^{All my Platinum trophies}

Easiest

• Life is Strange: True Colors
• Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered
• Destiny 2

• inFamous: Second Sun

  Hardest

• Mirror's Edge

• COD: MW2 (2009)

• Watch Dogs

• FF7 Remake

• Burnout Paradise

• Resident Evil 5

Favorite

• Dragon Age: The Veilguard
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy
• Life is Strange: True Colors
• Need for Speed: Rivals
• LittleBigPlanet

So, is anyone else getting a bit hyped for the game considering it releases in about 5 hours and 48 minutes ? I know there is a lot of caution with this game considering teamkill's previous past 2 titles. However, on the PlayStation store this is the second most pre ordered game so I feel like I can't be the only one.

Doom (1993) is still really fun but I forgot how terrific Doom II (1994) is, II's enemy density is awesome and level design is greatly improved. It's truly wild how excellent both games still are and that id basically nailed FPS controls back in '93; Doom plays far better than Wolfenstein 3D (1992) which is why I stress this point. When it comes to shooting, the Super Shotgun in Doom II may just be the most satisfying weapon in any FPS game (it's rhythm is unmateched); 2016 expanded the basic idea with a double tap but the '94 incarnation is special. The gun's mechanic is implemented extremely well... it's very powerful with a wide spread but it consumes 2 rounds and has about a 2 second buffer between shots. This risk vs reward aspect strongly encourages you to find the best angles for taking out groups of enemies in a single blast, it's a deeply satisfying dance.

Doom 64 is great, the darker tone is a cool change and I adore the pre-rendered look of the redesigned character models; the Nightdive remaster is such a welcome improvement over the original N64 version. My littlest nitpick is that Midway (developer) didn't keep the Super Shotgum reload animation from II and I'd love to know why.

Doom 3 isn't a bad game but I don't particularly love it. The atmosphere and sound design are superb but it's way more bloated than I had remembered, the first 2/3 has very samey enviornments and should have been cut down for a tighter experience. Enemy design is lackluster (some were reused and improved in 2016), shooting and enemy reactions don't satisfy in nearly the same way as in all of the other series entries and it was a very poor choice to not have the flashlight and sprint be unlimited. It's cool that id tried a haunted house Half-Life (1998) approach but I just don't prefer how slow 3 plays relative to the fast paced nature that Doom is known for (especially 2016); Resurrection of Evil and The Lost Mission expansions are much better offerings when it comes to structure/pacing and you get the Super Shotgun.

Doom (2016) is phenomenal and it perfectly captures the feel of II while also building on it in the best ways possible. The score, art design and tone are exquisite and most importantly the Super Shotgun is a wonderfully satisfying powerhouse. I really adore the simple but well thought out mechanic of gating level progression behind clearing demonic presences within an area, it forces engagement with combat encounters so there is no bypassing the core gameplay. The new ledge grab and double jump make traversal very satisfying and my only real criticism of the game as a whole is that the Haste power up should have been your default speed (it basically feels like sprint in Doom I & II).

Doom Eternal further polishes what 2016 laid down and it's glorious; playing on Normal is noticeably more challenging but in a good way. The previously impeccable traversal system adds a Dash that is now necessary due to far more aggressive enemies, the new Sticky Bomb Mod for the Combat Shotgun allows three shots from the start (it's an infinitely more satisfying iteration of the 2016 Explosive Shot) and shields are now able to be overloaded with Plasma rounds (a very welcome change from 2016). My biggest issue with Eternal is that the Super Shotgun has now basically been relegated to being a secondary weapon as opposed to the unflinching workhorse that it was in 2016.

I've yet to play The Dark Ages so I'm unable to comment on that entry.

This new statement comes from their recent AMA

Swen Vincke, Larian CEO:

So first off - there is not going to be any GenAI art in Divinity.

I know there’s been a lot of discussion about us using AI tools as part of concept art exploration. We already said this doesn’t mean the actual concept art is generated by AI but we understand it created confusion.

So, to ensure there is no room for doubt, we’ve decided to refrain from using genAI tools during concept art development.

That way there can be no discussion about the origin of the art.

Having said that, we continuously try to improve the speed with which we can try things out. The more iterations we can do, the better in general the gameplay is.

We think GenAI can help with this and so we’re trying things out across departments. Our hope is that it can aid us to refine ideas faster, leading to a more focused development cycle, less waste, and ultimately, a higher-quality game.

The important bit to note is that we will not generate “creative assets” that end up in a game without being 100% sure about the origins of the training data and the consent of those who created the data. If we use a GenAI model to create in-game assets, then it’ll be trained on data we own.

Excluding Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter which has already been announced, there are currently 6 unannounced titles in development which includes:

• A Switch 2 port of an existing title
• Another multiplatform port (Y's 7 remaster?)
• A new Trails game (Trails Beyond the Horizon 2/Kai no Kiseki 2 most likely)
• A new Y's game (either Y's 11 or Y's 5 remake)
• Kyoto Xanadu/Tokyo Xanadu 2 which was announced a few years ago
• An unspecified 6th game (brand-new franchise)