tldr videogame curation
melbourne, australia

Platform: Google Stadia

This feels like eating McDonalds. It’s tasty and fills you up in the moment, but you hate yourself and are left unsatisfied thereafter. Has some interesting new ideas, but mostly the same old stuff.

A welcome change of design direction for the franchise! Less about assassination & stealth, more about RPG-stuff. That said, it’s still full of bugs, clunky writing/VA and atrocious optimisation.

Great setting & at times fun gameplay, as well as of course… more of the same. Some promising characters, but they prove hard to get attached to. Lots of ideas in here, but none fully committed to.

Probably my least enjoyed of the franchise. Great visuals and world, but overall is strangely paced and often clunky if not completely broken. Sadly full of potential, but typically underwhelming.

I’m not entirely sure why this exists. Seemed kind of intriguing at first, but became painfully laborious almost immediately. Worth a play if you’re obsessed with the franchise, but not otherwise.

A very imperfect and quite buggy, but still worth-playing soulslike. While it lacks polish, it’s very sincere and has some interesting ideas. Bosses are a bit simple/easy. Combat is a bit clunky.

Gorgeous and lovingly crafted. Some of the best-in-class gunplay. Tonnes of content now, even a little overwhelming. Needs work on the new/returning player experience, but fun if you can push through.

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A band of Estonian painters and writers with zero games-industry experience set out to build an RPG, and somehow produced the most beautiful one ever made. Every line of its half-million words is hand-crafted, the whole astonishingly hand-painted city of Revachol aching with the kind of political fury, grief and humour that games rarely reach for and almost never land. It is funny, filthy, devastatingly sad, and more honest about failure and regret than most novels manage. Nothing else has the texture of Disco, and nothing since has come close. Truly an extraordinary game - absolutely a must play.

Obviously gorgeous, and voice acting and music also great. World is large without being empty. Story is solid, if a little repetitive and drawn-out at times. So, so much to do. Remarkably polished.