For real. Imo the best RTS out there currently. I feel so much more in control of the camera and the units. Whenever I go back to old RTS games now they feel dated and clunky.

The AI is also surprisingly enjoyable for a more casual player like me. It doesn’t cheat (as far as I’m aware) by getting resources or having vision where it shouldn’t. But it does exploit its high APM and it is very aware of what it can get away with in fights. This results in an AI that never does outright bullshit, but in one that does just sneak past the 2mm space not covered by turrets or units and ruins your entire economy. Give it a large open map and it’ll demolish me, but on smaller maps with choke points it’s easier to handle.

According to Steam:

1. Rocket League: 2038 hours
2. GTA V: 260 hours
3. Project Cars 2: 234 hours

I haven’t seriously played any of them over the last year though. RL has been run into the ground by greed. GTA V was always greedy, but was still some fun to fck around in. However it isn’t really relevant anymore. PC2 was replaced for me by Assetto Corsa (5th place, 170 hours) which has great mods and better physics.

Also, this is only Steam. Combining Steam and Uplay numbers, Trackmania 2020 probably 2nd place with just over 300 hours. And LoL may also be top 3 even though I haven’t played in years. Likewise Beyond All Reason may be getting close to the top 3, but I have no way of knowing since it doesn’t track the playtime afaik.

I think I’m going to buy it soon as well. Heard it’s a little rough around the edges, but the first games weren’t exactly stable either. From what I’ve seen so far it’s exactly as hoped: a modern stalker game like the old ones. Atmospheric, dark, hard, and janky. I respect the devs so much for building a game like this during such hard times.

I use it for sim racing sometimes and it’s amazing to feel like I’m in an F1 car or something. Until I get nauseous after 15 minutes or something. It’s also a bit of a hassle to set up. That being said, maybe it would be cooler if I got into beat saber or something.

Was it over hyped? Maybe. But it’s still a cool technology and I’d be sad to see it fall into nothingness. I don’t see a future where everyone is wearing VR glasses, but it’s still a very neat thing to enjoy every now and then.

Apart from the many compatibility issues with all kinds of random games that can usually be fixed within an hour (but still cost me too much time), the biggest one is specific stuff like playing Assetto Corsa with mods in VR using a Logitech wheel. It’s already a pretty hefty stack of things to keep working on Windows, but on Linux I cannot even get AC to start so I have no idea whether the rest will work.

I’m already fighting computers all day. When I get home tired the last thing I want to do is to fight the computer even more. I just want a game to start without issue. Even on my Steam deck I have regular hard crashes of the system in multiple games, and my PC is probably less supported due to the more random set of packages installed

Interesting how experiences can be so different. To me Jedi Survivor was an improvement over the first game, which I already enjoyed a lot. As far as I can remember you keep most (if not all) of your abilities. In the first game Cal has almost nothing after he essentially cut himself off from the force after the trauma of order 66. It’s and entirely reasonable explanation of Cal not having most normal Jedi abilities.

Survivor also has better combat, because of the new abilities and weapons, better graphics, and better traversal (looking at you, Zeffo). While I really like the story in Fallen Order as well, I also think that Survivor is better overall. It’s not as clear cut as good vs evil. There’s many different factions and people with different goals. In the end, it’s about everyone just trying to survive the tyranny of the Empire, whatever it takes.

The games definitely does feel very “gamey” though. There’s a lot of places where it’s clear that things are only the way they are because this is a video game. But to me that’s okay. A game doesn’t always need to be the most realistic and life-like experience. I don’t mind that a specific puzzle is totally unrealistic and clearly only there to force you to solve it. I can imagine that some people will not enjoy that though, and that’s okay.

At the moment Assetto Corsa and Wreckfest.

Assetto Corsa because it’s a simracing sandbox. I’ve modded it to hell with Content Manager and CSP. I also have a lot of paid mods for mainly formula cars like the RSS Formula 1/2/3/4 cars and the VRC Formula E cars. The AI is the perfect level of silly to cause absolute mayhem with the right settings, but also pretty interesting races when you want them to behave.

Wreckfest is a joy on the Steam deck and for casual mayhem. It still has a nice driving model imo, while remaining casual. The maps are optimized for crashing into others which means you’re never safe.

I loved Fallen Order and I loved Survivor even more. It’s the perfect follow up to Fallen Order. At launch it had quite some issues tho, which is why it wasn’t received well. Not sure how much better it is now since I never really had issues to begin with.

Not everyone is a native English speaker. You get what they’re saying, stop being so rude

Yeah it was very easy actually. Though fair warning to people who are sensitive to flashing lights: after logging in with DigiD (Netherlands) my screen went full strobe mode. Looked like multiple pages loading in quick succession with different background colours before finally landing on the success screen.

I’m okay with any delays as long as it doesn’t release in a totally fucked state. I have huge respect for the Devs, dealing with the Ukraine invasion and also building a game

From the train dataset that was frozen many years ago. It’s like you know something instead of looking it up. It doesn’t provide sources, it just makes shit up based on what was in the (old) dataset. That’s totally different than looking up the information based on what you know and then using the new information to create an informed answer backed up by sources

No. ChatGPT pulls information out of its ass and how I read it SearchGPT actually links to sources (while also summarizing it and pulling information out of it’s ass, presumably). ChatGPT “knows” things and SearchGPT should actually look stuff up and present it to you.

Not sure about satisfactory, considering the map is always the same. So the only sources of randomness are starting at another location in the same map or playing differently yourself

I like it. It’s sort of a follow up to Rollercoaster tycoon 1 and 2. Same kinda play style, but then in a modern game. I had some good fun with it. Personally I like it more than Planet Coaster, where I found the customization too overwhelming.

Yeah the bots were fine. I definitely liked splitgate more than the new tribes though. Even against humans I felt like I had way more chance to get some kills and overall the game felt more polished.

I was interested in the game, but for me the problem really was the skill level of the player base. Getting killed 20 times before getting a kill is no fun at all. I played during the test period, and I think it definitely would be fun with other noobs, but every game just has people in it who are miles above the rest.

Microsoft does a lot of bad things, but I got to give it to them here. Their push for accessibility in gaming is definitely a good thing. They’ve been pushing multiple modular controllers in order to allow people with disabilities to play games in a comfortable way. Having the support of a major player in the gaming market like Microsoft will definitely help with support for these products.

I’ve played Rocket League for more than 2000 hours since its release, but honestly I kinda felt like it was dying. Very little interesting new content, silly decisions like removing trading. I haven’t played seriously for more than a year now. It’s surprising to me to still see it so high up

I wouldn’t say so for most people. I bought it (figuring I could refund it if it was bad) and tbh the performance and buggyness weren’t too much of an issue. A way bigger issue is the late game and how all the systems interact. These issues only became apparent to me deep into the game.

My main issues are how you’re basically forced to work around cars. Every attempt I made to ditch cars or trucks would land me into bugs and unbalanced systems. I had a lot of issues with cargo train stations, I had weird deadlocks with trams and trains that grinded my city to a halt, I found that the bus lanes are just a suggestion and won’t keep out traffic, and I started missing bikes more and more (they’re not in the game). It’s basically just a horrible American city simulator, and that’s the only way you can play without running into trouble. A lot of that may be fixed, I haven’t played after the patch, but still I feel like the game needs some time in the oven. Especially for the price.

Good idea, they’re on the right path, but not there yet imo

I get what you say, but I bought Cyberpunk after the fixes and it’s legitimately one of my favourite games I’ve ever played. They should’ve never been in this position, but they righted their wrongs instead of abandoning the game and they made it into the masterpiece it deserved to be.

Yeah the DLC is really scummy imo. Definitely not worth the money. I’m just gonna ignore it. What’s more hopeful is the free patch with the introduction of mods and a good amount of bugfixes. If they keep this going they might be able to pull a Cyberpunk (although slightly less dramatic).

Multiplayer update hype! Also love that acoustic version of Arrow of Time at the end

This also goes for many things in general, not just gamedev. I used to be a teaching assistant at the University that I was studying at, and this was the main thing people seemed to get wrong in their projects. Instead of going for the basics and building from there, they just went for all the fancy cool features, or the most optimal algorithm. Then, when the deadline inevitably came around, they would have basically nothing working correctly. Sometimes I even warned them, and yet it still went wrong.

Oh awesome, I haven’t checked the other 2 out yet. Thanks for the suggestions!

There’s still some stuff going on, but it’s quite dead yeah. In the broader scope of RTS games you still have stuff like Age of Empires 4 and Beyond all Reason, both of which I find a lot of fun. But neither are really much like C&C. What is like C&C is Tempest Rising, which is currently under development. I played the demo and it did feel very C&C like, which is good, but time will tell how polished it will be on release.

Not a console player, but cool that the console crowd now also gets to enjoy these games. I don’t think I’ve ever finished any of the stories, but I sure had a great time exploring the worlds of Clear Sky and Call of Pripyat. Just walking around you somehow always managed to stumble into crazy encounters. The world felt so dynamic, with all the faction interactions and monsters. One big scary sandbox

Valheim is also great with friends by the way. We’re currently playing DRG, but we played Valheim quite a while back and it was a lot of fun together.

Singleplayer I’m playing Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty, which is imo a stellar experience so far. I’m also playing Cassette Beasts on the Steam Deck, which is also a great experience. Like Pokemon, but also different in many ways.

Multiplayer it’s still Deep Rock Galactic, and I’ve returned a bit to AoE 4.

I’m kinda annoyed that somehow better assets also have the RTX on/off symbol even though they have nothing to do with RTX, but other than that it looks cool.

Not sure how well known it is, but on a friend’s recommendation I bought Cassette Beasts. I just got a second hand Steam Deck and it’s a fun combination. It’s basically a Pokemon-like game, but with its own charm. Instead of pokeballs you record monsters with cassette tapes. It’s quite a goofy game and I’m enjoying it so far.

If you do get it for the Steam Deck, you should play it with compatibility mode set to Proton 8, because then it somehow uses 40% less battery or something.

The issue is that I miss features when using Epic. Additionally, games from Epic are not visible in my steam library which leads to me forgetting that they even exist. And also nobody uses it, so there’s no community feeling like I have with all my Steam friends.

I don’t mind it for free games though. If they give me a game for free, they deserve me using their launcher for that game haha.

Personally my main gripe is their aggressive strategies to force people into their garbage-tier launcher. Compared to Steam it’s just miles behind, and it’s yet another app to run on your PC. All my friends are also on Steam, and Steam had Linux support. However, if all you want to do is launch singleplayer games, you don’t mind the Epic launcher, and you get a good deal, then do whatever you want to.

I’m all for legislation to fix scummy practices in areas where something is essential, i.e. transport, connectivity, food, etc. Or to counter predatory practices like gambling or lootboxes that prey on addicts or children. But in this case I feel like it’d be a bit too much. Nobody needs WoW, nor is it really (in my opinion) preying on addicts in the same way as gambling or lootboxes. If enough people are willing to pay such a ridiculous amount of money, then apparently this is really the value.

Ah you’re the kind of person for whom the Hades devs created the shop item that guarantees a fishing spot in the next room. I never thought I’d find the reason why they put that in

Ah yeah true, I kinda forgot about Mindustry. There it works well indeed. Especially since it also has some interesting stuff like the Thorium reactor. Something like that would also work well in an RTS

Ah yeah true, I kinda forgot about Mindustry. There it works well indeed. Especially since it also has some interesting stuff like the Thorium reactor. Something like that would also work well in an RTS

I’ve been thinking about this combination for a while. I’m curious how well it’s gonna work, since factory games are usually the type of games that require a lot of attention. I can’t imagine having to rebuild all kinds of complex recipices only to be attacked again by the time you fixed it. Then again, you can also get attacked on Factorio and there it works well.

Interesting game, sounds like something to keep an eye on

That may be so, but they also got deals with quite some games that were supposed to be cross-laumcher to become (timed) Epic exclusive instead. This forces you to use their garbage-teir launcher. Besides that, Epic doesn’t really seem to take any action to help Linux adoption like Steam does. And as a Rocket League fan I’m also specifically pissed about how they have been running my favorite game into the ground slowly.

Epic isn’t trying to beat monopolies, it’s just trying to become another one.