Fenixp

Yeah, honestly, I'm not entirely sure why does Egosoft insist on the whole 'walking inside' angle. I mean sure, it sounds cool, but I can't see how can it be made relevant in a game of X's scale without putting a ton of work into it - and honestly, I'd prefer that work to be put into simulation instead. Then again, I suppose we do have a pretty damn compelling product we can go back to in the form of X3 so trying new things may not be a bad idea, still... Egosoft was the only company who periodically produced space sims with strong focus on economic simulation and they seem to be steering away from that in the name of pretty and cool. Come on, there's no need to act mature and try to come up with reasonable explanation as for why all caps are good. We know RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS are The Most Important And Awesome Thing™, and therefore ALL CAPS approach is the only appropriate... Nay, the only viable approach. No need for any explanation after that.

This thread is an impostor! Where is the real RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS!?

Oh that's wonderful, instead of actually storing controller ID, Steam's big picture just gets paired with player 1's pad, whichever it is. So the implementation's not only buggy and half-arsed, it also doesn't give a rat's arse about basic coding principles. Bravo, Valve! Bravo!

Well Steam has released an update that forces games launched with gamepad turned on into Big Picture mode. And, as it so typical for Valve, they've made a completely half-arsed job of it. So, basically, to try out Steam's feature that allows you to rebind Xbox 360 controller buttons to anything you want, I have paired my 360 pad with my Steam account. After messing around with it for some time and figuring out it doesn't really work particularly well, I have unchecked the thing that allows Steam to intercept 360 button presses and thought that's the end of it. It wasn't. When running in Big Picture mode, each button press on my 360 pad was followed by a semi-random keyboard button - usually arrow keys. In other words, 360 pad because useless in majority of games. After a bunch of troubleshooting, I stopped using Big Picture and forgot about it. So um... Big Picture seems to be forced now. And the bug did not get fixed. Not a new one, mind you. So now I'm going through the troubleshooting process again, but a new Steam's feature is that it apparently refuses to disable pairing between Steam and my pad - which is another known bug, incidentally. And to add salt to the injury, Steam didn't even bother to create proper desktop interface for controller configuration screens and just launches Big Picture in a window. Yaaay! Right. As per usual, Valve just can't do a single thing they try properly. Now I'm going to write to their support - to get an utterly useless response after a month as per usual. *sigh*

Not only is it a rather unique game that's paced in a way I've never experienced before, it's also extremely well executed, written, optimized and technically competent. Let's not punish developers for doing what they want to do when they do it well - 30 euro seems to be a rather reasonable full price for a product of this quality. Honestly, Hellblade seems like the kind of game Ninja Theory wanted to make since Enslaved - and Enslaved is about 10 hours long, padded by gameplay that exists for the sole purpose of more gameplay being there. Terrible design.

More Hellblade. The game actually goes out of its way to make its gameplay as varied as possible, in spite of its individual components being rather shallow. It still works damn well to reinforce the feeling of desperation tho. I wouldn't necessarily call it fun (because feeling a tad depressed... Well, isn't that) but it's certainly a compelling experience. Glad I threw money Ninja Theory's way, this a very unique ... Thing to play. Nonetheless, it's apparently like 6-8 hours long and the game's not particularly replayable, so - unless you're looking for a fairly powerful experience, get it on sale.

So, Hellblade is... It's structured primarily as a semi-linear (you can sometimes choose order in which you want to do things) narratively driven experience ... Thing, but reasonably heavy in gameplay department - for a narratively driven game that is. I do love that the game uses gameplay pretty much solely for the purpose of strengthening its narrative. Senua's struggle, her fear, her desperation and psychosis heavily influence everything you do, from combat to basic movement. She gets slower and voices get more desperate as she gets hit in combat, there are bits of the game where she's afraid and the run button just won't work... Yeah, I like it. Just be aware that the whole game is very much focused on granting player an experience that could not be replicated in quite the same way in any other medium - it is, however, still primarily a semi-linear story. Meh, there's been more games from the period that used that dialogue wheel, and it's not like ME's powers were particularly original to begin with. But yeah, the game definitely does take inspiration from ME - gameplay is focused far too differently for it to be much of a knockoff tho.

It's not really that at all tho - a big part of ME's gameplay was dialogue + choice and consequence that plays pretty much no role at all in The Bureau. On the other hand, tactical gameplay is expanded on quite significantly in The Bureau, in spite of it not working properly half the time and being irritating the other half. But yes, like Mass Effect, it's a third person cover-based shooter in its core.

Everybody should, to experience it as a cautionary tale at the very least. Great ideas appear all across that game, marred by poor execution and rushed development. Such a shame.

Meh, I always believed that quality of content beats its quantity - and when it comes to EP1, I've finished that one like 4 times when it was released. Then again, it didn't really bring anything new to HL2, and it most definitely does not stand up to comparison with content of Orange Box.

No, that's not fun at all, which is why I'm not doing it. Exploring the genuinely interesting and immediately striking locations that the game is filled with is, on the other hand, a ton of fun.

You can disable question marks in the options menu. Suddenly, the game is a ton of fun to explore.

With expanding moveset, I'm enjoying Hollow Knight more and more. The world it presents is absolutely unique. I still have a bunch of issues with the damn thing - damage on contact being one of them, enemies respawning on area swap being another one (that wouldn't be so bad actually, but you get knocked back on hit and some enemies require a lot of mobility to beat - in other words, when a fight occurs next to an area exit, it's entirely possible you'll leave the area by accident and come back to respawned enemies with topped up healt. Irritating.), then there's a bunch of enemies that seem to only exist solely for the purpose of being as irritating as humanly possible without actually requiring a big amount of skill to defeat. Oh well. Aside from that, the game is absolutely brilliant. If you asked me a few days ago, I'd say Salt and Sanctuary is the goto game for 2D Dark Souls, but Hollow Knight has taken that spot rather rapidly - it's a lot more polished than Salt and Sanctuary, its map is a lot larger and more fun to explore (and boy, there's exploration aplenty), lore and story is quite a bit more interesting and just... Everything about it is rather incredible. It also gets bonus points for having its own identity while it also wears its inspirations up its sleeve. So yeah, Hollow Knight. Play it. It's great. And really bloody difficult in places. But great.

I have somehow managed to play 8 hours of Hollow Knight past the last two days. Shoot me.

On one hand, Hollow Knight is absolutely fantastic, especially for atmosphere, exploration and distinct visuals - which are all things I can appreciate. On the other, the combat system is fun for the most part, but I'm unsure why exactly does the game need the cheap way to ramp up difficulty by making player take damage on contact with enemies (as in, whenever your hitbox touches enemy's hitbox, player takes damage, regardless of what the enemy's doing at the moment) - decision that's made even more bizarre by the sheer amount of work that went into making enemies have proper tells and avoidable attack animations. I'm also not entirely sure whether I love or hate the simplicity of complete lack of combo system.

Incidentally, Outcast got an official patch in 2014 - availible on GOG and Steam

Posting a literal link to a Discord chat won't work - you need to generate an invitation, set it to never expire and link that

Galaxy can already do that, actually - surprised me how well it works. As well as allowing user to choose whether a patch gets installed or not. Should be a standard feature as far as I'm concerned.

It's trying to take the 'Space station gone wrong' trope and craft an almost hard sci-fi game around it - taking Arkane's biggest strength (level design and environmental storytelling) and just create a game around it. It's neither really focused on action (which is cubersome on purpose, which is why I wish the game did end up getting more fleshed out stealth mechanics) albeit it's a big part of it - which I'm sure was a decision made to not bore mainstream audience - nor focused on horror as full-on horror usually requires steering off the 'realistic' path. And Talos I is possibly the most realistic portrayal of a space station I've ever seen in a game (not that big of an achievement considering the competition, admittedly - so there's obviously still crap like artificial gravity). I just love the tiny details it's filled with - like one of the first information you gain about the station being that it used to be a much smaller structure built by Russians called "Kletka" and, as you explore deeper into station's infrastructure, you can see how construction styles change and even glimpse "Kletka" written in Russian on some of the wall plating. Or, from a completely different angle, find a tucked-away corner in 0-G with flower pedals and a bottle of wine floating through the air, with a message saying "We should not open wine in 0G next time" pinned to the wall, just to find a computer belonging to a female employee surrounded by flowers in a nearby location. I love exploring virtual worlds, and Prey has given me one I can return to repeatedly and find something new every time. I just wish the shooting was also up to par.

This is not directed at you specifically, Tale, but I'm seeing this quite often - people say Prey needs more tension to be a horror game. But it's never been marketed or sold as a horror game and, well, it's not trying to be one. It's trying to be a sci-fi thriller with some horror elements, which is an end that I find it achieving quite splendidly - nonetheless, going into the experience expecting a horror game can only lead to a disappointment. As for combat, it's been my biggest sticky point with the game - always felt a bit too gimmicky for my taste, and still does. Altho it's a fair bit easier and more manageable on second playthrough when I have actually learned to make proper use of environmental hazards and setting up traps. What did hook me was exploration, atmosphere and, eventually, the storyline and strange dynamic the game has going for it (which only reveals itself later on)

My life was never quite the same after Necrons got nerfed.

And when a game doesn't get a Steam release, developer receives loads of e-mails saying "Steam or no-buy". And when a game receives special treatment outside of Steam, like on consoles, Steam users get upset and angry. That's not specific to GOG users, that's just how idiots behave. Similar to idiots who bring up GOG vs Steam rivalry (albeit indirectly) in every other thread in existence and then claim they're not Steam fanboys. Admittedly, similar to idiots who keep taking their troll bait, so... I think I'll quote Bart on this, but you will have to use -some- imagination to make it apply for my account

You can actually release DRM-free games without GOG. Or Steam. Or any other distribution service for that matter - and many Kickstarter games did do just that, incidentally. So thus far the only person who seems to be acting like an arse would be you :-P