Cancelled or shut down? If you wanted a cancelled game to come out, 99 times out of 100, it was your imagination making it into a great game, and they cancelled it because it wasn’t coming together.
For games that were shut down, for me, it was Robocraft. It was only shut down recently, but the version of the game that I loved from about 2017-ish was basically replaced a year later with a version of the game that I was not a fan of, and it stayed that way until the game’s and studio’s closure. I had to get burned by Robocraft in order to come to some realizations about the rot at the core of live service games, and it informed a lot of where I spend my time and money now.
I gave it a chance, and I remember the objective design being different for the sake of it to the point of being worse. They had a capture the flag mode involving charging a battery, but it could be charged to 99% at one base and then scored at the other base at the last second, making everything except the final play meaningless. It had a point control mode, but the points were only active in certain intervals, creating a real stop and go feeling that made the inactive periods as meaningless as the aforementioned first 99% of CTF.
Eurogamer understands Bethesda’s current plan is to shadow drop the game next week on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, including via Xbox Game Pass.
Video game marketing changed dramatically about 2 years ago. No one likes long marketing cycles anymore. There are too many opportunities for delays or “puddlegates”.
No, they contracted this game out to another developer, and it’s in Unreal. It’s been in the works for a long time. If they’re smart, it’s a testbed for getting future games off of their usual Creation engine.
I wasn’t a fan of a number of choices they made in their RPG systems in the Original Sin games, so until we see what their next game is, I’ll wonder how much of the heavy lifting done in BG3 was due to D&D rather than their designers. Still, BG3 knocked basically everything out of the park, so even a lesser RPG from this team will still likely be great. It would be nice to have the CRPG equivalent of Starfield from Larian, since most sci-fi RPGs tend to stick to the post-apocalypse.
I haven’t played it, but it’s on my list. A very long list. And Rogue Trader is 40k, right? Meaning fantasy trappings but in space? That can also be fine, but I appreciated Starfield’s setting for sticking to harder sci-fi tropes, like its obvious inspiration of Interstellar.
As is now my tradition (this is my 10th of these posts! And it’s been 10 days since my last one of these posts, there’s gotta be some symmetry in that somewhere) you’ll know the drill....
I watched two Jobst videos, and the second one didn’t sit right with me, so it’s no surprise he played fast and loose with facts that might see him lose a court case.
As for what I’ve been playing, I just beat Borderlands 2 the other day, and now I’m working my way through the DLC before I move on to the Pre-Sequel and 3. It’s mostly a huge improvement over the first game, but they definitely unflattened the progression compared to the first game, which is something a lot of RPGs and adjacent games do. It’s never been my preference, and it comes with its own design problems, like how the game refused to give me some decent guns toward the end of the game and then suddenly gave me guns that trivialized the next part of the game.
I’m still in the middle of Kingdom Come: Deliverance as well, but I’ve only inched forward in it since the last of these posts.
And I’m always playing fighting games like Skullgirls, so that’s the free space on my Bingo card.
When I build a new computer sometime in the next year or so, I’ll probably end up buying the second-best AMD card available at the time, because that’s where there tends to be the best bang for my buck. But in reality, I’ll be using the full power of that card for only a handful of games over the lifetime of that machine, and I’ll spend most of my time playing a 2D game that came out in 2012. Yeah, you can absolutely get away with cheaper cards and have a great time.
I built my last PC in 2021 just accepting that graphics card prices would never come down anytime soon, and I paid about $1400 for one. They did come down, not long after. I can wait more patiently this time.
I doubt it. Maybe Grand Theft Auto and Mario Kart can get away with charging more, but a lot of games asking $70 aren’t finding many customers willing to pay that price right now.
No one can predict the future, especially not now, but things are clearly changing. Microsoft is getting messaging out there right now to let you know the ways that they’re rolling with the punches. The next Xbox, and corresponding handhelds, will in all likelihood just be thinly disguised PCs that absolutely let you just install Steam, Epic, etc. on them if you so choose. So in that world, when you can buy an Xbox that also plays PlayStation games that have released on PC, how does Sony compete with that? That’s very up in the air.
And for all the ways that Nintendo has historically handled consoles, they’re under new management now that may be open to doing things differently. The way they’re trying to press their market advantage at the moment, which was already going to result in fewer units sold, could be even further undone at the worst possible time for them by a stupid trade war. How will they choose to respond to that? Because bleeding money by sticking to their old ways isn’t going to be what happens. If they did burn to the ground, the insurance company that owns their intellectual property would dig them out of the ashes and sell them where they can make money again.
Yes, they charged for it years ago on the last gen system. This type of rerelease usually includes the DLC in the package so that they can go back to charging full price for a game that’s no longer in the zeitgeist and not worth as much as a brand new game.
Full title: Ubisoft says you “cannot complain” it shut down The Crew because you never actually owned it, and you weren’t “deceived” by the lack of an offline version “to access a decade-old, discontinued video game”...
My friend loves quoting a line from that show where HyperScape was uttered in the same breath as games like Call of Duty as a “mega franchise” to try to will its success into existence. That episode is only a few years old, but HyperScape is already shut down forever.
I can’t make you like it if you didn’t enjoy it the first time, but I thought it was a great FPS and RPG that didn’t waste enough time, like its contemporaries might, to become boring. If you gave it a few hours, you’ve probably seen the cut of its jib.
I have been avoiding multiplayer Valve games like Counter-Strike 2 and Team Fortress 2, due to their in-game economies that have created an underage gambling gray market, which Valve has done little about. However, I am on Linux, and the choices for multiplayer shooters are few. Besides, my small boycott is not stopping...
You might not like my answer, but I haven’t really played new FPS games in years, because basically none of them are doing what I want. I’m well served in basically every other genre right now, but these things are cyclical. We’re just getting through the era of indie FPS games inspired by Doom/Quake and other more maze-like shooters, and we may soon be entering the era where FPS games are inspired by my favorites. My multiplayer these days is usually fighting games, and the only ones that will give you trouble on Linux are Dragon Ball FighterZ and the upcoming 2XKO, both due to anti cheat.
As an aside, I’ll also say that where you put your time shouldn’t matter, if the product is free, for instance, but it does matter in online video games. Your presence in matchmaking is adding value for someone else who might spend money in the game, so you’d still be helping the causes of CS2 and TF2 just by playing on the official servers. For TF2, I think the code just went open source and there’s a revitalization project to bring it back to what it was like at launch? If so, that might be pre-loot-box, and playing that version of the game would help send the message you want to send. The same might apply to old versions of Counter-Strike.
Most profitable per employee is a different metric, and yes, they may very well be that, but that’s not what you said before. Boycotting all of Steam because some of Valve’s games do the thing they don’t like is a tough sell, rather than just not playing or paying into the offending games. I certainly don’t take issue with them taking a cut of every game sold on Steam, given all that they’ve built with those proceeds.
We already know it’s going to be on Switch 2 and Xbox, including Game Pass day 1. It’s not going to be exclusive, but at the very least, Microsoft paid handsomely for it.
Microsoft is bringing their own games to PlayStation at this point. It’s possible it’s kept off PlayStation, but I doubt it. Team Cherry knows what their game is worth, and that would be a massive buyout.
I don’t put much stock in games from unknown developers ahead of their release, but people who got access to this during the review period have been dying to get to the end of the embargo to talk about it.
There’s a lot here, and yes, the total addressable market for the Steam Deck is currently less than either Switch will sell in a single quarter, but the video game market is a very different thing now than it was in early 2017. The Switch was the only game in town; now it’s not. Live service games make up a significant amount of what the average consumer wants, and those customers largely play on PC for all sorts of reasons. The Switch 2 is no longer priced cheaply enough that it’s an easy purchase for your child to play with, abuse, and possibly break. The console market in general is in the most visible decline it’s ever been in, also for all sorts of reasons, and those handhelds from Sony and, at least, Microsoft are likely to just be handheld PCs as well.
Development on blockbuster system sellers has slowed way down, which comes hand in hand with there just not being as many of them, which makes buying yet another walled garden ecosystem less appealing. This walled garden has Pokemon and Mario Kart, so Nintendo’s not about to go bankrupt, but if we smash cut to 8 years from now and the Switch 2 sold more units than the Switch 1, I’d have to ask how on earth that happened, because it’s looking like just about an impossible outcome from where we stand now.
Also, there’s this quote:
But, although Microsoft has now been making Xbox consoles for over 20 years, it has consistently struggled to use that experience to make PC gaming more seamless, despite repeated attempts
Look, I’m no Microsoft fanboy. Windows 10 was an abomination that got me to switch to Linux, and Windows 11 is somehow even worse. The combination of Teams and Windows 11 has made my experience at work significantly worse than in years prior. However, credit where credit is due: Microsoft standardized controller inputs and glyphs in PC games about 20 years ago and created an incentive for it to be the same game that was made on consoles. It married more complex PC gaming designs with intuitive console gaming designs, and we no longer got bespoke “PC versions” and “console versions” of the same title that were actually dramatically different games. PC gaming today is better because of efforts taken from Microsoft, and that’s to say nothing of what other software solutions like DirectX have done before that.
Still, the reason a Microsoft handheld might succeed is because it does what the Steam Deck does without the limitations of incompatibility with kernel level anti cheat or bleeding edge software features like ray tracing (EDIT: also, Game Pass, the thing Microsoft is surely going to hammer home most). Personally, I don’t see a path for a Sony handheld to compete.
I don’t think the people gaming on smart phones are the same demographic that would compete with the Switch 2 or a handheld PC. It’s not a lot of data, but take a look at how poorly Apple’s initiative for AAA games on iPhone has been going. There are more problems with that market than just library. The PC market has been slowly and steadily growing for decades while the console market has shrunk.
I think a huge reason so many people with a Steam Deck also have a Switch is that the Switch had a 5 year head start. Hades did really well on Switch, but I can’t imagine anyone choosing that version of the game if they had a Steam Deck, and the same applies to Doom, The Witcher 3, etc. I have a Switch and a Steam Deck, but I haven’t used one of those machines in years.
There are thousands of games that come out every year, even after filtering out the asset flips and hentai games. A handful of those will have kernel-level anti cheat that make them incompatible by design. Fewer still will be pushing minimum specs that are too hefty for the Steam Deck to handle. So the thousands of remaining games are your use case for the Steam Deck, which tends to be cheaper than its competition and comes with a better OS. A device like those Android ones are fine for emulation, but you’re not playing newer releases on it, and newer releases are far, far, far more than just AAA games with hefty system requirements; it’s also Mouse: P.I. for Hire, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, Warside, Descenders Next, Dispatch, and on and on.
Don’t bemoan this just yet. Ubisoft’s name on the game is a red flag as always, but they made a pretty sick turn-based tactics game in the Ghost Recon universe on the 3DS, from designer Julian Gollup, formerly of original XCOM fame, now working on a game called Chip 'n Clawz vs. the Brainioids.
Besides, I don’t want a single player Rainbow Six. I want a Rainbow Six that’s either single player or co-op, with a proper planning phase. I’m about halfway there with the Door Kickers games.
I don’t really have it in me to hold enough of a grudge against a YouTuber to be one of their “haters”, but even I’m not a fan of Pirate Software due to the Stop Killing Games mess he put out. Still, the comment I responded to seemed completely disconnected from the video linked here.
I’ve been on Kubuntu for a while, but snaps are starting to bug me. When I build a new PC, I’m in the market for a new distro. Do you have a solid recommendation for a KDE-based distro that doesn’t have a Windows-esque update step during shutdown and restart?
I sampled Fedora a few years back, but, much like Windows, when it installs updates for certain core components, on shutdown and boot-up, it will have a “Please wait while we install updates” screen. Meanwhile, in Kubuntu, it installs everything in the background while I’m using my computer normally, and the change takes place on next restart, when I’m good and ready, with no additional time waiting at that update screen.
Does Debian have the same update woes I ran into with Fedora? Or if there was a way to tweak that in Fedora, I couldn’t find the option, and it was several years ago besides.
Take advantage of your store’s refund policy as needed, but I can count the games I’ve had compatibility problems with on one hand, and one of them is because Indiana Jones is pushing ray tracing as mandatory.
I think I have an inordinate amount of nostalgia for Metal Arms: Glitch in the System and 007: Agent Under Fire. Both are locked to consoles. The campaign and multiplayer of Metal Arms are all-timers, and while the campaign is fairly basic for Agent Under Fire, the multiplayer, especially with all of the modifiers turned on, is some of my favorite FPS multiplayer ever.
I’d also like a PC version of Soul Calibur II with rollback, please, Bandai-Namco. I don’t care if the series stops there; this is really all I want or need from this franchise. Especially if you can just reskin Link and put his functionality in the game alongside Heihachi and Spawn.
What's a cancelled game you really miss? angielski
The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remaster is real - Eurogamer (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
Eurogamer understands Bethesda’s current plan is to shadow drop the game next week on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, including via Xbox Game Pass.
Baldur's Gate 3 - The Final Patch: New Subclasses, Photo Mode, and Cross-Play (store.steampowered.com) angielski
Steam Deck / Gaming News #10 angielski
As is now my tradition (this is my 10th of these posts! And it’s been 10 days since my last one of these posts, there’s gotta be some symmetry in that somewhere) you’ll know the drill....
Metro 2033 Redux is free to claim on GOG for the next two days (www.gog.com) angielski
PS5 price to rise in Europe, Australia and New Zealand (blog.playstation.com) angielski
“Europe” also includes the UK. It’s worth noting that GTA 6 will move a lot of PS5s when it releases.
‘If it’s the only place to play Mario, you buy it’: Former PlayStation boss reacts to $80 Nintendo games (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
Marathon | Gameplay Reveal Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
Ex-PlayStation exec argues 'only the dog can hear' differences between consoles and gaming PCs: 'They're all quite similar' (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's Nintendo Switch 2 Edition Won't Include the DLC (www.ign.com) angielski
Nintendo somehow keeps finding a way to make this worse
Ubisoft says you "cannot complain" it shut down The Crew because you never actually owned it, and you weren't "deceived" by the lack of an offline version (www.gamesradar.com) angielski
Full title: Ubisoft says you “cannot complain” it shut down The Crew because you never actually owned it, and you weren’t “deceived” by the lack of an offline version “to access a decade-old, discontinued video game”...
The Outer Worlds 2: 11 Minutes of Exclusive Gameplay – IGN First (www.youtube.com) angielski
Should we boycott games with loot boxes? angielski
I have been avoiding multiplayer Valve games like Counter-Strike 2 and Team Fortress 2, due to their in-game economies that have created an underage gambling gray market, which Valve has done little about. However, I am on Linux, and the choices for multiplayer shooters are few. Besides, my small boycott is not stopping...
Hades 2 will be a Nintendo Switch 2 console exclusive at launch (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
(Console exclusive means it’s coming to Switch + PC, but not on other consoles on release)
Switch 2 game-key cards won’t be account- or console-locked (www.polygon.com) angielski
Blue Prince | Review Thread (91/100 OpenCritic) angielski
Game Information...
Are PC handhelds like Steam Deck really competitors for Switch 2? (www.polygon.com) angielski
EXCLUSIVE - Ubisoft is Developing a Turn-Based Tactics Game Set in The Rainbow 6 Universe (insider-gaming.com) angielski
They’ll do anything to not make another Singleplayer Rainbow6 game.
PirateSoftware's Take On $80 Games (youtube.com) angielski
6* months away now. If you're on 10, do you plan to upgrade? Make the jump to Linux? angielski
I really need these games ported to Steam. What do y'all have on your lists? angielski
I'm currently scraping the Steam barrel and I could really use these ports:...