Pretty excited to get my hands on this game 5 days later! Reviews are surprisingly more split than I expected, with some calling it an easy 10/10 while others call it shallow. The general impressions are: If you like Fallout, you’ll love this game. I like Fallout, so I’m in.
By the way, IGN gave this game a 7/10, which is a new one for them because they hand out 9/10s like candy.
This game is on my to buy list, but probably in a few years when they have ironed out all the issues and dropped the DLC in a GOTY or whatever edition they make later.
Console is downscaled and 30fps and one guy on pc had 45-70fps 1440p high settings using a 3600x/2080ti. But yeah, more performance info should pop up soon :)
I'm thinking Steam Deck. Or wait for the Switch 2 and expect a port to that (Microsoft seems to have no problem putting exclusives on Nintendo platforms, c.f. Ori)
I kind of enjoyed fallout but it did feel very shallow for an RPG. I’m hoping this one does a bit better in that regard but I’m trying to temper my expectations.
Fallout had a lot of clever environmental storytelling, vignettes in random buildings, drama happening via terminal logs throughout abandoned factories, etc.
I hope that Starfield hasn’t gotten rid of that aspect of their world building.
I think many ambitious games recently get divisive ratings. I remember many cyberpunk 2077 reviews rated it highly praising the (imo excellent) highs while minimizing the lows before many reviewers bashed it for the bugs and incomplete scope. When these reviews come out it almost feels like the reviewers are scared to be the first to open the “hey it’s bad” floodgates
Elden ring was my first “souls like” game and it was also an open world game too. For a gamer who wasn’t accustomed to these kinds of games, it was a totally different experience for me.
Elden ring I think is still much more accessible for a newcomer. If you try Dark Souls 1, you’ll realize that the difficulty of the game also learns pretty hard into more tedious aspects.
Getting cursed in Dark Souls 1 means you’re HP is capped to half until you find the cure, as an example.
I always figured this was an intentional part of the design philosophy. The game lets players write and read one- or two-sentence strategy guides anywhere in the world. I took the hint and figured they wanted me to look up strategy guides.
What’s your concern? I’ve never heard any issues with purchasing anything on VPN. In fact, it’s recommended to save money by getting around geo-pricing
It is against the steam subscriber agreement to use a VPN. Particularly if you’re using it to get around a region restricted game. Will they check and catch you? Probably not, but they can. It’s definately not recommended though.
(assuming your home country is USA) You are allowed to purchase games from US websites while you travel. As long as the purchase is linked to your US payment method, with US residence address on the bill, it does not matter where I’m the world you connect from.
You might raise suspicion if you bought something via NL VPN, using Dutch credit card and address. Otherwise you are all good.
This whole quest scene was so unexpected, disturbing, hilarious and made me fall in love with the game. The timer for this choice makes the situation feel like a real intense JESUS FUCK WHAT DO I DO moment
Simulation games, like the ones Maxis used to make (other than SimCity). SimEarth, SimAnt, SimTower, etc. Those were educational and fun.
I also once played a simulation game that realistically simulated running a shipping business where you shipped things by boat, sailing your fleet from port to port, dropping off your cargo and loading new cargo, giving the occasional bribe, etc. while avoiding bankruptcy. I think it was called “Port of Call.” It was made a long time ago, and I haven’t played anything quite like it since then.
About my lowest threshold for success is that this at least makes disclosures about what you’re buying more prominent and restricts the ability for software licenses to just alter the deal and pray that they don’t alter them further. Even better disclosures would make the raw deal you’re getting become more poisonous before the point of sale. Especially as an American, I’m going to have wait a few years after any legislation goes through before I can trust online multiplayer games again.
The problem isn’t mobile games, and it’s not console games, and it’s not PC games. It’s the profit motive and corporations and enshittification. And there’s plenty of that going on in games for mobile, console, and PC. (And, for that matter, TTRPGs. And it’s not like the 300 different collectors editions of Monopoly released every year aren’t enshittification at play.)
Addictive gotcha mechanics are shitty when they’re tied to microtransactions. Even when not tied to microtransactions, I think they can still be shitty depending on the specific circumstances, and it’s definitely wise to responsibly manage your (and/or your children’s) engagement to not cause other problems in your(/their) life. But is addictiveness in a video game inherently a bad thing? I don’t think so. All games cause dopamine squirts whether it’s Pong or a slot machine. That’s kinda the point of games. There are plenty of Open Source games out there that cause big addictive dopamine squirts. (Mindustry, anyone?) And such games aren’t made to milk whales. They’re made because someone wanted to create and play such a game.
Don’t be talking too much smack about shovelware! Low-quality games create their own vibes. Some are accidental masterpieces. Both of my favorite two YouTube gaming content creators do a lot of their content on really low-quality games. This series got me to buy Radiation Island and I had a great time playing it. And here is a great video on all the shitty official games based on the movie Avatar.
“Gaming is as much about socializing as playing” is an awesome outlook to have on gaming! Addictiveness in games can be… concerning. But sometimes particular games are the key by which your kid can be involved in peer group. I’m not saying that automatically trumps any downsides and you should let your kid spend $∞ on Fortnight skins or whatever. But I think probably in most cases a balancing act is superior to a hard “yes” or “no”.
I should probably specify that I’m admittedly an old fart who doesn’t know shit about mobile gaming. (The only mobile games I play are Open Source ones on F-Droid.) And the only modern console I have is a Switch, and I don’t have any plans to get one soon. I’ve played a lot of Breath of the Wild, though. And a fair amount of Tears of the Kingdom.
Some final thoughts:
Open Source gaming is awesome.
The way they’re doing anti-cheat on PC is fucked-up.
But so is the way they lock down consoles and phones.
Hack your games. Hack your consoles. (If you don’t hack it, you don’t own it.) Get your kids interested in hacking stuff.
…responsibly, of course.
Play games with your kids! (And not just the ones you want to play.)
Roughly in order of how much I enjoy them from most to least. (Not that the later ones are bad. Just that they’re more low-key.)
Mindustry is amazing, but as I mentioned above, really really addictive. (The commercial game it’s most often compared to is Factorio.)
Then there’s Shattered Pixel Dungeon. Amazing dungeon crawler.
Endless Sky is a great space mercantile sim.
Luanti is a Minecraft clone.
Unciv is a turn-based civilization development game.
And if you’re wanting to do emulation, there’s Lemuroid. Also, EasyRPG, an engine for playing RPG Maker games like Yume Nikki. Oh, FreeDoom is a great implementation of Doom for Android.
Those are the ones that’ll keep your attention for a good long time. There are tons of much simpler games that are still fun like Frozen Bubble and Hyper Rogue. And plenty of games that I haven’t really gotten into very much but that people really seem to like Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.
Man. There are a lot now that I’m listing them out. Lol.
I would just like to mention that it is called “gacha” not “gotcha.”
“Gacha” is short for the Japanese term gachapon, which means “capsule toy.” You remember gumball machines? You put a quarter in and twist the handle and a gumball comes out. Gachapon is like that, but with a small plastic ball with a random toy inside. Those are less common than the gumball machines, but there were also some that had sticker/temporary tattoo sheets and those hard candies that looks like fruits(mostly bananas).
Gachapon is a bit different from gambling. Gambling comes with the inherent understanding that you have a chance to lose. With gachapon, you always get exactly what you are paying for: a random capsule toy. You just don’t get to pick which one you get. With gachapon, you always “win,” there is no chance that your money is spent and you get nothing in return. This is why games with gacha mechanics makes duplicates of characters or items useful. Whatever you get is still useful to you, even if you don’t get what you wanted.
I think you already understand the negative aspects of gachapon, but I just wanted to add that little bit of information.
With gachapon, you always "win," there is no chance that your money is spent and you get nothing in return.
Although you're technically getting something, typically the common items are nearly worthless, and may as well be nothing. You only "win" when you actually get the ultra rare 5* SSR Jackpot waifu.
Sometimes, but most of the time duplicates let you level up a character beyond their basic level (Limit Break, most commonly called), or give you materials to pick a new character (sometimes called Pity System, but that is a little different), or materials to forge new weapons.
I have played many gacha games, and I have only ever spent money on NieR Reincarnation because I wanted Square Enix to see that I like Yoko Taros games and want more of them. I am not a whale, dolphin, or a minnow. I am a “barnacle” F2P player, and I have never had a problem with the games I play. They’re not really designed to be constantly played all the time like a “regular” game would be, instead being level or session style games. I don’t compare my game progress with other players, and I play to have fun and pass time. I get exactly what I want from them for whenever I play them.
I’m not sure why you’re on a crusade to convince people to like mobile games. I’ve always got my phone on me, and I frequently find myself on a subway ride that’s too short to bother with a Steam Deck. Mobile games would fit in great there. My options are pretty terrible. For the kinds of games I like to play, the only ones that actually have mobile versions are basically digital versions of board games and a small handful of roguelikes. I tend to just read on the subway instead. It’s not for lack of trying. The library just sucks, and it offers less value than other places I can buy games. Your daughter is playing games designed to keep you “engaged” and addicted with all of the greatest tricks of the gambling industry; you can find the GDC talks with a quick search on your favorite search engine.
Whenever I see an echo chamber where people parrot the same shallow talking points—no nuance, no real analysis—the contrarian in me kicks in.
You claim there’s “no library” on mobile, but even a basic look at the stats and available titles proves otherwise.
If you actually want fun, premium mobile games with zero microtransactions, they’re not hard to find. You just have to look beyond the surface—and actually try.
I’m not parroting anything. I’ve looked. Sure, sometimes you get a port of XCOM or Slay the Spire, but then it’s not going to carry over progress back to my PC, where I’m more comfortable playing at home, and my reluctance to buy a version of the game like that explains why there isn’t enough money in trying to port the kinds of games that I like to mobile. Sometimes a game has a port, but it fell out of compatibility with modern Android and never got updated; and let me tell you, that’s a great way to convince me to stop looking. Even crazier is when something like Fire Emblem Heroes happens, because it’s adapting a traditional handheld/console game into an interface that makes way more sense for controlling the game, but it’s not a proper version of that series; it’s a gacha game. If I have any kind of extended anticipated desire to game on the go, my Steam Deck is just a better answer than trying to find the few games I would like that also got Android versions, because I’m going to spend more time playing them at home anyway.
Don’t understand why anyone even wants this underpowered, overpriced, uninspiring piece of shit. If mobile gaming is that important to you, just get a Steam Deck and install the inevitable Switch 2 emulator on it.
Seems more to me like they’re gonna get the ball rolling then rely on 3rd parties making the consoles.
Like they’d rather do what Android did and get their OS on as many different types of hardware possible rather than locking you into buying only their hardware.
That’s how it looks to me, anyway.
I love the Steam Deck, but if competition comes along and makes something with better hardware and repairability then we all benefit in the end, and Valve benefits even moreso if that new thing comes with SteamOS.
It’s the repairability that concerns me. Valve has been very open about their hardware, even giving support to those with the intention of modifying their Steam Deck. I haven’t seen any other company sell hardware like that.
Are you sure about that? After seeing the specs of the Switch 2, I’m convinced that Nintendo put the weakest hardware they possibly could get away with putting in a modern gaming device. I mean Nintendo literally lied and said that it could run games at 120 FPS, when a 4090 can’t even do that with literally 10x more CUDA cores.
I mean I believe you, but are you certain that it’s actually more powerful than a Steam Deck? Regardless, it doesn’t matter because Steam Deck 2 is on the way. Just buy that one when it comes out (or stick to desktop gaming like me if you don’t need to game on the go.) Nobody needs a Switch 2.
More like 240p lol. In most modern single player games games, my 4090 can’t maintain a steady 120 FPS at 4K, even with DLSS Performance (which at 4K is upscaling from 1080p).
So either Nvidia made a special version of DLSS for the Switch 2 that is more extreme than DLSS Ultra Performance (which is going to look like shit on a giant 4K TV), or Nintendo is just straight-up lying. I’m banking on the latter.
Well I have a GTX 1080 Ti and I can get 120fps raster graphics (without RayTracing, usually maxed out settings in games released nefore 2020) in 1080p ultrawide. Maybe something is wrong with your 4090, or the games you play are unoptimized or something.
I don’t doubt that the Switch 2 can actually output 120fps at 4k in some games, because if it couldn’t that would be a losing lawsuit for false advertisement. But since Nintendo never really said how it achieves that, I am guessing it uses DLSS to render the actual game at a sub-1080p resolution and upscales it to do so. They said 120fps 4k, but they never said without artifacting or reduced image quality.
Sound to me like a you problem, because I absolutely am getting 120 fps on Ultra settings in 1080p Ultrawide. Maybe you built your PC wrong or you got a faulty PCIE slot on your motherboard, or your installation of your GPU is a little… forceful… I don’t know. But games like Cyberpunk 2077 definitely hit that on Ultra without RayTracing.
Well you’re not using Ray Tracing, and I still don’t believe you. Regardless, we went on a tangent here and I don’t feel like continuing on with this pointless argument so ✌️
8 core ARM processor for the Switch 2, custom-made by nvidia. I played on the Switch 2 on a 4k monitor, pretty sure upscaling was involved, but it’s very smooth.
Pretty sure a Deck 2 would significantly out-perform the Switch 2, but I haven’t heard anything about the Deck 2 yet.
Actually, looking at raw specs… the Switch 2 seems to have almost similar specs to the PS4… except it’s ARM, and the Switch actually has more GPU compute cores. And since the Steam Deck can’t emulate the PS4…
As an American who can’t bear to play most online games because they might go down or disallow Linux users, please please please please check. EU laws are our only hope of having usable fucking technology.
The thought of being able to mod and host my own GTA 5 online server when it goes down, without some weird custom server mod that also uses Windows-exclusive anti-cheat on most servers, sounds like a damn dream. I miss that game… but fuck Windows, nothing is worth installing Windows. I just realized I’ve been ranting about the lack of Linux compatibility of GTA 5 Online in reply to someone’s comment about how this petition has gone on for a while. I swear I wasn’t hijacking your comment, I just have strong feelings about Linux gaming and got carried away.
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