I’d say fantastically. I went back to it for a bit last month.
I played the Legendary edition on the Steam Deck. Graphically, I think it’s fine (it’s way better than how I played it on the PS3 originally). The draw distance was always a strength, I think the Legendary edition included some visual upgrades, and being a game so much older than the Deck it runs at max settings 60FPS with no problem, so it looks better than it did on the PS3/360/most PC’s in 2011. I also think games from that era really hold up well because the generational jumps weren’t quite as big- the consoles had HDMI and a lot of games aimed for at least 720p, if not 1080p. Contemporaries like Assassin’s Creed, BioShock, Uncharted, and the Last of Us are all similarly still pretty good looking. Audio quality more or less peaked too, at least for stereo.
There’s also the Anniversary edition, which I have on PS4 but not PC. It looks more modern- tons of fancy lighting effects and upgrades textures. The models and terrain are still a bit low-poly, the animations a bit stiff, but overall I think it’s good.
The combat is simple- it always was, even compared to its contemporaries in 2011. A lot of people just call it bad, but I actually like the game design of Skyrim’s combat. Success or failure largely is just a preparedness check- is your combination of character level, skill level, equipment, buffs, follower, and consumable items good enough to get you through the fight(s)? It’s about resource management and good use of downtime. It’s not about mechanical proficiency or complexity, and I think that can be a good thing. I don’t have to be sober to play Skyrim. I don’t have to dodge and block for 3-5 business days before I get a turn to attack. It’s a power fantasy- ebony great sword go ‘brrr’.
And I think that helps the roleplay too. Mechanically intensive soulslikes can be fun too, but I find they feel fun in a more arcade-y way. Using mechanical proficiency to defeat an enemy your character is underpowered for feels great as a player, but for me that also kind of ruins the immersion and reminds me that it’s a videogame. To apply the same concept to something other than combat- it’s similar to replaying a game where the player has all of the knowledge the character doesn’t - where the best items are, which direction to go, which NPC’s to kill before they betray you, etc. Speed running stuff. Which is great in its own right, just not what I’m always looking for.
Then the quests. There’s a lot of quests, some better than others, but on the whole I would say they’re pretty good. The main quests early on are basically tricking you into visitng all of the major cities and points of interest across the map, introducing you to all of the factions and mechanics. A lot of quests are just “go clear that dungeon, either to kill someone hiding there or get an item”. Which is fine because clearing dungeons is fun- there’s a good variety of enemy types and dungeon themes. There is a LOT of voice acting for it’s time, and it’s mostly pretty good. Not on par with something like Hades, but still good.
The puzzles are notoriously simple, but they function more as a way to change the pace and have downtime in dungeons. They aren’t supposed to be hard.
On the whole, Skyrim probably isn’t (and never was) the deepest game in any one area. Soulslikes have deeper combat. Plenty of games have more intriguing plots and better characters. The lore is strong in the Elder Scrolls, but Skyrim only contributed a small part to what was built by other games. The crafting system is… Okay. There are hundreds of books in-game, but most are only a couple of pages. The leveling system is less complex than Morrowind or Oblivion. Everything is just as deep as it needs to be and no deeper. And that makes everything really intuitive.
You can’t ruin a build with a bad decision. You can’t get screwed by a bad loot drop. You don’t need to min-max to feel powerful. You don’t need to find one activity that gives a lot of XP to farm to build other skills. You can’t kill 100 rats to level up your lockpicking- you just need to pick locks to get better at lockpicking.
I also don’t mess with mods. I tried it out years ago and found it just wasn’t worth the effort of dealing with a mod manager. I find most mods are trying to turn Skyrim into another game. Shit posts like adding Shrek or Thomas the Tank. Adding ridiculous anime swords and big-tiddied women with bikini armor. Re-creating other games like Ocarina of Time or Morrowind in the Skyrim engine. Adding guns. Adding a bunch of fetch quests with whole novels of text and no voice acting. I’m sure there are some decent ones out there (especially visual and UI improvements) but the process of modding is much less convenient than Steam Workshop games. I haven’t seen anything that looks good enough to merit going to a 3rd party website to download stuff and fuss with a mod manager for.
Also, I find vanilla Skyrim is pretty stable and bugs are rare. Some of that is from things being patched over time, but also I think Skyrim just received an unearned reputation upon release. The rag doll physics cause a lot of chaos, but I don’t know that I’d call that a bug. There’s the occasional clipping. Even back on the PS3 where I first played it, I’d say 80% of issues were solved by reloading the area I was in, with another 19% solved by restarting the game. There were some interesting exploits (Fortify Restoration potions used to be broken, there are still item dup’ing exploits with merchants, you can access the hidden “chests” that the game uses for storing merchant inventory in the overworld, etc) but I find most of them are things you really need to go out of your way to find, and actually can make the game more fun if that’s what you’re going for.
True, but I’m not sure how closely Xbox works with the rest of Microsoft. As far as I know you have never been able to put Windows on an Xbox or Xbox System Software on a PC officially. In contrast, the PS2 and PS3 had official Linux support (which Sony tried to remove from. The PS3 for security concerns and got sued for).
Microsoft has a hardware division yes, but barely. It’s basically just Xbox, which is failing, and the Surface, which is also failing. They already lost the Mobile market. They seem content to have their laptop and desktop focus just be getting Microsoft software on other hardware.
I kind of get the impression that’s the direction they are moving. They simply haven’t done well in hardware, and their more successful business areas are the ones that are putting Microsoft software onto 3rd party hardware.
I’m still not convinced GamePass is really going to work, but Xbox and Microsoft seem to be. And while I don’t like subscriptions in general, GamePass definitely surpasses any competitor. So rather than roll out new hardware, I think they are moving towards putting GamePass on the Switch 2 and PS5 or PS6. Microsoft has instructions published for getting Xbox Cloud Gaming working on the Deck. I think they want that on the handhelds from AYA, AYN, Asus, Logitech, GPD, and everything else.
They might want to make Windows a viable option for those handhelds, but… They also might not. That would be a huge amount of work for them to compete with Steam. And we’ve seen how unpopular Windows 11 has been. They’ve been downsizing the teams working on Windows for years and focusing more on Edge and AI. I get the impression they just want the Xbox division to lower costs and become profitable at this point.
hHs that even ever been so much as rumored? There were leaks from various suppliers hinting at the Deck and Switch long before they were in develop. It’s possible I missed something, or possible they just haven’t leaked anything, but so far I don’t have a reason to think they would be trying to enter that space.
Microsoft seems to be abandoning that space. The Windows phone died ages ago, and the Surface seems to be languishing.
Operating System. Would it be windows? There are already plenty of handhelds that run windows, and usually the biggest problem people have with them is that windows sucks for that application and they replace the OS. Would they have a custom OS like the Xbox? What would it bring to the table that Steam LS doesn’t? Valve already put in a ton of work to get Steam OS as good as it is- would Xbox/Microsoft do that too? If it just uses Steam OS, what does the hardware bring that differentiates it from the Deck?
Software. I don’t know what the unit cost of a Deck is, but I’m guessing it’s pretty close to the sales price. The Deck does not need to be a profit center for Valve as long as it drives software sales on Steam. The Microsoft store has already failed- would an Xbox store on such a device manage to be profitable? Would it be locked down and incompatible with Steam? Maybe they could partner with Epic to compete? I’m just having a hard time seeing Xbox/Microsoft enter that business model.
What might be more likely is something like the Portal or G-Cloud. An ARM-based, lightweight product designed to be used for cloud gaming with GamePass. Maaaaaybe some local streaming from your PC or Xbox too. Even with that they would be competing against other products and pretty much every smartphone and tablet. There might be room to move some units, but similar to Sony I don’t see that being huge.
Were they common? Well, just look at the GameBoy pocket. At the time it was designed (it released 7 years after the original GameBoy) there were a lot of people at Nintendo who wanted to get rid of the port entirely because it was barely ever used. They ended up compromising by using a different, smaller, cheaper port that needed an adapter to work with the regular ones.
Which was kind of a pain for some people because the GB Pocket and Pokemon both came out in Japan in 1996 lol.
Well… Yes pretty much. I don’t count Creation Club items because they weren’t made by Bethesda.
I don’t turn them on. As far as I know you can find free alternatives for most of what is in the creation club- you’re just paying for to support the independent creators, the convenience, and I suppose the service of Bethesda filtering out some of the worst chaff of the mod scene.
Similarly, I don’t count the other big fixes and upgrades in the Special Edition or Anniversary edition as DLC. Bethesda was rolling out patches for the original game before then, and visual upgrades are more in line with what I would call mods/remaster/remake than DLC.
“Horse armor is not bad. I think horse armor is fine. The price point, at the time, was the issue. We felt, it’s probably worth this,” he said. “I won’t say who at Microsoft said, ‘Well, that’s less than we sell a theme for; a wallpaper is more than that. You should charge this; you can always lower it.’ We were like, ‘Okay!’”
Also it’s weird to me that Bethesda gets crap for their DLC’s. Oblivion’s horse armor was bad, but it wasn’t the worst or the first. Heck, Morrowind had expansions. MapleStory is pretty widely cited as the earliest form of micros transactions. And most of Bethesda’s DLC’s have been great- all 3 of Skyrim’s were ton of content relatively cheap.
I actually think it’s worse for Meta to take a loss on hardware. That tells me that they are expecting to make that money back and then some elsewhere. It’s possible that they are just hoping to make that money back through software sales (similar to Sony), but I just have a hard time trusting the company. The “Meta” name is such a turnoff that I don’t want a piece of their hardware in my house, let alone on my network, so I haven’t even looked at their offerings.
Also, I disagree with the notion that “for a budget rig somethings got to give”. The answers for a “budget” rig are… Nintendo Labo. The AR games with the 3DS. The various ways of strapping a smart phone to one’s face. Things that the VR community scoffs at, but the average consumer is much more likely to purchase.
I think the “budget” option is to just… Not use VR. For me, the adapter isn’t a huge deal. They just cut the price by $100 earlier this year. The Horizon bundle, plus an adapter, comes out to $560. The Valve Index can vary based on the setup, but I figure that’ll be at least $1k. The HTC Vive products seems way more focused on business than gaming, and all of their headsets are >$1k anyways.
So for me I have 3 options: wait for Valve or HTC to make more value-oriented products, get the PSVR2, or just not do VR. And I’m perfectly at peace with just abstaining from VR- I certainly don’t regret that I didn’t buy a 3DTV for example. But this PC adapter has suddenly made the PSVR2 an option where it previously was not one.
In this entire article, not even a single attempt to quantity the number of complaints.
This sounds to me like an extremely small minority. It appears as though Fallout 4 has sold over 25 million copies, and there’s… Maybe a couple dozen people on the Internet complaining?
For me personally, I dislike Meta strongly enough that the Quest was never an option.
I already had a PS5 and have a couple of digital VR games Sony have away a while back, plus there’s a few more I have been interested in. But until now the library was so restrictive that I could not justify the price tag for a PSVR2.
The only other option I considered was the Valve Index. I like Valve a lot and I’m sure it’s great, but at this point it’s 5 years old and would be 2x the price of the PSVR2. Not being comparable with the PS5 for those couple of free games plus exclusives in interested in like Horizon is a minor setback as well, although it’s not a huge deal and Horizon might come to Steam anyways. Also I would have to upgrade my PC a couple years earlier than I would otherwise- my RX580 is mostly fine now, but I don’t think it could handle VR.
I’m a technical person and I’ve tried a lot of different methods to do couch gaming with a PC. From having some sort of lap tray to various wireless mice and keyboard solutions. I’ve currently landed on having my gaming desktop just stream with Steam Link to my living room. As long as I’m selective about which games I want to play, I can usually get a good experience. But I still have at least 60% of my steam library that isn’t a good experience doing that.
Having a dedicated piece of hardware with a custom OS that is designed around a controller is a huge difference maker. Plus you add in how ridiculously expensive it is to get either a USB external optical drive or internal SATA drive to watch DVDs and Blu-Rays. Heck, even just watching Netflix or YouTube in the living room is easier on PS5 than a media PC for the average user.
There’s a reason Valve tried to make the Steam Machine.
Lol a good chunk of those “breaches and hacks” are either unrelated to PlayStation (Sony Pictures being the most notable) or had no impact to users.
I don’t care if they leak their source code for games or if their social media account gets socially-engineered. Even an outage from a DDOS isjust a minor inconvenience. According to the source you posted, they haven’t had any issues leaking PlayStation user data since 2011, over a decade ago.
Security concerns are valid for everything you do on the Internet of course, but are you bringing that same energy to Valve for the security issues Steam has had over the years too? The 2023 issue with dev accounts getting hacked to inject malware. The 2020 issue with the “Steam Sockets” library. They had their own data breach similar to Sony’s in 2011.
I say this as someone who grew up in that time period and has fond nostalgia: it has one of the worst libraries of any console. Depending on how you count (the different regions, the 64DD, what counts as a “game”, etc) there were 200-300 N64 games. That may seem like a pretty big difference between 200 and 300, but in comparison the PS1 had, on a conservative count, 4,100 games. If you want to say only 10% of PS1 games we’re good that’s still more good games than the N64 had games.
There are a handful of titles that will be remembered as some of the greatest games of all time. The two Zelda games, Super Smash Bros, Mario Party, Mario Kart, Paper Mario. Personally I like the Pokemon games too. But the list falls off pretty hard after that.
I love 3D platformers and collect-a-thons, but I could never get into Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie, or Donkey Kong 64. They all feel rudimentary to me, similar to Jumping Flash on the PS1. Maybe it’s because the N64’s joystick was so uncomfortable and loose. Crash Bandicoot 1 came out in the US before Mario 64 did, and in my opinion it was more fun, looks better, sounds better, and holds up better today. And then there were two more Crash games, plus the Spyro trilogy which I consider even better.
There are “cult classics” for the N64 that I think are only remembered like that because of the lack of other options. Blast Corps for example is a unique and creative little game. It’s fun to play for a bit, but was that experience really worth the price of a whole game? It almost feels like it could have been a side mode in something like Twisted Metal.
There’s so many games it didn’t have. Metal Gear Solid, Castlevania, and Final Fantasy are perhaps the most famous. Even a lot of games it did have were much worse- Resident Evil 2 and the Tony Hawk series are big examples where the cheap storage of the PS1 was clearly better. I remember I had a mediocre PS1 game called Battletanx that was pretty fun. Later on in high school my friend had a modded Xbox that emulated N64 games and I recognized that title, so we played through the co-op. It was still fun, but the textures were mostly replaced with flat colors and it was hard to see what was going on. I thought there may have been an issue with the emulation, or maybe the ROM was for some beta build or a hacked version, but… No, that’s just how it looked on the N64.
I didn’t mind the 3-prong controller. Honestly just having handles was already an upgrade over the SNES and Genesis. But the controller itself feels so cheap. The buttons all rattle around loosely and feel mushy and unsatisfying to press. The joystick is hard plastic, too tall, and flaccid. The plastic itself is a downgrade compared to its predecessors and to the Dualshock and even Saturn controller.
I still have my N64 and the handful of games I got for it. It had some of the highest highs of any console, but little else.