OmegaFoRCe wrote on Dec 4, 2020, 06:42:

jdreyer wrote on Dec 3, 2020, 17:55:
One thing I don't understand (and I said at the time of the NVidia story) is why someone doesn't offer virtual machines optimized for game streaming on which you could install your O/S, then Steam, then whatever game you wanted. This should be able to bypass any publisher complaints.

Ah but there is such a service! Shadow has been around for a couple of years and they're slowly but surely expanding their services. A lot of Quest VR folks have been using Shadow for their Virtual Desktop/Oculus Link experiences.

You could also use Shadow to mod Witcher 3 to the max if your home system can't handle it. Or any modding - it's just a high-end Windows environment streamed to your device.

VaranDragon wrote on Nov 27, 2020, 04:24:
Please don't buy Mechwarrior 5 Mercs. It is absolute Shite. I am one of the biggest Mechwarrior fans in existence. Mechwarrior 2 was my Bible. Mechwarrior 2: Mercs, my Catechism.

I played all of them, religiously.

I bought into Mechwarrior 5 at release. The first two missions are actually quite good. The mechbay is quite good. The rest of the game is some of the most terrible, generic crap gameplay I have ever seen. Once you've seen the 5 different mission types you have seen them all. The generic missions for the most part are terrible. Even the "story" missions are the same generic bullshit as the other generic missions (and by generic they really are generic). Each mission (no matter the type) is basically a struggle to survive against waves and waves of teleporting enemies (and they literally pop in existence, sometimes right in front of you) while taking as little damage as possible. No mission design, horrible AI, useless systems, no real sense of dueling it out or accomplishing anything (other than surviving) mission, after mission, after mission.
These guys couldn't build a single-player campaign if their life depended on it. So I have little faith that this DLC is not just more of the same cashgrab.

These guys have literally destroyed the Mechwarrior IP.

Thanks. I don't intend to buy it when it releases to Steam initially, but when it falls to $5 or $10, I'll bite, and I'll make ample use of the mod community's fixes to the game.
It's really sad how they phoned this in. I can see they put in some effort in some areas, but cheaping out on the story like that, and the reportedly poor voice acting, and the shoddy AI... this game should have been the triumphant return of Mechwarrior to PC gaming, and instead it's yet another release where we go "Well, that's a shame, guess I'll just play through The Witcher 3 again..."

I can't decide on GOTY. I put HL Alyx down for VR game, tho I haven't played it nor do I own a headset. RDR2 was very good but something prevents me from giving it my GOTY nomination. I gave it Story-Rich award instead. I put Sea of Thieves down as Better With Friends, Doom Eternal as Best Game I Suck At, Black Mesa as Labour of Love.
Ori 2 was good fun but I couldn't shake the feeling that I paid money to experience the exact same thing again. I put that down for Visual Achievement, it really does have good art direction, but then so does Sea of Thieves.
That still leaves GOTY. I wish I could nominate Cyberpunk...

Happy Thanksgiving Blue, from your northern neighbour across the border.

The Steam release is expected this December among other platforms. I agree though, they should have released to all platforms except the damnable EGS payout nixed that plan. Pretty lame bait-and-switch.
According to this GamesIndustry.biz article, "It followed that up last year with Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries, which EG7 said has sold hundreds of thousands of copies on the Epic Games Store alone."

This game sets the bar for how a remaster/remake should be. Supreme amounts of polish, expansion of interesting areas, adding little details absolutely everywhere, using the latest effects they can. The team poured their hearts into this game and it shows, and the wait was absolutely worth it.
Imagine if the Crysis Remaster had been this level of quality, if their team had the time and resources to polish Crysis to Black Mesa's level of finish. Both are seminal games, only one was a phoned-in cash-grab, while the other is an obvious labour of love.
Speaking of which, I nominated Black Mesa for the Labour of Love award in the Steam GOTY Award nominations.

What's PVP like these days? Are there purpose-built PVP gear sets or do you just use whatever gear you have in PVP and there's a magic scaling system to level other players? I recall Blizz did away with Resilience long ago.

BIGtrouble77 wrote on Oct 23, 2020, 17:02:

MoreLuckThanSkill wrote on Oct 23, 2020, 13:09:
Well, physical media had its share of pluses and minuses, just like digital, but overall the convenience of digital games seems to outweigh having a physical disk for most people, even back in the day.

Putting sheer install size aside, there are a bunch of things I loved about the "big box" era that we haven't seen for 25 years...

Having a physical representation of the game really added to the immersion and enjoyment when it was done well. I can't imagine playing Ultima 1-7 without the map, bestiary, trinkets, etc. Monkey Island made copy protection fun with Dial a Pirate. I read the X-com and Sim City 2000 manuals cover to cover.

The other side effect is that these weren't impulse buys. You had to go to the store and pull your wallet out to buy anything. I valued my more intimate collection of games way more back then than I do most of my Steam games now. Having a physical representation of a virtual product just made it seem more substantial.

Agreed. And like the article says, it's just nice to see the physical representation of the games you have played and have immediate memories of playing them when you see them sitting there on the shelf. I have a paltry physical collection of things now. A HL2 box, a Diablo and Homeworld manual, some Everquest 2 poster, the original jewel case for Everquest, the Baldur's Gate and FF7 cardboard CD trays... but of the hundreds (?) of games I've played since then, I have no physical reminder of my time with them other than seeing their name in my Steam library to call up memories.
And yeah like you say, forking over cash or your credit card to be able to walk home with a game, thinking on the way home what it will be like and the first thing you'll do, that was fun. Now you simply pay for license access and once it's downloaded play immediately. That's great, but it's missing something.

I think Delta Force used voxels didn't it?

I'm eagerly awaiting DD2, as I loved the first one. I never did get very far into the Crimson Curse expansion though, and I skipped the Colour of Madness and PVP DLC, but I did beat the darkest dungeon. I'm quite proud of that. I prefer non-modded for this title, I feel like it doesn't need additional heroes, and I prefer Red Hook's balancing. I guess I like playing the game the way they intend the player to.
Pity about them taking the Epic cash.

You guys are weird. You're always complaining about unfinished games being released and then dripfeeding the playerbase DLC and cosmetics. DLC which quite often is clearly held back from the initial release so the publisher can charge an extra $10 to unlock it. This has been a common complaint for years. Now EA comes along and releases Squadrons and Jedi Fallen Order and promises a fully contained release, all-in for $40 (or whatever), and you're complaining that you want more and they should release DLC? At least we know what we are getting this time around: a complete story for our money.
I agree that mod tools would be a good thing to release to the community so we can make more content for ourselves.
Another thing, EA must have learned about the SW BF2 fiasco, because this is a pleasing reversal of their previous horrendous DLC/cosmetics/lootbox-infused offerings. Lament that it's a closed story all you want, but don't go whining that they aren't holding back content to charge us extra for.

Looking forward to reviews. For me, TL2 came the closest to feeling like a Diablo 2 successor among the ones I have tried, including Diablo 3. I have low expectations for this game from what I read during the Early Access phase, and I will be legitimately surprised if TL3 manages to match TL2's level of fun, quality, and replayability. Also, mod support. TL2 Synergies mod was a vast improvement on an already great game.

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.