Playing Metro 2033 Redux at the moment, finally got my new gaming PC and Metro Exodus with full Ray Tracing has been on my radar but wanted to start from the beginning since I haven’t played this series before. You can clearly tell it’s made by ex S.T.A.L.K.ER. devs and sometimes you get weird almost deja vu, like the guitar playing around camp fires. Overall the setting and atmosphere is really cool. The lore seems interesting but the actual plot hasn’t been stellar so far. Gunplay is okay.
Just finished the Trolley Combat mission, and it’s been a hot minute since I played a level in a game that bad and unfun. Here’s hoping the final stretch is better.
I dug out my old Logitech Driving Force GT from the closet and blew off the dust. I haven’t gotten into a new (to me) racing game since Gran Turismo 5. The hardcore simulationist trend doesn’t interest me, I miss proper career modes and I have just had some awful bad luck with games being broken. I just occasionally revisit some classics.
So after many enthusiastic recommendations I grabbed Forza Horizon 5. My first impressions were great. The intro was a lot of fun, with the big set pieces causing me to fight my wheel as it bucked after being long out of practice.
But this was not representative of the actual game. The vast majority of the content is filled by fairly normal races with long stretches driving to them, back and forth across the same stretches of empty open world. It’s sort of like a Ubisoft game, but just cars.
This still could have been a good time. I like the driving model well enough, there is a large selection of cars and the environment, while bland, is certainly much less of an eyesore than what awaits me if I go back to play Need for Speed: Most Wanted for the umpteenth time.
I’ve got some criticisms of the actual racing (the way it generates opponents and their vehicles sucks, the tracks are boring), but what really killed it for me was this slowly creeping, eerie discomfort that built up in the back of my mind over hours until it became overwhelming. The vibes are fucked.
This is Fortnite, the racing game. It’s full of cameos and tie ins with influencers. Brands are plastered everywhere. Microtransaction adverts in most menus. Everyone talks in this creepy, corporate approved “wholesomeness” and aware of how “epic” what they’re doing is. There is a really uncomfortable tension between this huge festival that completely empties Mexico of pedestrians and how much the game fetishizes Americaness.
I wanted to scream during a sub-plot where you race a bunch of rich douche bags who are beefing with some guy at the festival. The game throws out shit like “they shouldn’t be discriminated against for their money, they can’t help the fact they are rich” and talks about fucking therapy. All the writing is this bad, I hate every single character in these inexplicably unskippable cutscenes.
It’s absurdtpo me how basically no racing game company realizes that one of the key points to have your game be fun is to have some kind of progress. Contemporary racing games literally just throw cars at you in hope to make it fun by constantly giving you new toys.
I get that this is a thing that sells to the masses who /want/ those shiny new toys, but man. Imagine if a big studio actually took the time to improve on the vintage NFS progression formula :(
I hate that a lot of the ones with a progression settle on XP to unlock tiers of cars rather than money and buying them too. I liked going to the used car dealer ship in Gran Turismo and seeing what I could afford.
Contemporary racing games literally just throw cars at you in hope to make it fun by constantly giving you new toys.
Forza Horizon 5 is bizarre for this. It has an acquisition system, but right after the intro you pick one of three cars, all new and not cheap. Then you get a custom rally car from the next race. A bunch of unlocks are going to give even you more cars afterwards, and will keep doing so regularly.
Like hang on, maybe let me work up from one of your cheap, older cars first and work my way up?
But this is also the game that unironically calls you “superstar” from the jump and sucks you off constantly.
Oh man, you've got sooo much to go! It's great. I love that whole starting area. It's so much fun.
My second play through was a wood elf bard. She was pretty fun to play. Considering I'm a barbarian player usually. First play through was a half orc barbarian, she was really cool.
in my experience, you can get pretty smooth gameplay at the cost of graphics, or pretty decent graphics at the cost of smoothness and fps.
I have mine set to pretty ok-ish settings for both. but then I tend to swap between handheld and docked for most games. so I’m kinda used to the graphics by now.
Have been playing and just finished Geodepths. Really nice indie dev first person mining, smelting, resource gathering on an alien planet type of game. Wish it had lasted longer to be honest.
I bought a Kinesis Advantage in 2011. I only just recently replaced it with the Kinesis Advantage 360 Pro. The key caps could use a replacement, but besides that it’s in good condition.
My MX518 is still sees daily use, just with a family member now. I think it’s old enough to drink now (edit: not American lmao). The Logitech logo at the palm has been worn down to nothing but otherwise doesn’t look too bad.
Yeah, the reason I stopped using mine was because the feet wore off and I felt like it was time to upgrade to the better laser of the G400s. Otherwise, they’re the same mouse. Buttons in the same place, same shape. Different color, better laser and bigger feet.
I replaced mine with a G Pro Wireless. Similar enough shape that it was still comfortable to switch to but lightweight and no cable to snag. Wouldn’t go back to having a cable, such a huge improvement.
I wouldn’t even call myself a football fan but the management part if very fun. Currently in the 6th tier and working on promotion.
Circuit Superstars
I bought the Switch Version so I can just pick up and play whenever and so far it is very good. It’s a nice mix of arcade racing with some realistic parts like pit stops and tyre wear. Hopefully online racing is still populated so I can give that a go.
Unfortunately am hitting some hard lockups in the last chapter or two on Deck so have put it down for now - seems to be a common issue based on some forum posts and ProtonDB.
I played through Portal Reloaded just before this which was excellent too, the puzzles are SUPER hard though, way harder than Revolution.
Yeah it does. Apparently running in Windows under Proton is less problematic but performs a lot worse, so I didn’t bother. I’m sure it will get fixed, guessing the end of the game probably just isn’t as well tested as the first 80% because that was pretty flawless
lemmy.world
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