What games are people playing these days!? (2024)

Frigidman

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10-22-2019, 09:29 AM

(10-22-2019, 08:54 AM)macdude22 Wrote: Where were the complaints when everything was a "steam exclusive".

Maybe because there wasn't anything that consolidated installs and games before. In all honesty, Steam is a big part of why I switched to PC gaming more because with steam it was so much more easy to get games and installed and 'working' ....... vs what it used to be before them, a total mix of co*ckeyed installers and broken nonsense and hoops to jump through just to get a single game running right.

Cant think of any 'competition' when steam sat down and snagged up tons of games and did exclusives (I dont even recall any exclusives, unless it was just publishers not wanting to bother with stupid self-installers anymore, so they only posted it to steam out of ease of use).

But now... Epic is trying to fight steam and the massive user base of steam by taking games and going exclusive with them. When there is little to no point in doing so especially since the Epic app, store and installer/manager is a total piece of crap (who wants to go backward?). Well, the only point being greed and monopolistic behavior. Steam may host all the games, but they still let stores sell their games and be competitive with pricing. Epic is like "no no no! no one else, only we can, we drive the price at whatever we want, and you cant do anything about it!" ... monopoly at its best.

Getting back on topic.... I been doing me some zombie killen in Dying Light. Pretty smooth game, runs at high details 120fps locked, and has lots of action, and fluid control. Jumping about, sliding, leaping, smashing, even the way you move the mouse, character, and swing weapons controls how you go about attacking zombies.

I've found the Bow to be especially nice, in that headshots take a lot of zombies down, AND you can yank your arrow right out and not have to worry too much about running out of ammo (unlike guns, which are loud and draw in some nasty critters... and run out of bullets).

Decent fun game.... for a sandbox zombie flick.

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macdude22

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10-22-2019, 11:32 AM

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Cougar

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10-22-2019, 12:19 PM (This post was last modified: 10-22-2019, 12:20 PM by Cougar.)

(10-22-2019, 11:32 AM)macdude22 Wrote: Epic entering the storefront market is literally the opposite of a monopoly but you do you.

Nobody is complaining that they’re entering the market. In fact, it’s a good thing. Steam needs a swift kick in the rear. The problem is that they’re strong-arming you into using their service. “Want this game? Too bad, your only option is us.” That is the aspect of this that is monopolistic. This presents two problems: one, it deincentivizes them into improving their service because they can rely on their users choosing their service because they want to play that game, not on the merits on the service alone. And because they have no incentive to make their service better, neither does Steam.

And before you mention it, no, this doesn’t excuse Valve from requiring you to play their own games on Steam. All games should be available everywhere. But since it’s their own product, it is slightly more understandable. On the Spectrum of Badness, it’s slightly more to the left.

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Frigidman

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10-22-2019, 12:30 PM

Pretty much .... if they are the 'only source' then there is no point in improving themselves to actually become a real competitor (look how bad Origin is). Steam needs a real contender.... get it off its butt and improve in some areas.

If Epic had the balls to join the fight... provide external sources with Epic Keys... (uplay, steam, gog all do... some origin)... Epic would actually be someone to pay attention too.

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macdude22

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10-22-2019, 12:32 PM

It's not a monopoly, publishers and customers have multiple storefront options. More options than other products in other industries. Nobody is strong arming anyone. They've incentives developers and publishers with financial favorable. These are market forces at their finest. Customers can choose not to purchase from Epic and if developers and publishers determine it's not financially beneficial for them to have exclusive or timed exclusives on Epic's storefront they won't.

Bear in mind I think Epic is complete popsnizzlee but it's not a monopoly in any sense of the word.

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Cougar

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10-22-2019, 12:37 PM (This post was last modified: 10-22-2019, 12:42 PM by Cougar.)

(10-22-2019, 12:32 PM)macdude22 Wrote: It's not a monopoly, publishers and customers have multiple storefront options. More options than other products in other industries. Nobody is strong arming anyone. They've incentives developers and publishers with financial favorable. These are market forces at their finest. Customers can choose not to purchase from Epic and if developers and publishers determine it's not financially beneficial for them to have exclusive or timed exclusives on Epic's storefront they won't.

Bear in mind I think Epic is complete popsnizzlee but it's not a monopoly in any sense of the word.

It’s not a monopoly for the publisher or developer, true. But for the customer it absolutely is.

(10-22-2019, 12:30 PM)Frigidman™ Wrote: If Epic had the balls to join the fight... provide external sources with Epic Keys... (uplay, steam, gog all do... some origin)... Epic would actually be someone to pay attention too.

You mean like this? https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/03/20/epic-is-bringing-its-games-to-the-humble-bundle

I agree that’s a good thing but it doesn’t solve the problem. You’re still required to use their client to play your games.

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ehuelga

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10-22-2019, 04:03 PM

Before installing Catalina I'm revisiting old favorites: Halo, Unreal Tournament, Half-Life 2, Portal 1 & 2, Left 4 Dead 2.

It's surprisingly emotional. I was at MacWorld '99 when Steve previewed Halo.

I'm thinking of delaying Catalina for quite a while just so my kids can enjoy Portal.

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Matt Diamond

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10-22-2019, 09:16 PM (This post was last modified: 10-22-2019, 09:19 PM by Matt Diamond.)

Speaking of Portal...

My daughter got a part-time job in a VR center. You rent by the hour and play any of the hundreds of games they stock. Mostly PC but also Playstation and XBox. She's been bugging me to try it so I went last week.

Holy cow. I played three things:

The Blu: You don't do much but look around but I LOVED it and it reminded me strongly of when I scuba dived as a teen.

I Expect You To Die: and you do. Some of the puzzles require searching diligently, others are genuinely tricky yet logical. The controls can be frustrating (was using controllers, not gloves) and you are supposed to die and replay each mission repeatedly. Restarting over and over got kind of annoying. Also, aside from turning your head, and the need to turn over every piece of paper you pick up, it really could have been a 2D point and click adventure-- the VR doesn't seem fundamental to it (maybe on the harder levels?)

The Lab: "a compilation of Valve’s room-scale VR experiments". The longbow mini game was particularly fun. The most memorable thing was Robot Repair, which (minor spoiler) [spoiler]you are set up to fail just so GladOS can show up and yell at you. It's an amazing feeling to have her looming over you. She's always been a hefty gal but the VR makes you FEEL it.[/spoiler]

I barely scratched the surface. Definitely going back.

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Frost

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10-23-2019, 11:42 PM (This post was last modified: 10-23-2019, 11:54 PM by Frost.)

(10-22-2019, 08:54 AM)macdude22 Wrote: but but but m'uh steam rreeeeeeeeeeeeee

Where were the complaints when everything was a "steam exclusive".

Great example of false equivalency, but no. Remind me when, again, Valve was paying developers not to use anyone else's stores and openly touting said exclusivity? Oh wait, they weren't. Stuff appeared on GoG, Uplay (UGH!), the Mac App Store, etc. and continued to be on Steam too. They were even cool with developers handing out keys for stuff bought elsewhere (which I did several times with some older games when I was new to Steam).

Epic is paying for exclusives. Epic pays to keep third party products off other storefronts. They're doing the same crap Sony and Microsoft have been doing to each other for the past decade and a half with their consoles. That is not even remotely in the same universe as a developer not putting a game on another PC storefront because they just don't want to put in the time/effort, or another storefront doesn't offer enough of a ready userbase to be financially attractive when working with limited funds.

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Frigidman

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10-30-2019, 11:05 PM

Been beating on zombies this last week or so in Dying Light (in the mood cause of the halloweenadays). Fun game for that genre... nice fluid animation and action. Lots of parkour too.

It has the ability to turn off ALL the HUD... which makes for an interesting gameplay (more fun/cleaner action), but a couple key things get lost in that... like being completely unable to switch to the right utility item since there is no display on screen which one you tabbed too (also no keys to directly switch to a specific slot of 4 items).

At least when tabbing between your 4 equiped weapons are seen in your hands on screen... you can kind of tell what you have ready to fight with. But the utility items... when you have to 'throw' or 'use' them to know what you have, can be very dangerous if the one you selected was a grenade and you actually thought you had a throwing star selected *ahem*.

Decent game, even runs for Mac users

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richmlow

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11-02-2019, 07:20 PM

Recently, I've been playing John Wick Hex.

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Thain Esh Kelch

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01-03-2020, 05:30 PM (This post was last modified: 01-03-2020, 05:33 PM by Thain Esh Kelch.)

Just finished VVVVVV. 74 minutes according to Steam. Installed it along with some other games, which looked too weird for my taste, so I just wanted to test it out, because I was sure I didn't like it.

But wow, what an indie! Hardcore platforming done perfectly. Man, I had a blast. Highly recommended! The only gimmick in the game, is that you can flip your own gravity 180°, but it works soooo well, and makes for some excellent platforming. Coupled with some ingenious level design, I can whole heartedly recommend this one for old school platforming cravings.

Short, but so delightful. Unfortunately, I only got 13 of the 20 hidden stars, and I am not enough of a masoch*st to go back and get the remaining ones. And I died 593 times during those 74 minutes (The game keeps count. I flipped some 2700+ times), so good luck to those that go for the 'No death' extra mode..

5/5

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Thain Esh Kelch

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01-04-2020, 06:43 AM (This post was last modified: 01-04-2020, 05:57 PM by Thain Esh Kelch.)

Fired up Toki Tori 2+ now, as it looked like another simple platformer. Didn't play much yet, but it looks and sounds great, but the gameplay is very simplistic, and so far I am unsure if I will put much into it. Reviews seem to be great for the game though, so maybe there's more to it than immediately meets the eye.

Maybe the chicken picks up a BFG-2000 later, or something...

Edit: The user interface is CLEARLY made for touch screens. Overhead map and story feels very badly explained. So far I don't get why this got so good reviews. Cute, but not much more.

Edit 2: For some reason it doesn't run too well, with lag here and there but nothing too bad, despite not being anything taxing. Must be a shoddy port. The game even told me it was running slowly and I should fix it in preferences!

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Matt Diamond

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01-04-2020, 01:23 PM

I'm still mostly playing Borderlands 3, but I also started Baba is You. Neat idea for a puzzle game- rules for each level (what can be moved, what can kill you, what the goal is) are present in the level, and you can change some of them.

The early puzzles have been fun. I thought one early one was too hard (you had to learn two new mechanics, rather than the usual one). Also they mostly seem to have just one solution-- I like it when puzzles allow a straightforward solution and one or more creative solutions, and reward you for finding both kinds. But its still very early in the game. Thumbs up in general!

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Matt Diamond

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01-06-2020, 04:40 PM

Baba Is You: it's amazing to me how quickly the puzzles got hard. I've read that it has ~200 puzzles, I've solved only 10-15%. And some of them took me quite a while.

Even a simple puzzle can have many degrees of freedom. And it's tricky to keep the set of logical rules in my head ("water is sink and closed", "skull is defeat", "rock is rock") as i solve block-moving puzzles. Some rules can be changed, but only if I solve a block-moving puzzle that itself requires changing the rules in a different way... The combination of logic and geometric puzzle types makes my head hurt.

And yet I'm still plugging away. I've consulted no walkthroughs yet, but I may cave if I get stuck on all the unlocked puzzles at once.

TIP: turn off the wiggle effect. It's cute but makes it hard to see the (occasional) visual cues for which objects are hot, floating etc. Technically you don't need those cues because rules like "skull is hot" are visible as text in the level, but having them can help.

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Cougar

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01-06-2020, 07:50 PM (This post was last modified: 01-06-2020, 07:50 PM by Cougar.)

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Thain Esh Kelch

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01-12-2020, 03:12 PM (This post was last modified: 01-12-2020, 03:13 PM by Thain Esh Kelch.)

Finished Toki Tori 2+. What a weird experience! Good sound design, great visuals, freaking amazing puzzles (!), a really nice number of small details here and there, and good gameplay when you finally *get* the game.

My only problem is a weird one: I had absolutely no freaking idea what the game was about? The presentation of the game was severely lacking in that the story was practically not explained at all. Some times you get a bubble with a little text at the top of the screen, but it switches between sounding like a help for plea, to a villainy monologue, to random blabber - And that's it for presentation. In the end, my fellow chickens are caught in a giant bubble flying around over the main map for some reason? There is black smoke coming up from the ground in a few levels, that kill you upon touch? I *think* this dark smoke is because of a giant corrupted gem underneath the chicken world? And I had to cleanse this gem by finding five magical frogs. Or maybe I had to destroy the giant gem. I don't know, since I wasn't told what happened after I found the five magical frogs and the other chickens came out of the bubble. Or why the gem was corrupted in the first place. And who was talking to me.

Oh and there's songs... Which I found out by chance by going to a menu at one point. The game didn't really tell me about those. And the songs are really important for the gameplay, as they reset levels and gives you the ability to portal around the map.

Essentially a really polished game, with some really really well thought out puzzles, and hundreds of those at that, surrounding by a presentation which offered essentially no guidance or explanations, which is a real pity. In the end, I really enjoyed it because of the puzzles and quality of everything else (I am a gamer at heart!), so I would recommend it for players who likes slow moving games where you have to think about what to do, in a world that looks really nice.

4/5 from me. A pity they didn't spend that last week on adding some more coherence to everything. And I wonder why they left that out as the only missing thing.

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Tibur

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01-12-2020, 11:28 PM

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Thain Esh Kelch

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01-19-2020, 02:46 PM

Finished up Abyss: The Wraiths of Eden - Collector's Edition. (Yeah, that's a mouth full). No idea where I picked that one up. It is one of those simple games with puzzles, find hidden items, mini games, and a small story to go. It was okay, had some pretty decent animations here and there, and some lovely backgrounds most of the time. Not too hard, not too exciting, but both my girlfriend and my daughter found the hidden items parts interesting so that was nice I guess. Story was pretty out there though, with a hidden society under water than finds a demon-thingy inside a monster statue in some caves on the sea floor. 3/5, nothing too exciting, but okay for what it was.

Then I fired up Super Meat Boy. Played two levels, and then accepted that I DEFINITELY need a controller for it, so I deleted that again for the time being. The arrow keys on my Macbook are definitely not up for that job.

Then I went for The Binding of Isaac, a rogue like with a horror theme. And.... It runs surprisingly bad on my machine? As in 3-10 FPS, until the entire room is cleared, after which it takes a few seconds and then jumps to 60+ FPS? O_o Game itself is okay I guess. Not too exciting, but I like the randomization. Will probably try and finish it at least once, even though it runs so bad. May give up though, because of it.

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nef601

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01-19-2020, 06:58 PM

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