Quoting: Beamboom

QuoteMost Innovative Gameplay: Starfield

That right there is the only documentation one need against user driven awards. It really is a general popularity contest. The more users, the more votes.

And that's not always the purpose of an award. Like here.

Voting what you know is also easier. However if you get past the few baffling AAA wins, there's plenty of indies in the winners too. Which more or less means that indies have a chance, they need just enough publicity. And big publishers don't control all the media like they used to, so even the stranger indie games might get featured at least somewhere. I doubt something like Lethal Company has had big advertising budget.

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Quoting: Philadelphus

Quoting: Purple Library GuyTraitor mode. On a submarine. I can see some . . . basic . . . drawbacks to treason in that situation.

That's pretty par for the course for games with traitors, since the win condition for them is usually something like "stop the mission" or "kill all/enough good players". And since killing all good players will stop the mission, and a good way to kill all good players is to do something that kills all players, and there usually isn't a stipulation that the traitors have to be alive, well…

I looked at details on the Barotraumas traitor mode and it looks like there's in universe explanation of getting picked up by rescue shuttle. Being in the rescue shuttle doesn't seem actually be requirement as traitor mission can be successful even if traitor dies.

Though I read discussion that playing a traitor on public server might get you banned as traitor might look lot like a griefer.

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Plenty of good games mentioned.

Portal 2 is nice if you missed the co-op for some reason and have just one friend available.

Barotrauma. In this submarine game, beginning is pure chaos, but it's part of the fun. Bigger submarines require more people, but you can add bots. And if pure co-operation gets boring, there's traitor mode. Campaign takes lot of time, but offers more sense of progression.

Then there's plenty more that have co-op multiplayer, but I have only played singleplayer.

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Second round voting is bit less interesting for me too. First round is fun because putting games into the categories needs bit thinking and categories that you don't know about can be skipped.

Second round is bit too random. Also it would be nice to be able to play the nominees to give them a chance. Now either choice is to pick what you have played or just think what's most suitable based bit on popularity.

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133 games played, 773 achievements and 57 new games

Top 5:
Dying Light 2
Borderlands 3
Barotrauma
Surviving the Aftermath
Halls of Torment

I can see from the timeline that I have been going through my bundles, though still 50% of the playtime was from games released this year. And now that I look at it, 27 of the games have either exited early access or released this year. Lot of indie, but it still counts.

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Quoting: neolithHas the Humble Choice website changed? There used to be lots of screenshots for every title you clicked on.

It looks different based on if you're logged in or not. You might have logged out by clearing cookies for example.

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Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: PhlebiacAlso curious about Crowns and Pawns; at one point the reviews seemed a bit mixed, although they look fairly solid now. How does it compare to something like the Broken Sword series?

It's definitely on the Broken Sword trajectory, but less dark in story I would say. "Grandfather died and left you his house" is also the start of Stardew Valley, after all. It has tank controls like OG Grim Fandango which takes a bit of getting used to, but the controller layout is pretty good.

I wasn't even aware of the tank controls as the traditional mouse controls work just fine. On regular adventure game scale it's somewhat below the classics. Some puzzles are bit tedious, but still in overall enjoyable game.

Should play the Broken Sword games at some point, but there's always something else to play first.

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My personal favorites from the list that I have played are A Short Hike, Superhot and Harmony's Odyssey. Not that much more to add to summaries in the article except Superhot is one of the few games that feel like being in an action movie (though Superhots plot is weirder than the average action movie).

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I also tried it and it seems that there's some strategy, but mostly it's luck.

Slay the Spire has option of skipping cards, which would give bit more depth to your choices. though it will make the game easier. There are some cards that have synergies, so if you would be able to keep the deck small, synergies would trigger more often.

Also one thing to note is that HP can go over the maximum, so you can get quite tanky. Only time I won the tournament, I had luck to get three HP generating trinkets and on top of one HP generating card that had synergy with one the trinkets.

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Did find time to play Robocop: Rogue City and I was positively surprised. It has been quite a while since I last saw Robocop, but it seemed that the game takes the source material somewhat seriously. There's violence (though most games do) and there's satirical tone. For example there's radio broadcast about sleeping pills that you give to your kids to keep them from asking questions.

I roleplayed police a bit and shoot the perpetrators in the leg. I'm not sure that they survive anyway though as leg most of the time is blown to bits. Rocobop is quite durable, though not invulnerable. And even in the demo, criminals get better prepared. Which you can compensate by investing your skill points in combat.

Game follows the trend of throwing lot of side quests at you, but at least they are quite well done. You can help people out and get yourself involved lot of different things. From demo it's hard to tell how repetitive the side quests will get, but will have to wait for the release and see the reviews.

Also already in the demo, there's at least one event that might have consequences based on your actions. You can also build good reputation, which should have impact on things.

There were few bugs. Gun might keep shooting and once I couldn't turn. Those issues weren't there most of the time though.

Demo has been available almost two weeks, so it probably not going to vanish right away.

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