Hey everyone, I’m a big player of Space Games of all forms, and this mini-genre (or ‘theme’, if you prefer) really has a TON of range and depth, and is a very fertile ground for indie and unique projects. I was recently playing a game called Avorion, after owning it for years without ever really engaging with it, and...
Outer Worlds has no space-based content. Yes, you have a spaceship, but it’s essentially a fast-travel device. One of the locations is a space station, but it’s no different than a large building (e.g. it’s not shaped like a torus or anything interesting like that).
Outer Worlds is a really fun take on the Firefly space western concept, though, as long as you understand all of your activities will take place on worlds/moons with basically the same gravity & atmosphere.
If I remember correctly, at the time Valve justified the 30% by pointing out that Apple was charging the same for music and video content. And Valve immediately started building value-added services like forums, updaters, multiplayer support, achievements, etc. to justify the price.
If you compare what Valve was doing to the physical media distribution methods of the period, it was a MASSIVE improvement. Back then, you could sell 10000 units to Ingram Micro or PC Mall, or whatever, and you only got paid if they sold. And any unsold inventory would be destroyed and the reseller would never pay for it. And if you actually wanted anything other than a single-line entry in their catalogs, you paid a promotional fee. Those video games featured with a standup display or a poster in the window at the computer store? None of that was free; the developer was nickeled and dimed for every moment their game was featured in any premium store space.
DIMM mounting brackets introduce significant limitations to maximum bandwidth. SOC RAM offers huge benefits in bandwidth improvement and latency reduction. Memory bandwidth on the M2 Max is 400GB/second, compared to a max of 64GB/sec for DDR5 DIMMs.
It may not be optimizing for the compute problem that you have, and that’s fine. But it’s definitely optimizing for compute problems that Apple believes to be high priority for its customers.
The biggest change is that we put up with a lot more repetitive gameplay back then, just because that’s how games were and there wasn’t enough horsepower to make complex stuff.
Today, you blow through a level of a modern first person game, or whatever, and see only a tiny fraction of what the game makers created for you. I played Titanfall 2 for the first time recently, and after playing the same level a few times, I noticed that a room that appears only briefly as you take an elevator past it has an extension cord coiled up on the floor. You can only see it if you look down as the elevator goes up, so you can see the floor of the room.
Old games didn’t have the room for those kinds of indulgences.
I hope it’s decent. One of the things that bugged me about the DLC for the original HZD was that they turned most combat areas into flat, contained arenas where you couldn’t really take advantage of geography and use planning to kill your targets.
Bottlenecking, laying traps, getting advantage of ground, taking advantage of limited mobility of the robots, stealth… all the gameplay videos I’ve seen look SO BORING.
unlike HZD you actually have a limit to amount of traps you can set
Err. Hmm. One of my complaints about HZD was that it put an arbitrary limit on the number of traps you could set. Somewhere around ~25, the first trap disappears when you lay the next trap.
Reducing the number of traps is a con, not a pro. If I’m willing to gather materials and craft traps, let me use them as I see fit.
And you’ve got KOTOR and Pillars of Eternity and others that are clearly D&D derivatives, but solve the problem handily with a “stash” whose contents are never accessible in combat.
I have never understood the fascination with inventory management. I just want to find stuff, and use that stuff later on. If I wanted something as boring as my actual job, I’d just do my actual job and get paid for it instead of buying a game.
A “stash” that is only accessible outside combat mostly preserves that balance, IMO.
Most games come up with a range of ways to get around the problem, even when they do have a strictly limited inventory with encumbrance:
Zero weight quest items
Ability to run or fast travel while encumbered (FO4 selectable perk)
A pet or NPC capable of carrying your less valuable stuff back to the vendor for sale (Torchlight had this, did Diablo? I haven’t played in decades.)
Pack animals/robots
Portable vendors (Skyrim had a demon vendor you could summon once a day)
Bags of holding (or similar)
Warp chests (many chests with same contents/inventory around map)
etc. ad infinitum. The fact that most games implement a variety of ways to deal with absence of an infinite inventory is kind of a tipoff that it’s more of a burden than a desirable aspect of gameplay. Most of these games are holding up a carrot (or several) to get you to pursue certain achievements just to reduce the monotony of inventory management.
I have to ask… why? The only device I’ve connected to hardwired Ethernet is a desktop PC in the same room as my router. I’ve not used ethernet for any portable device for eons. Why would you need it?
Does the NVIDIA Tegra line support DLSS? I guess it could be based on the “Orin” line of ARM CPUs, but I can’t find anything suggesting they can do DLSS.
Classic it may not be, but every few years I fire up a copy of Oni, turn up my playlist of mid 90s mega-hits, and lay some smackdown on some terrorists.
Basically it’s the spatial exploration of a first person shooter with the fighting dynamics of something like Virtua Fighter.
I’m not sure there is much intersection between PC & console gamers and social/casual gamers.
I can’t speak for anybody else, I guess, but neither I nor any gamers I routinely interact with play these freemium/social/mobile type games. Like, at all.
I think that looking to ourselves and our habits for answers will not tell us much, as those gamers are not in our sphere of influence.
I’m not drawing some elitist lines between hardcore and casual, I’m saying that the “video gaming revenue” graph is fundamentally defective because it’s lumping together genuinely different enterprises, with different audiences, marketing, and revenue models
My mom likes to play No Man’s Sky and Valheim, but her Asus TUF started freezing on games. RMA found no problems and sent it back to her but it still happens. I ordered a Legion for her but now I see these posts about all Nvidia 40-series laptops freezing up. What’s a gaming mom supposed to do?
I’ve been happy with my gaming laptops. I used to be like 80% travel for my job, so portable gaming was essential.
I still use a gaming laptop as my primary desktop, because it’s physically small, (relatively) quiet, and I don’t need to keep a honking big UPS to give me 20 minutes of time to save work and shut down. The battery’s not great, but it’s more than enough to get me through power interruptions, or to move the machine between power outlets.
ASUS isn’t responsible for software, except to guarantee that the laptop can run the version of Windows that it came with. They’re just going to run standard hardware diagnostics, and if it passes, it’s golden.
Were there errors in the event logs? Did you remove unneeded startup programs and disable unneeded services? Did you do a full OS reset/reinstall?
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.
That they are trying to create a robust custom character experience AND a robust pregenerated character experience is pretty damn ambitious. They must be pretty happy about the results if they’re talking it up this close to the release date.
I recently started playing GTAV again and sometimes I’ll get in my car and let the radio stations play while I do house stuff. Favorite stations are the 80s one with Kenny Loggins, and West Coast Classics and Rock Radio.
Just an open world survival game, only you’re a cat, dealing with regular cat problems. You have to hunt, avoid larger animals, compete with other cats, figure out which humans are dangerous and which will give you treats, judiciously spray things to maintain your territory, maybe mate and reproduce (your sex and fertility...
Hello! I’m looking for any game recommendations on GOG – especially anything that’s on sale! Tell me about your favorite few games that you have on GOG, or maybe some gems in the rough out there. I’ve seen a few threads on Steam lately, so it feels appropriate to me to look for some love on one of the smaller game...
If you’re thinking about the Fallouts, don’t forget all the Infinity Engine games (Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, Icewind Dale 1 and 2, Planescape Torment), and Neverwinter Nights, and Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2.
And Shadowrun (Returns, Dragonfall, Hong Kong).
There’s a universe of amazing isometric RPGs out there.
Thoughts on Space Games, Part 1: Top-5 AAA Games
Hey everyone, I’m a big player of Space Games of all forms, and this mini-genre (or ‘theme’, if you prefer) really has a TON of range and depth, and is a very fertile ground for indie and unique projects. I was recently playing a game called Avorion, after owning it for years without ever really engaging with it, and...
Google is redesigning its search engine — and it’s AI all the way down (www.theverge.com)
Six months in, journalist-owned tech publication 404 Media is profitable (www.niemanlab.org)
of note:...
Gabe Newell ordered to make in-person deposition for Valve v. Wolfire Games lawsuit (www.gamesindustry.biz)
Apple exec defends 8GB $1,599 MacBook Pro, claims it's like 16GB on a PC (www.theregister.com)
isn't it weird how newer games manage to look more realistic than older ones? - GST Channel [5:32] (www.youtube.com)
Thousands of remote IT workers sent wages to North Korea to help fund weapons program, FBI says (abcnews.go.com)
Is there an indie games bubble? (roadmapmag.com)
Capcom President Says ‘Game Prices Are Too Low’ (kotaku.com)
lol. lmao.
'The Game Just Fundamentally Undermines Itself': Game Designer Breaks Down 'Baldur's Gate 3's Most Fatal Flaws (www.themarysue.com)
‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ can be a fantastic experience and a bad game at the same time.
Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition has been seen on Singapore's ratings board (www.gamescensor.com)
[Unconfirmed] Season 29 of Diablo 3 should begin on September 15.
Was just watching Raxx’s video where I first heard this.
Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3 Revive Age-Old RPG Debate About Encumbrance (www.ign.com)
Starfield and Baldur's Gate 3 both weigh the player down with encumbrance. Love it or hate it, it seems like it's here to stay.
Nintendo demoed Switch 2 to developers at Gamescom (www.eurogamer.net)
In Cologne last month, Nintendo's public Gamescom showfloor booth let you play Pikmin 4 and Super Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. …
What are your favourite classic fighting games?
Looking for fourth to sixth generation console games, and old arcade and X68000 games. Saturn is out though....
Visualized: $300B of Video Gaming Revenue, by Source (www.visualcapitalist.com)
Article: visualcapitalist.com/…/video-games-industry-reven…
Just want a solid gaming laptop (reddit.com)
My mom likes to play No Man’s Sky and Valheim, but her Asus TUF started freezing on games. RMA found no problems and sent it back to her but it still happens. I ordered a Legion for her but now I see these posts about all Nvidia 40-series laptops freezing up. What’s a gaming mom supposed to do?
What game mechanics do you love and hate?
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.
Larian CEO's advice about origin characters has thrown my Baldur's Gate 3 playthrough plans into disarray (www.pcgamer.com)
What’s one of your favorite game soundtracks?
I recently started playing GTAV again and sometimes I’ll get in my car and let the radio stations play while I do house stuff. Favorite stations are the 80s one with Kenny Loggins, and West Coast Classics and Rock Radio.
Stray really disappointed me. I want a real cat game.
Just an open world survival game, only you’re a cat, dealing with regular cat problems. You have to hunt, avoid larger animals, compete with other cats, figure out which humans are dangerous and which will give you treats, judiciously spray things to maintain your territory, maybe mate and reproduce (your sex and fertility...
Games on GOG?
Hello! I’m looking for any game recommendations on GOG – especially anything that’s on sale! Tell me about your favorite few games that you have on GOG, or maybe some gems in the rough out there. I’ve seen a few threads on Steam lately, so it feels appropriate to me to look for some love on one of the smaller game...