#and i've been playing Jedi Survivor and Baldur's Gate

[ben-drabbles]

Last Adventure CCCVII

The lastest installment in a popular holo-game franchise, proudly maintained by humans descended from the colony ship Hero's Journey. While the game has come under fire for its lack of non-human representation, the developers insist upon keeping to 'the original vision of the franchise,' kept alive since - or so they claim - the golden age of Earth itself. "A world where magic and monsters are real, and a band of true heroes can save the day!"

This installment, like every entry since CCXXIV, takes place in full-immersion virtual reality, a common setup for people with the leisure time and credits to enjoy these games. However, the developers of Last Adventure CCCVII have 'opened the game up to the galaxy' by installing proprietary VR pods in gaming arcades, linking characters to biosignatures rather than user devices. They've also hired on a number of experts in cross-system communication, and for the first time in recorded history, have attained near-seamless VR play across interstellar distances. The dream of holo-gamers across the galaxy has finally been realized - a full-immersion massively-multiplayer galaxy-wide gaming experience.

There are, however, a number of questions as to how exactly these developers accomplished this near-impossible feat. While holographic communication between systems has been possible for decades, the full sensory data required for VR play used to just take too long to send, if it could be sent at all. Some theorize that they've installed backdoors into inter-system comms networks, or bargained with data smugglers; some think they've somehow compressed the data that needs to be sent between pods, perhaps through recent advances in psycho-tech. A few particularly conspiratorial folks believe they're using ancient Earth communication tech, and have been holding out on the common people of the galaxy until now. Whatever the case, the technology is here now, and we're certain to be seeing the effects for decades to come.

Though, perhaps the ghost stories about people entering those pods and never coming out are more than a commnet folktale - the developers of Hero's Journey have certainly been hiring on a lot more psychics and psychic scholars as of late, promising 'the next generation of virtual experiences.' Perhaps these pods are that next generation, or are a field test for some kind of new psycho-tech. What are these VR pods truly capable of? Only time will tell for certain - and in the meantime, who doesn't love pretending to be a wizard with your friends across the galaxy?

[setaphil-edits]

i played (and captured) a number of new games this year, some of which have been out for a while and some i went back and replayed. i remember saying in last year's vp summary that photomode was my most serious adult hobby, but i've been taking fewer and fewer shots each month this year. i'm not sure why, but after three years, i think it's best if i take a break for now.

thank you as always for the support. thank you, thank you, thank you! ❤️

games i've captured this year

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Baldur's Gate 3 Cyberpunk 2077 Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales Death Stranding Director's Cut

not included because of the ff bs reasons:

didn't take enough shots of these games, refunded or uninstalled, just plain didn't feel or like it

Hogwarts Legacy Marvel's Spider-Man The Last of Us (PC) Marvel's Avengers

if you'd like create your own, here's the canva template i used by Aesthetic Studio. pls tag me so i can see your awesome shots!

[imperatortez]

What's your favorite game you played this year?

sky my pal my friend my companion sky.

that is a very difficult question, I've played a lot of different games this year! In fact, I've actively been keeping tabs on games i've completed this year, totalling around 20 fully completed games.

I think it's gotta come down to three candidates, Valheim, Jedi Survivor or NEO: The World Ends With You. And the thing is, I love them all for different reasons.

Valheim is such a fun game to play with friends, and is an experience you could easily sink dozens of hours into without even thinking about it. From the biome-based progression and gear system somewhat akin to Terraria. To the harder boss fights and survival based aspects of the game. To it's incredible simplistic, yet very stylish and distinct visual style, it's genuinely a solid 10/10 for me.

STAR WARS: Jedi Survivor was an incredibly fun experience, despite a rocky technical launch. I definitely experienced a good few bugs and poor preformance, but looking aside the state of the game at launch it was a really genuinely phenomenal experience that managed to feel properly Star Wars. Which is a thing not a lot of Star Wars games manage. And I thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of that, not to mention that the twists in the story threw me for a genuine loop.

NEO: The World Ends With You was a game I didn't really expect to play this year. It was gifted to me by @somethingwittyandweird for Christmas last year and I got around to playing it sometime early this year, and the first few days didn't super do it for me in game, but after that I was locked in. It was a really interesting and engaging story, with really well written characters, and overall fun gameplay. As it turns out, I am so normal about this game, so y'know, it's fine. Totally fine. (My game be so fine then boom, it got even better)

A few shoutouts before making my final decision: Master Detective Archives: Rain Code was a phenomenal detective game. Which, typically investigation and mystery games aren't 100% my thing, I often don't feel very good at them and I find the mysteries get a bit too complex for my liking. But this one really hit home for me, fantastic game with fantastic characters, art design, writing and soundtrack. Baldur's Gate 3 is another fantastic game I've played this year. I'm a lover of CRPGs and D&D so it was a pretty safe success for me, and I did thoroughly enjoy it. I've got a lot of different gripes and disagreeances about how some characters were handled and some options and such within the story, and various opinions about other bits and bobs. But all in all, it very much deserved GOTY, even if it wasn't my game of the year. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and Pathfinder: Kingmaker were also exceptional games I played this year. Again, big fan of CRPGs so these were very safe hits for me. But in addition to that, they let me immerse myself and learn so much about Golarion, the primary Pathfinder setting, and I thoroughly enjoyed that. With well written characters, fantastic stories, and very in depth mechanics, these games were a great time for my fantasy adventures.

I think, having ruminated on it properly, my favourite game that I played this year has to go to Valheim. I can return to that game any number of times for any number of playthroughs and have a fantastic time, it's so engrossing and fun and it's a game I cannot recommend enough.

There are a lot of hot hits this year I just haven't played yet. Like Mario Wonder, Tears of the Kingdom, Alan Wake II, etc. etc. I just have not gotten around to them yet, though I plan on doing so sooner rather then later, hopefully!

I hope this satisfies your curiosity! And I for one look forward to seeing what games will end up being played next year!

[serena-darrin]

Well, this sucks. After watching someone else struggle with the PC version of Jedi Survivor (they -still- can't get the game to load due to the issues!), I decided to do some technical digging to see if I could help them.

And in doing so I found out that my computer can't run the game at all.

I'm below minimum specs - my Graphics Card is unsupported for Survivor. Even if I upgrade my RAM, I very likely won't be able to play. I knew I might have a RAM issue (I only have 8 GB rather then the 16 GB that's recommended), but I never even thought to check my Graphics Card, as it's a solid-if-slightly-older card and this has never come up! I thought, worst-case, I'd be upgrading my RAM, not having to buy a whole new computer! Fallen Order lagged sometimes, but it ran decently - and the lag, I'm pretty sure, is a RAM issue. It runs Mass Effect Andromeda quite nicely without complaint (a teeny bit of stuttering if something else decided to run in the background is the only trouble I've ever had). And Baldur's Gate 3, which Isn't Even Out Yet, is also well within my Graphics Card specs. The only game that my computer has actually 'noped' out on is a Modded City Skylines Build, and that's clearly a RAM issue, and it might even be a Mod issue - I haven't had the patience to go through my modlist after the newest update. It runs my Absurdly Modded Skyrim build and my slightly-less-modded Fallout 4 build without issue, and overall, has had very few problems running most games, up until now. Yes, computer technology has advanced, and developers want to take advantage of it. But, I purposely bought a powerhouse of a machine when I bought this a few years ago and it's already out of date - and on components that are much more difficult, if not impossible, to swap out? This feels like planned obsolescence, and I'm very displeased. I'm actually really annoyed that an older-but-still-solid piece of hardware is now below the minimum specs for Survivor - and that I'm going to have to get a new computer to run the game - something that a) I don't nearly have the money for, and b) why do I need to replace a perfectly good machine? Sure, it's always been cranky about Windows Updates, but that's a software issue. (Broken Windows Updates have bricked this machine twice, thank -God- for backups!) Hardware-wise, though, it's still in good shape beyond one stuck key on the keyboard that I haven't really been bothered to fix yet! And, this sucks even more because, if I want to be active here on Tumblr, or in the JFO Fandoms over on Ao3 - well, I've already hit some spoilers, even just by virtue of stuff in the Ao3 tags, and not everyone is tagging their stuff as spoilers here on Tumblr, either. (And because I'm an artist in my Day Job, I can't just log off and walk away, I have 'work' accounts on a bunch of the socials where I'm also seeing Survivor posts, thanks to the joys of the various algorithms, even if I'm not subscribed/following/etc).

Most of my mutuals here are being very good about tags and/or putting things under the 'read more', but it's hard to avoid spoilers if I still want to be active in the JFO side of the Fandom, which, I do - I mean, I've still got a JFO era fanfic that needs more chapters!

Now, I can -try- and run Survivor on an unsupported graphics card and see what happens, but, odds are, it won't work. And if it doesn't, I'm stuck either getting things spoiled for me, or, watching a Lets Play and getting things spoiled for me, because there's absolutely no way I'll be able to afford a new computer any time soon. I guess this at least means I'm avoiding the Drama that has been the PC launch? /sigh/

[youcantrewind]

I've been waiting for the PS5 Baldur's Gate 3, so I can't play it just yet (and even then I have other games I should really finish first, like Jedi Survivor, as well as lots of trip prep/costume work to finish), but all I can think of is how I'd planned to make all my D&D characters with the character creator and how my boy @silverthebard is probably just gonna look like Astarion's twin. 😅😅😅

Sorry Astarion, I did not rip off your aesthetic 6 years ago... the aesthetic is just one of Those Things(TM), ya know? 😂

Unsure if I should actually play a twinsies game with Silver because it'd be funny and he's my fav, or play with Mahriel (my druid) for the first play. Maybe we get there when we see how well each one translates in the character creator.

[remidyal]

Dragon Age: Veilguard quasi-review and thoughts like ten hours in

This game is going to draw a billion comparisons to Baldur's Gate 3 for what amounts to the reason of Dragon Age Origins having been something that was meant to call back to Baldur's Gate, but in truth this series hasn't really been that sort of isometric RPG since Origins and they're just very different games. This doesn't even hurt that much now, as a fan of those games, since unlike when Dragon Age 2 or Inquisition was releasing there's been a major boom in that subgenre, with literally a dozen or more truly GREAT games in the last decade I could point you to - Rogue Trader, BG3, both Pillars games, both Pathfinder games, and on and on. In truth this game is in many ways probably a closer relative to one of the modern God of War games or Jedi Survivor or something than it is to the CRPGs of old. Some spoilers below, but TLDR: It's thoroughly a pretty okay game, but with some of the worst dialogue this side of Destiny 2's original release story.

There's something really extra obnoxious about the right-wing outrage grifter crowd targeting the newest Dragon Age, and that's that it makes it really hard to discuss that it's (so far, at least, and I really don't know that anything in it is likely to change my mind) thoroughly an alright, 7.5 out of 10 kinda game and that the writing - mostly the dialogue writing - is pretty bad. This isn't on the voice acting, which is largely somewhere between good and at least inoffensive - it's specifically the script, which in many places feels like it's gone through seventeen cycles back and forth in various committees and meetings. The grifter crowd is using this to attack that all of the various gender stuff in the game is hamfisted. On the face of it, this isn't even incorrect, because it is hamfisted, because everything in the dialogue in this game is hamfisted, stilted, or both. The game has the subtlety of a brick in a sock about EVERYTHING.

Like, early on there's a very common RPG sort of setup - there's a village where some people with a faction you're dealing with have been sent and have run into trouble, and everyone's very aware the village has come under some kind of attack. Except they're shocked, shocked when they get there and the village isn't experiencing business as usual! So shocked that they repeat comments about the absence of people like ten times in the space of about two minutes, but never quite manage to put two and two together until you barge into the village proper and deal with the blight situation that was obviously there all along (like, literally, you can see it from where they were standing making those comments...). It's the kind of writing that clearly isn't within the universe; it's made to make certain that if you're not paying attention at all you still get the point, and then some. It's not a dealbreaker, it's not the end of the world - but it's also just not great, and a lot of games in recent years have been great on these fronts while this is a distinct step down from Inquistion's dialogue quality which already wasn't stellar.

Or, for another example, the power of teamwork and friendship speech. I'm generally a sucker for these; I've played a lot of Persona games over the years, or even FF14, or honestly most jrpgs at some point. BUT. Dragon Age: Veilguard decides it wants to do one of these with characters who literally met like two scenes prior and have been established as not knowing each other, and makes a pretty big deal of it, and it is not in any way earned. It feels like - though I trust that it wasn't - a scene that was generated by chatGPT, it's so out of place for the timing.

The most irritating part of this is that there IS good writing present in the game - the codex entries I've gotten so far are largely well written and much more natural feeling than any of the dialogue. That's the opposite of how it should be! And, in truth, I suspect that the codex entries simply got passed through less hands than the dialogue script, because everything I'm talking about above screams of too many cooks syndrome.

That said, I'm still okay with the game as I said. Combat is simplistic, but fun enough; the talent tree is if anything overstuffed with choices, and the environments and look of the game so far are gorgeous. I actually think the character creator itself is quite well done, though I've never been one to spend hours crafting the perfect character - I usually just hit random until someone who looks nice enough hits my screen and then maybe tweak a couple details.

The game seems to be a hit, regardless of any of this, and I'm fine with that - I certainly WANT to see more options and inclusivity in games, which means I am somehow placed in a position where I need to want a fucking middling quality EA title to do well enough that the people pushing bullshit have to go away (though they'll of course just move to the next thing they can sell their audience on.) It's a mediocre game, but good news - it's a mediocre that invites everyone to participate.