Seems like most of those games were the result of a small number of deals with Akupara Games, Legacy Games and SNK.

For anyone an interest in rhythm games / DDR, Metronomicon was a really fun rhythm/rpg mashup, though the comedy was a bit cringeworthy.

RedEye9 wrote on May 12, 2022, 20:40:
Humble Bundle Privacy & Health
When I see shit software like this installed on a customers computer I ask them if I can uninstall it.
hackcheck, washandgo, ssd fresh etc.

Even in cases where they're genuinely useful, I've found Humble Bundle's "utilities" bundles are usually a bit scammy. Either they are for 1-device or 1-year licences, or (as is the case for at least some of the software in this bundle) it's last year's version and upon registering your software you'll be immediately peppered with upgrade offers.

Bent wrote on Apr 27, 2022, 00:36:

I miss objective based attack/defend multiplayer and have no idea why it stopped being a thing

Yeah, I expected online games to change completely after that. And then they didn't, really.

Well, co-op eventually arrived in games. That sort of does it.

Wolf:ET and the Assault modes for UT2004 were so good that they ruined free for all / team deathmatch for me.

Splash Damage has continued to carry the flag for asymmetric multiplayer since then - I never really got into ET:QW but both Brink and Dirty Bomb were fun. Quite a few of my old ET clanmates got into Dirty Bomb, but I only dabbled and have no idea if it's still popular now.

Co-op being more prevalent probably works better for me - I don't have the reaction speed or time for hours of practice that I used to - but I fondly remember playing Wolf:ET during its heyday.

Reading this is so encouraging. Development is already well underway, screenshots look fun and it sounds like they're having fun.

So basically the opposite of every other "we're getting the band back together" gaming announcement I've had the dubious pleasure of backing on Kickstarter.

This is a nice biennial reminder to check out what Shroud of the Avatar is like now. Last time I played, I gave up after I walked chest-deep into the floor of an inn and could only interact with half the environment.

"Immersive simulation' didn't mean much to me a week ago, but having just finished Masters of Doom and discovering that it's how he described Deus Ex, that's pretty exciting. I still remember the ending I got for Deus Ex, and it remains a highlight because it was a huge decision.

I'm about 8 times bitten, 9th shy for video games from legendary 90s designers though. Seems like the resources needed to flesh out a modern game the way they envisage it is around what Chris Roberts has to play with.

That was an eclectic list, and reads a lot like somebody's list of "games I liked that, when I checked, had average review scores that I felt were unfair."

Out of curiosity, I checked my Steam ratings for games I'd rated positively but which hadn't received stellar reviews, and a few stood out:

• Quantum Break has aged really well, and was more fun to play recently than it was a few years back
• Rollers of the Realm deserves credit for making pinball fun for a poor/middling pinball player (though Yoku's Island Express has since done it with even more style)
• Alpha Protocol was much greater than the sum of its parts, a KOTOR of spy thrillers

There are lots of veterans keeping an eye here, so I'm curious to see what everyone else thinks is underrated.

The digital version of Pandemic suffers a lot from the "foot in both camps" issue, where the mobile version is too unwieldy, the PC version is too simple, and neither is nice. I still had fun with it, and the achievements were good at pushing me to find synergies rather than just stick with my favourite characters.

If I had to speculate, I'd imagine that doing justice to the franchise - adding multiplayer, adding a first class UI, or providing better support for all of the emerging offshoots - just wasn't feasible using this code base.

It's weird that they pulled it for sale only six months after releasing new DLC though. Maybe it is a licensing issue.

The mods on reddit have given that post a "misleading" tag on account of this comment, which points out that there's a lack of debug symbols and other evidence that would normally accompany an actual debug build.

That said, I don't think I've ever paid AUD$115 for a video game before, and I'm not going to start by paying for part one of the remake of a game that I've already played to death.

I do look forward to an affordable definitive edition though... the original has not aged well, even with all of the mods that are available these days.

EricFate wrote on Nov 23, 2021, 20:43:
I forgot Harmonix even existed. They haven't done anything of interest since 2006.

I think a lot of their stuff in the past few years has been pretty interesting. Fuser was clever and Dance Central brought something new to VR. That said, neither DJing nor pelvic thrust dance moves are really my thing, so I haven't bought either of them.

The market for music games is a lot more crowded than it was when they released Frequency, so we won't feel their loss as keenly, but the people behind Harmonix have been continuing to innovate since they founded the company and I would have much rather seen them work on something other than Fortnite.

HoSpanky wrote on Nov 3, 2021, 16:25:
Weird that they're giving out Puzzle Agent 2 without the original. It's like showing your friend Return of the King when they haven't seen the previous two movies. It's a direct continuation of the original game, story-wise. I suppose you could ignore the story and just do the puzzles but the story is funny and weird and easily half the fun of the games.

The first Puzzle Agent was part of September's freebies. The Secret Files games have also been tricking in over the last few months.

Kxmode wrote on Oct 27, 2021, 23:10:
Aside: Steam has nearly half* the total number of EGS's entire user base** visiting daily. So there's that.
* 62.6 million
** 160 million

Using the same sources, I could also state that EGS already has nearly half as many monthly active users* as Steam**, despite having been around for 3 years compared to Steam's 18.
* 56 million
** 120 million

I remember comments from last month's Choice indicating that recent lineups have been pretty uninspiring, but this looks pretty diverse and includes a lot of well received games, including a few I've had my eye on (Heaven's Vault and the second Orwell game).

My classic sub runs out in a couple of weeks, and this may be enough to get me to renew at least one more time.

Nullity wrote on Aug 31, 2021, 17:50:
I lack the words to adequately describe how astounding better games look with HDR, the difference is jaw-dropping (CP2077 is an excellent example). It's up there with playing Quake 2 and going from software renderer to a new 3DFX Voodoo card for the first time.

The most recent Tomb Raider game was also a brilliant HDR demo. I've never previously found the old eye candy settings like SSAO and Bloom to be terribly appealing, but opening out from a cave into a lush open area with light streaming everywhere was just stunning.

I recently got a 144Hz VRR monitor and decided to use it to replace my 75Hz HDR monitor, and the abysmal HDR support in Windows 10 was a big factor in my decision (I was forever enabling and disabling it at the Windows level to play a game). Sounds like it might be worth switching monitors again to play CP2077 with RT+HDR - it might even be stable enough to play by the time Windows 11 ships!

This comment was edited on Sep 1, 2021, 02:24.

Beamer wrote on Aug 25, 2021, 16:49:
4) Wait, so... can these guys die? Do they just get injured, like in the XCOM Adventures game? That's less fun, but I guess it works.

Do you mean Chimera Squad, or is there an earlier spinoff? The Chimera Squad mechanic, where superheroes could get incapacitated or scarred but not die, seems like a fitting blueprint for a superhero game.

Thinking more about it, the whole game works so well as a blueprint for a superhero squad game that I could imagine Chimera Squad being an intentional proof of concept.

Sigwolf wrote on Aug 3, 2021, 20:13:
Yikes, I've never had an easier time deciding to hit 'pause' on a Humble Choice month...

I don't mind so much when there aren't huge headline titles, because there's usually a few interesting smaller titles. I'll be keeping this month - I've already been interested in Superliminal and Out of Space, and some of the others I've not heard of.

Having said that, I've had my Choice/Monthly subscription for 3.5 years now, and the three times I've paused my subscription have all been in the past year.

Introducing a minimum cut for Humble "creates even more opportunities to support important causes" because they need to "stay on mission" and because a bigger Humble means they can have more sales?

I generally lower the Humble cut to about 10% when I buy a bundle, and the logic of "we'll give more to charity by forcing you to give less to charity" doesn't wash.

Surely there's no real underlying reason for this decision other than "we're a business here", and to say otherwise feels false.

jacobvandy wrote on Jun 29, 2021, 14:53:

theyarecomingforyou wrote on Jun 29, 2021, 13:08:
Yeah, the effects are barely noticeable in the trailer and yet the performance impact will not be. Quake II RTX was definitely enjoyable though - it got me to play through the entire game for the first time.

Nah, having ray-traced reflections is like taking off the horse blinders you've been wearing your whole gaming life. Once you're used to that, it's painful to go back to looking at the smudgy placeholders so many games frequently employ. Even the nicest screen-space mirroring loses its sheen when its limitations are made to look so obvious by comparison.

I haven't found that it's something that I really miss when it's turned off. Unlike more in-your-face things like HDR, it's realistic and normal enough that I often don't notice the reflections unless I think to look for them.

Control had a few anachronisms in there like film projectors that were great fun and really showed off the raytracing, but there were times coming around a corner that I was startled by my own reflection, and I'm not entirely sure that it improved my experience.

I was going to leave an insightful comment but it's pretty much word for word what jdreyer already posted. Dragon's Keep was an absolute delight to play.

Excellent! Really enjoyed the first game, as a novice pinball player it was nice to actually get some sort of achievement/progression, rather than fruitlessly chasing a wizard mode that I'll never be able to unlock.