Game spoilers and subjective opinions below, be careful.
spoilerI enjoyed all parts of Inscryption, but I think Act 1 was the best part of the game. The gameplay of act 2 wasn’t great and had too many mechanics flying around. Act 3 just felt too sterile and devoid of charm. I get that that was what they were going for, but I think I would have preferred multiple rooms in the shack over multiple chapters. There needs to be more games like Pokemon TCG for the gameboy (which is what Act 2 was referencing) though. With a card game that fits it.
I’ve watched two people online play the game and both pretty much slammed it. It should absolutely have been free with the console. Is $10 really disposable enough income to spend on what is essentially an ad for the console you’ve already bought and a handful of minigames? 7/10 is a wild score to give it, but I guess reviewers get these games for free anyway so price doesn’t matter.
Maybe this is me just being jaded after Nintendo’s fall from grace, but this is the first time I’ve seen a feature and wondered “why”?
If mouse control is important then just let people connect a bluetooth mouse. They’re easy to get ahold of and most people can probably chuck one in their bag if they don’t already have one.
Hell, if you feel the need, just make a “Switch Mouse” with a control stick on the side if you need to. No need to have one controller to rule them all.
This enables unique gameplay experiences not usually possible on a standard PC mouse setup, such as the ability to use two mice to play games.
I mean, this isn’t illegal or anything. It’s just so situational I’ve only seen it done once (World of Goo for multiplayer). Most people can’t effectively use mice with their non-dominant hand anyway.
An example of this is in Drag X Drive, where the player uses a mouse in each hand and moves them forwards or back to mimic moving around in a wheelchair.
Isn’t this just motion controls? The same concept could have been done with the Wii and two wiimotes. Only this time you just wear out the rubber pads on your joycon.
The addition of HD Rumble in the controllers also means players can experience force feedback while using a mouse.
… How does this even work given that a mouse is a precision instrument? Surely the rumble would just cause the mouse to shift around or become less accurate. I think there’s a reason nobody has tried to put rumble in a mouse.
Overall I can see it being a nice emergency feature for if you need a mouse but don’t have one on you. But the fact that they seem to be pitching it as a flagship feature feels odd to me.
Or maybe I’m just being grumpy and this ends up working well.
The mobile and PC gaming markets are very different, both in terms of monetisation and what games people expect to play.
If Valve wanted to get into the mobile games industry they’d basically be starting from scratch, and I don’t think it’s a market they’re particularly interested in.
You’re also assuming that buying a game on PC steam will also give you a license to play that game on android, which isn’t a given. I think many games have completely different monetisation models on mobile vs pc, so sharing between platforms like that wouldn’t make sense.
Compared to other platforms, they have a lot of good features and generally act in the public interest.
In regards to their DRM system, honestly some people are going to add DRM to their games no matter what. I’d much rather they use Valve’s system than some insecure third party spyware.
People have also mentioned their 30% cut which honestly seems pretty normal for an online storefront. It’s especially fair when you consider the fact that they provide marketing, hosting and payment processing for you. Not to mention things like achievements, matchmaking and workshop support if you want it.
There’s also the fact that a lot of the anti-monopoly folks tend to be Linux and/or foss advocates, and Valve has been pumping a lot of resources into open source projects.
Honestly, in the Linux space, the only reason Valve has a monopoly is because the other players just aren’t making any effort to compete.
Tl;dr Valve uses their market position for good (in general) and Steam is a good product.
Even disregarding the native Linux port… The Steam client is actually pretty decent. Any client would have to implement things like library navigation, storage management, Steam input support, the overlay, cloud sync and so on. And honestly, I don’t think anyone can reach the amount of features that Steam has.
Its probably why most people don’t actually use things like Lutris or Gnome Games to launch Steam games.
If only steam had a way to mark games as “hey, this game is in beta, expect issues”. I don’t know, making it clear that we were accessing it early or something…
I can’t speak for everyone, but I know I’d be willing to tolerate games being a bit buggy if they up front said “we know this game has issues. You can try it now or you can wait until we fix them”.
Okay, so there’s two lines I could go down for this.
The first is to joke about the recent controversy, and say that they’re only doing this so they can sue other alarm clock manufacturers for patent infringement.
The second is a wordplay by calling it “the s-watch”. But that doesn’t really translate well to text.
I think it’s petty to not play a game just because of the engine it’s written in…
I think I may have to make an exception to that rule for this. :P
(Trans rights are human rights, btw)
Edit: … Wait, hang on. Isn’t the notion of using a game engine at all “woke” in itself? Like, isn’t that the entire thing that started this whole thing?