I finished Hitman WoA campaign last night and went straight back to the beginning to do it all again (but differently)

So many more options to try out, VR needs more sandbox games! I took my time with my first play through, already at 60 hours. Yet still plenty left to explore and DLC to play later. The games never interested me before, however it's a perfect fit for VR.

It's very easy to cheat though, just stand up and they can't hit you lol. I play sitting so when I stand up I'm towering above the enemies and they all aim too low. You can casually walk up, put a shotgun to their head and bye bye. Stealth is more fun anyway yet dual wielding machine guns can be very satisfying now and then. Generally I prefer not to leave a trace :) Exception the Uncharted 2 train assault level at the end, no survivors! (Quite a rush standing on a train in VR)

Yeah, F.E.A.R. is that game that lot of us keep wondering why industry since then can't seem to manage to make another with as good AI as it had back so long ago. But then again, industry can't seem to make a lot of things these days that were pioneered long ago, and keeps reinventing wheels every so often.

So much of it is due to people that did not grow up playing games and entered the gaming industry as a means to a career, rather than an enjoyer of video games, whether that be as a developer or executive. I'm only in my 30s and I remember when I was about to graduate high school how many of my classmates wanted to work on games because they knew how much money you could make. None of them actually cared about gaming in general. I even joked with some of them how I never even knew they played games, and they actually replied that they didn't lol.

Makes me miss the older days of gaming when it was pioneered by a bunch of computer science major nerds that loved gaming and wanted to make a game that they always wanted to play, and coming up with creative ways in doing so.

Reminds me of a couple of clips. One from David Jaffe in the 90s, and one of Gabe Newell in the Half-Life 25th anniversary documentary.

I feel like these kinds of mentalities are just not in the game industry anymore. At least not in the more mainstream side of the gaming industry. You can certainly find this level of thinking in the indie scene at least. But it's disheartening to see where the industry I grew up loving has gone in recent years.

Gabe has proven that Valve still has that enduring mindset with as recently as Half-Life: Alyx. That game felt like I was playing a 90s/early 2000s game again but modernized.

Yeah, there's certainly plenty of that. Also, there's plenty of modern players/devs not knowing old games and big publishers not preserving institutional knowledge by endless cycles of firing and rehiring new people.

Pretty much all my favourite games come from small teams of ultra passionate individuals that wanted to make a game they themselves wanted to play when they were younger, and I'm happy to see there's still that going on.

Playing FFVII Rebirth right now and its amazing. It took everything that was great about Remake and just made it bigger and better.

SoulsStone Survivors got a demo on PS5 and it's releasing next month, I'm looking forward to it as I hear it's one of the better VS like games. I'm a bit wary so far with the demo, seems like there is little synergy here and just over offering new spells to swap out instead of evolving the ones you have. It may suffice until Halls of Torment gets ported.

I feel like giving Lies of P another go, while I'm in Soulsbornekiro mode after I seen a comment saying it can be played like Sekiro or more closely now, Khazan. I gave the game a 6/10 but maybe the issues I had with the enemies and bosses and later stages of the game may have been down to me misunderstanding something vital about the game, if there is a parry system hidden in there it could change the game for me. Anyone know if you can pull over your save from PS4 to the PS5 version? I'd rather get in on NG+ instead of starting from scratch so not sure which version to choose.

Giving Breath of the Wild another shot to see if I'll start enjoying it this time.
Last time I got to the paraglider. This time I'm halfway there (2 out of 4 shrines).

The shrines were good, but out in the Great Plateau there has not been a fun moment except chilling with the old man at his cabin (cozy), and getting the recipe that he wanted for a nice reward.

Plateau is just the tutorial.

I think one thing I'm looking for are towns and characters to interact with since it feels a bit too desolate at the moment.
I also can't remember any music I may have heard so far except the one when a guardian spots me.

About to hop on for another session now.

Second session (leaving the Plateau) was a lot more interesting. I'm invested in exploring more now. The Plateau was really boring in comparison.

Went to Hateno Village to see if I could progress through the story before going to Kakariko Village, but sadly they told me I needed to go there first, so I turned back and now I'm in Kakariko Village.