Still the longest not-live-service game I’ve ever played, although Pathfinder: Kingmaker gave it a run for its money recently.

Had the same thought. Plus, according to some of these reviews, there’s no information age units, so that gives them a possible fourth era to work with in upcoming DLC.

Civ7 does indeed use Denuvo. Concerning for a game like this with far more CPU usage than your typical game.

For me, Civ6 at launch felt like a couple steps forward and a couple steps back. I really appreciated the increased transparency with diplomacy, but the AI was aggressively bad in mid and late-game, something they never ended up getting right.

Just like they wouldn’t the last time…and the time before that…and the time before that…

It’s not a thing at outlets like these. Paid promo from influencers and independent reviews are not the same thing.

I ended up getting sucked into a CRPG big time last month, so the only thing JRPG I finished in January was Final Fantasy VII Remake Intermission. It was okay. I also bounced hard off Live A Live. Way too weird for me, I think.

I’ve got a date with Trails through Daybreak 2 on the 14th.

Kinda oppo here, I did not like most of Remake (not for the reasons most seem to complain about), but I am having a great time with Rebirth so far this month.

Mostly surprised at how well it’s running. Silky smooth, and I have an aging mid-tier PC.

A direct sequel isn’t going to happen for many reasons. More likely to be something in a similar vibe.

FC 24 did well even after they lost the FIFA license. Something else going on here.

Thanks for the direct link with timestamp, I just checked it out. I continue to be interested in this game, though it’s arriving sooner than I thought it would. First half of the year is absolutely stacked with releases for me.

Still thoroughly sucked into Pathfinder: Kingmaker. At least I’ve stopped poking around in side areas now, just focusing on advancing the main story. Also doing companion quests. This might be the longest not-live-service game I’ve ever played? I think I still have at least two more full chapters to go.

Like a lot of PC reviewers now, they’ve separated out their technical coverage; here’s PC Gamer’s tech review. But yes, even a couple sentences on it would have been nice.

In short, expect better performance from Nvidia GPUs, possibly until third parties get XeSS/FSR up and running; don’t expect full support for hardware enthusiasts, and don’t try it on the Deck unless you’re okay with the absolute lowest settings.

Their tech review might be more relevant to some folks here, here’s a link to that.

The only reason I’ve been commenting at all the past couple years, lol.

We still have a ways to go before reaching the inflation-adjusted, $150-per-game peak of mass market games in the 1990’s. A key difference is games back then had way higher marginal cost (it’s near zero now).

The interesting thing is that the market is becoming a lot more like it was back then, full of people that only buy one or two games a year and only play those. Of course now, the model is retaining players with DLC and MTX, whereas in 1995 it was more because people could only afford one or two games a year.

Ughh. The selective enforcement is maddening, both with this and TikTok. So much of the filed complaint especially applies to Roblox, but it’s clear that we’re only interested in protecting our consumers when it really means chipping away at a foreign rival’s burgeoning soft power.

A 10-foot USB cable. Most people use whatever’s packed in with their electronics, and it’s pretty rare to get anything longer than 6 feet. Having the extra length is really nice in many situations.

It’s also one of my go-to inexpensive gifts or part of a care package for someone in the hospital. The extra length there is often the difference between being able to use a device while it’s charging or not.

The full slideshow is a great collection of data, really interesting stuff if you’re interested in gaming biz.

That said, while I’m sure PC enthusiasts (among the larger gaming audiences here at Lemmy and Reddit) will be thrilled to see PC gaming rising while mobile is falling, the actual revenue breakdown is less exciting. PC growth is driven by a larger percentage than ever of microtransactions.

Much of the presentation is centered around “black hole games,” which make up a ton of the market and are extremely difficult to pull users away from. Sad when a lot of the strategy seems to be about cost-cutting and getting better percentages from the storefronts rather than making better games.

Yes, I quite liked FFTA2. I just wish the pace of battle was a tick faster. I’ve also heard there’s a romhack for the first FFTA’s laws that I’ve been meaning to check out.

Oh, I forgot about Valkyria Chronicles! I have a tendency to just randomly pick up games Hitoshi Sakimoto has scored. I didn’t finish it though. I think it’s fairly popular?

Seems I’m way too picky for that. I fell down an MMORPG rabbit hole for several years a while back and have spent the last several years catching up. Already starting to feel like I’ve played most everything from older gens I’m going to really like.

One thing I’ve noticed is I’m wishlisting way more upcoming games than before. There’s the occasional exception, but if I keep a rolling release schedule, I’ll generally still be playing new stuff well after release.