The 2026 Game Thread: You Will Own Nothing and Be Happy Edition

GodisanAtheist

GodisanAtheist

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It's that time of year folks, pick 12 games from your existing game library to download, install, and play this year.

They're all just licenses that publishers can *yoink* away at any time so might as well enjoy them.

And don't give me none of that GOG lip, they just got sold and who knows how long they'll be around for (or the quality of their service).

Currently Playing/Completed:

WH40K: DoW2: Retribution (RTS)(Completed)
Psychonauts 2 (Platformer)(Completed)
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty (DLC)(Completed)
Cyberpunk 2077 (FpRPG)(Completed)
Guardians of the Galaxy (TPS)(Currently Playing)

My List of 12:

Doom Eternal (FPS)
Slay The Princess (???)
Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak (RTS)
Ori and the Will of the Wisps (Metroidvania)
Psychonauts 2 (Platformer)
Persona 4 Golden (JRPG)
Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun (TBS)
RoboCop: Rogue City (FPS)
Company of Heroes (RTS)
Hue (Side Scroller)
Greedfall (RPG)
Quantum Break (TPS)
 
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Doubt I can name 12 but on my to do list are

Wow: Midnight
Last of us part II remastered
Dragon age the veilguard

Trying to finish
Doom: the dark ages
Avowed
Baldur's gate 3
and whatever get's added to Borderlands 4
 
Finishing pathfinder wrath of the righteous.

Need to do another attempt at bg3. My attention span keeps getting diverted. (Loke for the above pathfinder game) and I loose track... feels daunting to try and pick it up again from where I left off.
 
Grimlakin said:
Finishing pathfinder wrath of the righteous.

Need to do another attempt at bg3. My attention span keeps getting diverted. (Loke for the above pathfinder game) and I loose track... feels daunting to try and pick it up again from where I left off.
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-Yeah those mondo CRPGs are rough because as soon as you take a break it becomes a chore in and of itself to get back into it and figure out what you were doing.

I loved those games for their value and replayability back when I was a kid, but I much prefer more linear narrative driven games nowadays.
 
Grimlakin said:
Finishing pathfinder wrath of the righteous.

Need to do another attempt at bg3. My attention span keeps getting diverted. (Loke for the above pathfinder game) and I loose track... feels daunting to try and pick it up again from where I left off.
Click to expand...

I've tried numerous times to like P:WotR, but I just can't seem to catch the groove. It's not a bad game, and it has decent enough writing (at least, for the genre - what little I've witnessed), but the underlying story and the direction it takes just doesn't compel my interest enough to get invested in it. I enjoyed Pathfinder: Kingmaker well enough as long as it kept my attention, but it, too, fell by the wayside. I chalk it up to having burned out on CRPGs and having played too many to count since the early Baldur's Gate (Bioware's original) days.
 
I have a hard time getting into most CRPGs as well. Turn by turn game play just feels so slow and I get bored, and if you try to play it in real-time the mechanics are so complex (because they assume you are playing turn by turn) that I can't keep up. Dragon Age did an ok job finding a middle ground, but those have been about the only ones in recent memory that I played through.

I keep wanting to get into BG3 but the combat just keeps me out.
 
Brian_B said:
I have a hard time getting into most CRPGs as well. Turn by turn game play just feels so slow and I get bored, and if you try to play it in real-time the mechanics are so complex (because they assume you are playing turn by turn) that I can't keep up. Dragon Age did an ok job finding a middle ground, but those have been about the only ones in recent memory that I played through.

I keep wanting to get into BG3 but the combat just keeps me out.
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See I've done the free flow combat in Pathfinder WOTR, but I prefer turn by turn to fully exploit capabilities especially of spellcasters. Otherwise they just spam the spell you've selected until they are out then go with whatever weapon they have equipped. Turn by turn feels more like JRPG combat to me and I'm cool with that.
 
Beat the Imperial Guard campaign for DoW2 Retribution.

Fun and easy enough, nothing to write home about. One of those "one size fits all playable factions" type thing which is fine, the Imp Guard campaign seemed to fit into the plot fairly nicely.

I'll leave it installed and at least goof around with a few other factions and definitely play more Last Stand, which is fantastic when it works.
 
Ok, finally started Cyberpunk 2077 (base edition, no PL).


It's. Ok. I guess. It gives me the option to play as a corpo fem boy which is... I mean hey I can so will.


Takes a while to get going, after 4 hours it feels like the plot is actually starting to pick up with the "heist gone wrong" that you can see coming from a mile away.


I watched Edgerunners a while ago and find myself wishing CP2077 followed the same format of street rat finds family, then found family gets eaten alive by NightCity.


The core plot of CP2077 is slow to get going and I deeply suspect it isn't going to be nearly as interesting as it's going to want to be. Maybe it will scratch the itch, but we'll see.


All told it feels like a big step down in the narrative and storytelling department from Witcher 3 at the moment.
 
Alright, Psychonauts 2 is a wrap.

Fun, goofy game overflowing with personality. Was refreshing to play a pretty straightforward platformer again.

While the visuals and production value was fantastic (that M$ money hard at work) and each of the characters minds had a very unique visual style, the level design was overall good but never reached the same highs of the first game (Milkman Conspiracy and Goggolor levels spring to mind).

Unfortunately the fellow interns didn't play as much of a role in this game, and the cast was a bit overstuffed, so characters didn't get the same opportunity to shine.

Great psychology puns abound however.

I'll probably noodle around for a bit longer doing some cheevo hunting before moving on to something else.
 
Ok, two new games to play:

Cyberpunk: Finally getting around to this one and so far I am very... Whelmed. It's not a bad game, and it is slowly growing on me, it just feels like another game I've played before. It's early in the story, but already I'd say that Deus Ex did the whole transhumanism thing really **** well and I'm struggling to see CP2077 do it better.

CDPR also really kneecapped themselves insisting on the whole "it's first person, cannot have third person cutscenes" thing. The Witcher games had such dynamic character interaction during cutscenes thanks to the cinematic framing it used. CP feels like a huge step backwards with its insistence on staying in FP mode at all times.

Also for all the noise about the visuals they're... Ok? Everything but PT is cranked to max (all post processing turned off cause it was like a vaseline smear all over the screen) and the visuals feel kinda all over the place. The lighting is spectacular at night after rain, or in the interior of some poorly lit buildings, but in the middle of the day the game looks very mid. Lots of low poly objects, lighting is remarkably flat, visuals are really cluttered and hodgepodge looking.

A lot to say about the game and I look forward to playing it through, it's getting it's claws in me for sure, but it's not what I expected after the masterpiece that was Witcher 3.

Guardians of the Galaxy (aka we have the MCU GOTG at home): So I had absolutely no expectations for this whatsoever and it's been a very pleasant surprise. It's just a linear narrative driven shooter. Got your standard weapon upgrades, collectibles, etc.

I appreciate that the titular characters have thus far avoided the flanderizarion from the movies. Star Lord is the butt of some jokes, but he's clearly the leader and begrudgingly respected by the team. Drax is definitely on the more literal side and has taken cues from Bautisa's character from the movies, but he's not a complete idiot and is The Destroyer for a reason. Rocket isn't just "Hahaha he's a raccoon and he's ANGRY ALL THE TIME" get it see how funny it is hahahah. And so on.

Game looks good, plays good, promises a straightforward 15-20 hour adventure, has good pacing between action set pieces and narrative downtime, and most importantly is FUN. Much better than I anticipated.
 
Mother of God, I'm like 50 hours into Cyberpunk and there is just more and more game. It's definitely a slow burn, but I'm feeling pretty fully immersed at this point.

The main quests (especially the intro to Phantom Liberty) have been great so far, but the side quests in general are some real gems. Sinnerman was a helluva thing. Even the gigs and CyberPsychos have some panache to them.

Also a good chance to mess around with Optiscaler. FSR4 looked pretty good, but I'd heard CDPR did a crap job with FSR inputs (still some shimmering and weirdness here or there), so Optiscaler to the rescue using DLSS inputs and FSR4 upscaling and frankly it looks fantastic.

At this rate I have no idea how much more game there is. Might be playing this for the next 3 months (which is kinda how Witcher 3 worked out) but I can't say I mind.
 
I have been skipping around. Almost finished with playthroughs of Fallout 4, Red Dead Redemption, Shadow of Mordor. Just started another playthrough of Jedi Survivor, and my first ever playthrough of Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I played the other 2 to completion last year for the first time. It has better graphics than I expected. Mid to late 2010s produced some beautiful games.
 
DAPUNISHER said:
I have been skipping around. Almost finished with playthroughs of Fallout 4, Red Dead Redemption, Shadow of Mordor. Just started another playthrough of Jedi Survivor, and my first ever playthrough of Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I played the other 2 to completion last year for the first time. It has better graphics than I expected. Mid to late 2010s produced some beautiful games.
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-Yeah, raster graphics were really on another level 2016-2020.

When RT started taking off, raster started to look worse as devs put less and less effort into non-RT lighting.
 
Ok so I beat Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty. Ultimately went with freeing Songbird and sending her to the moon over Reed's dead body.

Helluva expansion pack, appreciated how it integrated with the base game seamlessly to the point where you wouldn't even know its an expansion unless the missions weren't coded differently from the base game. CDPR seems to handle this exceptionally well, Witcher 3's expansions were much the same way. Honestly, without PL, it actually feels like the base game wouldn't have enough content for the scale and scope CDPR was promising. I was a little shocked how quickly I was able to get to the "meet Hanako at Embers" point of no return when railroading the main questline.

Each of the Phantom Liberty primary story missions has a lot of variety, fun gagdets, balls to the wall combat, back stabbing, front stabbing, side stabbing. The whole thing.

Dogtown does definitely have more of a "theme park" vibe than the rest of night city, but the game's lore does a good enough job to support why it is that way.

One day I'll do another run of Cyberpunk and make the opposite choices to see how that turns out, but holy hell I'm pushing 100 hours of playtime and there are still tons of gigs and sidequests left to do. I'm maxed level and starting to feel the burnout setting in so I might just hammer out a few quests for achievement purposes then beeline the main game ending, set the game aside for a year, and then come back and do an alt playthrough.
 
GodisanAtheist said:
One day I'll do another run of Cyberpunk and make the opposite choices to see how that turns out, but holy hell I'm pushing 100 hours of playtime and there are still tons of gigs and sidequests left to do. I'm maxed level and starting to feel the burnout setting in so I might just hammer out a few quests for achievement purposes then beeline the main game ending, set the game aside for a year, and then come back and do an alt playthrough.
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That's where game trainers help. No burnout. Just good old plain fun.

Separately, I can't believe there isn't a Boys game yet. Causing mayhem as Homelander would be sweet, sweet fun.
 
Alright. Did the unthinkable. I met Hanako at Embers.

And then I burned Arasaka to the ****in ground with Johnny Silverhand. Ended up with the "Star" ending. Deeply bittersweet. V, alone, doing one last gig that will elevate them to a Night City legend.

Cyberpunk is yet another deeply flawed modern masterpiece. No one does it like CDPR. Superb story telling, a complete understanding of the source material and a mastery in visual storytelling. Initially I was skeptical of the first person perspective, but **** if CDPR didn't pull every trick of out of the proverbial hat to really pull you into the shoes of V and make you give a ****.

I'll still say that from a 10k foot level Witcher 3 is the better game, but Cyberpunk is still an incredible foundation for a new franchise and I can't wait to see what CDPR has in store next. These guys have rocketed to the top of my dev rankings and I hope they can maintain this kind of quality for a few more games until the inevitable min/max of any publicly traded company does them in.

Burn corpo ****.
 
AC Odyssey is aging like the best artsian cheddar. Playing on a 5800X3D 7900XTX combo maxed out on every setting that matters at 4K, with a 90fps frame cap on CachyOS, is a much better experience than when I played it back in 2018-19 with a overclocked 4770K through Ryzen 3600 and RX 580 8GB on windows at 1080. Even the Haswell had 32GB of 2133, the others had 32GB DDR4 3200. I think I used a Vega 56 by the end. Denuvo infection required the 3600 to eliminate any incidence of micro-stutter or other frame pacing issues and it could still slow down when things go bananas. Revisitng older games maxed out is what new hardware is really for? ;) This was peak raster gaming, along with games like RDR2.

Speaking of bananas: I wrote about it BITD, but it is worth revisiting. Being in Athens chock-a-block with NPCs, then getting in a fight with 5 mercenaries (it is GTA5 going medieval on your a$$) , the citizens, and the soldiers, is absolute chaos. With poison, fire, explosions, perfect parry, aggro, and all the other effects being rendered simultaneously, it is still silky smooth on this setup. Keep the fight moving, climb up on a high building or statue, shoot all you different types of arrows, craft more, use your demi-god like powers, loot the corpses as you go, keep the fight moving, run and hide for a minute, assassinate, go HAM again. I've had hour plus fights like that. When you bail and let things cool down. Go sell all the loot to the blacksmith and upgrade gear or the ship.

You can acqurie some serious buffs, and legendary armor sets have the best ones. I am using the OG AC protagonist Ezio Roman armor set as I still have not acquired all of the pieces for some of the other best sets in this playthrough. They give it to you from the start for playing the other AC games. Among some other cool rewards for being a long time player. It is one of my favorite sets because with the right engraving, a timed parry instantly recharges the warrior ability special that is devastating, especially with the spear of Leonidas leveled up. In a big fight I can basically spam it when needed. It interupts any other enemy attacks too.

I think this was the first game that went RPG, and did not use the old combat system`, which is way too easy. Including the Black Flag style ship warfare is addictive. Upgrade the ship and crew, you are going to need them when you are in it with 4 or 5 ships. That is another long time player perk; you have legendary lieutenents and extra skins for your ship and crew. They have specials too, so when boarding an enemy ship, they kick butt. The sea physics with weather is impressive for an 8 year old game.

They give you some interesting special side quest with good stories, but the fetch quests and such are repetitive as is typical to the genre. I have read complaints about the map being too big. If you have a job and young kids that is a legit complaint. Otherwise it will take you a long time to 100% the game.

I will have to see how Valhalla goes, but to this point, it is easily my favorite AC. Black Flag is second, and only suffers from the weaker combat system.
 
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