April 2025 General Game Discussion

[neogunhero]

Going to try to put some hours into Dying Light 2 this weekend. I'm still having a lot of fun with it. Seems the major complaint is the story/dialogue, which I can definitely see why, but it's so easy to ignore as I'm having a blast with the parkour and exploration. I'm needing to grind up my Parkour and Combat levels because I feel after 10 hours of playing that I should have a lot more perks unlocked. Truthfully, I'm not focusing on grinding XP, just having fun with exploring, also I have barely touched the main story content since the second they let me free roam the world, so I just need to dedicate some time to grinding that up. There are lots of really cool abilities to unlock so I'll be busy working towards those.

Besides that, I have been obsessed with a game on my phone, Luck be a Landlord. It's on Steam as well, but the mobile version works perfectly for me. Just wish I can increase text size a bit, but really it's just the form factor of the phone, it's played in portrait mode which is actually exaclty what I was looking for, something simple that I can play with one hand. Basically, you live in an apartment with a slot machine built in and that slot machine is your only way to make money to pay your rent. Each run is split into 12 rent payments, each increasing in size. You must roll the slot machine to make money, and add new symbols after each spin. The symbols make money under different conditions and can synergize with others to make more money each spin. You have a limited number of removals available, so you need to be strategic about what symbols you choose and which to remove. At first the game is extremely simple, but the more you play the more you see the complexity in it. There is a lot of strategy involved that you just figure out for yourself as you play. I've been playing this about every night before bed and it's been very fun, highly recommended.

 

[ZedClampet]

How is the combat in Expedition 33? Is it more like Final Fantasy with turns or more regular like Assassin's Creed games?

I haven't played Final Fantasy since the original 7. Well I played 13 for a dozen hours, but I went to a brain surgeon in Guatemala and had that nightmare removed.

However, this is a combination of the two. It's turn-based, but you do more than just pick your attacks. When you get attacked, you can either try to dodge (pressing "q" at the right time, or parry (pressing "e" at the right time). Dodging is the easier one to pull off, and if you get it right, you won't take damage. But parrying, which is harder to time, is better. Not only do you not take damage, but you get a counter attack and an extra action point, which is very valuable.

When you are attacking, you can increase your damage by pressing space bar from one to 3 times at the right moments.

It doesn't sound like much, but it adds a lot of user involvement and excitement and completely changes how you would normally feel about turn-based combat. And its very rewarding because they are difficult to pull off (to me) and it feel great to get that parry in there, do some damage and get an extra point to use on your spells.

 

[ZedClampet]

Do keep in mind that Zed is partially correct though in that Quadro is less performant than the newer RTX series of workstation cards and with the workstations.

That's pretty good. I'm usually not correct at all. However, everything I've read says that those cards are not tuned to gaming performance and don't do well. Bearing in mind that you find Cyberpunk 2077 performance acceptable on a laptop from 1937 with no graphics card in it...well this is certainly better than that, but how comparable is it, really, to a 3060 at playing games? Are there any benchmarks?

 

[BeardyHat]

That's pretty good. I'm usually not correct at all. However, everything I've read says that those cards are not tuned to gaming performance and don't do well. Bearing in mind that you find Cyberpunk 2077 performance acceptable on a laptop from 1937 with no graphics card in it...well this is certainly better than that, but how comparable is it, really, to a 3060 at playing games? Are there any benchmarks?

Yup, I put a link to them in my original reply

Here's the comparisons, scroll down for actual game Benchmarks.

The Workstation series actually performs generally on par with the regular RTX mobile, the biggest difference being that a Workstation generally doesn't have the same amount of cooling that you might get in a consumer, gaming oriented machine. So in that regard, yes, a regular RTX will outperform a workstation variant just because it's cooled better.

See some benchmarks here as an example (toward the bottom)

Generally they perform fairly similarly when given identical specs (aside from GPU, of course), though again, there are some compromises given the cooling.

I told y'all no one reads my long winded posts 😂

 

[Pifanjr]

I beat two more bosses in Inscryption. Honestly, the difficulty is just perfect. As long as you pay attention and plan ahead a bit it's pretty easy, but you can't just do whatever and expect to win.

Going to try to put some hours into Dying Light 2 this weekend. I'm still having a lot of fun with it. Seems the major complaint is the story/dialogue, which I can definitely see why, but it's so easy to ignore as I'm having a blast with the parkour and exploration. I'm needing to grind up my Parkour and Combat levels because I feel after 10 hours of playing that I should have a lot more perks unlocked. Truthfully, I'm not focusing on grinding XP, just having fun with exploring, also I have barely touched the main story content since the second they let me free roam the world, so I just need to dedicate some time to grinding that up. There are lots of really cool abilities to unlock so I'll be busy working towards those.

Besides that, I have been obsessed with a game on my phone, Luck be a Landlord. It's on Steam as well, but the mobile version works perfectly for me. Just wish I can increase text size a bit, but really it's just the form factor of the phone, it's played in portrait mode which is actually exaclty what I was looking for, something simple that I can play with one hand. Basically, you live in an apartment with a slot machine built in and that slot machine is your only way to make money to pay your rent. Each run is split into 12 rent payments, each increasing in size. You must roll the slot machine to make money, and add new symbols after each spin. The symbols make money under different conditions and can synergize with others to make more money each spin. You have a limited number of removals available, so you need to be strategic about what symbols you choose and which to remove. At first the game is extremely simple, but the more you play the more you see the complexity in it. There is a lot of strategy involved that you just figure out for yourself as you play. I've been playing this about every night before bed and it's been very fun, highly recommended.

Luck be a Landlord was apparently a big inspiration for Balatro:

'I don't play poker at all' says solo developer who made the poker roguelike I can't stop playing

Developer LocalThunk says his deckbuilder, Balatro, is actually based on a game called Big Two, not poker.

www.pcgamer.com

Is that where you heard of it?

 

[ZedClampet]

I told y'all no one reads my long winded posts 😂

This is what I'm doing now. I didn't have time earlier to read most of the posts. I was way behind on reading posts because I don't get notifications like everyone else does, so I have to wander from thread to thread to find new posts, AND I determined your post was for neogunhero, not me, so I just skimmed through it. I tend to ignore other people's conversations if I'm in a hurry and come back to them later. At that time, I was just glancing around for mentions that needed a response. Now that I'm done for the day and lying in bed with my laptop, I'm backtracking and looking for posts to read. I can assure you, especially when you are talking about your day, your hobbies, your gaming, etc. that I eventually read every word, though sometimes I have to catch up days later, and without the notifications, I can't absolutely guarantee that I find every post.

By the way, could you ask you wife what her high score is on the first map (Los Angeles) of Mini-Motorways? She's put a lot of time into the game, and I'm trying to see whether those high scores it shows are legit. If they are way above her high score, I'm going to assume they cheated.

Also, your Linux/Windows benchmarks have convinced me to get a Deck, although the Linux posts are running together in my poor memory, and I need to go back and read them again. I think your list of Linux complaints wouldn't impact me since I won't use it for anything but gaming.

 

[BeardyHat]

This is what I'm doing now. I didn't have time earlier to read most of the posts. I was way behind on reading posts because I don't get notifications like everyone else does, so I have to wander from thread to thread to find new posts, AND I determined your post was for neogunhero, not me, so I just skimmed through it. I tend to ignore other people's conversations if I'm in a hurry and come back to them later. At that time, I was just glancing around for mentions that needed a response. Now that I'm done for the day and lying in bed with my laptop, I'm backtracking and looking for posts to read. I can assure you, especially when you are talking about your day, your hobbies, your gaming, etc. that I eventually read every word, though sometimes I have to catch up days later, and without the notifications, I can't absolutely guarantee that I find every post.

By the way, could you ask you wife what her high score is on the first map (Los Angeles) of Mini-Motorways? She's put a lot of time into the game, and I'm trying to see whether those high scores it shows are legit. If they are way above her high score, I'm going to assume they cheated.

Also, your Linux/Windows benchmarks have convinced me to get a Deck, although the Linux posts are running together in my poor memory, and I need to go back and read them again. I think your list of Linux complaints wouldn't impact me since I won't use it for anything but gaming.

I'm just giving you a hard time, because I do the same thing, generally. Or more often, I just have nothing to add to a conversation so I never bother responding.

Honestly, I think part of the issue with Linux is the way I want to use it on my main computer, which is a laptop. If I used it on my desktop, which I don't use all that much, I don't think I'd have many issues with it; it works perfectly on the Deck and I think it'll be pretty much flawless on the "new" computer for my kids.

Just don't expect to be playing high end stuff with a Deck. The graphical power is about equivalent to a 1050 ti or so I've read. It's a good machine, but it's no powerhouse. Though I'm about to go use mine right now to play some more Oblivion: GOTY.

I'll ask my wife, but you likely won't get a response until Monday at the earliest, since she doesn't really play on the weekends and our Saturday and Sunday are absolutely stuffed with things, so probably won't have too much opportunity to sit down with the forum here.

 

[ZedClampet]

@Pifanjr and @BeardyHat Oh, I forgot to disagree with a few things in your posts about the Expedition 33 review. Actually it's just one thing, which is that I believe you can remain objective. It's not exactly what I was trying to do at the time, but I've mentioned multiple times with different games that I knew that they were good games but that I didn't like them. Also I've seen a lot of high level literary critics, basically all of them, who distance themselves from their own tastes when they write critiques and reviews. Of course, literary critics are generally on a whole other plane than games journalists. It's like the difference between a world-class philosopher and a guy arguing in a bar after downing a dozen beers.

All you need to really do is ask yourself who the intended audience for a game is, understand what makes games in these genres good, and then analyze the game to see if it's good for that genre and audience. But really, anyone who's played enough games should be able to discern good from bad. If you can't, you shouldn't be reviewing games.

Lastly, this reviewer thinks the game is a JRPG because of how the combat happens to be arranged. That's why he mentioned how many JRPGs that he's played. I thought it might be a JRPG as well. But after playing it, the combat set-up is really the only JRPG thing about it. Bearing in mind that I've only finished one JRPG my entire life. I've put hours into a bunch of them though, and this game, from the world and graphics to the progression, dialogue, characters and story, is very western,

 

[ZedClampet]

Just don't expect to be playing high end stuff with a Deck. The graphical power is about equivalent to a 1050 ti or so I've read. It's a good machine, but it's no powerhouse. Though I'm about to go use mine right now to play some more Oblivion: GOTY.

I've seen people, in addition to you, reporting that Oblivion runs fine, and I've seen people say that after a recent patch that they can get Indiana Jones to 30 fps, and @neogunhero can't play either of those games with his 2060. However, I definitely wouldn't buy one now with a new one predicted to come out this year. Maybe Valve will be bold and put an ARM chip in.

 

[Zloth]

Mortismal gave a review of CO:E33 that was good. He was very clear (very VERY clear, multiple times) that the combat is going to make or break the game for you.

PC Gamer's reviewer didn't like it much, and a lot of that centered around combat. He didn't like that the dodge/parry mechanics were so critical. He would enter combat expecting to lose, just so he could figure out the enemy patterns and whatnot, then restart and actually try. The key being that he said why. That's what I need to know. Plus I need to know whether it counted for or against the score, so I can correct for it if I disagree.

There have been some turn-based RPGs with various prompts to keep you interested, but they are pretty rare. The Last Remnant did some. It desperately needed them, too, because both sides would decide their actions and then all of them would play out at once, which meant watching up to 18 of your people plus a bunch of enemies each do their attacks one by one.

If I can never through the boss fight, I'll drop the difficulty or load an older save.

That could be an issue. Mort found that the lower difficulty is barely any easier. He was on a pre-release copy, though.

Looking at the Steam page, it's got the JRPG tag. If I understand those tags right, the ones that show on the page are decided by the developer, so they consider it a JRPG.

 

[ZedClampet]

Mortismal gave a review of CO:E33 that was good. He was very clear (very VERY clear, multiple times) that the combat is going to make or break the game for you.

PC Gamer's reviewer didn't like it much, and a lot of that centered around combat. He didn't like that the dodge/parry mechanics were so critical. He would enter combat expecting to lose, just so he could figure out the enemy patterns and whatnot, then restart and actually try. The key being that he said why. That's what I need to know. Plus I need to know whether it counted for or against the score, so I can correct for it if I disagree.

Why is this exact same pattern recognition great when Dark Souls or Elden Ring kills you 14 times in a row, but suddenly this scrub has to fight the fights twice and suddenly it's bad. You know what else is bad, this guy's gaming abilities. I've played 4 hours and lost one fight, the one I mentioned above that I arrived to almost dead.

That could be an issue. Mort found that the lower difficulty is barely any easier. He was on a pre-release copy, though.

I beat it on my next try.

Looking at the Steam page, it's got the JRPG tag. If I understand those tags right, the ones that show on the page are decided by the developer, so they consider it a JRPG.

This is not correct. That tag was always buried near the bottom because so few people thought it looked like a JRPG, but now that reviewers are calling it that, more people are voting for it.

Maybe this is a JRPG, but if so, then we should just get rid of the designation because the only thing that's unique to JRPGs, in that case, is that the combatants line up on opposite sides for combat. Everything else unique about JRPGs involves the fact that they come from Japan and have a lot of Japanese style and Japanese culture wrapped up in them. If everyone agrees that a game with French characters, French names, French music, western art and a western story is a JRPG, then I'll go along. I couldn't care less since I can put it wherever I want in my library.

By the way, it also has the ARPG tag and just the plain RPG tag. We're only missing crpg.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Going to try to put some hours into Dying Light 2 this weekend. I'm still having a lot of fun with it. Seems the major complaint is the story/dialogue, which I can definitely see why, but it's so easy to ignore as I'm having a blast with the parkour and exploration. I'm needing to grind up my Parkour and Combat levels because I feel after 10 hours of playing that I should have a lot more perks unlocked. Truthfully, I'm not focusing on grinding XP, just having fun with exploring, also I have barely touched the main story content since the second they let me free roam the world, so I just need to dedicate some time to grinding that up. There are lots of really cool abilities to unlock so I'll be busy working towards those.

I loved Dying Light 2, been thinking about going back because the parkour is so good. I didnt think the story was terrible for a video game either. I liked the first game but as a single player campaign I think the second game is way better.

---

I played through the prologue of Clair Obscura and got to Act 1. This seems like something I'm going to really like. I'm interested in the characters and the world, the voice acting, art style and music all fitting together neatly. Its doing a fair amount of showing and not a whole lot of exposition which is making it compelling to explore and talk to everyone.

I can see why people are saying theres a Soul like influence there, but not just from the combat parries and dodges. From what Ive seen the creature and world design seems FromSoft tinged in places with the broken scenery and dreamy-ness of it, and its not explaining itself with a whole lot of story overview, you have to talk to people and infer some things, although its obviously not as abstracted as Dark Souls or Elden Ring.

The fact that I know its not got a million hours of grinding and nonsense is making want to see all of it so far.

 

[Pifanjr]

@Pifanjr and @BeardyHat Oh, I forgot to disagree with a few things in your posts about the Expedition 33 review. Actually it's just one thing, which is that I believe you can remain objective. It's not exactly what I was trying to do at the time, but I've mentioned multiple times with different games that I knew that they were good games but that I didn't like them. Also I've seen a lot of high level literary critics, basically all of them, who distance themselves from their own tastes when they write critiques and reviews. Of course, literary critics are generally on a whole other plane than games journalists. It's like the difference between a world-class philosopher and a guy arguing in a bar after downing a dozen beers.

All you need to really do is ask yourself who the intended audience for a game is, understand what makes games in these genres good, and then analyze the game to see if it's good for that genre and audience. But really, anyone who's played enough games should be able to discern good from bad. If you can't, you shouldn't be reviewing games.

After thinking about it a bit more, I do agree with you, you could write an objective review. The main limitation is how good the reviewer knows the gaming market.

I wonder how good an AI could do predicting the success of a game based on all of the available data there is about gaming market trends.

Lastly, this reviewer thinks the game is a JRPG because of how the combat happens to be arranged. That's why he mentioned how many JRPGs that he's played. I thought it might be a JRPG as well. But after playing it, the combat set-up is really the only JRPG thing about it. Bearing in mind that I've only finished one JRPG my entire life. I've put hours into a bunch of them though, and this game, from the world and graphics to the progression, dialogue, characters and story, is very western,

The developers themselves said they were inspired by Persona and Final Fantasy, so the comparison with JRPGs isn't that strange:

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 creative director speaks candidly about the new RPG's respect for Final Fantasy and Persona: 'We are definitely not hiding that there are influences'

A western take on the classic turn-based RPG

www.pcgamer.com

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I wonder how good an AI could do predicting the success of a game based on all of the available data there is about gaming market trends.

I feel like this is essentially how AAA have mostly been doing things already.

 

[Colif]

Two minutes of watching game showed me why they compared to JRPG, how the 2 sides pair off is the same. How combat seems to play out, not in real time. reminded me of Final Fantasy.
I probably sit out as I don't like quicktime events in general. Or team based games. Or story based games... keeps making up reasons

 

[Johnway]

I saw something odd the other day. It was a chart of the top 10 grossing games during March, and it had Assassin's Creed at #2. However, they had charts breaking it down into PC, Xbox and Playstation, and the lists were somewhat similar except for a couple of exclusive PC games like Counter Strike, and I think there was a Playstation exclusive on theirs, but AC wasn't anywhere in the other three charts, so something was seriously wrong somewhere, and I decided not to post it. Ubisoft really needed this one, so I hope the chart that had it at #2 was correct.

A bit odd, if it was a top selling game for that month then surely it must appear in the top 10 lists that month. the results contradict each other. Unless it was a small blip and suddenly got pushed out very quickly. But that said, its all about making money, i wouldn't care if my game didn't reach some chart as long as i made a healthy profit after covering all the costs.

If it's realistic enough, you want to pull the opposite direction they are moving and stop reeling in. I was obsessed with fishing in RDR2, so I just follow the same rules in that game towards any other game that has fishing lol. Seems to work most of the time unless it's a meter-based fishing minigame.

Will have to try it. I hear that in valhalla i could use a bow and arrow and SHOOT the fish, so i'll try that as well. Might also try it in the yakuza series as well as i am terrible at fishing at that game.

 

[ZedClampet]

After thinking about it a bit more, I do agree with you, you could write an objective review. The main limitation is how good the reviewer knows the gaming market.

I wonder how good an AI could do predicting the success of a game based on all of the available data there is about gaming market trends.



The developers themselves said they were inspired by Persona and Final Fantasy, so the comparison with JRPGs isn't that strange:

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 creative director speaks candidly about the new RPG's respect for Final Fantasy and Persona: 'We are definitely not hiding that there are influences'

A western take on the classic turn-based RPG

www.pcgamer.com

I can be inspired by a work of cubism art and create a expressionist work. But I'm not going to argue about whether it's a JRPG. If that's what the developers want to call it, then call it that. It doesn't mean that is what it is, though.

 

[ZedClampet]

Two minutes of watching game showed me why they compared to JRPG, how the 2 sides pair off is the same. How combat seems to play out, not in real time. reminded me of Final Fantasy.
I probably sit out as I don't like quicktime events in general. Or team based games. Or story based games... keeps making up reasons

That's another thing. They call dodging and parrying QTEs. To me, one button press is not a QTE. I realize this is incorrect and that technically dodging in Dark Souls is a QTE, but as usual, I'm correct and the rest of humanity is wrong.

 

[Colif]

Did Ubisoft ever shows sales figures as opposed to player count for that game? It sort of got lost with the new releases overwhelming its news.

To me, one button press is not a QTE. I realize this is incorrect and that technically dodging in Dark Souls is a QTE, but as usual, I'm correct and the rest of humanity is wrong.

Odd, I didn't read the review but got the qte statement from another video, so its a common misconception then.

 

[Pifanjr]

I feel like this is essentially how AAA have mostly been doing things already.

I do suppose AI has been used in market research, but I wonder how much trust is put in it nowadays. Probably too much.

I can be inspired by a work of cubism art and create a expressionist work. But I'm not going to argue about whether it's a JRPG. If that's what the developers want to call it, then call it that. It doesn't mean that is what it is, though.

I agree. Genre labels in general are often applied too liberally for my tastes.

That's another thing. They call dodging and parrying QTEs. To me, one button press is not a QTE. I realize this is incorrect and that technically dodging in Dark Souls is a QTE, but as usual, I'm correct and the rest of humanity is wrong.

QTE shouldn't mean any mechanic in which you need fast reflexes, that's like calling any game in which you play as a character a RPG because you're playing a role.

 

[BeardyHat]

@ZedClampet

Don't have time for a lengthy post at the moment, but just for clarification, I'm playing the original Oblivion from 2006 on my Deck. I didn't bother with the Remaster, because I'd heard plenty of reports that it doesn't run amazing.

 

[ZedClampet]

@ZedClampet

Don't have time for a lengthy post at the moment, but just for clarification, I'm playing the original Oblivion from 2006 on my Deck. I didn't bother with the Remaster, because I'd heard plenty of reports that it doesn't run amazing.

Ah, okay. They actually have the remaster as Deck certified, so I assumed that's what you were playing. You probably said otherwise, but I spent so much time responding to posts last night that I didn't come close to catching up on my reading. People hardly post on the weekends, though, so hopefully I'll get caught up.

 

[Pifanjr]

After 25 hours of the Dune: Awakening beta, I'm sold on it as a survival game but still a bit iffy on the MMO parts

Crafting and resource management is compelling, but the wider world has yet to grab me.

www.pcgamer.com

I signed up for the beta on Steam. I recently continued reading the second Dune book and like the author of this article mentions, it's exciting to see that world being brought to life even if the gameplay doesn't sound that fun. Plus my wife is a big fan as well, so it's something we can share.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

After a few more hours of Clair Obscura: Expedition 33 Im going to say that this is a really good game. The combat is engaging, the parry, dodge and attack QTE's really keep you having to pay attention. Apart from the voice acting, art and music also being top notch it seems to be really polished. Not a single bug or stutter for me yet.

If it keeps up to the end, its going to be one of my favourite games at least from the last few years.