It really shows how bad the marketing of these higher resolutions are. We always advertised the vertical lines and then we switched to horizontal lines.
You can’t expect a video game journalist to understand basic display principles. EDIT: /s
“UHD features a 16:9 aspect ratio and is twice the resolution of full HD. In other words, two times 1080p, two times 1920 x 1080 pixels, that is 3840 x 2160 pixels. Having the same 16:9 aspect ratio means it is backward compatible with other HD derivates. However, both 4K and UHD can be shortened to 2160p to match the HD standard and therefore, companies use the terms interchangeably.”
“If you think 4K and UHD are one and the same, I don’t blame you. I blame the companies that LOVE to use them interchangeably all the time. You pick up a Blu-Ray movie disc of a 4K movie and you will most definitely see an Ultra HD label on it. 4K is actually not a consumer display and broadcast standard but UHD is. 4K displays are used in professional production and digital cinemas and feature 4096 x 2160 pixels”
UHD features a 16:9 aspect ratio and is twice the resolution of full HD.
According to Wikipedia resolution is:
The display resolution or display modes of a digital television, computer monitor or display device is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed
Its pixels, why do you think QHD (Quad HD) is called that. Because its 4x the pixels of HD(720p)
You cant talk about only horizontal because you open up the chat to ultrwides and deceptive marketing, such as AMD using “8k” to show off their new GPUs, when in fact they intentially used a ultrawide and marketed it as 8k.
Yeah but that would only be an increase in the horizontal resolution… you’d have 3840 x 1080.
So you gotta double the verticall resolution too, which means you’ve now doubled both horizontal and vertical resolutions, which is equal to 4 times the initial resolution
Actually, display resolution refers to exactly what you call pixel density, and NOT the pixel dimensions. This error is so common that the term resolution has practically been redefined outside of the professional (science and engineering) space, but technically, display resolution and pixel density are the same thing.
If that’s your kind of game, Unfinished Swan is another thats more plot based, but still has some fun puzzles. Doesn’t get mentioned as frequently so usually one people haven’t seen/played before.
It’s one of my favorite games of all time, but I don’t think Portal 2’s basic formula would be culturally relevant if it was reused today. The quippy writing is very 2010s-coded (à la Guardians of the Galaxy), the gameplay is a bit too simple to be re-used as is in 2025, and the sweet&short linear storyline of Portal 2 would ironically be lacking ambition for a successor to Portal 2.
Like all truly Great pieces of classic media, Portal 2 is a product of a skilled and truly passionate team getting together at the perfect time with the right idea, and reaching its public at a culturally relevant time.
The Portal universe still has stories to tell, and there are still test chambers to solve, so I obviously wouldn’t complain if Portal 3 came out, but I understand why Valve wouldn’t want to make a barely decent game in the shadow of Portal 2.
The Talos Principle became an interesting spin on the idea of FPS puzzles that try to keep you engaged. They got more direct with introducing the lore of the world around each time (P1<TTP1≈P2<TTP2). The puzzles are probably less eye-catching because you rarely shoot yourself into air, they are closer to classic 2d logic timekiller games, but I find these games are what Valve need to look at to see if they want to expand the world like that in their own way. If we assume Portal 3 would be about portals, wouldn’t reinvent the formula from the ground up, I think they’d need to go for higher stakes, and seemingly expanding the world or the mission at hand (from the probably sterile conditions of it all affecting just Chel and Apperture’s robots and facilities), be it an escape into the outer world of some sort (although it overlaps with Half-Life, is it bad?) or make her herself not the only thing at stake. My only hope is that it won’t be AR\VR\whatever experience because it would make me nauseos and\or poor.
(They’ve already stated they won’t do Portal: VR because of the nausea issue.)
I completely agree with your analysis, they would need to completely switch up the ambitions from a writing perspective for Portal 3 to make any sense. There are plenty of super interesting stories to be told in Aperture Labs, but I don’t think that Valve is structured to write any of them
Valve has always been “gameplay/tech first, story second”, and it just happened that Portal 2 delivered unexpectedly well on the writing. But I don’t think they can make a game with gameplay/tech twice as ambitious as Portal 2, and at the same time double down on Portal 2’s amazing writing. They’re just human and most of the people involved have moved on with their lives; in fact Portal 2 was their last truly ambitious narrative-heavy game, and they had to hire the old writers as consultants to make Alyx (which I haven’t played but from what I heard the narrative wasn’t on HL2’s level).
I’d love to be proved wrong but IMO there won’t be a Portal 3 for as long as Valve exists in its current form.
Portal 3 explores the fleet of Gaben’s megayachts with puzzles to get a control of them and also some abordaging\swimming mini-games to get from one to another, from smaller to bigger, with the last one being the promised Aurora Borealis, where game leaves us on an uncertain moment after we too see the feared G-Man but in Freeman’s glasses, got catched by a Smoker’s tonque in mall ninja rainbow colouring, only to be freed by Pudge teaming up with Scout.
VALVE TEAM: THE END OF LIFE FOR DEATH FORTRESS: EPISODE FOUR: THE PORTAL TO THE INTERNATIONAL
I’m happy they don’t do that and for all I care I can wait if they do something or not as long as I can still play in their classics.
There’re no “spoilers” as it’s a malfunctioned spell during the end scene, nothing more. That said, anyone clicking through to an article with “rarest ending” in the title deserves whatever kick in the head they get from reading about an ending scene… 🙄🤌🏼
I get the nostalgia for simpler times, but fighting games have benefited so much from the fact that they can now be patched and updated over the internet.
Marvel vs. Capcom 2 had 56 characters, but ~6 of them were so strong that they rendered the rest of the roster nearly unplayable in comparison. And this is one of the games that was most fondly remembered! For every hit like that there were a dozen more that were so much worse they were quickly abandoned and forgotten.
For all the backlash to season 2, Tekken 8 is arguably still in a better place than the vast majority of pre-online fighting games. People are mad because standards have gotten so much higher, now that games do get patched we expect those patches to be better.
I’m quickly arriving at the desire to at least have these games lock in at the end of a season. They typically don’t make big changes during a season anyway. For as much as people were tired of buying Super, Ultra, Arcade, and Revelator releases of a game they already have, surely in the DLC era we can just treat them as expansion packs and still go back and play the old versions if we want to. However, due to skins and such, there’s an incentive for them to not keep the old version around. I really liked Guilty Gear Strive season 1 and didn’t care much for season 2. I would have loved to keep playing season 1 instead at the time, but it was gone. A lot of Dragon Ball FighterZ fans are mourning the game that they loved that isn’t accessible anymore.
Edition Select like in USF4 would be rad. But I think I'd just like to see a universal way for platforms to let you roll back to any version of any game. Wouldn't even require any extra work on developers' part, platform holders would just maintain an archive of patches.
Supporting it can be extra work; hosting the old versions costs the platform holder more money. It’s not automatic, but I really want them to figure it out. USF4 definitely required a ton of work for their edition select, but what I’m asking for is much closer to the boot menu of StarCraft/Brood War rather than picking the exact balance patch from a list of dozens, lol.
Don't know about other platforms, but it's worth noting that Steam already does keep old versions and there's some command line method that can force download an older depot. Valve could offer UI to officially support this.
Something that you may not be considering is that a big part of live service updates is stopping cheaters. Whether the game is balanced or not doesn't matter at all if other players are flying through the map and insta-killing everybody else.
Allowing the use of old versions of your game will consequentially allow cheaters to continue having access to known, exploitable files. Even if those files are no longer in use in the "live" version of the game, giving cheaters a sandbox to experiment in inevitably allows for further exploits to be discovered in the live version.
Normally games shouldn't allow players on different versions to connect to each other. Version checks may be something devs need to explicitly implement, but surely most games should already have them or else I have questions for the developers.
Also, in the context of fighting games specifically, this is largely a nonissue. Fighting game netcode works by sending button inputs only, and the other client will play back those inputs to independently verify the outcome. There's very little cheaters can try to do that won't just result in a desync. To my knowledge there's only ever been one cheating scandal in the FGC, and the accused turned out to be innocent in the end.
Hmm… I don't see how that hurts, yes. Problem with fighting games is you cannot release new characters without balance patches otherwise you break the game for half your roster if not more. And people absolutely want new characters.
But locking games at specific points maybe is worth exploring, yes.
It's not like I'm saying I hate classic fighters, or that there aren't any I still enjoy today. I've got plenty of hours on FightCade just dicking around in various random kusoge. I'm traveling to Combo Breaker in two weeks, and I signed up for six different brackets, two of which are retro titles (Waku Waku 7 and Twinkle Star Sprites) (you could also count Mystery Bracket, but the point of Mystery is to play trash that doesn't hold up).
But the games that have stood the test of time are few and far between. They're the exception, not the rule. If you think your game is too good for patches because it worked for Vampire Savior, you're a lot more likely to end up like SVC Chaos.
From a developer's perspective, they have to adapt to a changing market. All your competitors are iterating and improving their games, you need to keep up.
And hell, some of the most popular classics are patches in a sense. People play Super Turbo and Third Strike, but no one's playing World Warrior or New Generation. At least now players don't have to buy those kinds of 'patches' for full price.
A game can be fun in spite of balance. MvC2 is a beloved game even with its six character meta. But when there's room for improvement, and the internet now makes improvement possible, devs should take the opportunity to improve as much as they can.
Also, speaking of Tekken 5 - are you talking about the initial arcade release, the rebalanced console port, the "5.1" arcade rerelease, or Dark Resurrection? Because those totally count as patches.
That's the thing, there really was never a better time for fighting games 😂 I know it sounds preposterous, but back then if your main was in a re-release, you had to buy the whole game again to play, now you can just pay for a character DLC, or a season pass, and both are significantly cheaper.
Balance changes can be an issue, I agree, but in terms of how much the average player needs to spend on a game, things have improved.
There has been one constantly updated game that I loved, I think because it wasn’t actually live service.
Dead Cells! They were always putting out balance passes but also included a new weapon occasionally, then would release a true DLC that added new levels, new enemies and new weapons. Would spend some time balancing that drop and eventually release a new one.
I miss games like that, I’m happy to buy an expansion of a game I love, not going to buy a new battlepass or skins or whatever though.
This is exactly what fighting games do though. A season is an expansion (new characters) and there typically is a balance patch after a new character drops, then they move on to a new season.
IDK what people who don't play fighting games think a season is, but judging by some comments in this thread, not every one seems to know.
As I typed that I kinda forgot this post was about a Fighting game. I was speaking more generally about GaaS. It’s good fighters still have something akin to old school DLC!
I would normally agree with you. But a fighting game is completely about the balance. You’re assuming the team under crunch, aiming for a financially-beneficial release date magically got it 100% right the first time, under pressure. In reality, they’re responsible for balance. They got it wrong, but it sounds like they’ll fix it.
Game seasons are not really the same thing as live service games though.
I’m really not into Tekken but there are games I play that have setup. Of course probably the most famous of all been Foxhole.
Anyway the point is that without “seasons” (simply called that because it harkens back to TV not because there are necessarily four in a year) there isn’t really any natural conclusion to the game, so you have short tournaments and people rank up within those tournaments, but obviously you don’t want the tournaments to go on for too long because otherwise there’s no way in for new players as they’ll start way down the rankings and not be able to compete. The solution for this is to reset everything every season, but then you’ve got the problem that people learn the meta and are able to rank up to high ranks almost immediately, whereas newer players don’t stand a chance so you haven’t really fixed the problem, the solution to that is to change the meta every season. That way everyone has an equal chance of working it out for themselves and ranking up.
I’m pretty sure they even did this with OverWatch back in the day.
Yeah, this is not applicable to fighting games, not in the past, not now.
In the past: they didn't do live updates because the technology didn't allow it, but they re-released the same game 100 times (See how many versions of Street Fighter 2 exist as an example)
Now: we get one version + balance patches and DLCs, and decent publishers do repackages after every season to make sure the price of the base game + DLC doesn't exceed the initial price mark: typically $60.
Game balance is so easy, you fonit once and then it’s perfect forever. No new characters, just buy a new game, just like in the street fighter 2 days. What a braindead take.
Looks interesting, but I gotta be honest: when I click on the Steam page and the first thing I see is a cash shop to buy “Epoch Points” for this early access game? That’s an instant turn-off for me. I’m sure it’s not as predatory as what Blizzard did with D4’s monetization, but I don’t want it in my games, period.
Jokes on them. That stuff turns me off. I’ve been playing one iteration or another of Diablo for over 25 years. I mean I take long breaks but I always come back. But Diablo 4, as well as it’s made, isn’t Diablo. I don’t want other people in my games unless they are IRL friends, and while I enjoy seasonal powers because I enjoy the gameplay, I don’t care about the rewards. And I’m just not a big fan of stacking tiny little 1-2% buffs and calling that advancement. When I drop a skill point I want to feel it without breaking out statistical analysis.
I played the hell out of it up until the season and then for about a month into the season. And I think I’m already done with it. Rather play BG3, or replay Jedi, or finish Horizon Forbidden West assuming I still remember how to play. D4 was a good story and the production values are top notch, but it doesn’t have the replayability joy of earlier games.
I don’t think I have interacted with another person on D4 except for a IRL friend I played with for a little while. I’m back to playing D3 and some PoE.
He’s right, a product like that would have failed dramatically. At this point I just want them to release a dumb AF, streaming-only, inside-out tracking VR headset that connects to PCs. Forget trying to cram an expensive Qualcomm or AMD chip in there, it will never give you the ideal VR experience. Make something that’s $200 bucks, connects to any PC running SteamVR, and just does extremely well with streaming and low-latency. Both Airlink and VRDesktop have already shown that its possible to get extremely close to a cabled experience. All that’s left is some polish.
I just want to be able to buy something like an Oculus CV1 without Oculus software/proprietary hardware and a nicer screen. I’m still rocking the same unit I got several years ago and it’s still plenty fine for most things.
All of the fancy things like wireless and no-tower tracking are nice, but I imagine a lot of players are going to be seated and just want the immersion. Why not have a $300-400 offering that does this?
I could be wrong on this since I have no source but I always assumed that Oculus headsets were cheap because they’re a Meta product and you’re actually paying for it with your data/telemetry.
Like, the ungodly amount they spent on VR R&D is absolutely not being made up for by the few hundred dollar price tag on their headsets — I bet that barely covers the cost of materials. That must be for a reason.
I think having base stations not only increases price but also makes it unapproachable for a vast majority of people. Personally, I didn’t even consider the CV1 or the Index because I just didn’t have a room that could properly accommodate them. For the sitting use case, no-tower tracking is actually very suitable and probably works better.
even at ideal condition there is about 1~2ms latency(streaming 1080p game), while hitting 90hz requires 11ms frame time. so you are asking the game to at least perform at 111fps or above to function under said ideal condition. I think if some manufacturer can put together a chip set where they do the frame gen tech on the head set side, so the game just need to run at 60fps it would be a better option.(like PS VR ) Frame gen does require some other buffers to generate the in between frames, so that’s more info to stream over the bandwidth.
That’s basically what I got. Xreal Air (formerly Nreal until a C&D from Epic). 1080p per eye and something like 49PPD with a 45° FOV. Tracking is 6DOF and requires software on the host (only complaint) and connectivity is via a USB-C cable (uses DP alt mode).
It’s nearly as “dumb” as an HMD can get. From the teardowns that I’ve seen, it’s really just got an MCU, a GPIO expander, a 6DOF chip, and the displays + drivers. And I love that about it. No batteries or anything to worry about.
It is pretty narrow but also what makes it work, IMO. I don’t have them for immersion but for display replacement. The narrow field of view lets the 1080p display have nearly 0 screen door effect. Plus, the birdbath optics are really cheap compared to waveguides or fancy lenses in VR headsets.
This has been on my radar for a while to compliment my steam deck. But I believe it doesn’t do head tracking with the steam deck or does it? I just want a floating screen in front of me that stays still when moving my head around, otherwise I’m gonna hurl!
I think it’s great for my Deck but, that will indeed be a problem. The headset contains only the sensors and display systems but, none of the logic circuitry to “pin” displays. Including that would increase the price a good deal.
Understood thanks for the feedback. After posting you reignited my interest and I found out that they also have their product called beam which would do the trick to make a spatial display… if you’re willing to cough up another 120 for it!
Yeah… I’m not :P But, I am plotting a DIY solution. A solution that will probably cost more than $120 on components but, I think it will still be worth it.
So, I’ve got one for my steam deck and it’s less an issue than you might think, in my opinion.
When you’re focused on the screen, it doesn’t create too much incongruity when the background shifts, and it’s easy to just let you brain parse the screen as something that just floats in front of you.
It’s not immersive enough to get the inner ear involved and confused. It’s a lot closer to holding a phone sideways about six inches from your face and moving your head around.
The only time it felt weird was when I was using it in a well lit room, and I shifted my focus to something not on the screen, that was closer than the apparent distance to the floating display. It was weird feeling my vision try to reconcile that the nearer thing was moving behind the far thing.
I think Deadlock is pretty up there. That said, it’s closer to Smite than it is a hero shooter. The community-driven character builds mean meta is pretty fluid and it has what I would describe as a very accessible MOBA-centered design. I don’t care for MOBAs much, but to say Valve isn’t innovating here would be disingenuous. I think my only problem with it is that it’s lacking something that makes the gameplay loop feel satisfying, but that may just be my bias against MOBAs talking.
That said, it’s closer to Smite than it is a hero shooter.
I haven’t played Smite since it came out, but has it really changed that much that it’s no longer a hero shooter? 🤨 It was like Overwatch, 2 years before Overwatch came out.
Hm… Maybe that’s what I am thinking of. I know for sure that Smite is the reason Tribes: Ascend was left for dead, though, and that’s reason enough to hate it.
It’s been hilarious watching Overwatch take notes from Paladins, the “Overwatch clone”, more and more lately. 5v5, hero builds, more of a brawly playstyle… OW2 at times feels like a blend between OW1 and Paladins.
Not only they copied the way Paladins works but some heroes too. Kiriko is just Io, even the fox theme is the same. Maui is Raum. Freja looks a lot like Cassie but at least the playstyle is different, the other two have the same playstyle
Well, they also sell weapon skins that cost as much as the entire game used to cost. So I’m sure they are just trying to do damage control while also not changing their monetization.
I don’t mind it if the game was always free to play. They gotta make their money somehow if that’s the case. The problem I have with Overwatch and the microtransactions is that they went free to play after they already made a fuck ton of money off of loot boxes and the fact that you used to actually have to buy the game. It’s just a cash cow and gameplay (including matchmaking, like you said) has suffered considerably. Not only that but they charge as much money as entire games for skins. Games like Overwatch when it first came out.
I don’t mind microtransactions in free to play games, I really don’t. It’s just the method they are using is just blatantly greedy and targeted for whales that will pay anything for fear of missing out.
I am with you on that one. I was speaking from the point of view of someone who didnt buy ow1 because I only got into the game after ow2 so I completely forgot it wasnt free before. Its sad how nowadays you cannot ever have “complete” games. Most games just few unpolished and unfinished and they just throw things at it trying to make money. Which for me is so ironic because I think ow has a solid gameplay mechanic - it just gets completely shadowed by all the financial decisions.
Things went out the window for me when Niki Minaj killed Messi with a neon green sub-machinegun. You’d think that would be a great game, but it’s a bit too much for my likings.
I never really agreed when people said that they want their super realistic call of duty, but this really is just absurd. Even if these skins were free is would be obnoxious. At this point you can only blame the poeple who buy that garbage
On the one hand I agree, it was obviously a calculated move to bait sales before microtransactions were added, which is incredibly scummy. But on the other hand, if a game reviewer gave it a certain score before microtransactions were added and nothing was altered/removed from the experience that was originally reviewed, I guess I don’t see the problem with the score they assigned at the time (assuming it was reviewed in good faith).
You can install it out of the box and disable game updates and not see any microtransactions, which will let you play it exactly as it was when it was first reviewed. You won’t get to do any online play, but I guess the bigger takeaway in that case is that any game which relies on online/live service elements for continued engagement needs to have a big fucking “CAVEAT EMPTOR” on every review.
To be fair, most games these days have build in update checking, and more and more multiplayer games are always-online-or-piss-off type of games which shoot down your idea. I wish it was still possible in all games, but alas…
Right, but what I was getting at with how prone to change online experiences inherently are, it seems odd to rely on reviews to begin with. Sure I suppose it is irresponsible for a publication to make claims about the quality of an online experience, knowing that there is no guarantee of consistency over time, but the customer also shouldn’t approach any online/live service experience with an expectation of consistency, because change is inherent to the model. Enjoy it while it lasts if it is fun, but again, caveat emptor.
The feeling of betrayal people have about online experiences is thankfully leading to pushback against live service models in general. Too many companies out there doing bait and switch bullshit.
If a game like Tekken happens to have a solid campaign and fun local multiplayer, I would be okay with leaving a good review up, because that is pretty much all that would have been reviewed ahead of time before there were other players to do online modes with. If a publication has a specific “no microtransactions” criteria, though, then I suppose they can do whatever they like afterwards. But anyone should be able to still obtain the day 1 version of the game and play it offline if you don’t like the direction they went with its updates. You might just need to be more creative on PC to find them.
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