If anyone is even remotely interested into card based RPGs I highly recommend the Black Book demo. I'm over 10 hours into the game proper and am totally hooked. Reminds me a bit of Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales, but with a strong focus on Russian folklore.

It's still a bit rough around the edges and could definitely do with a bit more polish, but in some ways being not perfect also adds to its charm.

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I already had UW1 and 2 as a gift for some Kickstarter campaign or other, and I also have the Amiga version of Syndicate. So I think I'm set, but nice anyway!

That said, I'll take Ultima VII any time over Underworld. As revolutionary as latter might have been back then, I somehow never really got into it. Maybe it would have been different had it been a fresh IP. But to me it always felt tacked on to the Ultima franchise, at a time when that had finally started to get a bit more coherent. (But why should things have been different 30 years back: if there's something that sells, just stick its name everywhere!)

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I had already given up on that one, so here's a positive surprise :-).

Though even without AI opponents I had quite the good time playing already; I always find it deeply relaxing to map out a city and see it come to life. (That's why currently I spend a lot of time with Mini Motorways).

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If this card would actually be available for close to its MSRP, I guess I would be able to put together an upgrade of my PC for just under €1000.

That's still 250€ above my comfort zone, but with the ongoing GPU shortage, I don't see a low to medium end model available in the 200,- to 250,- price range any time soon. And even then I would have to compromise on 16GB RAM instead of 32 to get down to what I would spend without second thought. And I'd rather not.

So I'll keep my eye out on this, because I'm really itching to replace my GTX950 and this one combined with a Ryzen 5600X would neatly fit with my current PSU and also offer a big enough leap in performance to be worthwhile. They're even still making mainboards with PS/2 connectors, so I can keep my trusty keyboard as well :-D. Wonder why that is ... because USB doesn't support n-key rollover?

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I've been on the fence about whether to get myself a Switch for a long time now. The prospect of sitting comfortably on the couch and playing some decent games on a tablet-sized device sounds quite appealing. But then again, I'm not a big fan of Nintendo or consoles in general. But this could be the very thing I've been waiting for all along.

Not going to pre-order, or pre-register for pre-ordering, though. But once it's generally available and living up to my expectations, I wouldn't mind getting one. Possibly even the high-end model for the non-glare display. Which at this point is really my one and only gripe. Why are glossy displays still a thing!? Otherwise the 250GB model would also do nicely.

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Played Overboard!, inkle's newest creation and found it short, but sweet. Like with most of their previous titles, I enjoyed the freedom it offers to players, with the narrative adapting to the choices you make instead of forcing you down a specific path.

Also had a go at the backer beta of Arcadian Atlas. So far it's Windows-only, and has the issue common to many Unity-based titles that it requires native Windows Media Foundation for video playback. But from the communication it seems like they might provide a native version at a later date. Keeping my fingers crossed.

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Seems the answers so far pretty much echo my own sentiment. On a personal level, I expect that the majority of games I do like playing will likely not end up as part of such a service. So it would be of little use. Even if Steam offered something like different channels for different tastes, and there would be a "narrative indie game channel", I'd rather get a perpetual license to the games I do play instead of having a constantly changing bouquet of content where games I hold dear may at any time get replaced by ones I do not care for.

More generally, I fear what would become of the vibrant gaming ecosystem if subscription services become the norm. It would install new gatekeepers when at least Steam right now is open to pretty much any developer (others already not so much). And in doing so it would likely narrow the types of games remaining viable, and affect even their gameplay to better match the affordances of a subscription model.

So no, even though it might be the inevitable future, I'm neither interested nor thrilled.

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I like how this is focused on non-war gameplay. Schemes and hosting feasts aside, there wasn't a terrible lot to do within your own realm, and both got rather repetitive across my campaign.

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It's nVidia and it's for laptops only, but it's a step in the right direction (for me, anyway). The one thing I don't understand is the limitation to 4GB of VRAM, though. Seems barely adequate for today, and not very future-proof. My nearly 6yo GTX 950 has 2GB already, and for a new card I would not really want to go below 8GB to make sure it'll last a good while.

Anyway, this time round I'm dead set on AMD, so I do hope they'll follow up with something in the lower segment soon-ish. And with a good cost-performance ratio. I have my doubts about the latter, though.

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Already played it a few weeks ago, and it did have some graphical glitches on occasion. Sometimes reloading the save helped, sometimes it didn't. I have the feeling that either nVidia are having issues with their memory management, or 2GB VRAM start being inadequate for modernish 3D games.

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