I bought the game for science cause it was the only game so far using all major features of UE5 and is a good reference to see how they manage asset, etc to keep the game running at 60fps with provided spec.
I think it does have potential, the mechanic is tight enough(the kbm default binding is not good, needs some rebind to make the combat flow more fluid), frame pacing is smooth majority of time(you have jitter mostly when it switch between cutscenes<->game), pretty much checked all the boxes and doesn’t feel lacking when playing the game.
BUT, it does have poor marketing plan and kinda bad luck in releasing window. It’s a good “alt shooter game” IMO.
A fresh report into Unity's hugely-controversial decision to start charging developers when their games are downloaded has thrown fresh light on the situation....
I have slowly faded away from those daily meetings and my rate to address issues increased. Working and supporting 2 different projects while doing extra research topics to future proof our tech or migration path. I do still have those weekly meeting though but my work pace have been better without the daily ones.
Even my manager ask me today if I want to do the biweekly checkup or skip, “well, we did the weekly this morning so I see no point of doing the biweekly.” “Sure, let’s skip.”
Now if I can have my own status board and progress bar on a internal page and tag it with my slack profile, maybe I can skip all the meeting?
Many modern AAA games has become glorified toilet paper rolls. They tried to keep manufacture then in hopes to milk everything possible, then when you are at the end of roll they hype and sell you a new one. Make them feel like you absolutely have to play the next installment to get a closure or something new branching out.(prequel/sequel/reboot/timelines/etc.)
It was unsustainable at the pace and amount pre-covid, unhealthy for hardcore gamers as well. We have to actively not buying and playing new games cause I can play certain amount per day/week.
With covid and post covid, I actually finished more games compare to before. Well, the extra 2 hours not needed to commute I can do whatever I wanted.
Well, it’s surprisingly an 8/10 game graphics aside. There is no mtx, they still fix their game despite low player count on steam. (no idea how many players on the EA play/Gamepass or console. But on PC if you meet the requirement you can run the game really smoothly. (I run 6800XT so at default 1440p/60fps no issue at all. )
I originally bought it for science and see how UE5 features run on my machine from a released game, and it does surpass my expectation. Also see what’s currently possible with those UE5 tech.
It does have kinda bad luck release timing wise, but it fits a good “alt” game you can play without any commitment. (no season pass, no battle pass, no grinding requirements/mission, semi open world but the main plot can be done without doing those exploration/puzzles. ) So I’d assume the sale can last longer people can play this game with more modern PC build.
Lol, I bought on EGS cause I know developer will get more money out of that purchase.(12% and they don’t have to pay UE royalty for sales on EGS. I do this pretty much for all unreal engine games.)
But I think the honest hw spec probably scare off a lot of potential PC buyers of this type of game. If somehow they have a demo as show case + spec check then people might be more willing to try or even buy.
One of the best of the many first-person puzzlers that followed in Portal's wake, The Talos Principle offered what felt like a complete experience. The possibility space of its puzzles—tools that you'd move around to overcome environmental obstacles—was thoroughly explored. And its story—a kind of meditation on the nature...
With how games work these days, having just the disk is pretty much useless if the publisher decides to delist or discontinue the game from platform, because:
patches and updates don’t come with disk form anymore.
many games that requires online authentication to play won’t be available to keep playing if their account service is down.
games go on sale with steady rate most of the time(except nintendo), for bargain bin deals you would probably find the game on humble bundle or gog.
you often have the good games that release “better” remake version over and over anyway. Note, I know people sometimes prefer the original version, but not everyone is on the same page and it hugely depending on the dev/publisher for the newer version.
Now let’s describe the cons:
in many countries, breaking DRM is illegal. So even if all you want to do archive, you can’t make a decrypted copy. That’s why homebrew etc provides the key/dumper for you to do such at your own risk. IMO, it’s safer(INAL) to download pirated iso/rom compare to doing your own dump. And, archiver actually tried to keep a post patch version before store is closed down(see wiiu store close example), the disk version is not a viable option anymore for archiver.
storage up keep, physical things require storage space. I still have like 3 large shipping box for my older gen(ps3/GC/Wii/X360 games) I will probably donate them to library or something and keep the only ones I wanted to keep.
console part cost, the BD drives are often first point of failure, then HDMI connectors. Cause well, moving parts are easier to break and harder to QA. PS5’s 2 versions gives a good example how the disk affects the look, weight, etc. Not to mention, they are a lot slower then SSD and you are required to install all that anyway.
developer/publisher/platform see nothing for used game sales. It sounds like huge shill talk but let’s be honest, they want to make a living, if you are not supporting your favorite developer they will have to offset the cost by doing shit you all won’t like. ie, mtx, subscription service, selling analytic data, selling the studio to shit publisher that push worth practice, platform raise price to meet target projection. Buy/sell used game only helps that service owner(gamestop/ebgame/bestbuy, not the community.)
did I mention switching disc just to play game is a PITA, and if your case is the modern garbage version, remember those plastic break down more easily and you would have to buy new case to hold your disc.
environment waste for all the manufacturing, packaging and shipping. It’s honestly not worth that in modern era if you give a fuck about how future generation will live.
your complains are itemized and exactly to the point. So that’s something developers would like to have. The difficulty to fix however is unknown, some seemingly simple fix would be very hard because of how the interaction is implemented. (ie, like sending stuff to another character or camp does not auto arrange/stacking similar item, it’s much easier to implement use the almost unlimited space slots, then when you actually sort, then they do the auto stacking for you when you manage a space.) people sometimes does not like auto sort result and prefer doing their own inventory, so they keep where the item is until you sort or moving. (more obvious after you did a trade and then to reorganize char’s inv)
I know, I wish we can config the priority of the type, so the more “useless” type are sorted to the bottom of stack, or even assign colored background for different type of things. As a hoarder that even collect rotten food early game it is annoying. (I did keep rotton stuff in a separate container and just sell the whole thing to merchant. )
They only feel it would be dangerous because they have the capital to drain talents to do experimental things while not care about the fall outs of closing subsidiaries or abandoning projects. It could also drive up developer cost and make the business more risky.(IMO, the developers are getting paid in peanuts compare to what the big publishers made. Even after considering flopped projects.)
The danger lies in once people get used to the new payscale, if big capital consider it’s not that profitable, then the better talents may not keep staying or heading toward this industry. Also less loan/venture awarded to companies doing projects not passing the “market research” phase.
Yes, and lastly Tencents also don’t like competitions bidding their potential acquisition targets.
See how Netflix work out their hike etc? I don’t think it would continue to work in their favor to meet the profit/sub count projection to make their stocker holder happy.
If the smurf detection/etc is good, then that’s the first way to alleviate those toxic behavior. It’s a really bad feedback cycle when smurfs are involved. My main game is rocket league, you can have smurf that win the game single-handedly and then start to play 1v3 or 2v4 because he decides that he wants to lose these games to keep playing at lower rank, or something you did the smurf don’t like, and you might be some MMR away for your next promotion and it doesn’t matter. The MMR matchmaking this little shit to your matches because he decides to smurf instead of playing at his normal level.
I don’t know much about dota or moba games, but the idea is the same, smurf will pump more negativity into the game.
This is from the culture where don’t show you outsourced some of your work and claim that you did everything internally. There was a time where players think outsourced anything is bad but we have since gone way past that. Many big studio out-sourced their asset making/audio etc cause it’s simply too much work to do the up keeps if you don’t have a library of them from your past games.
As far as I know some Japanese company still operate this way and the out-source partner are contractually not allowed to disclose what they worked on. You would be considered lucky to even make the partner list with company name only. It’s a really bad standard and I hope we just get rid of that entirely. (If you are not aware, China’s asset outsource companies makes a lot of assets for AAA industry for a long time. )
More concerning than Bethesda’s decision to withhold early review codes from certain outlets is how heavily some sites are relying on the game to drive their business.
yeah, it sucks and I just stick with the wiki source and proper sites I know. I am a hoarder so I don’t want to miss some good items I can get by accidentally wiping a area or block myself from them because of a wrong decision. Some of the generated sites are still refer to old early access stuff.
I wrote reviews(early 2000) during the late magazine era and even back then there were taboos about local influential company’s releases.(they only sign import deal and sell/distribute games locally.) Cause they survive on the ad money instead of subscription or individual purchases. Modern website sucks even more cause you made pennies for each view and if you don’t have something that covers enough contents to drive views, you will be at the mercy of promotion partners, same for the youtuber/streamer/influencer.
I mostly write review/walk through for import games, as there was usually a couple months delay for localization, even had contacts with local publisher that consult with group of writers about maybe which game to sign and import. The US/Japan publisher aren’t exactly nice guys you know, they will ask you to sign multiple games, including the games you know might not sell well as part of the deal. It’s a risky business and if companies that import games will try to influence review scores, you know how desperate the publisher will try to defend their “investment”.
Same here, I set to cancel renew every time I top up and since late ps4 time I don’t even add free games that are remotely interesting so I keep a cleaner library. And then when they announced the hike, I did the review and filter by games acquired via plus, same feeling, I almost never play those games, even though they look somewhat interesting and added them but probably never gonna play them since my primary interest and good backlog will last me long enough for next main games to release. So they will have the same treatment like my humble bundle games. And I also decide to not top up any more.
I know, I got the GC adapter hoping to have multiplayer Mario or Metroid games. So imagine my surprise when those never came.(I was more PC gamer back then and multiplayer is already plenty.)
For those that didn’t catch the last Direct, Super Mario Wonder has announced that it will feature two different kinds of online multiplayer, both very different to local multiplayer - one where you can see “ghosts” of other players currently online on a given level, which can’t interact with you directly but can give...
It’s because Nintendo still haven’t implement server client networking and host their own dedicated servers. It’s why people paid Nintendo Online to play multiplayer Nintendo games are getting scammed.(even Capcom or EA/Epic did batter job on switch then Nintendo.)
That’s why you get no real online plays, blame Nintendo’s internal policy, not networking complexity.
Well, not too late though. I stopped Xbox live when it’s value is not up to par. I also won’t renew plus since it doesn’t make sense anymore.(actually review my ps collection in game library and it’s full of games I don’t actually play.)
I don’t play multiplayer on PS so mostly paying for free games and cloud saves.(ps3 era was really good, ps4 starts to go meh, ps5 pretty much shit tier all around especially after the new higher tiers.)
So might as well stop.(I never paid for Nintendo online.)
It’s a move to test water then, since most people that are long term subscriber usually stack up during sales. I think they are testing how well it might work with their new offers and banking on people forgot to stop renew.
It really sucks cause essential pretty much no longer justified for their pricing at this point. Guess I have to try setup some sort of back up routine for my old save files on the PS cloud before I cancel my subscription.
It’s not impossible cause any thing that has specific rules laid out can be implemented. And table top rule are turn based(no time sensitive action, ie, physics simulation), fixed permutations/outcomes(dice rolls for everything), programming is just “rules” for moving numbers, even for deep learning networks.
The harder to implement are the conversations, cause there are pretty much infinite way depending on who initiate the conversation(background/race/stats/class/proficiency/+whatever player thinks that’s possible and DM assign a check value), with potential plots lines, the writer has to limit what can be chosen and remove other options even though it’s legit on table top.
It’s a FPS with bullet, grenade replaced by magics. It follows some streamlined lite metroid component for unlocking new ability for traversal and encounters/puzzles are paced pretty okay. Quite a bit of platforming section as well if you like that kind of thing. I have not finished the game yet but it seems to be a pretty short run and can finish over the weekend(no mtx). It does look really nice when you have the rig to run.(I used default settings it picked for my 6800XT and never feel jitter or frame rate dip problem.)
good thing the rendering engineers are willing to try different ways instead of stuck at this “real pixel” shit that some youtuber started. Even freaking Pixar that is grand daddy of CG tech also doing ML global illumination and temporal denoiser. some of our current gen realtime graphics literally took hours to render 10 years ago, hardware aren’t improving that fast, it’s the new algorithms and render method make it possible.
Not to diss his train of thoughts because it is hard to get money to fund risky projects. What he said is entirely base on the premise that vest majority of games are funded by publisher money, kickstarter or not that’s the reality for the longest time.
BUT, the part he is missing is that pitching is very important, the so called “risky” business is a economical/statistical analysis as of late. And you CAN get funding if you propose something that are sound and reasonable. Like today I was surprised that Immortals of Aveum has no microtransactions, even though the gear/resource interface hinted that at one point that’s probably considered. So EA, new IP, new engine tech, high spec req everyone spit at, can you come up with a even better counter argument to Rami? The game launched, after checking discord and discussions, consoles seems to run fine and smooth. I meet the 1440p/60fps requirement on PC so I took the plunge bought it this morning. Guess what, it delivered, I only tweaked 2 things, changing boarderless to full screen and disable vsync. Game is running very smooth on 60fps locked even at the big open field scene a youtuber tested yesterday that dips into 40+fps I have no issue at all running at exactly same location he did. (I did change the sensitivity settings on my mouse/in game so I don’t feel too dizzy cause there is no mouse smoothing, if your dpi set too high it’s actually hard to play. )
Will they be financially successful? I don’t know, it’s a big gamble for them and EA. But as far as Rami’s argument concerned, there is no problem getting funded and stick to your guns as long as you can prove to those doing the internal tests. Believe me, EA game with Denuvo, from dev I didn’t heard of, I did my homeworks and then decided to support them and took my risk. This is where I vote with my wallet. It works right after install and I haven’t run into bug/crash yet, and I hope this game is successful.
edit: is it fun? I also can’t be quite sure yet cause I just got out of tutorial area. But the mechanic is sound, KBM might be a bit odd on how they set the default bindings but you can change those, I did plan to give controller a try later.
I think it’s for the best of everyone to have this decision made. Larian can get a boost of sales, series S owner that didn’t need split screen can play, and MS set precedent that feature parity is negotiable.
Most of time, it’s the juggle of time and resource available to you, but there is still a hard limit otherwise how about demand BG3 to also run on my antique knockoff NES? Cause they are too lazy to accommodate the hardware limitation? How about my smart watch? Or someone else’s smart fridge?
Don’t get me wrong, what you said in some cases but most likely the devs are told to push it out instead of make the game run better(on the target platforms.) There are no secret sauce to otherwise fit a game like BG3 to previous gen consoles.
Last, if you are really good at this optimization thing the whole industry will pay good money for your skill set.
It’s the same for piracy, you can’t expect people that don’t have the money to play games that they have to pay for. Nothing beast free when you just have a phone or chrome book and download a game or play embeded after watching ads. The graph didn’t tell you where the money come from or the avg dollar spend per player.
not to defend them, but I regularly play around 3~4 hours and I didn’t notice my frames dip during play. It usually dip around enter/exit conversation, or when you faster travel, frame then comes back to normal range. (about 120 fps for me, during hotter days I just manually keep it at 60 so I trade some screen tear but cooler room.) If it’s memory leak it will usually lead to crash since you have less and less ram you can allocate. So there might be something that eats your resource.
Mechanical side I just don’t like hunting and gather stuff the scatter around the world, but is kinda of important for early game economics.(especially for a hoarder like me, I want to get all the magical items from vendors, trying to do it as legit as I can, all the sell for 1 coin adds up. opening all the crates etc does took a long time in storage area. )
There are actually plenty tutorials, but because of the open exploring aspect, players aren’t visiting those tutorial spots that the dev anticipated. They nudge you a bit using the enemy levels, but it should have covered more during the prologue.
lol, I lost nothing because the release/roll back happened during work hour yesterday, then before I even get to play again the fixed update rolled out. XD
My son would love this when he was 3yo. Now he is 7yo where DualSense is a bit too big while the his hori switch wired controller is getting worse.(buttons become a bit sticky) there should be official controllers for the 4-9yo range.
I did check and does have a target in mind if his current controller not up to the task. But is seems hard to get a ps5 compatible one, so I will just settle with the switch variation.
it has very simple rules, but can get really crazy creative if you know your way around it.
player base is big enough so even if you are top 1% it’s still easy to find games.
there is no balance change or new character the throws you off and relearn your game plan
it’s average 7 minutes match for replay/kick off count down and queuing time.
you can totally drop it and then come back again after finish a single player game and it’s still going to be there.
it’s free to play but I did throw Psyonix about 60~100 per year to support their operation cost. Good pack/cosmetic didn’t come up often so I usually have at least 4000 credits sitting in my account.
it’s good enough so when I encounter glitches I simply laugh and move on.
some of the glitches I’ve encountered so far:
animated door(or wall) loop back to closed “frame” but the collision is already moved away so you can walk through the door(or wall)
ranged attack/spell sometimes doesn’t calculate the path correctly when you hover over the target, so you have to manually move yourself and try again. Some times the path blocked calculation is wrong and you could waste spells.(especially for big enough creatures)
animation glitches during conversation. or right after loading.(mostly on NPCs.)
some stuff looks reachable but due to path finding for char to “get it” it becomes unreachable. (sometimes can use mage hand to get around this if said stuff is light and not fragile.)
Today there is a update drop so hopefully it got fixed. I probably still have a couple region to clean up before Act2. (judging from the revealed map area. )
Immortals of Aveum studio lays off nearly half of staff weeks after release (www.polygon.com) angielski
Unity will quietly waive controversial fees if developers switch to its ad monetisation service - report (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
A fresh report into Unity's hugely-controversial decision to start charging developers when their games are downloaded has thrown fresh light on the situation....
COVID And Working From Home Made Starfield Development "Very, Very Slow," Todd Howard Says (www.gamespot.com) angielski
Tomorrow's Immortals of Aveum Update 3 Fixes DLSS 3 Issues, Improves PS5/Xbox Series Upscaling and More (wccftech.com) angielski
Ascendant Studios and EA have detailed tomorrow's Immortals of Aveum update 3 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S....
The Talos Principle didn't need a sequel, but now that I've seen it in action I'm glad that it's getting one (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
One of the best of the many first-person puzzlers that followed in Portal's wake, The Talos Principle offered what felt like a complete experience. The possibility space of its puzzles—tools that you'd move around to overcome environmental obstacles—was thoroughly explored. And its story—a kind of meditation on the nature...
GameStop Boss Says Disc Drives Should Be Required On Game Consoles (www.gamespot.com) angielski
"It would be great if people had to buy more of the thing," says guy who makes money selling the thing.
September’s PlayStation Plus Essential games are now available to claim (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
Baldur's Gate 3 - Hotfix #5 Now Live (store.steampowered.com) angielski
Tencent Games strategic advisor Shawn Layden issues warning about non-endemics breaking into games (www.gamesindustry.biz) angielski
PS Plus price hike: We'll all pay for a subscription-based future | Opinion (www.gamesindustry.biz) angielski
SAG-AFTRA votes unanimously to expand its strike to include the games industry (www.eurogamer.net)
Smurfing is Not Welcome in Dota, Valve bans 90k smurf accounts (www.dota2.com) angielski
Altagram publishes new crediting policy after Baldur's Gate 3 blunder (www.gamedeveloper.com)
The new policy will apply to "all internal employees and external vendors, subcontractors, and third-party providers."
Starfield review controversy traces game journalism's orbital decay (www.gamesindustry.biz) angielski
More concerning than Bethesda’s decision to withhold early review codes from certain outlets is how heavily some sites are relying on the game to drive their business.
PS Plus price hike: We'll all pay for a subscription-based future | Opinion (www.gamesindustry.biz)
Super Mario Wonder's online multiplayer may be disappointing, but we have already witnessed that the alternative would be far worse. angielski
For those that didn’t catch the last Direct, Super Mario Wonder has announced that it will feature two different kinds of online multiplayer, both very different to local multiplayer - one where you can see “ghosts” of other players currently online on a given level, which can’t interact with you directly but can give...
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Sony raising PS Plus pricing by 33% (www.pushsquare.com) angielski
Tier Original Pricing. New Pricing...
Larian says it’s discussing potential Baldur’s Gate 3 DLC | VGC (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
Immortals of Aveum PS5/Xbox Series X/S: Unreal Engine 5 is Pushed Hard - And Image Quality Suffers - YouTube (youtu.be) angielski
FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 (FSR3) - AMD Stage Presentation | gamescom 2023 (www.youtube.com) angielski
TL;DW:...
Starfield Leaker Allegedly Arrested, Revealed as Master Thief - Insider Gaming (insider-gaming.com) angielski
Rami Ismail on why hits like BG3 lead to fewer funded games in genre: “Everything that’s successful tightens the noose” | Game World Observer (gameworldobserver.com) angielski
Baldur's Gate 3 will be released on Xbox this year, with split-screen features removed for Series S (www.gamescensor.com) angielski
Phil Spencer Insists Games Launch Across Xbox Series X and S Despite Baldur's Gate 3 No-Show - IGN (www.ign.com) angielski
Xbox boss Phil Spencer has addressed the fact Baldur's Gate 3 launches on PS5 before Xbox Series X and S in an interview at gamescom 2023.
Microsoft signs 15-year cloud streaming deal with Ubisoft in latest bid to win Activision Blizzard approval (venturebeat.com)
Visualized: $300B of Video Gaming Revenue, by Source (www.visualcapitalist.com) angielski
Article: visualcapitalist.com/…/video-games-industry-reven…
'A triumph': Brian Fargo, Mike Laidlaw, and other RPG architects weigh in on Baldur's Gate 3 (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
What's a good game you played with an awful tutorial? angielski
Either it didn’t teach you anything at all, or it taught you the most irrelevant parts of the game.
Baldur’s Gate 3 Hotfix 4 Rolled Back, Making Some Saves Inaccessible (www.siliconera.com) angielski
Baldur's Gate 3 - Hotfix #4 Now Live (store.steampowered.com) angielski
8BitDo stuffed 16 buttons into its hand-crampingly small Micro controller (www.engadget.com)
Arthritis can be yours for $25....
How does multiplayer gaming fit into your life? angielski
What games do you play? Who do you play with?...
Running With Scissors Studios gives permission to pirate games (beehaw.org) angielski
based...
Baldur’s Gate 3 Is One Of 2023's Best Games, Don't Turn It Into A Weapon (kotaku.com) angielski
The success of the Dungeons & Dragons RPG has kicked off a fiery debate about game development, AAA costs, and players’ expectations