All the Game Awards chatter and the current sale made me take the plunge on Clair Obscur" Expedition 33 and I’m so glad I did. Only ~8h in or so but it is such a vibrant, wild world to explore and it makes me think of the classic JRPGs I played growing up. The introduction of more active battling mechanics like parrying and dodging adds a level of complexity to the combat that I enjoy, even if I cannot for the life of me get the parry timing right.
Steam Deck took a couple minor tweaks to make it look good and the hair effects still are a bit janky (eg. Gustave’s hair will light up from a light source making it look grey). The soundtrack is phenomenal and was the first time in a long time that I’ve wanted to buy a game soundtrack (this battle track in one of the early areas cemented this as something special to me).
Super worth it and excited to dive in deep on this one.
I did see a tip about turning up the volume for sound cues when I was digging around trying to find if there was some kind of setting I could enable for a more visual cue (like you get for a Jump attack). I don’t usually play games with headphones on but I find myself doing that with this one!
The Steam Deck experience is pretty good. The issues I’ve had with the characters’ hairstyles catching the light weird seems to be more an issue of the lighting in general. I was in the Stone Wave Cliffs which has a lot of caves to explore and a lot of instances where there’s a “light at the end of a tunnel”. What I noticed was the light at the end was almost too bright/overpowering and it made it impossible to see the cave around me which, while maybe accurate to what you’d experience in real life with losing night vision and whatnot, makes it really hard to see/navigate. Similarly some of the menus are noticably darker as if I would need to turn the brightness up but not every menu is like that either. Just some weirdness there and I haven’t tried that section on my PC to see if it’s just how the game is or how the Steam Deck is handling it. Otherwise though, the Deck experience is pretty good and I’m getting into it for a couple hours a night without much issue. Definitely not the cleanest/fanciest graphics but in the “good enough” camp for me that aside from the lighting woes, I don’t notice much of a problem.
I’ll shill up for skill up’s website that spun up from his ‘This Week in Gaming’. He has some great coverage on indie games and always dedicates a segment to ‘put this on your radar’.
Paul Tassi from Forbes also has some really good takes and sources in the industry for those AAA games.
I think you might have misjudged when LCDs became common as by the end of 2004, when Halo 2 released, LCD TVs were already a reasonable fraction of new TV sales, and in parts of the world, it was only a few months later that LCD TVs became the majority. For PC monitors, the switch came earlier, so it was clear CRTs were on the way out while the game was being developed. If they hadn’t expected a significant number of players to use an LCD and tweaked the game as much as necessary to ensure that was fine, it would have been foolish
It’s entirely possible. I was just basing the guess it was designed with CRTs in mind because growing up, everyone my age still had a CRT until around 2008/2009, which we then replaced it with Plasma TVs. So it’s entirely possible my assumption is biased or skewed
Obviously, most people don’t replace their TV every year, so it was years after new sales were mostly LCDs that most people had LCDs, but companies making content like to be sure it looks good with the latest screens.
No, I’m not a No Man’s Sky fan. I’m a recovering No Man’s Sky addict. If retirement exists in the future, I hope this game still exists, cuz I’m gonna ruin whatever remains of my life with it.
Last time me and a buddy played we triggered enemies on a corrupted planet to earn parts to reclaim a sentient ship, but it was bugged so the enemies included corrupted and regular enemies and the ship at the end was 2 ships glitching into each other as they occupied the same location (one for each player).
I liked it, but similar to Elite they both seem to end up with a problem of “yeah, now what?” after playing for a while. Yet I have enjoyed other sandbox games like Wurm for many 1000s of hours, while Elite and NMS I only have 1200 and 400 hours in. Maybe the lack of multiplayer interaction? I know you can group up but doesn’t seem like something that really happens through gameplay alone.
Fuck yeah. I love No Man’s Sky. Whenever a new update launches me and a friend will just go and sink 10 ish hours into it just playing around. The game still has its issues, but I’ve had some genuine fun just immersing myself in the world and building bases and discovering things
Ah, Halo… the main image that showed up in my feed looked almost like part of Mass Effect 1, but the vehicle wasn’t right.
Same generation, but Mass Effect has a remaster, Legendary Edition. It’s been on sale on Xbox for $6 USD a couple times (what I paid for it)… and that’s for all three.
While I suppose they are technically three games, the intended use of the product is for you to import your clear save from the previous one to start 2 and 3. Your decisions from previous ones carry forward, even minor choices in the first one playing out in the third one.
For straight shooting, Halo wins, particularly against Mass Effect 1 and 3, but I think Mass Effect 2’s shooting was competitive to shooters contemporary to it. Though, it and 3 are a bit more like Deus Ex or Star Wars where you have tech/magic stuff you can do in addition to the guns. I tend to stick to pistols and assault rifles, but I’m known to throw a bit of magic here and there, especially the ones that eat shields.
As far as Halo, I only completed the first one (and did it on PC with keyboard/mouse). Played the first couple maps of the third one on Xbox, never could get the hang of it though. Only single player, never multi.
I’m always a sucker for 3 (Feels like a good in between for what I love in CE and 2 for me personally) and Reach.
But I’m very inclined to agree with the beginning being good. It’s one of the most memorable parts for me about the game, and I’d say franchise as whole
bin.pol.social
Aktywne