Ghostrunner 2

At its core, Ghostrunner 2 provides largely the same first person action-platformer experience as the first game. However, about every aspect was touched in some way and these changes seem to have been divisive among the player base. Some sizeable additions are the game being bigger, having few large non-linear maps, and introducing a motorcycle.

The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition

The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition is largely just a bundling of the base game and its two story DLCs -- for which I bought it -- by the game's publisher, Private Division. The original developer, Obsidian Entertainment, had very little to do with it; the extra work there is, was done by Virtuos Games instead.

Still Wakes the Deep

Ah, dammit, here we go again: yet another first person horror walking simulator with a cool title but not much else to give. Such a great name, though -- Still Wakes the Deep. It evokes the same feelings as the names of the couple of Vernor Vinge's novels I've read, that use of 'deep' as a noun. I also love how one can read the title in two ways: the deep waking yet again or the deep waking unmoving. In the game you can find a poem where title seems to have originated from -- unknown if it was written for the game or if it existed before the fact.

Deathloop

Deathloop (stylized with quotations and in caps as "DEATHLOOP") garnered a lot of confusion on its way to release. Somehow the game's premise appeared to be hard to grasp -- at least for some vocal percentage. Every new trailer or news article about the game had more than one person asking what it actually was. The reveal of the player invasion mechanic only added to the confusion -- it was as if people had never heard of such a thing in FromSoftware's games for instance.

Disco Elysium

When I listed my top 10 favorite games of the 2010s back in June of 2020, I wrote I was doubtful there would be a need to add anything from the decade's games I hadn't yet played at that point. However, there was one game from 2019 that I was thinking would make the list once I got to it: Disco Elysium. I didn't want to drop anything from the list now so I have just added this masterpiece as a +1 to it.

Redfall

At the end of my Dishonored: Death of the Outsider post 4 years ago, I was speculating the direction Arkane Studios would be going. Arkane Lyon's Deathloop was still an unknown at that time and I was afraid that it would be some easy-to-monetize multiplayer cash grab. While that game turned out to have a player-invasion mechanic, it is still very much a singleplayer title. Deathloop had been in development way before Prey's sales were realized; it probably wasn't pressured by the latter's reception. Instead, I should have been worried about the next title from Arkane Austin. I wonder if Arkane's parent company Zenimax Media had laid down the terms after Prey: the next title would need to make more money -- all the money. Raphaël Colantonio probably said no thanks and peaced out to found Wolfeye Studios (he also worked briefly on Ken Levine's upcoming Judas) and Harvey Smith came from Lyon to take control of Austin's reins.

Atomic Heart

I wonder what is it with Cyprus in particular that makes it a desirable place for Russian game developers to allegedly start operating from, but both Owlcat Games and Mundfish have opened an office there: to hide their nationality that is currently very unpopular in Europe, and maybe to have an easier time with transferring finances with the sanctions and whatnot. I doubt that either company have actually moved an entire studio's worth of personnel to another country -- I think some sort of "façade office" scenario is more likely.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy

The second game I played while waiting for Atomic Heart to get patches, was Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. Like Crystal Dynamics before, was Eidos-Montréal too tasked by their (now past) overlord Square Enix to make a game set in Marvel's comic book universe. I think the poor reception of Marvel's Avengers earlier hurt this game's initial sales, people being hesitant to jump into a possibly similar mess even if this one is solely a single player game. The general consensus on Guardians is positive but I personally found it a fairly tedious, sometimes even painful, of an experience.

Weird West

In my Prey: Mooncrash post I speculated there was more than family reasons behind Arkane Studios' founder and president Raphaël Colantonio quitting in 2017. Since then, in an interview, he has added that there had been "creative anxiety" involved with delivering big titles, having to make products rather than focusing on other things. Neither did he seem too happy about the Prey name that had been bestowed upon his last project.

NEON STRUCT

The other indie immersive sim included in Steam's 0451 sale I later bought was NEON STRUCT (as it's stylized), in the cover art also subtitled Die Augen Der Welt ('the eyes of the world'). It's only a 90 MB download, which is kind of impressive but the small size also means you won't be getting much in terms of assets.

Spirits of Xanadu

Few months back Steam had a little sale titled the 0451 Sale: titles of the immersive sim kind i.e. Deus Ex, BioShock, Dishonored, and the like. I already had all the big names since there are so few of them but the sale included a handful of unknown indie titles as well. They looked kind of suspect but I wishlisted a couple of them regardless to maybe buy them later when they're on sale again. Spirits of Xanadu was one of them.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood

Wolfenstein: Youngblood is a peculiar spin-off for the Wolfenstein franchise because it establishes that Germany was pushed out of the United States off-screen before it had a chance to happen in the mainline titles. Then towards the end, the game gets uncertain if things will go that way in Wolfenstein III after all.

Dishonored: Death of the Outsider

Dishonored: Death of the Outsider is a continuation to the story arc of the first game's DLC, The Knife of Dunwall and The Brigmore Witches, and a conclusion to "the Kaldwin era" and the series overall. Maybe in hopes of selling more copies, it was released as a standalone title instead of DLC to the second game. Death of the Outsider is smaller in scope (and price) than a full-size Dishonored title but doesn't lack on the detail and great gameplay I've come to expect from Arkane Studios.

Thanks to Crealgood for gifting me this game!

Fallout 4

Fallout 4 is a massive game. One could technically beat it way quicker than the 275 hours it took for me, but if you explore every single location and dabble in some settlement building, the hours start stacking up. This is the longest single playthrough of a game I've ever done by a good measure and will probably remain so for a good while. Maybe till Elder Scrolls VI?

Dishonored 2

The first Dishonored ran on the tried and true Unreal Engine 3 and did so well. Thus the technical issues of Dishonored 2 surprised many. Probably to avoid paying Epic Games (or anyone else) royalties again, Arkane Studios had taken the Bethesda in-house engine id Tech 5 and largely rewritten it into Void Engine for the second game. Unfortunately the end results weren't exactly desirable.

Prey (2017)

In my opinion the attention on Prey (2017) has been way too much of pointless discussion about Prey (2006) and its canceled sequel. And it is entirely Bethesda's fault. And maybe Kotaku's somewhat misleading rumors too. I guess I'm ironically adding to that discussion but the record needs to be put straight.

Tacoma

In Fullbright's second game, you arrive to an abandoned space station called Tacoma to retrieve its AI data. As you make your way through the not-that-large station's different sections, you discover what led to the abandonment from mundane notes and terminals but also from augmented reality recordings. They work a bit like time rewinding in Remember Me or Life Is Strange but the only interactivity is being able to read AR terminals open in the recording.

Gone Home

So, uh, here's another one of them walking simulators. It's called Gone Home and has an average playtime of 2 hours, which consists of exploring a house and looking at objects and notes. There's not a whole lot of game to it but that didn't stop Polygon from scoring it 10/10 and choosing it as their game of the year 2013.

Tales from the Borderlands

Borderlands "Take Over Your Life" bundle was 83% off for me on Steam as I had all of it except for Telltale Games' Tales from the Borderlands. And so I decided to play the currently latest title to the franchise even if its gameplay seemed suspect.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Similarly to Eidos Montreal's previous game, Thief (2014), was Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, too, accompanied by little controversies. While critics' consensus of the game seems to have been quite positive, players' opinions are far more mixed as is apparent from the Steam user review score. I reckon the big reason for that is how egregious many people find the ways the publisher, Square Enix, has tried to make more money off the game.