ampersandrew

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

That’s a bummer. There was a lot that looked great to me, though most of it was for 2026. Given how much good stuff there is in 2025 that I still have to get through, that’s a-okay by me.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

We very much do need GOG to be competitive with the market leader but with the primary selling point of DRM-free, yes. And is it a coincidence that the beginning of your username is the same as that awful YouTuber?

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

This machine will be the same desktop-mode-not-required-but-allows-for-more-functionality thing that the Steam Deck is, but it will chew through battery faster in exchange for more compatibility.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

I sincerely doubt that this device will satisfy criteria #1 or #2, unless you’ve got a generous definition for #2.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

They have given up on their own handheld. And why wouldn’t you prefer the PC library when it’s so much larger? The appeal to this device at this point is that the new UI is better for the handheld use case than desktop Windows.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

At least at first, it will be the only handheld running this version of Windows. So maybe after a year or two, it won’t be all that unique, true, but a year or two is a long time at the rate these handhelds are advancing.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

i just wish Xbox came out swinging with a compatibility layer for the Xbox game library

Though not officially announced, signs of that are appearing already, including a hint or two in the speech of the conference.

And for plenty of people, being able to play live service games that don’t work on SteamOS, with a UI that’s almost as good finally, will be enough.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

I hate live service games and Windows, so no, this device is not for me, but those are also the most popular games on the market by a wide margin. Despite how awful the Windows experience is today, there’s still one Windows handheld sold for every two Steam Decks. That situation can only improve with a version of Windows designed for handhelds.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

The audience has very much expanded since covid. Around that same time is when fighting games (at large) finally got the good netcode, because they finally realized they could no longer get away with the easier, cheaper, bad netcode. You might not know what the word “rollback” means, and probably most players don’t either, but I think everyone intuitively understands that it feels better to play these games online and that they’re getting better matches. This also came along with a few new ways to shed motion inputs, or at least make them optional, in many big releases, and a renewed focus on trying to invent good new single player offerings. Fighting game majors are breaking attendance records every year, and in a world where the e-sports bubble has burst, the fighting game scene is the only one growing organically from grass roots without spending money it doesn’t actually make (Fatal Fury might be the exception here, due to ties to the Saudi family).

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

For the fighting game nerds out there: an interview on IGN confirmed that there are KI breakers during active tags, and combos will be limited in similar ways to Killer Instinct, meaning a combo meter rather than hitstun decay. If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry about it; this comment wasn’t for you. These were the answers I was looking for, and now this is my most anticipated fighting game despite having no familiarity with the source material.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

I use backloggery.com, but I see a lot of people using backloggd.com these days. Backloggery is a bit more old school and relies a lot on manual entry, so I’m sure some of its competitors are better about linking up to things like your Steam account. You can also track a lot of this stuff on HowLongToBeat.com, which is mostly seeking to answer the question in the URL but also lets you log a review of the game, etc.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

I’ve been looking forward to this one. So much of this genre is going live service and online-only, and these people are some of the few making just a video game. I’m pretty new to this genre, but I liked that last Titan Quest quite a bit, and I’m looking forward to a lot of the modern sensibilities the genre acquired in the past 20 years, like dodge rolls and perhaps WASD/left-stick movement.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

There are a lot of types of games that are inherently not broken in their designs, and there are advantages to portraying the aesthetic in the same style, like quickly conveying to your audience where your inspirations came from so that they know what type of game it is. In a similar way, lots of games have moved on to a PS1 aesthetic these days.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

or making a real case why it’s beneficial

To which I said:

quickly conveying to your audience where your inspirations came from so that they know what type of game it is

In a lot of ways, “they don’t make 'em like they used to”, so in addition to that art style helping to convey what kind of game they made, it also comes along with cost reductions for their art pipeline in a lot of cases. It doesn’t really make them “stuck in the past” when there were real advantages to how things used to get done.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

And the YouTube link:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Hr6Q2hln_M

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

There’s a convention too, but it’s way smaller.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

How do terms of service give them root level access?

EDIT: For the record, I’ve been playing through this whole series in the middle of when they rolled out these EULA changes, and I wish them the best of luck in getting root access to my machine, but I promise you they didn’t get it via Proton.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

I don’t mean to be disrespectful when I say this, but I can agree that gravity pulls things up instead of down and it won’t make it so. I just skimmed through the EULA and didn’t find anywhere that it said it needed root level access (though maybe I missed it), nor did the executable take any action to try to do so.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

Then I suppose the loophole is to play on Linux.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

It’s Borderlands. They already had that claim. I don’t feel good about it, but they made this change after I’d already started this trek. It’s one more data point that gets me closer to only buying games on GOG, but I’m not all the way there yet. It’s definitely nefarious that it’s all good and legal to change the terms of the thing you bought after it’s already been sold to you. However, I also don’t see any evidence yet that it’s actually getting root level access to your Windows machine other than someone’s summary in a review, which is not exactly direct from the source.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

Yes, support for Borderlands 2 continued long after it was clear that Steam Machines weren’t taking off, which means it’s on a newer version than the Linux native one that Aspyr ported. You can still run the Linux native version, but if you want to play with your Windows friends or just get access to all the DLC, you need to run it through Proton.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

But it doesn’t have the mandatory kernel level disclaimer either.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

Sure, but it also seems like it’s data that you offer up via a 2K account, which I don’t have. I have a user name tied to my Steam ID, and that’s about it.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

He’s also in the crop of people who rage baited his audience with nonsense about Sweet Baby Inc.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

Good: ArcSys making a Marvel fighter like Guilty Gear Strive. Bad: Published by PlayStation, which means even the PC version will require PSN.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

For me as well, unless Valve and Sony work out PSN compatibility with Proton in the next year or so.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

If you get any kind of consistency, you should reach out to the mods and get it added to the sidebar. I like having a thread like this in a gaming community.

I’ve been playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance in anticipation of the sequel, which I already bought. I feel like I never know when the next opportunity to do side quests will be, so I found a good break in the story around main story quest 8-ish, and I’m just doing those for a while. The first couple of missions set some false expectations for what this game is and what you’ll have to put up with, but it becomes much more straight forward after that.

I’ve also been going through the Borderlands games ahead of that series’ sequel, and I just got to Borderlands 3. Man, that game feels great to play. It’s been interesting to play through these games so rapid fire, because whatever my criticism was of the previous game, the developers also knew about it and addressed it in the next game. I hear the writing takes a turn for the worst in this game, but the first few hours are more than tolerable so far.

And for quicker sessions, I’ve also been playing through Devil May Cry 4. I started playing through these games back when Hi-Fi Rush completely floored me, and then some other games came out, and I put DMC4 down for a while. Now that I picked it up again, it’s still great, but I’m not really sure what to do with Nero’s revving mechanic.

Why are you trying to wean your girlfriend off of Strive? I love me some +R too, but both of those games are great!

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

How far are you? I found chapter 2 to be a slog, in particular, but then it picks up right after that.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

Yeah, the rough part is that they send you back and forth between the two furthest corners of that map over and over again. But if you like the political intrigue of the show or Game of Thrones or that sort of thing, plus the twist the series puts on classic fables, it will get there, haha.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

Strive is so good. Any top 8 of that game is just full of people using the RC system in really clever ways.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

Now that it’s launched, might you be interested in a GOG version? I’ve got this game on my radar, but I won’t be able to get around to it at least until I finish a few other long games I’m working through.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

This would be the last exit that makes sense to either delay Marathon or cut their losses and let it die a quick death.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

The word was they cancelled their marketing, which doesn’t mean a delay is definite. When Concord wasn’t going well, they just put it out and hoped for the best despite a beta with terrible metrics, and…that’s an option again, where they’re not throwing good money after bad.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

Those “What’s New” updates are so easily abused. If you played multiple games in a series, every single one of them will post an update about the latest game, so you’ll see the same update like 5 times. Or, if you’re Street Fighter, you’ll pretend that it matters which one of your fictional characters currently has a birthday, and that will litter the feed until you click on “show less”.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

I’m questioning if there’s ever been a good D&D video game adaptation that wasn’t trying its best to just replicate the tabletop experience, and then I’d ask if it’s worth trying when you could just continue to make good replications of the tabletop experience.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

And hopefully they do away with those unlocks being tied to a server of theirs.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

Close! That was Agent Under Fire, not Nightfire. It’s one of my favorite multiplayer shooters, specifically with nonsense like the Q Claw, Q Jet, and moon gravity turned on. Nightfire really pared back on the stuff that made Agent Under Fire ridiculous, and it was good for different reasons.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

From the press releases at the time, it appears the new owners only have the studio and the Hi-Fi Rush IP, not their other IPs like Ghostwire or Evil Within. If they had to be choosy, Hi-Fi Rush was the one worth getting.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

I think I’m kind of done with Supergiant regardless. In both Bastion and Transistor, it felt like they had two out of three components to their gameplay loop but were missing something to prevent it from feeling repetitive; despite short runtimes, both very much did feel repetitive. I didn’t even try Pyre, and I have little faith it would be for me. I do love roguelikes and can enjoy -lites from time to time as well, and Hades got a lot of buzz. However, I actually quite disliked worlds 3 and 4, and the level generation is among the worst I’ve seen in the genre. I get the sense that Hades is probably most responsible for people who claim they want “handcrafted levels” as opposed to procedural generation, because perhaps those people haven’t seen it done well if they’ve only ever played Hades, a game with level generation so monotonous that the voice actor will call out a room we all recognize.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

Well, The Witcher 1 and 2 weren’t open world, and those turned out pretty well, especially 2. There’s something to be said about what a game from them might gain by doing more in a smaller world.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

How did you feel about Baldur’s Gate 3? Because the structure of the maps in the first two Witcher games are what most of the genre is like.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

Always has been.

There was a podcast that Irrational did before putting out BioShock Infinite that would interview game developers and other creatives, and they had one that interviewed the BioWare doctors. BioWare was always set up to be a multi project studio, and Irrational was a single project studio. At that time in the industry, lots of companies were pivoting from the former to the latter, due to how many more hands on deck a 7th gen console AAA game took to make. BioWare was set up the way it was so that one underperforming game could easily be carried by another reasonably successful one. By the end of that interview, I thought you’d have to be nuts to employ that many people and only work on one game at a time. Sure enough, Irrational buckled under that weight right after shipping BioShock Infinite’s DLC, and modern, single-project BioWare is looking worse for wear.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

That led into the used market, I suppose (a boogeyman for the games industry that birthed lots of the worst monetization today). I never really had that problem, outside of outliers like Pokemon Snap that were unusually short. In the 00s, it was pretty common to get 8-15 hours for an action game that you paid $50-$60 for, often times with multiplayer modes alongside the single player modes, and that felt like great value to me at the time.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

It’s not speculation with MindsEye. Everywhere was shown off first, and it’s still happening. That studio was funded with VC money, and VCs want “the next big thing”. That thing at the time was “metaverse”. MindsEye seems to be the smaller project they can get out in the meantime and, charitably, is one of a number of things they’ll churn out that all comes from a similar process flow and builds on each other (they hope).

As to boycotts, your individual purchases always matter; not just with what you don’t buy but also what you do buy.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

That oxygen is in a different room. The person who only plays Fortnite probably never heard of MindsEye or Concord. At some point, I wonder why games media even covers certain companies anymore. Sure, EA and Ubisoft made games we all liked 20-25 years ago, but they don’t really make games for those same customers anymore, largely.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

Releasing the server code as binary is how it used to work, and there’s no reason it can’t work that way again. It’s one of several ways to satisfy the petition.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

They’re as good at it as the operating system is, if you think about any time you’ve ever plugged an external monitor into a laptop. There is some Valve special sauce in the software to help with that on Steam Deck, but I don’t think it’s something that would have gone uninvented without the Switch.

ampersandrew, 3 miesiące temu

I agree. They’ve had time if they cared about making this product before the Steam Deck was a success, but much like with cloud infrastructure, or search engines, or MP3 players, or mobile, or game consoles in general, they only really cared about it after someone else made a great version of what they could have been doing themselves.