y’all keep saying this but playing 1 round of Valorant will make you realise pretty quick how easily people drop $80+ on a game.

I think 2 can also be used as an argument for why they should switch it up. After all, we switch playable characters each game to keep things fresh, so why not do the same with guns? A new planet should bring some new gun modifiers, and they could still bring back some of the old manufacturers as rare loot or legendaries to get even more variety. After 13 years and 4 entries, I’m just a little tired of reloading Tediore’s and throwing away all Hyperion and Torgue guns I pick up (exaggerating!).

I somewhat agree with you on movement: it doesn’t have to be for combat or necessary. But you have to adjust the enemies to account for the extra player tools lest you make melee or slow projectiles trivial. That and I believe that the best games implement features that solve something, even if the devs create the problem the feature solves. Take Doom Eternal for example: I wouldn’t have used half the tools in that game if they hadn’t provided challenges that were best overcome by using them. On medium-high difficulties you end up using everything at hand to get through the levels because otherwise you die, and that’s fulfilling! If I had the same tools at hand but the enemies were all .5x speed then it wouldn’t be very engaging.

Censor Torgue? In what way do you mean, because he’s been bleeped out since his introduction in Borderlands 2.

I’m happy to see that it looks good! The return to a more serious style is welcome after 3 games of perhaps taking it too far.

First impression is it seems a lot more Destiny-like: personal vehicles, quests you can pick up anywhere, dynamic events. I’m not complaining necessarily, but looks like they took some notes.

The movement options seem nice but not sure they add that much really. If they don’t solve a challenge that the enemies provide then it’s kinda pointless. I almost never used slide or ground pound in combat in previous games because I was better off just shooting the enemies.

And as much as I love my Jakobs weapons, I was hoping to see a manufacturer revamp. They even used the same companies in Tiny Tina’s with only minor tweaks. The heavy weapons sharing a slot with grenades looks to be a fantastic change though, very welcome.

Also, no lip-sync on NPCs? Looks weird having Amara speaking but her character do nothing.

Overall though looks like a solid but not ground-breaking entry. The guns look just as fun as before and the art design is a step up (those bosses!) from before which I love to see. I know people complained about the Vault Hunters being generic but I don’t have a huge issue with it. I don’t need my characters to be the blue-haired anime character sitting by the window.

Thanks for posting, I wouldn’t have seen this otherwise.

No, they have “lore”: a bunch of inconclusive and loosely connected animation shorts, vague plot points, and character bios that give just enough of a reason for their seasonal events to occur and for fans to drool over. Just like every other live service.

I always found the respec fee so low as to be essentially free. The bigger barrier was remembering what skills I had specced into lol

I haven’t played Genshin in a couple of years but it’s definitely one of the better ones from what I’ve seen. I played through f2p until I had a sense of the game and was confident in the content and monetization model. After that I did spend whatever it was, five bucks(?), for the “battle pass” but honestly as long as you have the time to grind then Genshin is fairly non-invasive. That grind is why I quit though, the end game was a slog.

I have a large backlog of five(?)+ plus year old games that are really good and I have yet to play. I’d much rather burn through those enjoying them on high settings instead of playing current games on low settings while trying to dodge crap monetization.

It’s impressive to make your new app so obviously worse than the last. It’s even more so when your last app was Origin.

Relies on people knowing about it, sadly.

Occasionally good games get nominated for the correct categories (Terraria for Labor of Love) but it’s very rare. I haven’t even played any 2024 games but wanted the badge so I just nominated some off brand games that will never win.

I’m an absolute Borderlands slut so I am pumped for this. I really hope the monetisation scheme is fine and that they added some QoL features I’ve been wanting since 2012 (multi quest trackers?!) but either way I’ll probably play this.

Depending on what you mean by casual, Terraria fits the bill. I love sitting down with a journey mode character and taking the game at my own pace. For the first playthrough I would probably point people to softcore normal mode as it’s the “proper” way to play, but once you’ve grinded out goals once then journey is a really nice way to take control of the game’s difficulty on the fly.

This really depends on the type of person you are. I find with the time pressure each in-game day that every time I launch it I get caught up in a mess of wiki pages and spreadsheets figuring out the ideal crops to plant and when, what gifts people like and when to gift them, etcetera etcetera. It became stressful and I stopped playing it after finishing most of the main objectives.

They do have achievements, yeah. Not much else though.

I’ll have to give it another go! I was absolutely loving the feature in beta, however the experience was dampened by intermittent game crashes that stopped the moment I disabled this feature. Classic AMD driver issue, most likely.

Are you being purposefully obtuse? Proton is based on Wine yes, but it is it’s own distinct project.

I played this when it came out because some people were hyping it up. It’s solid and a fun game, but I didn’t feel it brought anything whatsoever to the table that other shooters hadn’t brought 15 years ago. It isn’t even the first free game to provide a similar experience. Not surprised it isn’t a huge hit.

That’s not a bad build, really. Although I can’t imagine the air cooler will be necessary for a 4500, much rather use the stock and possibly upgrade to 32gb RAM if in budget. My stock 2000 series Wraith cooler has done me well in 40c summers.

Whatever you do, don’t use Steam reviews/scores on adult games to make your decision. I mean, if it’s Mixed then it’s probably bad, but there is an immense amount of 97% Positive games that are low effort tile puzzle asset flips/copy-paste jobs.

They do often have better sales, but you have to launch the store to know and personally I would rather pay the extra $1 to buy on Steam…

Better alternatives? That is highly subjective. Itch’s store-front experience sucks balls and they lack 98% of the features Steam has. I appreciate their existence and have bought games from them, but language like that will only serve to alienate people that know how much Itch lacks compared to Steam.

Judging by the downvotes, people really don’t like being told not to use our favourite DRM, huh… anyway, the reason people buy on Steam is for all the features and functions. Other than personal controller configs, most will not work with non-Steam games. Family Sharing, Remote Play, Workshop, premade controller configs, achievements, playtime, and any social features. Of course if you don’t use any of these, then supporting a smaller store is great!

Still pisses me off, this was one of the reasons I updated and they half-assed the implemenation then said they’re killing it because no one is using it… no shit no one is using it, you hid it it behind the Amazon App (that no one uses) in the MS Store (that no one uses) and layers of docs for sideloading.

Play a match of Valorant. EVERYONE has skins. There are whales that buy every $100 bundle sure, but even the regular players often end up buying a $20 skin or $50 bundle pretty often.

Ah, you’re right! I failed to grab that context.

Only for a single game? That shit is in almost every multiplayer game I play nowadays. Valorant, Apex Legends, Dead by Daylight…

Perhaps “you’re right”, “you’re wrong and also short, here’s why”, or even “I don’t know”. These would all be things you could tell them and a better response.

I prefer my men bottom.

Then perhaps it is an issue that should be remedied?

Anecdotally, I feel like there is some survivorship bias going on here. I’ve seen plenty of complaints about Bethesda bugs over the years, but people that are truly bothered by it (me!) have sworn off all their games and thus have no reason to talk about them anymore. The only ones left playing are those that still have some enjoyment/respect for Bethesda games. Cyberpunk felt like more of a “mainstream” hit so it makes sense there was more backlash.

The limits don’t matter if the provider raises their price next month.

I read a bunch of threads on this and there were a lot of questions about this… so yes, it was a question to many people.

I would bet money that phone makers such as Google keep storage low to steer people towards their cloud storage options.

I would happily use one for my music and movies to access them on the go. I already have copies elsewhere, so it would be no big loss if the card died.

They are, but mostly in budget phones. If you want a flagship camera or processor as well, you’re sadly out of luck. And god forbid you want a folding phone.

You’re not alone, bud. You see what you want to see, I suppose. /j

Technically Discord is trying to solve this with their threads feature, but I’ve found either the server owners don’t force it or the users don’t use it. Either way, it sucks.

Some people care more about doing what’s right than doing what is best for earning more money. It may be an alien concept, I know.

If Rockstar made a fully-fledged open world Crazy Taxi game with the scale and quality of Red Dead or GTA, that is quite indisputably deserving of the “triple A” label. Putting aside where you draw the line for it to be considered AAA, they clearly mean that their goal is an AAA experience. It’s not that deep.