From Playstation to Xbox, through smartphone, Steam and Switch – what’s pushing your buttons?
Video Games – What Are You Playing?
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I guess so, as apparently 3 is tying together 1 and 2.
This was only included in the Japanese Direct but seems to be coming out internationally and looks pretty cool.
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I don’t need another reason to be excited for Horizon: Forbidden West but this sounds fantastic:
Other interesting stuff on game accessibility.Metroid Dread has had an update that adds easier and harder difficulty. So will have to see if the applies to the demo.Independent of this, Sifu will also be getting difficulty modes in a future update! It’s one I’ll still wait until it’s going cheap as it’s a major gamble for me. But there’s a lot I like the look of in it.SkillUp’s review was good but I disagree that the experience is as linked to difficulty as he argues. I see the point but I think it would be replicated with difficulty modes, as people’s skill level and coordination difficulty vary.I’m also hoping both of these convince Housemark to tweak Returnal and maybe BluePoint to do the same to Demon’s Souls.Although, FromSoftware do seem willing to take the hit of reduced sales and market their stuff as being rock hard. -
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Are these boss fights in a “no respawn” zone?
If so, try to get some help from another player. Might be a bit tricky in a game with the reputation Avengers has, it’s easier with Destiny 2.
The companies like to say online games can be solo play but that’s not always true.
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Since Cyberpunk 2077 is back from the dead, it’s not impossible but, compared to C2077 and No Man’s Sky, Avengers seems to have bigger design problems it’ll have to overcome.
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Delayed by Storm Eunice, my copy of Horizon: Forbidden West has arrived.
If you’re nabbing the PS5 version you’ll need 98GB of space minimum in the PS5’s memory.
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Al,
As a live service game, the Avengers will not have an end in the traditional sense.
Best way to engage with it? Play it until you’ve seen all you want to then move onto something else, come back to it when there’s new content added.
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Horizon II: The Forbidden West
This is a surprisingly mixed bag. It is, overall, a great game, but the playing experience within that will be quite variable. As a sequel it is far weaker, as it tends to opt more for continuation than improvement, though there are some here. In terms of accessibility what look like exemplary options fall apart a bit due to implementation. In this respect Guerilla are behind UbiSoft and further behind Insomniac in their understanding of this area.
Things that work very, very well is the world design. Bigger than its predecessor but with the same level of density, it is a great world to explore but the Focus used to scan the world seems a lot more restricted here both in its range and what it shows. This sense of restriction crops up elsewhere too. Nonetheless, you always want to see what you can find. Minor flaws are how it displays map information inconsistently. Some icons disappear when done, others not so you can end up heading for stuff you’ve done. Similarly, sometimes the path guiding will be off. The climbing system is mostly good but often the indicator of button pressing would be lost in the texture detail, so at times it felt an inconsistent system.
Combat is more complicated but I’m not sure that makes it better. There are more elements, but the one the game really wants you to use is the acid arrows. Elemental effects are better late in the game when you have gear that applies them faster, until then they feel far more limited. Melee strikes feel more limited here too, nor can you power up your staff that much. The biggest weakness in the combat is the camera does not track enemies for you and the auto aim really isn’t much of one by 2022 standards. This will mean you try and do stuff but fail because the game just screws around with your aim, your camera, your view – one accessibility option of auto-concentration probably made the game far harder, when I played the final mission with it off it seemed easier! Then there’s arbitrary restrictions that make no sense like a max number of traps and tripwires you can deploy, which massively undermines their use. Finally, the game will arbitrarily strip you of stealth even if you’ve done everything right, or it’ll deploy stealth stripping indestuctible pods – these are hugely irritating.
The worst combat by far is melee. It is terrible and stands out even more due to how many excellent melee combat games have come out since 2017. It is crude, limited, often fails to register combos, hides enemies amid graphical detail and it really isn’t very good. For the sequel it needs a major overhaul, not just the combat but also visibility of human enemies.
I greatly enjoyed the story and the quests, the great majority were very good with excellent intro story sequences and conversations.
There is some open world clutter in this – the timed rubbish that is the hunting grounds are back, with an arena added – don’t care about either. There’s machine races – they’re overcomplicated rubbish. The collectables? I can’t say many of them were good to do, due to how the game often tofails to visually convey info. Not just in side content either. Many complain about Aloy’s prodding the player in the right direction, but even then there were times when I couldn’t tell what I needed to do. A blue-gray indicator blended in on a greay wall or a gap did not look jumpable to my eyes.
I managed to do most of the quests and, by taking advantage of a bug, even did an underwater stealth one. Talking of, that is utter rubbish and the game would be far better off without it. It ruins the enjoyment of the underwater environments, which look amazing. But you will get trapped in those and need to fast travel pack warp your way out because you won’t be able to see the way out.
All of the new enemies are very well designed and often look amazing. Some, however, are a total pain to fight and turn up far, far too often.
Any game that I spend over 100 hours on must have done something or a whole lot of something right and this does. It does have its moment-to-moment frustrations where oddity of design really crops up. Part of the reason those aspects stand out so much is because everything else is so good.
What do I want for the sequel? More obvious tagging and better camera tracking of enemies. Far better auto aim targeting for easily hitting machine parts. Less restrictions on what you can do in combat and the gear – your gear has the usual four levels, but there’s remarkably little Legendary gear to get. Though, when I powered up a Legendary bow, it was certainly worth it, I’d like to do a New Game+ run with that gear. DLC will also work.
And, while combat can frustrate, there will often be times where it is very, very good – blowing up elemental parts on a machine, with a huge blast resulting, never gets old. Watching a machine die by tripwire is always very fun. As is shooting off a weapon and using it on its prior owner – Thunderjaws remain the best example of this.
How would I rate this? Probably a great game for everyone else, it’s very good for me and a good, but not great, sequel. I do want to play the next one too.
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Lego Harry Potter Year 6
It’s very hard not to conclude that all Traveller’s Tales wanted to do on this set of games is inflict pain on kids. Because their visual communication is goddamn vague and awful in equal measure.
Sure, they look right. There is some neat design here but how you’re supposed to work out its “puzzles” without a guide I do not know.
Oh and duelling is back – every bit as crap and arbitrary a game wall as in year 5. The problems with this are two: You have to do it all on one life and the action does not pause or slow down when you are selecting spells. The window for you to select and target and cast is too small.
Add in a fixed perspective on levels that looks increasingly archauc and it makes for a frustrating experience. Sure, some of the weaknesses here crop up in other Lego games but not to the same degree.
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Some changes for PS Plus are on the way:
All-new PlayStation Plus launches in June with 700+ games and more value than ever
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Yep. I’m liking the look of the new PS+.
Sony will need to invest in game boosting the older titles, as MS are already doing that.
Like that Sony have practically said they have to choose where to play their money and they’re going with game development over day one streaming release.
The idea that I could try out a title like Returnal appeals a lot.
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After having loved the shit out of Yakuza 0 I’ve picked up games 1 thru 6 in various sales and have started with (the remake) of Yakuza 1. Every fight / conflict plays out the same way with an over the top finishing movie follwed by me chuckling “I love this game” to myself.
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Bought Streets of Rage 4 just so me and my brother could have some local co-op between us while he’s visiting this week. Really like this game. The graphics, music and core mechanics are really slick. Haven’t really played the others in the series, so not getting much out from the story or the characters. Skipping all the cutscenes*, I don’t feel like I’m missing much. I’m all about the senseless violence though. Challenging, but fair!
*I’m assuming the story is these people insulted my spouse, so now I have to slap them.
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Really like this game. The graphics, music and core mechanics are really slick. Haven’t really played the others in the series
It’s very much a modern update of the original games. Aside from the slick graphics, the originals have very similar mechanics, and even the visual style and music are in keeping with the old games (albeit updated).
SoR2 is widely considered the best of them if you fancy checking one out.
Anyway, I’ve come back to SoR4 many times, particularly for the multiplayer, so it’s been great value for money. Ben and I had a crack at it one evening which was good fun. And being able to have me and my two kids play all at once in couch co-op mode is great.
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It’s very much a modern update of the original games. Aside from the slick graphics, the originals have very similar mechanics, and even the visual style and music are in keeping with the old games (albeit updated).
That’s fairly easy to gather from playing this and having played a lot of Double Dragon and Battletoads back in the NES days. A “don’t fix what isn’t broken” kind of situation.
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Got a copy of Lego Star Wars on the way, hopefully it’ll arrive a little early.
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Bad news – can’t escape the virtual office just yet.
Next time, just send me your location and I’ll call in a bomb threat. This was a rather serious issue, after all.
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And then there is the “copying 34GB” bit…..
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New Monkey Island! From Ron Gilbert! And it keeps Dominic Armato as Guybrush!
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New Monkey Island! From Ron Gilbert! And it keeps Dominic Armato as Guybrush!
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Initial thoughts on Lego Star Wars.
First, this is not the Lego games of the past. This is a very different set up. You have a good deal more control and options than in the old games. The camera is better. The graphics are far, far better.
I’ve done ANH, started on Empire and done a little of Free Play in both the planet areas and space. Took out a couple of kyber comets and did a space battle which was hugely fun.
Criticisms are both planet and space play areas are quite limited in size. But the design quality for them is high. Control for the vehicles and ships is an improvement on previous games but it’s not quite nailed it. It’s good but there’s something off when you are flying.
The game isn’t massive in terms of its worlds, but in terms of activity. Level challenges, universal upgrades, class upgrades, 380 characters to unlock, minikits, level puzzles – there is a lot to do here, if you want to.
Finally, the style is excellent. This is both loving homage to and affectionate mick-taking of SW. There’s a host of fun jokes in the part I’ve done and doubtless far more to follow. Its looks and aesthetic are great, but its script might be even better still. When you’re running around the Death Star the PA announcements are brilliant. Similarly the opening level of the Tantive IV.
It’s a very good and very fun game. The accessibility options are good. Standard stuff? Yes but they’re well executed. Similarly, for PS5 players, there is smart haptic feedback.
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Done some of the random space battles and, unlike say Chorus, they know the importance of not making it too chaotic. The result is they are a lot of fun.
Did ESB and the first level of RotJ. Had thought it was going awry with a locate by frequency of beeps puzzle. I pretty much hate these things for obvious reasons. This time, however, I was hasty. As they had also included a visual cue which was smart.
It shouldn’t be possible for the battle of Hoth to feel fresh, but it does here. Also the preceding level on Hoth – you’ve never seen a frozen hellhole look so good.
For flying and general movement, I found that taking both settings up to 75% sensitivity supplied that missing aspect, especially when flying. The fight with the Star Destroyers then the asteroid field was superb.
It also seems pretty clear the game wants you to start with the OT as here it was doing lightsaber tutorials. But I suppose it might be smart enough to cover that when you first hit that combat, whichever episode you are on. The fight with Vader was a good showcase for the new lightsaber combat too.
One weakness I was hoping wouldn’t be here is NPC allies running into your line of fire. It stands out as the Stormtrooper AI is pretty good, they do move and dodge. Strange that it doesn’t extend further but this is a minor point.
One big improvement is the clarity for some of its puzzles. Most of the time it is clearer on what you need to do. Although there is some rubbish timed ones in here.
One of the reasons the game looks so good is they’ve been very attentive to how it looks when in movement, especially light effects and reflections.
This is a game that really wants you to keep playing it and it makes a very persuasive case.
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Oh, I’ll keep posting them. It is a very well put together game.
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Finished the OT and started the PT.
One flaw that became more apparent is the targeting, you still end up whacking your other characters. Would have been nice to be able to cancel that friendly fire effect.
The Fett boss was a bit of a mess, but what they did with Jabba and Salacious Crumb was superb and more than made up for it.
The Endor speeder chase is excellent. Great sense of speed and you can shoot off bricks off the trees! Forest level was pretty good.
The one oddity is the battle of Endor is very curtailed. You do the duel with Vader and that’s it. What they do for is quite clever, in that it gives Luke ability more in line with what we see of Jedi in the PT while foreshadowing Palpatine’s final defeat in the ST.
I can only assume they’re keeping the space levels of Endor as side content to unlock. I know I saw a level in the trailers where you take on the Executor. It’s too big a gap to leave empty.
Started TPM and the first level was very, very fun. It also has a stronger intro to lightsaber combat.
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TPM has its flaws, they’re minor, but do get in the way a bit. The podracing is great until it does this reconnecting a power lead – what it requires is a tricky and fiddly control combination that really hurts the momentum of the race.
Similarly, the battle sequence with the Gungans was weird and not as good as it could have been. At one point battle droids break through and a load of Gungan soldiers don’t react.
Outside of these minor defects, it’s very good. The duel with Maul is well executed and the level name itself is hilarious – Better Call Maul. The space assault on the Trade Federation cruiser is both epic and fun.
Started on AOTC and it has an excellent speeder chase through the night skies of Coruscant. After that the plan was to continue the episode…..
But I got distracted running around the Night Market, going after various side stuff of ships and kyber bricks!
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The amount of side stuff I’ve been doing while still on the surface of Lego Star Wars is absurd. Each area has its own side missions, character unlocks, ships, kyber bricks, races – there are multiple areas to a planet and there are 21 planets! Its huge.
Part of the reason for the side stuff – or what it started off as – is there was a save corrupting bug on the Kamino level. Patch 1.4 took care of that, so went and did that.
Then got distracted again running around Theed.
Minor weaknesses are the lack of a position indicator when jumping, can be hard to judge your position.
Similarly it can be hard to work out how to get somewhere and the map often won’t help you.
The camera does sometimes does some rather weird things that seriously compromise your view or mess up the Force movement of objects.
Finally, there is some timed rubbish that contributed nothing positive. It’s hard to know who that is in for. There’s a puzzle on Tattoine that is an atrocity of controls and camera view – all timed.
Would have been good if Travellers Tales had lost all of their bad habits, but they haven’t yet done it. This is a major improvement but some still persist.
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Finished AOTC then did ROTS.
Of the various planets encountered so far, Utapau is the only one I dislike. It’s too murky, hard to navigate and you can easily get trapped with restart being the only option.
It’s also become clear that I would find this a far more frustrating game without the assists. Lightsaber duels are a good example of it in action.
Are the haptics as good as they could be? Not for lightsaber duelling – the block is hard to time right due to the speed. More refined and distinct haptics would help with this.
That said, I do think the multi-stage boss fights here work far better than the previous versions in the old games. The one thing the game lacks and needs is enemy lock-on. Most of the time it doesn’t matter but in some boss fights, like the Krayt dragon side mission, the lack of it stands out.
Like the OT trio there are some odd omissions here – you don’t do much of either the battles of Geonosis or Coruscant. There are these rare times when you notice the abbreviation atanding out.
But the central gameplay of unlocking locations, getting studs to unlock, side missions etc. All of that is so good that it keeps you coming back to it.
And now for the Sequel trilogy….
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Turns out that, if you have a spare 5m studs you can buy the ultimate turbo penis substitute, aka Darth Vader’s Super Star Destroyer, Executor.
The way you get it to turn up is win three space battles in Tatooine space and it should arrive during the fourth. You then take out its fighters, destroy its turrets, board it, defeat a load of Stormtroopers and a couple of bosses and that unlocks it. It’s a pretty epic sequence.
Also ran around Kamino. In a cool set up, doing one character mission unlocked another.
Paid a trip to the Great Temple on Yavin IV, nabbed some stuff there too.
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So, TFA and TLJ, this is going to be good.
First, it is universally agreed that BB-8 is great in any version of the ST.
Second, the level where you steal the Falcon, shoot a load of TIEs and go through a wrecked Super Star Destroyer is superb.
The one with Han and Chewie is all right. Takodana is weirdly short. It’s better with the assault on Starkiller Base, though, as usual, the bit with Phasma underachieves, but then again, it is Phasma.
The X-Wing attack, both sections, is great. The duel with Kylo also works very well.
TLJ starts well – the fight with the Dreadnought is great. It also removes the more problematic aspects like Leia doing an impression of Pattin and Rose being way too taser trigger happy.
Canto Bight? Exploring the location will be more fun than the level. It’s all right, just not that great either.
The bits on Acho-To are similar. The location is better than the levels, which includes a crappy boss fight with Luke. It couldn’t pull all of TLJ’s teeth out. One interesting mechanic is in the cave, where you control reflections of Rey, but the graphic presentation lacks clarity. That in turn can stop you seeing what you need to do.
The fight with the Praetorian guards is less than it should be. Part of the reason is how it presents info. Until now, boss fights have a health bar for the boss and shield icons. Two shields? Equals three life bars total. Here? It doesn’t do that, instead there are eight shields for eight guards, with each guard having 1/8 of the single health bar. It’s inconsistent, confusing and the prior system would have worked fine. The other half is it locks you into a set order with the guards, which feels weird.
Another underachieving level with Phasma follows, no surprise there and then you get to Crait.
Crait is weirdly short. True, they can’t do much with the walker attack but the entire section with the Falcon flying through Crait is skipped over. The duel with Luke and Kylo is arguably better than the film and an example of how to do QTEs right.
And now Exegol beckons….
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End of the line….Well, the Skywalker line sure but there is a ton still to do in the game.
RoS started off weirdly with the Falcon in Ep IX seeming to control far more sensitively, which made flying through the Kijimi tunnels far more difficult. Still a good sequence though.
On a couple of levels there’s these in-rails section where they don’t apply the auto-aim to the aiming. Lessens the sequences quite a bit but doesn’t make them bad.
There was a smart stealth run on Kijimi, worked similar to the bomb planting on Starkiller base in TFA.
The duel on the Death Star wreckage on Kef Bir works better than in the film. Here’s its four duels, with connecting sections. It also sells the idea that Rey killed Kylo Ren but revived Ben Solo more effectively too.
The one big omission from the Battle of Exegol is a flying sequence where you take a few of the Xyston Star Destroyers out.
That aside, however, it is a very good finale. The two way duel – Rey fighting the Emperor’s Sovereign Protectors and Ben the Knights of Ren – works very well. It also does a much better job of selling Ben Solo’s redemption.
And yes, Babu Frik turns up. And is very cool.
Of course, I had to continue on the freeplay stuff with a trip to Exegol. Escorted a trapped Resistance pilot who was being attacked by Snoke clones! There’s other hilarious stuff here like a Gonk droid dreaming of a galactic domination, step one? Form the Knights of Gonk. There’s some great one liners too “exploded by his own kin”. Plus a Sith Loyalist kicks off a party on the restored Imperial throne, with strobes.
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Sand? Naboo? Get your planets right.
Utapau is just murky and…. brown, very brown.
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Of the various planets encountered so far, Utapau is the only one I dislike
really?? even Naboo, with all its sand?
There… is no sand… on Naboo. What?
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Of the various planets encountered so far, Utapau is the only one I dislike
really?? even Naboo, with all its sand?
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The game has quite a bit of fun with that.
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I play Avengers now and then. Now there is an announcement of bringing in
Jane Foster as female Thor, like the She Hulk that is also coming.
Some gamers are frustrated and I see it.Really what is the difference between a character and the opposite
gender counterpart, like Kate Bishop to Clint? It really is just a skin
and voice. which is rather lazy…Black Panther was nice. But the people want a new character to show, new
powers like a Dr. Strange or a Scarlet Witch. Easier said than done though.
How would their powers be manifested given the gamepad controls?Almost like a Superman game challenge. What powers would he have? How can
you used them? Might as well start it in god mode. 😂
———————–Hmmmm… I may have spoken too soon on Superman
There is this demo from the latest Unreal engine:
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It really is just a skin and voice. which is rather lazy…
I dunno about that. There are some very talented voice actors around and, for example, Hulk and She Hulk have very different personalities and good voice actors could definitely make those differences evident. Also, the body shapes are different and the physics of moving them are not the same.
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The gamers of that game have complained about no roadmap for the year and no new characters with varying powers…
Really? there are gamers complaining on the internet? if it wasn’t this they would be complaining about something else. Gender Swap? Have you never read anything with She Hulk in it? or seen any cartoon with her in it? I don’t know what bothers me more. You dissing My Girl
or misreading my post.
Hulk and She Hulk have very different personalities
J/K but i would suggest you take a closer look at Voice Acting. there are some amazing talents out there.
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Ummmm….I wasn’t exactly talking about the comics!
I was talking about character gameplay.
The gamers want a character with varying powers like a Dr. Strange or a Scarlet Witch!
A She Hulk would be too similar to Hulk as Kate Bishop is to Clint. Same with Jane Foster
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And I am getting into the Byrne run of She Hulk. Fwiw.
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I downloaded and unzipped that engine.It is just a Superman flight simulator.
Well done for a demo…
Have to see how serious the people are in designing a Superman game ie. how his powers are like on the gamepads, bossfights,
game content and challenges etc.Should depower him first like what John Byrne did and later on Stracynski did in the comics.
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Fair warning on that Supes flight demo using the Unreal engine…
It takes up a LOT of CPU. Don’t be surprised when the PC crashes!
Avengers is just same old same old. Go on a mission, get all the goodies in the treasure chests first, then the fighting etc.
It is on the back burner for a real boring day.
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Well Square-Enix have just sold off Crystal Dynamics, so he may not even have that for much longer. Depends if the servers and license transfer over to the new owners or just get dumped.
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Especially where an online, live service game that bombed massively like Avengers is concerned.
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There are other games you can play Al.
And?
I know… I got old Tomb Raider as well.
Thing is, it has a big brand name with known super heroes. Like I was saying before about games with Avengers, Batman, the Star Trek and Star Wars name….
As it is now, this week is going to wrap up Moon Knight, Picard, and the debut of Strange in the theatres. So video games are on the back burner for now. 😁
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