I bought Cyberpunk on Stadia on release day, since I couldn’t play it anywhere else, and it was actually great for me. The technical issues I ran into were all because the game was buggy, not because the service was bad. The biggest issue was the self self-fulfilling prophecy that Google was going to kill it, and not worth subscribing to (which they eventually did kill because of low usage). I think that if Google had spun out Stadia as it’s own company, it may have succeeded.
Same here, Stadia was great the entire time it lasted. But I have good internet, so that helped. But yeah the killing factor of it ended up being google as you said. Very unfortunate.
I was betting on Stadia being the future of gaming. Without having to mess with hardware or software it was an amazing product. Their service was great, but we all know how it turned out. At least they refunded me all my purchases.
Hah I actually made a profit on their shutting down. Or at least, on Cyberpunk 2077. Bought CP77 and got a free controller + Chromecast bundle, sold the Chromecast for 45 bucks and got Cyberpunk refunded in full. After buying it again on sale through Steam, I had a profit of 15€.
And I still have the controller! The Stadia controllers are awesome.
Even non techie people don’t trust them to keep any new service going, so they have to force people to use their new services, which of course comes with a ton of bad will, and then when people inevitably don’t like this and don’t spend as google has envisioned, they shutter it, continuing the cycle of failing more and more and probably reinforcing internally the idea that the only way to make more money is through enshitification rather than innovation, because they can’t admit to themselves they’ve destroyed their brand image.
Chants of Sennaar was great! Had an absolute blast trying to work my way through it. I probably sounded like I was playing Baba Is You when trying to wrap my head around the glyphs (?) and the messages they try to convey.
Figuring out the symbols, their meaning and then using them properly to translate between different people was surprisingly rewarding and fun. I wouldn’t have minded if the game had a bit more gameplay, but at least it didn’t overstay it’s welcome.
I loved the grammar differences between the languages. Like where the negation glyphs go, or pluralisation. It always made me happy when I struggled with the translations, and then renumbered stuff like “Bards place the subject before the verb!”
Chants of Sennaar is by far one of the best games I’ve played. I had an absolute blast getting it to 100% and wish it had just a little bit more to do or vocalisations of the various languages.
I also really liked Heaven’s Vault, really recommend that as well. Tunic is probably one of my favourite recent games, genre wise very different but still in that translation category.
Chants was probably in my top I played last year, absolutely loved the soundtrack too.
I‘m always amazed at the amount of people believing the Steam Machine will be sold for the same or less than the most expensive version of the Steam Deck while being six times as powerful.
The other problem is that the tariffs could be totally different by the time it releases. I fully suspect that the tariffs are the reason that we haven’t got a price yet.
It would be funny if it is noticeably more expensive in the US though like with the Switch 2.
Just playing devil’s advocate here. I don’t necessarily disagree with you, but there are some interesting factors at play.
The Steam Machine won’t need a screen or battery, two of the most expensive components on the Deck. So that can go into better CPU/GPU/RAM instead.
Valve proved they can make a successful physical hardware product with the deck. That gives them a lot of negotiating power with AMD to get the best deal they can.
Unlike with the Deck, they’re releasing three new gadgets in almost all major countries simultaneously. That means they may have already started manufacturing months ago, and are benefiting from economy of scale at an entirely new level.
Sure, I should have clarified not surprised by the power or the price.
It makes sense that as more and more power becomes available, the price doesn’t necessarily have to increase.
Computers (especially CPUs/GPUs/SOCs etc) are becoming more and more powerful all the time, and more and more efficient all the time. It doesn’t mean that the price of them has to rise.
The fact that it’s 6 times as powerful doesn’t mean it should be more expensive than the most expensive version of the Steam Deck. The fact that it’s 6 times as powerful should be entirely expected, given the fact that it’s newer with a larger form factor (meaning that it may not be as limited in terms of heat etc)
Hopefully this is a detailed enough comment to clearly explain my thoughts on this.
Being on the patient side of things, two games I’ve played in recent years and didn’t enjoy were:
God of War (2018) - it just felt like AAA slop to me. Meaningles upgrades, tons of obvious puzzles at any corner - never throwing in even a single brain teaser, boring combat - the best option was almost always to throw the axe, that thing were you start walking at a snails pace to mask loading and/or play a cutscene and on top of that your god powers being mostly cutscene exclusive. Just your bog standard AAA game with no ‘friction’ - boring.
Factorio - it just feels like work to me. On top of that, going in blind, I just didn’t enjoy building something up just to tear it down again because I’ve unlocked something new changing the requirements. Once again, feels like a job in IT. Also, resource patches being limited just gave me the weirdest kind of anxiety despite never actually seeing one run out.
Factorio’s the awakening for a lot of people on certain ends on the spectrum. My AuDHD makes it crack for me. I will say though, while the tutorial teaches you some essentials, it just throws you into the deep end once you start a real game.
I only discovered all the tips and quality of life from videos online, and there are some troubles in the game you can solve on your own but good fucking luck (belt balancing).
Might not be your kinda game, but if you ever feel like giving it another chance, check out some vids online for beginner tips (: It’s a game about stimulating the Eureka! part of our ooga booga caveman brains and it feels amazing.
I feel vindicated. I have the exact same feeling of factorio feeling too much like work, having to refactor everything because the requirements change is one of the more frustrating parts of software engineering imo, and the game feels tailored specifically to invoke that frustration.
I imagine that part gets better after the first hundred hours where you basically know what’s coming. I don’t have the patience to learn the tech tree though, given that I don’t even enjoy the game.
Yeah I’ve seen people try to balance things perfectly in factorio, but my strat is always to overproduce and let belts getting backed up balance out the throughput.
Yeah same. I’ve seen other people stockpile intermediate resources to try and smooth out bottlenecks, but I think that’s wasteful. Build extra throughout, and have as little product sitting there as possible.
I’m fuzzy on the details, but it went something like this:
I set up long resource lines of coal, copper and iron.
I needed a thing#1 and built a neat little package to build it, exactly to order and on minimal space.
I copy pasted that design 10 times left to right along my resource belt line.
Then thing#2 came along. Needed the same stuff and combined with thing#1 into thing#3. So I wrapped my resource belts, designed a second package on minimal space and also copy pasted it 10 times. So I had pairs of thing#1 and thing#2 with a line in the middle to combine them and a belt to collect them. Worked nicely.
Then:
Coal was replaced by electricity. I had no space for powerlines.
I got other types of the grab thingies, potentially simplifying my setup.
Suddenly I got sorting, making my belt setup a waste of space (I had one line per thing/resource).
All belts needed to be replaced by better belts.
Oh and:
Thing#4 came along, needing 2 of thing#1 and one thing#2 with some additional resources. Since I built to order, I basically had to start from scratch or severly hamper the production of thing#3. Also, my packages didn’t work anymore without wasting space and/or entirely fucking up resource belt management.
Therefore, I designed stuff from scratch to fit the new requirements.
That’s from the very beginning, but after repeating this pattern a few times, I gave up. Building it non-optimized felt even worse.
Interesting. Optimizing the factory for your immediate current needs sounds very tedious, because those needs change all the time. I instead optimize for expandability and adaptability. The factory game genre isn’t for everyone, but if you are interested in some tips:
My solution is usually something like:
really long line of basic resources (usually a belt of smelted copper and a belt of smelted iron, eventually adding more stuff and adding more belts of iron and copper as supplies are needed)
when I need thing 1, I make a little package that builds it, drawing resources from the line with splitters so the excess can continue down the line
thing 2 is an independent little package farther down the line
When it’s time for thing 3, I build copies of the packages for building thing 1 and thing 2 as necessary to feed the construction of thing 3, again as separate feeds splitting off the main resource line
when it’s time for thing 4, its again independent of the production of things 1-3, except they are splitting off the same main resource belt
If the resources on the main belt are insufficient to feed all of those machines, one of three things needs to happen: 1. Add more raw resource processing until your belt is full and backed up at the beginning 2. If that’s not enough, upgrade the belt 3. If you don’t have a belt upgrade available, build another main resource line and use splitters to rebalance it onto the main line
This construction allows for easy expansion without having to destroy anything. I typically don’t disassemble anything unless it’s actually a problem for some reason or I need the space. This is especially important because you often need some basic components like the level 1 belts even into the late game.
Also, once you unlock robots, you can literally copy-paste, just select an area to upgrade all belts/arms/etc. in, and a lot of other neat tricks that drastically speed things up.
And one last peace of advice: Overproduce everything and let belts backing up balance out the resource distribution. Then if you discover that belts that previously were backed up are now sparse, figure out why and optimize it, usually by adding more production of whatever the missing resource is.
Ultimately throughput is all that matters. Loss of throughput because you don’t need something isn’t wasteful. Loss of throughput because you aren’t producing enough of something is a problem to solve. Things that don’t affect throughput don’t matter and aren’t wasteful.
I played pretty much the same way De_Narm did. I tried caring less, though because I had no idea what would come next, it inevitably descended into spaghetti. I am stressed out about technical debt enough at work to be playing a technical debt simulator lol.
Dedicating the space needed to expand, ensuring everything you build is scalable, inevitably requires you to know a lot about what’s coming.
Yeah, if you know what you’re doing you can avoid these issues. I did not enjoy myself in the slightest, so after some hours of giving it a chance I decided that learning how to avoid these issues was not worth the pain. I’ll just stick to work instead.
2001 easily had the most games that were highly rated and as others have said you some real classics. The PS2 was hitting it’s stride, the original Xbox Launched, and the Gamecube was right there.
2011 also had some damn amazing games: Arkham City, Portal 2, Skyrim, Skyward Sword, Minecraft, Mortal Kombat 9, Starcraft II, Bastion, Uncharted 3, Battlefield 3 to name a few.
I cannot describe how disappointed I was in the switch when it came out, and the situation isn’t much better now. It took one huge step forwards, yes, bus also ditched a ton of really good features :
No cameras !?
No microphone !?
No analog triggers
No 3D display
No stylus support
No Streetpass
No personality (fun apps, menu music, themes…)
Even the Motion controls, which are still a thing, do not feature any IR reference point, making the Wii still the best implementation of motion aim outside of VR.
The games are great, but these days I personally play the Wii U and 3DS more often, because unlike the switch these platforms still offer some experiences that are just not possible elsewhere.
In fact, the Wii U and 3DS are currently the only consoles I would recommend actually possessing physically. Wii U emulation is really annoying (though Steam Deck can get there, with a cable in the way), and good luck finding anything for the 3DS that does the 3D part any better than a New 3DS XL.
Some of the things make sense, but overall I agree.
3D display simply died, everybody did it for a while but so few things used it well that it wasn’t worth the cost (especially since it hurts quality unless you can get the player to use special glasses).
You could use touchscreen compatible stylus, but no extra features connected to it.
Definitely miss analog triggers, which also hurts emulation (GameCube). Something streetpass-like could’ve been put in the mobile app (which also is way too limited and supported by too few games).
Absolutely miss customization too.
Gen 1 Switch should also already have gotten a top side USB C port - with support for accessories like a camera + mic (which wouldn’t have necessarily been built in, but supported).
Switch 2 could benefit so much from better local discovery especially now that it has GameShare, you could have it passively advertise supported games so you could discover opportunities to play even games you don’t have (much like how Download Play used to work on the Nintendo DS and GBA)
This one is it for me. The game really does so much with so little. The reality of the game is that it is a roughly linear sequence of closed levels (with some hub levels thrown in) that feels like a cohesive, connected world. It’s absolutely incredible!
Yes, I go back and replay the game every few years. Its grittiness is definitely a bit silly to me now, but when I was a kid, I was enchanted by it. While the Jensen games did not have the charm of the OG, the first was still decent, and it’s a shame Square Enix drove it into the ground with the second Jensen title.
DX:MD is one of the most fun stealth games, it’s just unfortunate they put vent shafts everywhere. Absolutely tragic what Square Enix did with the preorder bullshit.
Having played a lot of raft with my kids, I can say I never would have thought of it for this. But looking back, yeah, there is a good deal of world building going on.
I have an 8bitdo zero 2 that I’ve had for a few years.
I kept it on my key chain for a long time. It would be in my pocket for 8 hour workdays in which I worked outside and got wet. It still works despite having been through all that.
I used to stick my phone to a magnetic mount in my car sometimes and used the controller to play emulated games. Nowadays I use a retro handheld or a steam deck.
I recommend 8bitdo very highly in general. Most of their controller feel really solid and completely nail the retro aesthetic they are copying.
The zero 2 isn’t like that though. It feels cheap and light, but it has held up well.
I actually had an 8BitDo Zero 2 a while back, but lost it. That was my first attempt at finding a solution for gaming on my phone, but didn’t like how I had to either prop my phone up with something or lean over a table to see my screen. I didn’t know about that clip-on device, though! If I can find the controller I lost, this will certainly be the cheapest solution for me. Thanks!
Ah, of course it's about the serious violations on free speech in checks notes the brutal dictatorships of Britain and Germany. The dictatorship of common sense dictating you how not to be an asshole.
eh, the exaggeration aside…the trend lately IS extremely worrying.
especially the treatment of protesters.
that said I’m pretty sure that’s got little to do with this situation…tend to agree with the others ITT: “libertarian” and “free speech” is seldom a good combination of words…
I can't deny there were some cases where the authorities have exaggerated. Especially recently. But you know where these people are actually coming from.
but do we? Microsoft is absolutely a mega-corp and would not hesitate to screw over people for money. If you’re anti-bigoty, don’t assume they’re your friend. Maybe someone “insulted” Charlie Kirk, or said that ICE are Nazis. Remember Jimmy Kimmel? I get your sarcasm in your original post, but I think you’re making an assumption that corporations are in the right when they take down speech, when they’d just as quickly shut down a trans-supportive group as they would a transphobic group.
This seems entirely tangential to the thread. At least from what I’m reading, they’re discussing whether Britain and Germany allow freedom of speech. Nobody in the thread seems to be talking about MS’s stance.
I think the statement that Microsoft is not your friend is noncontroversial, a given, and applies to every large corporation on the planet.
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