I think Mint is the cleanest recommendation when you don’t want to be held liable for issues; but for gaming specifically, I ended up liking CachyOS a bit more.
It’s very bleeding-edge, which if you know tech is often a good and bad thing. But games work well. It is not quite so clean with things like installing popular apps - I’m using a package manager called “bauh”, which is relatively new, unrefined, but works. I still end up installing a few things from terminal, which I know shouldn’t be needed for casual users.
Last I tried Mint was early in the year and I think I installed from an old version. It could be what few gaming issues I saw are gone.
The only games I’ve seen to have issues with online multiplayer are the biggest ones: COD and Battlefield. If you’re into those, I guess you do need to go Windows.
Some others I play are fine; Dead by Daylight, Wild Assault, Space Marine 2.
(No, I’m not a furry, I just like a Bad Company 2 style with infantry focus, and the abilities are pretty nice)
It’s the first test bed for every developer, which means something like a headset utility is more reliably going to work on Windows. But it’s impressive even that margin is falling.
Imagine seeing Nvidia drop Shadowplay features to push their own beta app improvements, while the Linux imitator for Shadowplay still works simply and fine, and doesn’t even drop for “DRM detected” issues.
Or trying to install/update Epic/Ubisoft games needing to go through another terrible UI upgrade while Heroic and Lutris still look the same.
A year ago, I tried Linux and felt frustrated about some minor UI inconsistencies and fiddling. Recently, I tried again, and it still had stuff to work through, but I was patient for it because now I’m dealing with all that same shit on Windows.
Oh yeah, though to hotkey audio switching I ended up writing my own bash script which was clunky. Curious if anyone better than myself might take charge there.
I guess I should have some stance on this. I played Nier Automata, and the combat was horrendous to me. I still think there must have been some core mechanic that was unclear to me, but even on brief review, I didn’t see anything.
I dropped the difficulty down to nothing so I could quickly force through all the story content and see “what’s so amazing about this game”. And the story did nothing. It had me burst out laughing in mockery at the times players were supposed to be crying.
That could just be a quirk of that game’s story in particular. I do think some scenes I’ve enjoyed out of long JRPGs were only notable because I’d invested time and effort in them, so I think a lot is lost if the player isn’t interacting with the premise at all. It’s why I’d prefer forms of difficulty adjustment, removing just one form of challenge, over total removal of the entire gameplay system. Unfortunately, I think a lot of action games handle that poorly, in a very lazy way that doesn’t appreciate what challenges players.
But I know the feel - games that expand their emotional range often get the best reactions because moving to an extreme of seriousness, sadness, or even humor, can shock the player.
I regret that after Ross’s stepping back, I didn’t give this issue much attention. I suppose we have to trust that it’s sifting through the slow gears of politics, but with so many “bull” responses to petitions it’s likely worth keeping public attention on it.
Yeah, I was able to play through most of AC: Odyssey on my deck, thanks to Lutris. I also use Heroic just because I’ve never wanted to install Epic’s launcher.
In support of the move in spirit, but: Any ideas to prevent a company from circumventing this via dummying up contractor firms? Eg, “We employ this software company started by our founder to write our code. Coincidentally, their pay is .1% of the pay at Microsoft”
I’ve always been okay with keeping gaming libraries digital - but I think the larger console population might be okay with that too if we could disconnect digital games from account-based ownership - the kind where a company can go “Oh, whoops, we lost the license to this fart sound effect. We’re going to have to remove this game from your library.”
I can’t say I like how /Games often circles around negative attention rather than positive.
Activision spent billions on marketing so people will buy these stupid Ultra Editions. Even negative attention gets people thinking about and talking about the game.
Instead, post about the cool indie games out that you think deserve far more attention than this battle pass slop. Let Activision come check up on us and cry because for all their efforts no one even cares to hate on their game.
Theres an asymmetric game out as a demo, called Carnival Hunt. It has a really unique aesthetic, and isn’t all that fun yet, in part because of the formula being refined and players getting better at it. But I like the idea: Rather than TCM’s idea of unlocking doors towards an exit, the survivors, “bunnies”, are trying to climb the floors of a large building, with each method of ascending a floor requiring various tools and making noise. Some ways up are harder to set up but easier to repeat, others only work if the killer is ignoring them.
The only occasion I could buy that a “console makes the exclusives” is when the costs are so high that the investors decide a $60 price tag isn’t enough.
That can be alleviated with DLC, or live service bullshit; or it can become an incentive to buy a particular console.
Then, when someone is braindead and doesn’t want a big epic award winning adventure, they’ll use that same console to play Fortnite. Thus, God of War helps sell VBucks or whatever.
It’s a weird analysis, but even though we no longer see console exclusives and it’s seen as a pro consumer move, I also think it was just a way for managers to boost one quarter’s revenue, and it wasn’t really good for the console ecosystem as a whole, especially considering how it would fund future exclusive epics.
You can get quite a few options at Itch.io if you filter for games that have an HTML5 version, and click through - much faster than installing options from Steam Next Fest. Unity and other small game engines have been perfect for that.
A little lesson about technical projects: You will quickly reach 95% completion and have something amazing to show off. Then, 95% of the work is completing that last 5% in order to make the prototype usable.
AI is good at making itself look ready. It is nowhere near ready.
I think this is why a certain scrolling shooter at the endgame of a certain game closely located to a tomato didn’t emotionally work for me. I can do the math - it can’t just throw that many other players at the problem to get me through the enemy ships, and the game needed to be playable off the internet since little else of it was online.
If you want something a bit closer to Starfox, rather than an all-range flight arena, try Rogue Flight. It definitely evokes the power fantasy feeling, living up the classic arcade trope of “one ship being readied on a mission to save humanity”. There’s some very big-name voice actor work in it, as well.
Another good game for the “power fantasy” trope, though it’s a bit more outside the target, is Ace Combat 7. Or, perhaps any games in the series, but this one is pretty accessible. The combat is close to what you’d get in X-Wing/Tie-Fighter, but with fighter planes. It breaks from realism a little bit where needed to make the stunts fun. And, the story very much orients around the silent player character being “scary tough” in a fight, to the point enemy fighters are retreating just from seeing your wing markings.