Yup, I had this exact experience. Installed Bazzite because it was a “gaming OS”. Had trouble just installing any non-gaming apps, or looking up guides to do so. Even gaming wasn’t perfect.

Installed CachyOS, and yes, there are annoyances, but also a nice path to fix them. It’s both a good gaming OS, and a daily driver for casual use.

My daily drivers: Outlast Trials, Dead by Daylight, Wild Assault, Helldivers 2, Warhammer Space Marine 2.

All of those work fine on Linux. It just seems to be the most toxic, gamerfuel-heavy games that go full kernel anticheat.

I like the premise, I think I just get this very “boomer” complaint about a lot of competitive FPS’s where I’m firing at people’s afterimage hitting nothing as they slide-dash around for 5 seconds before they turn and bring my HP to 0 in 2 headshots.

It could well be a genuine skill difference, but it hasn’t changed much with practice, and it prevents me having much fun with those games. I’d theoretically like such a game if it could somehow shift the skill entirely towards positioning, prediction, and ability/gadget-usage, rather than twitch-reflexes, but it’s a hard design to make work while still satisfying players. Arc might be different if it’s primarily PVE.

Certainly interesting to look at the fastest-growing distros: Ubuntu (the well-known, popular option), Bazzite (the gaming-marketed one), Freedesktop (someone else can answer this for me), and CachyOS (the side-gaming one? Not quite a gaming OS but very good at it)

I’m not so sure Valve is the right maintainer for the core desktop. The Deck works well, but mainly what Valve is maintaining is the Game Mode feature and Proton. Everything else is largely better handed off to a bigger group.

I’ve definitely run into some snobbish “Accept my incorrect solutions and be grateful, or go back to Windows, newb” types of people. I don’t have much love for them. I recognize it takes patience to acclimate new users, but it’s part of the job.

By and large I’m preferential to just stay with something that works; part of what pushed me off it has just been Microsoft themselves enshittifying the experience. I feel like I remember a day when Windows start search actually took you to what you wanted, and now “notepad” immediately queries the shopping network before your own program list, and when you get Notepad open it has a Copilot button.

You’re doing the right thing as long as you stay on an OS that keeps you going day in and day out. I tried Linux earlier in the year on two distros that did NOT work as well as the internet said they would, and went back to Windows. More recently, tried another one and there were stupid difficulties - but I got past them, at a time when Windows issues were just giving me “This is the way it is now, just put up with it”.

I’m dual booting with Windows because of a project I’m finishing that would be difficult to move OS, but Cachy is now my gaming OS. It’s nice to move away from the “forced” behavior from Windows.

Tangentially, a few UI decisions felt locked-in on Ubuntu and Mint too; or at least I couldn’t find an easy way to change them. I’m still a little annoyed my scroll wheel changes form options but it’s a minor thing.

How do people feel about this company using generative AI? That was a concern of mine around The Finals; they’ve defended the decision on voice acting and it made me wonder where else they’re using it.

EDIT: Learned some new things from the responses, certainly an interesting situation. I’ll consider them.

IGN: “Traditional gamer journalism is dying. Please support honest journalists.”
Also IGN: “Good work, 47. Now publish the article and locate an exit.”

Did anyone else know the reason Morpheus is “reborn” in an odd way in Resurrection is because he canonically dies in the MMORPG? I remember wanting to play that as a kid…probably didn’t miss much though.

There are definitely some ways I’d like to see media shifts, but I’m always very cautious about govt regulation around it.

For instance, I always hated how much we parodize authoritarian dystopias. The “parody” element is often lost on people, and they end up respecting it; like people who lose the irony in vouching for Helldivers’ “For Managed Democracy!” or feel like Warhammer40k’s Imperium of Man is awesome.

We probably need more Spec Ops: The Line’s, but also more hero fantasies about destroying those dystopias.

Just get a Steam Deck, and add a hub and wireless controller.

Oh, but it won’t run full-detail AAA releases at 4K? Nothing cheap will. That is exclusively the domain of consoles, earned through direct-contact optimization with developers. That’s still enough horsepower for the thousands of great indie games on Steam, many of which are simple enough to run fine on a midsize TV on the small Deck CPU.

Basically, if someone is adamant about running high-detail games on their TV using Steam, they’re already a niche enough market that it really doesn’t make sense to build up a single SKU for them and hope for bulk manufacturing savings the same way you could for consoles.

It’s probably better off for developers to keep targeting the Deck as a general metric point anyway. The especially good news there is, once devs do that, Linux desktop gamers benefit anyway.

I still need to start this.

But I know the feel - games that expand their emotional range often get the best reactions because moving to an extreme of seriousness, sadness, or even humor, can shock the player.

I regret that after Ross’s stepping back, I didn’t give this issue much attention. I suppose we have to trust that it’s sifting through the slow gears of politics, but with so many “bull” responses to petitions it’s likely worth keeping public attention on it.

In support of the move in spirit, but: Any ideas to prevent a company from circumventing this via dummying up contractor firms? Eg, “We employ this software company started by our founder to write our code. Coincidentally, their pay is .1% of the pay at Microsoft”

I’ve always been okay with keeping gaming libraries digital - but I think the larger console population might be okay with that too if we could disconnect digital games from account-based ownership - the kind where a company can go “Oh, whoops, we lost the license to this fart sound effect. We’re going to have to remove this game from your library.”

I can’t say I like how /Games often circles around negative attention rather than positive.

Activision spent billions on marketing so people will buy these stupid Ultra Editions. Even negative attention gets people thinking about and talking about the game.

Instead, post about the cool indie games out that you think deserve far more attention than this battle pass slop. Let Activision come check up on us and cry because for all their efforts no one even cares to hate on their game.

Theres an asymmetric game out as a demo, called Carnival Hunt. It has a really unique aesthetic, and isn’t all that fun yet, in part because of the formula being refined and players getting better at it. But I like the idea: Rather than TCM’s idea of unlocking doors towards an exit, the survivors, “bunnies”, are trying to climb the floors of a large building, with each method of ascending a floor requiring various tools and making noise. Some ways up are harder to set up but easier to repeat, others only work if the killer is ignoring them.

The only occasion I could buy that a “console makes the exclusives” is when the costs are so high that the investors decide a $60 price tag isn’t enough.

That can be alleviated with DLC, or live service bullshit; or it can become an incentive to buy a particular console.

Then, when someone is braindead and doesn’t want a big epic award winning adventure, they’ll use that same console to play Fortnite. Thus, God of War helps sell VBucks or whatever.

It’s a weird analysis, but even though we no longer see console exclusives and it’s seen as a pro consumer move, I also think it was just a way for managers to boost one quarter’s revenue, and it wasn’t really good for the console ecosystem as a whole, especially considering how it would fund future exclusive epics.

What exactly do you see as a punishing death? Erasing someone’s save file? The only other thing I can think of besides permanently taking consumables that won’t be restocked is sending you back a long distance to redo a bunch of fights again - and DS does literally that. DS2 even lowers your max HP as an additional Fuck You.

You’re not the first person to say dying is “not so bad” in those games and I still can only view those as the ritualistic statement of an insane person. Every other action game I play, I rarely die, and when I do it just has me retry the singular thing I was attempting in that past minute. Even other hard games, like Super Meat Boy or Ori and the Blind Forest, don’t force large area repetition, or take away items as punishment. The mastery of completing 18 tasks perfectly in succession is for speedrunners - it’s not something I or most players are interested in, and it’s solely a source of stress, not excitement.

Heck, Tunic had the money-loss system during development. The dev took it away before release (you just lose a paltry amount and can still get it back) and the game was still great.

I disagree with this. I think Dark Souls does tell you which are approachable or not. It’s just not as obvious as other games. Some games will have a sign for the player that says “this path is dangerous” but DS doesn’t. It has characters talk about venturing into the catacombs. It has characters point out the aquaduct is the path to the first (and at the time the only you know of) Bell of Awakening. It tucks the elevator into New Londo behind the bonfire, where stuff will be later but you won’t see yet. It also tells you a lot about locations in item descriptions.

That’s…false.

The very first NPC you find at Firelink Shrine tells you there are two bells - one above, and one far below. It strongly implies both are equal options. There are at least 3 ways out of Firelink Shrine; one happens to go below, just like your friend the NPC said, to New Londo.

For players still acclimating to the basics of the combat, New Londo is a terrible novice experience. It requires perfectly tight positioning on teensy platforms barely visible through the water, and relies on limited items to even make a single attempt through the ghost-ridden area. That is a ton of mechanics that would be fine to slowly introduce players to, but it’s like putting the “Allspice Turducken while in a tornado” level of Overcooked first.

Then you’re talking about the Catacombs? The area whose entrance has infinitely respawning skeletons? Give up, man.

Dark Souls’ failure isn’t talking through NPCs - dozens of games that give your character a radio do just that. It’s from literally lying to you with misleading tripe and having no interest in any form of teaching - be it Half-Life 2’s nonverbal teaching or any verbally direct form. I had to play games by other devs, imitating the better parts of their formula, to learn FromSoft is just uniquely TERRIBLE at it.

That is…ABSOLUTELY false.

People frequently point to the idea that if you collect an item like a Soul of Lost X, or a weapon, and then die, you get to keep the item. But the game also has consumable items used to make tons of options easier within the world. Things that enhance your weapon temporarily, give an extra health boost, or give you souls. Players that use these without making much use of them, or even misuse them due to nebulously archaic descriptions, will have nothing given back to them later on, making a venture even harder than the first few go’s.

Plus, you’re likely not to get as many level ups due to lost souls, meaning you’re going to get even more of a difficulty ramp than other players.

I’m sorry - it’s just juvenile the way people who obsess over this game will defend every issue with “it’s not for every person” - especially when indie devs that have TWEAKED the formula, and FIXED the issues, end up making for very fun games. No one is playing them and complaining “Man, I wish I’d accidentally spent an hour going the wrong way at the start!”

I’m not far in Silksong - have not actually been stopped by difficulty yet - but even the obstinately unguided exploration is getting to me. And I do worry about the reports of it being too hard by others.

I never actually beat the final boss of the first game. Gave it a few tries, decided something as hard as that being a two-phase where the second hits harder is bullshit, Just decided to YouTube the ending.

It’s funny that tastes diverge so much. I love artificial scarcity, as a way of rewarding my exploration. Spotting out a trove of batteries wouldn’t feel so rewarding if I already had 5 and they last an hour.

I ended up giving up at one of the clicker sequences.

The game lore says they’re blind and navigate by hearing. The game code does not.

Counterpoint: Dark Souls is hard, because it gives a lot of options from the get go, and no information on which ones will be approachable or not. NO other major Soulslike I’ve played does this in the way DS did.

It also relies very hard on death alone as a teaching tool even when it says nothing. Players don’t see “You died. This boss is too tough! Maybe you should go back and upgrade your weapons.” They just see “You Died.” and interpret “Should have dodged that 87th swing!”

Worse, it has BAD lessons through the lost souls system. It makes sense as a pressure tool to make you fear death, but it teaches new players the wrong thing: For players to immediately beeline for the spot of their death without considering exploration, build changes, etc.

This game was what pulled me into PC gaming, but when I’ve watched novices return to it even with all the time I spent listening to their commentaries on good teaching…players don’t learn the things they want well, and I can’t blame them on reflection. Even things like where to go are tough for reasons they shouldn’t be.

I’ve played many Soulslikes, and found pretty much all of them fun…EXCEPT for the ones by FromSoftware. All others branch out into a lot of exploration, they just don’t put 8 paths square at the beginning of the game and then slap you down for 5 of them.

If I looked up a getting started guide, I’d feel constrained by its arcane instructions. “Go this way, take the third door, but DON’T talk to that NPC yet…”

Fun games are open to the player exploring, without massively disproportionate punishment for it.

You can get quite a few options at Itch.io if you filter for games that have an HTML5 version, and click through - much faster than installing options from Steam Next Fest. Unity and other small game engines have been perfect for that.

A little lesson about technical projects: You will quickly reach 95% completion and have something amazing to show off. Then, 95% of the work is completing that last 5% in order to make the prototype usable.

AI is good at making itself look ready. It is nowhere near ready.

I think this is why a certain scrolling shooter at the endgame of a certain game closely located to a tomato didn’t emotionally work for me. I can do the math - it can’t just throw that many other players at the problem to get me through the enemy ships, and the game needed to be playable off the internet since little else of it was online.

The above poster is likely to become a racist terrorist, given their history of comments getting downvoted.

/logic

FUNKYHEART: In which the people who wrote that bunny-hopping script for Half-Life 2 speedrunning made a video game, in which they’re also strange cyber demon lesbians.

For some of the cases where enemies are getting multiple turns in a row, using an S-Break (RT+D-pad) can be a good way to get yourself back on positive ground. If you get a turn, it also helps to give defensive buffs to the VIP before the enemy attacks them.

That said, I have heard that while Nightmare difficulty poses a great challenge to some masochists and optimizers, it’s not a difficulty level the developers really balanced around.

Just tried it out. I’m unfamiliar with the extraction shooter genre, but it was interesting, I’m not necessarily opposed to tactical complexity for its own sake. I died to a minefield, and then on the next go didn’t have a weapon; so some of the mechanics come across a little bit unclear.

I’m glad it has a demo because I know a lot of people don’t enjoy characters like that; there’s some great heartfelt conversations once you get to know the characters, but you have to be able to stand 20+ narmy and overly polite banter sequences to get to the moments where each of them surprises you. If you get that far, you usually get invested.

I REALLY like what they’ve done with the combat in this one. Even on normal, I was losing early boss fights for playing without consideration and using nothing but the enemy’s elemental weakness. I just finished Chapter 1, and I especially liked having moments where half the party was dead, and attacking was actually a good option to give my team a moment to revive each other, thanks to the stun/delay systems.

I wonder how much they’re paying Rockstar to delay The Only New Release of that generation; which will doubtless be available on PS5/XSX anyway.

There was still back and forth between PlayStation and Xbox. For the PS3, Sony went bonkers on architecture, and as a result Xbox won a lot of players. With the Xbox One, they made stupid plays on TV access and always-online, and Sony succeeded against their foot-shooting. Then, with the Series S|X, Xbox still lost but won back some consumers by introducing service-based game rental, which Sony followed suit on later.

The two have bettered each other by serving as competition to capitalize on the other’s anti-consumer actions, and by at least competing on pricing and ideas. Imagine if people called out the Xbox One’s always online, but PlayStation didn’t exist.

“lol, too bad gamers”

Here’s a question. For ages back, the console market had three contenders. Who do you think would compete in the trifecta between Nintendo and Sony?

Normally, PC markets stay aside from that conversation, but it might be Valve and the Steam Deck. I’m just not sure if Valve is the type to be interested in running big promotions at Wal-Mart by Mountain Dew displays.

If you want something a bit closer to Starfox, rather than an all-range flight arena, try Rogue Flight. It definitely evokes the power fantasy feeling, living up the classic arcade trope of “one ship being readied on a mission to save humanity”. There’s some very big-name voice actor work in it, as well.

Another good game for the “power fantasy” trope, though it’s a bit more outside the target, is Ace Combat 7. Or, perhaps any games in the series, but this one is pretty accessible. The combat is close to what you’d get in X-Wing/Tie-Fighter, but with fighter planes. It breaks from realism a little bit where needed to make the stunts fun. And, the story very much orients around the silent player character being “scary tough” in a fight, to the point enemy fighters are retreating just from seeing your wing markings.