What? The launch was definitely botched, but after all the updates it’s now a great game. Personally one of my favorites. Honestly I’m not sure if there are many studios who would do a better job than CDPR in making such a large scale Cyberpunk game.
As long as it’s a bit of a sandbox: hell yeah. But there needs to be stuff happening, things to do. I love games like GTA, Cyberpunk, Just Cause, Stalker, because you can just go around the world and experience random stuff happening. Sometimes I don’t want a goal, but just a sandbox to create my own stories.
I’m still not sure what to think of early access. On the one hand, it is too often an excuse to push a buggy mess. That shit is seriously annoying.
But if it’s done right, it can allow developers to make games that are way larger than they otherwise could. In the end development costs money, so with only X million dollars of upfront investment you will run out at some point. With early access they can extend the money pile further, and therefore they can keep extending the scope of the game way beyond what would otherwise be possible as long as the game is popular enough. But then the focus should be on delivering a mostly stable core experience instead of a buggy unbalanced mess.
Imo it worked quite well for games like Factorio, Valheim, Satisfactory. I had like 80 hours in Satisfactory way before the official release, and then another 100 hours or so with friends a bit later (also before the final release). While there were definitely some bugs, the experience overall was worth my money and I was happy to be able to play it already.
Ironically my laptop, which has been Linux-only since 2015 or something, has finally stopped working properly. The dedicated GPU (NVIDIA Quadro K1100M) no longer has working drivers with the kernel from Ubuntu 24.04. Then again, it wouldn’t run windows 11 either probably.
I finally committed to Linux at the end of last year. Enough is working to make it preferable to Windows now. I’m still having a lot of bugs, and it’s costing quite some time. But at least my computer is mine again. No more telemetry, ads, and UIs that treat me like a toddler. No more updates forced onto me instead of being done whenever I want it.
Well if I could quickly check how all clothes would fit on me without going to the store and without having to change clothes, I’d probably spend the same effort. Having a character creator would also be neato
For real. Imo the best RTS out there currently. I feel so much more in control of the camera and the units. Whenever I go back to old RTS games now they feel dated and clunky.
The AI is also surprisingly enjoyable for a more casual player like me. It doesn’t cheat (as far as I’m aware) by getting resources or having vision where it shouldn’t. But it does exploit its high APM and it is very aware of what it can get away with in fights. This results in an AI that never does outright bullshit, but in one that does just sneak past the 2mm space not covered by turrets or units and ruins your entire economy. Give it a large open map and it’ll demolish me, but on smaller maps with choke points it’s easier to handle.
I haven’t seriously played any of them over the last year though. RL has been run into the ground by greed. GTA V was always greedy, but was still some fun to fck around in. However it isn’t really relevant anymore. PC2 was replaced for me by Assetto Corsa (5th place, 170 hours) which has great mods and better physics.
Also, this is only Steam. Combining Steam and Uplay numbers, Trackmania 2020 probably 2nd place with just over 300 hours. And LoL may also be top 3 even though I haven’t played in years. Likewise Beyond All Reason may be getting close to the top 3, but I have no way of knowing since it doesn’t track the playtime afaik.
Damn the trailer looked pretty cool. I love the modern retro vibe it has. They have space tech, but also CD decks etc. But the comments on Youtube are an absolute dumpster fire… “How dare they have a female with short hair REEEEEEEEEEEEE”
We played this game called Icarus last weekend because of a free weekend. It was okay for me, but I also have a pretty high-end PC for the 1080p monitor connected to it. Even for me the game was quite janky, but for my friends with older hardware the game wasn’t a good time. One friend’s microphone randomly turned into a max-volume noise generator while playing on multiple occasions, something that has never happened before. Another (who plays on Linux) experienced constant crashes and weird behaviour.
After that disappointment we went back in time to The Showdown Effect for the first time in years, which was still as hilarious as ever. Apparently there’s an updated free to play version now (called reloaded or something?) so we’d have to check that out. Would recommend it if you’re looking to have some mayhem with friends .
Edit: oh yeah and I also bought Grid Legends because it has a big sale and I like racing games. The driving physics don’t annoy me like the ones in The Crew or Forza so I’m having a good time with it till now
Interesting how experiences can be so different. To me Jedi Survivor was an improvement over the first game, which I already enjoyed a lot. As far as I can remember you keep most (if not all) of your abilities. In the first game Cal has almost nothing after he essentially cut himself off from the force after the trauma of order 66. It’s and entirely reasonable explanation of Cal not having most normal Jedi abilities.
Survivor also has better combat, because of the new abilities and weapons, better graphics, and better traversal (looking at you, Zeffo). While I really like the story in Fallen Order as well, I also think that Survivor is better overall. It’s not as clear cut as good vs evil. There’s many different factions and people with different goals. In the end, it’s about everyone just trying to survive the tyranny of the Empire, whatever it takes.
The games definitely does feel very “gamey” though. There’s a lot of places where it’s clear that things are only the way they are because this is a video game. But to me that’s okay. A game doesn’t always need to be the most realistic and life-like experience. I don’t mind that a specific puzzle is totally unrealistic and clearly only there to force you to solve it. I can imagine that some people will not enjoy that though, and that’s okay.
Assetto Corsa because it’s a simracing sandbox. I’ve modded it to hell with Content Manager and CSP. I also have a lot of paid mods for mainly formula cars like the RSS Formula 1/2/3/4 cars and the VRC Formula E cars. The AI is the perfect level of silly to cause absolute mayhem with the right settings, but also pretty interesting races when you want them to behave.
Wreckfest is a joy on the Steam deck and for casual mayhem. It still has a nice driving model imo, while remaining casual. The maps are optimized for crashing into others which means you’re never safe.
Yeah it was very easy actually. Though fair warning to people who are sensitive to flashing lights: after logging in with DigiD (Netherlands) my screen went full strobe mode. Looked like multiple pages loading in quick succession with different background colours before finally landing on the success screen.
Not sure about satisfactory, considering the map is always the same. So the only sources of randomness are starting at another location in the same map or playing differently yourself