanser, as another user already stated.

If you play on console, Demons Souls or Bloodborne are also options, the latter probably being the fan favorite (or you can try to emulate it on PC). I think BB combat is supposed to be more aggressive because you can get back health, when you attack enemies after you’re hit.

Sekiro is focused on parries, and a lot faster, and more difficult.

If you want to try other developers, Lies of P is a recent one, that’s pretty good, more focus on blocking and perfect blocks, along with the BB-esque health-leech after you get hit, so you’re supposed to be more aggressive.

If you’re a Star Wars fan, the Jedi games, Fallen Order and Survivor aren’t bad, but they have some open world bloat, that you can ignore. Also, it’s an EA game.

If you like old school Zelda and puzzles, maybe check out Tunic.

If you like Crabs, try Another Crab’s Treasure, that was already mentioned here.

If you like 2D Metroid and bugs, check out Hollow Knight.

If you like 2D Metroid and little girls (what?) take a look at Ender Lilies.

If you like FPS and have friends, try Remnant for some coop fun.

If you like fast-paced action games and loot, with some souls stuff, Nioh and The First Berserker Khazan have you covered. If you want more of that along with Final Fantasy, there’s Stranger of Paradise.

If you tried Sekiro and liked it, or maybe you thought it was too hard, but it’s good in concept (and like loot) you can check out Wo Long. Also helps if you’re super into the Three Kingdoms stuff.

If you want Chinese mythology, take a look at Black Myth: Wukong.

If you like anime tiddies, there’s Code Vein, a decent game like this, on the easier side.

If you’ve tried a bunch of these games and just look for more, The Surge games are alright, nothing special I think.

If you want to defeat the woke mind virus and are extremely based, but don’t like good games, take a look at the Lords of the Fallen (2023).

“Works fine on my system” and so on.

I played it at launch on PC, and the only thing I remember is terrible performance in certain areas. Don’t think I had any real gameplay bugs, but maybe I just forgot.

I still didn’t like the game, but bugs weren’t really the issue for me.

Call of Duty players, when the matchmaker doesn’t just put them against people who have never held a controller before and they have to shoot at moving targets:

I only played DKC 1 & 2, never played 3, so I just looked at the Wikipedia, and it said DK and Diddy were somehow “made” to fight Dixie and Kiddy. That’s why I just assumed there was some kind of mind control going on.

I thought Country DK was the DK from Donkey Kong Jr. (so maybe Cranky’s son) but who knows, maybe he’s the son of DK Jr. or no relations at all.

Maybe Donkey Kong is just a title, and Country DK took it or won it from Cranky by finding more bananas or something.

In Donkey Kong, he (Donkey Kong) kidnaps Pauline and Mario comes to save her. Then in Donkey Kong Jr. the old Donkey Kong (Cranky Kong in Donkey Kong Country) gets kidnapped my Mario and DKs son (Donkey Kong in Donkey Kong Country) has to save his father. Donkey Kong 3 looks like just some Donkey Kong (who knows which) rampaging and a dude saving his flowers.

In Country the Bananas get stolen, then in Country 2 K. Rool kidnaps DK, and Country 3 has some mind control or something, maybe kidnapping.

OG DK started it, but in Country it was all because of K. Rool.

True, didn’t think about games like this, but that’s the case for every online-only game, even if the changes might not be as drastic as OW1 -> OW2. It’s not like you can roll back a patch in FF14, Siege or Destiny and play on that version, if you don’t like the direction the game is going.

I don’t think a part of SKG is making sure all different patch versions of a game are available and playable, once the devs end support for a game.

BTW I’m not against SKG, I’ve signed the petition, but when people say this would keep companies from selling the game forever, kill yearly installments of some franchise, or would “force” devs to make old version of their favorite game available, that’s not what SKG wants to do.

I mean, SKG is about keeping the game still playable, not buyable forever.

But I want to resell it to the same person for further profit

One of the biggest controversies at the start of all of this was Ubisoft pulling The Crew whilst pushing people to buy The Crew 2.

I know about The Crew, but it’s not like Ubisoft had a Special Edition or something lined up that replaced the original game, and you had to buy it again. There was no reselling, the sequel is a different game.

Nothing in the SKG initiative is against Sequels, Remasters, Remakes, whatever. It’s not even about keeping a game in stores forever. It isn’t against yearly releases of Fifa, Madden, NBA 2k, that get removed after a few years, as long as you can still play your copy of Fifa 26 in twenty years.

No one’s forcing you to buy a remaster… unless they are because they revoke your right to play the original so it’s your only option.

That’s the thing though, does this really happen? Usually games that get completely removed, that you can’t even play anymore are multiplayer games, live service stuff, that are just so dead that nobody is even remotely interested in a remaster, so the game is just gone.

Not really what this is about.

They could even still keep doing that with Remasters, Remakes, Ports on a new Console, Special Editions, whatever.

Finished the Lies of P: Overture DLC. It was a mixed bag for me. A rough beginning, which got better in the second half, and I got back into the rhythm after not playing this game in a year.

Not sure how to feel about the final boss. The setup was alright, the fight itself not bad, but for me, it was just constantly blocking the 10-20 hit combos of the boss, then maybe get one hit in. This boss in particular, but also other fights, felt like they weren’t made for a player like me, who beat the game once and then came back for the DLC.

Performance wise, this week I noticed a lot more frame drops, mainly when you move the camera. I think it’s connected to small particles flying around, since in the epilogue, your base is just full of these tiny sparks, and fps just tanks. It would be unplayable, if you did more than just walk around for a minute or two. Otherwise, the drops weren’t as bad, and they never caused a death or something, but it’s definitely something the devs should look at.

I mean the former leads (or at least one of them) say the game was ready for Early Access, the publisher says it wasn’t. This could be the deciding factor if the studio gets the bonus or not.

Although today the publisher said some previously leaked slides were real, that show how the potential EA release fell way behind schedule over the years and would have been pretty bare-bones and that a delay would have made sense.