Square Enix doesn't own Deck 9. It's a private studio.

Hmm. How to sell something you don't even own? An intriguing paradox.

Yeah, I skimmed read through the article. Sounds like a pretty shitty situation. Not my kind of games, but they do seem to have a fan base of some size, which I can respect. Not every games have to be made for me, and I'm happy someone finds joy in these sorts of games.

For the sake of the developers there and the fans of these games, then, I hope things improve, and I do appreciate articles like this bringing these sorts of things to light.

Where to even start? I use wishlist mainly to keep track and remind myself that these games exist. More then half of the time, they don't turn out as interesting as I thought and I just remove them.

The oldest game on my wishlist is Planetary Annihilation: Titans, which I almost went ahead and bought three times. I'd say it has a decent chance.

Warframe, En Garde! and Returnal while I take a break after finishing Horizon Forbidden West on Wednesday.

I feel... ...conflicted about HFW, which has eery echoes for me considering how I felt about HZD - I've been here before. The main problem is the early game. Both HZD and HFW follow the identical structure: linear Prologue, followed by a semi-open section blocked off by a boss fight, which opens up the game world once defeated. The difference is where HZD's early game is 2-3 hours long and is capped off with a hectic and exciting boss fight against a Corruptor which instantly got me fully on board, HFW's early game is 4-5 hours long and ends with a boss fight... ...against some dude. I mean, sure, he drops a useful traversal item as reward, but at the end of the day, he's still just some dude, and fighting him left me cold, frankly.

So it was left to me to gradually warm to the game over time. On the other hand, I did warm to it - as I knew I would. This is a Horizon game, after all; they already had me at "redhead shoots bow at robot dinosaurs." It started at hour 10, when I finally figured out the identity of the woman in what looked like hospital gown, who I came across via fanart. It started off rough, but in the end, I did like her arc, and feel happy for both Aloy and this woman. More importantly, it got me invested. I look forward to the inevitable shenanigans they'll pull together in the third game. There were other highlights; the POSEIDON quest, Ted Faro's fate, Cauldron Iota, among others. I also appreciated the various improvements to the skills and abilities, gear and loot, and traversal systems, all of which will make it difficult for me to go back to HZD. That said, I've been here before, as I said.

Just like HZD, then, I have to give it two scores: objectively an 8, personally a 9, though this time it's more like 8.5 rounded up. Again, the early game almost made me round it down, but meeting the woman in the "hospital gown" made me begin to reconsider, and Cauldron Iota sealed my decision. It still feels like Guerrilla somehow stole a big list of things I like at a visceral level, smashed all the items together, and somehow made a coherent game out of it - they just did it a little less deftly this time around.

Anyway, I'm taking a week or two break, primarily to catch up on the Dante Unbound update for Warframe, then I'm doing a HZD-HFW back-to-back play-through.

Nope. I see mass protest as a sign of systemic failure; a sign that a political system is incapable of addressing the concerns of its citizens without resorting to such public display of emotive theatre. Governance should be done through rules, process and consensus, not games, emotions and theatrics. Another reason I don't vote and don't believe in "Democracy."

Update: just finished HFW just now. Gonna install Returnal now thanks to this thread. Maybe I'll have some early impressions tonight.

It's sitting in my Steam library, but I haven't played it yet.

I'm nearly finished with Horizon Forbidden West right now, after which I plan on taking a 1-2 weeks break. Catching up on the Dante Unbound update for Warframe will be my priority during this break, but Returnal is on my alternate game playlist, right after En Garde!

They tried to reboot Thief. They fucked it up.

As for Deus Ex, I don't think modern AAA development can do a Deus Ex game with the same scope and cleverness of the original. Maybe if they reduce the graphics and art direction budget, but AAA games can't have that.

Maybe it's time to let go.

Is 17 the age rating or the critic scores? Lol. Sorry, I just have no faith in Bloober Team.

Anyway, reviews then sale bin if decent. I'd rather have Silent Hill 3 on Steam, though; I played that on a friend's PS2 but never completed it. I consider one of my "unfinished businesses."

@R4gn4r0k:

Yeah, great port, not a perfect one. We'll see if they roll out more patches for the few niggling issues.

I plan on taking a break for a week or two after I finish my first play-through, but honestly, I don't feel tired playing HFW at all. Having done a Mass Effect trilogy back-to-back run before, I know how to pace myself for things like this.

The bigger issue instead could be that it might be hard going back to HZD after having played HFW and its improvements.