I have 367 games in my Epic library. A few of them are f2p (e.g. Fortnite) but the majority are giveaways. The only game I’ve purchased on EGS is Alan Wake 2 due to exclusivity

Alan Wake 2 image seems unrelated? Odd since the others match

Portal

Breath of the Wild

Alan Wake 2

I feel like this game is a good candidate for xcloud if you have game pass. Don’t have to worry about high specs or downloading, and if you have a decent connection there’s some lag but not as necessary for this type of game. Thoughts?

The title makes this sound like it’s going to be less common that they’ll be releasing games on PC, but in case anyone skips the article it’s actually in regards to PC-exclusive content

Totilo points out to Spencer that three of Microsoft’s nine releases in this period are PC-only (The War Within, Towerborne in early access, and Ara: History Untold), and asks whether this is a new norm for Microsoft.

“No,” says Spencer. “This is historical. There might always be some anomalies, but I look at those three as an anomaly. We want our games playable across as many screens as possible. We think about the Xbox platform as the Xbox console, PC and cloud. We want all the games playable across all of those. We want them to be Play Anywhere.”

Fair enough, I’m being overly pedantic

Embrace, extend, and extinguish" (EEE), also known as “embrace, extend, and exterminate”, is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found was used internally by Microsoft to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used open standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and using the differences to strongly disadvantage its competitors

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

Microsoft sucks but the phrase doesn’t really apply to company acquisitions

From Bloomberg

“We definitely want to be in the market, and when we can find teams and technology and capability that add to what we’re trying to do in gaming at Microsoft, absolutely we will keep our heads up,” Spencer said. Still, there’s nothing “imminent” and very large deals are probably off the table at present as the company is spending a lot of time absorbing Activision Blizzard employees, he said.

Congrats! I’ve been stuck in Black Ops 6 lately, but I’ll need to get around to finishing the final draft soon. I look forward to reading your full thoughts then.

As a side note, there isn’t a community for Alan Wake and remedy games, is there? I feel like they have enough to discuss that it could merit one.

• no touchpads

and assuming it’s like their other handhelds…

• no back buttons
• runs windows

I really like how today’s commentary mirrors what you’re doing by starting the final draft. Deja-vu.

Congrats! I’m not at all surprised, but I’m glad you enjoyed it so much. Excellent game.

If you want a small break before playing The Final Draft, you could check out the DLC? It all takes place before/during AW2

AW2 baby 🙌

This game is pretty demanding on steam deck, and I never got it to run in a way that was satisfying. If you have a more powerful PC, I’d try using moonlight to stream it instead

Definitely toned down from Titanfall, but if you liked that game you’ll probably like Apex too!

I would say stress about the character selection too much, you’ll find characters that you enjoy more over time but abilities don’t overshadow good gunplay in the game.

A few small tips:

• heal your shields before your health (most of the time). Shield items are slightly faster to use than their HP equivalents but provide the same amount of healing (e.g. shield cell = 25shields ~2 seconds to use, health pack = 25hp ~3 seconds to use)
• when you kill an enemy and they drop their death box, you can loot their shield from the box to instantly recharge some or all of your shields. It can be really helpful even in the middle of a fight or if you know another squad is coming to third-party you
• don’t get too caught up looting, you’ll get good stuff a lot more quickly by taking out other teams who have already looted for you
• always be aware of where your squad mates are and make sure you’re close enough that you can get over and help them if need be

Best way to learn ofc is to just jump in and play some matches. Have fun!

I recommend giving Apex a shot. It has some really nice movement and gunplay.

I’m guessing you’re referring to Vampire Survivors, which does have the Bullet Hell tag on Steam.

I agree that it’s not a traditional Bullet Hell, but there are also three other games listed in this post. Seems like OP is just excited, no need to be rude.

I have no problem with the in-game “jump scares”, but the popup ones were a bit much. I was glad when they added a setting to reduce the intensity of those, makes it much more tolerable.

Side note: I am playing through and loving the new Lake House DLC. Night Springs was fun, but this is the kind of continued AW2 experience I’ve been hoping for. A highlight was reaching the Floor -3 with

October 22nd!

Agree with most of these but

Revengeance is perfect

I’ve really been enjoying your updates on this playthrough. There’s a lot I like about AW1, but the gameplay wasn’t my favorite, so it’s like a nice vicarious replay.

AW2 is published by Epic, so I wouldn’t hold your breath about it coming to Steam. When you’re about to run it though, I highly recommend it. It’s the only game I’ve bought on EGS, and I’d do it again.

Thank goodness Remedy will be self-publishing going forwards. Control 2 can’t come soon enough.

No mention of Suyu? It just picks up from the latest EA version of Yuzu and they host their own repo.

https://git.suyu.dev/suyu/suyu/releases

These trailers have started to blend together for me, and I think that’s the issue. They might have a “nice vibe”, but that alone isn’t enough. What makes your game unique and fun to play? Sell me on that!

I’m so excited for this

The subtitles indicate the object at the end of the hallway is a painting. Maybe related to Rudolf Lane? The jumpscare images appear to be new characters. Just happy we’re getting more of Estevez and our friends at the FBC

• no touchpads
• no back buttons
• decals
• runs windows

Sorry if this comes across pedantic, but in case anybody isn’t aware there are some games that offer Achievements (Alan Wake 2 is one I know).

I do agree though, Epic just doesn’t have the features Steam does. I don’t think their barrage of free games idea is a bad one, but it feels like an afterthought when it’s just not as fun to play them there. (Better Linux support would be nice too, at least there’s Heroic.)

As I understand it, Control 2 will be self-published by Remedy and is just being co-financed by Annapurna in exchange for film and tv rights

Not the actress that provides the voice and likeness for the character?

Well…it’s better. Still shitty, but at least they addressed the main gripe (not being able to purchase the next battle pass with apex coins earned). This really feels like one of those “drop a ridiculously unpopular change and see how much of it you can get away with” situations.

I felt the same way, enjoyed the narrative of the first but the action felt like a bit of a chore after a while. The second one is a lot more fun from a gameplay perspective, in my opinion. Just be warned that it is pretty demanding for the steam deck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0GowV_WYVg

Here’s the video that the article references. Timestamped link: https://youtube.com/watch?v=X2mBP8i4WYA&t=3840s

Tldr: two passes per season (one per split), 60 tiers instead of 110, purchased with real money ($10 each) instead of apex coins.

You think they’re scummy? How come?

Very grateful for this site

60fps cap and no ultrawide support without mods, I believe

Hidden in this announcement, the person who created this port released a tool to statically recompile N64 games into native executables

Hadn’t heard of this before

ReShade is a generic post-processing injector for games and video software developed by crosire. Imagine your favorite game with ambient occlusion, real depth of field effects, color correction and more … ReShade exposes an automated and generic way to access both frame color and depth information (latter is automatically disabled during multiplayer to prevent exploitation) and all the tools to make it happen.