The lack of Stealth in a Vampire game…

I have been trying out the newly released RPG The Blood of Dawnwalker, and the lack of any kind of stealth in this game is an incredibly missed opportunity that would have added an excellent thematic gameplay mechanic. Instead, if it’s scripted not to do so, you will have to fight your way in or out of a situation every time.

While this is clearly a skill issue from my part, I find the combat incredibly awkward. This is mostly due to a spastic camera and the brutal action‑based combat, where you are supposed to block, dodge, and kill multiple opponents on a regular basis. And well, it’s just too hard for an old fella like me, yet I can play Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord without trouble using manual blocks. I’m not sure what is going on here, outside of having a difficult time focusing on what’s happening in a skirmish, visually. Anyhow…

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Shower Thoughts – Was Microsoft’s Approach to Gaming Wrong?

While sitting on my balcony, taking in the sun and sipping on my coffee, I started to think, like you do: Could Microsoft’s approach to gaming have worked? As we now know, all those billions they spent on legendary studios didn’t really pan out in their “kindergarten” experiment. Kindergarten, since giving these studios infinite time and money didn’t produce any cultural milestones, which I assume was the intention—but instead gave us a bunch of mediocre titles just to fill Microsoft’s requirement to remain under the sweet money-tree. Let me explain.

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Mourning the Loss of An Era

I wasn’t too invested at the time, as I essentially skipped the sixth generation of consoles when those were the state of the art in gaming. I did know about them, of course, and I did play on them occasionally, over at friends or perhaps borrowing a console. But when the seventh and eighth generation came around, I was intrigued, and eventually got an Xbox 360 and a PlayStation 4—to once again join the console community with my own machine.

Now, consoles have been part of me since earlier on too, but I feel those generations are more abstract, even if one knew about the eternal battle between Sega and Nintendo. The seventh and partly eighth generation made it feel more like a real thing, as suddenly keeping the games around even when completed had value in itself. The point I want to make: from being a magical backdrop when I was a kid, to something more tangible, purchased with my own money—consoles have always been there, regardless of where I was in life. But all that is coming to an end…

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Star Wars Games Are Best When They Let the Weird Jobs Matter [Guest Article]

Star Wars games have always had one very obvious problem.

The Jedi are standing right there.

They have laser swords. They have magic space instincts. They get dramatic robes, ancient temples, moral crises, and the sort of destiny speeches that make everyone else in the galaxy quietly check their schedule and wonder whether they still have to pay rent.

So naturally, a lot of Star Wars games end up orbiting the Jedi fantasy. And fair enough. When it works, it works. Jedi Knight, Jedi Outcast, Jedi: Fallen Order, and Jedi: Survivor all understand that swinging a lightsaber around while the galaxy collapses is, scientifically speaking, quite fun.

But the strange truth is this: Star Wars games are often at their best when they let someone else have the controls.

Not the chosen one. Not the last hope. Not the robed person in the middle of the poster.

The bounty hunter. The clone commando. The pilot. The smuggler. The soldier. The mercenary. The doomed fool in a cockpit wondering why the Empire brought that many TIE fighters.

That is where Star Wars games get interesting.

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Michal Kicinski on buying GOG

Last week or so, Michal Kicinski, one of the original founders of GOG, bought out GOG from CD Projekt Red—making it a private company under the ownership of one. It was still private under CD Projekt Red, but it operated under a public company, which comes with uncertainty. Especially, when GOG showed not to be a company that exactly earns a lot of money. Shareholders hate that, so, it was just a matter of time before CD Projekt Red decided to cut them loose—to sell it to a horrible company that would have turned GOG into an abomination of a store within a year.

We got lucky here, let’s just say that, yet things are still uncertain—what kind of plans does Michal Kicinski have for the company? Could he be the chosen one, or is he just another rich villain—grabbing something good to corrupt it in making a quick buck? Well, we finally got an unofficial statement on the GOG forum by the man himself:

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Is gaming as we know it coming to an end?

Before I start my speculative rant, I just want to say that I’m no expert in any of this—this is just what I gather from reading news, and taking the temperature on the current console market (with PC hardware included) for the last couple of months. I try not to be all doom and gloom, but man, it’s hard not to! I think gaming, on both PC and consoles, the classical way, is coming to a brutal end, with a lot of suffering included.

It might not happen, with everything turning out just fine, like in the fairy tales of old. But if there is one thing life has taught me: happy endings are rare!

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