Doom the dark ages...

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Yawweee877h444@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨games@lemmy.world⁩

My YouTube feed is filled with nothing but overwhelmingly positive reviews. All I did was watch the trailer a while back, then a review with gameplay from some influencer that got early access.

I’m a huge doom fan dork, since the 90s. I’m old. But the trailer and gameplay had me thinking… meh.

I’ll wait for a sale. But I’m curious if anyone else feels the same. Anyone normal play it? Specifically fans of 2016. Are these influencers getting paid to hype the game?

Anyone normal who bought day one, tell me I’m wrong and the hype is warranted. Just curious.

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LandedGentry@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
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- v4ld1z@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  It’s so sad to see. I’ve spent way more time listening to the soundtrack than playing, I’ve listened to it working out, I’ve listened to it at work, I listen to it when commuting - his work is just amazing. All that lost because a higher-up fucked up and didn’t care enough to mend the relationship. Whilst straight up lying about the events of what really happened on reddit, of all places.
  
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  - LandedGentry@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
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- Suck_on_my_Presence@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Can you elaborate? I wasn’t aware of this.
  
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  - LandedGentry@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
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- ICastFist@programming.dev ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  His GDC presentation on how his work happened is an excellent watch
  
  Doom: Behind the Music, GDC 2017 www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4FNBMZsqrY
  
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MolecularCactus1324@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I feel the same. The atmosphere is decidedly less doom-like in my view and I’m a little skeptical of these new gameplay mechanics. Riding flying dragons? I’m also not a fan of the way Marty Stratton handled the situation with Mick Gordon. I bought Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal on launch. I will not buy this game until it is bargain bin prices.

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vikingtons@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
2016 had the perfect balance between story and gameplay to me, in that the player character expressed flagrant disregard for any narrative elements. This was doom 1 af.

Just keep moving and turn the bad guys into chunks. Need nothing more.

I fucking hated the loop in eternal. I get that the developers wanted you to play in a specific way, they partially achieved this through arbitrary mechanics like ammo scarcity. I can appreciate that it’s a good game, but I didn’t get on with it.

The art style went full Hollywood horror, and the exposition was kinda dialed up to eleven by contrast to its direct predecessor. Very much disliked that you couldn’t crouch (definitely more of a me issue, though I think sliding is a missed opportunity in Eternal’s movement repertoire).

2016’s PvP was imperfect but still fun and much appreciated. Snapmap was super underrated and has many sick community made levels.

The later games are a phenomenal technical showcase; the absolute posterchild for the Vulkan gfx API, but it’s not very ‘doom’ in spirit to me any more

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- Poopfeast420@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  
  the player character expressed flagrant disregard for any narrative elements
  
  They don’t. Doomguy does like two things in the very beginning, but it’s not like they don’t care, but what Hayden has to say and his justifications for everything that has happened.
  
  You meet Hayden later in his office, with a few minutes unskippable “cutscene,” but it’s not like Doomguy ignores him or jumps out of a window in the middle of it.
  
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  - vikingtons@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    fair enough, it’s still in stark contrast to all of eternal’s exposition, which was pretty hard to watch (the Colosseum scenes especially).
    
    That’s not to say the story isn’t good or interesting,
    
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Poopfeast420@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I’m currently playing the game, got like a handful of levels left. It’s a good game, but with the way the Doom games have evolved and changed over the time, I don’t think you can really say “if you like that Doom, you’ll like this Doom.”

I definitely enjoy the gameplay of Eternal more, but Dark Ages is really good.

The feel of running around is great. You sound massive, your jumps create shockwaves and kill enemies. If you’ve played Boltgun, it’s like that.

The shield is feels great. The charge is awesome, just like the Meathook was in Eternal to get right next to your enemy, and fodder demons just explode on impact.

Parries feel good, but are extremely easy. The timing is super forgiving and the range is massive.

I think a big thing, that not many people are talking about, are the difficulty sliders. You can change so many things, but ID just ignores 90% of them with their presets. You can change so much stuff, and make it feel like a completely different game. Crank up the game speed and just zoom around. Increase your and the enemies damage, so it’s all about dodging, or you get one-shot. Make the projectiles slow, but a lot more deadly.

There’s still some ammo management, but it’s not like Eternal, not even like 2016. Your melee attack, that you can use for the execute drops ammo, just like the Chainsaw, but you’re using it regularly anyway. Some guns also have upgrades that shooting demons with it also drops ammo for the weapon.

The game is a lot more story heavy, but just like in Eternal you can just skip it and not read the Codex entries.

The mech stuff is alright, but pretty basic, but also really short segments. The dragon is cool in theory, but I really hate these parts, and they just drag on for far too long. Flying around just isn’t fun.

Weapons are pretty good, and I have some favorites. The normal Combat Shotgun with upgrades is great this time and not just outshined by the Super Shotgun immediately. That Ball-on-a-Chain gun is also really nice, with some cool upgrades. Because you don’t really have any ammo issues if you use the melee regularly, I’ve just used one gun for long stretches of time, because there’s just no reason real reason to switch, and you can just use what you want.

The devs always said in Dark Ages you’re like a tank, but with default settings on Nightmare difficulty, you’re made out of paper. Projectiles are extremely dangerous, and enemies like to spawn behind you and shoot you in the back. The game is actually not great on telling you where you’re getting attacked from, and there’s just always tons of enemies around and some deaths can be kinda frustrating.

Then there are also some minor UI/UX issues. You get small icons in the middle for your melee charges, but they don’t show the progress like in Eternal with the Blood Punch. There’s no dedicated Map button, just open your Dossier, which remembers your last screen, which is annoying, because you want that map 99% of the time. Sprinting has this terrible vignette effect around your screen, and you want to sprint all the time, but you can only disable all screen effects, which includes some stuff I’d like to see.

For some dumb reason, the Fast Travel option, at the end of a level has been removed, so if you miss a secret, you’ll have to play the level again. There’s also tons of points-of-no-return, so you’ll have to stare at the map constantly, to make sure you haven’t missed anything, which makes the lack of a map button so terrible.

After I’m done with my Nightmare run, I want to do another one, where I play around with the sliders a bit. I want to turn up the game speed, but will probably lower the damage and projectile speed to compensate.

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- Paradox@lemdro.id ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Fwiw it shows the charge % to the next pip down next to the ammo counter
  
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  - Poopfeast420@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Yes, but it would still be nice to have in the middle.
    
    I went back to check in Eternal, and I was wrong about that game showing the progress on the icons in the middle of the screen. Just like Dark Ages it just shows charges that are ready to use, and the progress in the full HUD on the edges of the screen. Seems like I just need to get good and do the same thing I did in Eternal.
    
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Zikeji@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
The gameplay looks fine. It looks like a Doom game. But I won’t buy a game with DRM, so I won’t be buying it until that gets removed (at earliest).

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- shittydwarf@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Yeah I would have bought it at launch if it weren’t bundled with denuovo, which is now locking out users on linux
  
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Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
It’s a great game but it runs like ass and uses Denuvo so I can’t recommend it.

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- Hazzard@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Dude, what are you on about? Sure, it’s not as easy to run at 300 FPS, but it’s a new boundary pushing game and for what it’s doing it runs astoundingly well.
  
  Absolutely gorgeous, and must rely on black magic because even DF reports it never has any stutter, traversal or shader, despite having massive levels with ridiculous fidelity and not even having a shader compilation step. Hell, I can’t even understand how they got Denuvo to not introduce stutter.
  
  Not to mention it’s somehow fairly light on the CPU despite huge enemy counts with good AI, raytracing, the best destruction physics I’ve seen in ages, and the streaming demands of massive levels. I’m completely GPU limited with a decent CPU and a 7900XTX.
  
  Hell, it even hits 60 on consoles while doing all of this, the game’s performance is witchcraft. Eager to see the path tracing and how far we’ll be able to push this game a decade from now, like how I can run Eternal at native 4K/120 now.
  
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  - Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The fun thing about PC is everyone is using different hardware.
    
    I dunno what DF is but I assume they’re running Nvidia cards on Windows, in which case you probably won’t have a problem.
    
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- PlasticExistence@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Same reason I still haven’t played Black Myth Wukong
  
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simple@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Yes, it’s very fun. I’m not sure why you’re so pessimistic on it, it’s another good DOOM game. I’m not too far in it yet but first impressions is that it’s closer to Doom 2016 than Eternal, there isn’t much platforming or acrobatics.

The only thing I’m not sold on is the story. They added a lot of story and cutscenes. I have no idea what’s going on honestly. Feels a lot like they added too much Warhammer 40k to the Doom franchise.

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- Yawweee877h444@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Thanks. Glad to hear this. I’ll definitely be buying it, just depends how long I can wait.
  
  not sold on is the story
  
  This was how I felt about eternal. The lore was overdone, didn’t have the doom “feel”. 2016 had simpler lore, very well done, that kept with what I felt the doom theme feels like.
  
  That being said if the gameplay is fun, that’s what’s important.
  
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- wintermute@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Not talking about any reviewer in particular, but in general, even if they are not payed, they get the game for free and usually have affiliate links to buy the game, so there’s at least a couple of incentives to do a better review.
  Again, not accusing anyone, but the potential for bias/conflict of interest is something to keep in mind when watching those types of reviews.
  
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pdqcp@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
If anything has Denuvo, I’ll skip it

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zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I like both the previous games better. I miss executions, limited melee ammo feels awful, and the guns (at least first 3 i found so far) aren’t very satisfying. I won’t be continuing to play, game pass has had a killer month and if I want to keep playing doom I’ll go back to 2016 or eternal

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Jax@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Disclaimer: I’ve beaten every modern doom on nightmare.

This doom game is such a departure from the doom series that it is just a bad game.

The game can be beaten with a single gun and parry. Every single time I ‘struggled’ it was because I was playing the game to have fun (silly me) and wasn’t spamming shield. Every single encounter ended almost immediately once parry spam was activated.

The final boss literally did not touch me. This game was a really really bad joke.

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SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

Are people getting paid to hype games

Are you kidding? This has been a growing issue since the 00s. Even back when Total Biscuit was still alive (rip), he was fighting it with tooth and nail. Microsoft and some other companies have AGGRESSIVELY attacked consumers and now, it’s entirely broken in almost every industry.

Finding real reviews on things is INSANELY difficult to find, not only because influencers are all heavily biased and censored or even blacklisted when they aren’t positive, but most normal people couldn’t give a decent review if they tried. Hype is everywhere, and colors everything.

TB called it years ago: the trick is to find a journalist that you know what they like, dislike, and are honest and with integrity, able to be brutal and fair, but have ethics and a strong sense of responsibility to the future of gaming. This requires a uniquely difficult and rare combination of intelligence, novel ideas, and sound judgement, along with consistency. And production, a refreshing articulation, and some brevity doesn’t hurt.

Find that source and support them, and help them grow. Get to know their tastes, and they should serve us all well.

But, until that person who can unite gamers appears again, and holds those important and knowledgeable discussions… Influencers will be just that: influencers - not journalists. And be unreliable shills.

Honestly I’ve thought about doing it more than once, but fear and risk of the wrath of sensitive gamers and corporate hr entities angry for me shitting on their games and decisions and suing me is a real thing. I could be a gaming journalist, one that gives my all and tries to serve the good of gamers and the future of society to the best of my ability. But I also seriously doubt anybody would want to listen to me.

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- ICastFist@programming.dev ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  But, until that person who can unite gamers appears again, and holds those important and knowledgeable discussions… Influencers will be just that: influencers - not journalists. And be unreliable shills.
  
  Given past events, the more likely outcome is yet another gamergate, where actual criticism of the lack of honesty in games reporting gets drowned in a sea of misogyny, personal attacks and hate based on disinformation
  
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PhAzE@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’m playing it right now, and ots actually a lot of fun. Exploration feels fun still like doom 2016 and Eternal, and you have different murder mechanics to choose from in the midst of a hundred enemies. I’d say the reviews are right.

Now, that being said, I think i still like 2016 better, but they both have a very different feel from each other.

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Paradox@lemdro.id ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Tbh it’s more like quake 1 than Doom

Which isn’t a bad thing, but I think everyone would have been perfectly happy with just Doom: Eternal 2

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- redhorsejacket@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Idk about that, I heard a fair number of folks who were less enthused with Eternal vs 2016. The general sentiment among those folks was that Eternal skewed too far into “combat puzzle” territory, where encounters felt like they had prescribed “solutions” that you needed to perform to succeed reliably. This iteration being less about resource management and high speed encounter flow seems to be a reaction to those critiques.
  
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  - Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    
    The general sentiment among those folks was that Eternal skewed too far into “combat puzzle” territory, where encounters felt like they had prescribed “solutions” that you needed to perform to succeed reliably.
    
    Nailed it, that was exactly my problem with Eternal.
    
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  - ICastFist@programming.dev ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Doom 2016 wasn’t exactly generous with ammo limits, but Eternal was a chore. Here’s 20 enemies, 6 of them are cacodemons that will only die if you lob a shotgun grenade at their mouth. You have 12 shotgun and 50 plasma bullets, the latter enough to kill 1 caco.
    
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MyDarkestTimeline01@ani.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I’m having a blast with it. It’s a break from the design ethos that was Doom Eternal. So if you’re looking for more Eternal you’ll be disappointed. This one wants you to play significantly more aggressively.

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Pnut@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Did you play the 2016 one or eternal? My first ever game was the first doom. Doom 3 is a great game but it just wasn’t really doom. Getting into the lore was cool though. A roommate forced me to try doom 2016 and it immediately brought back the memories and feelings, they also use and continue the lore in a non invasive way. I haven’t yet played dark ages but the modern ones are very much the successor to the originals.

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RageAgainstTheRich@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I honestly think its really damn good. I love using the shield. It just feels amazing.

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workerONE@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’m loving Doom Dark ages, I’m on about level 8 out of 22. I like that there’s enough room in levels to move around. The weapons are extremely effective and your toolkit is reduced so you have shield-block shield-slam shield-throw melee and then guns. It’s pretty easy to remember everything you have and then select an appropriate attack for the situation. Weapons and melee are very effective. I really love it. Hopefully there aren’t any more Mech-pilot missions because that one sucked. The dragon wasn’t my favorite either but you can make it through without much difficulty and it didn’t take forever. Movement is awesome, you can just run everywhere.

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Renacles@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I absolutely love Doom Eternal, it’s my favorite shooter of all time by a landslide.

Dark Ages still hasn’t sold me, parries are the last thing I ever wanted from a Doom game and they seem to be the game’s main focus.

I can respect Id Software for trying new things with every game, but taking away movement and focusing on parry mechanics isn’t really innovative to me.

The 80 euro price tag doesn’t help, there is no way in hell I’m paying that much for a game.

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- toynbee@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  This is basically LGR’s review summarized.
  
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  - Renacles@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I haven’t watched it, I guess we just feel the same about the game.
    
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contactecho@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Your opinion is going to depend on what you’re looking for in a doom game. It isn’t quite like DOOM 2016. It’s less like DOOM eternal. No dashes, less aerial combat, and less of the rock paper scissors gameplay.

It’s geared more towards “stand and fight” gameplay. It’s still run and gun, but more about parrying and staying in the enemy’s face. The shield has interesting play associated with that.

If the atmosphere is what you’re looking for, it actually is closer to Eternal. You’re present for the fall of a planet, so the atmosphere is functionally the same.

If you are for the lore, it is lore rich and rather engaging.

All that said, if you can wait for a sale, go for it. It feels like a DOOM game, but it’s not what everybody expects in a DOOM game.

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- Jax@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  It feels like a doom movie. I was genuinely excited for the cutscenes because I thought something actually cool would happen, only to get sucked into to yet another railroad dragon section, even worse railroad mech section, or mission filled with ‘kill enemies to break shields’.
  
  Idk, the ‘stand and fight’ gameplay stopped being fun when I realized that 80% of the guns were just functionally worthless and parry spam + impaler would solve all, not some, all of my problems. For 20 hours.
  
  I’m just gonna go back to playing Eternal if I want DOOM. ID fucked up DOOM 3, again (IMO).
  
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  - Poopfeast420@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    
    80% of the guns were just functionally worthless and parry spam + impaler would solve all, not some, all of my problems
    
    That’s kinda all guns. Seems like ID wanted to please all those people who said they hate the “forced” weapon switching in Eternal and just made everything strong against anything.
    
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zecg@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Looks like complete ass, deflect the green is the stupidest idea in gaming in a long time and those dragon segments are just an insult. Also, I’m happy Bethesda saved time and CPU cycles not baking lighting, but it got offloaded to gamers’ computers for dubious benefit. I have eyes, I see how 2016 and Eternal look, please tell me how much of a graphic improvement the endless glitching fields of darkness are. I wouldn’t buy a game for more than 15€ if it’s top notch (patient gamer here), but I don’t see myself playing this ever, it just evokes a sadness. The story of Eternal (the only game of the recent trilogy I actually liked) was a huge Marvel-caliber turd and I skipped every cutscene, so I’m not expecting anything in that department.

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Goretantath@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Can’t wait for that one modder who makes games look like shit to disable the raytracing.

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OTINOKTYAH@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
OT: Funny thing, everytime i see the “New” Doomslayer i have the game “Witchhaven” in my mind…

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andybytes@programming.dev ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Exponential feedback loops on a road to nowhere on tracks coming to an end. We are running off of fumes and experiencing high rates of enshitification. The Devil’s in the details and by God I love the Devil. Given that I own a lot of my own games, I have a wide collection that I could probably diddle with until I die. So I don’t know, I feel like the golden age of gaming is over. I don’t want to be a kermudgeon and hurt the feelings of kids, but it’s over. I mean, maybe they can improve graphics, but who cares at that point? I mean, I’m not gonna subscribe to shit. I don’t care what you dangle in front of me. I mean, I’m not in to prostitutes, and I don’t want to smell your farts, so… Yeah. That’s that. The ride is over. song, *It’s Closing Time playing in the background…

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_spiffy@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’m loving it. But most of the people I talk to were put off by eternal. It’s more of that Soni can get people not picking it up for it’s very expensive cost currently.

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- HuskerNation@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Once I got adjusted to the difficulty of eternal I fell in love with it. Still feel like the music is disjointed.
  
  Music in dark ages just sucks
  
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  - teslasaur@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The music is the best part of both games.
    
    That says something, since both games are the best shooters over the last 10 years.
    
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