General Game Discussion thread for April 2026

[neogunhero]

Played more Vampire Crawlers last night. Okay, I have to admit, I see some of the gripes the PCG reviewer had, but it's still a very fun game. One thing they pointed out is how each card uses a different amount of mana, and if you play them in numerical order (0 mana card first, 1 mana card second, 2 mana card third), it results in a big combo for extra damage. Great, but it does get repetitive after a while. There is no thought besides playing the cards in order.

The fix for this is finding a Bracer on one of the floors which draws another card to your hand each turn. I've found 3 Bracers in one run, so I had a total of 6 cards in my hand each turn. When you have more cards, there is more room for strategy, however I still defaulted to playing all 0 mana cards first, 1 mana cards second, 2 mana cards last. So far in the game there aren't many synergies that would be better than playing the cards in order. Kind of lame, but still fun overall.

I'm certain as I progress further into the game I'll see more room for strategy. Each world zone has a few levels, and each level has up to 4 floors. After killing the boss at the end of floor 4, the red reaper comes and kills you just like in VS. I do wish for an endless mode, but I have a good feeling that will come eventually.

So just as the PCG review pointed out, you play until you die, go back to the village to increase some permanent upgrades, and try again. Each time you beat a level, you unlock a new one that is more difficult. I've beaten a good amount of levels in the first 2 zones and each level does introduce a new card, so the further along you get, theoretically there should be more room for strategy other than mindless card playing.

It's fun, it really is, but there are a few gripes like that which stick out. I think I still prefer the original VS to this as that provides a crazy power fantasy as you mow down thousands of enemies a minute, this game is more challenging and you don't feel that some level of power. Maybe later down the game when you get some crazy combos and plays. This game seriously needs an endless mode.

 

[Frindis]

I heard a theory online somewhere, this was specifically about IGN, but this person said they believe IGN gives low scores to popular games on purpose so that it garners discourse and people start talking about IGN again. I kind of felt that was the case with PCGs review. 98% overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam versus one persons 50/100 score is quite jarring. It is very well this persons own opinion, and reviewers should not be subjected to hype as that could influence their opinion, but I feel the editorial team at PCG maybe should have picked someone who was going to be a bit warmer to the game. I've barely played to notice any real flaws but I highly doubt this game is as bad as that review makes it seem.

I think some game reviewers don't get some games, so they give them low scores, or they try an edgy take, trying to stand out and raise clicks. Some might also just be completely clueless, like those who can't even shoot or move their character properly.

Some games might not be for the reviewers, so when you have some middle-aged grumpy guy trying to hold on to his job and he gets a review copy of some indie RPG game doing something new, he's going to make his voice heard about just how much this game is not to his amazingly perfected 90's taste buds.

 

[Frag Maniac]

This looks fantastic. Please be good!

At least the combat looks much more nuanced than their new Hitman series, but I'm still skeptical whether they're going to have a small amount of missions in exchange for several ways to do kills, infiltration, etc like in Hitman.

 

[neogunhero]

At least the combat looks much more nuanced than their new Hitman series, but I'm still skeptical whether they're going to have a small amount of missions in exchange for several ways to do kills, infiltration, etc like in Hitman.

They do have that combat simulation mode in this game, and have announced that new missions will come to it over time. That is a nice way to add additional content without having to add it to the main story. Being an IO Interactive game, this might be better to wait a few months or year before picking up as there will be much more content in the game at that point. I also hope the story is done well as a 007 movie fan, I like the younger Bond learning the ropes of MI6 so I'm hopeful it will be an entertaining story.

 

[Frag Maniac]

They do have that combat simulation mode in this game, and have announced that new missions will come to it over time. That is a nice way to add additional content without having to add it to the main story. Being an IO Interactive game, this might be better to wait a few months or year before picking up as there will be much more content in the game at that point.

That's not very reassuring for me because it's the same exact thing they did with the new Hitman series. Even if you wait until they're all released, I doubt it will feel like a full fledged globe trotting adventure to several places around the world like in the movies. It's strange that the movies got much better with the ones starring Daniel Craig where they were finally made with more grit than sarcasm and still good global scope, but despite the games looking good graphically now with fancy theatrics in combat, it seems we're stuck in a loop gameplay wise.

 

[Frindis]

I don't have hope for 007 First Light because of how IO Interactive did everything possible to scam people with their bloody confusing Hitman series packages for purely "fk you" for profit. I loved Hitman, Hitman 2, Contracts, Blood Money, and after that, they started to get greedy leeches.

 

[Pifanjr]

My friends and I continued our Barotrauma campaign yesterday. Now that we have our tier 3 attack submarine, things have become a lot easier. We fought two of the strongest enemies in the game and got out without a single death. Well, kind of, we did restart when my friend accidentally shot a nuclear rail gun shell point blank and it blew up our sub as well, but other than that it went really well.

Which isn't to say we had no deaths at all. We had a quest to retrieve a relic from a base and these quests are always a pain, but this time the base spawned somewhere we could park the sub right next to it, so we decided to give it a try only for me to get caught in a trap and die. We gave up after that.

We also had a quest to blow up the reactor of an abandoned outpost to smoke out the bandits that had taken it over. One of my friends decided to throw a molotov cocktail at it, but this did not destroy the reactor. So my other friend tried putting the fire out so he could get close enough to just overload it manually and ended up succumbing to burn wounds.

These were only minor setbacks though and at the end of our session we managed to reach the start of the last biome. We're getting close to finally finishing the campaign, though the last biome has no outposts in it at all so we're going to have to either stock up on a ton of supplies to get through it in one go or slowly help make the biome safe enough for new outposts to be created.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I heard a theory online somewhere, this was specifically about IGN, but this person said they believe IGN gives low scores to popular games on purpose so that it garners discourse and people start talking about IGN again.

Previous to this, the joke was always "11/10 IGN" because people thought they were too positive/in publisher's pockets, etc. The Internet turns everything into a conspiracy of some type.

That was exactly my experience when I tried out the demo. I don't quite understand why PCGamer gave it a 50 in their review...I'm pretty sure the reviewer just didn't click with the game, which is just a thing that happens. Personally I would've reviewed Vampire Survivors as a 7/10 at most, fun to kill some time with but not something I'd recommend to anyone, but PCGamer gave it 87/100 and it has a 98% positive rating on Steam.

The "opinions can't be wrong" saying is inaccurate. It's only true when a subject is 100 percent subjective, like "Did you like the game?" However, the question answered by a review should be "Is this a good game?" and that is not 100 percent subjective, so reviews can be wrong. (As usual, this lecture was mostly for myself...I was using pi-fan-junior's thoughts to think things through)

Played more Vampire Crawlers last night. Okay, I have to admit...The fix for this is finding a Bracer on one of the floors which draws another card to your hand each turn. I've found 3 Bracers in one run, so I had a total of 6 cards in my hand each turn. When you have more cards, there is more room for strategy, however I still defaulted to playing all 0 mana cards first, 1 mana cards second, 2 mana cards last. So far in the game there aren't many synergies that would be better than playing the cards in order. Kind of lame, but still fun overall.

Accurate, but to me, the battles aren't the strategic part. The battles are where you find whether your deckbuilding and upgrade strategies worked. Those are the fun parts to me. And the deckbuilding and upgrades are happening so rapidly that the whole thing, for now anyway, works for me.

That's not to say the battles are completely mindless.