It is a good thing to have competition. The hate is because they are doing things people don’t generally like. Exclusivity deals for one thing. Epic can’t really compete with steam because they are too far behind on features, so they resort to exclusivity deals which aren’t really good for any consumer. One could argue it is the fault of publishers taking them, but that is just looking at it from a purely business perspective. As a consumer, I don’t really care about the business side… I don’t profit from it. So I don’t really wonder why gamers are mad at epic for it.
Say what you will about what it did with the characters, but Sly 4 took the level design and art to new heights, and that was thanks to modern advancements in graphics.
Jak hit differently though. It had a good mix of great platforming and creative use of graphics. If anything without Jak I wouldn’t have played rift apart or sly.
I’m saying is that modern game engines and rendering tech allow a lot of the things that are good about these games to be turned up to eleven, both in terms of gameplay and art.
I will heavily disagree with you on your evaluation of Sly 4. The higher fidelity models doesn't really add much to the characters that you couldn't glean in prior entries in the series, and really only serves to give the characters a more plastic style all while minimizing the features that made them so memorable - their cartoonish aesthetic and stylized design. Not much changed on the design front for any of the major cast, besides more detail regarding their costumes.
I will admit that more details on the smaller bits of their costume would be nice in the older entries, but compromising the style and aesthetic is a much worse tradeoff for what was gained.
There's many other people evaluating the level design in Sly 4 so I won't go into that too much, but suffice to say, Sly 2 has comparable level design, and some are better in my personal opinion, but Sly 3 has the best level design of the franchise. None of those level designs were hindered or empowered by graphical capabilities. The only part that would have a noticeable impact, if anything, would be the post processing effects from some abilities in Sly 4, but I don't really think those added that much to the experience, as most are gimmicks and costume based, meaning they are only used to solve puzzles and don't play any further part in your arsenal except when the game specifically calls for those abilities.
Now I don't disagree that modern computing power could make the series much better, but AAA has this tunnel vision on graphical fidelity, when the indie scene has proved time and again, style always has and always will trump substance.
Ratchet and Clank made the transition successfully because they didn't overblow the graphical fidelity on Clank, it simply looks like a higher quality model of his early iterations, and has been made easier due to the armor and other sci-fi bits of technology in the series, as the genre scales better with the raw fidelity that most AAA developers pursue than other franchises.
Doesn't really help either that the first step that the Sly franchise took into this modern era was spearheaded by a third party studio. I'm not gonna bash Sanzaru that much, as it's clear they had to put in a lot of work to approach Sony and Sucker Punch to even get permission to work on the franchise, and it shows in the humor of their mission design, although they were uncertain of themselves and it shows. So not only was Sanzaru dealing with the difficult position of having the newest entry of a beloved franchise, but also coming up with ways to modernize the gameplay and graphics in a franchise almost iconified in the early 2000's comic and cartoon aesthetic.
It's clear they had more to juggle than could have honestly been expected of them, not the least of which that the franchise had been dead in the water for 8 years at that point, as the industry had slowed to a crawl after the creep of design scope and the upscaling of the industry caused much of the workflow to stagnate or recursion in on itself.
People are overly loyal to Steam and don’t realise the huge market share they have. It’s not technically a monopoly but everyone else is fighting over the 20% that Steam doesn’t have so who can blame Epic for throwing money at the problem.
As someone from the UK, where most of our spines were standardised like the PS1 and PS2. And having personally collected hundreds of the latter. I’ve always preferred consistent standardised spines. A full bookcase of PAL PS2 games looks so much nicer to me than the messy look of one filled with NTSC games in my opinion.
The games on those old computers were better, too, proving you can’t make something good just by throwing power at it. Emulators are popular for a reason.
Agree with you; there’s some classics from the 8 bit era and its a cool project to build your own way back emulation machine. I did one 8 years ago and I put it into an arcade cabinet. It gets used at parties as everyone can pick up and have a go.
That’s fantastic. One of the best moments in my life was discovering a comprehensive archive of Apple ][ game images. So. Many. Games. So many, sometimes it’s hard to find a specific one if you remember the game but not the name.
exclusivity deals, forcing them to drop from steam even after they first announced release on there. They also target crowdfunded games like phoenixpoint.
Even if they have fixed that specific issue, why would you believe they have fixed anything else?
first comment on the reddit thread>thlm 5mo ago Epic Games Launcher Incorrect Default Permissions Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability CVSS SCORE 7.8 This vulnerability allows local attackers to escalate privileges on affected installations of Epic Games Launcher. An attacker must first obtain the ability to execute low-privileged code on the target system in order to exploit this vulnerability. The specific flaw exists within the product installer. The product applies incorrect default permissions to a sensitive folder. An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to escalate privileges and execute arbitrary code in the context of SYSTEM. DISCLOSURE TIMELINE 2024-07-16 - Vulnerability reported to vendor 2024-12-04 - Coordinated public release of advisory 2024-12-06 - Advisory Updated That timeline is disgusting
So in essence, its not bad because it trys to compete with steam. Its bad because they really dont try to compete and just do anti-user things. And people dont care because “yay free games I’m never going to look at again”.
If you want to see what actual competition looks like at the moment, take a look at GOG.
I don’t hate times exclusives that much because that’s done extra cashflow for the dev to be able to either finish their game or polish it further. I still don’t think we’d have gotten Alan Wake 2 at least the version we got without that epic deal. I also don’t know if square would’ve bothered even entertaining the idea of porting all of the kingdoms hearts games either.
There’s A LOT to talk so you better check there. If you don’t want to check, wait till your account get hacked and try ask support to get it back! You can give all the info you want but 99% of the times they just say “fuck you” and you lost everything
Edit: Can you customize your profile pic there? :)
Granted not everyone cares, I remember them giving away a pfp with Sifu but there’s still no pfp customization. Why? They don’t care about you but about your money
Couple other things to add to this beautiful list others have: meta gaming and chat.
They barely added achievements and only for a couple games, while steam has that, guides, community art, and even a newish notes feature in case you’re playing an OG game that makes you track stuff. Guides have kind of been better than more traditional sources.
Chat is… better on steam, although discord kind of supplanted it. Game based emoji, stickers, etc. It’s actually very good, though, with support for couch coop stream gaming, etc, with voice comms.
One could also point to the generous family sharing function, but I’m not sure what Epic does in that regard. DRM is DRM though. Do keep in mind, though, the philosophy behind Steam is to make DRM palatable by adding features. Epic philosophy (on paper) is to give devs a higher cut, although I’ve heard devs feel more supported by steam-- especially since they aren’t afraid to throw obscure indie games into a users discovery queue.
It was great when it had its niche, and I still buy games there occasionally, but it has poorer integration with pretty much anything, Galaxy is bloated as hell, and it has explicitly no linux/deck support.
Eta: apparently GOG actively funds Heroic launcher, didn’t know that, thanks for pointing it out to me.
So I learned recently that GOG actively funds Heroic. Which really takes some weight off of Heroic's support for GOG game autopatching and cloud saves, meaning it may be a bit hacky and officially in "beta", but it's very unlikely for GOG to object to its presence.
They may not "officially" support Linux, but they don't "explicitly" lack support.
Also, tip of the hat to Heroic, it works extremely well and very reliably. I was frustrated with Lutris and I am bummed out by how Galaxy didn't quite get there as the one universal support launcher to handle all your libraries, but Heroic is good enough as a replacement I don't mind nearly as much anymore. Even on Windows I'd consider it over Galaxy.
Yep. As I understand it it's via affiliate links, so if you buy GOG games through the storefront in the Heroic UI they get a small cut, but the Heroic devs say they have spoken to GOG reps and they are broadly supportive, so unless that changes I don't think their ability to support GOG features would be compromised any time soon.
I’m currently playing the game, got like a handful of levels left. It’s a good game, but with the way the Doom games have evolved and changed over the time, I don’t think you can really say “if you like that Doom, you’ll like this Doom.”
I definitely enjoy the gameplay of Eternal more, but Dark Ages is really good.
The feel of running around is great. You sound massive, your jumps create shockwaves and kill enemies. If you’ve played Boltgun, it’s like that.
The shield is feels great. The charge is awesome, just like the Meathook was in Eternal to get right next to your enemy, and fodder demons just explode on impact.
Parries feel good, but are extremely easy. The timing is super forgiving and the range is massive.
I think a big thing, that not many people are talking about, are the difficulty sliders. You can change so many things, but ID just ignores 90% of them with their presets. You can change so much stuff, and make it feel like a completely different game. Crank up the game speed and just zoom around. Increase your and the enemies damage, so it’s all about dodging, or you get one-shot. Make the projectiles slow, but a lot more deadly.
There’s still some ammo management, but it’s not like Eternal, not even like 2016. Your melee attack, that you can use for the execute drops ammo, just like the Chainsaw, but you’re using it regularly anyway. Some guns also have upgrades that shooting demons with it also drops ammo for the weapon.
The game is a lot more story heavy, but just like in Eternal you can just skip it and not read the Codex entries.
The mech stuff is alright, but pretty basic, but also really short segments. The dragon is cool in theory, but I really hate these parts, and they just drag on for far too long. Flying around just isn’t fun.
Weapons are pretty good, and I have some favorites. The normal Combat Shotgun with upgrades is great this time and not just outshined by the Super Shotgun immediately. That Ball-on-a-Chain gun is also really nice, with some cool upgrades. Because you don’t really have any ammo issues if you use the melee regularly, I’ve just used one gun for long stretches of time, because there’s just no reason real reason to switch, and you can just use what you want.
The devs always said in Dark Ages you’re like a tank, but with default settings on Nightmare difficulty, you’re made out of paper. Projectiles are extremely dangerous, and enemies like to spawn behind you and shoot you in the back. The game is actually not great on telling you where you’re getting attacked from, and there’s just always tons of enemies around and some deaths can be kinda frustrating.
Then there are also some minor UI/UX issues. You get small icons in the middle for your melee charges, but they don’t show the progress like in Eternal with the Blood Punch. There’s no dedicated Map button, just open your Dossier, which remembers your last screen, which is annoying, because you want that map 99% of the time. Sprinting has this terrible vignette effect around your screen, and you want to sprint all the time, but you can only disable all screen effects, which includes some stuff I’d like to see.
For some dumb reason, the Fast Travel option, at the end of a level has been removed, so if you miss a secret, you’ll have to play the level again. There’s also tons of points-of-no-return, so you’ll have to stare at the map constantly, to make sure you haven’t missed anything, which makes the lack of a map button so terrible.
After I’m done with my Nightmare run, I want to do another one, where I play around with the sliders a bit. I want to turn up the game speed, but will probably lower the damage and projectile speed to compensate.
Yes, but it would still be nice to have in the middle.
I went back to check in Eternal, and I was wrong about that game showing the progress on the icons in the middle of the screen. Just like Dark Ages it just shows charges that are ready to use, and the progress in the full HUD on the edges of the screen. Seems like I just need to get good and look at the full HUD, like I did in Eternal.
We don’t own our games anymore, so I need to know my library’s going to stick around if I’m going to invest in it. Last I heard, EGS hasn’t made a profit, so that doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in me that it’ll still be around in five years.
I think competition is the answer to a lot of problems consumers face, but unfortunately the “are you going to be there tomorrow?” problem is going to be a major disadvantage for any storefront that competes with Steam. It’s why my most preferred shop is GOG, because I still have all my games with them if they close up.
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