I think so. I tend to pass on sports games even though I enjoy them because they are the same game year over year essentially. So I'm looking forward to being able to play NHL 21 at no extra cost.

Other than that I dont think there are any huge EA franchises I'm into but I might end up being surprised.

EA Play on consoles is terrible. Does not include the most recent sports releases so you won't be able to get NHL21 as part of it except for a 10 hour extended trial. The only thing available on consoles is older versions of the sports games, mass effect Andromeda, Anthem, NFS games, and a few indie games and platformers.

Ah, thats interesting. Thought I saw an ad about it coming that explicitly referenced NHL 21

It does usually give members a 10 hour (possibly content-limited) trial of new games. And a 10% discount, though idk if the latter (or either, I suppose) will make it to gamepass.

Battlefront.

Mobius Front 83 is out and the two reviews I found are both lukewarm. Prob gonna skip

Bought watchdogs and quite enjoying it. A few issues with controls and camera maybe.

Restarted with permadeath after a few missions, definitely the way. Really bad at doing anything stealthily.

The spiderbot is awesome for stealth and I spend most my time in game using that - it's also got a takedown so for the few missions where you have to bring in a person somewhere, you can clear the way by taking out the guards first.

Once you get the upgrade that can hide bodies from view, it's a lot of fun just taking out a whole building using the spiderbot.

An interesting game called Butcher is being given away on GOG

https://www.gog.com/game/butcher

Thanks mash!

Oh, just a heads-up for the thread: Epic is giving away Elite Dangerous and the Horizons DLC for free this Thursday. Horizons enables you to land and drive around on planets. It also comes with VR support built in.

Ring of Pain

Decent roguelike card crawler.

Available now on Epic. It's free to buy until next Wednesday. Best Space Open-Universe game out there.

How's the combat in Elite? I'm more interested in that than trading.

I like it. Granted I fly my ships in easy mode so it's similar to flying a plane. The realistic mode will maintain velocity independent of where your pointing. It's much harder to fly.

I feel Elite does a great job with energy management and damage modelling.

anyone else disappointed in the promos during this sale? I mostly have 3-5 years old games on my wishlist and they would often be sold at -75%, this time I'm seeing -30% almost exclusively. I thought that maybe I was just unlucky with titles on my wishlist, but I browsed some general categories and it seems that promos are mostly around -30% mark

one really good promo I found was The Surge 2 at -70%, very good deal considering it's a pretty new game that has gotten good-to-great reviews

e: I'm also seeing Code Vein at -60%. Question to people who played both: which is better? I don't care about all the anime in CV, just interested in good soulslike gameplay. I've heard that CV has great bosses, but very uninspired level design, and the opposite about The Surge, anyone care to comment on that?

Publishers changed their pricing strategy a few years ago

Bingo. Days of “great” sales are over.

Nah, they just moved to other platforms. There are a ton of legit stores now, and they constantly have great sales. I never buy on steam these days, there is always a store with better prices or bundles.

https://gg.deals/

Do GoG games come with Steam keys or is that a thing of the past/never was?

Never was (and never should be), afaik.

GOG is an independent DRM-free platform. They do not give keys to DRM-platforms and if you get it on GOG, why would you need a key for any other platform?

You've got it backwards. GoG Connect gives you a copy if you have the game on your Stream account. Obviously, only some games apply.

https://www.gog.com/connect

OK that's what I was thinking of.

Per Aspera(Mars terraforming city builder) got released yesterday and came out on sale, but as someone who buys and plays pretty much every management sim that comes out I really don't like this effort to shoehorn in a plot.

Same thing as Frostpunk, there's just no replay value once you win, but unlike Frostpunk there's so much dialogue that you have to listen to again if you **** up. And you absolutely will **** up your first run because the game has this wonderfully arty minimalist UI that looks INCREDIBLE but also doesn't tell you anything. There are 3 tech trees, not one. You need to build new spaceports to do more special projects, it's nearly impossible to switch from an ongoing project. Did a meteor strike just destroy 9 buildings? Not something the game really bends over to bring to your attention.

The core-expansion-to-get-more-resources-to-expand gameplay feedback loop is there and works but it's not nearly as technical or rewarding as something like Surviving Mars(which is only like a B/B+ game). Nearly every resource bottlenecks at transportation, not extraction or at the factory. You really only need like, 1 factory per advanced resource until your base gets enormous, and really then you're doing it to prevent cross-hemisphere transport at the cost of efficient resource allocation. If you try to improve efficiency by putting a steel foundry every place you have iron and carbon near each other, you'll eat all your inputs and overproduce, and there's only three levels of priority management: powered off, normal, and steal resources from construction sites max priority.

New Zachtronics game looks funky: https://store.steampowered.com/app/9...bius_Front_83/

They sure like to mix it up...

That looks pretty cool. I might finally play a Zachtronics game!