PCGamesN is spot on. I found the technical test disappointing. It's just a rehash of the classic AoE games which wouldn't be so bad if there weren't already rehashes for every single one of them from no. 1 to no. 3 in the form of Definitive Editions. I expected A LOT more from a no. 4.

That build has nothing, NOTHING, on my Barbie in terms of REKT COWS PER MINUTE , man!

Ozmodan wrote on Sep 21, 2021, 10:57:
Kind of hard to patent something Blizzard has been doing for years.

Not only Blizzard. Origin and uPlay have also had this for many years. Steam is extremely late to the party in that regard. Maybe Gabe should get this new technology called Internet in his New Zealand exile some time to get up to speed with some developments in the last decade.

Mr. Tact wrote on Sep 20, 2021, 22:48:
It really is quite amazing.

IF those numbers were true, yes, but I have huge doubts they are real.

WannaLogAlready wrote on Sep 19, 2021, 14:06:
Glad to see Deathloop doing well.

I don’t think it’s really doing well. It must have been a weak week on Steam. The peak player numbers were very low for a new release. In that top 100 list Deathloop was typically found in the second half way down the list. It just did well relatively in comparison to the other games on the sales charts for whatever that means.

WannaLogAlready wrote on Sep 17, 2021, 21:39:
Hope some characters reappear.

Dude? The whole trailer is basically one big reappearance fest .

The Half Elf wrote on Sep 16, 2021, 13:52:

Goodtry wrote on Sep 16, 2021, 12:39:
I wish they would put these resources into MWO instead. It's the better game by far IMO.

Have you followed the games development at all, or like the fact that it's 2 different dev's?

How so? Is MWO no longer developed by Piranha Games?

Dev wrote on Sep 16, 2021, 09:18:
... because it's starting to hit us in the pocketbook now

You can say that again. Going by the player numbers on Steam the game has flopped so hard that it would not be surprising if they renamed it to DEATHFLOP soon . And I mean DEATHFLOP almost literally since I'm wondering if this might be the final nail in the coffin for Arkane under their new Bethesda/Microsoft overlords. It almost seemed like a miracle that Bethesda allowed them to keep being "creative" after the poor sales performance of Prey. Now that Bethesda also has new overlords: Will they (Microsoft) keep letting Arkane doing their "creativity" gig or will there be consequences now?

Nice! Please be good...

Overon wrote on Sep 15, 2021, 23:56:
Was it really Capcom's DRM and Denuvo had nothing to do with it?

Yup. They did not remove Denuvo. They made "adjustments" to the DRM in the July 20 patch that fixed performance for the most majority of users. Since Denuvo was not removed, the logical conclusion is that Capcom "adjusted" their own DRM (or maybe even removed it).

The freeloaders always love to blame Denuvo but I have never ever had a single issue with a Denuvo game. I have played dozens of Denuvo protected games while not even knowing they had Denuvo until I found out by chance.
Denuvo often also gets blamed for poor coding, poor porting and poor optimization like in the case of DEATHLOOP. It's not Denuvo. It's the garbage Void engine coupled with a VRAM memory leak that will hopefully get patched soon. Arkane might have decent gameplay & level designers as well as above average writers but the tech was never their strong suit.

Overon wrote on Sep 15, 2021, 20:24:
Hey that was the case with Resident Evil Village which makes it certainly possible in Deathloop.

No, it wasn't. The culprit with RE:V was the Capcom DRM, not Denuvo. The most likely culprit for DEATHLOOP is the craptastic Void engine. The game is using crazy amounts of VRAM while looking mediocre at best. As far as I have heard the devs are investigating a memory leak as the cause of the performance issues because the VRAM just gets swamped with data the longer you play. The game probably fails to clear the memory correctly. It's another sloppy port but what else is new in PC video gaming in 2021?
BTW, Dishonored 2 (same engine) can still be quite wonky as well. It's simply not a good tech basis they are using for their games and it's a bit strange they did not drop it in favor of Unreal or something else tried and established.

Free content from Paradox? Has it happened? Has hell frozen over? Can pigs fly?

El Pit wrote on Sep 14, 2021, 12:45:
Don't pull a Cyberpunk 2077 and release the game when it's done. Even if it is 2022 or 2023.

^ so much this. I'm in no rush anyway and won't buy this game before there is a complete edition. They can and should take all the time that it needs.

The Ars review has nailed it with their verdict:

Verdict: Bethesda's biggest disappointment in years. Wait for a sale (or a "definitive" edition).

I'll wait for both. A sale of the definitive edition .

vrok wrote on Sep 11, 2021, 01:00:
Story and writing is much improved over Kingmaker

What story? The story is: Please kill demons. A lot of them. Preferably all. Thanks.

I like WotR, too, but even if I tried really hard I couldn't come up with a more boring story than yet another demon invasion. That's the weakest part of the game for me. Killing endless amounts of demons is just so stale by now. The slow TB combat which is required on higher difficulties (I'm playing on unmodified Core) does not help make it more exciting after a couple dozen hours.

I hope I can find the endurance to stick with it but it's turning into a slog of constant trial & error on Core difficulty. Some of the fights are very long and you can't save in combat so sometimes trial & error means losing many hours of progress. I know... "lower the difficulty" but that would remove any incentive to play. Like Solasta with its non-existent story, WotR is another combat simulator. The main motivation lies in trying out the many classes and builds and (mythic) paths which the game is offering for character and party development. I doubt anyone is seriously engaged by the paper-thin plot.

VaranDragon wrote on Sep 10, 2021, 02:35:

JeffD wrote on Sep 9, 2021, 21:30:
I completely passed this game over because it looks and plays so dated, so I will be anticipating a modernized version of it. I am hoping it will be on pc and only mentions ps5 because it is a sony trailer.

Passed it over when? When it came out? It's probably the best Star Wars RPG, and one of the better Star Wars games ever made. You need to play it. I will bet hard currency that the remake ends up being dumbed down console trash.

Well, there are two Star Wars RPGs and imo Sith Lords by Obsidian is BY FAR the better one (fully patched, of course). The original KotOR is way overrated in my view. The consolitis was strong with it due to the limitations of the original Xbox. The maps were tiny as mentioned here, there was no inventory/equipment worth mentioning, the writing was pretty mediocre, the story and characters fulfilled all the typical BioWare cliches of the time, the constant waves of always the same enemies were a drag... I was honestly bored to tears when playing the game.
KotOR 2 was much better with its more mysterious premise. It made me want to lift the shroud why I lost my connection to the force, what Kreia had to do with it and what the Sith and the Jedi were up to. It wasn't all sunshine, lollipops and unicorns either since it also had its slog sections but I found it much easier to motivate myself to slog on.

Grown women shouldn't be wasting their time watching and weeping over moronic Netflix series. There.

Besides, some of us probably spend less time gaming per day than quite a few women are spending on their hair, nails, skin, eyelashes, shaving, deciding what to wear and all that stuff.

How about we all just respect how others choose to spend their spare time?

Hell hath no fury like a nerd’s scorn

eRe4s3r wrote on Sep 2, 2021, 03:50:

RedEye9 wrote on Sep 1, 2021, 17:45:

zip xavier wrote on Sep 1, 2021, 17:11:
use this tool to strip out unwanted components of the driver if you want

https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-nvcleanstall/

This link has a little more info https://www.techpowerup.com/nvcleanstall/

Yeah and it is a very useful tool if you have to install to more than 1 PC and it begets the question why Nvidia is not shipping the ACTUAL DRIVERS instead of this bloated mess. They got 200mb more bloated in 2 years, bad trend.

They are shipping the actual drivers. You can very easily and quickly extract the drivers manually (basically doing manually what this tool does in automated fashion). It's very simple: Extract the driver file with 7zip, then delete all of the unnecessary folders. CTRL + A to select all folders, then CTRL + left click to pick the half dozen that need to remain (you need to keep the GeForce Experience folders just for the setup even if you do not want to install GFE). Delete the rest. Run setup.exe and select a custom install. Select the 'driver only' option. Done. This takes less than 60 seconds including unpacking the driver *.exe file, no tools needed. I do this manual procedure every time a new driver is released. It literally takes seconds if you do it often and if you're used to it.

It seems a bit silly to complain about bloat. This is no longer the age of dial-up and limited disk space. The drivers are very feature-rich depending on your setup. They contain support for VR, for the Shield and many, many other things that not tech savvy nVidia users might need in a simple complete package. It's not "bloat" per se. Tech savvy users can easily remove the "bloat" that they do not need, either manually or by using tools or by downloading repackaged "raw" drivers. All of this is a non-issue for anyone who has been using a computer for more than playing Minesweeper.

Oh. What crimes did she commit? Did she dare to suggest fair pricing and complete edition bundles?