Seventyfive wrote on Feb 5, 2014, 15:44:
Is Civ 5 any good? I stopped playing a few Civ's ago when my tank got destroyed by archers. Kind of thought that was some real bullshit.

The first expansion made some significant changes to unit health, so that fighting a dramatically weaker unit is likely to cause it to take 1-2% damage instead of 10%+. So that particular problem isn't as as bad as previous Civ games.

Overall the combat is balanced - if your cavalry are surrounded by pikemen or your city is being harried by a lone unit of archers, you can safely predict the outcome.

I've never been particularly fond of battles which involved more than one of air, land, or sea at the same time, but I'm not sure if that's because it's not balanced or I just suck at it.

Anyone who picked up the last Frozenbyte bundle - almost 3 years ago now - might be pleased to hear that their promised game, Splot, is not complete vapourware.

Verno wrote on Jan 7, 2014, 09:21:

BitWraith wrote on Jan 7, 2014, 08:48:

jacobvandy wrote on Jan 7, 2014, 06:20:
Half-Life 2 was not the reason Steam took off.

Keep telling yourself that one.

I'm sure it was a factor but you don't think Counter-Strike had a bigger impact? It was the most played online game for years running after the WON retirement and probably lead to millions of Steam installs.

I'm actually not having any luck finding user counts over time with my google-fu, but that's a really interesting thing to ponder.

Based on the "years of service" badges in my friends list, the same number of friends signed up for Steam in the 12 months preceding HL2's release than in the 12 months after it.

Combined, though, they only make up about 1/3 of my friends list - the rest have mostly been users since 2008.

I'd say the biggest factor in Steam "taking off" was in the past few years when it's become weird for a game not to be available on Steam on launch day, no doubt assisted by word of mouth from the old school users.

I'm sure worldwide ADSL adoption hasn't hurt, either.

Steam Machines offer console gamers something that would blow their UUDDLRLRBA minds - competitive pricing.

Valve might be the most dominant player in the digital distribution market, but it's not the only player, and it seems to have a much more agile relationship with publishers regarding sales and discounts. AAA titles stand a chance of being picked up at a significant discount to their Sony/Microsoft equivalents, even pre-orders.

A couple of people have posited that people might not buy this if it was for sale in Best Buy next to a PS4 and an XBOne, but there's still a really good value proposition.
Maybe not one that's terribly exciting for the powers that be at Best Buy.
I think a bigger problem than the sticker price is the launch line-up. If the potential buyer doesn't have a gaming rig to run Game Streaming, the current list of titles isn't exactly jaw-dropping, though Valve does promise to reveal more "AAA titles coming natively to SteamOS in 2014".

xXBatmanXx wrote on Jan 5, 2014, 19:14:
The people it upsets are the people that want to abuse it.

My wife's PC is sitting about 2 metres from mine.

The new feature is more restrictive than the old days of "insert disc 1" (where our only real limitation was on playing play the same game at the same time), which is a bit of a shame.

That said, Valve should still be commended on actually taking steps to give us more freedom.

Dev wrote on Jan 5, 2014, 17:03:

Domgrief wrote on Jan 5, 2014, 11:54:
Almost 20% of surveyed machines are Russian? That surprised me.

Steam makes it much more convenient, and valve has proven there's a market there.

What actually surprises me is that a PC with a decent internet connection is affordable for the average Russian, though clearly this isn't new news.

Having a successful Russian market is one thing, but from those numbers it looks like per-capita penetration of the Steam platform into Russia is on par with, or higher than, the US.

Almost 20% of surveyed machines are Russian? That surprised me.

That data would be interesting to navigate with some analytics software.

jacobvandy wrote on Dec 15, 2013, 21:30:
Nope... How many times must it be explained that these Top 10 lists are based on weekly revenue flowing through Steam?

Probably about once for everyone who visits the comments of a "Steam Top 10" post here, then wonders how it all works. I certainly can't see it documented anywhere except in forum footnotes, and that's for Valve's "Top Sellers" list and may not be exactly the same as whichever report Blue is looking at.

If backers got steam keys to play the beta, maybe Valve's report shows all key registrations/activations, and not just transactions through the Steam storefront.

Though if that was true, there'd be a spike every time a steam-key-in-a-box AAA title (activision, zenimax, etc.) was released to brick-and-mortar stores.

Well, I'm glad Clem and Omid are still hanging out.

I hope Season 2 allows a little more branching of the story - Season 1 was fantastic, but sometimes the references to what had happened in the past seemed like token efforts to look like the game remembered what I'd done. And the convergence toward a single ending - even though it was a really powerful ending - made my previous choices seem a bit meaningless.

It amuses me to read John "to win the game, you must kill me" Romero and Southern Methodist University in the same sentence.

MoreLuckThanSkill wrote on Sep 11, 2013, 21:34:
Another great humble bundle. I own almost all those games already though, curses.

True, but if you're looking for a bargain, it's still a good deal even if you have all but one of the games.

And if you like paying a lot more than the minimum, you get a great opportunity to give money to the developers again, donate some money to charity, and get the games DRM free. Everybody wins!

Quinn wrote on Aug 30, 2013, 21:25:
Off-topic: Since we're talking about an ancient game here, let's go further back. Does anyone know the name of the sidescroller where you were a guy (I think named Dave?) fighting monsters? The most memorable thing for me was the part where, if you died, a small window showed exactly how brutally he died. ie, getting his head bitten off by a werewolf. Can't remember the title and for some weird reason it's nagging at me lately..

Do you mean Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion?

You may recognise the names of some of the developers of the game: John Romero, John Carmack, Adrian Carmack, Tom Hall.

Loved this line:

Fans will experience an additional three to four playthroughs on average before encountering all of the new material included in XCOM: Enemy Within, providing nearly limitless replayability.

Four playthroughs of XCOM would take a long time, but the juxtaposition with the word "limitless" is hilarious.

nin wrote on Jul 2, 2013, 23:35:

Isn't a large chunk of the money going to some stupid documentary?

Whoa whoa whoa...just because you're not interested doesn't mean other people aren't. I find them very interesting...

I haven't even watched the documentary episodes yet, but the side-quests are great. I never managed to land a job in the games industry and it's great fun to see through the eyes of some of the DF employees.

The game might still be many moons away, but it's really nice that we still have something tangible to enjoy.

This project originally asked for $400K with an estimated completion date of October 2012 - that is, about 6 months of development. The current target now appears to be about 25 months after funding completed.

A blowout of *4 times* the development time is a situation where a publisher may very well have pulled the plug on the project.

And the Crowd is now in the same position as a publisher would have been - frustrated and with a lighter wallet. Unlike a publisher - thankfully - we don't have a pack of lawyers on retainer.

I'm glad they're making a plan which doesn't involve asking for a handout.

Creston wrote on Jun 24, 2013, 10:41:
Does anyone actually still use Impulse? I refuse to give GameStop a single fucking dime, even if the game on sale happens to be the best deal ever.

There was a point where it was more reliable than Steam if you weren't connected to the net, and had better backup/restore capabilities, but that changed years ago.

Since then (even before the GameStop acquisition) it's like they've been working overtime to make it harder to use, more regionally restricted, and basically a worse overall platform than Steam, Desura, or even Origin.

Sony promises no delay for Gran Turismo 6

What could someone possibly achieve by announcing that there will be no delay?

Not only is it non-news; it's basically inviting yourself to be laughed at if it turns out that you're wrong.

nin wrote on May 23, 2013, 21:38:

Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 on Steam.

Never played these before, but holy cow...is it just a game designed to sell you more stuff?

Only in three ways:

1) Expansions (which are pretty affordable, really)
2) They release a new bloody version every year like EA does sports games
3) Purchasable foil cards (I don't get it either)

Despite #2, I've still bought it three years running now, usually on sale.

Duels of the Planeswalkers is actually a refreshing change from the IRL Magic Experience, where you need to spend hundreds of dollars to stand a chance against a decent player, or drop $20+ in cards just to participate in a sealed deck tournament.

I think I agree with Mr Spector on this one:

• The game devs are welcome to come up with their own criteria for success
• Metacritic scores are misleading to me as a gamer - generally, I'm more likely to enjoy a MC 70% game that's recommended by a friend, than a randomly selected MC 90% game
• Game publishers have been able to measure critical acclaim for decades - but in the old days they actually had to choose which critics to trust, and read their reviews. Handing this responsibility over to Metacritic - which will happily lump together arstechnica and mysonworksforactiblizzard.com, is not necessarily a step forward