So, has anyone been playing ARC Raiders?

The QAA podcast did a subscriber-only episode on the game and I checked it out and watched some gameplay videos and am tempted to pick it up at some point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_40X_9vJZrw

Dovira wrote: Thu Nov 13, 2025 6:51 am Trying out Tomb Raider 3 on the remaster.

Looked at the first game a bit as well.

It always fascinates me how something can align so closely with what you remember, while in fact being quite different. The game lets you switch between old and new graphics, and it's only when compared side by side that I actually notice most of the changes, but then they're extremely obvious. At first the only really apparent thing, besides player and NPC models, was drawing distance and sky (compare ex1, ex2), as well as light and shadows (ex1, ex2). But as you can tell from these pictures, there's a lot more going on. The general blockiness of the environments, which is necessary for gameplay, is the biggest tell it's an old game, and even with details being much clearer it all goes together very well. Nothing is intrusive or jarring.

One of my favourite things about the original game levels are the extreme colours. TR Anniversary is a good game, but it really disappointed me that they made everything look greyish-brownish. Aesthetically those levels have way less of an individual character, particularly the Egypt levels look very uniform (compare this or this to this). Here even when lighting is comparatively dull (ex1, ex2 and ex1, ex2), they have the same sharp colour contrasts, and it looks awesome.

I recently completed my first Yakuza/Like A Dragon game, Yakuza: Kiwami and absolutely love it. The core gameplay is brawling and mini games, but the miniature open world of Kamurochō has become one of my favourite virtual hangouts. Have grabbed Yakuza 0 and 2, expect to dissolve into one of these every year until well into my dotage.

I am close to finishing the new indie tactics RPG Demonschool and can’t recommend it enough. Have been dropping in on the Insert Credit forum, set up by the game’s lead designer Brandon Sheffield, and will probably write a rave there when I complete it. It’s pulpy and gorgeous, and the gameplay is - once you decide to go for top scores - compulsive and has just about the right level of depth to me. Proudly woke as evidenced by angry MAGA types on Steam ranting that they can’t tell the girls from the boys, and the writing is funny, and through little variations on repetition and the occasional confounding of expectation, moving. The game’s aesthetic is a deliberate throwback to the Sega Saturn, the soundtrack is absolutely banging, and generally it represents the kind of game I want to see more of. Grab it!

https://youtu.be/EQnXp0koywc?si=8eEiIjIj9HmeNb9_

Dovira wrote: Mon Nov 24, 2025 9:46 am

Dovira wrote: Thu Nov 13, 2025 6:51 am The general blockiness of the environments, which is necessary for gameplay, is the biggest tell it's an old game, and even with details being much clearer it all goes together very well. Nothing is intrusive or jarring.

On a recent Insert Credit podcast, they discussed which games had the best grids, and someone brought up the original Tomb Raider: you wouldn’t think to put it alongside chess, Tetris or a tactics game, but movement worked on a grid in early 3D platforming. The convenience of the modern control scheme - feels like every third-person action adventure has the same basic controls - has swept away the eccentricities of the alternatives.

jimmy spako wrote: So, has anyone been playing ARC Raiders?

It looks pretty, but competitive shooters are unfriendly to me, and they seem to be in the charge to use AI in ways that make me queasy, so I’m staying away.

Jim, IIRC you’re on XBox - my beloved time-sink Helldivers 2 opened up to it a little while back, and if the thought of semi-competent co-op shooting with semi-coherent wit and obscenity with me and a couple of other PRF 1.0 lags appeals, please send me a message. The game’s Starship Troopers schtick still holds up well, and it’s the only live-service game that’s really drawn me in, largely because it is as relaxed or hard as you want it to be at any given time.

sparky wrote: Fri Dec 05, 2025 11:11 pm On a recent Insert Credit podcast, they discussed which games had the best grids, and someone brought up the original Tomb Raider: you wouldn’t think to put it alongside chess, Tetris or a tactics game, but movement worked on a grid in early 3D platforming.

It makes movements very precise and easy to calculate, and also makes it very satisfying when you can do a sequence of movements fluidly. I imagine it's also very helpful for level designers. I believe I read long ago that it was the intitial Sega Saturn release of TR1 (a version curiously inferior to all subsequent ones) that prompted the use of that particular grid system.

On the TR remasters, I finished the first game yesterday, and I'm about 3/5 of the way into my first real playthrough of the third, where I'm stuck on the gorgeous but confusing London level. All in all I can highly recommend these. Once again I'm struck by how imaginatively evocative the environments and settings are, and the way you pass through sequences of locations. Some of the music pieces are truly beautiful, and some of the "danger" themes really make you feel in danger, especially in the second game. Maybe it's how they suddenly break through the silence, but I jumped everytime one of them started when I played it back in the day. Several comments I read the other day suggested that the old TRs are horror games in disguise, I think that is spot on.

^You led me on a fun short Wikipedia spree about the original Tomb Raider; I had no idea it first came out on the Sega Saturn, a platform In not even sure I’ve seen in the wild, but now seems to be one beloved by the cognoscenti.

Am suffering from a surfeit of games and too little time; one day perhaps I’ll visit the early TRs. The London screenshot of TR3 looks fab; I think I’ve only played a few minutes of the first or second one on a friend’s PlayStation back when it was current.

A couple of recent tips:

Blade Chimera (PC, Switch) is a promising cyberpunk metroidvania - I’ve enjoyed an hour of it and probably would’ve played more if Demonschool hadn’t consumed me.

Neon Inferno (all the main consoles plus PC) is an eye-popping run-and-gun, also cyberpunk, with an unusual mechanic where you press a shoulder button to aim into the screen at enemies that pop up in the background - divisive, a friend finds it too busy, and from what I’ve played it’s bastard hard, but the combat feels chunky; I’ll persevere.

I keep trying different games, but always end up returning them. They are fine, but they are games that take some time to invest in, like exploration and world building, etc. I find that not only do I not have time for them, I've lost interest completely. It's weird, to want to play a game, but find that you just don't have it in you. The last two I tried were No Man's Sky and Drova.

My nephew got me Ultrakill, which I really do like, but I play it every once and while and get exhausted trying to beat a boss for 2 hours. Still fun, I love these types of FPSs. I really want to play the new Doom (I loved Doom 2016 so much, but Eternal was just kinda meh in comparison). No way am I going to pay full price for it.

The games that keep my attention these days are ones that are purely mechanical and have no more than 30 minutes a session. I've been playing Dice with Death a lot. I exhausted Monster Train 2, I had to take a break from it. Rogue-like deck builder style games have really taken some interesting turns. I really love Ballionaire, but I wish they had more boards. I'll probably pick up Clover Pit next, the demo was a lot of fun. I don't expect there to be a lot of longevity in this one, but for $9, I wouldn't complain.

I'm looking at Cobalt Core or Lonestar, maybe picking those up when I get bored with my current lot.

I'm getting into the Age of Empires update too. Had the original game since ages, but never got good at it. In these types of games you can expect to get crushed the first few times you play and then you have to figure out what went wrong.

What helped a lot this time was making a save at the start of a random map, making saves at significant points like advancing to a new age and other points of interest to notice timing and such, and then you can redo the map! And then you can practice other things while being more familiar with the terrain. Some startup guides were also tremendously helpful.

Managed eventually to win a match in not the most efficient way but with overwhelming advantage (me Hittites vs AI Phoenicians, their elephants were scary at first but horse archers devastated them). AoE is such a chill and harmonious game that I want to play it slowly, but that you cannot do.

Warhammer Total War III is on sale for £15/$20. Lots of fun.

i started playing clash royale over the break with my nephews to try to connect with them. the 13 your old added me to his clan of other 13 yr olds and they are pissed he added me because i suck so bad. he also texted me the other day that i'm not playing enough (presumably the clan is not impressed with my scores) the 17 yr olds were a little better at explaining what i should do but i'm still getting destroyed lol.

is this kinda like what d&d was like? i never played it - but you've got llike different cards with powers and stuff and its about matchups.... my eyes just gloss over. give me tetris or defender or mario i'm a simple man.

The horrendous ads for this game make it a no go for me. Some are so bad they’re surreal. The worst has this guy that seems to have a brain injury and diarrhoea running down the street with a mic accosting people with some dumb question.

The game is the worst kind of pay to play BS that relies on people with a gambling addiction to make money.