LadyCrimson

Over inflated budgets plus perhaps live-streaming revenue not living up to (long term) expectations plays a role too. They really need to scale back budgets/expectations on most projects, which could also decrease the risk-averse nature of AAA game development a bit. Not that they're likely going to, just like most risk-averse "blockbuster" movies won't. Thus we will all continue to look more frequently at smaller dev projects for that.

I got a bug up my rear re: some furniture and room organizing, which among other things entailed moving a bookshelf from garage to my PC room. Which means, ofc, that I suddenly gained the solo push/pull, scoot, drag-object strength of 5 men, because this has to go there, RIGHT NOW. Anyway I was showing off/yapping about the results of my efforts w/the hubby later and somewhere he said "...with a husband who can't help you." 😧 ...he's been getting progressively more mentally bummed/negative the past few months re: his back situation and inability to do anything remotely strenuous or sustained. Hoping upcoming summer weather and ability to do lots of short swims in the pool again will cheer him up some. We've also been trying to do a lot more short 30-60 minute excursions, whether a walk, errands, window shopping, let's try a new eatery, etc just to get him out of the house more often. Even those wear him out tho.

^ To be fair, especially as I grew older, I try to be pretty open minded or at least neutral. I mean I'm probably one of the "few" older trekkies/trekkers/whatever who actually somewhat likes the first two Star Trek reboot films (the rest were meh) because I looked past the ST and just saw them as silly action movies, unconcerned with what they were doing to any lore. Games into movies tho ... at least ones that aren't full blown story games (eg, Last of Us) ... it's not about lore, it's turning game graphics into live action. Never feels like it turns out right/I usually dislike it. Maybe akin to some anime vs live-action gripes a bit. Eh...maybe BL the movie will be lightly entertaining.

^ Yeah I remember when it started EA. I was interested until 3rd party registration (nothing "wrong" with that, just a personal quirk of mine) and have ignored it since (literally, so Steam would stop telling me about it). I think back then it didn't have Offline mode either. Leaning towards getting it. If nothing else, sorta want to support the offline-sp mode (they're separate from online chrs) being included. 😛

Anyone trying Last Epoch? It's out of early access finally. It needs a company/not steam 3rd party registrations so I was kinda ignoring it, but now I see it has a full Offline ability and my interest has suddenly skyrocketed. Plus getting good gameplay reviews. Negative user reviews at the moment seem to mostly regard the typical laggy/long load/access server at launch issues (they're working on it). But since I don't care about Online playing, no skin off my nose. It does have a cash shop but so far no indications from anyone that it's p2w, just cosmetics and things like portal skins, maybe ala Path of Exile etc. Only $35 too. Hm.

*watches that Borderlands trailer* As a huge fan of the Borderlands 1 and 2 and a ... uh ... player of BL3 stuff, my reaction to chr. casting (all of it, not just Hart) and the oddly cheap looking cos-play look is still Edit: feels like they're going for a Guardians vibe, and a younger audience.

Ah! Well, if I end up buying it at some point and it has a soundtrack version, I'm getting that one.

^ LOL - looks like a cross between Age of Empires and the Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator. Just crazy enough I might like it. ==== Manor Lords - I'm starting to worry the city management-builder-RTS "hype" is starting to get overextended for this one (2 million wishlisted I think I saw last). That said...even tho it'll be Early Access first, I'm still also totally going "Please be good, please be good, please be good...". EDIT: also, I don't know what song plays in that battle trailer, but I love it.

@Sarex I do think the big "outcry" re: no save on exit etc. does come from many feeling taken by surprise. It shows as a driving with at least some level of sorta free exploration survival game, not necessarily a hardcore-kinda-rogue-like rush-y style game (or whatever). I watched three reviews of the game and none of them mentioned the save system process. Supposedly later many missions do get shorter, but yeah those initial ones where many players may take an hour or two or more is the first impression. And in the demo at least, altering most settings options would also disable Achievements. Not that I would care, but anyone who does care can't change the settings then. Anyway, the dev's already responded, which is why I noted I don't think they'll change anything. Which again, is fine. Just means I won't likely get it, myself. Note: the "technical sacrifices" they refer to is probably that they didn't code the game to keep (constant) track of stuff that would be needed for a save/exit state.

omg

The demo for Pacific Drive, if you already installed it, was made unplayable with the full release of the game. If you try to run it (even by the .exe) it just says "no license." Some folks are kinda peeved. It doesn't include me, but I can understand if they didn't get around to playing demo before release day. Seems an odd choice. I'm still kind of interested in the game but not having even a save-on-exit still isn't my thing for a SP game, so I'll wait and see if they ever change their minds. They could leave the no-save-on-exit etc. as a hardcore playstyle option or vice versa. Again, I don't need manual saving, but "leave game on all night" or "replay a section again cause maybe life happens, once too often" isn't my thing. Edit: not holding my breath for it to be changed, mind. I kind of think they won't.

Tried a city-builder demo named Synergy. Mostly because I liked the artwork style a lot. Demo appears to be the tutorial round. So little mini-quests to set up water, gathering, homes etc. So far, the artstyle is the only thing I seriously like about it. Keybinds are all over the place + mouse use and I feel like I need three hands maybe. Probably can remap them ofc, but it all feels like weird choices/annoying, at least to me. Building rotation seems limited (use Shift). I don't think the map itself rotates, not even the 4 point rotation ala Caesar 3, which is disappointing. Maybe I just can't find it in the keybind. Also, the UI element/text default setting of 1 is very microscopic, turn it way up if you want. Other than that it feels like your general city builder, keep citizens fed, busy, research/tech lines, some map exploration factors/motivations which might be a little different than usual. Something about the gameplay design feels strangely limited/awkward tho. But the artstyle is fantastic, which makes me want to like the game. Maybe with full release/outside of the tutorial.

Also, don't forget you can always turn the video play speed up to save viewing time. Doesn't work well for everything but very talk-y videos, putting it 1.5x speed helps a lot. Or even max 2x speed if they are verryy slow talkers. That video above is also notable (to me) for probably being the first I've seen that used up the time-stamp numerical limit. The last long looking segment isn't about one single game, he just couldn't use any more time stamps. heh.

First two seasons of Resident Alien is on Netflix now. I guess there's a 3rd season still airing. I remember seeing the first episode when syfy posted it on YT and thinking it was weird/quirky/funny, + I'm a fan of Alan Tudyk. But I don't have SyFy. Rewatching the first episode, it didn't seem quite as funny as I remembered, but it was still kinda cool. It became less and less interesting after a few episodes. One of those shows that it feels like I should like but it doesn't quite pull it off. Ah well.

Speaking of mega length videos, here's one where my interest-meter was enough to make me click on it. He spends maybe 2-5 minutes describing a game a little, steam user reaction if any, release/ea status if any, etc. So it was easy to spam the spacebar arrow keys to skip over any titles I wasn't immediately intrigued by - thus for me it was a 30 minute video, hardehar. The actual more city-builder focused (vs. train sims, life sims, factory/shop/tycoon more rts sims, god games etc) starts around 2 (hrs):28(min) I think. I saw a few new ones to put in the Wishlist. lol. Seems to be several indie Spore-like games being made, too.

My game YT account is kaput, gone. Made me feel weird for a few minutes but I don't use it/care about using it anymore so I don't miss it, either. But anyone who maybe wanted to rewatch the FO:NV Thriller video once every few years, you're outta luck now. 😛 hahaha Edit: The older I get the more I miss the non-internet days. I mean in terms of my life/habits/hobbies etc.

Yeah...limits or not, a lot of uploaders now over-indulge themselves far too much re: video length/lack of editing. But I'd give that posted video slack since it appears to be documentary oriented/very specific-interest topic. eg, if one is really into that topic, maybe the longer the better. On the flip side - generally speaking, I dislike "shorts" almost as much. I mean I get it, some silly/ent. content works fine with that but I wish TikTok hadn't made it such a dominant form so now YT keeps pushing it to compete. That's not what I go to YT for.

---That Patrick Stewart ad was really weird. >.> Man he looks really old now. He was 48ish when ST:TNG began I think, so he's early/mid 80's now? Time marches. 😩 ---That John Stewart video was great, thanks. Re: what I assume was also a superbowl ad, I liked the Arnold and Danny one better. Poking fun at himself plus at the end it was sort of like a Twins reunion, of a sorts.

Some disco songs were ok, but those pants back then were terrible. ...sorry, I'll show myself out.

I's love you You's love Jar To-geth-er we's-a reach the stars! Ins our big round ship Travel far me-sa and you Won't you say You's love me too!

Twister without Bill Paxton (RIP) or Helen Hunt isn't Twister. It's like Die Hard without Bruce Willis (for me Die Hard is 100x the better film but you get my point). At least they waited over 25 years to prequel/reboot. Maybe it won't entirely suck. Mostly it makes me feel old, not because of film dates, but because I don't recognize anyone in that trailer even in a vague, offhand way. This is happening more and more often. I'm so not hip to who's famous or even "well used chr. actor" recognizable re: Films/TV now. 😛

*snort* at "AAAA" game. I mean, if they were going to go there, why not just call it "S". In other games, Tombraider 1-3 remake is almost here. Watching some footage I am undecided whether I like it. They seem to have respected it a lot and it does look better in some ways (there are small QoL improvements as well) but I like the brighter/less muddy lighting/colors/shadows of the original. EDIT: other videos show better lighting in some places, other places almost too dark etc). I wonder if you can turn the shadows low or off to mitigate that. EDITEDIT: you can flip between original/remake on the fly I think it has a photomode too. The biggest ? for me tho is whether I'd actually replay them. Skip to 3:45 for gameplay. The (not in-game) story cutscenes don't look any better, just upscaled/smoothed a bit or something. This YouTuber plays thru whole game plays highlights from all three I think, so you can look at different areas.

Condolences and best wishes, Raithe.

@Keyrock lol, yeah the face quality is the first thing I noticed. Doesn't really bother me much but it's kind of amusing. 😄 I noticed on the forum that others seem to have fps/stutter issues with the demo. Outside of having to use DLSS to get the 60fps at 4k because apparently my 9900k/2080ti is a potato these days, I didn't notice any issues like that. I was like that with FFXV tho too. Barely noticed any issues while everyone else called it broken. Based on the install size of Outcast's demo I'm semi-convinced it's a build of almost the entire game, or at least 90% of it, haha, vs. a small-install-sized demo file, which could be one reason for such severe restrictions in place. Players also figured out you could reset the replays limit deleting save files or something, and if you hexedit you could defeat the time limit too. I didn't bother trying however.