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Agreed for the most part, but that’s not really the gaming industry’s fault. I will say environmental graphics (e.g. ambient details, texture depth, lighting, amount of miscellaneous background and ground clutter density) have gotten much better. If you play The original W3 (before the official “remake” and/or mods), it definitely looks very aged versus something like Black Myth Wukong or Cyberpunk 2077. Bloodborne even more so (although, I’d argue that game’s graphics were never its strong point to begin with, but it did have excellent art direction, as From’s games always tend to have).
That being said, they all have aged pretty well for the most part. And the difference between a game made in 2000 vs 2010 is definitely a way bigger difference than something made in 2010 vs 2020.
It’s definitely a crapshoot a lot of times. But there’s usually at least one or two on there that are similar enough that I might genuinely be interested in it. You can also forcefully hide games from showing up in suggestions, iirc. I’ve never done it, but some of my friends have recommended doing so in order to make Steam dig deeper for finding lesser known stuff. I’m not that big of a connoisseur, though.
Edit:
I recalled correctly, and it seems they’ve even made the Ignore button a lot easier to find (or I just never noticed before):
It depends, sometimes I go down the rabbit hole on their “Games Like This” suggestions on my favorite games’ store pages. I actually just found a cool one that way the other day called Ad Fundum. It was a funny coincidence since it came up suggested on a completely unrelated game, but I’d been wanting a game centered around digging underground.
But yeah, with literally over 100,000+ games on Steam, it’s become way too difficult to find quality stuff that isn’t AAA or indie games that struck it lucky with popular streamers giving them exposure. Which sucks for indie devs that actually put out their passion projects since it makes discoverability so hard, as others have pointed out here.
I’d argue FF12’s content is primarily grinding, though. I liked the game, actually just beat it this summer. But, I was definitely ready to be done with it by the time the credits rolled. I finished with around 70 hours, I think. There are a lot of secrets and whatnot, I just wish their crafting/bazaar system wasn’t so tedious with its requirements.
Diablo’s story is now entirely detached from its gameplay, the protag can see the villains cutscenes due to a plot device, no more clever writing to explain events after, you get rewards not from an NPC but from the menu from completing world events, and somehow there are localised areas of 100s of enemies just waiting for you to start a fight in a random spot on an open field, theres a GPS showing you the way to the next objective
Diablo 2’s story is also detached, it’s nothing new lol. I’d say Diablo 3 actually had the most protag focused story besides Diablo 1. In D4, all of the cutscenes at least involve main characters you regularly interact with.
Regardless, no one plays those games for the story. They’ve always been purely about gear grinding and demon/monster butchering. D4 is probably the most polished in the series, except for maybe D3, which was a very streamlined experience, for better or worse. I like all of the Diablo games, but I still think D2 and D3 are the most fun I’ve had playing with friends. Fun is always the most important aspect, and D4 was making strong strides to improving that aspect when I last played over the summer. Not sure if that’s still the case in the new expansion, but I figure I’ll try it out when the xpac is on a deep discount.
I know it’s on the “other” site, but this post from a few months ago has several people saying they got it working quite nicely: https://www.reddit.com/r/cavesofqud/comments/1dcqyym/regarding_qud_on_the_steam_deck/
That’s the first description on the website. It says it’s a cloud native Linux image that comes pre-installed with all the apps for gaming, e.g. Steam, Lutris, etc. I was asking a question as to why it’s better than SteamOS, as when I see cloud native I just assume it’s something designed for and around streaming. I may be misunderstanding its purpose, but that’s the impression I get from the site.
Ahhh, I misunderstood your earlier comment, my bad. Yeah, if I had a windows handheld, setting it up to boot straight into Steam Big Picture would be a no-brainer for me, just as a minor QOL thing.
As for your other point, I don’t remember them saying that, but that’s pretty crappy they fell through on delivering on that promise. I’m just hoping as SteamOS/Linux gaming continues growing in popularity that developers just start putting more effort into native support.
I 100% agree with you on your first 2 paragraphs. I really love my Deck, but God damn is it annoying getting things like Battle.net, GOG, and/or Epic games working inside of it in Game Mode sometimes.
Apps like NonSteamLaunchers or Heroic help a lot, but they don’t always work smoothly. Like I had the itch to try out WoW again this week after not playing for numerous years (I’d heard War Within was really good). Getting battle.net installed and working within Game Mode was a major pain in the ass. I’d done it a few months ago for Diablo 4 without much headache, but somehow when I tried launching BNet last night, it wouldn’t. NonSteamLauncher’s BNet integrator also wasn’t working for whatever reason. So I had to do a few workarounds before I got one that worked.
It’s scenarios like that where I truly wish Valve would try harder to work with companies like Epic or Blizzard to get better native integration. I know Epic is a competitor, but really it’d be beneficial for both companies to have good integration between each other. I’m much more inclined to buy games on Epic if I can easily play them on my Deck, and I’m more lore inclined to stay within Steam’s ecosystem if I’m not constantly encountering these annoying obstacles. It will likely never happen, but I can dream
As for your last paragraph, are you referring to wiping your Deck and just installing Windows? I’ve been hesitant to do that due to how often I use the sleep mode function in games. I’ve tried using sleep mode on my desktop PC like that when I can’t save a game and I need to stop to do other stuff, and it’s really hit or miss if a game will resume without issue after waking. Have you had any problems? Also, how is your battery life impacted? The Deck has crazy good battery life, and I attribute a lot of that to how efficient the underlying OS is with power management, but maybe I’m wrong. Also, do you have issues with drivers? The APU on the Deck is a custom AMD chipset, but have people ported the drivers for it over to Windows now?
Straight representation? Lol, what? Like every major branching choice RPG with romance options offers plenty of hetero choices (Witcher, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Baldurs Gate, Cyberpunk 2077, etc). Even in Veilguard, the first AAA game I’ve played that offers nonbinary choices, still has plenty of hetero representation. Culture wars are so god damn exhausting and unwinnable.
I disagree. There are a number of Coromon creatures that also heavily resemble some pokemon. I mean, it’s to be expected, there are only so many variations of creature designs before they begin being similar to each other, especially with how long Pokemon has been at it, having like 1000+ creatures now.
Anyway, Nintendo is a greedy shitbag of a company. I love many of their games, but they’re the absolute worst when it comes to being extremely litigious and/or consumer friendly. I truly hope they lose this legal battle
That’s one review from Steam Deck. Game just might too resource hungry and/or unoptimized for it at the moment. The user also didn’t state what Proton version they used. I’m going to install it on my other Linux PC and report back later.
Edit: Works fine on my PC, running latest version of Nobara (Linux distro focused on gaming) and Nvidia drivers. I also used GE Proton 9.11 in Steam.
I had it auto-detect graphics quality (seemed to be about High settings) @ 1080p, and enabled Fur Shadows. I set DLSS to Balanced. Averaged 60-70FPS, dips down to 45ish when I entered an area with heavy rain. Played for about 15 minutes and entered the open world area after the intro. I was playing on my HTPC hooked up to an older spare TV, so I apologize for those that use 1440p or 4k since I cant test the performance at those resolutions.
My specs are:
-Ryzen 5700X
-RTX 3070 FE
-16GB DDR4 3200
-1TB nvme SSD
Edit 2: Played for another 30sh minutes, no issues. Performance did dip a bit in some open world areas, but I never saw it go below 45 FPS.
My quick review: The game has some interesting ideas, but the combat and presentation are pretty jank. Many of the early monsters just ram you like a goat, which launches you in the air and gravity is kind of floaty, so you can end up getting repeatedly tossed around. Their animations are very stiff, so sometimes it looks as though the monsters are just gliding at you versus running. The aesthetic/style of the world looks great, though. The giant tree/Ent thing stomping thru the forest was intense and surreal, I enjoyed trying to hide from it and failing.
The UI is not good, not awful. All of your important information is in the inside of your bow shaft, but it isn’t presented in a clear and easily understood way. Not being able to easily tell how many arrows you have in the middle of combat is frustrating. I also think the wind direction should be easily referenced without needing to hold down a button, sort of how Ghost of Tsushima did it.
Lastly, and this is subjective, the music is not very heavy metal IMO. I was expecting something like Doom 2016, but with Cannibal Corpse, Cradle of Filth, or even Slayer type heavy metal. Instead, it’s more ambient and slower; not intense at all.
This just sounds like you’re being kind of lazy, to be honest. You can browse Steam by tons of filters, narrowing down a genre with like a dozen subgenres and tags (including only showing single player/offline games). Then you can sort that list by rating, release date, cost, if they’re on sale and/or offer a demo, etc. If you’re just going to hate on people’s suggestions/recommends, then get to searching the long lists and find something that looks interesting. Steam lets you refund anything under 2 hours, so there isn’t much to lose.
I think it’s because PSN isn’t available in a number of countries, so it’s an arbitrary obstacle to an otherwise fully functional game that doesn’t and shouldn’t need an account. Requiring external accounts to play a game is nothing new, but I’m happy to see people reaching their threshold for these ridiculous practices and openly complaining. If people didn’t complain and simply didn’t buy the game, how would Sony know why people aren’t buying it?
Agreed. HZD always felt like a game that was built around a story premise first and foremost, which sort of makes sense as that studio had never done a game like that before.
I remember an interview where they were struggling to shift gears from Killzone and looking for new ideas from among their staff when one of their devs pitched HZD’s premise. As a result, they approached making an open world action adventure game as complete noobs. This doesn’t excuse any of the poor design decisions. I was hoping they’d learn from their mistakes in FW, but they instead made the open world part somewhat better and then forgot to keep the focus on the main quest and characters in the process.
Agreed, wider and thicker with maybe a wavy/ ridge texture on the bottom half of the mustache and slight rounding/flaring on the sides that narrows to the top.
https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1262480275/ron-swanson-250fp011911_400x400.jpg
Feels like that’s a good reference pic for OP.
Edit:
But I do prefer #2 more. Like others have said, it’s simpler and easier to tell the expression.
Same. I logged about 20 hours on it before my desire to play just kind of slowly faded away. The game was too large and long to warrant such basic gameplay mechanics. You could be fully upgraded within 5-10 hours and then you’ve essentially seen all the gameplay there is. There’s maybe 6-12 random “quests” you’ll see while traveling (those dynamic events, e.g. a wagon being robbed), so even that part of it becomes repetitive pretty fast.
I’ll get downvoted, but RDR2 is a really overrated game, in my opinion. The game was well made, no doubt about it. Its graphics and environmental design are still gorgeous even to this day, despite being 8 years old. The voice acting, writing, direction, cinematography, etc. are all very well executed. However, at the end of the day, I just found it kind of boring to play.
Right? For a game to be a collector’s item, it needs to still be able to function in its intended capacity. Additionally, they need to be considered good. Most games that become a collectable do so when they transition into the “classic” category, usually 20+ years after they released. In 2050, no one’s going to think, “Oh man, Concord was hailed as a masterpiece in its day, I need to own that piece of history!”
Yeesh, I’ve never used the website but that NightCrawler person seems like they have some serious control problems. The fact that the whole community was willing to chip in/pay for it and take it over and the admin still refused to cooperate is pretty shitty. At least it looks like someone managed to convince the admin to let them host and takeover the site’s wiki.
Probably their last attempt at milking more money out of it before it’s forgotten to time. I was wondering if Xbox or PlayStation have a hard time limit on how long an EA game can remain in such a state, seeing as this one has been in “alpha” for over 10 years on PC and 8 years for PS4/XB1.
Either way, the game is janky as hell. I’ve tried getting into it, but the jank is just too much to ignore for me. It’s insane they’re asking $45 for such an unpolished mess that’s pretending to be complete and hasn’t really added much meaningful content in ages.
For sure, taking breaks is important if I get frustrated with a game. Fortunately enough the only boss to truly stump me so far has been Commander Gaius. I eventually summoned 2 of my friends and the fight became a lot more fun, but even with 2 other people it took us probably 15ish attempts due to the massive health increase caused by summons and I’m also on NG+. I’m sure the final boss will be tougher, since I’ve heard from everyone who crazy it gets.
I’ve been better about my pacing this DLC, too. When the game initially launched and I binged it for about 2 months straight and was super burnt out by the end (had a lot more free time back then due to COVID and only 1 kid).
The post says it’s Uncharted 4.
Agreed about ER. Although, I try to play more relaxing games if I’m playing late in the evening. I’m finally at the final legacy dungeon in the DLC, and boy oh boy there’s an enemy in there that killed me so fast in like 3 hits. It was over before I even had time to react, lol. I called it a night and switched to something else before bed.
I’d recommend just watching a playthrough. I was like you and tried to get into it 2-3 times and the game was just too frustrating. Starting over from almost scratch every time was annoying given how often you die. So many things in the game are time sensitive as well, so you’re either sitting around waiting to time something or rushing to get somewhere in time only to miss the time window and have to wait or come back later. You couple that with the lack of QoL features and clunky controls and it just wasn’t enjoyable for me.
Just as a disclaimer to people who are passionate about it, I’m not saying it’s a bad game, just that it’s not a game for everyone and that’s fine.
Unsurprising. The first game, while novel and interesting, was not a good game. And from what I read, the general consensus is that the actual gameplay of this one is even worse than the first’s. I admired what the first game was trying to do and I even think they did it well, but at the end of the day the majority of people play videogames to have fun.
Regardless, some folks love both games, and I’m happy for them. That being said, it’s a very niche game and I find it odd for Microsoft to have bet so heavily on it to be more popular.
Yeah, Forza Horizon is literally all I can think of with this announcement. The thing is, Forza has far more mass appeal due to the breadth of options it has. I am struggling to see how the hell Crazy Taxi could even come close to Forza’s variety.
The only thing I can think of, is they plan to make it like Twisted Metal meets Crazy Taxi, and by massively multiplayer they’re referring to server instances of 100+ players in a city area. You’ll have objectives to pick people up, but I would bet they’ll end up making it so you can also pick up illicit deliveries or even being a driver for bank robbers or something, similar to GTA Online. Sort of a PvPvE type system as well. If they combine all of those elements, I could see it being maybe fun. But I doubt it will end up fun.
Anyway, agreed with others that they should’ve just stuck to a smaller scale arcade style game. The previous games were all that way and they were successful and fun. I have no idea why they’d think changing that basic formula is a great idea for a game like this.
That’s literally what AAA means…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_(video_game_industry)
And to think Larian is some small company is also silly. It has over 400 employees and 7 offices. It’s privately owned, yes, but it hasn’t been an AA studio since the success of Divinity Original Sin 2 and most definitely not since the massive success of BG3.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larian_Studios