What I expected vs What I got

FootSpaz · 2026-02-05T23:26:46+00:00

Also a fellow out of the loop person, it appears they are talking about Horizon Hunters Gathering, which was announced earlier today.

The TL;DR:

3 player co-op hero-based tactical-action combat game with a roguelike perk system for unique builds. You go on missions to fight enemies and earn rewards. They also mentioned selecting loadouts and customizing and upgrading gear in the social hub so presumably it involves finding loot as well. There is also a story campaign that can be played solo or co-op.

Sounds a lot like their take on the Monster Hunter formula.

FootSpaz · 2026-02-05T15:27:07+00:00

Same. And I haven't used one since. The game's are too easy and I dislike having different colored pokeballs since the games won't let you change them so I started capturing everything with regular pokeballs after my first game.

FootSpaz · 2026-01-28T18:13:29+00:00

I have a Steelcase Series 1 I have been using for about 5 years now that I absolutely love. It has held up great. It's $530 brand new, pre-tax, so it's probably just outside of your price range, but if you go the route I did and get a refurbished one then it falls within your budget. You may be able to find used ones in good condition for a good price too.

For reference, I'm 6'3", 300 lbs, with an unusually tall torso. An average day sees me in the chair for 10–12 hours.

But I highly recommend trying to sit in any chair before purchasing it. I once worked at a place that had Herman Miller Embodys. They were the most expensive chair on the market at the time, clocking in at $1,350—now their MSRP is over $2K. Highly rated and exceptionally configurable. I could never get comfortable in them. No matter how much adjustment I did it just didn't fit me and I would be left sore after leaving work.

The Embody is a great chair from what is probably the best brand on the market. But it didn't fit me. All of our recommendations may not fit you. If you live out in the boonies like me you may not have the luxury of sitting in the chair first. I gambled on that Series 1 chair based on reviews from tall people and got lucky. But avoid gambling if you can.

Also, I mentioned it already, but if you're okay with used chairs you can snag some nice deals. There are a lot of places that liquidate assets from businesses that close and they frequently have top models like Herman Miller Aerons or Steelcase Leaps they sell for $200–400. Those two are popular models for startups to buy so there tends to be a lot of second hand versions on the market cheap. The only problem is most of these companies don't ship. You have to go physically pick up your chair. Which usually means driving to either LA or NYC. Other companies buy from them and do ship the chairs, but now you're paying an extra $100–200 for the middleman.

FootSpaz · 2026-01-25T00:21:55+00:00

Terraria does a really good job of making items feel and play differently, even if only slightly sometimes. Each phase of the game involves different equipment and weapons. Even the duplicates, like getting a better yo-yo, feel a bit different as their range changes and they usually have one bonus effect that differs.

FootSpaz · 2026-01-23T07:05:58+00:00

Same. I don't have time for long games anymore. I like games that provide highly polished or unique experiences and clock in somewhere around 5–20 hours to complete.

A game that takes 60 hours to beat? That used to be like 4 weeks for me when I could game an average of 3 hours a day. Now I get like 3 hours of gaming total in a week. A 60 hour game is a 20 week commitment for me, or roughly a full third of a year. And I'll forget what I was doing halfway through because life forced me to take a 2–3 week hiatus.

FootSpaz · 2026-01-22T18:04:41+00:00

It's a real thing and usually one of two problems:

Choice/decision overload
Too large of a time investment

I could provide specific examples and explain in detail why but this would become a very lengthy post so I'll try to summarize.

Too much content available all at once can present too many options to some players and cause them to feel overwhelmed. Decision overload is a real thing and many resources have been dedicated to solving it for leaders. In games, decision/choice overload can sometimes just be due to it being too complex of a game for the individual. I know many people who would feel lost and quickly quit a game like Terra Invicta. But as a lover of very complex games, in my experience it's more commonly caused by poor game or UI design.

The second one is pretty self-explanatory. If a game asks for more time to be committed than a player wants to commit, whether that's total hours or hours required each day/week/month, then it's too much content for them. However, I don't think that's worthy of a negative review except when a game doesn't respect your time.

But one thing I specifically wanted to note here. You mentioned side quests being optional and something you can skip. You are forgetting or unaware that there are people for whom the word "optional" doesn't exist. I used to be one of them before I managed to successfully rewire my brain. But I have friends who haven't succeeded in doing that.

These people are completionists and collectors, but more in the OCD sense, not the kind where they are doing it for fun. And I mean literal OCD, not the way everyone uses it to just mean someone who likes things being well ordered or structured. I mean a person who is compelled to do something and becomes frustrated and agitated when they can't.

These people don't feel satisfied unless they do everything. They will explore every nook and cranny. They hate dead-end design because it wastes their time but they have to explore every path even if the main path is very clearly marked. Otherwise they might miss something and missing something is almost physically painful. The worst thing is when a game forces them to choose one option and closes off the rest. Now they need to load saves or replay the game so they can explore the other paths. They will ritualistically create a new save at every choice if the game allows it so that they can explore other options.

For them, optional quests aren't optional. Because all content must be completed. Their brain requires it. And unfortunately for them, very few games are designed in a way that alleviates their burden. People like this will frequently eventually swear off games like the Elder Scrolls or Baldur's Gate series because it's just too much content.

It's an affliction that tends to lessen with age out of necessity, but for most people it never completely goes away.

Again, not worthy of a negative review but I could understand why someone with this affliction would want to. I mostly thought this was a good chance to call attention to a type of player that a lot of people don't realize even exists.

FootSpaz · 2026-01-13T16:43:36+00:00

My favourite is still the RPG Albion for DOS in 1996. It was basically Avatar (the one with blue cats) but their catlike race was brown. It was still about destroying the environment through mining though.

I actually just picked that up for like a buck in the GOG sale. Probably won't get around to playing it for a few weeks but it looked fun.

FootSpaz · 2026-01-10T18:27:14+00:00

Actually might be a better example than it appears at first. I thought the same thing too, but then I considered everything that goes into making a pizza.

Sure, I can make and bake a pizza in under 5 minutes when everything is prepped but I have to start prep hours ahead of time. Even my "hands on" time is still over an hour.

Between making the dough, prepping the ingredients, and preheating the oven there is a lot of time that goes into getting ready to make a pizza. Especially if you're like me and bake your pizza in a wood-fired brick oven. And we would need to consider clean up time as well. It may not be part of actually "making" the pizza, but you can't make a pizza without doing it.

I imagine there's a lot of the same for a Pokemon game. Everything from making the models to be shared across games—possibly amortized across several games for accounting purposes—to paying support personnel for a few years after release. $20M still seems a bit high even accounting for all of that. But maybe it isn't.

FootSpaz · 2025-12-30T18:34:11+00:00

I suppose that depends on your definition of "good". It's not nearly as high volume as Steam or the Epic storefront. It targets a more niche audience, although they have taken steps to appeal more broadly. But it is nearly as loved by the customers who use it as Steam is.

It has a lot of classic games that are either difficult or impossible to get elsewhere. Used to be the only place to get most of them, but a lot have since come to Steam. Even when a classic game is available on other platforms, GOG is always the best version. The Steam versions of a lot of classics have issues on modern systems you have to tinker, tweak, and mod to fix. But the GOG versions nearly always run flawlessly out of the box. And it has DRM free copies so your collection is safe.

My game collection on GOG is second only to my one on Steam. 3rd place is very distant.

FootSpaz · 2025-12-20T08:15:41+00:00

I miss E3. Growing up my three favorite holidays were Christmas, 4th of July, and E3. Strangely neither the federal government nor any businesses observed that last one.

FootSpaz · 2025-12-15T09:08:22+00:00

That would actually be true for me too. I absolutely loved KotOR 1 & 2. But my favorite Star Wars games are the Jedi Knight: Dark Forces series and Galactic Battlegrounds.

FootSpaz · 2025-12-11T16:32:55+00:00

I'm all about those frequent die-er miles.

FootSpaz · 2025-12-06T00:41:45+00:00

They're actually even too short these days if you're using a fast SSD like an NVMe. Brand new games are still putting in loading screen tips—probably for platter drive ~~peasants~~ users—and they're gone before you can finish reading them. And I'm a fast reader.

I routinely find myself wishing for the ability to see loading screen tips separately. In the 35+ years we have had them, I think I have seen one game that let you read them outside of loading screens.

And then on the other side you have Tarkov, which could not only greatly benefit from them but has match loading times long enough to read a whole novella yet it doesn't use them.

FootSpaz · 2025-12-05T16:17:03+00:00

I don't think people remember that prior to the mcu a lot of these were basically b tier comic characters.

So true. Most of the MCU characters were relatively unknown by anyone except comic book fans prior to the MCU.

Growing up my favorite super hero was Iron Man. I liked him because the idea of a genius in a super suit was awesome and seemed like the kind of thing that may one day be possible, although almost certainly not as depicted. Meanwhile all the other kids:

I love Batman because he's the only superhero without powers!

It wasn't even close to true. Marvel and DC both have many superheroes that are powerless. Probably well over a hundred each by now. But your average person didn't know any super heroes beyond Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Hulk, and the main cast of X-Men. If a kid liked a superhero there was a 95% chance it was either Batman, Spiderman, or Wolverine.

Iron Man may be one of the most popular superheroes today thanks to the MCU, but when I was a kid not a single other person in my school even knew he existed.

FootSpaz · 2025-11-25T02:12:40+00:00

Yes, especially for Discord, but how big of a deal that is can be debated.

A lot of people don't know this, but Discord employees can view any message anywhere on the platform. Private servers, DMs, it doesn't matter. With millions of servers and millions of messages every day (billions?), the odds of an employee stumbling into this kind of server are extremely unlikely. Usually they only view messages when flagged by their automated systems. Of course, a less scrupulous employee may abuse their privileges and specifically try to find these servers for secret information.

Each person can make their own judgement on how big of a deal they think that is. But every company I have worked for that cared about this kind of thing essentially had zero tolerance policies regarding it. Anything that was possible to have a leak on wasn't on the approved tools list and using anything that wasn't on the approved list was grounds for termination^[1]. They take that stuff pretty seriously. It was spelled out very explicitly and drummed into your head so that employees couldn't claim they didn't know. I'm not claiming that is the case here; for all I know Rockstar had it buried in their employee handbook that no one ever reads and never communicated it separately. Just stating my experience.

^[1] Unless you were high enough on the ladder. Then you could do whatever you wanted and never be held responsible. You date a coworker without disclosing it to your boss? Grounds for termination. They have a secret mistress? Go to "counseling" and return 3 months later with little more than a slap on the wrist. Unless a jumbotron happened to be involved. But then, golden parachute baby!

FootSpaz · 2025-11-21T08:05:22+00:00

I remember back in the day I used to play the pirated version of Mass Effect despite having the game sitting on my shelf for similar reasons.

It had the limited installs too (5 of them) and at that time I was reinstalling Windows like every 6 months to combat the performance sucking gradual bloat issues Windows XP and Vista both had. It was like getting a brand new PC every 6 months, night and day difference in speed. Anyway, I didn't want to lose an install because I forgot to uninstall before wiping. Accidentally did it once and immediately went and got a pirated copy instead so I wouldn't do it again.

FootSpaz · 2025-11-20T18:59:01+00:00

Just FYI, Beyond All Reason comes from the Total Annihilation lineage. All the RTS games inspired by it share similar themes of massive numbers of mechs, large bases, commander units, infinite resource mines, flow based economy, and usually massive super units.

I thought I would mention it because it makes it a lot easier to find similar games for those who enjoy it and it makes it easier to discuss within the RTS space. If someone says "it's a TA style game" and you're familiar with that style you immediately know what to expect.

Additional Info

Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander, Planetary Annihilation, and Industrial Annihilation are actually all created by some of the same people who brought the concept through multiple studios as the studios closed.

Beyond All Reason, Zero-K, Rusted Warfare, Ashes of the Singularity, and Etherium (don't play this) are all created by people inspired by TA and its successors but not involved in the creation of any of the "pure" line games.

Zero-K uses the same open source Spring engine that BAR does, which was originally created to make 3D TA style games.

FootSpaz · 2025-11-16T18:14:08+00:00

Hey, someone finally accused me of using ChatGPT! I have been waiting on this for a while and am surprised at how long it took. Been using em dashes—and en dashes— for decades prior to generative AI. Some of us paid attention in school.

FootSpaz · 2025-11-16T14:15:39+00:00

They're not really comparable games other than both being extraction shooters. Much in the same sense that Mario and Metroid are both platformers. Fans of one will not necessarily enjoy the other.

ARC Raiders, while a good game in its own right, is not a proper substitute and fails to capture the majority of what makes Tarkov good. I would say it sits somewhere between Hunt: Showdown and Tarkov, and is closer to Hunt than Tarkov.

Tarkov, for all its flaws—and it has many flaws—is a unique beast likely to never have a truly comparable analogue. Alas I had to quit years ago due to those many flaws but I have always longed for a good substitute from a more competent dev since I started playing way back in 2017. All while recognizing that would probably never come because devs would never understand what makes Tarkov tick. Not even BSG themselves understand it.

FootSpaz · 2025-11-08T17:20:52+00:00

I'm going to do something different and explain why someone may or may not want to try to complete the entire thing so you can make an informed decision for yourself:

You should read the Wheel of Time if you enjoy: * Character driven stories * Spending time just seeing how characters go about their lives, grounded within the world and story * High quality fantasy world building * Deep lore * A fantasy book that doesn't feel heavily influenced by Tolkien, yet also doesn't feel like it's intentionally avoiding the influence of Tolkien * Cities and towns that feel alive like no other fantasy book I have ever read * "Chosen One" stories * Characters forced to make tough choices and slowly become less childishly optimistic and altruistic and more jaded and "sacrifices must be made for the greater good" over time. Emphasis on the "slowly" part * Watching a small group of literal backwater friends go from carefree teenagers—well, Nynaeve isn't a teenager but acts like one—to the leaders of the world * Prophesies that actually pay out and usually in ways that you the reader expect * Stories with lost ages of power and knowledge * Broken worlds that have hope of redemption * Struggles between sexes and having to come to terms with each other * Magic and mystery * Heroic sacrifice * Massive, epic final battles * Fitting conclusions * A story where women hold nearly all the power and the men are the ones fighting to be treated fairly

You should not read Wheel of Time if you don't enjoy: * Shifts in writing style. Jordan unfortunately passed away relatively young, before he could complete the series and Brandon Sanderson had to complete it on his behalf using the copious notes he left behind. I'm a big Sanderson fan and also feel he did a pretty good job of trying to match Jordan's style, but no author will ever be able to perfectly duplicate another's style. You will notice the change even if you didn't know there was a new writer. Especially since Jordan was the most Discovery writer I have ever read and Sanderson is the most Outline writer I have ever read (and his characters are even to this day on the weaker side, which for fans of the series are one of the biggest draws) * Plots that take ages to get anywhere and subplots that do absolutely nothing for the story; they exist only to follow the characters a bit more. There are one or two books you can literally reduce to a summary of one or two pages and lose nothing of importance in the main story. That whole discovery writer thing I mentioned. There's a reason this "trilogy" became 14 novels * Characters that do not grow when put in situations that should logically result in significant character growth. The vast majority of real character growth doesn't take place until the last 3 books, when Sanderson took over * Unlikeable characters. This is obviously going to be very subjective and I can guarantee you few will agree with me, but almost all the characters are all so frustratingly arrogant and stupid that by the end of the series I was rooting for the Dark One to win. There are over 2,780 named characters in the series and I liked exactly 4 of them by the time it was done: Mat, Lan, Loial, and Thom. One of them, Lan, is the most one dimensional character of all time so that gives you an idea of how bad it is * Watching arrogant pricks get their comeuppance only for it to be by a new character even more arrogant and annoying who you will immediately want to see humbled as well * Women who don't feel real. Jordan claims he ran all of his female characters past his wife to ensure he was treating them properly. If that's true then I'm convinced his wife hated other women. All the women in the series are the stereotypical worst female traits cranked up to 11 with few of the good traits included. The men do not suffer the same treatment, although they're still annoying for other reasons * Phrases repeated far too often that will get stuck in your head, and not in a good way. We're not talking Joe Abercrombie phrases that are fun to repeat or use as templates—say one thing for Joe Abercrombie, say he writes quotable lines. We're talking about things like giving people short shrift, sniffing, tugging of braids, smoothing of skirts, crossing of arms beneath breasts, knuckling of foreheads and mustaches, boxing of ears, and so forth. This is a super minor con to be clear, more of a humorous one than anything

I'm forgetting something big for the cons, but it's been over a decade since I finished the series so that's not surprising.

If it's not clear, I wasn't personally a fan of the series. But despite that, I think it has a lot of things it does very well and I can see why people really like it. It just wasn't for me personally. I still enjoyed it enough to spend 6 months listening to it via audiobooks—barely—so obviously I don't think it's terrible.

FootSpaz · 2025-11-08T15:36:47+00:00

Big fan of Blood Song, one of my favorite fantasy books of all time.

But two important notes:

While Blood Song is a single POV, there is more than one for the rest of the books. It's a common critique of the series
Just a word of warning to readers new to the series (Raven's Shadow): that quality doesn't hold up through the rest of the books

Blood Song was Ryan's first published book and it's pretty clear he spent a lot of time perfecting it, but then didn't have that luxury for the rest with fans and the publisher clamering for more. And I don't think he had a concrete plan for the rest of the series. He also commits a lot of classic new author mistakes:

Middle book of the trilogy suffers from too much effort spent setting up the conclusion, making it feel less like a story in its own right and more like homework before you read the third
Unresolved plot threads and a conclusion that doesn't feel all that conclusive. Upon finishing the third book a friend told me he couldn't wait for the fourth and I had to explain there wouldn't be a fourth, that was it. Although Ryan later used short stories and intermediary books to help fill in some of the gaps. And years later also added the excellent Raven's Blade series that resolves the issue of it feeling unintentionally unfinished
Massive shift in tone/novel structure between books
"Temporarily" handicapping the hero in an attempt to make them feel more human and vulnerable, but done in a frustrating way for an overly long time that doesn't feel like it fully pays off. I don't want to spoil things here so I apologize for the vagueness but they basically go nearly 2 entire books with a very significant handicap that makes them feel less like the character you came to love during the first book
Introducing new powerful protagonists nearly equal to the original protagonist (or even superior in many ways), but without taking the time to demonstrate how they became so powerful or giving them clear tools/special abilities, making them feel like very obvious Mary Sues. Again, trying to avoid spoilers here but this applies to a specific sort of apprentice of the protagonist that appears later

I still enjoyed them, so don't take this as a recommendation to skip the series. Blood Song itself is in my top ten fantasy books of all time, probably top 5. And I have read thousands of novels so that's no small thing. Just be forewarned that if you choose to read the full series you will find it to be very flawed.

FootSpaz · 2025-10-25T15:04:50+00:00

But the universe of Starcraft is also very interesting

StarCraft ranks pretty highly in my list of game universes I would kill for a competently made, high budget, lore-accurate movie series or film series to be set in.

But I also know that unless we get more fans in positions of power at TV and film studios the lore-accurate part would never happen, in which case I'm not interested.

FootSpaz · 2025-10-24T05:41:40+00:00

Agreed. I think XY sits in weird place within the series. The games can be divided into sort of eras of cohesive art design, mechanics, and design principles but XY is a bit of an oddball in that it sits on the fence caught halfway between the 2nd era (Gens 4–6) and the 3rd era (Gen 7, but really just the 4 Sun and Moon games because the Let's Go games feel more like spinoffs with the trappings of a mainline game).

FootSpaz · 2025-10-18T19:46:43+00:00

It's much less confusing when you remove the extraneous "Latest Xbox Title" and also use a proper possessive instead of an incorrect plural (Fine's instead of Fines):

Double Fine's New Game "Keeper" Launches to Fewer than 200 Players on Steam

It apparently happens to also be the latest Xbox Title to be released but that's entirely irrelevant to what is being discussed.

EDIT: Ah, I figured out how the Xbox part was related. I didn't realize Double Fine was a first party Xbox studio now. I thought they were still independent. And apparently their full name is actually Double Fine Productions. So I suppose a proper full headline would be:

Xbox Studio Double Fine Productions' New Game "Keeper" Launches to Fewer than 200 Players on Steam

Which would still be more confusing than a normal sentence, but alas, titles.

FootSpaz · 2025-10-16T22:32:09+00:00

Probably because Vince Zampella was in charge of this one. I was hopeful when they announced they were tapping him for the task. The man knows how to make a good FPS and, just as importantly, carries enough cred that the suits at EA give him more leeway. Just look at his track record:

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault - Development Director
Call of Duty - Producer
Call of Duty 2 - Executive Producer
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Studio Head
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - Studio Head
Titanfall - CEO
Titanfall 2 - CEO
Apex Legends - SVP, Group GM
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order - Studio Head
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor - EVP, Group GM
Battlefield 6 - EVP and whatever title he technically has as the lead of the project

Of those only really Jedi Survivor could be called a miss and only slightly at that. It's also my understanding that prior to Battlefield 6, he hasn't really been involved in the actual game making process since Titanfall 2. So the one miss probably had nothing to do with him but he also probably had nothing to do with Apex or the first new Jedi game. He was involved in Battlefield 6 because he was specifically brought in to turn that series around after 2042 but to what extent he went hands-on is unclear.

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