August 2024 PC Gamer Article Discussion

[BeardyHat]

Haven't seen a PCG article on it yet, but Doom 1/2 just got a rerelease, if you already owned either on Steam, you get the update. Lots of little features, like a Hulshult soundtrack (wonder if this is the same one he released years and years ago), as well as support for 4k, 120FPS etc, etc. They also added Online multiplayer, which is pretty neat; never got to try multiplayer Doom back in the day, so I gave it a run and had fun for about 10 minutes before the host ended the game after I killed them several times D:

Anyway, I'll have to see if I can get my friends on to slaughter them this evening.

I've been watching this dude play Grand Theft Auto 4 with the traffic at 9999999 'warp speed' and it's both hilarious and some sort of surrealist masterpiece

Ever seen a city's worth of cars fly over the sea?

www.pcgamer.com

I still don't quite understand people who just watch other people play video games, but I have come to enjoy watching other people playing video games in ridiculous ways.

I agree with this. Twitch is an utterly baffling phenomenon.

 

[DXCHASE]

Landlords are so drunk with power they've started advertising apartments made in The Sims 4 on real estate websites

"Can I pay in Simoleons?"

www.pcgamer.com

Im kinda in the same boat with Mollie here about moving.

Was told my current house was being sold (i rent a house) and that i had until sept. to move. So started doing the whole looking for apts. too. Shes 100% right about the process. You join somethin like Zillow, you reply for a viewing, show up with 50 other people and then spend a bunch of money paying for application fees just to get denied. Luckily i only had to deal with this for a month- month 1/2 or so before my landlord decided not to sell the house, but raise my rent and then start doing stuff to the house that hes been avoiding for the last, idk 10 years? But since then we've been trying to .... dun dun dun buy one so we can move out of here and its much worse than trying to find a rental but mainly because you need waaaaaaaay more money and a good credit score, and fast timing, a good home-buying agent etc. etc. etc. etc.

So if i ever come across an add that uses sims as a way to show the layout of a house, i am posting it. I would love to see pics of the actual residence that were being molded after here.

 

[ZedClampet]

I guess they didn't figure people would notice the top-down view and invisible ceiling. Took us forever to find an apartment for the kids. Mostly it was just because my daughter has a cat. I assured the woman I would gladly pay for any repairs when they left if we could just find an apartment.

 

[Hveðrungr]

Twitch is an utterly baffling phenomenon.

Surely a majority of Twitch views are teenage boys watching whatever is the current successor to the hot-tub meta because they haven't yet graduated to real hradcroe pronorgaphy. Looking at the homepage, “Just Chatting” has about as many current viewers as every other suggested category put together.

 

[Brian Boru]

Haven't seen a PCG article on it yet, but Doom 1/2 just got a rerelease

…

Doom Eternal's new official mod support includes 'the very same tools' used to create the game

A new launcher and mod portal, plus a beta version of the idStudio toolset, are now live on Steam.

www.pcgamer.com

ETA:

Id Software just surprise launched Doom + Doom 2, a 'definitive' bundle that adds cross-platform multiplayer and in-game mod support to every retro Doom

The Doom + Doom 2 package is a free update for existing Enhanced edition owners.

www.pcgamer.com

 

[ZedClampet]

Flight Simulator 2024's huge ambition means 'you can now exit the plane, walk around… you can land on every ship, and it looks like a first person shooter environment'

Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jorg Neumann talks about the tech behind MSFS 2020, and some astonishing-sounding features coming in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.

www.pcgamer.com

They didn't wait long enough between the last one and this one. How are you going to convince me to spend all this money if I still vividly remember my 30 minutes of non-stop air disasters?

I'm probably the only player whose Boeing broke up in the air 3 minutes into the game.

 

[BeardyHat]

Flight Simulator 2024's huge ambition means 'you can now exit the plane, walk around… you can land on every ship, and it looks like a first person shooter environment'

Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jorg Neumann talks about the tech behind MSFS 2020, and some astonishing-sounding features coming in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.

www.pcgamer.com

They didn't wait long enough between the last one and this one. How are you going to convince me to spend all this money if I still vividly remember my 30 minutes of non-stop air disasters?

I'm probably the only player whose Boeing broke up in the air 3 minutes into the game.

I don't think that's you, that's a feature of Boeings these days.

 

[Brian Boru]

I'm probably the only player whose Boeing broke up in the air 3 minutes into the game.

As Beardy intimated, they were being prophetic—probably Machine Learning's reaction to ingesting Boeing's designs Not too funny tho, we need 2 big players in the Western big aircraft industry.

Re MS Flight Sim 2024, I'm with the article author Andy Edser—Blimey!

If they can pull off the ambition, it'll be truly remarkable—even if it's a 500GB download to get all the goodies. MS tend to get stuff right after 1 or 2 attempts, so if not '24, then '28… soon anyway.

 

[ZedClampet]

Not too funny tho, we need 2 big players in the Western big aircraft industry.

No need to be concerned there. The Department of Defense will pay their bills forever if need be. Anyway, Airbus had their problems in the early 2000s, and it didn't sink them, so I'm assuming Boeing will survive. Airbus literally had to tell pilots to stop alternating the tail flap pedals because it was making the tail fall off the plane.

Hi-Fi Rush lives: PUBG owner Krafton has acquired Tango Gameworks from Xbox

The move will allow "the talented team to continue developing the Hi-Fi Rush IP".

www.pcgamer.com

It should be noted that Krafton is basically PUBG and a collection of failures. Subnautica doesn't count because they weren't owned by Krafton then.

 

[ZedClampet]

Valve is 'continuing to work on adding support' for other handhelds, but 'SteamOS isn't ready to run out of the box' just yet

Is SteamOS becoming the Half-Life 3 of gaming operating systems?

www.pcgamer.com

I assume if you put this on your PC that you would be able to turn off Big Picture View in Steam. Whenever I accidentally go into BPV I try to use it for awhile, but it's just not as convenient for mouse/keyboard.

 

[ZedClampet]

Make your own Korean in this Sims competitor where everyone behaves awkwardly

Oh, wait, that's not the right headline. Oh well. Too lazy to fix it. The character creator will be available to goof around with next week.

There's another story on this, too:

PUBG life sim will have mod support

Oops. Wrong title again. But I thought all their games were going to take place in the PUBG universe?

Anyway, if you are interested, here's another link to an older story that includes some pretty comprehensive videos about what's going to be in the game.

Oh, the game is called INZOI. Maybe. It's something like that.

Note: I'm practicing to become a retail simulator dev. Got to get even lazier.

 

[neogunhero]

Steam's new 'Helpfulness' system for user reviews is here to fix Steam's 'Helpful' system for user reviews

Valve just can't stop fiddling.

www.pcgamer.com

I’m all for this. While I appreciate a meme-y or funny review as much as the next guy, as Valve puts it, it really does impact your purchasing decisions. You go to the review section to find out what players like and don’t like about the game, trying to help inform your decision, but all you see is:

“My friend who I play DOTA with said if this review gets 300 likes, he’ll buy me a new skin”

Or

“No one ever reads my reviews so for every 1 like I get I’ll eat 1 spoonful of mayonnaise”

…and they both have over 500 likes, 30 gifted badges, 300 users marked as “Funny”. Because of the numbers it generates, they’re always at the top of the review section. It doesn’t irk or piss me off, but I would much prefer to see real opinions instead of that.

 

[Hveðrungr]

The ones that do irk and piss me off are when people give sarcastic thumbs up reviews when they clearly hated the game in the review. It's not funny, you're inflating the review % and making the game look better than it is.

 

[Pifanjr]

Steam's new 'Helpfulness' system for user reviews is here to fix Steam's 'Helpful' system for user reviews

Valve just can't stop fiddling.

www.pcgamer.com

I’m all for this. While I appreciate a meme-y or funny review as much as the next guy, as Valve puts it, it really does impact your purchasing decisions. You go to the review section to find out what players like and don’t like about the game, trying to help inform your decision, but all you see is:

“My friend who I play DOTA with said if this review gets 300 likes, he’ll buy me a new skin”

Or

“No one ever reads my reviews so for every 1 like I get I’ll eat 1 spoonful of mayonnaise”

…and they both have over 500 likes, 30 gifted badges, 300 users marked as “Funny”. Because of the numbers it generates, they’re always at the top of the review section. It doesn’t irk or piss me off, but I would much prefer to see real opinions instead of that.

I don't rely on Steam reviews exactly because of the first couple dozen reviews, only about two are actually informative. I personally prefer looking the game up on Reddit to get a couple of different opinions on a game.

 

[Hveðrungr]

I don't rely on Steam reviews exactly because of the first couple dozen reviews, only about two are actually informative. I personally prefer looking the game up on Reddit to get a couple of different opinions on a game.

But the downside of that is that you're getting the opinion of Redditors

 

[neogunhero]

I don't rely on Steam reviews exactly because of the first couple dozen reviews, only about two are actually informative. I personally prefer looking the game up on Reddit to get a couple of different opinions on a game.

Yeah, it’s definitely not the best place to make an informed decision, but the ease of access is convenient, and when someone actually writes a well thought out review, I deem that to be helpful. I’m just glad that I don’t have to sift around the junk reviews to find the good ones anymore, which may end up making it a more reliable source of info than before. I still watch YouTube videos and read publication reviews along with Steam reviews to make purchasing decisions.

But the downside of that is that you're getting the opinion of Redditors

To take this a step further, I don’t find very much value in reading the opinions of posters in a subreddit dedicated to a single game/series of games to make these informed decisions. These are major fans of the franchise, so I think there’s some bias there. It can also be polarizing, since I’ve seen subreddit collectively say which entry of a franchise is the best, while also seeing a subreddit not able to agree which game is the best. For example, go to the HoMM subreddit and search for posts asking which is the best Heroes of Might and Magic game, every comment has a different answer.

 

[Brian Boru]

all you see is

You're lucky, must have a premium account, yeah?
All I see are ASCII cats…

opinions of posters in a subreddit dedicated to a single game/series

I find Reddit useful for in-game techniques and problems, not for purchase-relevant discussions—imagine asking on CivFanatics if Civ X is any good

about two are actually informative

Yeah but they're usually easy to find, and this new thing should make that easier. My general problem is finding specific info relevant to me—eg is it FPP or TPP, how much melee, degree of RPG, out-of-genre content, unskippables, Alt-Tab behavior, QTE, Save system etc.

 

[ZedClampet]

Steam's new 'Helpfulness' system for user reviews is here to fix Steam's 'Helpful' system for user reviews

Valve just can't stop fiddling.

www.pcgamer.com

I’m all for this. While I appreciate a meme-y or funny review as much as the next guy, as Valve puts it, it really does impact your purchasing decisions. You go to the review section to find out what players like and don’t like about the game, trying to help inform your decision, but all you see is:

“My friend who I play DOTA with said if this review gets 300 likes, he’ll buy me a new skin”

Or

“No one ever reads my reviews so for every 1 like I get I’ll eat 1 spoonful of mayonnaise”

…and they both have over 500 likes, 30 gifted badges, 300 users marked as “Funny”. Because of the numbers it generates, they’re always at the top of the review section. It doesn’t irk or piss me off, but I would much prefer to see real opinions instead of that.

As a habitual user review reader, this all makes me very happy. Of all the review sources (reddit is not one), only user reviews can be expected to be truly honest. YouTubers and publications have a lot of factors pushing them to do certain types of reviews and their reviews are often filled with nasty little things like virtue signaling. Whereas someone just sharing their opinion nearly anonymously doesn't have to worry about advertising deals, moral crusades or their status among their peers.

Also, with PCGs reviews, for instance, you are getting the opinion of a single writer who may be predisposed to like/dislike the game (I'll dig up an example of this if anyone requests it). If the entire staff reviewed a game, it would have much more value. This numbers game is another thing user reviews have going for them.

 

[Hveðrungr]

imagine asking on CivFanatics if Civ X is any good

If you ask on TWCenter whether a new Total War game is any good they'll tell you it's an unplayable turd like every other game since the sacred relic TW: Shogun II. My more limited experience of Civ forums is that they respond in much the same way about the sacred relic Civ IV.

 

[ZedClampet]

The best example of what I was talking about in the second paragraph would be PCGs review of Shadow Warriors 2 where the writer went on and on about how childish the humor was when that's exactly what that series is known for.

 

[ZedClampet]

If you ask on TWCenter whether a new Total War game is any good they'll tell you it's an unplayable turd like every other game since the sacred relic TW: Shogun II. My more limited experience of Civ forums is that they respond in much the same way about the sacred relic Civ IV.

Either way it's not good info.

 

[Zloth]

The ones that do irk and piss me off are when people give sarcastic thumbs up reviews when they clearly hated the game in the review. It's not funny, you're inflating the review % and making the game look better than it is.

I've seen people down-vote extra popular games, then say in the review that they loved it. I presume they just down-voted to try and get in front of people looking for a dissenting opinion.

As a habitual user review reader, this all makes me very happy. Of all the review sources (reddit is not one), only user reviews can be expected to be truly honest. YouTubers and publications have a lot of factors pushing them to do certain types of reviews and their reviews are often filled with nasty little things like virtue signaling. Whereas someone just sharing their opinion nearly anonymously doesn't have to worry about advertising deals, moral crusades or their status among their peers.

Uhhh, nearly anonymous? Not on Steam. The activity feed shows what's happening with your friends, including reviews they leave, and you know people who are "real life" friends and gamers are pretty likely to be Steam friends, too. There's PLENTY of peer pressure!

Also, with PCGs reviews, for instance, you are getting the opinion of a single writer who may be predisposed to like/dislike the game (I'll dig up an example of this if anyone requests it). If the entire staff reviewed a game, it would have much more value. This numbers game is another thing user reviews have going for them.

Yep, that's always going to be an issue. Also, even if all reviewers were somehow made totally immune to outside bias, scores would still come out as a Bell curve. Every now and again, reviewers are going to land on one of the extremes. Metacritic is good for taking care of that sort of thing.

But you've got another problem - finding a pro review in the first place! A lot of the games you play aren't ever going to be reviewed.

 

[ZedClampet]

Uhhh, nearly anonymous? Not on Steam. The activity feed shows what's happening with your friends, including reviews they leave, and you know people who are "real life" friends and gamers are pretty likely to be Steam friends, too. There's PLENTY of peer pressure!

None at all for me. I never pay attention to what my friends review, and so far as I know, none of them pay attention to mine. But even if they did, I couldn't care less. I go into the activity feed maybe twice a year, and when I do, I'm never analyzing other people's activities. The only activity I ever see on my friends is when they are in a game.

By the way, you are the only person out of about 50 friends (I only really know about 20 of them) who has ever commented on one of my screenshots, and I don't think I've seen anyone's screenshots. I don't use Steam like it's social media.

 

[Pifanjr]

But the downside of that is that you're getting the opinion of Redditors

I have been to Steam forums, I don't hold the kind of people who post on Steam in higher regard than the people who post on Reddit.

Yeah, it’s definitely not the best place to make an informed decision, but the ease of access is convenient, and when someone actually writes a well thought out review, I deem that to be helpful. I’m just glad that I don’t have to sift around the junk reviews to find the good ones anymore, which may end up making it a more reliable source of info than before. I still watch YouTube videos and read publication reviews along with Steam reviews to make purchasing decisions.

To take this a step further, I don’t find very much value in reading the opinions of posters in a subreddit dedicated to a single game/series of games to make these informed decisions. These are major fans of the franchise, so I think there’s some bias there. It can also be polarizing, since I’ve seen subreddit collectively say which entry of a franchise is the best, while also seeing a subreddit not able to agree which game is the best. For example, go to the HoMM subreddit and search for posts asking which is the best Heroes of Might and Magic game, every comment has a different answer.

The upside to Reddit for me is that it's common for people to reply to other people's reviews, calling out parts they don't agree on or affirming parts they do agree on. It makes it easier to separate valid criticisms from personal pet peeves.

I should note that I very rarely buy games, when I do buy a game it's one I'm almost certain of I will like it, so I read reviews not primarily to decide whether the game is good, but whether it'll have a deal breaker.

Yeah but they're usually easy to find, and this new thing should make that easier. My general problem is finding specific info relevant to me—eg is it FPP or TPP, how much melee, degree of RPG, out-of-genre content, unskippables, Alt-Tab behavior, QTE, Save system etc.

I really wish people would rely less on genres to describe games and just list what mechanics a game has. For example, BoardGameGeek has a section specifically for listing mechanics for each board game, which is a lot more useful than trying to shoehorn everything into a couple of genres.

 

[Hveðrungr]

I never pay attention to what my friends review, and so far as I know, none of them pay attention to mine.

I was gobsmacked a few years ago when a friend told me he reads every review I post and always has a look to see what my activity is. So there are such weirdos out there.

I really wish people would rely less on genres to describe games and just list what mechanics a game has.

Yes, I always try to put such info in my reviews because I want to see it myself.