2026 VIDEO GAMES CATCH ALL THREAD

[Dragon]

 

[RIPPA]

In my attempt to work through my backlog of games I actually own - I decided me next game will be Marvel's Spider-Man 2

Assuming the fucker ever actually finishes downloading

[JLSigman]

On 3/19/2026 at 6:33 PM, JLSigman said:

Steam's spring sale is on, and I picked up Divinity: Original Sin (Enhanced Edition) for cheap. Interesting that you actually play as two separate people. It's very pretty but the camera is occasionally annoying as hell (haven't figured out why it randomly stop following you). 

This one definitely needs a guide, as I am all over the place with the main quest so bad that even the main guy is like, "Hey, you REALLY need to finish up this first quest before you do anything else" and I have no idea how to advance it. 

[JLSigman]

As someone downthread points out, epic profited over 1.6 billion US dollars last year, which would've paid these 1000 salaries about a million times over.

[Casey]

They also just raised prices on V-Bucks not even a week ago (and reduced the amount you get)

[RIPPA]

Buried in that story are that they are shutdown Rocket Racing, Festival Battle Stage, and Ballistic modes in Fortnite

No idea what any of that means beyond them repeatedly saying that "Fortnite didn't perform as well as expected in 2025"

So we continue to beat the dead horse of what's the good of a billion and half dollars if you were expected to make two billion

[Zimbra]

On 3/22/2026 at 12:45 PM, RIPPA said:

In my attempt to work through my backlog of games I actually own - I decided me next game will be Marvel's Spider-Man 2

Assuming the fucker ever actually finishes downloading

I'm also playing this to get it off my backlog.

I had to turn the difficulty down to Dumb Baby because somehow I keep getting worse at videogames.

[RIPPA]

If I hadn't played Miles Morales kinda sorta recently - this would be a lot worse for me

That being said I clearly know I am in my old man phase because I am yet again reminded that I am not the biggest fan of changing protagonists

[SirSmUgly]

I gave up on Outer Worlds 2 a while ago. Obsidian mistakenly thought HEY THE MOON GUY IS BELOVED, LET'S JUST HIGHLIGHT HIM IN THIS MEDIOCRE SEQUEL TO OUR PROMISING INITIAL ATTEMPT AT THIS SERIES. First of all, Parvati is beloved, not Spacer's/Auntie's Choice Moon Guy. Second of all, the narrow character building options combined with bullet sponge enemies is real shitty, man. I'm also done with the mediocre satire and snark in this series. In conclusion: Fuck this game. 

I haven't re-engaged with Red Dead Redemption 2 yet, but I think that's where I'm headed. I was in the process of finding rare flowers about five or six months back when I put it down for Hades 2, so it's back to opening the first of what will eventually be a small handful of IGN guides on collecting various things in this game. I've got all the carvings, dreamcatchers, and cigarette cards by now. I've finished all the treasure maps, I think? Whatever could be done before the post game, I've pretty much done it except for this flower-gathering stuff. It'll be an easy way back into the particular controls. 

Speaking of Hades 2, I still play it a surprising amount. A run takes only about 25 minutes, so I'll make them whenever I get some space to actually sit down and do something that I want to do rather than work. I unlocked literally everything in the game except for the meaningless levels that you can get just so that you can have something to spend all of your "get stuff" points on. 

I want the NES games in the Animal Crossing add-on (YEAH, LOVE TESTER), but I don't want to engage with making hotel rooms or crafting shit to get them. Dammit.

Balatro is the game that I sort of hate the most while I'm playing it at this point but that I also refuse to stop playing. I re-engaged with it last weekend after some time away from it, and I can't even call it an experience that I bedgrudged, which is weird considering that I complained about every shitty Joker draw I got and every worthless Buffoon Pack or Arcana Pack I opened. I should decide not to bother touching it until the long-awaited update comes out, but also, I'm thinking of grabbing it on Switch the next time it's on sale and unlocking all the cards again. Shit, man.

Finally, I've been playing Virtual Boy when and where I can - far less than I have wanted to - but I've had a ton of fun with it. I'm doing a second run of Wario Land VB before I go ahead and do the second game experience with all the extra spiky balls to make it more challenging. Mario Clash is a fantastic game, but I wish that I had the Virtual Boy controller to play it. As with Teleroboxer, it's better with two pads than a pad and a stick. Mario's Tennis, as I mentioned earlier, has a truly great OST. I love the art direction, too. There's something charming about a few flying Buzzy Beetles floating by while you're up 5-2, 30-Love on Toad and trying to put the court-diving little bastard away. 

There isn't anything in the big budget space coming out this year besides Wolverine and GTA VI that interests me (I was interested in Pokopia, but I'm not paying seventy American dollars for a Game Key Card or a digital download, so yeah). Hopefully Nintendo drops a new 3D Mario on us or something, but otherwise, I'm hoping that the mid-budget and indie games pick up the slack for most of this year. 

Also, you know what game is still sick? Street Fighter Alpha 3. Base game, Upper, Max: They're all great.

[tbarrie]

11 minutes ago, SirSmUgly said:

I gave up on Outer Worlds 2 a while ago. Obsidian mistakenly thought HEY THE MOON GUY IS BELOVED, LET'S JUST HIGHLIGHT HIM IN THIS MEDIOCRE SEQUEL TO OUR PROMISING INITIAL ATTEMPT AT THIS SERIES. First of all, Parvati is beloved, not Spacer's/Auntie's Choice Moon Guy.

I wouldn't say they highlighted Moon Man that much, despite his presence at the main menu. But yeah, my biggest problem with the sequel is that none of the companions are as awesome as Parvati. Or any of the companions from the original game, frankly.

11 minutes ago, SirSmUgly said:

Second of all, the narrow character building options combined with bullet sponge enemies is real shitty, man.

How recently was "a while ago"? As I recall they patched the game to give you more skill points per level. I don't think I've fired it up since that patch, though, so I don't know how much difference that made.

Bullet sponge enemies don't really bother me. The way I see it, real-time combat in a CRPG is always just filler to keep you from blowing through the good parts too quickly. If it happens to be fun, bonus, but you usually can't expect it to be.

11 minutes ago, SirSmUgly said:

I haven't re-engaged with Red Dead Redemption 2 yet, but I think that's where I'm headed.

What are your thoughts on RDRedemption 2 in general? I bounced off of RDRedemption 1 pretty quickly, because while I knew it wasn't marketed as an RPG, I was unprepared for just how not-an-RPG it was. Does the sequel give you more control over your character?

[odessasteps]

I liked the old lady assassin, whose name escapes me. And eventually the Judge Dredd guy with the hammer, but not as much. Didnt like graft lady all that much. Liked the HERBIE style robot. 

[Contentious C]

13 hours ago, JLSigman said:

As someone downthread points out, epic profited over 1.6 billion US dollars last year, which would've paid these 1000 salaries about a million times over.

1000 times 1M is 1B, so that math doesn't math. 

But yeah, if they were all averaging 100k a year, then they could have kept them all on for another TEN YEARS at that salary just from this year's profits, still turned a nearly $600M profit for FY2025, and still had time to let them go later if they couldn't afford it.  Later being TEN YEARS FROM NOW.

This might be the kind of perspective you were going for.

[SirSmUgly]

16 hours ago, tbarrie said:

I wouldn't say they highlighted Moon Man that much, despite his presence at the main menu. But yeah, my biggest problem with the sequel is that none of the companions are as awesome as Parvati. Or any of the companions from the original game, frankly.

For sure, you're right about that. I'm more referring to Moon Man as the mascot of the series.. He's on the cover. He's there on the main menu being snarky every time you boot up. The cover of the first game had Ellie on it, which is a much better choice. Give me party members and an action shot. I really complain about Moon Man because he's a sign that the developers thought that they really had something there conceptually. They didn't. 

Quote

How recently was "a while ago"? As I recall they patched the game to give you more skill points per level. I don't think I've fired it up since that patch, though, so I don't know how much difference that made.

I downloaded the patch, but I probably had to start a whole new file, and I'm not droning my way through the first planet again to experience the game as properly balanced. 

Quote

Bullet sponge enemies don't really bother me. The way I see it, real-time combat in a CRPG is always just filler to keep you from blowing through the good parts too quickly. If it happens to be fun, bonus, but you usually can't expect it to be.

I definitely see this point. I think I feel that way when playing those old isometric CRPGs, but in a modern CRPG, I feel that Fallout 3 (for all its faults) changed the game with VATS. I want my combat to be at least somewhat engaging and somewhat less bullet-spongy. I don't think the slow-down bullet time stuff in the first game was a particularly good replacement for VATS, and even then, it seemed even less essential in this sequel as a mechanic. 

Quote

What are your thoughts on RDRedemption 2 in general? I bounced off of RDRedemption 1 pretty quickly, because while I knew it wasn't marketed as an RPG, I was unprepared for just how not-an-RPG it was. Does the sequel give you more control over your character?

I dearly love both of those games, but they're not RPGs, and I don't want them to be RPGs. I play them for story, exploration, because I love Westerns that critique the mythos of the West, and because RDR2 in general is possibly the greatest collectathon ever made. 

[tbarrie]

2 minutes ago, SirSmUgly said:

I downloaded the patch, but I probably had to start a whole new file, and I'm not droning my way through the first planet again to experience the game as properly balanced. 

As it happens, I misremembered what the patch did. It didn't give you more skill points per level; it reduced the difficulty of a bunch of skill checks, making a less specialized build more viable.

3 minutes ago, SirSmUgly said:

I definitely see this point. I think I feel that way when playing those old isometric CRPGs, but in a modern CRPG, I feel that Fallout 3 (for all its faults) changed the game with VATS. I want my combat to be at least somewhat engaging and somewhat less bullet-spongy. I don't think the slow-down bullet time stuff in the first game was a particularly good replacement for VATS, and even then, it seemed even less essential in this sequel as a mechanic.

Yeah, but the old isometric CRPGs frequently had turn-based combat, which is inherently more interesting and engaging than real-time combat.

I didn't use Tactical Time Dilation much in the first Outer Worlds, and it bugged me a little that I was probably less effective because I couldn't be bothered. So I rather liked the way the sequel gave you a variety of gadgets you could spend your energy on. Made it feel like I wasn't being pushed towards using TTD so much.

[SirSmUgly]

2 minutes ago, tbarrie said:

Yeah, but the old isometric CRPGs frequently had turn-based combat, which is inherently more interesting and engaging than real-time combat.

 

I can't get there with you on this one. I think they're differently interesting and engaging (and of course highly dependent upon the contexts of the games that they are in). 

[Cliff Hanger]

My hotel in Manhattan is next to a arcade (called, simply, "Barcade.") Their collection is small but really intetesting; I hadn't seen a working Time Traveler or a Discs of Tron that hadn't been cut in half1 this century, and they have things I only ever saw in magazines from the Golden Age (Anteater, Mr. Do's Castle, a Wacko in the original weird-ass cabinet.) Solid beer list too, I'm planning to go back before I leave on Friday.

[supremebve]

Pokémon Pokepia is fucking awesome.  I have never really played a Pokémon game. I'm like a year or two too old to have been caught up in the Pokémon craze.  It doesn't matter. Pokepia is everything you want from a game like this.  It's Animal Crossing, but instead of catching bugs and fish, you are building habitats to catch Pokémon.  The islands are large, you can build damn near anything.  It's the kind of game where you think, "I'll just log in to see if any new Pokémon showed up," and then you realize you've been playing for two hours and need to go to sleep.  I couldn't possibly recommend it more.

Crimson Desert is perhaps the most ambitious game I've ever played, it's trying to do a whole hell of a lot.  I honestly don't know if it succeeds at anything in particular, but somehow it keeps me coming back for more.  The controls are legitimately terrible, especially in the insanely difficult boss fights.  The world feels full and empty at the same time.  You are constantly bumping into people because there is always some activity going on around you, but no one really says anything unless you talk to them.  So, you see a bunch of people milling around, sometimes in large groups, but they're completely silent unless they're talking to you.  Every once in a while, someone will say something unprompted, and you know that they are about to offer you a quest.  It's weird.  The inventory system is awful; you literally have to carry everything.  You cannot store anything anywhere.  I know they're releasing a patch for this, but how do you make a game with this much gear to collect without designing a way to manage it all?  At any point, you need to carry your weapons, armor, a bunch of food, a mask, a bunch of keys, and a shitload of crafting materials.  Every time you get a bounty hunting mission, it comes with a poster that just sits in your inventory, taking up space.  With that said, the way to expand your inventory is to do side quests.  I don't know if this will last the entire game, but you generally get three additional inventory slots per side quest.  It's something that keeps you motivated to keep going and see what's around the next corner.  I'm only about 8 hours in, I've only been in the starting area, and the game frustrates me to no end, but I'm excited to keep playing.  

[dogwelder]

Well this will surely piss off a lot of people:

Nintendo Will Charge More For Physical Games Starting With New Yoshi

Quote

Nintendo has announced that it will begin charging different prices for its digital and physical Switch 2 exclusive games starting with Yoshi and the Mysterious Book.

“Nintendo games offer the same experiences whether in packaged or digital format, and this change simply reflects the different costs associated with producing and distributing each format and offers players more choice in how they can buy and play Nintendo games,” the announcement reads.

 

[supremebve]

1 minute ago, dogwelder said:

Well this will surely piss off a lot of people:

Nintendo Will Charge More For Physical Games Starting With New Yoshi

 

I have to say, this is a long time coming.  There should be a price difference between digital and hard copies.  The problem is going to be that they are going to raise the price on hard copies, but not lower prices of digital copies.  

[odessasteps]

2 hours ago, supremebve said:

I have to say, this is a long time coming.  There should be a price difference between digital and hard copies.  The problem is going to be that they are going to raise the price on hard copies, but not lower prices of digital copies.  

Yeah, this. Same with books, comics in particular. Digital comics were kept the same price to try and help LCS not lose customers. 

Edited March 25 by odessasteps

[Casey]

8 hours ago, supremebve said:

Crimson Desert is perhaps the most ambitious game I've ever played, it's trying to do a whole hell of a lot.  I honestly don't know if it succeeds at anything in particular, but somehow it keeps me coming back for more.  The controls are legitimately terrible, especially in the insanely difficult boss fights.  The world feels full and empty at the same time.  You are constantly bumping into people because there is always some activity going on around you, but no one really says anything unless you talk to them.  So, you see a bunch of people milling around, sometimes in large groups, but they're completely silent unless they're talking to you.  Every once in a while, someone will say something unprompted, and you know that they are about to offer you a quest.  It's weird.  The inventory system is awful; you literally have to carry everything.  You cannot store anything anywhere.  I know they're releasing a patch for this, but how do you make a game with this much gear to collect without designing a way to manage it all?  At any point, you need to carry your weapons, armor, a bunch of food, a mask, a bunch of keys, and a shitload of crafting materials.  Every time you get a bounty hunting mission, it comes with a poster that just sits in your inventory, taking up space.  With that said, the way to expand your inventory is to do side quests.  I don't know if this will last the entire game, but you generally get three additional inventory slots per side quest.  It's something that keeps you motivated to keep going and see what's around the next corner.  I'm only about 8 hours in, I've only been in the starting area, and the game frustrates me to no end, but I'm excited to keep playing.  

Vendors also have items that expand your inventory slots (usually just by one).

The patch that has the storage released a few days ago, but I believe you need to unlock the camp in Chapter 3 (also, there's a house in that camp area that's yours that the game doesn't even reference lol)

[dogwelder]

Sony raising the prices of all its hardware:

Quote

With continued pressures in the global economic landscape, we’ve made the decision to increase the prices of PS5, PS5 Pro, and PlayStation Portal remote player globally. We know that price changes impact our community, and after careful evaluation, we found this was a necessary step to ensure we can continue delivering innovative, high-quality gaming experiences to players worldwide.

The updated recommended retail prices for PS5 consoles are effective starting April 2, 2026 as follows. For all other territories, please check with your local retailer or direct.playstation.com where it is available.

U.S.

• PS5 – $649.99 
• PS5 Digital Edition – $599.99 
• PS5 Pro – $899.99

U.K.

• PS5 – £569.99 
• PS5 Digital Edition – £519.99 
• PS5 Pro – £789.99

Europe

• PS5 – €649.99 
• PS5 Digital Edition – €599.99 
• PS5 Pro – €899.99

Japan

• PS5 – ¥97,980 
• PS5 Digital Edition – ¥89,980 
• PS5 Pro – ¥137,980

The updated recommended retail price for PlayStation Portal remote player is effective starting April 2 as follows. For all other territories, please check with your local retailer or direct.playstation.com where it is available.

• U.S. – $249.99
• U.K. – £219.99
• Europe – €249.99
• Japan – ¥39,980

 

[SirSmUgly]

Whew, going forward the strat will be to subsidize the pricing of a new console at launch and for the first couple years, grow enough of a base that you can lock into your storefront/subs/MTX, and then raise the price for the stragglers. 

Wild times!

[Casey]

I originally bought a gaming laptop because of the absurd price at launch of the PS5 Pro. Now they’ve raised it, so I’m pretty happy with my decision. Plus I’m sure every single PS6 game will also launch on PS5 until like 5 years into its lifespan.

I think going forward I’ll just be a PC guy until a 4070 becomes obsolete.

[odessasteps]

I only use my PS5 for exclusives (and MLB the show, since it’s not on PC). Everything else, I use Game Pass, either on my Xbox One or PC. The only thing I’ve bought on Steam in a long while is my online pal Tom’s game Carpoon.