In this damn thread there is a lot of this.

Everybody in here buying Che shirts from Hot Topic.

Still hate spitters though.

zero-k

Have you tried Beyond All Reason? Personally I liked it more than zero-k.

I’m building an arcade stand I can put in front of my TV so I can play emulated games with my kids. I could not care less about most of the new games coming out these days.

GPU prices priced me out of the top of the PC gaming market, got new hobbies now.

MakeCode and the other Scratch-based visual coding systems I included make for a good way to get the basics in a way that isn’t tied exclusively to any platform or product.

Having python to use once you start hitting the limits of visual coding gives you those properly transferable skills without being tied to Roblox and its extremely abusive practices.

This whole ecosystem is much more approachable than just slinging random Lua scripts.

Roblox’s tooling is so particular to Roblox that it is hard to transfer the knowledge out of the game.

Microsoft MakeCode can use Scratch or Python and connect with Minecraft, Lego Mindstorm, and a few other things. The same style of visual coding system shows up in a lot of other devices and their software, like the Makey Makey, Makeblock’s educational robots, etc… I think those are better choices personally.

It should be more in inverse bullet hell: it’s hell, but not for you.

I’m on a 2080 Ti and even I’m having a hard time justifying these upgrades. Upgraded my wife’s 1080 with a used 3070 instead.

This is most people though. Most people will not move unless they absolutely have to.

I think Quakeworld and Half-life probably deserve more of the credit for kicking off the modding community but Morrowind on PC definitely gave Xbox gamers something to be jealous of.

In one match I got two air disc kills over 300m. I was a god damn sniper with that thing.

And yet again, not one of those other vendors are anywhere near as permissive for developers or as good to consumers as Valve is. You lumping them in with the others is deeply unfair.

If devs want to get a better cut, Itch.io and GOG are there and they don’t steal people’s information and fuck consumers the way EGS does. I will not support storefronts owned by psychopaths: I avoid Amazon almost completely, I do not buy from Apple or Google stores, and I’m not going to buy anything from EGS either. Put your game on Itch or GOG. Simple as.

Would criticizing this specific cut be easier, if we talked about Apple’s iron grip on the App Store? Because it’s the same damn policy.

Except that it isn’t? Apple doesn’t let you circumvent their store, while Steam not only allows games to have their own monetization system, it allows off-site sales of the game on Steam. That is significantly more permissive, by a degree of magnitude that makes me wonder about your sincerity.

What Epic means by “for developers” is, developers keep more of the money. Walk me through how that’s bad for you.

Why should we accept an objectively worse storefront run by psychopaths because developers make more money under some circumstances? EGS is not supporting open-source software, Linux, VR. Their online backend is awful, with their chat and multiplayer still sucking years later. No remote play or remote play together. They don’t allow user tags or reviews. They are missing incredibly basic library sorting controls. No easily accessible news/update notes from developers. They have adopted virtually none of the pro-consumer moves such as identifying dead games, DRM, or third-party launchers before you buy. No custom profile pictures.

Also worth noting the featured/recommended list in the Steam store does a good job, even sending me the odd game with like 5 reviews that might actually suit my interests. I have on more than one occasion bought games I’d probably never see without this, and I’m in some communities with indie devs. I’ve demoed and tested games no one has ever heard of. If Steam can find me gems in the rough while I’m that low to the ground, they’re doing a good job.

If that feature alone isn’t worth Steam’s cut to you, frankly you deeply misunderstand the marketplace in general and just how damned hard it is to sell a game as a nobody. EGS and Prime will never support indie devs or niche titles this way, because it doesn’t make them money. Steam will, because it does. Think about that.

What an absurd read. As if middlemen taking a third of revenue is pro-consumer.

Considering this was a shift from retail where getting games to retail cost a great deal more, how exactly is that bad?

Also you know nothing stops gamedevs from selling their keys elsewhere and getting all of the revenue right?

Steam was the first to offer 2 hour/14 day refunds, as well as refunds over broken games. They brought reviews to the storefront. Communities and discussion boards to communicate with devs and find like-minded players. Demos, 4 packs, easy access to servers and SDKs, easy update delivery and tracking for consumers…

It’s a store-front with a strong focus on consumer happiness. People are not going to give that up for EGS or Prime, which are run by psychopaths and not even remotely consumer-friendly. Tim Sweeny even said EGS is made for developers, with the implication it is not for consumers.

GOG is probably the closest competitor that stands any hope of success but they have steered clear of actually entering Steam’s territory, preferring to grab a market Steam neglects (retro PC gamers). Considering they have not developed the other systems Steam has I don’t think they want to compete and are content to coexist.

Downvoting because that link has more ads than content holy shit.

I don’t know how involved he is but yes, Rivals of Aether 2.

That guy truly is a knob. I dropped him for his take on Stop Killing Games, it was such an obviously brain-dead take…

All I want is for people to make informed choices when picking an OS for a machine. An immutable OS has value in the right circumstances, but if you weren’t expecting that it would definitely be frustrating.

My kids play on my Steam Deck so I know all too well how useful it can be lol. I’ve done many Windows reinstallations in my time.

Aloft looks potentially interesting but the alpha was a bit bare on content. I want to see how people feel about it in a few weeks.

For the patient gamers though, perhaps check out Astroneer or Dinkum? Maybe Stationeers or From the Depths if you’re into serious simulation.

Especially if SteamOS remains immutable when it lands, then I really won’t be able to suggest it except for situations like “my kids have a habit of blowing up their computers” or something.

Apparently Path of Exile 2 has very serious performance issues on Windows 11 24H2, to the point of being unplayable.

Tower Unite is like this, with a bunch of social games too. VR is not needed.

Wurm Unlimited tends to be my go-to winter game to get stuck into.

Yeah I keep falling off Elite Dangerous, despite loving it.

Same. I want to like it but that engineering grind is absurd.

This shit is why I stopped playing Rust, Eve Online, and a bunch of other games. I can’t do the time sink anymore and to be honest, I’m not sure why I ever tolerated it.

I’ve been playing Abiotic Factor and Journey to the Savage Planet with my wife and enjoying them a lot, and a big part of why is that I don’t need to log in every day. With my guys I also occasionally hop into Dinkum, Volcanoids, Darktide (post-progression update), Helldivers 2… Even Darktide and Helldivers 2 are borderline too grindy for me.

Okay so I don’t have an example that matches IRL time like Animal Crossing but a game with similar style I can do. If you’re down with time progression like Stardew Valley, check out Dinkum, best summarized as “Outback Animal Crossing”

Vermintide and Left 4 Dead’s rolling commentary works because they use it strategically rather than filling every moment of time up with bullshit. Borderlands just got worse with each game until the third one went off the rails.

Earth Defense Force 5 ends with you fighting a god. EDF 6 basically starts and ends with this.

Generally speaking there is an inverse relationship between average review scores and the quality of the game. Considering the game is probably going to be another open-world collectathon, I’m going to wait.

Abiotic Factor. It’s like playing through the Black Mesa facility but as a survival game, something I never knew I wanted until I experienced it.

Had some friends try to get me to play. Gave it a good 20 hours or so, spent most of it just trying to get anywhere. About a quarter of the time some random guy would zoom along and blow me up before he even showed up on radar, and now I was on a timer waiting for my ship to come back. Another 10% of the time I’d get sucked through my ship when I tried to use FTL, there goes another ship recovery timer.

The time consumption even when things go right is absolutely ridiculous, and they often go wrong. The random PK shit feels so fucking awful that I’d really rather just play something else.

I have played and enjoyed games that require patience, like Wurm Online and EVE Online. Star Citizen is on a level above even those and I’m not sure I would have liked it even before I had kids, but now? Forget it.

Now that we have viable PC handhelds I no longer have a reason to care about Nintendo. Blast the pirates or don’t, I’m not buying their shit either way. On the other hand I’ve got a lot of friends who actually have decent money in Nintendo’s ecosystem who use emulators to play the games they own in a way they prefer. This has left a bad taste in their mouths…

Given the nature of their matchmaking approach, this is probably the best option.

Would be easier if we could choose our lobbies out of a list…

Not sure if you played the original version but the remaster adds new attacks to some enemies and changes some of their behaviours. It also seems to have changed some enemy spawns, I think. It made the game feel fresh in a way I wasn’t expecting for something I probably played through a few dozen times lol.

Mankind Divided has some too close to home moments but the first game? That shit was almost like a playbook of the next two decades, it’s actually nuts.

You probably would have liked Guild Wars 1 as well. You get to max level (level 20) well before you finish the content, and the rest of your advancement is farming mats for high level equipment and stealing elite attacks from enemies to unlock them for yourself.

ADL report

Opinion discarded. Those ADL fucks lie about damn near everything.

Oh that is uncanny, I was just thinking about this game today. Really a surprisingly unique car combat game, I still haven’t played anything like it.