Too bad about the rogue like part...

Too bad for you, way better for me.

Yeah, I'll stick to games that happen to have level design in them.

Valve is not your friend, and Steam is not healthy for gaming

Fantastic article, regardless of where it's posted. Definitely worth a read if you're a regular Steam customer.

Oh man, the new Assetto Corsa Update features amazing new AI. I've been playing it all day. Is there anybody who plays racing games/sims here?

Dang, and this whole time I thought Steam was providing a convenient service and cheap prices on things I like.

I really dig the Forza series, but I haven't been keeping up with it after 4. Didn't care much for Horizon, either. That's awesome about Assetto Corsa though, that game looks amazing! Seems like it has a better track selection too; I have no idea why Imola still isn't in Forza. Does Assetto Corsa have many options for car customization?

That's, hopefully rather obviously, almost completely irrelevant to the point of the article.

And GOG.com is a helluva lot more convenient than Steam, by pretty much any possible measure. Lightning-fast client? Sure. Don't want that client running whenever you play a game? That's fine too. Don't even want to even install a client? No problem there either. Fair regional pricing? Yup.

Or how about EA's Origin, that gives out excellent classic EA games every month freely at their expense, and gave full-refunds ages before Steam could even comprehend such a malevolently vile 100% pro-consumer prospect (and even now, Origin's refund process is far superior to Steam's).

Come on now. Valve is only on top because they happened to be there first; they themselves are inferior in every way to the majority of their competitors.

There's a lot of tuning, but next to no modding. Most cars have different colors, but that's about it when it comes to looks. There are also some preset modifications to some cars. The Ferrari 458 Italia comes in street and racing configurations for example. But you can do stuff like apply different tyre pressures to balance them out after they're heated up, tune gears, breaks, turbo (if the car has it), fine tune ABS and Traction control and much more stuff like that. I don't know how this game plays with a controller though, haven't raced a single minute in it without a racing wheel.

Cool, cool, thanks for the detailed response! I bet using the racing wheel is fun as hell, especially if it sounds like there's a pretty dedicated tuning system that's actually consequential to how the car handles. Part of the reason why I never liked Gran Turismo.

lol

Also,

Uh, you ARE aware EA has been publishing games since the mid-80's, and they've published such totally-not-classics as Crusader: No Remorse (which I picked up for free from Origin), Crysis, Wing Commander: Privateer and the inimical Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom, the hilarious and groundbreaking Theme Hospital, many of the best Ultima games, many of the best Sid Meier's games, System Shock 2, American McGee's Alice, Nox (imho better than Diablo), many of the best C&C games (also the worst lol, and admittedly drove the series into the ground)... and on and on.

They've published a fuckton of classics, no doubt about it.

Why does everything have to be fucking perfect all the time? Valve and Steam aren't perfect, no. They're in it to make money, not suck our dicks. But that's the same with all the other companies, too. The only reason Origin and other competitors are offering things Steam doesn't is because, y'know, they're trying to compete. Do we really need to get into all the things Steam has that its competitors don't?

Also, I hope you realize how ridiculous you sound when you accuse Valve of being a Big Evil Corporation and then champion EA. EA single-handedly destroyed C&C, which was one of my favorite franchises, for no good reason. They did the same to plenty of others. Fuck EA.

Things Steam has that other clients don't have (or at least, not all of them:

- Universal refunds, no questions asked. Origin only offers refunds on EA games, and only within 24 hours of launching the game. GOG only offers refunds for technical issues (which doesn't include things like your PC not being able to run it well, so you're SOL if you're just getting shitty performance) and requires you to do extensive troubleshooting with their tech support before they'll cough up the money.
- Better prices
- Download servers that aren't located in the furthest corners of Siberia
- Much more expansive library
- Built-in mod support
- Steam Controller support (you have to add Origin games to Steam to use the controller, which is an incredibly convoluted process because EA doesn't want you running games on Steam)
- Linux and Mac support
- Early Access
- Updates download in the background
- Vastly superior community features
- Big Picture Mode
- Family Sharing

Those are just the things I use on a regular basis.

For some reason you are citing Origin as a good alternative. I have Origin installed. I've bought a few games on it but it probably comes out to less than 1 game a year since I've installed it since it fails the very minimum requirement of if I search a game, I will most likely find it and be able to buy it. Look at the top 100 games on Steam of current players. Pick a dozen of them and search them in Origin. You will most likely not find any of them. Origin in its current state is not a good alternative to Steam. Ubisoft games are on Origin but Rainbow Six Seige isn't. GOG, a DRM free store has more games than it.

As a client it doesn't handle multiple installation directories. It doesn't have community sections for games like Steam and GOG. I don't see any counterpart to Steam groups or anything like friend activity page. It doesn't have anything like Steam Workshop. It doesn't have any support for Linux; GOG Galaxy doesn't but it's planned so people have to download the games without a client on Linux currently. As a store it doesn't support or show any user reviews. If a game is buggy on Steam, it's really easy to find out. Discover-ability of games is a wash because there's little to discover. So few games, recommendation algorithms can't show whether they're any good. Origin library doesn't let you categorize games. Origin functions well solely as video game store and it doesn't even have many games. The last month 2 games have released on Origin, Syberia 3 and The Surge. Quality varies wildly on Steam but it gets almost everything.

Origin is not a good alternative. It is a basic alternative. This store is touted on certain forums but rarely anywhere else because the reality is that Origin is not a good alternative. It's more comparable to Steam of 2007 but with a modern interface design.

- - -

Here's a truth nugget for those following this thread who don't really pay too much attention to the PC space: none of the "alternatives" touted for Steam provide a comparable feature set. Even GoG, which I personally am hugely in favor of philosophically, fails to match Steam in terms of features, and it's quite the gap too.

Read the original article that I linked, for the frame of reference: link

I have read the article. It's got this absurdly adversarial tone that would make Gawker blush, and is rather poorly researched. Like, maybe he should look up the definition of "monopoly" in the dictionary at some point.

More importantly, it means nothing to the level-headed average consumer who already knows that no corporation ever has been or will be their friend, nor do any exist with spotless records. Instead we as consumers seek out the best service for our needs, and to that end Valve provides one that is by far the best. There's no pro/con game out there you'll play with services like this (or really any other) where you'll not have some damning things on the con-side. But, just like every consumer, it's up to you to decide if that's worth it for you or not, and clearly many people (both consumers and developers) have decided that Steam is very much worth it.

The Origin app is by far the worst piece of gaming-related garbage I have ever installed in my life. Every time there's an update, it downloads all the way and then fails to install, and I have to uninstall and reinstall Origin all over again, every time. Their game updates are just as terrible, not working half the time. Not to mention that their client is super slow and sluggish in its latest version. All these problems I've never had with any other client. Sure, I like me some of the games on Origin (maybe 3 at most), but those people can't write a good app to save their lives.


It's not an alternative, period.

Oh, can you guess what time it is? It's time to update uninstall Origin again! Actually, since I'm not playing any games on there right now (and probably won't in the foreseeable future) then I guess I'm not gonna bother re-installing it again anytime soon. Fuckin' trash.

anyone interested in destiny 2? from what i have seen its pretty much the first game

I'm keeping my ears perked for it because the friends I have who play it absolutely love it, but I'm not expecting too much.

personally i didnt have any interest in destiny due to pretty much zero story line but now i have playstation plus if they can remove the most garbage parts of the game(how repetitive it is, the bosses who were just a big normal enemy with a huge HP pool, i think it could be fun but i from what i have seen which is about 30 minutes of gameplay is just the same thing, i think it could be fun with friends at times but that is about it

Cracked actually posted a Robert Brockway article digging into the unused story for the game.

thank you for posting that, sounds way more interesting then a story of completely nothing, the higher ups were insane to decide the story needed to be re written in 2 weeks, hopefully they learned their lesson but i still dont have much hope, i know the dlc did add some story

on the surge, i just finally made progress for the first time in days and it just feels amazing exploring new places, i mean i know what the environments will look like because a lot of them look the same but it still feels very rewarding and tense when you have a lot of scrap/souls on you

It's the what?

my wording was garbage but it pretty much looks like the first game, if someone told me i was watching destiny gameplay i would have believed it

Far Cry 5's distant foreign land ruled by a crazed despot is the United States. Montana, specifically.

Super excited to see this game.

Is it meant to be tackling a religious cult or some radical militia?

This looks pretty fucking metal!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/82 ... r-platform

They've only shown teasers so far. I guess they're doing a full reveal on the 26th.




All teasers there.


Edit.... Is that trailer not playing? What the hell...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQGJgkEEkr0

It does. The aesthetic seems like a cool spin on the whole "sinister Christian imagery" deal, and the gameplay looks fairly tight. Pretty hot stuff.

Also, that giant blindfolded baby is creepy as fuck.

^Very, very cool, colour me interested.

Hmmm...





Seems on point.

Dude, I'm all about it. Pixel art looks top notch and like Xlxlx said, the creepy Christian imagery is a great motif.


This kinda concerns me though. Feels a bit gimmicky and I feel like it'd get super old after seeing it the first dozen times. Makes me think some of the "smooth animations created pixel by pixel, frame by frame" is effort better spent someplace other than theatrics you have little agency in.

Well of course they're going to show off gimmicks, they can't condense complex mechanics or excellent level design into a gif. Gimmicks are what get people interested.

Personally, the gif directly below it gets me way more interested in the game than a prebaked death animation that looks like Bloodstorm. But I get your point, their marketing must be good if they met their goal in less than a day!

Prebaked death animations are basically the only reason anyone ever cared about Mortal Kombat. Cool ridiculous gory shit gets people excited, regardless of how "in control" the player is. I agree with you that solid mechanics should be more of a draw than gimmicks, but this is marketing we're talking about. I have a friend who's super duper into fighting games, has $200 fight sticks, and analyzes frame-by-frame breakdowns of each character's moves. The game mechanics shit that he looks for in fighting games would send the average gamer directly into a boredom coma.

Very good point, that's pretty much the only thing that got me into Mortal Kombat, Eternal Champions, etc. And I'll admit, that animation is really, really well done. Definitely looking forward to seeing more. (Damn, your friend is probably the person that always kicks my ass when I play Skullgirls online lol)

I've been playing the heck out of Underrail. Highly recommended for isometric RPG fans, and especially Fallout 1/2 fans.

Case in point: Shadow of Mordor. Just about the only fun thing about it was watching the gory uruk murdering animations.

That said, I think you can do badass kill animations right, if you make it the reward of skillful play/good timing (e.g. parry -> ripostes in Souls games, or better yet, gun stagger -> visceral attacks in Bloodborne), it becomes far more interesting and of course, less gimmicky.

Path of Exile rant re: the upcoming massive 3.0 expansion and mechanics changes:

Yeah, I haven't played that game specifically but it's always been better to keep the nerfs small and the buffs big. Give the weaker classes something flashy and exciting, don't give the stronger ones too much to complain about.