I have very mixed opinions on this title, namely in how the game of broken telephone has left key bits of context out. While Valve has not given an explicit statement of what caused the game to be crossed off the list, they did state that the reason the developers were asked to provide a build for Valve to review was due to the developers having marked the game as releasing in a few short months, necessitating the tight turnaround on providing a build for Valve to review. The developers statement on this was that they've never been asked to do this before, which may be true, but I assume that the quiet part not being stated out loud is that they had previously not set it to release so soon.

That being said, I don't necessarily think that should have precluded Valve reassessing the game afterwards, but I can understand a hesitance to do so when a developer has already provided you with a demo that has a child depicted in a morally grey scenario like that (assuming that is indeed the reason why it was even rejected in the first place, and again, that's something Valve could have made much more clear).

Outside of all of that, however, I think a more important point to call to attention that while GoG may have said "We’re happy to give HORSES a home on GOG, giving players another way to experience the game" and "Creativity deserves to be celebrated.", but while they did what I will ultimately say is the right thing this time, they failed to do the right thing with Red Candle Games' Devotion back in 2020. https://www.polygon.com/2020/12/16/22178225/red-candle-games-devotion-censored-steam-release-gog-date/ [External Link]

That's what sticks in my craw more than anything about this. This performative waving of "creativity being celebrated" and "giving these games a home on our platform". None of these storefronts, not a single one, has actually stood by that stance when the chips were down. Steam and Epic are the example today, but GoG failed Red Candle Games, Itch.io has and continues to cave to credit card companies, and Humble Bundle is just a more legitimate key store.

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So this is less paid beta test, more an opportunity to support Digital Extremes and demonstrate interest in this new title. Granted, when DE did this last time, it was essentially a hail mary to keep the studio from going broke, and now they have the backing of Tencent and such to fund their efforts. I'm still going to buy in anyway since I missed out on Warframe's founder program and I want to support a home grown developer.

As for the combat, I can at the very least say that it's getting better. I was in the original test very early on, more or less when they were just letting folks run the build that they initially showed off at Tennocon (the Warframe convention), and it was extremely clunky. It's no Arkham combat system, but I trust DE well enough to make it work, and it is better now, even if it still has a good ways to go last I played it over the summer.

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Just going to take a moment to once again steal this joke, because I love it too much not to beat it to death.

There's a very good name that nobody seems to be capitalizing on, and that's making it the Orange Box.

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I asked gemini to put the current AI against the timeline of the Hyperion books.

@Bumadar Stop that. You're not the first person I've seen do this, you probably won't be the last, but you're not making an interesting or valuable contribution to the conversation by using AI to write 3/4 of your comment.

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Eastern Exorcist looks gorgeous, Speed Freaks seems like it might be fun, and I think I recall hearing good things about Grapple Dog. WWE 2K25 might be fun, though I seem to recall support nor performance for those games being fantastic. Spellforce is grand strategy, which has never been my bag, and I've heard mixed things from folks on Plucky Squire's level of hand holding and such. Monkey Island is always nice, but man, that Destiny 2 bundle might be the worst deal of the whole thing. Ah yes, I'm sure that will draw me back into the game that stole the content I paid for, from the developer that's in so many pots of hot water at the moment.

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the ability to pin celestial bodies to your starship’s navigational systems

Oh my God YES. I have such a hard time with establishing frames of reference as to where I'm located, and it has lead to too many situations where there's a particular planet I want to go to in a system, but instead end up looping around a planet trying to find the angle where I can see the planet I'm looking for. I'm really hoping this works like it sounds it works.

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I was interested in it back when I first heard about it, but looking into the game's steam reviews and the development team's response to folks who raised concerns about risk/reward mechanics, the tilt function, and various other things have been... Less than impressive. I understand having your vision for things, but if the stats for your risk reward perk mechanic say that players are overwhelmingly not taking the risks, that isn't a sign that you should be forcing that risk, it's a sign that the risk is outweighing the reward. One example I saw quoted was "inverted controls for a minute, but at the end you get a full heal", which seems to me like "Oh so I'm going to be forced to take damage and if I manage to survive it, I'll have full health again." It doesn't feel like you're getting much out of it.

Worse still is the response I've seen to folks asking to have the tilt function added back in, with one developer saying they'll "think" about putting it back in, and another suggesting players roll back to an older, buggier build prior to release that has the tilt function still intact, which feels a lot like a cop out, and rather dismissive of legitimate player concerns. I'm hoping that as the rating plunges further the developers have a come to Jesus moment.

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Appreciated, though it'd be nice if there was the same granularity that there is on the desktop client for what notifications the client pops up. I know some folks (Like Liam) don't put up with any notifications at all, but having to have my Deck set to hide me being offline entirely for the past year and a half or so just because I didn't want to have a constantly appearing notification bell that should be something we can fine tune was ridiculous. Assuming this actually fully resolves my problem, which I haven't had a moment to test for certain yet, unfortunately.

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For what it's worth, TCG Shop Sim is actually kind of fantastic. You get the fun of card pack opening and flashy cards, the management aspect of running your store and designing it nicely, it's a nice enough mental math workout, and the dev has been super active in updating it and adding in neat collabs and such. It's not exactly a looker, but it runs nice which is more than some games can say these days.

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