This was awesome, the audio restoration was absolutely top notch and despite including both presentations and the audience reactions it all felt completely seamless.

It’s also just incredible watching the footage and thinking about what an insane leap HL2 was in its day. Hell, many current games struggle to produce as expressive facial animations as it did 20 years ago! And that’s not even getting into the interactivity of the engine and level design combining.

Not really for what I was envisioning I think: I want an actual remake where the second half of the game would be rewritten, along with new scripting and voice acting and cutscenes etc etc.

For stuff like upgrading assets and adding ray traced lighting etc the Nvidia RTX Remix stuff is great, though. So you could use it for more of a remaster, like they are doing with Half-Life 2.

At least that’s how I understand it.

Track opinions are a lot like driver opinions where a lot of times they’re “as good as their last race” in the public eye.

There is some of that, to be sure. There is also a fair bit of outright bias towards classic European circuits. Hence the Imola example, as that is often talked of as one of those great tracks but it hasn’t produced a great race to watch in ages. It’s possible how fun and/or challenging a track is to drive factors in for some people, too. Everyone loves Spa but it’s mostly been boring races there in recent years.

Changing external factors like the track surface play tricks too - Interlagos has always been reliable for amazing action, but the new tarmac seemed to ruin the possibility of taking alternate lines which made the sprint much less exciting than I thought it would be (the race was wet so let’s put that aside).

True enough. Just look at Imola, for instance. Though I suppose it goes back to what the definition of a “great track” is.

Since the dream of a true sequel is dead, getting Mitsoda et al involved in a proper remake would be the next dream. Imagine the setting and locations with modern ray traced lighting and having Mitsoda rewrite the weak second half of the game into something better?

The gameplay is janky at best and pretty bad at worst - partly because they really went for including all facets of the tabletop and maybe bit off more than they could chew: they wanted FPS gun shooting, third person melee combat, stealth with takedowns and a magic system. As such all those are fairly clunky and unpolished as a result.

Baldurs Gate is weird combat wise with its Real Time With Pause system and you really kind of have to like that slower tactical aspect to get into those games. Bloodlines is still action combat - though not exactly smooth.

Picking Tremere and relying on blood magic to get through combat might be the best bet if you’re unwilling to engage in the unbelievably clunky melee.

It’s inspirational what they’ve done. I really hope the launch goes well.

Are you working on the STALKER 2 team?

If all this talk of Bloodlines and Bloodlines 2 is inspiring you to go try out the original, please remember to install the unofficial patch. Seriously. You’re more or less incapable of finishing the game otherwise due to multiple potential hard locking bugs. Plus it fixes a ton of other minor stuff.

The game itself is great though and worth your time. It devolves a bit in the second half as you get into the parts that were thrown together by the rushed production, but the writing, OST and atmosphere alone are worth experiencing.

I remember everyone clowning on the circuit the whole year saying it was complete garbage and a symbol of everything wrong with F1 - only for it to produce one of the best races of the season. Pretty funny. Hopefully it wasn’t a fluke and next week’s race will be as good.

Already pre-ordered the Ultimate edition. Goes against my usual principles but I don’t care in this instance. I hope the game is a massive, GotY contending success.

Unity is flawed, but somewhat of an underrated gem. It’s such a shame that it released in the state it did and got the reception it did because that’s pretty much what caused Ubisoft to pivot into the style of the Origins and onwards style games.

Imagine what could have been if they built on what they had in Unity? The free run up/down system had so much potential and - while janky - the Unity parkour can produce some of the most pleasing, slick and stylish sequences. Just look at the stuff people are pulling off!

Also, revolutionary Paris is the best realised city they’ve ever made for an Assassin’s Creed game.

There is also Red Info which is Robert Kurvitz, Alex Rostov, Helen Hindpere and Martin Luiga. They are apparently working on something and will probably make an announcement next year (according to Martin Luiga on his recent Human Can Opener podcast appearance).

All I want is a final proper send-off Splinter Cell before he dies. Sam Fisher’s final job type vibe. I think there is some cool potential there - not that I trust Ubisoft to pull it off, mind.

Back in like middle school or whatever it was around that time we had a portable drive (or was it just on a CD?) with an installed folder of UT99 we used to bring to school. During recess we’d go and copy paste it to the PCs in the computer room and play little LAN tournaments until a teacher would find us and chase us out. Instagib only or course, and I think we also played 120% speed.

Good times indeed.

Same. It depends on the game though, obviously. If I’m playing Deadlock or something similar (fast paced and competitive) I’m not going to go for graphics fidelity. But anything single player? 60 FPS is perfectly fine and ray traced lighting can make a huge visual impact. Both Alan Wake 2 and Cyberpunk looked great with RT and well worth forgoing 100+ FPS.

I’m hoping this patch is the perfect balance of making being grouped up midgame not horrible, while still stamping out double soaking (which I find a boring and annoying optimisation).

Also interested to see the comeback mechanics toned down a touch. The game has felt very yo-yoey to me since the last big patch. You’d often work hard for a midgame lead, misplay one fight and suddenly be behind. Didn’t feel great.

The only real qualm I have is the lack of Ukrainian and Russian accents on the English dub. I don’t really understand the thought process as I felt like it added a lot of character and immersion to both the originals and to the Metro games.

Otherwise I’m optimistic, I think the game looks good and they’ve been saying all the right things. Game journalists who have played it also report things that make me feel very hopeful, both in terms of micro gameplay (atmosphere, tension and isolation without reliance on jump scares) and macro gameplay (decisions mattering, branching stories and factions).

I pre-ordered the ultimate edition regardless to support the studio after the horrors they’ve survived over the war, including losing colleagues to the frontline.

Reminds me of Cassidy’s foreskin musings in Preacher.

Time is a flat circle eh?