Fenixp

Yes. Do you? Judging by large Czech gaming development houses and reports leaking from CDP, they kinda don't. I mean, one of my friends working for an unnamed dev house was getting free breakfasts, lunches and sometimes dinners so that he wouldn't have to leave the workplace, so that's something! Crazy unpaid overtimes are among the standards of gaming development, incidentally, along with a whole bunch of other issues. Precisely - the industry is preying on enthusiasm, often times offering even unpaid jobs to "start off". It's kind of disgusting.

Ah, so you're excited to work in gaming development! Prepare to be chewed by the system until you burn out and then spat out, hoping you can still muster motivation to do what you want to do. Edit: Let's say that there's a good reason why most of my friends who worked in game dev are only getting serious relationships now, in their mid 30s, after they switched job. Demanding no hard work is one thing, complete disrespect for labor protection laws that many gaming companies show is on wholly different end of the spectrum.

I'm thinking a lot of tears and booze.

More importantly, Shadow Warrior 2 replaces the hand-crafted levels of the original with procedurally generated ones, to ... Not a great effect, really. Beginning is hand crafted, but you'll get to the procedurally generated levels soon enough. The loot is completely underwhelming and rather pointless TBH.

Well, SS1 was believable because it came out in 93, so having Engineering level, hangar bays, crew quarters and such was enough for it to feel like a real place. Similarly, SS2's level design was an improvement upon that of the original game (in other words, enough to feel believable at the time), but had plenty of issues (lack of logic in some parts of some levels being the least of them TBH) - worked at the time tho. Prey continues this trend rather nicely.

It's a lot more similar to SS 1 than SS 2 (not a horror game, much more open. And yes, it has 6 degrees of freedom zero-G sections - didn't know they've had that planned for SS2.) Thematically, it's kinda trying to do its own thing, to... An extent. After all a good chunk of it was penned by Avellone. And yes, I'm aware of similarities between SS2 and Dead Space - and yes, I actually preferred storyline in Dead Space to that in SS2, as one in DS was a lot more subtle. However - and you could call that a continuing trend from SS1 as SS2 was more linear than the original already - I wasn't a big fan of how linear Dead Space ended up, definitely when compared to the second System Shock game and even more so when compared to the original. To me, exploration and believable locales was a huge draw of System Shock games (and yes, station presented in SS1 felt believable for the time the game was released - doesn't particularly feel that way anymore. Eh.) Prey continues in this tradition with Talos 1 actually feeling like a place to work and live in, Ishimura ... Doesn't particularly and sacrifices quite a lot to become a horror setpiece.

Dead Space would be okay-ish at being a System Shock game, but only so-so. Good thing we have Prey now!

This thread needs more activity.

https://youtu.be/oTicsIK5umw Basically, it's a Piranha Bytes game, for better or worse. As with others, I'll wait for it to get patched before digging in, but I really do want to dig in.

Apparently, Evil Within 2 is also pretty damn good game. And it has no microtransactions, loot boxes and - and that's a new one for Bethesda - doesn't even sport Denuvo. So buy it because Katphood loves Shinji Mikami and also because, apparently, AAA games that are simply ... Games with no BS surrounding them is a thing to be celebrated nowadays.

Just one. Do this: https://youtu.be/SQxNikzFfLw

Nope, but I think it got to Access like 6 months down the line.

Turning to PEGI is actually a rather clever idea - an icon is good, assigning the games an AO rating due to their exploitative nature even better.

Outlaws is awesome, and has become my notebook game for my travelling needs. Old-school FPS games are grand. Darkwood is ... Getting a bit stale, 8 hours into it. I suppose I'll take a look into the third area and see if the game does anything to liven itself up, but... I'm not entirely sure it will. It could have been great if it were a bit shorter or more focused, as it stands, the first 5 hours of horror are now being replaced by chores. But eh, something interesting may happen in the next area, right? Right? Seeing all the craze about Cuphead got me into a boss rush mood - but I'm not a huge fan of linear, yet difficult platformers, so I'm giving Furi a shot. Just got to the fourth fight, the game's extremely tight and frantic. Do like. I probably won't finish it since I suck at these games, but... It's been a lot of fun so far.

Oh fighting with your mouth (or keyboard) is essential, I'm pretty sure a lot of negative press and PR can go a long way - not buying the game, however, is very much a losing battle. Which doesn't mean I'm saying you should stop fighting - just to use other means than those that have repeatedly proven to be inefficient. If player numbers of Shadow of War are anything to go by, approaching it by informing the masses and boycotting the game failed yet again. I mean, I'm sure as heck not buying them either - but I'm not really expecting that to change anything in the long run. Pushing legislation on the other hand, especially in countries these big companies are based in... Well, that would be a game changer. You can buy the in-game currency for actual money, and doing so will then give you advantage in the semi-MP component of the game. Or did any of that change?

If videogame history is anything to go by, it certainly is effective, but it won't help. To my knowledge, loot boxes in SP games started off as a part of EA sports games - which are largely marketed towards a crowd that won't really care about such controversy, if they even know the controversy is a thing. And, sure enough, titles like Battlefront have a much larger overlap with core gamers, but even those are just a subset of who the game is marketed towards - and only a small subset of core gamers will actually avoid buying the game. And if enough people realize the danger of such a move and end up avoiding the game, next few titles by EA won't have loot boxes until things calm down and then they'll introduce them as something slightly different. Precisely like it happened with always online DRM, precisely like it happened with lack of dedicated servers (which are also a rarity these days.) As opposed to lack of dedicated servers or always-on DRM, however, this practice is genuinely dangerous and harmful - and as long as large companies don't get hit by court-ordered sanctions, they'll keep trying until players finally accept it. We've seen it time and time again. Edit: Speaking of, Shadow of War got released, and its after launch player peak is already comparable to recent titles like Prey, Dishonored 2 or Nier: Automata. We'll see if it'll keep climbing or go down from here. Source: http://steamcharts.com

Oh that wasn't a jab at you specifically Katphood, it's just... We have accepted this kind of bull**** for nearly a decade now, and if I've noticed anything in gaming communities (altho it may not be specific to them), it's that they'll scream loudly about a controversy and then stop when they get bored and move to another one, things only changing when systematic solution is put into effect (like refunds forced by law) I've just grown rather cynical ever since I was one of the people yelling loudly about DRM like 10 years ago for it to subside for a little bit just to become a standard practice later on - titles with always online DRM are still released, most just don't care anymore. In fact I'm encountering increasing amount of "Damn those dirty pirates, always-on DRM is good! Oh yeah and Steam is DRM-free!" Putting existing content from a game as DLC is a thing, SP microtransactions are a thing, paid mods are becoming a thing (altho I'm still not sure how bad of an effect that'll actually end up having) - most just sort of forgot about these and moved on to the next thing, so... That's precisely what'll happen with unregulated gambling. If gaming community comes together and fights loot crates, publishers will probably drop them for a bit and then bring them up under a different name, with a different excuse - and they'll keep trying until the practice is either accepted or regulated by law. And after all that's exactly what laws are for, so I'd actually say the way to go, as opposed to not buying the game, is to write a letter/e-mail to your chosen representative/political party, explain the situation and try to get the change to happen that way. I will never do such a thing.

Oh they were already in Rise of the Tomb Raider, nobody started the ****storm back then tho :-P Just goes to show how much do people 'jump on the bandwagon' as opposed to doing their own research. And Ass Creed: Unity / Syndicate too, for that matter, as far as I know anyway. Still, they were straight-up microtransactions - if you don't want them, you don't touch them, and when you do, you just buy the things you do want. Loot crates abusing addictive tendencies is something a wee bit different. Nonetheless, those were around for ages too - in MP games and Asian RPGs. I think all this stuff can be traced at the very least all the way back to Diablo II and real-money grey market surrounding it, which grew considerably with the second game. It then felt rather disgusting when Blizzard decided to support the practice by an official market-place, but people pushed back against that decision sufficiently for it to be taken down, so that's a good thing I suppose. At any rate, gaming community accepted abusing addictive personalities for ages now, to the point of it being rooted in the media so firmly that I'm pretty sure legal steps will need to be taken to stop it. If gamers win the loot crate battle, concept will just return under a different name.

That's sexist!

After high praise of the sequel by Keyrock, I got kinda interested in trying out the original Steamworld Dig and thought about buying it - no need to tho as the game is free on Origin for limited time! So uh... Yes, that's the news.

a) Darkwood. I didn't think you can make a top-down game this scary. Combination of Silent Hill, survival crafting games, focus on story and exceptional sound design make this a must for horror fans. b) Outlaws. Yes, the old Lucas Arts shooter. Didn't expect the game to be so damn deadly - your weapons hit like a truck, but so do the enemies'. It makes for careful and systematic gameplay, combined with oldschool level design. Liking it a lot, not sure why I've not played it yet. ('spose it might be due to it running on the crappy Jedi engine) Edit: And there's a train level! Of course there's a train level! I love old shooters.

It's U.S.A. so it has to be good!

Not really, you can finish the game while not using powers at all. They make the game easier and open up more options, but as there's no such thing as skill gating in Dishonored 2 either, missing bone charms is fine. There's also the Power Armor that ups your strength by ... Three I think? Thus no need for more strength than 5, really.