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.

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.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Some say The Elder Scrolls series gets simpler with every iteration. That may be true particularly when it comes to spells, but at least when going from Oblivion to Skyrim, I would say nothing of value was lost when something was streamlined -- even in regards to spells. I think in general Skyrim is a better game, a more polished version of Oblivion in almost every way.

DOOM Eternal

DOOM (2016) was a fun game for one playthrough. I tried replaying it later on but the game felt samey and I quickly uninstalled it. With DOOM Eternal I didn't even get to the end of my first run before I felt I had had enough. It's not that the game is just more Doom; there is enough new stuff to make it feel fresh. The problem I feel is that Eternal has higher skill ceiling and even on mere Hurt Me Plenty difficulty I had to reload a myriad number of times. That tends to be annoying.

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.

RAGE 2

I wonder if it was Bethesda/id who saw Mad Max, thinking its engine would be a good fit for RⒶGE 2 (as it's stylized), and approached Avalanche Studios for a collaboration. Or was it vice versa. The credits have more Avalanche's people than id's so I would guess it was mainly their project.

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!

Prey: Mooncrash

Metaprogression has become increasingly more common in new games with roguelike elements. I reckon that's because people simply hate permadeath so much. Even with procedurally generated content (which in theory is what makes permadeath to have more value than merely being a punishing difficulty), the thought of losing everything upon death really puts them off. Thus permadeath games that move forward even with botched runs seem to sell better.

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?

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

The ending of Wolfenstein: The New Order may have seemed like the end for Mr. Blazkowicz too. But while his injuries were grievous indeed, B.J. is back on his feet soon enough to again kill scores of them "white-ass Nazi bastards".

Wolfenstein: The Old Blood

I should've bought Wolfenstein: The Old Blood with The New Order. If I recall correctly, it was shortly after that when Bethesda started limiting the discounts their games get during sales on Steam (and Humble Bundle). Neither do they do those "complete your collection" bundles that give an extra discount for already owning something. 50% off doesn't feel good enough for me and so I waited. And even now, I didn't buy the game directly off Steam.

DOOM (2016)

DOOM (2016) doesn't try to mix in the horror genre like Doom 3. There are no pitch black areas or slow build-up. Instead it drops you right into action and delivers a straightforward demon killing experience.

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.

Wolfenstein: The New Order

Wolfenstein: The New Order is set in alternative history where Nazi Germany has won the Second World War thanks to technological superiority gained from finding a forgotten stash of some secret order of inventors. It is the seventh game in the Wolfenstein franchise, a series of first person shooters that mostly follow the adventures of Captain William "B.J." Blazkowicz. It is also a soft reboot of the series and not having played the earlier titles is not critical to understanding what is going on.

RAGE

I am not sure why I bought RAGE. I guess I wanted to play another first person shooter. I had even already watched a playthrough of the game when it came out in 2011 though by now I had forgotten pretty much all of it with the exception of recalling the ending being anti-climactic.

Hunted: The Demon's Forge

I suppose I bought Hunted: The Demon's Forge for the same reason as Blades of Time -- for fun third-person hack and slash. It did not turn out quite as fun as BoT, however -- melee combat seemed to involve being stagger-locked a lot. And so I played through the game using E'lara (an apostrophe because fantasy) who focuses on ranged combat. As the elf, the game is more of a third-person cover-based shooter.

Fallout: New Vegas

Fallout: New Vegas is yet another case of Obsidian Entertainment being commissioned to make a sequel to a game. It is also bit special in that because several of Obsidian's founders had worked on the original Fallout games. And maybe because of that, New Vegas is a whole lot better than Bethesda-developed Fallout 3 -- at least in my opinion.

Fallout 3

The setting of Fallout 3 is definitely not something that is to my liking -- a post-apocalypse nuclear wasteland does not sound particularly compelling. I have seen the game be praised on multiple occassions, however, and I ended up buying it myself -- about a year ago, it would seem. My previous and short-lived experience with the series was Fallout 2 where I got far enough to kill some scorpions (I think) before quiting because the game was not like Infinity Engine games I so love.

Dishonored

Dishonored woke up the completionist in me and I played through the main game thrice and the story DLCs twice in a row to get all the Steam achievements. However, getting every single one proved to be difficult in the end as many of the Dunwall City Trials DLC's achievements are actually truly challenging. Eventually I decided I would rather move to the next game on my backlog instead of wasting time in retrying Back Alley Brawl ad infinitum.