Flight Simulator X My Beloathed. For a very long time, most big flight simulators out there were some variation of this source code, and it somehow has chugged along for over a decade. The game is ridiculously unoptimized, has so many limitations baked into the engine, and looks fairly bad by modern standards. However, the third party community for this game has made it so much more than it originally was, and I'm interested to see where the next entry in the series will go. The single player missions are fucking wild but also fun, and I'm sad to see them not be present in the new sim. As I'm writing this I'm the only all tutorial levels speedrunner for this game, so I guess I'm pretty invested in it.

Ich finde es wichtig, dass Spiele wie dieses gemacht werden und ich wünschte, ich könnte sagen, dass es einen wertvollen kulturellen Beitrag leistet, aber leider ist es noch nicht ganz da.
Der Widerstand während des dritten Reiches ist ein starkes Setting, und der graphische Stil passt auch perfekt zur Thematik.
Das Spiel gibt eine gute Übersicht über die Geschehnisse, allerdings ist es noch etwas zu langatmig.
Ich bin mir auch nicht sicher, ob Management der passende Fokus für so ein Spiel ist, da ich persönlich das Gefühl habe, dass das Handhaben von Werten, um ein optimales Ergebnis zu haben, dehumanisierend wirken kann, was man bei diesem Spiel auf jeden Fall nicht möchte.
Ich persönlich konnte leider auf emotionaler Basis einfach keine richtige Verbindung aufbauen, was wirklich schade ist.

far be it from me to pin down something hyper-intricate to one central thing but i truly think that just about everything in disco elysium, or at least all of its sources of power, comes back to the fact that harry du bois is not a character that literally anyone would choose to play as. the western rpg and its roots in tabletop games are so fixated on systems and stats and customization as controlled self expression...it is not a question of if the world will bend around your whims and personality, it is a question of which world-bending tools will be most easily used by you. the most obviously intuitive way to approach an rpg is to project an idealized version of yourself...to be able to carry your ideals, tastes and curiosities into a world that will react to and reward your unstoppable individualism. even in a group setting, this has to be one of the most common sensations being chased.

if there is any character in the world of disco elysium that can give you this power fantasy (and there almost certainly isnt), it is not harry du bois. harry is a horrific bloated shell with a largely unchangeable past that u are forced to exist in, no part of even as something as mundane as his appearance would come from a character creation menu. and despite your uneasy judicial power, you have no ability to sway the horrific and contentious material state of the post-everything world around you. and, of course, you'll endlessly fail a bunch of dice rolls.

it is both crushing and balming. relief from the responsibility of saving the world, overwhelmed by the responsibility of saving yourself...but both tasks that should not be approached alone. you cannot create a better world on your own, but if you are so inclined, you can see and create little glimpses of one everywhere around you. the cruelest and kindest aspect of the game is that it will never give you an out...it will never let you sit with any complacent excuse. you must still interact with the world and others...even, Especially, since you cannot simply bend them. the deconstruction of rpgs starts as comical and disempowering, and slowly brings focus to all the tiny lights and colors around you that you would miss from the birds eye view. the world is a canvas...just not a blank one meant exclusively for you.

no matter how much we think we understand, no matter how powerfully we spec into Whatever, no matter how thoroughly we sketch out this wretched world and its interlocking mechanisms, we can never comprehend everything. there is always something strange and wonderful out there, something that will increase your understanding of what was ever possible. perhaps the world wouldnt be beautiful and wondrous enough to be worth saving if the one person who had the power to could perfectly understand everything. perhaps this should be misery for those who seek understanding...but really it's the opposite. the joyful process of understanding is never over...and everything you learn along the way will be worth it for its own sake. there is never any excuse to stop. so go and be free...you are living a power fantasy an rpg protagonist could only dream of

Man, you can tell this is a legacy series that did one thing good back in the day (hunting monsters) and laser-focused on gradually refining that. The Fantasy Japan setting is nicely rendered but generic and about as shallow a cultural representation as the average Mexican restaurant in America. The narrative and characters are generally either nonexistent or faintly embarrassing. This sounds harsh, but they barely matter - they're set-dressing and setup for the monster hunting, and they have the good manners to move by quickly.

That aside, the monster hunting - it's intensely satisfying. The initial approach makes a good first impression with rewarding mechanics. Zipping around the environment as you scoop up and strike down the local wildlife is a functional amuse-bouche, building up anticipation and crystalizing the final preparations. Popping a web-slinging spider or a pheromone-puffing mink into your pocket might point you towards hijacking an extra monster to rodeo into your target, while grabbing status-inflicting exploding toads may instead tempt you to set up a trap.

The monster fights themselves are certainly worthy of being the series' singular focus. Each monster has a distinct character and a variety of attacks, with constant surprises as you hunt increasingly dangerous targets. A razor-tailed velociraptor, a colossal acrobatic crane, and a b-boy mega-monkey are some of the first targets, and they only get more extravagant. While the game is broadly forgiving if you're staying on curve with upgrading armor & weapons, analyzing a monster's attack patterns and exploiting their weaknesses is still exceptionally satisfying.

In between hunts, upgrading your equipment is often enough encouragement to go back into the fray to test out your new digs. It's not an XCOM-level "one more turn" effect by any means - upgrades tend to be more numerical rather than meaningfully changing the way you interact with fights - but given how strong the outfit & weapon visual design is, test runs are tempting.

After a hundred hunts, many of Rise's charms have already started to wear thin. The environments' unchanging nature means that exploration is decidedly finite, and collecting wildlife at the start of a hunt can turn into more of a chore than a treat. The limited ways monsters engage with their environment (typically milling about aimlessly, occasionally beefing with other monsters in the locale) similarly limits the variety - and impacts the monsters' credibility. (Most hunts start by telling you the target is a danger to civilization, not that you ever see that.) And the Rampage side-mode - a sort of Monster Hunter tower defense - is broadly unworthy of revisiting more than the game insists. But by this point, you've probably cleaved through nearly all of Rise's content. I wish there were more systems to encourage (or force) improvisation, but Rise shines bright enough for the majority of its time that it's hard to rag on it especially hard for an ending that fades away.

Having played through all the Serious Sam titles to one degree or another, Serious Sam 4 was, admittedly, really repetitive. It's a slog to play through and moves slow, with Sam even remarking on how annoying it is that gates keep sealing him into combat arenas every ten minutes or so.

That being said, it isn't bad by any stretch. It's a Serious Sam game with no extra frills aside from side-missions that play the exact same as the main missions, and if you like the games you'll like this one if you haven't gotten franchise fatigue.

But if you make it to the later half of the game, you'll find the quality meat of it hidden deep under the minutiae. Suddenly you're on a harvesting combine, mulching enemies, or biking through the fields of France, blasting heads as you go. And then you'll find a very un-sam boss fight tucked at the title's end that I won't spoil here but was a HUGE breath of fresh air after 10 hours. It's too little too late, introducing modern shooter fixtures in the last twenty minutes of gameplay as gimmicks that won't save an attention span that can't endure the front 7/8ths of the game.

If you enjoy it? Power to you, you're strong of will and your tunnels haven't quite yet carpal-ed. But if you're a fan that was already feeling tired after Serious Sam 3? You won't find the fresh take you hoped for here.