Also, if you haven't, Prey (2017) is the final song of that genre and probably the best of them.

Prey is extremely good, but boy did I hate the ending. It's not just a disappointing ending, it's one that retroactively cheapens the rest of the game, IMO. Still a great game and worth playing, but that ending will always leave a bitter taste in my mouth.

Agreed. I try to focus on what I enjoyed and imagine my own head-cannon ending.

The Mooncrash DLC specifically is one of the best pieces of gaming available. It turns the base game mechanics into a Rogue-like where the world resets but some things in the world still stay persistent.

While I like that DLC, I think it loses what makes these games so great to play: the feeling of exploration and slowly uncovering a story. Moon crashes repetition and time limits don't quite do it for me (although I still really recommend it to anyone).

Absolutely agree. Prey is stunning puzzle sandbox and I love so much the atmosphere of the game, from both the artistic and environment design perspective, but also from the outstanding ambiance soundtrack by Mick Gordon.

Unfortunately I have the impression that the final part was rushed, as the story feels incomplete at best. I wish Arkane could dedicate 6 more months to this game.

I've been out of the gaming scene for a while; will the iGPU on my Ryzen 7 9700X be able to handle a 9 year old game?

Until you get a better response, here's my experience: my 7700 gets stable 60 fps in gta5 at 1080p on medium-low. Haven't tried anything more modern, I'm addicted to ancient stuff.

It's on sale for $5, so I'll take the risk and find out this weekend.

I tried it out: Smooth on Low setting, playable on Medium nausea inducing on High.

I picked it up a few months ago for the first time but I've not found the enthusiasm to keep going. Think I was around half way maybe. Does it get better? It's the sort of game I really like on paper but it just feels a bit shallow tbh. Plus I don't find jump scares relaxing after a long day at work. Feels like I'm missing something

Honestly doesn't get a ton better, but your character gets stronger and more able to deal with the enemies so they become less of a concern and can explore with a bit more freedom

If you love Deus Ex, I think the Dishonored games carried the flag for this kind of game too. Harvey Smith, lead designer on Deus Ex, was heavily involved in making them and while the setting is completely different (magic, steampunk-ish), the “feel” of the games owes a huge amount to Deus Ex.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Smith_(game_designer)

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dishonored_(series)

Agreed, the Dishonored series was great as well.

Also the System Shock and BioShock series.

Agreed on the System Shock, and of course if we are talking about Looking Glass games you have to mention the Thief influence.

Bioshock has never been in the same category for me, because it is very focused on run and gun combat, for this reason I’ve never felt it worked as an “immersive sim”. The levels aren’t nearly as open plan either. It’s still great in its own right of course.

I just checked, and it's available now for $8 with mooncrash or $5 without at gog.com

It's impossible to speak highly enough of this game.

Only thing that bugged me about Prey is it felt like it was "on rails" and I couldn't just explore. The game is huge and gorgeous...

One of the few modern games that actually got me tense and scared. It is a really good game.

> final song

I mean there's deathloop ... not saying it's anywhere near as good.

It does seem like immersive sim is gone, but it feels like it's influence lives on in BG3 and Elden Ring. The best games these days try hard to hide the rails.

I played it for the first time using Deus Ex: Revision. It's very good.

I would suggest anyone playing it for the first time to give the original with only basic engine fixes (e.g. Deus EXE) a go before playing some random modders take on what the game should be like.

If you have a lot of free time, may be. The game is pretty long. I enjoyed Revision though, so nothing to complain about.

You played a worse version. Revision butchers a few levels, especially the NYC section - bigger in scale without a good reason for it, making it impossible to find key persons organically (with also the hints not working anymore).

Revision sucked as it had crappy textures on Hong Kong. GMDX it's far ahead, less tacky/broken and with hugely enhanced areas. As early as at Hell's Kitchen you are looking a much more realistic area (city planning, buildings, park benches/objects and whatnot) than before.

A remaster is apparently in the works.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3131640/Deus_Ex_Remastere...

Genuinely curious if this ever ships. It was meant to release in January this year, but the devs pulled the launch after it got a terrible reception from fans.

What has been shown so far looks worse than many of the free modded versions out there, and with AI lowering the bar for modifying games every week… As an experiment I asked Claude to take the source code from the browser port of the game that appeared on GitHub recently, add coop multiplayer and as much of the graphical enhancements from the remaster video.

It took about 4 prompts, and I have builds playable on Linux, MacOS and Windows, with coop. Gets well over 300fps on my Mac Mini as uses metal on an a Mac.

Nightdive studio will be fine with their Sony and Nintendo devkits and arrangements with them, store access, publishing deals etc. They'll just use the same AI tools to get things done faster, presumably.

The studio will be fine. They'll use AI but it won't be a buggy vibe coded mess; they'll actually test it and refine it. That's the hard part.

[delayed]

A lot of modern remakes become "demakes". Often a remake focuses on surface level improvements, like graphics, but damages the underlying game systems that made the original beloved in the first place. Another common problem is lazy graphics upscaling that improves the resolution but makes the result look cheap or incongruous with the game's original style (GTA3 remastered is a great example[1]). I think there are a handful of truly great remakes a bunch of mediocre ones and a surprising number of total disasters like Warcraft 3.

But probably the worst trend with modern remakes is taking the original games off of online stores or "upgrading" them to the remake thus making the original unavailable. Combined with the "demakes" trend above and it seems like we're actively destroying many historical games with these "remakes".

[1] https://www.digitalfoundry.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2021-...

One I'd mention as someone who probably played through too many times, there's a randomizer mode which shuffles a lot to make need to explore/discover the maps again, and avoid just following a well trodden path to proceed.