Would never have guessed Owlcat's new game would be in The Expanse universe, or that it would be an action RPG, for that matter.

I'm a huge fan of The Expanse so I'm going to check it out regardless, but I don't know how this is gonna go.

Setting aside how unusual it is for overall spend to decrease in this age cohort (I encourage people to read the WSJ report linked in this article), this is the only comment here that hits on the most newsworthy part of this. Video games have been recession-resistant for decades, but now we're seeing it as a leading category for cutbacks. Even though gaming is a low-cost hobby, zoomers have found alternatives, and that surely includes F2P games.

While trends haven't been great for a while now, this is the most alarming data I've seen yet for the traditional gaming market. I feel like I'm gonna blink and there's going to be a generational divide like there is with baseball.

Not my experience at all, but I hang out in niche subreddits only.

I will say that I am noticing a trend where if I sort top posts by year, damn near everything is 10-12 months old. Between that and just a general lack of good info on recent topics, it's clear a lot of the subject matter experts have moved on. To Discord, maybe.

I tried a bunch of these today and yesterday. EDIT: also tacked on impressions of demos for After Inc: Revival, Kaizen: A Factory Story, and Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon.

In the "Shut Up and Take My Money" tier:

• Bits & Bops - Sure, it's a total Rhythm Heaven clone but, hey, why mess with a winning formula? Still, I worry about devs borrowing this heavily from Nintendo titles these days 😬
• Dispatch - I only needed 10 minutes with this to know I'm sold. The animation is gorgeous and it has a hell of a cast. Between this and Expedition 33, how are new studios getting these people!?
• Mina the Hollower - Shovel Knight's the best retro game I've seen and I didn't need to see much of Mina to know that Yacht Club delivered again. It's got a Zelda vibe (the jump especially feels just like it did in Link's Awakening) along with all that other 8-bit-with-present-day-game-design goodness. I also cut this one short so I can enjoy it in full later. Day 1 for me.

Pretty good but a couple hiccups:

• Forestrike - Hey, PlayStation gamepad glyphs! Always appreciated. Outstanding atmosphere in general. The pixel graphics are interesting; the character design reminds me of old Sierra games. I wonder if at some point during dev they considered just not going roguelite? There's real storytelling talent here and I think a linear game with increasing complexity might have been even better (and helped to not undercut the narrative as roguelite progression tends to do).
• inKonbini - Very short demo, but the gameplay seems it'd be good and vibe is cozy. Really strange that the written Japanese is gibberish. It seems too elaborate to be placeholder text, so I wonder what the story there is? It takes me out of the life sim aspect of this a bit.
• Kaizen: A Factory Story - I found a lot to like with this. I tend not to like puzzle games, but when I find one that's interesting, I tend to really like it. The setting is also great. After a very short demo, the only thing I'm not sure on is how long the full game is going to be. I'd like to get this, but the price has to be right.
• MIO: Memories in Orbit - This one was up and down for me across the board: music, gameplay, systems, visuals. The tutorial sections are outstanding work and worth the download for that alone (there's one right away). While I think the metroidvania design here is good, I wasn't sold on the graphics. At times it's difficult to parse out what's a platform and what's background, and there are weird blind spots with camera on top of that. I also can't believe they went with the map system from Hollow Knight, the only real negative of that game.
• Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon - I see this one just went 1.0 after an early access period, and critic reviews have been mixed. Understandable why old Elder Scrolls fans are feeling this is scratching an itch. I think there's a lot to like here, but I might ultimately skip it. The prevailing thought I kept getting through the demo is that this studio's next game is going to be great.

Not for me:

• After Inc: Revival - This ended up playing more like a clicker game than I was expecting. This seems not bad, but this isn't my kind of game.
• BALL X PIT - The gameplay pacing on this is unpleasant, with the roguelite elements stopping the action too much. Kept wanting to get into a flow state and was constantly interrupted.
• Bloodgrounds - All the other demos I played came ready with story and this one feels underbaked in that department. What I played of the demo was almost all gameplay. Didn't see much that sets it apart from the pack.
• Dice Gambit - I don't think this strategy game gets the basics down well enough to add on the dice layer. Feels like one move should be guaranteed regardless of rolls (and lack of move undo is unfortunate also). The art style also isn't for me.

Still amazed how well Wilds sold after that dumpster fire of a demo.

I'd also recommend they open up the co-op more, but common sense multiplayer seems a bridge too far 🙄

They still have plenty of source material. They aren't even halfway through the game yet.

High enough regard to be very profitable, which makes the job cuts even more ridiculous.

Super excited for this, and I wasn't expecting it at all. I loved CP2077 but season 1 of Edgerunners was even better than I was expecting.

I do think the story and the characters pick up more later. If you liked traveling the overworld in the previous games, FF7 will also feel like it's moving along on that front more after Kalm.

That said, not enjoying the combat by now is a problem, I think it's kind of the highlight of the Midgar section. If gameplay's important to you in your JRPGs, it might be time to give this one a pass.

Tactics Ogre was also partly inspired by the genocidal conflict in the Balkans. I wish Matsuno was getting new projects like this.

Roguelite gameplay is a natural fit here but I just can't with this art style. 😔

クロトリ getting the literal "Blackbird" treatment is a good example of how impossible direct localization is. It's why I appreciate--and support--injecting similar vibes elsewhere in scripts that may not have literal connections to the original Japanese. I think Woolsey got there in this particular case with Flea, Slash, and Ozzie. Not so much with the gurus.

I think, though, the answer to "why did we end up with this Woolsey-ism?" is no more complicated than him sitting bleary-eyed with a spreadsheet at 2am because of insanely short deadlines, and getting zero feedback. I've always figured that's how we ended up with phoenix down.

Some of these scores haven't been updated from early access yet, so this number's probably going to go higher. Might be the top-rated game of the year. I'm sure it's well-deserved, too. I played the crap out of the EA version when it first dropped.

What a year for smaller game projects.

Ouch. Even selling it to Fandom would have been better than this.

Stardew Valley's success had more to do with smart marketing than anything. The game has the exact same formula as Story of Seasons and Rune Factory, which are very corporate-run series, just not at AAA scale. The difference was Eric Barone cultivating word-of-mouth marketing via influencers and online communities to reintroduce the genre to the Western market (along with lucking into capitalizing on what was then a more nascent pixel art indie gaming trend).

Undertale's a good example, though (I'll still note this particular example is a huge spoiler). I did the thing and it was a very fresh idea, and one of the best hooks I've seen in a video game. Thing is though, I doubt even 10% took that route to see it. That's something the game has in common with Baldur's Gate 3, which is full of those low-percentage moments. AAA devs don't like investing a lot of resources into things most people aren't going to see.

Jeffrey Combs was also in DOTA: Dragon's Blood, and that series's cast was a fun synthesis of video game voice actor luminaries plus Star Trek alumni (Michael Dorn, John de Lancie, Anson Mount, Andrew Robinson and more).

But yeah, really that whole late 90's/early 2000's gaming era had some genuinely great performances from actors of different media. I still think about David Warner in Baldur's Gate 2 from time to time.

It's coming out on everything. Post on Square Enix's site with multiple details here.

Half-Life 2 always stands out in my mind for this due to it being such a physics playground.

I usually hate water areas in games, though 😂 Especially the Zelda ones.

Fortunately, Silksong's never missed a release window before.

I just think it's ironic that it came to mirror the books in that you can enjoy absolutely top-notch storytelling for a while and then can't enjoy the ending.