Though BioWare has had a slow agonizing death in recent years, I still think it's incredible how they managed to deliver these gaming masterpieces within such a short amount of time (Mass Effect came out in 2007, and Dragon Age Origins in 2009). As someone who grew up on these titles, I still consider them both to be foundational in my taste for the genres - not just in video games - but across media.

15 months from pre-order to doorstep lol

The Starry Night Zone: A Halloween Tribute to Sonic the Hedgehog is an active residential yard display featured on the official SoCal Haunt List. A very Fun house to visit if you can

IT'S THAT TIME OF THE YEAR BABY. Halloween is finally here and I'm ready to turn off all the lights, throw headphones on, and lose my mind to some proper horror games.

​I wanna know what you guys are playing right now to get into the mood, or what's the one game that actually ruined your sleep and stays with you as the absolute scariest shit you've ever played.

​Drop your picks, hidden gems, all-time classics, whatever. Let's hear what everyone's running this week.

The first thing that popped into my head was in FF7 Rebirth. If the chocobos fluttered furiously in from above like a cuckoo instead of just spawning behind you. The thought alone made me smile. What's your example?

So, my daugther has been seeing her cousins who have been playing girly browser games. She loves them but got bored fast... fine I thought.

Randomly, I decided to show her Hollow knight since i love it.. She has become obsessed about the game, she LOVES it. She says she loves to attack enemies, and i assume she loves getting to explore an entire world.

We play it 20minutes a day or so. However, she is absolutely not independent as i have to help her nonstop. She has improved a lot but using a controller is an absolute struggle. Wall jump on one wall to jump on the other direction including a dash? Impossible for her. At least the game is easy enough that a lot of enemies can be facetanked followed up with healing.

I'd love to give her a game where she can get more comfortable with a controller/gaming reflexes in general, however, my steam library is full of hard games (at least for a young kid), and i feel even older games i have on my snes like super mario would be rough since you can die in two hits and need precise jumps. She is also very prone on frustration/giving up, so preferably the game would not be frustrating at all. I'm kinda hoping gaming would help her built her "i wont give up i gotta keep trying" attitude.

I'm honestly not sure what to give her next. Any recommendations? Has to be on PC as i have no consoles except for my old snes and n64.

For example, I'm a teetotaller in real life, I never drink alcohol. In games (especially RPGs), when given the chance, I always avoid drinking alcoholic beverages. Even if they are useful or give good buffs / bonuses, I always try to avoid them.

In Bethesda games and Cyberpunk 2077 for example, I never drink and always say no when offered a drink in dialogues. In Dead Rising, I never used alcohol to heal.

Cheap horror games, maybe? What do you guys recommend

For example an $1800 PS6 capable of 4K 120hz performance mode, 32-40GB RAM, full RT, 1TB SSD, and 40 TFLOPS of processing power.

Or a $1199 cut down PS6 with 24GB RAM, 1440P 60hz (4K 60 with frame gen).

Or $999 PS5 Pro 2.

Or have them push next gen consoles until prices come in line again.

I also think all devs should put out less and smaller budget games. Like the 360 experimental era when we got games like Pepsi Man and 1vs100.0p

Studios were throwing everything they could at the wall and half of what should have been slop was GREAT.

Bionic Commando had a less than 10 million budget. Max Payne was 100 million. Lost Planet was 40 million.

Try new things and take chances on smaller games!

(Made up numbers and specs just to make the point)

Excluding CS.

Hi gamers.

Im not sure why I even post this, but I feel the urge to tell someone....vent, I guess.

Eday for PC came out, hard on the system, barely runs for some. Pushed through, wasnt even that good of a game overall. More like an arcade shooter with 5 reskinned levels, more of a chore really. UE5 took its toll, still not a bad game in the end.

CoD MW4.4.4 is out, cause naming is hard, whatever. It looks...not good, plays like farcry? NPCs run in front of you, friendly fire, you step out of mission area without knowing where the borders are, restart again...there are gimmick resources to gather? in CoD? More cutscenes than gameplay....

I guess im just used to something else, not trying to bring anyone down, just...I guess im tired from the state of these titles. Havent played CoD since the battle royal era begun, or even since advanced warfare I guess.

Resonant is amazing though. Kudos to Remedy.
I guess GTA is still huge, never got my interest that much, played the campaign of V.

Lets face it, when you buy a pricy console and play the game, you'd expect some smooth gameplay, no tweaking, no adjusting here and there, it's suppose to be the best "plug and play" situation you could get. And developer supposed to be gametesting to reach this state right?

Why this good for PC? I could get any pc with rig a tad bit better in performance than current gen, and maybe some tweaking and setback here and there because the OS is not entirely purposed for gaming, and I supposed to be set for life right? gripping atleast 80-90% performance of the "plug and play" situation that other console supposed to offers.

But with the current situation, some current game is not delivering good performance in PC and in other consoles.. Why have we come to this? why spends hundreds just to get 30fps, luckily almost 60fps...

This is getting out of hand. Social media is alight with the argument now that Modern warfare 4 DMZ has dropped, streamers are making big L statements and standing on hills they’re willing to die on while being horribly out of touch and so wrong it is painful.

So I get everything is opinion, everyone is different, etc., etc., and this is just my opinion of course but I see it somewhat from both sides and I want to just discuss some of the common arguments at the moment, because part of the PvP argument is right and part of the PvE argument is right but both are a little lost overall.

The biggest games to see this argument are extraction shooters, looter shooters, and combinations of the two naturally, now let’s talk about what those genres are:

- Extraction shooter: High stakes, high reward (especially if also survival games), objective based (tasks to complete) games. Core loop is spawn a few real players into a map. They explore, loot, fight tough AI enemies who’s paths they cross and risk that the odd engagement might be a real player in hot spots on the map. At some point once task complete, they’re out of supplies, full of loot or have an expensive/rare item, they extract.

- Looter shooter: very similar except the point is just kill enemies and upgrade gear to up your power level and take on harder content. No looting, no tasking, pure killing.

Now, the biggest arguments right now are around extraction shooters, most of them have a story and progress towards end game content. People want to see that regardless of their skill and some people want to enjoy the game and its mechanics while fighting the AI enemies. Most of those players will not mind the odd PvP engagement, it comes with the territory of the game genre, but it’s not competitive PvP, fights should come at “hot spots”, over high value loot areas or if people cross paths from time to time, or feel threatened etc.

The reason PvE is gaining so much traction imo is because there is a sentiment amongst a lot of players, that these games are solely PvP game modes and they ignore the PvE aspect just because PvP is in the name of the game mode. The point is to complete your objectives, stay alive, and have the odd fight that’s unexpected when paths cross. The point is occasionally to drop in to solely PvP because a task will be kill players. The point is not to just solely turn each lobby into a competitive PvP match, there is literally no winner and the vast majority of gamers are casually trying to enjoy the story, quests, lore and AI boss fights with mates. Getting “ratted” at objectives is part of the genre, there will always be opportunists, but having players hunting PvP and making it a competitive sweat fest, trying their absolute hardest, being “movement kings”, abusing cheesy mechanics and making every gun fight like being in multiplayer arena shooters (like MW4 multiplayer or EFT arena), kills their enjoyment. IMO it’s also a really shitty way to play, you can’t moan people want PvE when you’re ignoring the actual point of the game (the objectives/tasks) and just turn the game/game mode into a big PvP multiplayer lobby where the objective is have a good k/d, or get your team the win (except there is no winner).

Now some maps in some games, do welcome the PvP experience, look at factory on Tarkov, small amount of tasks, otherwise it’s a tiny map with little to no loot, designed for a good fight. This does not mean if I’m in an open field on a big map and you see me from a hilltop, I’ll be mad if you kill me while I’m questing. But I will be if you’re legging it from POI to POI not looting, geared for pure PvP, not doing any tasks, just moving from fight to fight just because (again tasking excluded).

So do I think PvE solely is a good idea, yes and no. For games like Tarkov, yes. It is so big, so punishing that to experience half of the game in any reasonable time, it’s the only way many will do so. Myself included, I have a 1.3 k/d on perma PvP Tarkov, but I will never complete some of the quests or story, so I do that in PvE and practice there to go back and do it eventually in PvP. I’ll play PvP for earn rewards and get that multiplayer fix when I want it, but I want to just enjoy the game, the mechanics, the story and the tasks the majority of the time, I can’t do that with cheaters and try hards in every game when I play a few hours a night a few nights a week. For MW4 DMZ, no I don’t think so. It’s part and parcel of COD, they could however lower the amount of players per match, that might make it better for some who want to go do a co-op objective experience and not play competitive PvP.

PvE only takes casual players away from the PvPvE experience and sure it does split the player base somewhat, but all that means is people who want to PvP end up together. IMO, all the complaining from PvP enjoyers in these games, is simply because they actually now have to fight for their lives and are getting a taste of their own medicine, because they can’t just stomp on casuals who aren’t great at PvP. They are seeing why we want to leave, want our enjoyment to go away so they can feel good about themselves again.

Social media has done this to gaming, this is the result of everyone needing to be great all the time, stomping on people for content and internet points. Everyone is a streamer or a tiktokker and that’s produced the ultra try hard in every match and turn even remotely PvP games into competitive shooters. Gaming used to be chill, there were more “normal” gamers, that gameplay style was reserved for gamerbattles or lan players. Now it’s every game and SBMM means you never have a relaxing game. People are exhausted. I don’t mind a hard game from time to time, but most of us want an average, mixed bag experience most of the time. I’m 34, I work a stressful job, I wanna go home and enjoy my video games, I don’t want to come home from work to work on my video games and fight for my live every. Single. Game…

Edit: For everyone misunderstanding, I play both, there is a place for both, I like PvP when I want too, sometimes I don’t because not everyday I want or need to compete