Hawke64

Usual June (demo) Hypnos (demo) An open area. Needless to say, the GPU disapproved. Silly Polly Beast (demo) Drova

Drova Primeval Forest Somehow, my favoured weapon type is axe now and I usually go with swords or daggers. Tried Blackshard and Hypnos demos. They ran poorly.

SteamDB does not host the files, only the Steam metadata of the apps, such as depot IDs, which you need to download the files via Steam CLI. You also need to own the related game for it to work. I have not tried it for the larger titles, but it worked fine for Signalis - 1 command and the older version dropped onto my hard drive and I had to move it into the "common" SteamApps folder. For the more recent version, signing up is not required, so unless the game is actively patched, you should be fine. Admittedly, if Steam handled updates better and the developers allowed a less painful rollback (via the beta branches), using SteamDB would not be needed. This example is for a large game (Larian's D&D game) with frequent patches, so it would require an account: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3023295121. It is a relatively straightforward step-by-step guide and it explains the process. I would add that your approach, keeping specific versions on your own hardware, is safer as long as you have more than 1 copy. The modding unrelated use case for SteamDB is pricing monitoring.

Regarding time limits in games in general, it can work if the game is balanced around it and not you vacuuming all map of XP. I liked it in The Séance of Blake Manor, so I had to prioritise the relevant items and dialogue options without having to go through everything. There also were several ways to gain specific information. I cannot quite recall how it was in Expeditions: Viking (there was a timer and several paths to victory), but I have not finished Expeditions: Rome which did not have a time limit and expected you to clear whole large maps (and frequently with random mercs, which annoyed me a lot). There's also Pathfinder: Kingmaker, though there were several factors that could lead to a death spiral. Tried Silly Polly Beast demo. Got repeatedly bodied in a corridor where 2 waves of foes spawned in front and behind me and I ran out of ammo. After a few more attempts, I got to the next room, with low health and no ammo with predictable results. It is heavily inspired by Silent Hill (you wake up in some demonic realm after doing a thing and falling into a well), the art is lovely, the controls are rebindable, the saving system is bad (a single overwriting auto-save per playthrough, 3 slots in total). The gotcha is that it is combat-heavy, up to being an action game, rather than a survival horror, and you need to hold the interaction key to unlock the next door, so you have to clear the rooms, while the foes revive when you re-enter. The one and only defence option, rolling, amusingly, does not consume stamine, but hitting enemies in melee does. There's also something about the setting that bugs me, but I cannot quite pinpoint it (it being Eastern Europe? The MC being very anime-styled, but everything else not?). Good audio design, though.

I've read the reviews and some comments for Dawnwalker. It might be fun, but I am definitely going to leave the paying testers to face the first wave of bugs and performance issues. Speaking of, the price tag and me strongly disliking TW3 do not encourage purchasing it now either. Played Drova some more and visited the main towns. After ~10 hours of exploration, I forgot what the main quest was about, so had to reread the journal. I also was able to avoid being kidnapped (this time the bandits were not immortal and died to the same type of mini-boss), then, after several attempts, reached the potential kidnappers' base and somehow cleared it (of bandits only, as the giant worms were 2-shooting me). So, the exploration is satisfying overall and the story should get going more actively now.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-internet-we-once-loved-is-gone-steamdb-founders-announce-the-community-run-database-has-been-acquired-by-nexus-mods-owners https://steamdb.info/blog/steamdb-nexus-mods/ No strong opinion - something as large as SteamDB can be challenging to run and it is easy to burn out, while the new owners may or may not try to en****tify the service. It might be beneficial for the core model of Nexus, as Steam still forces the updates (unless you beat it with a metaphorical metal pipe), which break the mods. So, it can go either way, but I understand the SteamDB founders' logic.

Drova A random side quest near the start of the game

Drova. Kited 2 immortal and hostile NPCs to a mini-boss. They were getting repeatedly KO'd throughout the battle but overcame the boss by the virtue of their immortality, however slow it was, while I sat behind a rock and poked the occasional spawn (my hits were not even visible on the mini-boss' HP bar). Ironically, the mini-boss defeating them counted as my victory, so the side quest was completed as well. Otherwise, it has been quite story-light - I've been exploring and not seeing many talking NPCs. I finished the session when I reached the Remnants' Camp and befriended a cat there.

I'd say that there was significantly less exploration in TW3 than I would like in general but more than I could take in TW3 (i.e. I started jogging straight to the next quest marker after the prologue village and looked up some armour locations). The traversal and combat were atrocious. It was not great in TW1, but it was less actively unpleasant. Climbing a chest-high cliff or opening a chest was also impossible in combat which annoyed me quite a lot. I do not have any strong memories or opinions about the VA, though I generally prefer either silent or close to my range VA (~Dante from DMCV). I suppose I enjoyed the opportunity to ask NPCs to get to the point a few times. They are mostly third-person. Similar to Saints Row, but offered less customisation and were less fun in general. I think I got pretty far in Vice City but could not do the cinema plane mission. I played San Andreas, though less, and focused more on just running around. No recollection of GTAIV, Steam shows that I have it.

Naughty Dogs used to count the polygons in the original Crash Bandicoot. Regarding The Witcher increased system requirements, if the developers locked the new story DLC behind the new version, it is a rather user-unfriendly move. They are welcome to ship a new GPU, an SSD, and a few RAM sticks to all affected users, of course. Given how it went with previous "upgrade", I am somewhat sceptical of the performance. For what it's worth, the developer left the pre-upgrade version available as a separate download on GOG (under the Extra panel) and as a beta branch on Steam, so that's something. But I also somewhat dislike the series, despite playing it back to back, including the DLC, so neither purchasing nor replaying in any event. Edit. Checked GOG, now there are 2 editions (Complete and not) and 2 editions (default and classic) under each. The not-Complete classic takes 10 files + separate DLC (3 files) to download. The Complete default takes 22 files. 1 file is up to 4GB. Fortune's Run - Valve Removing Access - Steam NewsValve is removing my access from the game. I've made it 1$ and discounted it maximally. Goodbye everyone. -DZI hope that the developer will recover from it, providing that the information shared is accurate. Fortune's Run is definitely $1, though. From the store page: https://www.eurogamer.net/take-two-rockstar-gta-6-leaks-subpoena-discord-response Well, here is to hope that Take-Two and its CEO will have the same privacy they wanted to "grant" to random Discord users. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/rather-than-calling-for-gta-6-boycott-fired-rockstar-workers-urge-players-to-support-them-in-their-legal-battle-against-the-studio-by-buying-union-merch On a positive note, Well Dweller is releasing on 22 September. https://steamcommunity.com/games/3699590/announcements/detail/698773621583119093 The cat game, Fable, and the D&D action-adventure look quite nice as well.

Drova

Drova. Started the game, got to the first settlement (camp; spent a few short gaming sessions cutting the treants in the woods, 5 minutes per treant), got through a random cave to some ruins, grabbed a big axe while dodging the harpies. Could not use the axe - it required 74 skill points spent and I had 28. On a more serious note, the system requirements, controls, and the saving system are very appealing and the gameplay somewhat reminds of Gothic but better and with a custom PC.

The issue with logging in while on VPN seems to be resolved. Thank you.

Solasta II The start was not promising. My battle against the vegetation. Relative success - the palm tree was gone. Poking the rest of the options ("love" having enter them in plain text and lock the file between changes) did not help much in terms of performance. But I got odd hair artefacts. I like the UI and the D&D5e implementation. The rogue with 10 Str moving the rock was somewhat funny. The visual character creation is quite decent, though a non-athletic wizard has to start with the more femme body. Tried with the masc one, too much core muscles for 8 Str. Not sure yet how the Personality interacts with the Family role that is set later in the campaign.

Sorry to hear. This is also the main reason why I do not purchase larger titles on GOG - it can be challenging to install and get them running on other systems, while retrying takes time and bandwidth. Regarding replaying, I replay games less often now. Mostly due to the limited time and larger backlog, though there are a few shorter action games I return to (should replay DS2 at some point). I would like to try the different paths in WotR but the time commitment does not encourage me. I've purchased 2 Early Access titles this month (and probably will get a third for £8). The experience was not quite as positive as I had hoped - Solasta II has a fantastic character creation system. I spent several hours creating the party and restarted trice (ended up with recreating my party from the first game). The issue is that the game does not run at all on the PC and runs poorly on Deck. So I spent a few more hours trying to get it to run better. The only positive achievements are that I know the developers added -dx12 -sm6 to the launch options on Steam (if anyone has the GOG copy, could you please confirm?) and I have managed to purge the vegetation (to reduce it significantly enough for it to be less visually obtrusive). Otherwise, on my testing point (the spot after the third battle and before the first vista), there was no noticeable gain from anything except dropping the rendering resolution. When I reached the World Map, the FPS dropped to single digits, so it was a hard stop for me. Still, I am quite happy with the character creator (would be even happier if I knew that I had to assign different family roles to my toons) and the D&D5e implementation (it felt amazing to have the Sneak Attack reactions trigger). The other one is Expeditions: Samurai. It somewhat reminds of Expeditions: Rome and performs noticeably better than Solasta II (well, it runs on the main PC). The visual style is closer to Kingdoms of Amalur than Rome. The issue with Samurai is that I could not see the interactive items reliably, there is no area maps (it was the same in Rome), and the objectives were not quite clear from the dialogues (I had to check the journal twice after landing to figure out that I had to level up to proceed or that I needed to take the weapons back instead of just waiting), which is a poor combination. Otherwise, there are some changes to the combat system with different classes using different resources for abilities and the dialogue options affect the standing with the companions quite actively (the bonuses are provided for both loyalty and animosity, interestingly). The character creation is more limited and the list of perks and skills is not provided at the start, but it is functional overall. The EA game I am looking at is Entropy. In the demo, the combat was the RPGMaker default which annoyed me immensely. The setting and the visual style were appealing enough, though, with the character creation being fairly limited as well (the avatar and the starting stats are chosen during the opening scene). So, playing Mark of the Deep which is a decent isometric action-adventure game about pirates. No performance issues so far.