Lurker > Lightning Strikes

I think INSIDE has a pretty clear story, especially if you watch the secret ending. Also great game!

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I dont see how you can claim GameFAQs has a significant Nintendo bias these days. Look at the list andylt posted, Nintendo have won two of the past five, and both of those are pretty understandable winners. If theres a bias its an RPG bias. Most industry awards are pretty genre-biased anyway.

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Depends what youre after.

The Game Awards is a bad production, but its the closest youll get to industry consensus with the voting system. If you want a critics consensus, Golden Joysticks Critics Choice is a good one. GDC awards is the main developers awards. I think BAFTA is probably the most prestigious one and closest to an academy award, and they actually have expert juries for each award which is good.

For fan votes, GameFAQs is the best one. There is a bit of genre/franchise bias which is how you get silly nonsense like FFXV winning (which it absolutely would not repeat) because people just vote for the franchises if they havent played the games in time. However, they generally have good picks, and having a run-off (or two) prevents silly stuff like Death Stranding being the IGN peoples choice with 17% of the vote. Theyre good!

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For the board in general, pretty positive! It got a small plurality of the votes in the GOTY poll topic, not overwhelming but a good sign.

For me? I liked it a lot. There are pacing issues that are not necessarily linked to the decision to split up the story (which I think was necessary), and it has some texture issues, but otherwise its really great.

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Turkey

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I actually had something very similar happen while playing Fallout 4 near launch on PC. I was walking along and then suddenly hit a loading screen, spawned high up above the main settlement, then fell to my death. Best bug Ive ever seen.

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Yo that Alien Isolation port is good. Looks and runs better on Switch than PS4.

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Nobody for Flight Simulator huh?

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I've lived in two countries and neither has data caps!

Tbf I can sympathise, what they get away with in America is astounding and it seriously hurts the people there.

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I was mostly joking about Stadia but

redrocket posted...

Data caps, people.

Data caps.

This game is not playable on Stadia for a majority of people.

...in America. For the broader audience its fine.

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To think all this would have been avoided if it was a Stadia exclusive!

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I should have put a however however however, such exceptions to cert for big releases shouldnt exist. And indeed they shouldnt, as this is what cert is for!

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This situation is a little more complex than lol CDPR... it should be lol CDPR and Sony!

CDPR were right that ultimately Sony decides on refunds.

Sony were right that this version of the game should have never reached sale.

However, Sony let it pass cert.

However however, that was almost certainly down to Sony receiving assurances that the game would be fixed in time.

So CDPR is mostly at fault but Sony gets a bit of the blame here too - this game should never have passed cert.

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FWIW Opencritic itself removes most of those from the top 12 on the homepage. FFVIIR only just fell off in the last day or two because of Until You Fall, which only has 7 reviews. Legends of Runeterra only has 10 reviews, and Demons Souls is a 1:1 remake (odd that they allowed it but not Xenoblade, which has much more new content).

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Regarding the bullet:

We move forwards from time point A to time point B. The bullet moves forwards from time point B to time point A. At time point B, the bullet is fired and moves forwards towards time towards time point A, which for us looks like it is moving backwards when in reality it is moving forwards in the opposite direction in time.

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I was doing the fight mission where you face two people, got a short distance away from one while fighting another, and he just stood there apparently unable to see us, even though I was directly in front of him. Thats the worst Ive seen so far but it was really obvious.

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andylt posted...

If this were the case Dreams should be here over FF7 (assuming you're using Opencritic)! I call this poll rigged!

Like I said, early access games addressed on a case by case basis! Haha, a loophole!

To be completely honest, I probably wouldnt have allowed Hades if it A) hadnt only launched as a complete game on Switch, and B) wasnt the best reviewed game of the year winning a bunch of awards. Its hard to judge when an early access game should be counted.

But man, imagine if I pushed off FFVIIR for Dreams, I would never hear the end of it. I didnt have FFXV on here in 2016 (a decision I completely stand by) and got so much complaining when that game wasnt even close to the line. At least FFVIIR deserves to be on the list!

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LordoftheMorons posted...

13 Sentinels

I'll say this: 13 Sentinels got much closer to the cutoff than I thought it would (though it would have had to go through Spelunky 2 and Spiritfarer, both worthy entries)! I'm excited to get to that one if only because I heard the story was good.

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As always, poll options are based on reviews (and games having enough reviews) so dont get mad at me, no rereleases (yes, including Demons Souls and Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition), early access on a case by case basis. Cyberpunk fell off the list (even the PC version) and I thought about removing one of the two PC sims for it, but honestly they deserve to be on here and Cyberpunk probably deserves to drop off for its review shenanigans. I left this topic much later than usual precisely for Cyberpunk and everything!

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Genuinely reads like satire, and not the funny kind. Really horrible stuff.

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Id say that poster is the least of the transphobic issues. In-game its just another cyberpunk instance of the commodification of marginalised people, which is a core theme of the genre. Thats fine. It is unsettling that it was used as marketing in real life though because then youre just doing the thing the game is criticising.

But worse than that there were various tweets posting more explicitly transphobic memes. In at least one case the person responsible was fired (and I believe went on to work for a far right site, huh) but it shows a lack of control of the marketing.

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The Devotion thing in particular is mindblowing. It seemed like an easy PR win to distract from the whole Cyberpunk fiasco. Yet not only did they not follow through, they explicitly stated that the reason was messages from gamers, so the Chinese trolls won again. Over a single image put in by a rogue employee that got patched out within hours. Terrible stuff.

Also, mandatory crunch after saying they wouldnt use crunch, a messed up bonus system that encouraged voluntary crunch (thankfully now scrapped), transphobic and generally questionable marketing, and going back on a lot of promises they made with the game. Perhaps a better way of putting it is what didnt CD Projekt do.

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Pretty sure Giant Bomb does this.

https://www.giantbomb.com/games/

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Ice King (Adventure Time)

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Gnosia looks cool.

Happy Game is some real nightmare fuel, geez.

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Spelunky 2
Some cat fighting (?) game called Fisti Fluffs
Very, Very Valet (Timed exclusive)
Neat looking Peruvian brawler called Tunche

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IIRC, Polygons review was pretty meh on TLOU2, so top 20 is pretty good comparatively. Its probably a compromise position between those who liked it and didnt.

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andylt posted...

Is SMRPG first party? I figured the rights would be murky enough with Square to stop them putting it out on this. Fingers crossed for GB+64+GBA soon, but honestly I doubt it.

It is but youre right - they need to run everything by Square which is why it always takes ages to show up.

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Solid top 5, and a great winner.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

I remember a LOT of people being down on Doom Eternal. I also mostly heard negative things about the DLC.

Honestly, Doom Eternal should have been higher, but I get this response. It has a really rough start, then gets a lot better from about the fifth level on. And given how long those first few levels are, I dont blame people at all for being down on it and perhaps dropping it long before. Also the story is a bit lame. However I should add that for some it was great from the start and they fell off in later levels, but I think that has to do with how fine you are with the Marauders.

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DKC3 as expected. So excluding light gun/peripheral games and long expired licences, that just leaves Earthbound and Super Mario RPG as the outstanding first party stuff. A few missing NES games though.

Lets hope we see GB and N64 games next year!

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Reloaded is genuinely pretty good. Nowhere near the first, but a solid action film.

Revolutions is pretty awful really.

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Literally the only bug Ive seen so far is two guns appearing to float in midair for a second during a firefight. Really tame stuff!

Also, I understand it opens up a lot in Act 2, but right now Im mainly enjoying it as a cinematic linear game. The main quests have all been really good.

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Andromeda was a bad game at its core. Also a lot less ambitious, and frankly some genres get more of a pass with regards to bugs. I am fairly sure that as reviewers experienced it though (ie on PC, usually on top-end machines), it was a much better experience than Andromeda. Now, the console version is a different story. Frankly they should have cancelled it.

FWIW on Stadia I have seen zero notable bugs so far.

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Doctor Who

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Its not bad, its just surprising. The Witcher 3 was really long, and the first two were quite a bit longer than this too.

In general this game seems much more open world Deus Ex than The Witcher, and the size is no different.

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We all know 1 is, but 2?

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The main story seems surprisingly short. Only 19 main quests which doesnt seem like a huge amount.

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That might be the best SHINE post of all time.

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Crunch sucks and the marketing was perhaps more than borderline offensive, but I got this game anyway I guess. Post all your thoughts and questions here.

If any of the people causing trouble in the review thread (or anyone else) causes trouble or tries to derail, I will close this topic. Play nice.

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Good old yurp I guess

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You only need a Chromecast for TV play. You can play on Chrome or android devices. You dont need a subscription, just a sign up (though you need a subscription for 4k).

masterplum posted...

My internet is 300MBS and I dont think that is fast enough for stadia

Not to mention my terra byte cap. I couldnt play more than 25 hours in a month for it to eat my entire allotment

Speedwise thats fine, I have no problems at 60. The cap would be an issue though.

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Lets get this topic to 500 so we can make a discussion thread without the bad faith actors!

Game works great on Stadia, honestly a surprise. This is probably the first actual case for Stadia? Most people dont have and/or wont buy a PC with a 20/30 series card which us what you need. Its a wreck on console. There is no upfront cost other than the game, and I got 10 quid off with a Pro trial. So if youre interested in the game and dont want to drop hundreds or thousands on hardware, Stadia is legit the best way. I cant believe I just wrote that!

The only major downside is no raytracing. Geforce now has it apparently, so thats an option too. But either way, it looks like this might be the game that makes streaming.

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I will say this in the games kind-of-defence: it has a note in the character creator telling you that pronouns are tied to voice so at least people wont get caught off guard, and theyre clearly aware of the issue... but it just raised the issue of why its this way in the first place. Did adding a separate pronoun option break the game?

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Lol

I just bought a Stadia game.

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Hades, though FFVIIR has a much broader range. One of those two.

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I might actually get this on Stadia???

Not a sentence I expected but it might genuinely be the best option if you dont have a beefy pc, which I do not.

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Cool

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I have to say I agree with the earlier sentiment posted here.

Just let Mass Effect die.

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Yeah TLOU is going to win most people's choice awards. Critics are actually much more likely to not pick TLOU than the popular vote! Just look at the Golden Joysticks, where TLOU won the popular vote and Hades won the Critics' Choice, that is the theme. Indeed of the handful of fan votes so far, the only one TLOU hasn't won was this one, because of a rally. It won't get them all of course, FFVIIR will win GameFAQs and I think Hades will win the Giant Bomb community vote.

Tbh popular votes are usually monumentally stacked in the favour of a handful of the biggest games for obvious reasons so frankly I'd rather the critics even though there's problems there too.

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Theres nothing especially woke about TLOU2. Hades is much more inclusive too!

The whole woke conspiracy thing comes from the same type of people just trying to make things about them. Ignore it my guy.

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