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Some stuff in the steam sale

Hopefully this and Lara Croft are as far as Steam Sales damage will go, though I don't buy as many sale games these days Subnautica is a very 'deep' game. But literally as well as figuratively, I never completed it

Magneto isn't really known for his chill.. A timey wimey issue of FF.

I mean Divine Divinity and Divinity 2, two games that came out a long time ago.

Check the topic in the game's section, there's some feedback in there that might help:

Alright, beat it again with 100% scans, thankfully you can switch difficulty mid-game, so I could breeze through the final boss. The best ending unfortunately only unlocks if you also collect all the items, so I had to look that one up. Regretfully, it's just as abrupt and unfulfilling as the normal one, with the exception that I wonder why they kept the ending so open and vague, because let's be honest, Nintendo is going nowhere near this series again (Prime, that is) after this game's history. As for the game – I might have to preface this by saying that Metroid Prime is an all-time favourite of mine. Ask me ten days in a row what game I'd put on my personal top spot, I'd name it on nine of those days. It was a combination of multiple factors back then, a genuinely impressive, revolutionary title that reinvented 2D gameplay in a 3D space not even Mario 64 and GTAIII had done so masterfully. It also came at a time when I was slowly transitioning from viewing videogames as a fun time to kill some time either alone or with friends and started to become more aware of the intricacies behind them, how they are designed, what they want to make you feel while playing them, how they can impact you in ways other media can't (without downplaying those, everything has its values). There have been games that are important to me before and since, but Prime 1 was a milestone that just by definition can never be repeated. And being able to launch a game in 2025 that ultimately feels just like that and reminds me of those times, it's obviously difficult to approach it even remotely in an objective fashion. (There will be some area/upgrade spoilers in the text below.) You could certainly throw the criticism at Beyond that, in some ways, it does its own Force Awakens where it tries to hit the same notes as Prime 1 did all the way back then. And I'm not just talking about how the double jump has the exact same momentum, goes the exact same distance and height, how the Morph Ball is linked to the same physics, how sound effects and jingles are taken 1:1 from the original. I'm also talking how it goes back to the classic videogame tropes of visiting jungle, ice and lava areas, of having funny little Morph Ball puzzles that require skills the game never explains, of having save stations despite the addition of autosave and checkpoints almost making them obsolete. If the game was just that, would it have drawn less or more criticism? For me it would have been enough, but looking at its first gameplay trailer, feelings of stagnation seem to have been part of some of the discourse, and that's likely the reason why we have those new ideas sprinkled in, none of which really improve the game in any shape or form. Oddly, I didn't hate the bike. It is fundamentally unnecessary, but it does control well, there's very little friction and annoyances when moving around with it (take note, horses from Rockstar games). I did, however, play the game at a cadence where I would only ever use it once per session – maybe your gaming habits and speed, and how often you have to get back on it without a real-life break, can negatively impact how you feel about it. Or you just dislike the idea in general. But after my extremely negative first impression from the trailer, I have to say I'm fine with it. But at the same time, the game would likely be better if it wasn't part of it, because it ultimately doesn't add much of value and I can only imagine how many months of development resources it must have swallowed to get working this nicely. Concept art suggests it was an idea they got quite early in development, so this must have had a massive impact on its production, especially as Retro has never done anything close to 'racing' before. The second addition is significantly more impactful, in a negative way, and I'm obviously talking about the Federation Force marines. I don't really know where to begin here because their inclusion has implications on so many levels, beyond just the gameplay side, so I think I'll just go ahead through everything wrong with it. For starters, the way one of them works as a hint system is diametrically opposed to what Metroid is about. The first three Primes had a hint system as well, but not only was it unobtrusive, it was diegetic in a way that feels organic within Samus' lone wolf approach, in that her scanners picked up an anomaly on the map and showed you where it was. It was not a spoken line, which in itself feels at odds with Metroid's atmosphere, that straight up tells you what to do or shows you, at hour 14 of your playtime, the location of 'base camp', a place you have been a dozen times before. It's handholding at its worst, insultingly so, and has no place in a Metroid game. Why you can turn off tutorials, which are actually useful, but not hints is beyond me. The problems with the NPCs also move over to other areas, for example when they accompany you. I did actually lose one boss fight because during that specific encounter they were part of it and one of them got knocked out, which is horrid game design no matter how you slice it and it's emphasised by the fact that their presence as a whole is entirely unwelcome in the first place. There's also moments where their presence impacts the whole tone and atmosphere – a late area that is an obvious reference to the Phazon Mines would have been incredibly tense if you were on your own. Enemies in that area are blind but spawn all around you when you produce loud noises, like using missiles. The obvious byproduct, you'd think, of this idea would be to make happenings there as eerily quiet as possible, but instead you're permanently accompanied by an NPC who regularly talks. It almost feels like outside interference during the game's design, or at best two ideas clashing, not finding a compromise, and just combining them, forcing a result that drags down both. There's also a third issue with this, and to an extent some of other aspects, and I think that's what the video maf linked goes into (I haven't watched it): the demythification of the Metroid universe. More like any other game in the series except for Other M, Beyond is very happy to give answers to questions nobody was asking for. It's making its universe smaller by adding information, interestingly in a similar way as to what happened to one of its biggest inspirations, Alien. Suddenly we have people constantly interacting with Samus. They talk like people from earth, or at least the stylised version of them from Hollywood movies. They believe in gods. They work in cubicles. They comment on stuff that we were used to just accepting as-is – like Samus' unrealistic transformation into a Morph Ball – making it feel awkward and comedic. Samus as a character has traditionally been entirely detached from the 'good guys' of its lore, and in hindsight I get the feeling it was an accident, but it added to the universe instead of taking away from it. No lessons were learned from Other M in other words, and even though Samus doesn't speak here, it hardly matters. In fact, it might even make some cutscenes feel more weird than they should. I'm not saying there's no place to indulge that side of Metroid, but I think it should happen without Samus' involvement. Let a character like Armstrong fangirl about her in her own spin-off game, in which Samus doesn't appear but is only a looming legend in the vastness of space. Not in an active manner like she does here (though admittedly, she's still the best character in the game, likely thanks to how good her voice actress is). There's also two additional aspects of how they're implemented that can feel annoying. Firstly, Samus gets teleported away after a short tutorial filled with Marines. Why not use that opportunity as a believable plot device to have her isolated yet again after said opening – don't send the other characters with her, have her try to find a way back on her own, thinking she left everyone on that base to fight for themselves. Another idea is a bit of spoiler territory but Though despite all these issues, and an extremely underwhelming finale, I have to go back to the first paragraph and say that just being able to go back to this type of game was a joy. Yes, the level design is extremely linear and can't hold a candle to Prime 1 and 2. But this being a sequel to Corruption, it seems like that's just the direction the series was travelling in. There's also some extremely good moments in there, like the first visit in the ice fields, fighting through the station, figuring out some part of its lore, and then seeing the whole station come to live and the ice thawing when you walk back to surface. Even simple ideas, like restarting the generators in the Volt Forge and seeing the whole area come to life again with the pumping soundtrack, are extremely powerful moments that can easily keep up with some high points of its predecessors. It's ultimately the good parts that outweigh the bad for me, and I might – though I still have to think about it a bit – put this at the top spot of my goty list. The ending soured me a bit on it, which is a bit petty of me, but that's the emotion you're left with at its conclusion. Though it was indeed a strong emotion and not some lackadaisical sigh, so it's not like it left me cold. I have no idea if anyone will read this, but yeah, that's how I feel about this game. One annoying part about the general discourse about it I want to add though is that years ago, we had a sequel similar to this that made mostly the same mistakes but the majority of people embraced it and considered it an improvement. I am, of course, talking about Batman: Arkham City. In the same vein, not to blow this post up even more, I wonder if Metroidvanias (particularly the 3D variant) are just inherently incompatible with the industry's desire to go 'bigger and better', because the further you move away from compressed, labyrinthine environments, the more you distance yourself from the genre's core foundations. Maybe to conclude, I'd say I like this as much, maybe even more than Corruption, while Prime 1 and 2 still hold the two top spots.

some new Steam games before the sale

Talk about overreacting...

I've heard security in real life isn't this tight over there.