ziabice about 3 hours ago
The game's great, but they should fix the inventory (is a complete mess, seems one from a game in the '90), the font size of the UI and they should let me see the cards/stats of every member of my party, even the ones which are in my camp, so I can decide what items or enhancements are best suited for them.
This is basically my only nitpick, too, playing with a controller. D:OS2 was better. I don't need the character stuff taking up half the screen of inventory management, especially when it isn't done in a way that really enhances your information on the utility of equipment to your character.
Inventory should be its own section, so you can use the triggers to hop between tabs of different types of gear. I'd also like it if they took inspiration from Elden Ring for what it does display on the characters. It's also not perfect, but letting you cycle which info sheets show in the extra panes provides a good balance between making a lot of information readily accessible without making it a chore to find.
I don't see what's objectionable here. This isn't them saying they're going to start scanning every private chat you have to look for anything mildly controversial to take action against. This is saying that when you use their public-facing service and get reported for being an obnoxious douche to other users who are matched with you when trying to play their games, they have a standardized process so you know where you stand.
They have it recorded. If they're repeatedly upholding reports through appeals, you probably deserve to be reported.
And yes, you absolutely should lose access to multiplayer period if they're forced to ban you. The idea that just losing chat access is a suitable punishment for repeatedly being a shitbag is fucking absurd.
Imagine a game banning you for being toxic and then steam banning you from all multiplayer games. Boggles the mind.
If Valve had the staff and Valve was the one handling bans from games, that's exactly how it should work.
People who aren't consistently making the experience of everyone around them worse don't routinely get banned, and a proper appeals system is more than enough. Being online doesn't mean that there aren't real people on the other end that you're harassing and treating like shit and ruining their gaming experience. "If you make an alt and go online, you lose offline access too" wouldn't be an overreach. It would just be good policy. You don't have a right to harass people with impunity.
You're conflating two things. This isn't developers. It's Microsoft.
If Valve was in charge of bans, a literal lifetime ban for you as a human being would be entirely justifiable and fair as a punishment for inappropriate conduct in interactions with other players.
I’m a non-gamer looking for recommendations please. I saw the Quake II refresh and it makes me want to explore/roam some 3D environments again. But I’m really not into the intensity of any of the shooting games....
I have not played it, but people rave about The Outer Wilds and it sounds like it fits your needs.
It's not at all my thing, but search the term "walking simulator" to find stuff like that.
Have you tried some of the games you're talking about on the "story" difficulty modes? Most have moved to calling it something like that instead of "easy", and I'm at the opposite extreme, but a lot of them are designed to let you experience the world and story without the pressures of combat.
If you have access to a switch, Mario Odyssey or Kirby and the Forgotten Land have some "combat" but you can skip a lot of it, and they're made to be beatable by kids. Other 3D platformers exist in similar veins as well.
Just thought I’d share something I thought was pretty interesting. I have a mother in law who is… well let’s just say she’s a stereotypical older mom who doesn’t own a computer, just an iPad. During the pandemic, she started getting into Nintendo games and bought herself a Switch. Fast forward a few years later and...
I was interested in buying a Steam Deck… Until I discovered all the (apparently) better alternatives. Asus Rog Ally, OneXPlayer, Aya Neo etc… I like the idea of an handheld console and obviously I would like to have a device that can run almost everything, so the Windows based handhelds seem better than the Steam Deck. Is it...
But I definitely wouldn't swap it straight up for any of the rest.
The Deck is big and heavy compared to the field, but it uses the size for a couple of purposes:
It has full controller sized everything (this is without measuring; it feels extremely comparable to the Xbox controller, though), plus the touchpads that are IMO an absolute requirement for interacting with the OS at all. Using any joystick to move a mouse cursor is terrible, and you will have to interact with the OS. You can work around this by only managing stuff at home with a mouse and keyboard plugged in and launching everything through a controller friendly launcher, but it's a headache.
The Ally has the same 40WH battery the Steam Deck does (per a 30 second search), but if you go smaller you almost definitely have to go smaller. On a similar note, much of the rest of the space is cooling. If something is advertising comparable specs in a meaningfully smaller package, they're sacrificing one or the other. It's just physics. The Ally can kick up the power to higher top end performance, but it's at a higher power draw and you can get down to ~2 hours battery life on the deck. Again, the basic limitations of physics say that's going to make a dent in the already tight battery life constraints if you use the power. (Yes, having it while plugged in is still nice.)
The shape is really comfortable. It does take some awareness to avoid resting the weight on your elbows, but once you recognize that you can comfortably play long sessions (compared to the switch, but a lot of the slightly smaller ones have very comparable designs because they're the only way to make a real dent without shrinking the screen).
You can also install Windows without major issue if that's your preference, though if you don't play games that choose to block you out for anticheat you probably don't need to.
Ultimately, all of these devices have to make compromises. It's a handheld and there's only one real supplier for chips to make it with (unless you go the basically Android only ARM route). Steam chose an extremely balanced approach such that you don't really feel any of them. Others chose to push harder to one metric or another, but because of the bottom line constraints of the form factor, they had to sacrifice something else to do it. It's possible you prefer the other approaches better, and that's fine. Valve will be perfectly happy if enough good options become available that there's no need for a second deck. Their goal was to make handheld PC gaming a thing (and cut down their reliance on windows), and they were extremely successful at both.
There are no other football games that are even respectable efforts, and despite the rhetoric, Madden is actually a very good football sim that continually gets developed from year to year.
Reviews are extremely lazily done and about game modes. The game modes have seen minimal development since the emergence of ultimate team, and people are justifiably unhappy with that.
Literally not one major outlet is evaluating the actual simulation of the sport, which very clearly has massive investment from year to year and sees serious improvements to complexity and fidelity in each instance, with stagnation only coming when it hits the wall of what console hardware can do.
I've seen football simulator. It might maybe be competitive on physics with decade ago Madden, but even that's generous. If you just want a vehicle for franchise mode it might work for you, but if you want to play football it's just not close. Madden isn't perfect as a football sim either, because the physics of football are insanely complex, but there's nothing out there that's better than "kind of close to a decade ago" technically. You're much more likely to make something tolerable leaning into the discrepancy and making an arcade-y NFL Street knockoff, and that isn't there either.
the simulation of the sport has seen an increase in bugs in recent years,
This is a ridiculous lie. It's not even in the general vicinity of reality.
The absolute best mainstream review of Madden in existence is a many times less competent version of that platformer review where the guy couldn't get through the tutorial. You unconditionally are not qualified to give any opinion in any context if you don't understand the mechanics and strategy of the sport.
There will always be bugs. It's the nature of a complex simulation with emergent gameplay.
But anyone telling you that they're increasing doesn't know what they're talking about. They're increasingly small edge cases as the simulation gets very obviously more advanced and complex every iteration. It's not minor and it's not subtle. If you play ten hours a year with a middle school football level of understanding the improvements are impossible to miss.
Any review from someone who doesn't watch football every week all season is the exact same quality of someone who's never played an FPS reviewing a tactical shooter. it has literally zero value in any possible context and it's an embarrassment to your organization to publish it.
The reviews are what they are because there are literally zero gaming outlets who respect the existence of sports games or cover them the way they cover anything else.
I play hundreds of games a year and have literally never once seen a player t pose on the field. It's not a thing that's a normal or frequent occurrence, and anyone who tells you it is isn't just incompetent. They're deliberately and maliciously lying to you, and in and of itself it's incontrovertible proof that their entire review is fraud.
At the start of this console generation, Microsoft made a surprising decision. Rather than split its consoles between disc and digital-only like Sony, it actually split them between power level. The Xbox Series S was cheaper, but lacked the horsepower of the more expensive Series X. It was meant to be a bridge between...
Larian has delayed the release of Baldur’s Gate 3, currently on pace to possibly be 2023’s Game of the Year, until they can figure out how to make split-screen work on Series S.
The switch is a handheld and the ports it gets are for that reason. It wouldn't have sold enough to get basically anything third party if it was the same device without portability (see BOTW as a system seller when it literally already existed), and it still doesn't really get that many current gen demanding ports.
The fact that there's a worse Xbox you're required to support when the Xbox already lacks some of the asset loading tricks of the PS5 and has less units sold on top of it isn't something developers can just ignore. BG3 really isn't all that demanding for a next gen open world game, and compromising your vision to force it onto a worse console isn't something people want to do.
Parity here isn't on a scale. It's a binary trait. Either they are the same or one is worse than the other. The shitty XBOX does not have CPU parity with the real one, and it's a serious limitation that effectively means that the "good" Xbox also has that worse CPU in terms of game design. It will obviously still get some games, but it's losing games that it would otherwise get because it has nothing in common with a next gen system.
Split screen being the specific thing that BG3 is struggling to do isn't the point. It's merely a symptom. For a next gen open world game, split screen BG3 is still not that demanding. The fact that all the real action is turn based makes it far easier to make run than a similarly dense real time game with real time physics demands, and the fact that the Xbox S can't handle it is a very strong example that it's a piece of shit.
It has no strengths, and the install base is shit.
The switch only gets away with being a last gen console because it's a handheld. The Series S has all the performance benefits of a last gen console with the install base of one that released 5 minutes ago.
There is no "the way they do split screen". BG3 while running split screen is not a game that should make a current gen console struggle in any way. It makes the S struggle because it's not a current gen worth of hardware.
Larian has delayed the release of Baldur’s Gate 3, currently on pace to possibly be 2023’s Game of the Year, until they can figure out how to make split-screen work on Series S.
Yes, they should be able to say "this game doesn't run on series S" because it's significantly worse than the other options and it doesn't deserve the work it takes. It doesn't even have CPU parity, which is a much bigger deal than less GPU cores.
I’ve had a great time playing some of the ‘smaller’ games lately: Dredge (adore this game so much), Dave the Diver, Cloudpunk, Stray, Octopath II, Observer....
I haven't beat all of them but Dig 1 and 2 are definitely way shorter than I wanted (I'd pay full price for an endless mode DLC lol).
Except Hades, Supergiant games aren't super long. Bastion and Transistor are decent, and Pyre might be a little longer but is pretty unique.
I'm interpreting your list of games as semi-casual with a strong unique flavor. The messenger is a little harder than the others but still not super long.
We are now less than one month away from the launch of Starfield, the new space-exploration RPG from Bethesda Game Studios – makers of The Elder Scrolls series as well as Fallout 3 and 4. And after an excellent and very well-received 45-minute Starfield Direct presentation in June, hype is running high.
I didn't love fallout, but mostly because of the dinky crafted weapons and their handling and the fact that you almost had to use VATS to make it work. They're damn good at making giant worlds worth exploring, and the gunplay looks a lot more fluid than fallout. I like the premise of highly customizable shipbuilding a lot more than fallout's settlements, too. It's far from guaranteed to be great, but "sci-fi Skyrim with enough engine improvements for guns to feel OK" is extremely promising to me. There's a reason Skyrim is still selling copies a decade later when the mechanics are super limited by age, and if they're able to bring the same world building to space exploration I'm all for it.
While Baldur's Gate 3 is being widely celebrated by fans and developers alike, some are panicking that this could set new expectations from fans. Good.
Then again, it might have just preemptively killed Starfield.
They're pretty different games. They're both RPGs, and there's some overlap, but turn based is ultimately very different gameplay than action, and one isn't going to scratch the itch for the other to a lot of us.
I'm fully expecting to go pretty hard at both, and BG3 might have me engaged enough to not jump straight into Starfield at launch, but I need immersive 3D games, too, and except Elden Ring which is it's own thing (even if it does pretty comfortably check the boxes of ARPG), I've been waiting for something of comparable scope to Skyrim that doesn't have a fatal flaw for a long time. Even as old and janky as it is now, it's still a scale that's only matched by a handful of games in the decade since.
It does run on steam deck (though at lower settings with FSR to get 40 mostly stable).
Open world games with some complexity generally take a decent amount of power. You have to load a good number of surrounding objects at any given time, with a pretty wide view on the zoomed out view. There are also other characters/animals doing stuff, environmental effects, and a healthy dose of passive checks on the environment against various traits of your party to see if your character identifies any of the secrets all over the world.
Frankly I think that's laughable. The Witcher 3 is fine production quality wise, but it's not even sort of competitive with BG3. The main quest line vs BG3 side quests, maybe, but there's a huge step down to the animation quality of anything else.
A lot of the storytelling is through 2D scenes giving the illusion of being animated by moving pieces around (which does the job perfectly fine), and a lot of the side quest stuff is just plopping one character without any impressive animation in one spot just dropped in the world.
In BG3, there are a bunch of minor side quests where there are several characters interacting with each other in the 3D world, and your decision making branches branch harder. Just the sheer number of otherwise "minor" interactions with fully animated, voiced, and narrated actions is crazy.
I was planning on paying a rogue, paladin, or warlock (based on my tabletop characters), but this article nearly has me convinced. I am waiting for the PS5 release, so any agreement or dissension from my PC friends? Other class recommendations?...
I'm skeptical of any article like this on its face. The whole beauty of a well done RPG, especially a CRPG, is that you get choices on how to build your character and how you handle encounters and can be successful with many of them.
If bard is the most fun for you, awesome. If it's "objectively better", the game is flawed.
When I got the XSX recently, it was so I can play Starfield when it comes out. That was basically the only reason. I did not realize the extensive backwards compatibility that this thing has. But since getting it, I’ve been playing FF13 trilogy, Fable games, Dragon Age series, Lost Odyssey, etc. Basically all games of note...
Only if you dramatically lower your standards for what backwards compatibility means. PS3 emulators might be progressing, but they're far from the native hardware in actual functionality, especially with games that actually used the features of the hardware that made the PS3 a powerhouse.
Emulators can wave that away as "it is what it is". Sony advertising backwards compatibility couldn't.
I still won't buy stuff there, but this is a far better way to make a storefront interesting than Epic. Instead of locking everything behind exclusive deals to try to force people to use your platform, they're adding actual meaningful benefits to using their storefront. Cross ownership is nice. Game pass is nice. That's how you provide competition.
Just for the heads up, this thread will probably have a lot of spoilers. I’m gonna try to go vague on spoilers for anybody that hasn’t played Hotline Miami 2. If you’ve played the game, you’ll probably know what I mean, but I’m going to say some purposefully esoteric shit to keep it out of full spoiler territory....
The little mermaid side story was sad. Then, I spent the entire second act just grinding along to get the best character in my party back only to end up super depressed about it when that didn't happen.
What they need to do is utilize steam's branch feature to allow smaller installs for low resolution assets and with minimal language support without an opt in to other languages needed.
The steam deck really has me wishing Steam had pushed for that as part of fully verified (or have "great on deck" be a tier above and only for games that do the extras like that). So much space is spent on things I don't need at 800p
By now, it’s well known that Pokémon Go sucks. My biggest problem with it is just how shallow it is. It’s like a minimum viable product with a vaguely addicting gameplay loop....
Pretty much every problem boils down to “but implementing this would’ve made us lose money”
Pokestops could’ve been “typed”. Like “hospital” could’ve been a free heal or have better healing item rates. “Museum” could’ve been the place to get fossil Pokémon, or maybe revive fossils that you find from regular stops. Maybe a grocery store would’ve had better item rates. A school could’ve been a move relearner. Maybe some Pokémon only evolve at church, or at an amusement park. The lures could’ve done something similar, turning normal stops into typed stops
I'm glad they didn't, but they could have definitely done ad deals with some large franchises and small businesses to make their locations have special features.
I meant sticking core functionality like the suggestions I responded to. "Oh, it's so sad your pokemon got injured and will be out of commission for 6 weeks. Luckily for you, if you get in line at a Starbucks then stay in the shop for 10 minutes, or go through the drive through, he'll be feeling good as new." "Your pokemon laid an egg. It will hatch in 9 months, or you can spend an hour inside this concert venue to get it now."
For me it’s first person puzzle games. I can think of maybe a dozen off the top of my head that came out in the last decade. I especially enjoy when they’re open world. The ability to just quit a puzzle that’s stumped you and go try something else for a little bit is incredibly refreshing.
I love hearing about unique takes on game mechanics. Someone recently convinced me that limited inventories are kind of abused currently and that unlimited inventory systems would give more player choices.
If Dark Souls had easier difficulties, they wouldn't have the reputation they do. People would turn down the difficulty instead of learning the bosses and how to beat them.
The games aren't as hard as people make them out to be. They just force you to adjust and learn to play in control. There's a reason people can play them with all kinds of goofy input options, though. If you pay attention to what enemies do and don't blindly spam attack every second, they're all beatable
I think that's a matter of preference. I don't think many video games have good writing (even compared to a lot of casual popular "beach read" type books), so I get my story telling from however many audiobooks I can squeeze into 2x 40-50 hours a week. I want challenges in games and I want distinct fail states to punish failure.
A Japanese video game walkthrough listing sleeping pills as one of their recommended methods to get high scores in Pokémon Sleep has gone viral on Japanese Twitter recently. The mention of sleeping aid has since been deleted from the site.
I got a Quest 2 a while back and played around with it a bit. There were some entertaining games like “I expect you to die” and the first portion of “Lone Echo”, but mostly they just felt like proof of concept demos and I quickly lost interest....
The unskippable "boring" introduction we've all seen 1000 times in VR is wildly better. You really feel like you're being carted through a town, hearing people all around you talk their shit. Then the dragon.
I didn't actually get that far because space constraints became an issue with where I had my setup, but going to the little town then white run felt like an adventure on its own.
Baldur's Gate 3 is going to get some big updates (www.gamingonlinux.com)
Xbox introduces new strike system to curtail bad behavior (www.theverge.com) angielski
First / Third Person without the Shooting/Combat? (kbin.social) angielski
I’m a non-gamer looking for recommendations please. I saw the Quake II refresh and it makes me want to explore/roam some 3D environments again. But I’m really not into the intensity of any of the shooting games....
The Steam Deck is changing how normies think of gaming PCs.
Just thought I’d share something I thought was pretty interesting. I have a mother in law who is… well let’s just say she’s a stereotypical older mom who doesn’t own a computer, just an iPad. During the pandemic, she started getting into Nintendo games and bought herself a Switch. Fast forward a few years later and...
Steam Deck VS rivals
I was interested in buying a Steam Deck… Until I discovered all the (apparently) better alternatives. Asus Rog Ally, OneXPlayer, Aya Neo etc… I like the idea of an handheld console and obviously I would like to have a device that can run almost everything, so the Windows based handhelds seem better than the Steam Deck. Is it...
Madden should not be 70$ (lemmy.world) angielski
Microsoft’s Xbox Series S Parity Demands Are Now Handing Sony Free Wins (www.forbes.com) angielski
At the start of this console generation, Microsoft made a surprising decision. Rather than split its consoles between disc and digital-only like Sony, it actually split them between power level. The Xbox Series S was cheaper, but lacked the horsepower of the more expensive Series X. It was meant to be a bridge between...
Microsoft’s Xbox Series S Parity Demands Are Now Handing Sony Free Wins (www.forbes.com) angielski
Larian has delayed the release of Baldur’s Gate 3, currently on pace to possibly be 2023’s Game of the Year, until they can figure out how to make split-screen work on Series S.
Microsoft’s Xbox Series S Parity Demands Are Now Handing Sony Free Wins (www.forbes.com) angielski
Larian has delayed the release of Baldur’s Gate 3, currently on pace to possibly be 2023’s Game of the Year, until they can figure out how to make split-screen work on Series S.
29 Best Retro Handhelds Of 2023 [All Reviewed] (retrododo.com)
Do you have one of these? Do you use it? I want one but I’m afraid it’s going to end up another plastic brick in a drawer.
Overwatch 2 is now the #1 of the worst Steam games (feddit.de)
steam250.com/bottom100
Suggestions for smaller-y games if I liked _______ angielski
I’ve had a great time playing some of the ‘smaller’ games lately: Dredge (adore this game so much), Dave the Diver, Cloudpunk, Stray, Octopath II, Observer....
Starfield Is the Biggest Game for Xbox Since Halo 5 - IGN (www.ign.com) angielski
We are now less than one month away from the launch of Starfield, the new space-exploration RPG from Bethesda Game Studios – makers of The Elder Scrolls series as well as Fallout 3 and 4. And after an excellent and very well-received 45-minute Starfield Direct presentation in June, hype is running high.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is Causing Some Developers to Panic (youtube.com) angielski
While Baldur's Gate 3 is being widely celebrated by fans and developers alike, some are panicking that this could set new expectations from fans. Good.
'We haven't started on an expansion' to Baldur's Gate 3, Larian says, but it's not completely off the table (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
A level 12-20 D&D adventure would pose major new design challenges.
‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Prepared For 100,000 Concurrent Players, They’ve Gotten 700,000 (www.forbes.com) angielski
Bards are Baldur's Gate 3's best class and I can't imagine playing it as anything else (www.pcgamer.com)
I was planning on paying a rogue, paladin, or warlock (based on my tabletop characters), but this article nearly has me convinced. I am waiting for the PS5 release, so any agreement or dissension from my PC friends? Other class recommendations?...
Backwards compatibility is the best feature of Xbox, and I don't understand why Sony is so far behind on this
When I got the XSX recently, it was so I can play Starfield when it comes out. That was basically the only reason. I did not realize the extensive backwards compatibility that this thing has. But since getting it, I’ve been playing FF13 trilogy, Fable games, Dragon Age series, Lost Odyssey, etc. Basically all games of note...
You can play Starfield on PC and Xbox even if you only buy it once (www.pcgamesn.com) angielski
Most emotional moments in games? (SPOILERS)
Just for the heads up, this thread will probably have a lot of spoilers. I’m gonna try to go vague on spoilers for anybody that hasn’t played Hotline Miami 2. If you’ve played the game, you’ll probably know what I mean, but I’m going to say some purposefully esoteric shit to keep it out of full spoiler territory....
Baldur's Gate 3 is a 122GB download and you can't preload any of it (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Larian has finally confirmed that preloading won't be available, apparently because of a limitation with Steam.
What Pokémon Go could've been. angielski
By now, it’s well known that Pokémon Go sucks. My biggest problem with it is just how shallow it is. It’s like a minimum viable product with a vaguely addicting gameplay loop....
What are some game genres / styles you like that aren't being made anymore, or are being mde but not very often? angielski
For me it’s first person puzzle games. I can think of maybe a dozen off the top of my head that came out in the last decade. I especially enjoy when they’re open world. The ability to just quit a puzzle that’s stumped you and go try something else for a little bit is incredibly refreshing.
What game mechanics do you love and hate? angielski
I love hearing about unique takes on game mechanics. Someone recently convinced me that limited inventories are kind of abused currently and that unlimited inventory systems would give more player choices.
Pet peeve, games that won't let you save
I wish all games would just let you save whenever you want to! Why is using checkpoints and auto saves so common?...
Pokémon Sleep: Japanese walkthrough site lists “sleeping pills” as a tool for real competitive sleepers, but quickly backtracks (automaton-media.com) angielski
A Japanese video game walkthrough listing sleeping pills as one of their recommended methods to get high scores in Pokémon Sleep has gone viral on Japanese Twitter recently. The mention of sleeping aid has since been deleted from the site.
Techland's next chapter and the road ahead (techland.net) angielski
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Are there any good VR games yet?
I got a Quest 2 a while back and played around with it a bit. There were some entertaining games like “I expect you to die” and the first portion of “Lone Echo”, but mostly they just felt like proof of concept demos and I quickly lost interest....