November 2023 Random Game Thoughts Thread

[ZedClampet]

You know what's kind of cool? Wherever in Steam I look at my friend list, for example when I'm gifting a game or trying to invite someone or just on the main list, Steam always puts Guido at the top. I suppose it would be fairly easy to identify if someone has a main gaming partner in their list, but it's a nice touch.

*****
I may or may not play Weed Shop 3 anymore. I'm very frustrated at the moment. It's probably one of the worst designed and poorly explained games I've ever played and there is zero information online, which is a bad combination. I love running the shop, but I'm over it.

 

[ZedClampet]

OH....MY.....GAWD!​

I take it back. Copilot is a terrible gaming partner. My frustration with Weed Shop 3 all has to do with it giving me inaccurate information.

Get this.

I asked it how to get the employee named Jennifer French, and it told me that I had to reach level 25 and then complete a quest for her called The French Connection. I had to find her by going to the Rapper's Shop. She will give me a mission to sell 100 grams of weed at $14 per gram. I have to do this on the boardwalk. She will be so impressed she will let me hire her.

I didn't know where the Rapper's Shop was, so I asked how to find it. It said that I should check the map or follow the yellow star on the HUD. Alternatively I could go to the end of the boardwalk and the store is between a tattoo parlor and a clothing store.

Here's the kicker: All of the above is complete BS. There's no map. There's no yellow star, there is no Rapper store between a tattoo parlor and a clothing store. Furthermore, there is no Rapper Shop at all and no mission called The French Connection.​

What you actually have to do to get Jennifer French is reach level 31.

I need a damn vacation now after that wild goose chase. But first, I'm going to have a little talk with this idiot AI, Florence. How are people supposed to use a tool that just makes things up?

If I were doing something important, I wouldn't use Copilot at all. If I owned a business, I would block it.

 

[ZedClampet]

Pumping Simulator 2: Clunky, somewhat buggy. Intensely stupid. Poorly thought out mechanics. Steam Score: 95% positive
Starfield: Steam Score: 69% positive

If this doesn't teach a lesson about setting expectations low, then I don't know what does.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Probably also a lesson to be learned from overhyping and under delivering on Bethesdas side. Will there be a new engine for Elder Scrolls 6 I wonder?

Got my new GPU installed, its faster and quieter. Booted up Control for a quick look, RT looks nice but I'm not sure its all that, DLSS quality has a blur to it, like youre using a lower resolution on a screen that doesnt match pixels 1:1, which is exactly what is happening but I thought it was supposed to be invisble. Need to play a bit more, should have a lot of time tomorrow. Also had a quick look at Metro Exodus and felt the same, looks nice not exactly breathtaking, even native without upscaling via DLSS.

I would have taken a look at Alan Wake 2, but the voucher that came with the game doesnt seem to work. It shows up in Geforce Experience as redeemable, but when I click on it it tells me the offer has expired. Which is weird because its not supposed to expire until January 1 2024. Started a customer service ticket on the Nvidia site, maybe theyll get whatever it is untwisted before I get an answer. Probably sold a lot of cards over the weekend so maybe some sever somewhere got gummed up or something.

 

[ZedClampet]

Probably also a lesson to be learned from overhyping and under delivering on Bethesdas side. Will there be a new engine for Elder Scrolls 6 I wonder?

Got my new GPU installed, its faster and quieter. Booted up Control for a quick look, RT looks nice but I'm not sure its all that, DLSS quality has a blur to it, like youre using a lower resolution on a screen that doesnt match pixels 1:1, which is exactly what is happening but I thought it was supposed to be invisble. Need to play a bit more, should have a lot of time tomorrow. Also had a quick look at Metro Exodus and felt the same, looks nice not exactly breathtaking, even native without upscaling via DLSS.

I would have taken a look at Alan Wake 2, but the voucher that came with the game doesnt seem to work. It shows up in Geforce Experience as redeemable, but when I click on it it tells me the offer has expired. Which is weird because its not supposed to expire until January 1 2024. Started a customer service ticket on the Nvidia site, maybe theyll get whatever it is untwisted before I get an answer. Probably sold a lot of cards over the weekend so maybe some sever somewhere got gummed up or something.

You shouldn't be noticing DLSS, but the games that implemented it first probably didn't do a great job with it. First game I tried it in, it was terrible, and I immediately turned it off. Since then in newer implementations I haven't had a problem, although I've heard that Starfield's recent DLSS addition is not so hot. If you have Cyberpunk 2077, try it in that. I was running that just a couple of weeks ago and it looked amazing with DLSS on.

 

[ZedClampet]

Probably also a lesson to be learned from overhyping and under delivering on Bethesdas side. Will there be a new engine for Elder Scrolls 6 I wonder?

Got my new GPU installed, its faster and quieter. Booted up Control for a quick look, RT looks nice but I'm not sure its all that, DLSS quality has a blur to it, like youre using a lower resolution on a screen that doesnt match pixels 1:1, which is exactly what is happening but I thought it was supposed to be invisble. Need to play a bit more, should have a lot of time tomorrow. Also had a quick look at Metro Exodus and felt the same, looks nice not exactly breathtaking, even native without upscaling via DLSS.

I would have taken a look at Alan Wake 2, but the voucher that came with the game doesnt seem to work. It shows up in Geforce Experience as redeemable, but when I click on it it tells me the offer has expired. Which is weird because its not supposed to expire until January 1 2024. Started a customer service ticket on the Nvidia site, maybe theyll get whatever it is untwisted before I get an answer. Probably sold a lot of cards over the weekend so maybe some sever somewhere got gummed up or something.

Hey, I missed it. What GPU did you get?

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

You shouldn't be noticing DLSS, but the games that implemented it first probably didn't do a great job with it. First game I tried it in, it was terrible, and I immediately turned it off. Since then in newer implementations I haven't had a problem, although I've heard that Starfield's recent DLSS addition is not so hot. If you have Cyberpunk 2077, try it in that. I was running that just a couple of weeks ago and it looked amazing with DLSS on.

Yea I have Cyberpunk installed, but I wanted to get Phantom Liberty potentially on a small discount around the Xmas sale. Should fir it up and have a look anyway.

Hey, I missed it. What GPU did you get?

Got a 4070. Wishful thinking had me believing I'd somehow get hold of a 4070Ti on a good offer but nothing went down inside my budget. I'm happy enough, had a 5700XT before so its around about twice as fast on average in raster with 4GB more VRAM.

 

[ZedClampet]

Yea I have Cyberpunk installed, but I wanted to get Phantom Liberty potentially on a small discount around the Xmas sale. Should fir it up and have a look anyway.


Got a 4070. Wishful thinking had me believing I'd somehow get hold of a 4070Ti on a good offer but nothing went down inside my budget. I'm happy enough, had a 5700XT before so its around about twice as fast on average in raster with 4GB more VRAM.

Cyberpunk has a good benchmarking tool if you want to see the graphics without actually starting the campaign.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Cyberpunk has a good benchmarking tool if you want to see the graphics without actually starting the campaign.

Good point, I'll take a look when I get a chance later. Hopefully I can get Alan Wake 2 going, tempted to just get it with the Epic 33% discount but I know as soon as I pull the trigger the voucher will come through somehow.

 

[ZedClampet]

Yea I have Cyberpunk installed, but I wanted to get Phantom Liberty potentially on a small discount around the Xmas sale. Should fir it up and have a look anyway.


Got a 4070. Wishful thinking had me believing I'd somehow get hold of a 4070Ti on a good offer but nothing went down inside my budget. I'm happy enough, had a 5700XT before so its around about twice as fast on average in raster with 4GB more VRAM.

If you still have problems with blurriness, you could download the Nvidia Profile Inspector if you don't already have it and try adjusting the Texture LOD Bias to -3. I just saw some people talking about this in the forums. Others thought it was good as is.

I guess I'm not a very good reference for this sort of thing since my vision is always kind of burry.

 

[ZedClampet]

Good point, I'll take a look when I get a chance later. Hopefully I can get Alan Wake 2 going, tempted to just get it with the Epic 33% discount but I know as soon as I pull the trigger the voucher will come through somehow.

The last time I got an Nvidia voucher they told me that the maximum number of vouchers had already been used. Needless to say, I was very impressed with their voucher program.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

The last time I got an Nvidia voucher they told me that the maximum number of vouchers had already been used. Needless to say, I was very impressed with their voucher program.

Great. I really want to play Alan Wake 2.

Last time I bought an Nvidia card was in 2017, I forget what it was because I didnt like it much but I know it worked, some Tom Clancy thing. Also got Assassins Creed Black Flag with a GTX 780 that worked, been some time since then though.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

If you still have problems with blurriness, you could download the Nvidia Profile Inspector if you don't already have it and try adjusting the Texture LOD Bias to -3. I just saw some people talking about this in the forums. Others thought it was good as is.

I guess I'm not a very good reference for this sort of thing since my vision is always kind of burry.

Might just take some getting used to, there was some blur pop in in the paintings in the lobby in Control, the marble surfaces and reflections looked pretty nice though. Inspector rings a bell, thanks for the link I'll check it out if the problems continue.

Just tried AW2 again and it worked! Itll be ready by tomorrow.

 

[Zloth]

Yakuza 6 has little random missions you can do. I've done a few, but I happened to do one at some sort of tipping point for the game where it makes a boatload of new sidequests available. The random quest was to catch three guys that ran off before a timer counts down. So, I go running after one of the hooligans, catch him, and repay his petty theft with some assault & battery. (I'm a good guy, though, I swear!)

Ah, and there's another one of them, just down the hill a bit. I run up to him and... oh, he wants to talk? Did the devs hide some content in their random missions? No - it's some older guy who wants to talk to me about some new cult that he would like me to infiltrate (i.e. hospitalize). Blah blah blah blah - OK, back to chasing down these guys before the timer runs out! The other guy must have gone this'a'way...

And then I run into some teenage girl that says her consciousness travelled back in time a year, and she wants to prove it to me. FINE. I hope that timer is stopped. We try to figure out how she can prove she's from a year in the future while just standing there on the street. We come up with nothing and I say I hope to see her later. Onward after these robbers!

And then, as I was about to go down some stairs, a guy and gal in their late teens fell down the stairs, rolling over each other as they fell. When they hit bottom, they discovered that they had somehow swapped bodies! That dialog went on for a bit. (Spoiler: telling the girl-turned-boy that she gets to pee standing up now does not help matters. I presume she-now-he didn't grasp just what a time savings that is yet.)

I did eventually catch all three. I think the timer started at 4 minutes and it took me more like half an hour to find them all, but it still counted as a success!

If I said it was in EA, I misspoke. It's actually in full release.

Oh, my bad! Weird that they would block mods, then. I guess it isn't just Rockstar now.

How are people supposed to use a tool that just makes things up?

They prefer the term "hallucinating."

But yeah, it's very hard to trust those things when they confidently tell you something totally wrong.

Probably also a lesson to be learned from overhyping and under delivering on Bethesdas side. Will there be a new engine for Elder Scrolls 6 I wonder?

Depends on what "new engine" is really supposed to mean. Plenty of things in the current engine will still work great even 10 years from now. I would presume that they'll carry those over to the next generation of the engine. Other things will be replaced by new techniques. How much has to be replaced before it counts as a new engine?

 

[Brian Boru]

All of the above is complete BS

Did you follow the sources Copilot referenced? Interesting to see where it got the wrong stuff, and so much of it. Apart from teething, this is more likely to be GIGO than throw baby out with bathwater.

a lesson about setting expectations

I wouldn't set too much store on a rating from 300+ votes, it doesn't compare with a rating from 80,000. As you infer, expectations for Starfield were high, and there were probably none for WS3, which also skews things.

They prefer the term "hallucinating."

It's like Wiki, key is to go check the references quoted if the topic is important to you. Wiki and current AI don't do independent research, they collect info, and AI is obviously not perfect at that yet.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Depends on what "new engine" is really supposed to mean. Plenty of things in the current engine will still work great even 10 years from now. I would presume that they'll carry those over to the next generation of the engine. Other things will be replaced by new techniques. How much has to be replaced before it counts as a new engine?

Itsa bit glib. In Bethesdas case, Elder Scrolls 6 will probably be fine for fans in this engine as long as they work on some of it again.

Remember 10-15 years ago when execs at EA decided that they could just use Frostbite for everything to save money, it caused a load of bugs, problems and crunch for devs and the products suffered a lot? From all Ive heard and read it feels like they tried to crowbar Starfield into a fantasy game engine and it came out looking a little like a square peg hammered into a round hole. I'm sure there's still fun there, apparently the shooting is alright, but perhaps something with a different scope would be better off going a little more back to the drawing board technology wise. A seemless world is a big partof what a Bethesda game is.

 

[Frindis]

Been playing SpeedRunners (75% off on Steam) with my nephews. Highly recommend it as it is A LOT of fun and one of those games you learn the basics of quickly while competing against the others with new tricks up your sleeve as you level up your skills. The best tip for any beginners is to memorize the maps the best you can, especially where all the wooden crates are, as those will often slow you down to a halt if you do not pay attention. One cool thing about the game is that as you run around the map over and over again, the map size will slowly shrink, meaning that what you see is less which makes it much easier to make mistakes if you don't remember what is in front of you.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I've now played a bit of Alan Wake 2, which is so far a heavily story based detective/adventure game. I'm OK with that for now, as long as the story and world stays interesting enough. I like a supernatural story.

The game looks great with RT, although DLSS and Frame generation do cause some blurring, flickering and artifacts here and there. Frame rate is terrible without them on though so its a decent compromise.

 

[Sarafan]

I started Aliens: Dark Descent and the game seems incredible. So much gameplay depth and tactical options... The gameplay is truly unique. And I thought that probably nothing can surprise me in video games at this point... Only the graphics and animations are mediocre. I also had to use sharpness filter in GeForce Experience because on max settings the game is very blurry (pretty much the same as in Baldur's Gate 3).

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I started Aliens: Dark Descent and the game seems incredible. So much gameplay depth and tactical options... The gameplay is truly unique. And I thought that probably nothing can surprise me in video games at this point... Only the graphics and animations are mediocre. I also had to use sharpness filter in GeForce Experience because on max settings the game is very blurry (pretty much the same as in Baldur's Gate 3).

Is this our new blurry future? Or do I just need new glasses.

Using SMAA instead of TAA like you suggested seemed to cure most of my blurriness problem in BG3 but maybe the two manufacturers just have their quirks in different games.

 

[Sarafan]

Is this our new blurry future? Or do I just need new glasses.

Using SMAA instead of TAA like you suggested seemed to cure most of my blurriness problem in BG3 but maybe the two manufacturers just have their quirks in different games.

There's no option to select type of AA in Aliens: Dark Descent. There are only quality levels. The game seems less blurry with AA off though the jagged edges are extremely visible in this case (the game has an isometric perspective and the objects are small, so the jagged edges are a pain if you turn AA off).

 

[ZedClampet]

Is this our new blurry future?

They've been improving DLSS since release. Plus, the developers have to do their part and get used to training the AI on a ton of images. Or maybe they just provide the images and Nvidia trains the AI. Anyway, I think we're just still in the early stages. Certainly there's no intention to make things blurry.

 

[BeardyHat]

Itsa bit glib. In Bethesdas case, Elder Scrolls 6 will probably be fine for fans in this engine as long as they work on some of it again.

Remember 10-15 years ago when execs at EA decided that they could just use Frostbite for everything to save money, it caused a load of bugs, problems and crunch for devs and the products suffered a lot? From all Ive heard and read it feels like they tried to crowbar Starfield into a fantasy game engine and it came out looking a little like a square peg hammered into a round hole. I'm sure there's still fun there, apparently the shooting is alright, but perhaps something with a different scope would be better off going a little more back to the drawing board technology wise. A seemless world is a big partof what a Bethesda game is.

I played 86 hours of Starfield and really had a good time with it, but I also had only one expectation going into it. I didn't subscribe to any of the hype and went in expecting it to be a Bethesda game in space, a genre (I think we can assume it's a genre, at this point), I've loved since I first played Daggerfall on the PC Gamer demo disk back in...1996?

Anyway, it did take about 10 hours or so before I really felt the hooks in me, but even during that lull, I still wanted to play more. It's also still sitting in the back of my mind and waiting for me to go back to it, but the switch in my brain hasn't yet flipped back to "Talky-Style Game" yet.

But it's no wonder the player base has fallen off, as it's just not the cultural zeitgeist anymore. The world moves so fast these days that people are always off to the new thing and I don't necessarily think it's any one games fault for that.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

There's no option to select type of AA in Aliens: Dark Descent. There are only quality levels. The game seems less blurry with AA off though the jagged edges are extremely visible in this case (the game has an isometric perspective and the objects are small, so the jagged edges are a pain if you turn AA off).

I remember seeing some gameplay when it released and I have it wishlisted. Good to hear you like it anyway, its at a decent discount atm too. Hmm.

They've been improving DLSS since release. Plus, the developers have to do their part and get used to training the AI on a ton of images. Or maybe they just provide the images and Nvidia trains the AI. Anyway, I think we're just still in the early stages. Certainly there's no intention to make things blurry.

I've always been a bit sensitive to non native res on a monitor (1080p on 1440 eg) so maybe I just see it more than others for some reason. Its probably just something I'll get used to in time. AW 2 was really bothering me to start with and seemed to get better the more I played anyway.

I played 86 hours of Starfield and really had a good time with it, but I also had only one expectation going into it. I didn't subscribe to any of the hype and went in expecting it to be a Bethesda game in space, a genre (I think we can assume it's a genre, at this point), I've loved since I first played Daggerfall on the PC Gamer demo disk back in...1996?

Anyway, it did take about 10 hours or so before I really felt the hooks in me, but even during that lull, I still wanted to play more. It's also still sitting in the back of my mind and waiting for me to go back to it, but the switch in my brain hasn't yet flipped back to "Talky-Style Game" yet.

But it's no wonder the player base has fallen off, as it's just not the cultural zeitgeist anymore. The world moves so fast these days that people are always off to the new thing and I don't necessarily think it's any one games fault for that.

Fair enough if you enjoyed it, I know a lot of people did.

Bethesda games mostly arent my jam. What I liked about Skyrim was the discovery and exploration, pick up a quest, or just pick a direction and start walking. On the way somewhere there would be random encounters or cool stuff to discover. Also it was snowy and mountainous and that landscape really appeals to me, it was stunning at the time with the northern lights and starry nights.

I understood from talking to a friend who likes Bethesda games and played it a fair amount. In Starfield you pick up a quest, fast travel to the destination, have a fight, then fast travel back to get your reward. They removed the possibility for a lot of random discoveries on the journey, and a lot of the extra content they had to put in to fill the universe around the edges was quite repetitive.

My dumb amateur inexpert brain wonders if they should have started with a smaller scale project to test the waters then developed their tech and aimed to get there in a couple of steps. Feels like they just had to make something bigger because thats the Bethesda way.

Still it sold at least 6 million apparently on top of being on Gamepass, so Bethesda probably arent doing too much navel gazing. I only complain because I selfishly want more interesting games to play myself.

 

[ZedClampet]

I enjoyed the few hours I spent with it, but I think if they were going to emphasize fast travel that they shouldn't have made a space game, and if they were going to only have small amounts of a planet explorable, then they probably shouldn't have made a space game. Emphasize travel by your ship. Have manual planetary landings. Create a first class proc gen for planets. Emphasize a sort of mercenary space ecology and keep players wanting to invest in their ships. As it was, all these things, which IMO are essential for space games, were trivialized. I happen to think that it still worked, but it was missing a lot of things players were expecting.