No problem, hope you have fun with it!

This ended up way more rambly than intended but hopefully will be of some help. I might clean things up a bit if I have some time later.

Drakengard

First game is a bad Dynasty Warriors clone and can be a really rough experience.
It has very repetitive gameplay and pretty much requires the use of a guide if you want to get the true ending due to things like “get to this already cleared part of the map at this specific time” if I recall correctly. Final boss is… an experience.

It has a great story (with ending E being a direct connection to Nier Gestalt/Replicant), though depending on how resistant you are to the monotony and jank, getting there might be a challenge. There are some absolutely bonkers ideas here, beyond anything you’ll find in later games and that’s honestly the biggest draw for this title.

Finally there’s music. Oh boy, the music. It sounds like a cacophony of a madman and not in an enjoyable way. Don’t expect anything like Nier OSTs.

All in all, don’t feel bad about switching to/going with an LP - this text one by The Dark Id is a classic, with everything you could want (it’s pretty much a play-by-play, with lots of screenshots and music, just without the tedium).

Drakengard 2

Main thing to keep in mind is that this game is kind of its’ own thing and one I remember the least about.

Taro had no involvement beyond helping with a few CG cutscenes and the producer (I think?) of the first game had only a limited power over the development. Because of this writing can be a bit more generic and flat.
It’s not all bad and story has some connections to the first game but it was intended to be a more streamlined experience.

Gameplay is mostly improved but has some issues, like certain bosses requiring specific weapons (you can beat them otherwise but they’ll require a lot of hits).
Play it if you really want to complete the collection but it’s not necessary to experience the “main” series.

Drakengard 3

This one is technically a prequel to all the other games.

Yoko Taro is back in the writer’s seat for this one and the overall story is better than D2 in my opinion. I already mentioned the humor in this one - it can be a bit crude and vulgar so your enjoyment of those parts will depend on how well it clicks with you.
Story has the usual Taro flair and can be further enhanced with the DLC which expands on each of the antagonists (I don’t know how easy it is to get these days).

It’s not a great game from a technical perspective - it runs like garbage on the original hardware (framerate can fall to single digits at times) and can look a bit dated even compared to other games from 2013. Some of it can be improved with emulation but I’m not sure to what extent.

Gameplay is further improved (there’s still a lot of jank) and way easier to fully complete so there’s that. If you survived the original Nier you should be fine.

It can be an interesting experience if you like stories by Yoko Taro, just don’t expect a good game (this sentiment can be extended to all pre-Nier Automata games to various extent).

If you’re looking for something relaxing there’s Afrika - a photography game with a (light?) sim focus.

If you’re fine with kind of mediocre gameplay, rough performance and interesting writing: Drakengard 3. The occasional humor may or may not be your cup of tea but the overall story is worth it - it does require replaying stages and some grinding if you want to reach the true ending however.

This controversy was actually how I found out about the classic XCOM (I may have heard about it before but never really looked into the series before that).

Truth be told, the whole thing could’ve been avoided if not for 2K’s lack of foresight - not only they decided to call the game XCOM but also Enemy Unknown was already in production when they revealed the FPS version. All they had to do was let people know it wasn’t the only project in the pipeline (though lack of such announcement may have been caused by the development issues with EU at the time).

The big part of the initial reactions had to do with the fact that Enemy Unknown wasn’t announced at the time so people were worried series will move in a completely new direction (anybody remembers Close Combat: First to Fight?).

The other issue (post release) was how different it was from what we’ve seen initially - it was suppose to be set in 1950’s, have first-person perspective, open-ended levels, info gathering, research and horror vibes (check this trailer and this gameplay).

By release that game turned into a third-person shooter with simpler, more linear levels, no research of alien technology and other streamlining measures. That doesn’t mean the final product is bad (I enjoyed it quite a bit and the “twist” near the end was a pretty neat addition), it just didn’t live up to the expectations and slowly fell into relative obscurity.

All in all I agree, play The Bureau if you want a different take on the XCOM universe. It’s a decent game.

Oh, totally. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.

Personally I’d love to see a new take on Daggerfall using AI for features you mentioned (though it would have to be an “all in” affair as Bethesda’s approach to randomly generated content these days is… not particularly impressive).

It’s not like they can really avoid it. AI assisted tools will become a standard in the future (“productivity has to go up” after all) and there’s a good chance Valve already received some feedback from AAA publishers on that matter, since they’ll be the main players utilizing such tech.

The good thing here is the exsitance of a disclaimer on store pages, as it will allow people to decide for themselves, and the ability to report content straight from in-game overlay.

Full on ban was never a realistic option.

Fair enough. In that case I don’t think I can be of any help at the moment but I’ll keep you in mind if I stumble into something with such characters.

May I interest you in Hedon Bloodrite? It’s orcs instead of goblins but there’s plenty of thickness.

It does a good job at pointing out flaws with Steam UI and how they could be fixed (something Valve is apparently unable to do themselves).

While the design in this video isn’t perfect, it’s way better than the current shitshow and I don’t see why people (especially those who know what they’re doing) shouldn’t remind a multibillion company they should do better.

Steam page (demo available).

Good job, should’ve link it myself… (; -_-)

There’s also demo on Steam.

I think these are new - there’s a comment on the project page asking about “playing the classic Red Alert maps” and one of the devs replied they would require some modifications to work.

Besides, original missions can be played with OpenRA so I don’t think they would port them here without at least adding support for the new factions (which in turn would require changes in story?).

That’s just my guess based on some research though, I’m not a specialist when it comes to these projects.

Just Windows, Mac and Linux. There’s no Android build (that’s what would be needed for such tablet).

Man, I have the GBC re-release from LRG but haven’t played it yet. I should get to it one of these days…

Can’t wait to play this one as well.

I think you’re making this a little bit more complicated than necessary. Those gadgets are cool but that would probably require more support by the devs than a simple keybinds and considering how niche this stuff is… I think the latter is a more probable option.

Those two axis you mentioned would be modified together anyway since we’d want the speed modifier to be the same no matter the direction. Alternatively one could make it into a separate variable included in speed calculations - this way you can keep the direct input value provided by the controller (whether it’s a gamepad or a keyboard) and have one more piece that can sit unchanged when playing with analog controls.

Mouse scroll was an example since that’s how it worked in Splinter Cell back in the day (it’s also how Star Citizen does it today). You could just as well use any other key to increase/decrease the this muliplier (or make it mouse scroll + modifier key).

Overall, I do agree that more flexibility in input mapping would be a good thing. Can’t go wrong with giving people more choice.

That’s not what I mean though. Back in Splinter Cell you could use mouse wheel to increase or decrease your character walking speed - similar to how you can do it with an analog stick. It’s about giving player more gradual control on how fast/slow you move.

That said, customizable game time scale (not game speed) is also another thing I’d like to see in games.

I was mostly thinking about action (or generally keyboard walking) games but that’s good to know, I never got to play those titles honestly.

It’s not like customizable difficulty would be mandatory - you have your default presets and an option to customize. You could even add a disclaimer about how “modifying difficulty can break the experience” or whatever.
I’d rather have a choice and not use it than be stuck with options that never feel “right”.

I realize that games (and software in general) today are about simplifying things and removing any possibility of user messing up but it can make the end product way less engaging in my opinion.

Some things were already mentioned so here my other pet peeves:

• customizable difficulty - no default preset will be as good as one that can be modified to your liking. Sometimes the issue lies with difficulty making things more of a chore than a challenge, sometimes they tune things too much where you get stuck in a weird middle ground where one difficulty is way too easy and the other bashes your teeth in.
• character speed control on PC - we had this stuff figured out in 2002, when Splinter Cell came out! Why the hell are we still stuck with terribly slow walk and slightly too fast jogging? This isn’t hard to implement either - there are already multiple speed states when playing with a gamepad, all that’s required is an option to control it with a keybind.
• visible body in first person games - I always try to immerse myself as much as possible and having a physical body helps sell the idea that I’m a character in this world rather than just a floating camera.

I also completely forgot to mention another duo - Chip & Ironicus.

This one is a little different as they record their commentary over premade footage. They can also be a bit more… low energy (?) compared to many bigger channels but if there’s one thing they (or more specifically Chip) really shine in, is the huge amount of effort put into each and every playthrough.

Pretty much every episode is released in two versions, cut and uncut commentary, to let you choose whether you want the option to focus during cutscenes etc. They are also filled with cool trivia, secrets and just good skill level in general.
They have a pretty legendary MGSV LP where Chip prepared 3 seperate playthroughs, each with a different approach (stealth, combat and goofy).

Besides that, they also have stream recordings with live commentary, a podcast and regular charity streams.

Chip worked at recently closed Volition so he could definitely use more views.