Conscript requires a lot of time set aside to play it in order to make any progress, so instead, lately I’ve been playing Divinity: Original Sin. I had put it down toward the end of act 2, and it took a good deal of looking at a walkthrough to figure out how to progress from where I left off, since the quest log only helps so much, but I wrapped up act 2 and got to act 3. As combat-heavy as this game is, I do really enjoy the cut of Larian’s jib, even when it’s not as good as Baldur’s Gate 3.
I also picked up Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics, or the MvC Collection for short. I never had a Dreamcast back in the day, and I had probably only played a couple of hours of these games in arcades or via emulators in my entire life, so I never got to dig into these games before. I put together a ratio team using Justin Wong’s 2024 ratio list of Dhalsim/Juggernaut/Thanos and even won some matches online with it, so that felt good. For a high-tier team, I do want to avoid as many of the mainstay characters as possible, not just because I’m not a rushdown player but also because it’s more interesting to see anyone other than Magneto, Storm, and Sentinel on screen, so I might run Dhalsim/Dr. Doom/Cable. I don’t imagine I’ll stick with MvC2 for too long, since Skullgirls is, in my opinion, just a better MvC2, but it’s fun seeing what I might have been playing if I had a Dreamcast in the early 00s instead of a Gamecube, especially with the next fighting collection on the way too. I also tried out X-Men: Children of the Atom in this collection, and boy can I not figure out how to stop the CPU-controlled Colossus. That dude expertly dodges my ice beams, seemingly can’t be stopped once his armor is up, and will air grab me the second I try to super jump out of the corner.
Metacritic and OpenCritic scores are the best way to gauge whether or not they’ll win GOTY at “The Game Awards” though, since the same people who awarded those scores are largely responsible for nominating and selecting winners at that show. So it’s possible that as bugs were ironed out in patches and over the subsequent years these outlets all found their “Kingdom Come: Deliverance guy” who came to the game late that perhaps this new one does better, but it would have to do a lot better to be a real contender.