Malvok wrote on Feb 5, 2017, 19:28:
They should have spent more time on server infrastructure and less on virtual dicks.

This is Funcom we are talking about. They suck at most things. Virtual dicks is all this game has going for it.

Seems like a case of too little to late. With all the fantastic shooters we've seen since Dirty Bombs release I don't seen anyone going back to it. The most hardcore fans will continue to play it, but being a pretty good shooter doesn't cut it when you have a number of fantastic shooters out there.

Cutter wrote on Sep 13, 2016, 12:15:
It's idiotic they don't use a scale of 10. That's still the best way to rate something. There are a lot of games I might rate a 5 or 6 but if my options are up or down than it goes down. And most people aren't going to plough through reviews to see that and just skip the game entirely.

No, ditching score system is part of what makes steam reviews superior to all the other user/customer review systems. It prevents people from intentionally trying to tank the score by spamming 0/10, which few games truly deserve, or 10/10, which again is not often deserved.

Requiring someone to own the game on steam and limiting them to a thumbs up or thumbs down makes it work.

Your review doesn't really matter, very few single reviews do. Steam is using a large sample to get an idea about how people feel.

You can still put any score you want in your written review. If people think your review is one of the few really good ones they will vote it to the top.

Creston wrote on Aug 20, 2016, 13:45:
Wow, they paused the console versions and are releasing the PC version first? Has that ever even happened before??

When a game is still in flux or using the constant development model you sometimes see it. Warframe his PC first then expanded to consoles.

Also rarely, when a game is more PC focused, like Witcher 2.

Avus wrote on Aug 10, 2016, 10:46:
another recycled game...

It is the best Dead Rising. It is good to have it on PC.

thecakeisalie wrote on Aug 10, 2016, 19:25:
BattleEye can be circumvented, although it's supposedly one of the better anti-cheat packages out there.

Able to be circumvented is a hell of a lot better than their previous cheat protection which basically didn't work at all.

ItBurn wrote on Aug 7, 2016, 12:59:
"Tim Sweeney thinks Microsoft will make Steam "progressively worse" with Windows 10 patches"

This really isn't making Steam worse. It is screaming get a Dualshock 4 or Steam Controller.

RedEye9 wrote on Jul 29, 2016, 20:26:
What, are they still butt hurt over the death threats because of ME3's identical endings. So now i gotta get a fakebook account to communicate w/em. f that.

It is more a combination of them being absolutely incompetent at managing their communities and them being lazy and wanting to save money.

They'll regret it down the road when fan communities form and they have no control over them. Then when they fuck up the community roasts them alive.

Tachikoma wrote on Jul 24, 2016, 04:53:
I like South Park and I love RPGs. But somehow have zero interest in this. Strange.

The Stick of Truth is actually really good, give it a try if you haven't. I'm hoping Ubisoft doesn't fuck this up without Obsidian. They are really good at fucking stuff up.

Suppa7 wrote on Jul 11, 2016, 21:31:

Devinoch wrote on Jul 11, 2016, 14:44:
Speaking of missing the point completely... Because Valve wants to sell games doesn't mean it's beneficial to have as many positive reviews as possible.

You aren't old enough to know that those of us who watched PC gaming grow up, gabe is an enemy not a friend. Hes' a total dick that pushed the move behind the removal of dedicated servers. He hugely started the trend of confiscating game ownership and encouraging back end locked down games. Remember steam was shoved into half-life and counterstrike as drm which no one wanted.

Steam is still drm and gabe is still an asshole, more and more games will be increasingly impossible to preserve because game companies are producing games in underhanded ways that prevent gamer control of said game.

If you are a veteran PC gamer like you claim you will also remember that he basically saved PC gaming. Initially PC gaming had a whole wall at Babbage's or Eletronics Boutique. Around the time Half-Life 2 dropped PC games were relegated to a single cart in the middle of the store. Retail didn't want to carry PC games because console games were more profitable.

Without Steam we wouldn't have the strong indie ecosystem we have today and we wouldn't have developers respecting the PC as a platform. The money steam makes forces them to pay attention. Digital distribution has some downsides, but was healthy for PC gaming.

Gamers have no confidence in game journalists and their reviews anymore. They have proven time and time again that they are wildly out of touch with gamer's tastes.

Steam reviews are amazing. Yes, people write stupid stuff in the text. They aren't about the text though. They are about the general trend. It is the one of the best sources of it a game is good or bad we have right now. Ignore the reviews at the bottom, you are concerned with the postive vs negative trend. They even improved it and added recent reviews and all time reviews. Bad games tend to get obliterated, good games tend to get mostly good reviews.

Of course Steam reviews make developers sweat a little. If you make a bad game you are going to get called out on it very quickly.

Some recent examples:
Doom - 88% recent 90% all time
Battleborn - 52% recent, 65% all time
Metal Gear Solid V - 87% recent, 87% all time
Fallout 4 - 71% recent, 79% all time
Day Z Standalone - 52% recent, 70% all time
Mark of the Ninja - 94% recent, 97% all time

That all seems pretty accurate to me. Way more accurate than the game press who gave fallout 4 and 84% on PC while glazing over its flaws. It even caught the fact that Day-Z has stagnated and probably isn't a good buy anymore.

If you gave me a choice between just the Steam review numbers and just the metacritic numbers I would go for the steam reviews.

Sure there is some noise in the reviews, but it smooths out as quantity increases. Why would Valve ever pay some game writers to do what Steams users are already doing, better, for free? Nobody wants a bunch of former Kotaku or Polygon hacks replacing Steam's users. Plus they wouldn't even make a dent in all the games on Steam.

shinchan0s wrote on Jun 4, 2016, 17:46:

Slick wrote on Jun 4, 2016, 16:18:
"gearbox has writers?"

are you fucking kidding me?

this is either a pithy troll attempt, or you legitimately don't know what you're talking about. I'm guessing the latter.

Battleborn is so far the funniest game I've played since Portal 2. Totally unexpected. It's not all AAA-grade comedy, but a big chunk of it is, and the shit that characters say in MP just makes me start crying it's so good. That's probably the most noticeable thing coming from BattleBorn to Overwatch... Overwatch is fucking dry and boring and tries to take itself seriously... I'd much rather hear my character taunt the enemy with "Public school student!" instead of "The reckoning is here". BARF.

Although speaking of funny games, the mini game where you catapult portal-style personality cores in valve's "The Lab" demo for the vive is also really funny, with a cameo from Justin Roiland no less!

I just hope that the writer in this story will have the freedom to keep up this irreverant tone with the new job on offer..

There's no accounting for taste. There are people out there that actually like the Star Wars prequels and Community's 4th season.

I'm with you man. I love Battleborn's humor and the character designs are better than Overwatch IMO. Tracer's accent is beyond irritating. Blizzard just nailed it with the more mainstream appeal.

By "more mainstream appeal" do you mean a better game? That certainly what Blizzard did, they made on of the best multiplayer shooters in a long time. Battleborn's mediocrity didn't stand a chance.

Technically yes, but it is sold as a different entry on Steam. So it gets tracked as two games.

ItBurn wrote on May 14, 2016, 12:47:
I loved painkiller. Especially the Black edition, damn. But I haaaate Bulletstorm. It's a terrible game in every way for me. So I don't know what to think about that announcement...

People Can Fly split up after it got bought by Epic. Their best talent seems to have gone to Flying Wild Hog. FWH made Hard Reset and the Shadow Warrior reboot.

This is just whiny game journos complaining because we are tired of their bullshit and that Steam is helping us replace them. They complain because games like Gone Home pulls 71% positive, actually reflecting the fact that it is a decent game that isn't for everyone, instead of getting 10/10 reviews.

They are pissed because they are losing their outlets to try and push their politics and are being crushed by big data and youtube personalities. All we wanted to know was if the game was good and modern games media is too busy kissing up to big publishers and pushing their specific clique of indie friends to tell us.

The establishment see Steam reviews as a threat because they are actually good and cutting them out of the loop. Steam is the single greatest positive force in gaming, period

This comment was edited on May 7, 2016, 20:42.

Cutter wrote on Apr 8, 2016, 19:23:
Damn gangster! I am down for this! Please don't suck!

Paradox has a pretty good track record with their grand strategy games. They are very deep, very comnplex, and usually quite good. However, they aren't for everyone and usually have a learning curve.

Crusader Kings 2 is a good example of how it will probably turn out.

SpectralMeat wrote on Mar 9, 2016, 12:20:
I didn't install the ones they've just came out with yesterday

Those are apparently incredibly bad, massive performance hits to everything, Windows won't boot for some people, ect. Not sure if you heard that yet, but it would be a good idea to avoid them.

Jerykk wrote on Jan 2, 2016, 17:51:
Cliffski doesn't actually explain why the new refund system kills flash sales and daily deals. He just says that it does. I'm not sure where he's making the correlation. People are less likely to refund a game (or any other product) if it's cheaper.

He also says that the flash sales and daily deals weren't designed to create a false sense of urgency in order increase sales, which is patently incorrect. The whole point of having a time-limited discount is to create a false sense of urgency. The shorter the time-limit, the greater the urgency. It's the reason why Black Friday exists.

It is because you are allowed to refund because an item went on sale. So flash sales and daily deals would generate a large amount of refunds. Thus they don't really work anymore.

However, I disagree that "deep discounts" are over. There are games I didn't buy because their sale wasn't big enough. Developers are still figuring it out. I don't think we will see as many super-sales, but I think devs played this Steam Sale too conservatively. There were a lot of 15% and 25% sales. I think devs just need to find the sale points again.

This comment was edited on Jan 2, 2016, 18:18.

WaltC wrote on Dec 24, 2015, 15:47:
This isn't to knock other OSes at all--just to comment on the fact that it is also difficult for me to understand why game companies even bother to pay for OS X/Linux ports of their games, or why OS X/Linux "gamers" (I feel those are oxymorons) are willing to wait months and years on second-rate game ports that often never come at all.

It is a long project. As more developers support Linux and OS X gaming it becomes a more viable option. Microsoft was jealously eye-balling the walled garden approach of iOS for some time before Windows 10 and it spooked a lot of people. GabeN realized his company's fate was ultimately tied to the whims of Microsoft. What would happen if Microsoft decided to lock them out? A lot of other developers noticed the same thing. When Windows 10 hit, yes it was as draconian as people feared (possibly in part due to the change in leadership at Microsoft), but it still made them all realize they were vulnerable.

There is a big push to have games be on multiple operating systems right now. That way developers can hedge their bets. This is more about trying to create an ecosystem where gaming is no longer a Windows exclusive activity on the computer. Valve has actually done a very good job at bringing gaming back to Apple computers. It isn't as good as windows, but you can actually be a gamer on an OSX device now.

Krovven wrote on Aug 30, 2015, 13:41:
A friend has been trying to get me to play it for years. But I never wanted to buy it as I wasn't a big fan of the first one.

Must resist...especially now that Diablo 3 Season 4 has started.

GW2 was not a great game at launch. The PvP was bad and there was nothing to do at the end game. The devs idea of the end game was to have you run around to all the leveling zones you never did and get scaled down so you could try and 100% the game. Most of the end game dungeons were busted and not worth doing. It was a pretty sad state.

However, it was nothing like Guild Wars 1.