I need to hurry up and finish my ME1 playthrough so I can get to ME2. I never played it back in the day, and ME2 is the one everyone raves about.

Jebus... when did it go EGS exclusive? I've had this wishlisted for a while now. Just checked and no I didn't, but I have been interested in this title since their early announce trailer a year or two ago. What a bummer... I might pick it up for my Switch depending on performance reviews for that platform. They've had a Steam page for a while now right?
That EGS exclusivity payout is just too good for devs these days. A cool, free $2 million up front, a greater slice of the pie on a year's worth of sales... and then the platform has no reviews or forums or discussion boards to "gum up the works" and provide players with pertinent info, no achievements to create - since all other games lack achievements, it's fine if yours doesn't have them either, but on steam it becomes a selling point.

I bought it for Switch and maybe got three solid hours of entertainment out of it. It's a short, quick game with limited replay value. Probably best to wait for a sale on Steam.

I played the single player campaign twice through on release, but then Unreal came out just five months later and its campaign blew me away with its colored lighting, transparency, imaginative levels, better music, and so on. I have vague memories of coming back to Q2 after a couple months playing Unreal and finding it kinda dry and boring. I never really got into multiplayer, maybe only played half a dozen matches.
Then Half-Life came out in November... and Tribes in December of '98. What a time for gaming that was! *nostalgic sigh*

I was prepared to retort "Your indie game isn't selling on Switch because it's crappy indie shovelware" but that isn't the case here, this complaint is coming from a respected dev. One of his complaints was that the eShop isn't build for game discovery, it's built as a catalogue of games. This means users either go into the eShop with the title in mind and then search for it, or they wash up in the eShop and get presented primarily with whatever has the highest discount, since the eShop sorts by downloads which means units sold - so higher discount yields more purchases which yields more downloads, so the cheap rise to the top.
I think the entire eShop and News Wire feature need to be integrated, like he suggests, but also more discovery algorithms and options need to be baked in, the way Steam does it. It would help a LOT of Nintendo fixed the horrendous lag when simply browsing the store. As it is right now, it's almost painfully slow. It would really help if we could have game ratings, but that can be "gamed" as well by buying reviews.
Basically I think Nintendo intended the eShop to be idly browsed by users, like going to a movie rental shop or a library and browsing the racks, rather than going there and being presented with stuff they might like based on their previous play time. In this regard it's working as intended, and as the flood of shovelware increases on the store - and it's already an absolute deluge of shovelware - Nintendo is simply getting games in front of eyeballs, regardless of user interest.

yuastnav wrote on Jul 22, 2020, 06:38:
Well, it was fun while it lasted. I liked playing this game when it came out. After they dropped Linux support, though, I became less interested. This is just another nail.

It's rated platinum on ProtonDB: https://www.protondb.com/app/252950
It's not native anymore, but even if you buy it from EGS, you could still load it through Steam as a non-Steam game using Proton, or you could load it with Lutris?

Verno wrote on Jul 16, 2020, 13:12:

Xero wrote on Jul 16, 2020, 12:53:
Looks like a poor mans Sea of Thieves.

Hah man that's saying something, SoT one of the most shallow and boring games I've played. Fans of it always seem to hit people with the "its great, just bring friends!" but friends + beer makes almost anything fun, I'm looking for something that's actually worth playing.

I for one really like SoT and I wish my spouse were more interested in playing more of it. We've only played 5 or so sessions and I've been itching for more of it. I love the sandbox nature: the game gives you some simple quests which set you up to make and find your own fun while doing those tasks. It's like how EQ was fun back in the day: my goal is to get to this camp and grind some XP, and half the time I'd get waylaid by other, better opportunities.

Jonjonz wrote on Jul 8, 2020, 06:22:
This has to be the most inane, naive, sophomoric Op Ed ever posted here.

Yea just what we need, another Great Leap Forward, or equivalent of the the Russian Marxist revolution. Burn everything down and lynch anyone anonymously accused.

I'm gonna go with you didn't read the piece. And if you did and you still feel this way, you need to learn some empathy.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Jul 8, 2020, 13:13:
Watched it and...meh. Damage sponge boss with circle, attack, fade, repeat.

The game mechanics are beyond stale at this point.

I had been thinking of buying Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, and after reading some Steam reviews, checked out gameplay footage from YouTube, and it's the same thing - between long linear corridor exploration periods, mash attack and dodge buttons during combat periods, then return to linear corridor exploration. It's like the Doom Clones from the 90s all over again, been there, done that.
I'd like to see more impactful combat design, and better justification for combat in games in general. I'd like to see combat design made deadlier, with stress repercussions after combat ends, made more about timing and waiting for opportunity than taking out hordes of enemies.

Ahumado wrote on Jul 6, 2020, 16:30:
SW 2 was trash. SW 1 was great and there was nothing you know what about it

trash opinion

There's a torrent of the install file out there if anyone's thinking of grabbing it. I intend to play just a little bit, depending on community size. I also expect to get pwned by seasoned TF2 vets.
I never really had a problem with the cosmetics and the hats, I thought it added to the fun and party atmosphere of TF2. What I don't like is the crate and key system. I get what Valve was trying to do - with item trading create item scarcity and let supply and demand dictate price - and that's interesting especially as an Econ BA. But it just really bothers me that I have the choice of either paying $2.50 per key to get random cosmetics from a crate, or buy the ones I want from other players at ridiculously inflated prices.
I guess that's the point of TF2 Classic 2.0 though, return the game to a point just before introduction of the hat craze. Personally I enjoyed all the different weapons from the updates, it really mixed up class playstyle, but the base game was balanced perfectly, so I'm fine with that also.

I'm much less enamored with Doom Eternal than Doom 2016. The latter I have played through three times, while with DE my campaign save is on the final level/mission and I'm tempted to uninstall it now. It's a good game, but I guess I find the enemy/weapon tactics mildly irritating.
I was watching the trailer for H:ZD and it looks like a reskinned AC Odyssey to me. I'm gonna skip that one, the gameplay looks so similar to AC, Z:BOTW, RDR2 and TW3 that I feel like I've already played it.

HorrorScope wrote on Jun 26, 2020, 10:46:

Mordhaus wrote on Jun 25, 2020, 20:04:
It's the nature of people to pick sides.

And it's learning and intelligence to break past that. I still have some real beef with EGS. Love Steam overall, but EGS no doubt is the one bringing the most value to the buyer between those two currently. Steam reads the room though and is adjusting. EGS as we know is simply buying market share, which most of the time if perfectly legal if one likes it or not. I think I have every major launcher installed, I picked the side of choice, I picked the side that it isn't that hard to do. I'm just starting to look at GOG Galaxy and some 3rd Party Apps of possible one Front that sucks them all in.

Agreed, and while EGS may be buying mindshare with their discounts, those are real discounts: last sale EGS offered $10 off every game over $15, an unlimited amount of times; meanwhile Steam offers $5 on $30 spent as a one-time thing. And despite myself, I maintain my own silent petty boycott of EGS and bought three games from Steam last night despite their rather weak discounts of 20% or 30%.
It does feel true that we're seeing worsening Steam discounts (not that that's Valve's fault, it's the publisher's choice), but we need someone to peruse ITAD and determine if Steam discounts are factually worsening over time. Last time I looked at random titles on ITAD, it appeared that base prices are slowly rising while discount % remains the same, but I didn't do a longer analysis and just viewed a few titles.
Troubling thing is, EGS' exclusivity gambit may be working. I go to their storefront and immediately identify a half dozen games that look interesting, fresh, and locked to EGS, and part of me wants to say "Screw it, I'll play it as a non-Steam game" while the other part says no continue to boycott. Meanwhile I look at the Steam store front and I'd estimate 19/20 titles don't interest me, or I already ruled out long ago, or I already own... EGS is very good at sniping the appealing new titles.

jacobvandy wrote on Jun 16, 2020, 22:54:
Like the over-excited senior shouted at Bob Barker, that's too much!

So I glanced through the featured games, installed some demos that piqued my interest, finally got to the list of most popular ones at the bottom... Turns out I should have just skipped to there, since I had queued up about half of those and nothing else. Does anyone really go digging through the whole 900? Seems to me like 95% of these festival games will just wallow in obscurity the same way 95% of the overall Steam catalog does. The cream rises to the top, and that's good enough for myself and anyone I talk to about it.

I spent a few hours last night digging around, and yes, there are a heck of a lot of indie sidescrollers and platformers that will release in obscurity. I saw one that was a straight up rip-off of Limbo/Inside. Plenty of Celeste-inspired quick death platformers. Lots and lots of sidescrolling hack-and-slash games.
I didn't wade into the Survival genre but I imagine it's overstuffed with "You wake up in a jungle island and must survive!" games
Granted I did manage to find several interesting games I downloaded the demos for and wishlisted, so it's safe to say that while yes there are plenty of semi-crappy indie games on there for previewing, there's also a lot of polished looking games. Metamorphosis stood out to me. Superliminal also has a demo.

I have no interest in this title, but my wife's friends swear by it as some of the most fun in gaming they have had in the last 5 years. Two of them have thousands of hours of play time between them, and hearing their stories, it does sound pretty hilarious. I prefer to avoid unfinished sloppy titles myself...

Good for EGS giving this one away though. GOG Connect was a similar gesture - build a library so you have more desire to purchase GOG titles - but EGS has the bank to give away some really decent current titles.

theglaze wrote on May 26, 2020, 11:18:

jacobvandy wrote on May 26, 2020, 10:35:
Because in-home and remote co-op have nothing to do with a cloud, unless you want to consider your own PC to be the "cloud." You are running those games locally and using your own network or internet connection to serve the stream to your other devices or your friend(s). The point of cloud gaming is that you do not download and run the software yourself.

Yes, that is the definition of 'cloud gaming'; there are various use cases for 'remote gaming' and I find it strange that Steam is leaving a gap over the more logical next feature to offer:

• Offered free by Steam: In-home streaming from gaming computer to other device on the same network
• Offered free by Steam: Remote co-op streaming via Steam from gaming computer to other devices on different network
• Not offered by Steam: Remote streaming from gaming computer to other device on different network
• Rumoured to be offered by Steam/NVIDIA: Cloud streaming to other device on any network

The rumoured cloud gaming is a stark departure from Steam's traditional business model, payment structure, and general way of doing things. Maybe Steam just wants to monopolize cloud gaming before any of their competitors figure it out...

Steam already allows you to play your games remotely, powered by your home PC. I played AC Odyssey remotely using my laptop from the university library when I was supposed to be studying for the CPA CFE, and it actually played pretty well, being rendered by my system. Spooked my wife out as it wakes the monitor up and she could see the game "playing itself".
This next offering is what I imagine everyone expected, Steam offering a cloud-hosted games platform. Game demos is a great idea for this tech, so instead of downloading 80gb of Call of Duty demo, Steam just streams the demo to you from their server warehouse. What this means for modding in the future is somewhat scarier, but if that's my primary concern, then Blade offers full Windows 10 desktop streams with full functionality, so I could mod Witcher 3 to my heart's content on a remote server and stream it wherever I want... but only if the server can stream the content to my local system faster than my home network can, which is just a function of my home internet upload speed vs theirs.

I don't recall playing this game past the first level. Making the player fight cyber-toads as an intro to the game was such a horrible decision. Too bad, because apparently some of the later levels in the game are somewhat interesting, but at this point I have better things to do than slog through Daikatana to see what I may or may not have been missing.

I'm late to the party and picked up Doom Eternal the other day during the 25% off sale. It's been quite the adjustment. I consider myself pretty good at shooters and played Doom 2016 on nightmare pretty successfully, but last night I decided to hell with it and dialed back my campaign's difficulty from Ultra Violence to Hurt Me Plenty just cause I was sick of getting wiped out so easily. I'm not keen on installing a mod this early in my playthrough but it's pretty tempting as quite often I don't realize I'm out of ammo until the game switches my weapon for me. The game could really use an ammo count right by the reticle, I'm frankly way too busy shooting demons to glance at my ammo count most of the time. That jump height increase would help a lot also...

Beamer wrote on Apr 23, 2020, 14:31:

theglaze wrote on Apr 23, 2020, 13:44:
I felt daunted with XCOM 2, just too grand in depth and length with key gameplay elements outside of combat.

It's as if XCOM Chimera Squad was created for me. Thank you Firaxis/2K!

Me: what does he mean, too grand in length?!

Also me: 250+ hours spent in game

I think I did 4 playthroughs. Maybe 6. So yeah, it's a lot and a real commitment.

Right?? It's such a great game! All those Steam Workshop mods extend the playability so much, same as for Torchlight 2, the mods available expand the game and make it even more fun to play. I've beaten the game twice now once on Novice and once on Normal, now playing Commander Iron Man difficulty. Really love those weapon mods like the axes, all the hero customization... and War of the Chosen made the game even better!

ColoradoHoudini wrote on Apr 14, 2020, 11:21:
Reddit:

.......It's riddled with non-Americans, underaged people, and very strange accounts parroting the same messages over and over........

Reddit isn't a website provided solely for American users, it serves worldwide users. Naturally you're going to find non-Americans responding to world news in the comments. Are you saying you don't care about the opinions of non-Americans?