Epic Games is useful for the free games they giveaway every week, some weeks better than others. And I know the topic of ownership of these “free games” is another conversation, but I’ll take advantage of it while it’s there and also while giving them little to no money.
Basically Epic like every other publisher has created their own launcher/store.
They aren't trying to compete on features and instead using profits from their franchise to buy market share (e.g. buying store exclusives).
The tone and strategy often comes off as aggressive and hostile.
For example Valve was concerned Microsoft were going to leverage their store to kill Steam. Valve has invested alot in adding windows operability to Linux and ensuring Linux is a good gaming platform. To them this is the hedge against agressive Microsoft business practices.
The Epic CEO thinks Windows is the only operating system and actively prevents Linux support and revoked Linux support from properties they bought.
As a linux user, Valve will keep getting my money and I literally can't give it to Epic because they don't want it.
Pure speculation: of the people who don’t like Epic, maybe 25% are legitimate, principled objections to their business practices. The rest are split evenly between people who just want to manage their entire library on a single platform, and folks just going along for the hate-ride because it seems like the “safe” position to take.
From a technical stance, Steam and GOG are superior platforms (for different reasons). For equal-price purchases, I can’t think of a single reason to choose Epic over other options. But claiming a game for free? That doesn’t make anyone a bad person.
I’ll be honest, I definitely prefer having everything on one platform for convenience. This is in second place; right after letting me play a game directly from the icon without having to open the damn launcher in the first place.
Also, I am not well educated about the technicalities of Steam or GoG, so all I can say is I’m enjoying the cool factor of GoG combining my accounts in one place. Kinda bummed that Epic’s integration doesn’t have game time and achievement sync… But that’s probably an Epic thing.
We spend zero dollars on video games and yet our kids seem to play a lot of them, my wife and I don’t really play. They even had a friend give them an Xbox and there are computers and tablets and phones in our house. Games don’t have to be a money pit.
I dunno if you want him playing a true mmo at that age, but old school RuneScape is currently as popular as ever. Specifically old school though, RS3 has the same sort of problems with micro transactions etc.
I’m still confused as to why you guys don’t just ban the spending of money on micro transactions and not the game itself? Every game is jam PACKED with mtx these days, from CoD to Fortnite to Forza.
It builds character! Lol but, yeah phasmo is too intense for many of my adult friends, even.
Out of curiosity, do you generally know what he was doing on Roblox? I’ve heard of several horror games being remade within Roblox, such as Iron Lung. I’ve wondered what the limitations are. I definitely remember stumbling into some intense things when I was around that age, but the landscape is so different now
He was wasting time playing shitty games because his other friends played those same shitty games. I was taken aback at how mind numbingly shitty those games were. We were in the same room as an Xbox with gamepass and a Nintendo Switch and he chose to play some seriously bad games instead because his friend was addicted to it. Then he became addicted to it. Luckily, that whole friends group will now have much, much better games to play.
Personally, I want my kid to be able to buy a few things every now and then. Roblox got the axe for multiple reasons - mtx was only one aspect. He gets a vbuck or two with his allowance if he wants to earn them. It helps him get a healthy view of how little mtx are really worth, but a cosmetic here or there is kind of fun.
Oh duh. Also, I forgot you said it was because you didn’t feel the gameplay/game itself was quality enough, which is fair enough, but I’m not too familiar with Roblox as I’ve never played it.
peer pressure. I fell for it in my TF2 days in high school. A buck there a few bucks there, all for a hat with particle effects that I never got. All because one of my friends I was playing with had one, and I wanted one too.
I learned a valuable lesson, but I was also 15/16 and had the ability of self reflection (and wanting to get Skyrim for $5 instead of a key). Can’t expect this level of self control from most teenagers, let alone a 10 year old.
Roblox is well-known for predatory practices aimed at children, and predatory behavior from other users who may or may not be looking for children to abuse.
Banning Roblox entirely seems like a very reasonable thing to do IMO.
No matter how popular it is, I’m pretty sure I don’t have to play it to know I wouldn’t like it.
You walk into rooms, and if there’s no monster, you collect the scrap. If there is, you either die instantly and present a clip for your teammates, or there’s a very simple counter for them that just requires not instantly panicking.
Lots of waiting for your teammates to finish a mission because you just got unlucky.
Unreal Tournament 2004, with few players it turns its normal frantic and fast paced gameplay into a suspensfull slower experience which is awesome.
I think you can get it on the internet archive as it stopped being sold on gog and steam this spring.
OpenRA - Do you remember the old classic series Command & Conquer ?
OpenRA takes the old original game, updates the controls to modern RTS controls, add new ai to play against, add support for modern resolutions and adds a good internet multiplayer system, all of this for free!
I played the entirety of “Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion”, which was short, fun, and cute. I’m increasingly finding that I lack the stamina and mental headspace for large games, and I’m appreciating the little indie games a lot more. Something about the combination of cute food characters and running around committing petty crimes and ripping up documents just really appealed to me.
Yesterday I started “Earthlock”, which I got a couple of months ago in a giveaway. I’m liking it so far. Has a lot of “Final Fantasy games in the 1990s” vibes which is working for me. There’s more frogs than I expected, which is always a pleasant surprise.
I thought you suggested it because of my username. Even better than you didn’t notice, and have now realised there’s another reason I should play Frog Detective. 🐸
Oh I love Frog Detective! I played it together with my (then) 5 year old daughter, where I was required to read out loud all the dialogue in funny voices.
They are indeed very cute and short games.
I've been playing Starfield, and I think I'm getting close to just wanting to wrap it up. I may or may not want to get a larger ship before that happens, because the starter ship has been a bottleneck in seeing through some of the other faction quest lines. At the same time though, better ships are expensive, and I'm not sure I want to grind missions with better money payouts to get there. This game should be better.
While traveling, I've been playing Pillars of Eternity on the Steam Deck. I've got 5 party members now, and I'm level 3. I think I'm about to get access to the stronghold that has its own button on the UI. Really enjoying this one so far. Thankfully, it exposes all of its dice rolls to help me learn the systems better.
Flawlessly. The default controller mappings aren't bad either, though I did tweak them a bit. It doesn't actually have controller support, so you're either using the right stick as a mouse or relying heavily on the trackpad, but you're going to want to use the buttons for a few things, like pause/unpause, for instance.
Instead of chiptune inspired music, how about music that inspired chiptune ? Yellow Magic Orchestra had an important impact (namely) on '80s/'90s era video game music. Here’s Rydeen (1979).
Best game i played this year was Alan Wake 2, though I can imagine it’s probably not for everyone. The Marvelesque “homework” you’re recommended to do before playing to catch all the references and understand the interconnected lore might seem daunting, but the world and narrative Remedy has built continues to impress me. A lot has been said already about how Remedy has been pushing innovation and mixed media, but I’ll also add how impressed I am with the level of writing in general. Not only is the narrative mind bending, but all the characters are compelling and distinctive and all the different styles employed are nailed perfectly and mesh surprisingly well, from the Noir-caricature Alex Casey monologues to the goofy Koskela brothers TV ads.
The worst game I played this year was Ghost of Tsushima. Okay hear me out. The game is beautiful, well optimised and the combat is solid and satisfying. The game is just roughly twice as long as it should be considering what it is. The story is only okay at best, but suffers from a consistently dour and overly serious tone which really starts to drag as time goes on. The only bit of comic relief is Kenji, and he is barely around. On top of this the quest design is 90% “talk to person, move to area, kill the enemies there, go back and talk again”. Main story missions overly rely on walk-and-talk and/or ride-horse-and-talk. There are a handful of missions with more to it than that and those are good, but there just isn’t enough variation to sustain interest over the playtime (especially if you’re attempting to do everything and thus have to chase down the Ubisoft level open world stuff). After about 10h playtime I was loving the game, but by the third act I was thoroughly worn out and bored.
Unfortunately I had to drop Alan Wake after the prologue. The game is probably great, but I think my PC has finally hit a AAA game it just cannot handle. Perhaps I’ll give it another shot once I upgrade.
I absolutely get your criticisms with Ghost of Tsushima. While I personally loved the game when I played it, I do recall commenting that it had the same gameplay loop as I criticize Skyrim for i.e. go here, kill things, repeat, but for me the core combat mechanics were good enough that I didn’t mind. A shame that you weren’t able to enjoy them to the same extent, but very fair critique
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