You’re thinking of Dota Underlords, which was popular for a short time but then quickly got abandoned. I definitely wouldn’t count it as a success.

I liked Metroid Dread a lot. I feel like it’s a good starting point for Metroidvanias too because the game does a good job nudging you in the right direction e.g. by closing off certain areas but still letting you explore and figure out where to go. I especially enjoyed the movement, it feels very fluid and satisfying.

The only major issue I had with the game was that performance is really bad in a few encounters. Most of the time it runs fine though. It’s also not super long. I prefer a game that doesn’t overstay its welcome, but if you’re looking for something that is good value for money in terms of playtime there might be better options.

It’s not the privacy of the content we’re discussing, it’s the horrible Discord client that keeps datamining your PC. It even inspects all the processes.

I agree that Discord isn’t a good choice for FOSS projects for various reasons including privacy, but can’t you just use the web client to avoid that specific issue?

One of my favourite games! I’ve got over 400 hours on Steam and some more on mobile. Did all achievements but I’m still struggling with A20 Heart kills so I haven’t gotten tired of it yet. My favourite class is probably the Silent. I also like the Watcher a lot, but she’s a bit too easy and her decks can feel a bit too similar. The Ironclad has grown on me since I’ve realised that the exhaust cards are good actually. And that he’s not really focused on attacks. Defect is my least favourite but I do play all four. My favourite way to win is with Snecko Eye! Getting an early Snecko Eye and then picking all the expensive cards is a lot of fun.

I’ve been meaning to play a few similar games like Monster Train or Wildfrost but so far I’ve always felt like I need to get back to StS to improve a bit more instead.

For people looking to improve I’d recommend jorbs and Baalorlord on Twitch and YouTube, they’re chill and very good at the game.

Yeah, it may not be as popular as Mario or Zelda, but I wouldn’t say it’s “unfairly forgotten”. People who have played the game tend to be pretty vocal about it. And justifiably so, I’ve never had a comparable experience in another game. I wish I could forget about it and play it again.

MMORPGs like World of Warcraft or Guild Wars 2 are a great way to play together. With 5 players you can exactly fill a party in both games.

RTS games like Starcraft 2 (which is free now) or Age of Empires could also be fun, but 5 players is a bit awkward because it’s too many for a single team and uneven so you can’t play like a 3v3. But at least in SC2 there’s a 2v2 and a 3v3 ladder so you could always split into two teams or play a free for all. There are also a bunch of cool custom games in the arcade like Ice Baneling Escape or Zealot Hockey you could try.

Very different, but Trackmania is also fun with friends. Not the right choice if you enjoy ramming your friends off the road, but there are probably other games for that too. To set up and play in a club/server you’d need club access which costs like $20 a year, but you can try the game for free first to see if you like it. You can compete for records on a map, play an RPG together (a map style where the focus is on finding the right way instead of just racing) or build tracks for each other.

You could try an ARPG, unfortunately most of them (Diablo, Grim Dawn, Last Epoch) seem to limit parties to 4 players, but Path of Exile allows up to six. And if you’re not serious about the end game you’ll never need to spend any money (if you are it’s like $40 for stash tabs one time and you’re set forever).

It sounds like you’re actually looking for turn-based tactics/strategy? In that case maybe check out Civilization VI and the Advance Wars 1+2 remake. They’re both supposed to have local multiplayer on the Switch, although I don’t know how good it is. I don’t think you can play the Advance Wars campaign co-op, but it sounds like you can at least play individual battles like that.

If you’re really looking for real-time strategy, Pikmin 3 seems to have a good co-op story mode. Pikmin 4 technically has one too but the second player isn’t able to do much, so it’s probably not very fun.

I think I’ve just been irreversibly damaged by Path of Exile’s fast gameplay, D4’s combat felt pretty tedious to me in comparison. Or maybe I’ve just had the wrong builds so far. I’ve been meaning to give it another shot but there have been so many other good games recently so I guess it’ll have to wait.

I know there’s a mentality out there that a Diablo game is a failure unless it’s the only game you ever want to play for the rest of your life, (which, btw, I don’t even feel that about Diablo 2), but it’s ok to take breaks and play different games and come back to a game when it’s updated.

Yeah I don’t get that either. I have to skip leagues (seasons) in Path of Exile both because I wouldn’t have enough time to play other games if I didn’t and also because I tend to play it so much that I get tired of it and need a break afterwards.

What do you like about it? I’m genuinely curious. I’m happy you’re enjoying it, I wish I could too, but somehow it just bores me.

I definitely agree that you shouldn’t (just) measure a game’s value by playtime. I prefer a shorter game that’s an interesting and exciting experience all the way through over one that is longer, but feels drawn out.

That’s a good point, but I feel like there are reasonable solutions for that like a disclaimer when buying the game digitally. For the physical version they could either put a sticker on it or just delay the physical version only. I also think that people who are informed enough to know about specific features like that are more likely to hear about this discourse.

The S was just a bad idea from the get go.

Yeah for sure. I agree that pushing the One X as the cheaper/entry level version would have been much better. Even for much longer than 1-2 years. People wouldn’t get as mad if they gradually started to phase it out and stopped releasing the high profile games on it after a few years while still supporting it somewhat. Even the feature parity thing wouldn’t have been that much of an issue if they’d just clearly communicated an expiry date beforehand.

They COULD blame it on the S, but, again, Microsoft won’t allow it.

I don’t get how blaming the S for a delayed feature would be different than blaming the S for a delayed game, which is what they’re doing right now.

But I definitely agree that this is bad for Microsoft and they should do something about it. Not sure whether dropping the S would be the right call but they definitely need to reconsider the feature parity requirement policy.

Can’t they blame it on the S either way?

And “just being the ganked version” in this case would mean not having a single feature that the vast majority of players likely wouldn’t even have used in the first place. Yes, it’s not good, but the choice here is between either locking your players out of that one non-essential feature or locking them out of the entire game. And the second option is, to me, very obviously much worse.

And it’s also not like it would be the “bad” version forever. They can just patch it in when they get it to work. And let players decide for themselves whether they want to get the game now without split screen or wait.

True, but I feel like not releasing the game at all is even worse. The consensus seems to be that PS5 already has better exclusives and now you can’t even play one of this year’s best third party games on Xbox.

I also thought they might have such a requirement but I was unable to find a source that confirms (or even mentions) it. Definitely still possible though.

As far as I can tell the article only talks about a feature parity requirement between the Xbox Series S and Series X versions. And that could be met by just dropping the feature from both versions.

What I don’t understand is why they don’t just release both Xbox versions without split screen and then try to patch it in later. That way they’d satisfy the feature parity requirement (as I understand it) and people could at least play the game. I love that they’re still doing split screen despite it seemingly having fallen out of favour these days, but it’s hardly an essential feature.

There isn’t really a “second one”. Overwatch 2 was just a patch with essentially two major changes. They changed the monetisation, making the game free-to-play and introducing the battle pass. An especially unpopular part of that is that new heroes now have to be bought with real money or unlocked through the battle pass. The other big change is the move from 6v6 to 5v5, which was controversial. There are definitely some positives, like getting rid of the “double shield meta”, which did make the game more fun. But there’s also more pressure and focus on the single tank.

The game is free and if you bought OW1 you still have all your stuff (cosmetics and all the non-OW2 heroes), so if you’re curious you can just check it out. Personally I’m still enjoying the game but there’s also a lot of valid criticism.