LadyCrimson

@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.

Funny, I was just thinking about how many years I've been here. I was a year "late" to the party, however. Does that mean I'm a youngster? Being a youngster sounds good, so I'm going to pretend it does.

Outcast 2, demo: ---This one put time limits on the two non-endless-combat gamemodes (explore, story) available - 20 minutes (kicks you out) and two replays. Annoying. Could've been just two replays, no time limit. Or at least give an hour. ---Visually decent (not "next gen", just looks nice), felt like most might be able to get a decent working performance with setting tweaks and/or DLSS. ---horizontal jet-pack flying/gliding, as well as "jump" being vertical high jet bounces (edit: which will be used in quests or reaching items). In explore demo you could do it endlessly, don't know if there will be fuel limits to range/time in full game, I would guess yes. ---no UI scale in demo and the elements are all huge and often pretty visually disruptive. ---I played "explore" for the 20 minutes and ran into one enemy glitched into the ground so I couldn't shoot it, meaning I couldn't get the quest complete. I was however able to melee punch it when it popped half out of the ground once. I was a fan of the original Outcast game's attempt at doing something different, but wasn't an actual big fan of the gameplay itself. Outcast 2 feels a bit more generic pseudo openworld exploration/rpg, at least in the demo starts. The demo did, however, sort of immediately trigger the curiosity "want to know/explore more" response, vs. wanting to almost immediately turn it off, which I would count as a positive.

This horizontal flying jetpack was cool. I'm guessing that's what Starfield needed. Is it just me, or do most games these days not know how to do non-cluttery/non-annoying UI's? All these elements were huuuuge on the 55" TV. This demo wouldn't let me alter UI size scale either - that at least would help.

Question re: this demo week on Steam: If you've downloaded a demo, are they still playable after the week is up? Or do they become deactivated. I mean, I like demo's but there's only so many hours in a day.

Copycat, demo: ----well, it's sorta cute. Controls are pretty clunky, camera view control is pretty clunky. I do like the cats 1st furperson purspective, like staring at legs from under a shelf. It's no Stray, but maybe. Pacific Drive, demo: ---visually looks decent if you can keep certain settings High/Ultra. Driving the car is fine/didn't feel too hinky etc. ---demanding game performance wise. Shadows and lighting is visually/atmospherically important, so one may not want to turn such down a lot, and middling/older PC's may find themselves playing it at 30fps. If you're the type who wants 85+fps at all times/higher resolutions, likely to be disappointed. YMMV. ---not a very intuitive tutorial phase re: what to do next and the UI in general is a little annoying but I can see getting used to it enough. ---THERE IS NO AUTOSAVE. Save triggers are far between and in most "zones" it will not save until you've finished a bunch of tasks or something. It's done this way on purpose. I get it, gameplay tension design and save-scum prevention. Some may enjoy it. For myself, I like being able to stop and go to bed vs. feeling forced to continue because I haven't figured out/done what will trigger a save to happen. Still, for the type of gameloop, it might be marginally tolerable if you love everything else. Undecided.

I can only pick one? How unfair. Yes, that is a cat all right. Success, now to go hide it under the shelf in the garage for later. ...it's kind of cute, but it's no Stray.

When you download a bunch of demos but by the time you're done looking/dl-ing, it's late and it's time for bed. But there was a new cat game! And Pacific Drive had a demo. And some other randoms. Demos are cool, I like demos.

^ I would like some doctors like that. My experience with (Kaiser) doc's the past 10 or so years is that getting them to run any tests is like pulling your own teeth. I wonder how much being male vs. female (both re: patient and doctor) can affect that in some cases. I kinda feel like when hubby has any symptoms enough for him to seek aid, the docs pull out all the stops re: tests, scans, and possibilities and stuff. When I go in and mention something I deem peculiar or painful, I get more dismissive reactions, ibuprofen or advice to relax. Well, except when hubby bought me in delirious/nigh unconscious, ofc. I'm sure it's highly variable/random/depends on symptoms etc but yeah. It feels like that sometimes.

That SW video popped up in my feed the other day and I clicked on it expected a meme joke or something. I did find it kind of interesting to listen to for about 30 minutes, mostly in that kind of fascinated with how far fans will over-examine any shred of "lore" way - but I don't think I could stomach 12 hours. If one was into that kind of extreme lore/scene examination for SW, it seemed edited in such a way that it might keep one's attention. The narrator voice is a bit weird tho - AI voice I'm guessing? eg, imo the best thing about that video is the title joke re: length. Well, that an admiration re: the dedication required to make such a thing.

For me that was one of those odd situations where if I don't look at the actor, I liked his actual singing more. Not that he's anywhere within the "really good JCS/Judas" category. Vocally too stretched. But watching his OTP facial contortions made my ears hear it entirely different. Listening to music vs. watching music does that to me sometimes. I think the only things I liked about that 2000 film version were Simon/the zealot (I like Simon's bits in just about all versions) and the priests - Caiaphas and Annas (bald guy). The '73 JSC film is still a strange one for me because I was exposed to that concept rock album first, listened to it 100's and 100's of times, memorized all the lyrics etc. The film feels like they altered the general octave range a little, to fit Neeley, especially for the showcase Garden of Gethsemane number, better - nothing wrong with that, mind, but I don't like it as much vocally. But the Simon dance number was fun and Carl Anderson was very good - he and Neeley were still great vocally when I saw them on stage in SF back in the, uh, maybe late 80's/early 90's. Some of the Broadway clips/recordings I've seen/heard, various casts, seemed like they were also pretty good. But that concept album will always be #1 for me.

Super windy. No power. Tablet useless without wifi. Phone has 88% left which wont last long if media use. Tis early, 630pm, not sleepy. Rhett Rhett whatever shall I do. At least toilets dont need power to flush.

Edit why did my phone double post pfft

With the weirdness of "the beach", I suppose that's possible - trailer implies Sam believes the child is deceased, but it could be some kind of bizarre rebirth/duplication. One chr. narration implied there's something off re: baby's existence/past. Maybe the baby is a new Extinction Entity. Higgs in the original game - he became weirdly sympathetic towards the end. Not in a turn-around/becomes good way, he's still deranged/psycho etc, mind. More in the "he was a sad puppet". Edit: not that I know the lore overmuch. My eyes kind of glaze over when trying to watch hours of cutscenes in a game and that last few hours/end of the game in particular. I mostly paid attention to Mad's story arc. But it was all on the "so bizarre it's kinda interesting" side so I remember some stuff, heh.

My stuff still mostly gets me 60fps/4k at High (more if not average aaa sorts, or if I turn on a little DLSS) and I'm fine with that. I don't game constantly anymore and not worth new (pricey) tops gpu without new cpu at this point, either, imo. Thus I'm also waiting for the 5080/5090 to see what it does/the price. Maybe Death Stranding 2/PC will motivate a new build. Maybe. I'm not sure there are any (consumer, common store) 100" 8k TV's available. Biggest I've seen mentioned in reviews is 86" ($5-$6k or more usually). Which isn't to say there might not be some fancy dancy uber rich designer $15k version, not sold in consumer stores. But I also see little point in 8k for typical home use, even for gaming. 100"+ to me would be when I'd prefer face-interface gaming/movie watching to become more (long session, comfortable/less intrusive to wear) usable/amazing instead, if one is interested in the "eyeball surround/immersion" sensation.

^ I am definitely wondering what is up with that talking puppet. Or who the young blonde lady is going to be. I'm also going to take a wild guess that Higgs will only be a secondary bad (not seen very often) or even end up as a half-good in the end. Having not played any of his other games, I was kinda figuring that guitar weapon sequence was some odd homage to some previous game, like the weird boxing MGS4 homage Higgs fight in DS1. If it's not that ... well, whatever. It's probably not all that important, just some weird cutscene shenanigans. Kinda looks like Higgs channeling Alice Cooper. The "these rooms are other crew" has me thinking the online connectivity aspect might be enhanced more.

Not that it applies to this fora, but just to say, I still don't use Steam Overlay/their screenshot taking options. Although I did notice in NMS that even with Steam's overlay off, using NMS's built-in photomode to take a shot (vs. my 3rd party screen-capturing it instead) seems to stick shots into Steam's game embeddable pic folder system automatically regardless. Although it still sometimes takes terrible quality even with that uncompressed aspect checked etc. Anyway, I like my 3rd party screenshot/vid programs and my own file system organization schemes too much. So on the very rare occasion I want to embed a pic link into a steam forum instead of text link, I use Steascree. I have for years. It's no longer updated/worked on, but I probably used it last a year or so ago - it still worked just fine. https://steascree.download/ https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steascree

Looks even weirder than the first one. I can't wait. Although, I'm guessing I'll have to wait for the PC version...

Impatiently waiting for my stevia/1g sugar Lily's dark chocolate caramel packages, because I discovered them last month and seemingly cannot ever be entirely rid of my desire for something sweet. I also heard about another survival type game called Enshrouded, that looked like it might be more my thing (vs. Palworld at least) but per usual when I went to look at Steam - Early Access. My Steam wishlist grows longer and longer because I seem to have no interest in AAA titles and 70% (made up statistic) of smaller budget devs are early access these days (and typically remain ea for 4-5+ years). Which is fine, but I'm not getting any younger. When I hit 65 or so, I'm not going to even wishlist ea titles anymore.

@Keyrock I thought it was a good video for anyone not playing Palworld.

I was just talking from a business/cost cutting measures/potential continued sales perspective, keep in mind I think the estimated final budget re: Starfield was 300-400million. In terms of Steam, don't they take a large cut? Anyway I think they were wanting a billion in revenue. Which is likely to be reached, if gamepass and the negative ratings/customer support publicity don't affect long-term sales overmuch. Point being tho, that it takes a ton to just break even these days, by their reckoning. Games and marketing budgets for such games are huge now and what owners want in return....it's like blockbuster movie math. In terms of anything to turn around - well, public faith/mockery would be the main thing. It's still Negative/Mixed rated on Steam and that dev comment response to user reviews was a big lol. Although as per usual with these kinds of hoopla's, many "hating" on SF right now, are still likely to turn around and buy the next Elder Scrolls no questions asked. I still think Blizzard has not really recovered from that whole "YOU HAVE PHONES DON'T YOU" thing, public image wise.

I wonder if sales figures include refunded. Also, these days, even when something is a "success", in that it sold (or at least "shipped", during physical product times) a lot of copies, or was "popular with Gamepass" (doesn't always translate into full sales), sometimes the company/owners/shareholders/whoever don't think it was successful enough - eg, it didn't meet desired world-domination and praise expectations and they start crying into their diamond glasses of gold whiskey, leading to who knows what company decisions. You could probably apply that to Blizzard and Diablo4, as well. FF15 on paper was a decent/good success, but a combo of factors (not all of them related to money per se) still made them pull/cancel DLC and disband/scatter that whole department - to their brains/"profit math", they barely broke even I think, not worth more work. That all said, I don't think Bethesda is going to abandon Starfield any time soon, so to speak. Updates and the mod kit may turn things around.

A release date for Manor Lords? Yes! *last seconds of trailer* wait...Early Access? ... sigh. I should've known/realized. Oh well. I'm still hoping it'll be a cross between city-builder and something like Stronghold.

Late to the party - finally we get more info/footage of this game. Sadly I am not all that impressed. I don't mean in a super negative way, only that what's shown didn't make me feel super interested or pumped up. It just was kind of ... "ah, I see." That said as always it's hard to truly gauge until one is actually playing. I'm probably going to wait for some actual gamer-play footage tho, vs. buying it at release hour.

I have no backlog, only some games I tried for a few hours and am never going back to. I think I am, however, up to 130ish games "owned" on Steam, after, uh, 14 years. That doesn't include DLC's, I think they aren't counted in "games owned." Which reminds me, there's probably some more games I need to get Steam to remove, because I don't care about them being available to me ever again and are just list-clutter.