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[Ulfarr]

Yep a funnel piece. I think he uses one in the video to fill a bucket full of gems and ore, only to try to transfer them to the crucible and almost crush the game from the stuff going everywhere but inside the pot. Which struck me as odd, that he chose to put them in the bucket in the first place.

Anyway thanks for the analysis

[Aoi]

Shantae and the Seven Sirens, one of the very few platformer/sidescroller series that I follow, just dropped for PC and it's an absolute delight. The gameplay itself is pretty much stock metroidvania, but the execution is excellent. Spriting is beautiful, audio fits neatly, characters are quirky and fun.

You play as the eponymous Shantae, the Guardian (Half-)Genie of her hometown, and her specialty is the ability to transform into things ("Like a key for a locked treasure chest or a fire-breathing dragon?" "Mostly, I turn into a monkey and climb around on things." "Does it come with pants?" "...I have to go now."), mechanically functioning as the unlocks to new areas. Combat skills are managed separately.

I pretty much only have to ding it on two areas though-- it has load times that feel ridiculously long (zone transitions can take longer than things that are obviously resource intensive, like BL3), and if you're backtracking to check out previous areas with newfound abilities, you can zip across places pretty fast, so... even worse ratio of load-to-play. And, something across the franchise as a whole... it's easy. Three bosses in, I've clocked no deaths. (Evidently, there's an NG+ option that decreases your defense but expands you mana pool, so that may work out better.) And, in the process of taking about 5 minutes to farm for +autopickup range, I'm swimming in hp restores.

One thing that I like is that bosses really don't overstay their welcome-- once you crack their mechanic, the battle's basically over in two or three cycles of their attacks. Which does make for short battles, but I find I've grown weary of fights that are endless battles of attrition or demanding absolute precision for ten minutes.

[Folly]

Ah, so that's why I've been noticing an uptrend in Shantae lewds on the imageboards lately.

[nenjin]

Just dipped my toe into Mechanicus last night, did the tutorial. It is a way more stylish game than I expected it to be, and has a ridiculously heavy 40k soundtrack. I suspect the meat of the game is more in customizing your Tech Priests and overall Cohort than in the tactical richness during battle, but I'm eager to play more none the less. After decades of Lasguns and Bolters and whatnot, it's kind of refreshing to be using Mechanicus weapons instead.

[Aoi]

Ah, so that's why I've been noticing an uptrend in Shantae lewds on the imageboards lately.

Yeah... beyond the obvious, I've noticed there are some subtleties in the animation that don't discourage it either: Among others, her idle animation has her swinging her arms in such a fashion that it looks like she's doing hip thrusts and when she's ducking(crawling), there's an occasional wiggle of the bottom if you aren't moving.

"There is a joy in her moves that transcends strict content rating thresholds." (Kid you not-- it's part of storyline dialogue in the second (third?) chapter.)

[Mephisto]

XIII, the old cell-shaded FPS based on a comic series, is getting a reboot. I am excite. I look forward to experiencing the mediocre non-ending in all of the glory of modern graphical fidelity.

[Jiharo]

DemonCrawl, the "roguelite minesweeper" is getting free expansion soonish. I played it for a bit back then and personally enjoyed it although I see how it can be really frustrating.
Negatives/warnings:

It's not a game that can be won almost every time through perfect play. RNG can and will screw you. You have your items and powers but often you will end up with having to gamble sometimes betting everything on a 50/50 roll.
Sometimes you'll get a good enough combination of stuff to be able to abuse items to solve last stage without making a single click on a board. Sometimes you'll get to "If I guess this right I'll probably be able to make enough turns to resolve my effect removing curses before those stacks of poison kill me. Whoops."

I didn't unlock/try all or even most of the classes but one in particular, Spy, feels a lot more comfortable to play than the others, probably because it's gimmick, giving extra information on tiles, stands closer to the basic layer of minesweeper game and reduces situations where you are forced to gamble.

On the positive side huge amounts of items and stage mods creates a lot of unique combinations that can either make you overpowered or doom you.
All in all it might be a time killer slot machine but it feels strangely compelling.

[JimboM12]

apparently one of my lesser anticipated games came out right under my nose: Survivalist Invisible Strain came out today with a release sale to cap it off.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1054510/Survivalist_Invisible_Strain/

its a simple yet awesome zombie survival game thats a sequel to Survivalist, itself a good simple survival zombie game.
it revolves around a 40days style infection that ravaged the world and you are dropped into a map to survive and recruit other npc survivors to build your settlement. your ai companions can accompany you or be autotasked to perform needed settlement functions like farming and you can theoretically recruit everyone you run into including bandits if they are injured and give up.

the most important thing for returning players tho: the aiming system is back but includes melee combat now! so imagine sweeping the legs out of under a infected then bashing their heads in while they're crippled on the ground. its fairly refreshing to do and feels super badass.

so far it doesn't seem to suffer from that insulin subplot from the first game (you have a unique companion who has diabetes and needs insulin every so often or dies) and the melee combat is quite dynamic. settlements also seem more sustainable due to the fact you can harvest trees now for wood, allowing you to deforest an area to make a real fort.

for less then the price of a combo at mcdonalds, youre getting an incredible value with this game and if my edits and overall impression hasn't made it clear, i highly recommend this game for those who love zombie survival games and don't want their hand held with a story or anything; just dropped in and expected to survive.

[Zangi]

Ah, I remember playing the first one for quite awhile.  Pretty damn good for a zombie game.
I also recommend at the very least checking out the first game in the series, which is on sale for a dollar.  There is also a demo if you can’t even pony up that dollar.

https://store.steampowered.com/search/?franchise=Survivalist

[Akura]

For those with VR, Blade & Sorcery Update 8 just dropped.

The great: new magic is fun as hell. Fire gives you either an awesome looking firebolt that you can control a little in flight(charge, then stick your palm out and release), or lights your weapon to do extra damage(hold near, but not directly against, weapon while charging). Lighting works a bit different from before; first you charge up in your hand, then stick your hand out to shoot lightning(previously, it didn't charge up, it just shot lightning). Or charge your hand next to your weapon to electrify it.

Gravity is neat. Having it selected will allow you to force-grab your opponents' limbs like objects, allowing you to hold them aloft, pull them towards you(and your next attack), toss them off a cliff, or slam them into a wall/ceiling/whatever you fancy. Charging and casting it seems to send a blast wave of kinetic force, but I haven't figured the optimal ways of using it. Sometimes it just makes the enemy flinch, sometimes it sends them flying. I just don't know how yet to do one instead of the other. Charging gravity in both hands and holding them together causes all objects around you to start floating, but I haven't figured out the exact utility of this. Imbuing your weapon causes something to happen with how they ragdoll, but I didn't take enough time to figure out more; it's probably better for blunt weapons like the maul.

There's a new map, Citadel, which looks hella awesome as well. It's also far, far larger than any of the other (vanilla) maps.

Enemies have armor, so far I've only seen leather, but it does work. I've had slight difficulty stabbing the armored areas, but uncovered areas are still squishy meat. Stabs feel a bit more visceral as a result. Decapitations and limb removals also look better - they have meaty bits there instead of model glitching.

The bad: There's a serious issue where the game starts lagging like crazy, which in VR is very, very bad*. It's definitely not a limited issue, I've seen several posts from others already confirming it. I hope that will get fixed soon. The new enemy designs look a bit uglier than before, but it's not too bad. The character designer(I had to recreate my character) had several options not working properly, for example head type and hair type went from "none" to 5 with no options in between. And of course, mods, gotta wait for those(and I gotta reset my Nexus password again).

[Robsoie]

For people interested in the recent GOG free total annihilation.
On window 10 system, some people seems to have no problem, but much more have (and i have) but i couldn't manage to get the game + unofficial patch + "attempted ddraw fix" to work (it always end with a "environment failed, verify your directx " type of error).

Some people pointed that they managed to make it work using DxWnd
Apparently there's an old version of DxDwn that was reported by some people to work faster with TA, found here :
https://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showpost.php?p=743543&postcount=44
I tried it (with "unofficial patch + "attempted ddraw fix" already installed) and after changing the paths to the gog executable (as the guy had the game installed somewhere else) then File -> Save to save my changes, it still didn't worked.

If you don't trust the guy uploading it, this version of DXWnd is this one :
https://sourceforge.net/projects/dxwnd/files/Latest%20build/v2_03_56_build.rar/download
And File -> Iimport this text file (rename the .txt into a .dwx format)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[target]
title0=Total Annihilation
path0=C:\GOG Games\Total Annihilation\TotalA.exe
launchpath0=C:\GOG Games\Total Annihilation\TotalA.exe
module0=
opengllib0=
notes0=
registry0=
ver0=1
coord0=0
flag0=1048742
flagg0=138969433
flagh0=16
flagi0=205520896
flagj0=4096
flagk0=268435460
flagl0=0
flagm0=0
tflag0=0
posx0=0
posy0=0
sizx0=1920
sizy0=1080
maxfps0=0
initts0=0
winver0=7
maxres0=-1
swapeffect0=0
maxddinterface0=7

(assuming you kept the GOG install path like that)

Then i set dxwnd.exe compatibility to "window XP SP3" , relaunched dxwnd and this time it worked perfectly and i finally could play.

Tested a mod, removed entirely then reinstalled TA and managed to make the escalation 9.2.0 gold + hotfix to work without the need of DxWnd (but of course it's only for skirmish or mp, as campaigns aren't available with mods).

[Iduno]

Do I want Jupiter Hell?

Edit: Also, which one is the best STALKER game?

[Robsoie]

For the commercial games, it's tied :
Shadow of Chernobyl is the best for the atmosphere and has the more different areas to explore.
Call of Pripyat is the best for the missions and gameplay mechanics and has the biggest areas to explore.

For the standalone mods focused on the freeplay side , for me it's the recently released Call of the Zone, it ticks all the buttons for me and feels like a much more complete Call of Chernobyl.
Other people seems to be more fans of the Anomaly mod, but there are some features that i disliked (and can't be turned off) and took me out of the game.

Similarly to Anomaly, Call of the Zone does not require to have Call of Pripyat.

[Aoi]

Do I want Jupiter Hell?

I didn't like JH much-- and, if my memory serves properly, I hit Colonel Baron of Hell in DRL.

This is at least a few versions back. I found the view cramped, the action felt slow, the 4-directional movement bugs me (if you're looking at videos, it does visually support diagonal movement... but it's mechanically two steps), and as a result of the last two combined, combat less dynamic. Gone is the feeling of juking around corners to dodge bullets, despite there still being a slight mechanical advantage to do so.

Frankly, if it didn't come with the history of DRL, I probably would've looked at it, thought it looked vaguely interesting, and left it in the middle of the pile of "Things I'll never get around to."

[Ulfarr]

Edit: Also, which one is the best STALKER game?

To add a bit on what Robsoie already said. Shadow of Chernobyl (SoC) is the "lore heavy" one since it focus a lot more on what is going on and why. It's also the most rough/unconventional and arguably difficult among the three games. Scavenging is a real aspect of the game.

Clear Sky (CS) is a prequel to Shadow of Chernobyl and it's probably the least favored among the STALKER community. It's not exactly a bad game, in fact it has a decent story and it did improve upon SoC in some areas with the most significant IMO being the repair/upgrade system. The bad part, is that its biggest selling point, Faction Wars, was quite bugged and ultimately irrelevant.

Call of Pripyat (COP) is more like a spin off. Your character isn't directly related to the events of the previous games, though you do have to deal with their aftermath. On the plus side you can enjoy COP even if you haven't played the other two. It's the best one in terms of gameplay mechanics and has some pretty memorable questlines but somewhere along the way it feels like it lost a bit of that "sense of mystery" that surrounds the Zone. I guess it's just natural since the "mystery" had been the focus of the previous installments so they didn't want to rehash it.

Spoiler: more on mods but spoilered because they aren't that relevant to the question (click to show/hide)

Misery is an attempt to bring some "ultra realistic and hardoce" gameplay in CoP. Some players love it, others hate it. It has some merit but it often goes too far, I mean the whole concept is that stalkers are desperate people that come to the zone and risk their lives to hunt for valuable artifacts, you can't just make a bottle of clean water cost more than what you can sell said artifacts for.

Call of Chernobyl (CoC) is a big sandbox game. It's basically the maps of all three games, with COP's gameplay and just a skeleton of a story. It has lots of submods that expand on its features.

Anomaly is a Misery meets CoC supermod. It's bleak, it's atmospheric, it's unforgiving and can be tiresome as hell. Like Misery it's sometimes downright stupid too. It has lots of submods that expand on its features.

Call of the Zone (CoTZ) is CoC on steroids, featuring various improvements with a heavy focus on the missions which was something alll CoC derivatives were missing.