Random video game news... renewed!

[Azdeus]

Getting through GOG Galaxy's the main hurdle, keeps disconnecting me every few minutes.

[Azdeus]

Getting through GOG Galaxy's the main hurdle, keeps disconnecting me every few minutes.

[Zoraptor]

I've never liked the 'bad games do not get reviewed' explanation for review inflation because sure it's usually cheap/ unknown games don't get reviewed, but it's also cheap/ unknown movies that don't get reviewed. Not like movie critics regularly watch and review the film equivalent of a steam Asset Flip game either.

Ultimately the problem is that if you go by game reviews there has basically never been a bad big budget/ hyped/ important game, their scale starts at 7. For the less fortunate, it starts at maybe 5. That is not the case for film, they're far more likely to use the full scale, and to do so even if it's a big title.

1 hour ago, melkathi said:

So pretty much like most big titles these days.

Also rather like the original games in the series. SoC and CS had, uh, one or two bugs at launch, it's fair to say, and CoP was not that much better. Indeed, the non modded experience for them has some... quirks to this day.

[Bartimaeus]

Told a friend that if the game wasn't crashing every 30 seconds, HoC's launch is still better than SHoC's. They told me they couldn't even get past pre-compiling shaders, the game kept crashing, so okay, maybe it is worse than SHoC's.

[Mamoulian War]

1 hour ago, MrBrown said:

This explained it pretty well, I think. tl;dr, because no one reviews the actually bad games, unless they're notable for some other reason.

 

 

I am inclined here to agree with Zoraptor again. The statement, that “We do not review bad games” does not hold water IMHO. As I can say, that I have played few games, which have been absolutely terrible/boring snorefest, which has got the rating of 7/10 or even above. They do review bad games, but they are afraid to give it proper evaluation.

Newest Dragon Age is prime example of that IGN and Gamespot gave it 9/10 and Eurogamer even 10/10 FFS… If this does not show the current state of quality of game reviews, than I do not know what

[uuuhhii]

some politician are trying to take down steam

not sure how much of a panic this will stir up

[Mamoulian War]

4 minutes ago, uuuhhii said:

some politician are trying to take down steam

not sure how much of a panic this will stir up

It’s from someone from Virginia, who was citing the ADL report, which has said that 0,08% of all emotes on Steam are of hateful character… The most ridiculous about this report is, that half of the emotes, which they pointed to, were Pepe Frogs…

[uuuhhii]

2 minutes ago, Mamoulian War said:

It’s from someone from Virginia, who was citing the ADL report, which has said that 0,08% of all emotes on Steam are of hateful character… The most ridiculous about this report is, that half of the emotes, which they pointed to, were Pepe Frogs…

 

anything can be dog whistle number 8 could be part of a dog whistle too

imagine if they include all use of 8 as hateful too

[Mamoulian War]

27 minutes ago, uuuhhii said:

 

anything can be dog whistle number 8 could be part of a dog whistle too

imagine if they include all use of 8 as hateful too

That would be terrible indeed. Everybody knows, that most hateful number is 7, because 7-8-9…

I’ll see myself out now

[Malcador]

2 hours ago, uuuhhii said:

some politician are trying to take down steam

not sure how much of a panic this will stir up

Well people are slaves to Steam, they'll Rise Up.

Hate speech is pretty normal for gamers, though

[Azdeus]

So after having to restart galaxy 34+a few times, I got to play for about 2 hours. I really dislike how UE it looks, had an out of video memory crash, but otherwise I didn't notice any glaring bugs, some clipping and weird cloth physics, though could be that dude had the badonkadonk of a neolithic fertility godess. The facial animations are true to Shadow of Chernobyl, spot on there. Had my usual trouble with mouse sensitivity settings and I made the mistake of turning off all the yellow paint before I made the choice of game difficulty, so they got turned back on. I restarted twice because of this, but turns out all I had to do was go into the menu in game and turn that off

[BruceVC]

11 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

I am inclined here to agree with Zoraptor again. The statement, that “We do not review bad games” does not hold water IMHO. As I can say, that I have played few games, which have been absolutely terrible/boring snorefest, which has got the rating of 7/10 or even above. They do review bad games, but they are afraid to give it proper evaluation.

Newest Dragon Age is prime example of that IGN and Gamespot gave it 9/10 and Eurogamer even 10/10 FFS… If this does not show the current state of quality of game reviews, than I do not know what

Mamie thats why you can only trust and have faith in one global game rating score and we all know what that one is

When has the " BruceVC game rating system " ever let you down 

[Wormerine]

 

[Gfted1]

Avowed Is Much More Than Just Obsidian’s Take on Skyrim

[Lexx]

Did they added a 3rd person view? For some reason I thought this game was 1st person only.

[HoonDing]

Looks like a mobile game

[Lexx]

Yeah, watching the video right now, I don't like how big the HUD and everything is. There is stuff going on everywhere, lots of blinking, lots of lights, lots of text... Does the game think I'm stupid and need to be held by the hand at all times? Usually games allow disabling all this HUD stuff, but question is then... can I still actually play the game or am I just gimping myself?

[kanisatha]

Third person option was confirmed a good while ago.

[mkreku]

https://www.eurogamer.net/after-three-hours-avowed-still-shows-no-sign-of-a-killer-hook-to-call-its-own-but-this-fizzy-rpg-****tail-is-plenty-enjoyable-all-the-same

I think it looks better than I expected. The Pillars universe never really interested me, but the video convinced me to at least keep my eyes out for this. I don't particularly like the zone-split world (like in the Outer Worlds) but I can probably live with that as long as the zones are split in a clever way (like the planets in Outer Worlds).

[LadyCrimson]

Force Gaming's yak about their preview play had me also thinking "seems better than I thought." A lot of secrets to be found (exploration focus), the zone thing seems ok, combat seems ok. The UI and combat UI still is kinda ick. Things like "too easy" could be because it's the prologue/first area of the game, hard to judge when it's just a first area type preview. EDIT: he mentioned a lot of fps fluctuation, performance wise.

But the map seems large enough, indicating there will be plenty of "zones" to visit/explore. "Dawnshore" is the zone they were allowed to play in.
Still not sure if my brain currently wants this type of game, but it does look more promising now.  EDIT: I may still wait for at least a 30% sale tho.

EDITEDIT: thought maybe some might find a world map spoilery, spoiler tag added.

Edited November 21 by LadyCrimson

[HoonDing]

Having zero knowledge of the setting might actually be a boon here

There are a lot of "I wanted POE3" comments

[Wormerine]

8 hours ago, Lexx said:

Did they added a 3rd person view? For some reason I thought this game was 1st person only.

It was confirmed a while ago, but this is first time we get to see it in action. Obsidian is still thinking of 1st person as a primary play method (Mort's video touches on that in the interview section), and some of the other previews (I think Eurogamer) expressed a similar sentiment.

7 hours ago, Lexx said:

Yeah, watching the video right now, I don't like how big the HUD and everything is. There is stuff going on everywhere, lots of blinking, lots of lights, lots of text... Does the game think I'm stupid and need to be held by the hand at all times? Usually games allow disabling all this HUD stuff, but question is then... can I still actually play the game or am I just gimping myself?

We will see. It does have a very "consol-y" feel to it, like Outer Worlds did. I don't think it is terrible, there isn't much there that I wouldn't want to see considering what game it is likely to be. Probably the ever present quest description is the only thing that I would like to have an option to get rid off at the moment.

I do think it is good that interactable items are easily recognisable. Ironically high fidelity makes it tricky to distinguish items from windowdressing - I am trying to play Dishonored 2 without X-ray vision power, and it is a bit tedious. Could they have been more subtle? Eh, perhaps, but I think they look alright in the vibrant artstyle they go for.

[BruceVC]

15 hours ago, Gfted1 said:

Avowed Is Much More Than Just Obsidian’s Take on Skyrim

Thats a positive review,  good to know 

 

@majestic its got our favourite and preferred  themes in it, Colonialism ..YES !!!!!

 

" You can immediately grasp the themes at hand. You’re a representative of an empire, a colonizing force bringing “civilization” to people who may not want it "  

 

[Sven_]

On 11/20/2024 at 9:01 PM, Mamoulian War said:

I am inclined here to agree with Zoraptor again. The statement, that “We do not review bad games” does not hold water IMHO. As I can say, that I have played few games, which have been absolutely terrible/boring snorefest, which has got the rating of 7/10 or even above. They do review bad games, but they are afraid to give it proper evaluation.

Newest Dragon Age is prime example of that IGN and Gamespot gave it 9/10 and Eurogamer even 10/10 FFS… If this does not show the current state of quality of game reviews, than I do not know what

It's a 82 Metacritic overall -- which makes it barely rank in the top100 for 2024 overall.  It's also a game that over 30% of critics apparently don't recommend, as aggregators have adjusted to this score inflation by marking every review under a 7.5 as "mixed". So much for the BIG RETURN OF BIOWARE. This plus there being two games with a score of below 50 is the state of game reviews.  It's not merely IGN by the way. That's a red herring. But according to the video's logics, IGN shouldn't use the lower grades for Hollywood movies as well -- which they do. And as argued, nobody reviews amateur and indie movies uploaded to the internet as well. The movies that see coverage and marked as mediocre to stinkers are noteable productions, and not comparable to garage indies publishing their first game on Steam.

Germany's biggest (PC) mag is Gamestar. They officially have games scoring in the 70s range as "good" ones, 60s range as "ok" ones, 80s score as "getting the best out of their genre", and 90s as "exceptioinal games anybody should experience". Now I'm a fan of CRPGs -- but pretty much any major one got at least high 80s scores from them, both Pillars games 90s scores, Pathfinder WOTR as well -- and of course BG3. I still think that's rather generous (and I've enjoyed most of those).

Meanwhile, in general, take a look at which bigger RPG-likes at all were ranked lowly in many many years. I can tell you two: Fallout 76 (50s Metascore) and Alpha Protocol (60s Metascore). Tellingly two titles that were perceived as having severe issues upon launch. Game reviews are pretty technical in general -- as argued, Michael Bay should consider doing movies. Technically, you can hardly rip him to shreds the way he is by movie critics. Unfortunately, movies as well, aren't but technology.   Meanwhile, games can hardly "fail", unless they're bugged to crap.

Edited Friday at 05:24 PM by Sven_

[HoonDing]

Avowed will sell millions. It's not like the Xbox beggars can be choosers.