STP! STP! STP!
Stop the Pun!
(kidding... I hope they never stop coming)

Holy crap! That was amazing. I’m in a doctors office waiting room trying to control my laughter… only somewhat successfully.

A disheartening sign of the times, but at this point any time I see ""experts say", "according to experts", or "studies show", I pretty much immediately tune out the rest of the statement. Experts, and apparently now studies, are just like statistics - they can be made to say anything.

I got in on the original Kickstarter for Star Citizen and then kind of forgot about it. I see the occasional post here but typically avoid the comments on those posts. This "Any Day Now" video was fascinating for someone who has only loosely followed this epic drama. Highly recommended.

They have some of these available on ipad. It would be amazing if they could convert or create a game, even if it had to be slightly simpler in design, for phones. It's not everyone's thing, but I'd love to kill some time with a game like this on my phone. The closest thing I've seen is "Heroes of Steel" and it's just not that great compared to SpiderWeb's offerings.
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Ha! I just saw that the first Queen's Wish is indeed available on iphone! Nice!

MoreLuckThanSkill wrote on Mar 15, 2022, 05:41:
Is this one of those games that got played by a popular streamer(s) and now their fans are buying it?

I'm wondering that, too. It was cheap enough that I picked it up and played for a few hours. It's "ok", but I couldn't find anything there that Minecraft/Terraria/Don't Starve haven't done and done better.

Everyone will have their own opinions of course, but in addition to the classics you mentioned, my “new classics” list includes Arthur Christmas and Klaus. I don’t know why Arthur Christmas makes me so giddy but I love it!

The user get's to decide what's in the best interest of the user. This "I know what's best for all you lowly plebes" we're getting these days from our big tech corps and our government is maddening.

"BENGOO G9000 Stereo Gaming Headset" What? Whoa... 66,000 reviews. I dont' think I've ever seen that many reviews for a product. Fakespot doesn't think too highly of it though. Still, if Amazon's list here is based on sales, that's a lot of headsets out the door.

Dev wrote on Nov 17, 2020, 19:30:

WaltC wrote on Nov 17, 2020, 18:22:
When I tried the game pass for PC last year with The Outer Worlds, I bailed out when I couldn't mod the game (because of its Herculean copy protection unique to the Microsoft store--it brooked no changes to its file structure.)

Was that the MS store version? Like I don't know if game pass has the super locked down MS store versions or not.

Yes, this is the major downside of XGP. It's still worth it for me, but for some games,I end up buying the Steam version regardless of the fact that I'd get it for "free" with my game pass: Outer Worlds and No Man's Sky fell into this category (though I regret the Outer Worlds purchase). You just have to accept that if you play a game on XGP, it's going to be the "stock" game 100% with almost no access to tweaks or mods. It's the console experience, but on your PC. That's a big ask - on the PC, tweaking and adjusting at the file level is simply part of the experience.

MrCharm42 wrote on Oct 10, 2020, 07:47:

JTW wrote on Oct 9, 2020, 23:47:

Cutter wrote on Oct 9, 2020, 22:58:
I recommend strongly against. Wasn't terrible, just really meh. Quit about halfway through. Go play it on XGP if you're curious.

I actually agree with this. It isn't awful, but nothing about it was particularly good, either. The combat was dull. The dialog was uninspired. The quests weren't enticing. The NPCs had no personality. It was just... dull.

I'll 3rd this - though it was good enough for me to complete (yes, I have a problem). Just not very memorable in any way, though generally bug-free. Glad I did it on XGP, as I'll never play it again (or care about DLC, etc.).

Going to jump in and agree. This is EXACTLY the kind of game that I "should" have loved, but it was just so meh. This was the fist game to make me really appreciate XGP because I was able to put about 15 or so hours into it and walk away without feeling guilty for having wasted money.

J wrote on Aug 26, 2020, 17:31:
Wasteland 2 left me feeling off. The Outer Worlds was even worse. Even if this one is good, I'll be waiting to recoup my losses.

My experience exactly. Both of those, on paper, were exactly what I thought I was lookin for in a game, but in the end I stopped playing for a day or two and never felt the urge to come back to them.

But... that's the awesome part of gxbox game pass. I can try these things and not feel THAT bad if I drop them. I pruchased Wasteland 2 outright, but Outer Worlds was on XGP, and that's how I'll try Wasteland 3 as well.

I avoided this game like the plague when it first came out, but after hearing about the improvements, I started playing a few weeks ago. I am having a great time. I did find the "Normal" mode a little easy (which is unusual for me - I like easy ) so restarted on "Survival". Even that's not hard, but at least there some risk involved.

If you've ever been interested, but held off because of the massive over-promising when it launched, I'd encourage giving it a shot now. I'm not sure it's worth full price, but if you can find it at 50% off or more, it's a good deal for the number of hours you'll put into it.

RaZ0r! wrote on May 7, 2020, 15:24:
Witcher 3 wasn't massively successful until very recently when the TV show was created. I'm not so sure Witcher is an influence here, but it could be.

That's an understandable point of view, but the Wicther 3 sold over 20 million copies BEFORE the show came out and even before the fairly successful Switch port. Sure, that's not GTA V numbers, but it's still a huge, huge success.

Strangely enough, I just finished this game. It had been sitting in my epic backlog for years.

To be honest, I was left with an overall feeling of "meh". The characters were pretty well done. The premise was fun and once you reached a certain point (do you still have to hold back spoilers for a five-year-old game?), movement and escape became less troublesome. Combat was fine, if tedious.

My main complaint was really that once you were two hours in, you had really experienced everything the game was going to offer. Combat never really changed. You never became powerful enough to change the nature of how things worked. Your weapons did little more damage and the foes you faced absorbed a little more damage. Nothing changed the entire time.

Yet I finished it; not something I do for every, or even most, games these days. Why is that? Well, the missions - especially the main storyline missions but also many side quests - were pretty interesting and widely varied. The primary story itself was intriguing enough to make me curious as to how it would end. Finally, and this goes back to my complaint, I was always waiting for "Phase II" of the game where combat etc. improved or changed just a bit. That never came, but I can't say I regret my time playing the game.

I know sounded negative here, but I'd still say it's worth a play if you've never given it a shot. You can find this well-supported high quality game for dirt cheap now, so there's little risk.

I only recently tried PoE1. I really tried to get into it, and I can't put a pin into why, but I finally dropped it about 15 hours in. I just didn't look forward to coming back to it in the limited time I have for gaming. Now compare that to DOS2 which I just started and wow! I have to tear myself away from the game (despite really struggling to be successful in combat). It's just so clean and polished and, well, fun.

One thing I noticed right off after having tried PoE so recently was the simplicity of the character development models. Whenever I leveled up in PoE, I had no idea where to put points to actually make any difference; completely the opposite of DOS2 where it's blindingly obvious what a point in each of the different areas will help with.

From the FAQ quoted directly above:

What games will be included in the beta?
All games tagged with local co-op, local multiplayer, or split-screen will be included.

I don't see LAN mentioned anywhere above or in the linked support document.

Fleabag isn't for everyone, but the wife and I thought it was hilarious. We're eagerly waiting for the next season.

I'm certainly no guru, but here's one man's experience.

I had been using Dell business class IPS monitors for years and years; first a 24" 16:10 ratio and then a 30" 16:10. I LOVED these monitors. When I finally decided to upgrade I hesitantly went with an Agon AG352UCG G-Sync monitor. It uses the same panel as a number of other 35" ultrawide MVA monitors with a resolution of 3440x1440.

I say "hesitantly" above because I was VERY unsure about stepping away from my beloved IPS panels and into something that was potentially not as good. All I can say is that I have been happy in every single way with the decision. I use the monitor for 95% business as opposed to gaming despite having actually bought it for gaming purposes. The colors, clarity, and precision are all everything I could have hoped for.

Monitors are subjective and I know some of the reviews of MVA panels mention various uniforminty issues, etc. I'm either not as sensitive to those problems or they don't exist in my unit as to me it seems perfect from one end to the other. I'd have no problem recommending one of the several monitors using this panel. I'm typing this message on it right now and it prompted me to re-examine the angles and colors. They still look good to me.

For what its' worth I originally powered it with a GTX 970. That was "ok". The G-Sync kept everything playable even with lower framerates, but when I upgraded to a GTX 1080 a few months later it was a marked improvement. I'm no GPU expert but the improvement was actually way more than it should have been given the actual difference in GPU power and I suspect strongly that a big percentage of the difference was actually the higher memory count in the 1080 over the 970. So if that's true, it's a good reason to consider a high memory card, even with a smaller GPU if going for something with 3k or 4k resolution.

This looks WAY too much like The Last Stand flash game to not have some kind of shared history (same dev, or something). The game mechanics, the pegboard weapon holder, etc. It's exactly the same.

Not that that's a bad thing. That was a fun flash game.