November 2024 General Gaming Discussion Thread

[Zed Clampet]

Trying to explain to a Japanese developer that they can't treat Steam like the Nintendo Switch. No one is going to buy their new indie game for $70 and certainly no one is going to buy their 10 year old game for $60 (this new game is the sequel).

I'm not saying there aren't indie games that might be worth $70, but this one sure as heck isn't.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Google is going to be forced to sell Chrome. I think we should bid on it. We don't have to have any money. Once we can prove that we won the bid, capital investors will give us the money.

This is how you actually get rich.

 

[neogunhero]

Had a super busy weekend so didn’t get to play very much. However I finally found a sweet spot with my Stalker 2 settings. It sure as heck doesn’t look the best, but playing on Medium settings with DLSS Balanced on, the frame rate is very playable. It loses a lot of the fine details especially since I’m still on 1080p, but for the most part I can’t tell when I’m moving and shooting. I was able to knock out some side quests and it worked very well. For some reason, going to Quality mode on DLSS or FSR makes my game go to 5fps while in larger settlements, but balanced doesn’t have that issue at all besides frames dipping a bit. Still, just happy I’m able to play at all.

 

[BeardyHat]

Had a super busy weekend so didn’t get to play very much.

Exactly where I'm at. Last week was busy as hell too and this week will be even worse, so I'm hoping to fit some more game time in at some point, but we'll see. STALKER 2 is still tempting, but I'm hoping to wait and see if performance improves on the Deck when they are able to fix some stuff about it. I should just play Call of Pripyat again...

I've been dabbling in Daggerfall Unity again, but I kind of "suck" at the game because I'm a bad roleplayer. I can never not feel like I'm playing a game and I find that it really helps me to have some direction and definition from game designers. I still love Daggerfall, but I want to try and get better at that aspect of myself...

Still haven't had any time to play The Black Parade.

Also realized this morning that I am stupid. Here I was, attaching my USB-hub to my Deck to clone the drive and worrying about the lack of power when I had my eGPU the entire time. Not only is it an eGPU (which won't work with the Deck), but it functions as a hub with power delivery, doh. I did end-up getting a Dock for my Deck, but it was only $24 on Amazon. Not sure what I'll do with it after my project is done, but I have thoughts of getting a portable monitor and using the Deck as a semi-laptop in the off chance I travel.

 

[BeardyHat]

Trying to explain to a Japanese developer that they can't treat Steam like the Nintendo Switch. No one is going to buy their new indie game for $70 and certainly no one is going to buy their 10 year old game for $60 (this new game is the sequel).

I'm not saying there aren't indie games that might be worth $70, but this one sure as heck isn't.

They do often overvalue their properties, don't they? Mention in a previous post, but I'm still a bit sore about the Dragon Quest 3 remake being $60, which is just absurd. I know development is a ton of work and it is essentially creating an entirely new game with assets, translation, etc, but I can't help but point at Little Big Adventure, which got the same treatment but is half the price.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Still slowly working my way through The Last of Us Part One Remastered. Its still good, they havent updated anything about the gameplay as far as I can tell, but its still fun and functional and the story and weight of the combat and ammo scarcity carries it. As I said before no performance issues anymore, playing it on Ultra with DLSS quality and no drops or hitching at all.

Made my way up to Prestige 9 difficulty with Against the Storm and its starting to get tougher again. There are new resources, races and biome combinations to deal with all the time so at least for me every level has different challenges to work through that keep it interesting to play. More content patches coming as well.

Also Techpowerup did a handheld analysis of Stalker 2, Steam Deck doesnt seem to be up to it unfortunately.

STALKER 2 Handheld Performance Review

STALKER is back after 15 years with Stalker 2 that finally transforms the Zone into a seamless open-world filled with dangers, mysteries, and treasures. Let's see how Steam Deck and ASUS ROG Ally fare in the latest rendition of the Zone in our handheld performance review.

www.techpowerup.com

Im still torn on getting a Deck as a present to myself this year, on one hand I have a lot of games that it will play really well, but new AAA 3d games coming out are too much for it. Should have bought one 2 years ago.

 

[neogunhero]

Exactly where I'm at. Last week was busy as hell too and this week will be even worse, so I'm hoping to fit some more game time in at some point, but we'll see. STALKER 2 is still tempting, but I'm hoping to wait and see if performance improves on the Deck when they are able to fix some stuff about it. I should just play Call of Pripyat again...

Even if you’re going to play it on Game Pass and not buy it, it’s worth waiting for patches to come out. The devs have explained they are aware of many bugs and will be working on fixing them. I don’t believe they singled out performance issues specifically, but I’m hoping these patches will eventually lead to better frames. I really think it was their decision to use baked in ray tracing rather than having it as a toggle option that is crippling many people’s PCs, so I really hope sometime in the future we can disable RT but I doubt it.

 

[Pifanjr]

Who are you playing as? Some of them are better at aggressive play than others.

I was playing as the Waystalker, the Elf's first career. I thought the Trueshot Volley would be really helpful, but it seemed like it wasn't prioritising specials like it does in adventure mode. I also struggled hitting specials with her bow as they move a lot more irregularly than AI specials.

 

[BeardyHat]

STALKER 2 Handheld Performance Review

STALKER is back after 15 years with Stalker 2 that finally transforms the Zone into a seamless open-world filled with dangers, mysteries, and treasures. Let's see how Steam Deck and ASUS ROG Ally fare in the latest rendition of the Zone in our handheld performance review.

www.techpowerup.com

Im still torn on getting a Deck as a present to myself this year, on one hand I have a lot of games that it will play really well, but new AAA 3d games coming out are too much for it. Should have bought one 2 years ago.

I think you really need to shift the mindset on the Deck for AAA gaming. It can do it, but start thinking about AAA games from 4+ years back, that's where the Deck's bread and butter is; plus just untethering you from your desks or if you play games on the couch on a laptop.

I'm usually on my Deck because I don't want to sit at my computer desk or because I want to stretch out on the couch and sit next to my wife and not be constrained by something on my lap or needing an armrest for my laptop. It's nice to be able to just set it down next to you and get up.

Think of it as a device that gives you options in how you want to play your games and a device that mostly is great for smaller or indie games and playing a AAA game on it is more of a bonus than anything else. Honestly, I probably would hate to play STALKER on my Deck anyway, as I get quickly frustrated by shooters using a gamepad because I feel like I'm playing with a handicap.

Maybe I'm a bit evangelical here, but I've just fallen in love with handhelds in general since about 2018 and the Deck is all I ever wanted.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I think you really need to shift the mindset on the Deck for AAA gaming. It can do it, but start thinking about AAA games from 4+ years back, that's where the Deck's bread and butter is; plus just untethering you from your desks or if you play games on the couch on a laptop.

I'm usually on my Deck because I don't want to sit at my computer desk or because I want to stretch out on the couch and sit next to my wife and not be constrained by something on my lap or needing an armrest for my laptop. It's nice to be able to just set it down next to you and get up.

Think of it as a device that gives you options in how you want to play your games and a device that mostly is great for smaller or indie games and playing a AAA game on it is more of a bonus than anything else. Honestly, I probably would hate to play STALKER on my Deck anyway, as I get quickly frustrated by shooters using a gamepad because I feel like I'm playing with a handicap.

Maybe I'm a bit evangelical here, but I've just fallen in love with handhelds in general since about 2018 and the Deck is all I ever wanted.

No it sounds like it suits your situation perfectly and thats understandable. For me its more of a luxury, as being at a desk isnt a problem and my family are right here in the same room anyway most of the time. It would probably only really get used a lot a few weeks a year away from home or if I happened to be sick. The fact it wont play everything well is just another straw that pushes me towards using that money elsewhere.

Tune in next week when one shows up second hand locally cheap and I buy it anyway despite all my nonsense.

 

[Johnway]

Don't really buy things on black friday unless there was an opportunity or a killer deal too good to pass up. The one game that sort of caught my attention was Showgunners for 2.49. The GOG version can be cheap but for the steam version im all for it.

Gaming wise, still playing POE. Haven't made much progress, maybe did a few things here and there and still sniffing around for gear. I have a few promising items, but nothing that makes me excited or perfect for rolled gear. I need to fiddle around a bit and hope for the best.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Been playing Storage Hunter Simulator. It's nearly perfect by simulator game standards, just some wonky physics sometimes. You bid on abandoned storage units, fix up the stuff inside, estimate a value, then try to sell it in your shop. There are tons of upgrades to keep me interested. I bought a new house and am decorating it with some of my finds, and I'm about to buy a new truck. Definitely my kind of game.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Played some Stalker 2, game auto set me to high everything, and I was getting about 40 to 50 FPS, which was fine for me.

I feel like the Easy difficulty isn't easy enough for me. I went and got this thing, and with very little warning this creature showed up and killed me. I didn't even see him until he was right up on top of me. I shot him and looked at my health, which was all the way at the bottom. I decided to heal, but before I managed that I died, so maybe I was bleeding out because I had found bandages before, so maybe blood loss is a thing.

Anyway, that's pretty fun. I'm actually going to start over because I was watching my Xbox FPS thing the whole time (maybe instead of watching for things sneaking up on me), and that was also where the game was giving me messages, so I didn't get to read any of those. Possibly it said something important, and I was only about 20 minutes into the game anyway.

Love the atmosphere. It felt good to fire up a game with real graphics again.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Got a Steam notification telling me Everything from my wish list was on sale. Logged in all excited thinking the Black Friday/Fall sale had started.

Turns out Everything is on sale.

 

[neogunhero]

More Stalker last night. Fiddled around with graphics settings again and got it to look a bit better while maintaining decent frames.

DLSS makes the game look like absolute trash. I don’t know if it’s because I can’t run the game well in the first place (I heard it works best if the game already hits 60FPS without upscaling), if it’s because I’m on 1080p (I’ve heard it looks best at 1440p and above), or what the issue is, but things far out in the distance get their LODs reduced to near 0 and they look like polygonal blobs until you get your face 10 feet away from said object. The image is blurry and muddy as hell, text is very fuzzy, any sort of movement makes the game look like sludge. I understand upscaling does stuff like this, but eventually it became unplayable for me. Same issue with FSR. That’s when I decided to mess around with graphics settings.

DLSS has always been the default for me since I have an NVIDIA card, and when that doesn’t work I tend to go to FSR, but I switched to UE5’s TSR (Temporal Super Resolution) and found that the image looks a lot crisper while maintaining my frames, and I was able to turn settings to Medium. It made me super happy last night! I’m probably pushing my PC to its absolute limits but the game runs decent and looks decent. Still some blur which is to be expected, but the image looks so much better than DLSS or FSR. I have tried Frame Generation and it does make my frames better but the input lag gets very bad to the point where I can’t stand it anymore. What I’m worried about is when I finally reach the much larger cities in the game. The starting camp, which has maybe about 10-15 NPCs in a smallish area, still makes my frames go down. I can only imagine what will happen in a much larger settlement, and I see a ton on the map.

With most of my performance woes out of the way, I knocked out a few more main missions. I figured I should grind the main mission a bit longer to open up more of the world, but the game is so damn large there is still a ton of stuff to do in just the starting area. I knocked out a few side missions and sought out a few stash boxes in the starting area. It’s a good place to grind for resources to start your journey. I’ve gotten some good weapons, a much better suit than the starting one, a gas mask, tons of ammo and healing, and I’m ready to continue on my journey.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I have found a kindred spirit. Or rather, a kindred spirit has found me. I may actually have a co-op partner again.

 

[Colif]

Got a Steam notification telling me Everything from my wish list was on sale. Logged in all excited thinking the Black Friday/Fall sale had started.

Turns out Everything is on sale.

looks at his wish list item... still not released.
Kaamos was incorrect, its not everything. 😀

 

[Zed Clampet]

New Arc Line. Eurojank is off the charts, as is the traditional, heavy-handed and naive political discourse which keeps popping up. The writing is as abysmal as the game's basic execution and drones on and on with no discernable purpose.

When you aren't busy crashing to the desktop, you'll find that little to no effort has been put into most of the quests, which have exhausting and irrelevant stories tied to fetching objects and end with nothing more than a notice that you got your reward. Even with a bad quest story, I'd like a little more in the way of closure than a pop-up window listing my prizes.

Combat, on the other hand, is quite good, as are the graphics. Unfortunately they've been securely packed in cow dung, as everything else, including the technical aspects, is sorely lacking any semblance of polish.

The best thing it has going for it is that it is in early access and might improve.

 

[Colif]

If Brian stepped out for a cigarette, I think someone locked him out now and he might be a little chilly.

 

[Zed Clampet]

If Brian stepped out for a cigarette, I think someone locked him out now and he might be a little chilly.

I think he's in jail.

There's a long list of things that could be going on with Brian, but the fact that he hasn't popped in and posted anything at all is concerning to the point that I've been hoping he's in the hospital (or jail). Does anyone know what city he lives in? I could probably find him if I had that information even without his name. Of course, if you have his name it would probably take less than 5 minutes.

 

[dxchase]

Quick question for anyone that can answer. So i signed up for PCG's physical magazine delivery because it also had an offer in there for a free t-shirt. After i picked my size and went through purchasing, i see nothing about when the shirt will be delivered, or even if i bought the shirt. Theres also nothing in the FAQs about it. Does anyone have any more info on this? Do they send out the tshirt right away or when i get my first subscription?

 

[Johnway]

So the steam autumn sale is up and so far the main outstanding deal is psychnauts 2 for less then 6 quid. A steal i say, but who knows? maybe epic might give it away for free or it might drop below the 5 quid mark.

As for the voting, like i always demand, i want a wooden spoon award to laugh at a gaming industry that never learns anything. it wasn't even tough, ubisoft this year has been nothing short of horrible and insulting. Honorable mention goes to Sony and Nintendo who did some terrible stuff, but ubisoft takes the crown this year with ease.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I want to!

Actually wouldn't mind replaying the entire series again, but I'm not sure that'll happen.

But, with the added commentary, it might be a good excuse for my wife and I to go through 2 again and listen to all of it.

A couple of weeks ago, Call to Arms: Gates of Hell - Ostfront released a new DLC, the US Airborne, which I ended-up picking up immediately, if only to support the developers. It adds US Airborne (duh) and a campaign based on Band of Brothers, which I only recently watched (around April this year). The missions have been quite fun so far and fairly challenging, though I've made it through most of them so far playing on Normal with minimal save scumming.

If I have one complaint, it's that it doesn't set the difficulty of the campaign overall, but instead, each mission defaults to Easy. I just beat a mission this morning, only to realize at the very end that it was actually on Easy. I find this to be somewhat annoying, as I need to quit out of every new mission and then start a "new" campaign on the new map at the correct difficulty.

That said, it's given me a renewed thirst for my World War 2 wargame I love. Due to it, I finally ordered my new rulebook I needed (first rules update in about 8 years or so) and am now feeling eager to start my repainting project on my US Infantry, which are far from the standard I painted my British 8th army to. That said, I have a couple other painting projects standing in the way that need to be finished first, unfortunately.

That game is 75 percent off. Grabbing it now.

 

[Colif]

Quick question for anyone that can answer. So i signed up for PCG's physical magazine delivery because it also had an offer in there for a free t-shirt. After i picked my size and went through purchasing, i see nothing about when the shirt will be delivered, or even if i bought the shirt. Theres also nothing in the FAQs about it. Does anyone have any more info on this? Do they send out the tshirt right away or when i get my first subscription?

This looks like a post for Forum feedback area...

I made a thread for this sort of thing... literally just made it for this reply

Questions about magazine offers

Please reply to this thread if you have queries about subscriptions That way Admin will see your reply. Especially if I mention them here: @CParsons @SHaines Hopefully Chris doesn't mind the mention, I can't seem to add any one else.

forums.pcgamer.com

AS magazine questions aren't something that come up a lot.

 

[Zloth]

Just Cause games, Mad Max, Styx, the Portal games... the games that always go on huge sale are still doing the same thing.

Save 75% on Dishonored on Steam

Dishonored is an immersive first-person action game that casts you as a supernatural assassin driven by revenge. With Dishonored’s flexible combat system, creatively eliminate your targets as you combine the supernatural abilities, weapons and unusual gadgets at your disposal.

store.steampowered.com

Save 90% on Dishonored 2 on Steam

Reprise your role as a supernatural assassin in Dishonored 2. Declared a “masterpiece” by Eurogamer and hailed “a must-play revenge tale” by Game Informer, Dishonored 2 is the follow up to Arkane’s 1st-person action blockbuster & winner of 100+ 'Game of the Year' awards, Dishonored.

store.steampowered.com

That's a crazy price! Prey is $5 USD, too.

Saints Row: The Third on Steam

Get ready for the most out-landish gameplay scenarios ever seen as the Third Street Saints take on the Syndicate!

store.steampowered.com

Save 80% on Batman: Arkham City - Game of the Year Edition on Steam

Get Batman: Arkham City and all DLC for one low price with the release of the GOTY Edition!

store.steampowered.com

DOOM on Steam

Now includes all three premium DLC packs (Unto the Evil, Hell Followed, and Bloodfall), maps, modes, and weapons, as well as all feature updates including Arcade Mode, Photo Mode, and the latest Update 6.66, which brings further multiplayer improvements as well as revamps multiplayer progression.

store.steampowered.com

Save 85% on Tomb Raider on Steam

Tomb Raider explores the intense origin story of Lara Croft and her ascent from a young woman to a hardened survivor.

store.steampowered.com

Save 85% on Rise of the Tomb Raider™ on Steam

Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration includes the base game and Season Pass featuring all-new content. Explore Croft Manor in the new “Blood Ties” story, then defend it against a zombie invasion in “Lara’s Nightmare”.

store.steampowered.com

Save 75% on Oblivion Game of the Year Deluxe on Steam

Includes 2 items: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion® Game of the Year Edition, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion® Game of the Year Edition Deluxe

store.steampowered.com

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition

The Witcher is a role-playing game set in a dark fantasy world where moral ambiguity

www.gog.com

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition

The second installment in the RPG saga about professional monster slayer Geralt of Ri

www.gog.com

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition

One of the most acclaimed RPGs of all time Now ready for a new generation Rewards for

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BioShock™ Remastered

BioShock™ Classic is included with your BioShock™ Remastered purchase BioShock is a

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BioShock™ 2 Remastered

BioShock™ 2 Classic is included with your BioShock™ 2 Remastered purchase Minerva's D

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XCOM® 2

XCOM 2 is the sequel to XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the 2012 award-winning strategy game of the

www.gog.com