Picked it up, excited to try it out. :)

For linux people, if you are having troubles launching it, add the following environment variable to the game (if you are using the Heoric launcher, it’s in the game-specific settings menu under Advanced): WINEDLLOVERRIDES=ddraw=n,b;dinput=n,b

This game looks pretty solid. Worth playing?

They raised prices a ton, and they didn’t even switch to the better sensor type that would fix such a persistent issue? Why?

HL1 is a bit clunky but still great.

Try out Black Mesa. It’s a proper remake of HL1, not just a reskin. They did a damn good job, including a very large build out of the Xen levels, making it into a proper portion of the game, rather than what existed in HL1 which felt a bit rushed.

Half life 2 is so damn good. One of my most replayed games.

And full points to Black Mesa for actually improving the game, not just reskinning it. 10/10

Ah, I could see that. It does have quite a bit of such things.

Doom 2016 (Dropped this, sadly. Gunplay and parkour was AWESOME, but the whole devil worship thing really turned me off).

Off topic, but this game is the exact opposite of devil worship. The primary gameplay is to travel to Hell and kill demons.

Cyberpunk 2077. It’s a futuristic FPS that feels very similar to GTA. I personally like the integration between uploading viruses to enemies while you shoot at them. And the stories are often quite good.

You can get it on sale for half price. And the Phantom Liberty DLC is worth getting bundled with it.

The article compares it to a well done page of text for Charles Dickens from a previous game. They want it more like that: “Fun facts! Good gags! Frikkin’ frequent paragraph breaks!”

It goes on to say: “I’d settle for the game bothering to clue me into who its major historical cameos actually are. Shadows is a huge game with a massive cast, and yet bizarrely you won’t find pages about any of the characters in your codex, fictional or otherwise. Who is Hattori Hanzō, and why doesn’t the game care to explain why I should be so impressed when he shows up?”

You are the only one who has mentioned any of this. Please don’t fight ghosts.

You bastard!

I’m not very excited about this. Starcraft 2 was quite a bit worse than Starcraft: Brood War. And Microsoft is not known for putting out quality lately.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows takes place in Japan circa 1579…300 years before the advent of the incandescent light bulb

These little jabs are great.

Win 11 is going to eat up so, so many resources on a low-power device like a Pi.

I remember getting really annoyed at the LoL community as anytime you were in that balanced section they just wanted to surrender and get to the ‘your team stomps theirs’ sooner. Certainly not missing that game, every time one of my friends play it, the annoyance in his voice skyrockets.

I’m confused on why people are paying so much money for Monopoly.

There are entire genres that only work with mouse/keyboard, and thus only really exist on PC. Notably 4X, RTS, base-building, and simulation games. They are where I would start:

• 4X: Civilization VI and Stellaris
• RTS: (Someone else will have to recommend some, they aren’t my jam, but they are absolutely worth checking out now that you have a PC)
• Base Building: Oxygen Not Included, Factorio, and Surviving Mars
• Simulation: Kerbal Space Program and DCS (You will want a joystick for DCS)
• Other: FTL and Hearts of Iron IV

Also, make sure to check out Is There Any Deal to give you historical (and current) best prices on games. PC games go on deep discounts on the regular. You do not need to buy PC games at full price if they were released more than 6 months ago.

He wants games to release on all platforms. Where is the ‘lottery’ rhetoric coming from?

Framework laptops look like they have held in price. Hopefully it stays that way.

Seems like bullshit to me, but I’m not a lawyer.

The Japanese patent system is so, so much worse than the US one. Where things like what you just described are possible. Honestly, Palworld is probably hosed over there. Palworld made a system years ago, Nintendo then patented it, and Nintendo is going to beat them over the head with their Japanese patent.

In the US, a solid defense to a patent claim is to show prior art. In this case, Palworld’s dev can point to Palworld as the prior art if Nintendo sues them; Nintendo’s patent existed after Palworld did. Palworld’s dev can also point to a giant mountain of prior art of other games that allow one to throw an object to capture a monster.

Wine likely just runs your personal programs without issue. And you can swap them to a native compile at some point in the future if you feel motivated.

Yeah, this was my strategy. Used Mint on a secondary computer until I got more comfortable with it, then made the plunge on my main computer. Made the transition so much easier, as I was able to learn the differences at a relaxed pace.

Nintendo is attempting to bully other game developers. They can’t enforce this patent in the US, but they can wave the patent and a cease and desist letter menacingly at their competitors. Thing is, it’s generating bad will against Nintendo and the first time a company calls Nintendo on their shit, Nintendo is gunna lose. The patent is either so specific it won’t apply to another game or its broader and there is a mountain of prior art.

From my reading, it’s the latter. The patent seems to try to monopolize the idea of throwing an object to catch a monster. Which has been done so, so many times before.

And even then, the US patent office often will grant unenforceable patents, that then explode in the patent holder’s faces the first time they try to use them.

The granted one in this case is about “the process of aiming and capturing characters”, which they either had to make so specific as to not apply to anybody else, or general enough that there are piles of prior art out there.

Those are both much cheaper than the 5080 and significantly cheaper than the 5090.

AMD is releasing cards in a few weeks. Would be worth checking those out when they arrive. nVidia and AMD releasing cards within a month of eachother should also mean there is a plethora of used cards on the market.

It’s also right at the end of the prior generation. Let’s get Switch 2 release numbers in and compare to Switch 1 release numbers before we draw too many conclusions.

That said, the PC market has been overtaking consoles. Particularly since PC handhelds are a thing. Things like the Steam Deck are directly competing with Switch and (soon) Switch 2 sales.

The Pokemon games all being the same caused me to get bored of them years ago. And now with them suing Palworld for ‘capturing monsters with an object and summoning them in 3d space’, a patent made after Palworld released their trailer, I find the Nintendo brand actively harmful to the state of gaming.

Sounds like Paypal/Honey is in a world of pain. This is the second lawsuit I have seen. They probably aren’t having a good time over there.

The site can be fun sometimes. ;p

Hopefully it will be a banger like the first!

Does Microsoft make Halo? Halo’s developer is owned by Microsoft, just as Xenoblade’s developer is owned by Nintendo.

Xenoblade

The Xenoblade series is made by a developer that is owned by Nintendo. If Nintendo doesn’t want people to rag on their products, they should make them better.

I remember back when Halo 3 and 4 were out for one Microsoft gaming platform (Xbox), but not the other (Windows); and Halo 2 for Windows was a disaster area (Games for Windows Live, ugh). Went on like that for years and years. I just couldn’t figure out why even first party Microsoft games were not available on both Microsoft platforms.

I would have bought the Halos in a heartbeat from a Windows-locked store back then. Though, I’m glad that by the time they launched an official MS store (and much, much later released Halo 3+ for the PC, and Halo 2 in a way that didn’t suck), I was already souring on Microsoft as a company and didn’t want to lock myself into a platform-specific store.

Exactly, every time I say ‘I’m thinking of putting up a Factorio server, you want in?’, they are significantly less likely to be playing (or paying for) the newest game that has kernel-level access. Why, because we are playing Factorio for the next few weeks together and Factorio is fun.

Factorio isn’t the only game we play, but the point is to reinforce yours. If you are playing fun game x, your friends are more likely to play x instead of something else. Even if they have no care about Kernel-Level access, the fact you do affects their buying (and playing) patterns.

First of all, plenty of people would be happy to self-host a game for their friends, if they were still allowed the option.

Exactly! Me and my friends often play on modded Factorio servers that one of us hosts. This is only possible because the developer doesn’t lock things down to only the first-party (official) servers.

We don’t play with cheaters either (you aren’t getting invited to our server if you are). We play with our friends because it is fun, in a way no official server could hope to work.

Why would they listen to your personal complaint if you, singular, are going to buy it anyway? Your voice only matters to a company if it means you won’t buy their product otherwise. Don’t buy the game, then tell them why you didn’t.

Maybe they should spend less money. Something like Hollow Knight was made at a fraction of the cost of a AAA game, but is excellent.

If you spent a tenth as much on each game, you only need one or two games to do well for the whole set of ten to be a success.

The company also has a vested interest in keeping PC players on their OS, while simultaneously treating the platform like a second class citizen for years. Anybody remember the abortion that was Games for Windows Live? And it isn’t like Windows Mixed Reality or ‘this is now a tablet OS’ are doing them any favors either.

God am I happy I didn’t buy any software on the Microsoft store.

Agreed, seems OP is getting tired of the live service grind. Subnautica (start with the first) and Hollow Knight are both excellent single player games to try out.