January 2025 General Game Discussion

[BeardyHat]

Still playing GTAV here and there, going slowly. Several other games as well, but I've...unfortunately...jumped into a new hobby with both feet and that has been eating up all my time and money.

Anyway, I decided that this year I'm going to buy fewer games and I've been hugely successful in the last *checks watch* two weeks of the year. But for the past few days I've been thinking about Aliens: Dark Descent, which just went on sale this morning. It's not the cheapest it's ever been, but it is a game I think my wife would enjoy watching me play on the couch--though we haven't really been doing that lately.

It is mighty tempting...

 

[Johnway]

With Re2 remake done i'm going back to playing Path of exile for some reason. I have installed mechanicus but i've not touched it yet. its probably like a junkie relapsing i'm going back to POE.

The sad thing is that the market in POE is completely dead. So i'll have to start using the currency that it was intended: crafting. I'll keep the divines and exalts and half of the chaos orbs, but unless there is more things to trade i suspect its going to be a long struggle...

 

[isleepinabed]

Going through Eric the Unready. Recalling the "perfect start" thread from the other week this one is a strong contender for it.

The first puzzle of the game has you knee deep in it, after figuring out how to drop down into an outhouse toilet to rescue the farmer's daughter, who he believes was turned into a pig by a wizard.
This might also be one of the few games where you can kiss someone at will (or something... that is to say, you can kiss a pig) as a gameplay mechanism (by this I mean that it's nost just a kiss in an input-less cutscene, for instance).

Sure it's not a dedicated button or anything. And it is for comedic purposes. But I'm sure we could do with a lot more kissin' and huggin' than blastin' and slashin'. What the hell ever happened to the human race?

 

[Pifanjr]

human race?

That reminded me of a video I happened to see of someone speedrunning Get to Work

 

[Zloth]

What the hell ever happened to the human race?

What are you doing kissing a pig that's been in the latrine!?

See, this is why game avatars need some basic rights!

 

[Colif]

I sat and watched weather today... I didn't risk plugging PC in during it... no idea why

 

[BeardyHat]

I sat and watched weather today... I didn't risk plugging PC in during it... no idea why

Real men plug their PCs in during lightning storms 💪

I did end up picking up Aliens: Dark Descent. We only played for about 20 minutes and didn't make it out of the tutorial yet, but I'll probably continue with it a bit on my own before I reintroduce my wife to it. She wants us to finish Dress Space: Remake anyway...

Edit: autocorrect strikes again, but I'm going to leave that one...

 

[isleepinabed]

What are you doing kissing a pig that's been in the latrine!?

See, this is why game avatars need some basic rights!

When faced with the prospect of contracting swine herpes, some people ask "why?..."

I, through Eric, the Unready, instead ask "why not, why not indeed!.."

 

[isleepinabed]

Christ!...

NSFW text, but it cracked me up, perhaps just for being so unexpected:

Spoiler

 

[Johnway]

had a stab at mechanicus and playing the tutorial and getting use to the gameplay mechanics. i must say, i'm a lot more excited as the game then before as it sets the scene and what's at stakes. Essentially a do or die mission and we have another dooms day clock in the mix will we succeed or will i fail? Unlikely as i'll save scum if i must.

 

[Frindis]

@isleepinabed What game is that quote from? I need to play it for scientific purposes

 

[Pifanjr]

@isleepinabed What game is that quote from? I need to play it for scientific purposes

Going through Eric the Unready.

 

[Frindis]

@isleepinabed I wonder how many of your abilities are not used more than one or two times. I'm not saying it is this for Eric The Undready, but from my experience when you see that many "open, look at, burn, put, wait, wear, melt, open.." options, it is less about functionality and more about just having it in there as an option. Hah, now I know what thread I will be making next

 

[isleepinabed]

@Frindis

Well.. you can use these abilities as many time as you like.. "Smell" is a good one too, which isn't listed. You always get a reaction.

If they prod you along the story or through a puzzle? Rarely... Despite being a comical game, the fact that it came at a time when text adventures were already out of fashion (came out the same year as Myst as fate would have it), it has one of the most well made interaction systems I have used.

Regarding this specific point, many interactions accept various verbs as a solution so technically it might be possible to do a run using quite a number of different actions, I imagine..

 

[BeardyHat]

Well, took me like two years between receiving the poster and getting the frame to hanging it up, but it's finally done. I'm not entirely sure about the placement, but I do like that I can see it from my desk.

https://imgur.com/a/WQPl9Oa

 

[Zloth]

If I see that in a house, I'm going to start pushing on all the walls to see if any secrets are revealed!

 

[BeardyHat]

If I see that in a house, I'm going to start pushing on all the walls to see if any secrets are revealed!

Mghh

Mghh

Mghh

 

[ZedClampet]

I HAD MY FIRST CUSTOMER!!!!

I didn't see a garbage can or any other way to get rid of it, so I just went ahead and served it

 

[ZedClampet]

I HAD MY FIRST CUSTOMER!!!!

I didn't see a garbage can or any other way to get rid of it, so I just went ahead and served it

And then I remembered that in real life I put lunch in the oven almost 2 hours ago....

Fortunately, the oven cuts off when the timer runs out.

 

[isleepinabed]

Do any of you use Steam's "Discovery Queue" or "Interactive Recommender"?

Once in a lifetime I seem to discover something worthwhile but I get so much crap in there, even after tagging "ignore" the types of games I'm not interested in.

Am I just wasting my time? Is there a better way?

 

[Pifanjr]

Do any of you use Steam's "Discovery Queue" or "Interactive Recommender"?

Once in a lifetime I seem to discover something worthwhile but I get so much crap in there, even after tagging "ignore" the types of games I'm not interested in.

Am I just wasting my time? Is there a better way?

No, mostly because I'm not looking for new games. I already own too many and have a bunch more on my wishlist, I really don't need to get hyped for more games.

I just checked the Discovery Queue out of curiosity and the second recommendation was Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. I'm not sure why it's recommending a first person shooter, let alone one that has a Mostly Negative rating according to recent reviews.

None of the recommendations it gave me were particularly good, with about half of them just being outright bad. The best one was probably for Hammerwatch II, since I've at least have a couple of hours in Hammerwatch, but I would think there must be far better recommendations it could have given me.

The Interactive Recommender is much better. It's suggesting a bunch of games I've already played through family sharing, which isn't great but isn't necessarily bad either. It would've been nice if I could filter those out though.

Outside of those, it's recommending quite a few games that I've already played (and enjoyed) outside of Steam as well a couple of games I would like to play, so I would say it's doing a pretty good job overall.

 

[Colif]

So Asmongold predicted a terrible thing which is inevitable if things continue. In 15 years or so, advertising in game will be normal. It makes sense as where did they advertise before? TV. Its dying and being replaced by internet and gaming is where a lot of eyes are now.

We need adblockers that work on more than just browsers... time to look at firewall rules again.

I don't like that idea but I won't be around forever. Its a war others can fight... it will be AAA games it shows up in first.

 

[ZedClampet]

So Asmongold predicted a terrible thing which is inevitable if things continue. In 15 years or so, advertising in game will be normal. It makes sense as where did they advertise before? TV. Its dying and being replaced by internet and gaming is where a lot of eyes are now.

We need adblockers that work on more than just browsers... time to look at firewall rules again.

I don't like that idea but I won't be around forever. Its a war others can fight... it will be AAA games it shows up in first.

He probably got this idea from EA, which announced last year during an earnings call that it was discussing in-game ads and looking at different ways to do them, but people freaked out and EA backed off of it and said, "Well, we discuss lots of things that we never do."

******

Do any of you use Steam's "Discovery Queue" or "Interactive Recommender"?

Once in a lifetime I seem to discover something worthwhile but I get so much crap in there, even after tagging "ignore" the types of games I'm not interested in.

Am I just wasting my time? Is there a better way?

I use the Interactive Recommender quite a bit, and usually find some interesting things in there. I move the sliders all the way to the right first, and then adjust them a little from there.

The Discovery Queue, on the other hand, is completely useless. Or at least it used to be. I haven't played with it in a couple of years.

Most of the time, though, I just use the page below and input different tags and stuff along the top and right of the list

Steam Search

store.steampowered.com

If you are looking for a game similar to another game, the following site is pretty good and can find even the most niche of games. You may want to uncheck the box to show unreleased games. The lists it creates aren't perfect, but if you actually go through the list you can usually find some interesting games.

SteamPeek - Indie friendly game discovery

SteamPeek uses a unique recommendation algorithm to find the most relevant, indie friendly PC games - great tool for all kind of gamers. Beside the list of similar results, it allows you to discover hidden, trending indie gems, new game releases and even coming soon titles.

steampeek.hu

Of course, the thing that makes all of these tools a worse than they should be are the Steam tags, which are often wrong. Hopefully they'll come up with an AI or something that can clean them up. With over 100,000 games, I think it's too late for humans to do it Plus, we're the original source of the problem anyway. Let AI do it, and we may argue with it, but it should at least be consistent.

 

[Colif]

He probably got this idea from EA, which announced last year during an earnings call that it was discussing in-game ads and looking at different ways to do them, but people freaked out and EA backed off of it and said, "Well, we discuss lots of things that we never do."

someone will do it, and there will be push back, but as Asmon said, it just takes one good game where people put up with it and then it will become normal... no... I won't sit through 5 minutes of commercials in a game. I stopped watching TV to avoid them.

Needs to be zero tolerance, Commercials break immersion.

@ZedClampet the last two links are the same.

 

[ZedClampet]

someone will do it, and there will be push back, but as Asmon said, it just takes one good game where people put up with it and then it will become normal... no... I won't sit through 5 minutes of commercials in a game. I stopped watching TV to avoid them.

Needs to be zero tolerance, Commercials break immersion.

@ZedClampet the last two links are the same.

I think the most likely implementation would be in the match queue for PvP games. You could easily do this with no blowback in games mostly populated by non-gamers like Fortnite.

As for single-player, I feel sorry for the first company that decides they are going to interrupt a game with ads. The reaction will be so severe that they likely will never recover. A lot of AAA companies are already backing themselves into this position with endless microtransactions and incomplete and broken games. People already dislike them. Now they would move to loathing.

IMO, this is one reason so many companies keep pushing AAA PvP games (or the PvP portions of otherwise single-player games) even though PvP games are extremely risky and fail far more often than they succeed. By focusing on these games, companies largely get to avoid "core" gamers and can do whatever they want because a lot of the players who play these games aren't actually "gamers" and don't care. Great examples of this are the FC and Madden games. You go to Steam where the gamers are and look at the user reviews and, and they are terrible, yet these are always 2 of the top 10 selling games of the year (not on Steam, overall) because the non-gamers eat them up. You could easily put ads in these games while people wait for matches, and you wouldn't hurt yourself at all.