https://www.thegameawards.com/nominees/best-independent-game

Balatro (Winner)
Animal Well
Neva
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes
UFO 50

I got my Xbox Series to play Fable. It also doubles as an extra Halo machine for Lan parties. But it was really for Fable.

Still waiting, but it’s supposed to finally come out next year I believe.

I was on board with PS5 immediately with Ratchet & Clank and I’ve been pretty happy with it.

I have a 3000 series that had a broken screen. I fixed the screen, but now it won’t hold a charge. I bet this would be a good solution for it.

So this thing works on 1000 and 2000 series PSPs too? That’s awesome.

Do you mean that Sackboy was relatively grounded compared to Astrobot or are thinking of Little Big Planet?

Either way, it sounds like I need to play Astrobot.

How does it compare to something like Sackboy?

Damn, is this game that good?

I kind of love the early game. If I see a particularly difficult room, usually it’s a treasure room and you can back out or take the challenge. The two real objectives are get gold or kill a boss.

RL2 feels a lot bigger and more dependent on longer marathon runs and more strategic builds. For me it’s still a lot of fun, but not nearly the same cozy feel. Plus there are other challenges that seem mandatory for progression. Having said that, I have not touched the difficulty sliders.

I love Clive and they did a phenomenal job capturing his fighting and abilities. But Tekken is the weirdest fighting game to include him in.

I’m going to give a possibly controversial opinion. But my favorite casual game to play is Rogue Legacy.

If you accept that you know you’ll die a lot, it’s a lot less stressful. Outside of that, it’s extremely player friendly. It’s not too complicated. There’s progression. You have runs that end and give you a place to stop. You can turn it off anytime without needing to worry too much about losing progress. It has platforming.

Holy crap, I thought you were joking. Yeah, it’s Among Us.

Fine, I’ll play them.

Best one? Final Fantasy X

Best one not listed? inFamous 2

Was that big in Japan?

I like the old Arc the Lad games and I always forget that Japan just loves them.

I played through the Final Fantasy VIII Remaster on Switch recently. And there are some major slowdowns. Especially when there is FMV spliced into a play area. There’s a section of Ultimecia’s Castle which is particularly bad.

Consoles are just a consistent standard. Developers know what they’re developing for, they know their constraints, customers know all the games will play on it, it will look good on a standard TV, they know the games will play well with their controller, they know the digital store, etc, etc, etc.

Everything is standardized, everything works.

That’s ignoring the console support for exclusives, which Xbox has severely fallen behind on compared to the others.

I love the Morrowind recommendation. Also, unlikely suggestion, but I had to get a pen and paper for The Great Crystal dungeon on Final Fantasy XII.

From the sound of it, it will just use PS5 OS. So probably not. But every system after PS1 other than the PS4 has had some sort of backwards compatibility.

If it’s backwards compatible with PSP, Vita, PS1, then I’m down. Otherwise, meh.

Considering the controversial mechanics and the protagonist with trust issues, that opinion is pretty opposite of what I expect to hear generally speaking.

I love the mechanics too. But I found the cast to be pretty relatable either for myself or for people I deal with. I thought the story, particularly Squall’s evolution and internal conflict, to be fascinating and cause for self reflection.

In 7, Tifa and Aerith and interesting. Both anesthetics that are polar opposites of their personalities, and story appropriate too. Aerith in particular giving off major “preacher’s daughter” vibes. But outside of those two, I can’t imagine being able to identify with a single other cast member. I didn’t particularly like the story either after Cosmo Canyon.