Quoting: drlamb

Quoting: slaapliedje

How is Maneater? That's a game I WAS looking forward to prior to the EGS exclusivity. I know it recently released on Steam so I may grab it.

Only was able to play it a bit so far, but it was definitely fun. Something satisfying about chomping down on fat beach goers.

Same here with EGS. It was one of those things where I thought it'd come out a long time ago, then realized it was EGS exclusive (as far as PC version goes) and bought it when it released on Steam. Ran into some Alligators that I then swam away from rather quickly... but munching things as a shark is amusing for sure.

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I was playing Maneater last night (built with UE4) via Proton and it seemed to need to load in textures or something so was jerky for the first bit of the game, but seemed to smooth out a bit afterward. Pretty sad with a 5900X and 3080...

Munching on random swimmers is fun though.

It's a shame that Epic doesn't support Linux in their store at all... Or even anything other than 'the engine supports Linux'.

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Quoting: denyasis

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: denyasis

Quoting: NociferAlso, for some reason it left me with a strong urge to replay STALKER :P

Yaaasssss

Did you see a new Stalker game is coming out? I should go back and play the others, as whenever I tried to play them back in the day, it seemed my computer didn't run fast enough, or I cranked up the settings too high for it to run smoothly, and it felt jerky. Though I kind of always blamed the engine for that.

I did. I hope it's good. I played the whole trilogy and part of anomaly this fall. Ran great in wine. First one is still my favorite, but Anomaly is good too.

Quoting: 14This game's graphics were not terribly consistent in the trailer. Some of the outdoor scenes looked much better than indoor scenes. Yes, reminded me of Half-Life 2 or SWAT 4 age of graphics.

Yeah, they didn't seem too consistent. My cutoff for "old FPS graphics" is more in the middle late 90's (Thief, system shock 2), although I think it varies heavily depending on art direction and level design. Some age very well, some not so much.

Speaking of things not aging well, and even at the time. Ultima IX went through so many different iterations, I'm surprised it didn't end up like Duke Nukem Forever (as opposed to dnf, the replacement for yum). When it was 3dfx only initially I thought it looked pretty great, but then didn't play that far into it until they'd released the DirectX patch for it, and then you got things that looked great... and things that looked like garbage, as they were very low resolution and flat.

I'm not usually one at least that'll stop playing a game if the graphics are bad. If the gameplay / story line is good enough, I'll stick with it. Though lately I have the 'too many games' syndrome and tend to get distracted too easily to win anything.

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Quoting: denyasis

Quoting: NociferAlso, for some reason it left me with a strong urge to replay STALKER :P

Yaaasssss

Did you see a new Stalker game is coming out? I should go back and play the others, as whenever I tried to play them back in the day, it seemed my computer didn't run fast enough, or I cranked up the settings too high for it to run smoothly, and it felt jerky. Though I kind of always blamed the engine for that.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyBy the way, does anyone else find annoying the fashion among big corporations to rename themselves by the acronym of what used to be their name, except now it officially doesn't stand for anything it's just this free-floating brandable signifier?

So like we got EA which used to be Electronic Arts but now is just two meaningless letters. In Canada, our big banks all went that way--the Bank of Montreal is BMO (not just BM, heh), the Royal Bank of Canada is RBC and so on. And the slogan is "Our name stands for nothing, and so do we!"

I still try to remember the ECA logo on old Atari 8bit games. Back when Electronic Arts made good games and didn't try to screw their customers out of every nickel. EA now generally means either Early Access, or 'Games that are ruined by microtransactions and should stay on mobile devices where for some reason people are okay with such things'.

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Here's another example why subscriptions are bad: MMOs. You spend your time and money on them. Then they decide that they aren't making enough so they switch to F2P and gimp all of your stuff, and try to get you to buy loot crates. Or they just kill the game off altogether and all your time / money is gone. Games that go free2play you know have done all the calculations to see if dropping subscription support and going with loot crates / pay2play is more profitable.

This discussion is making me re-think subscribing to channels on Amazon Prime though. I mean I do that instead of getting cable. But I also have a large collection of movies on physical medium still. Thinking I should just go with that, it's weirdly cheaper in the long run to just buy series on disc instead of renting an episode for 1.99...

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No, and here's an example of why subscriptions suck.

Changing of license in the middle of it...

So in the wee hours of the morning, I'd woken up and couldn't go back to sleep, so figured I'd look around on Amazon Prime for a movie to watch. Landed upon Saturday the 14th (figured it was amazing to watch at 3am). It finished up, and all of a sudden said that it was going to load up the Highlander series. I was like 'well okay then, I didn't click on a single thing, it just said 'video would resume' and then started Highlander...

Well turns out it'd automatically started IMDBtv... with Ads... needless to say I was freaking PISSED! I didn't ask for this garbage. I had to stop watching it because every so often it'd force me to watch a 45s ad. No.. Just no. So I did end up starting to watch the Highlander movie...

Off topic, I have to say, why is it that they picked Sean Connery, who very much has a Scottish accent, to play a person from Spain, when they had Christopher Lambert play the Highlander, who couldn't do a Scottish accent to save his life...

Anyhow, I'm pissed that I subscribe to Amazon Prime Video, multiple channels on it (Starz, Showtime, HBO) yet they screw me and force me to watch IMDBtv with ads??? And there is no option to opt out of that either...

There are enough subscriptions out there, and most of them end up being garbage. I'd prefer to just outright purchase my games, and I've bought a LOT on Steam.

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Quoting: scaine

Quoting: Arehandoro

Quoting: rustybroomhandle

Quoting: Arehandoro

Quoting: rustybroomhandle

Quoting: NociferAh, Mass Effect. That sci-fi game that had such an absolutely great first part, before somehow managing to turn into an absolute crapfest in its second and third parts. For anyone who not only cares about good game writing but also enjoys reading about good game writing (and writing in general)

Pfff, opinions. ME2 is the best of the three by a huge margin. Primarily due to the fact that it actually does a better job of establishing reasons to care about individual characters rather than just the clinical plot stuff.

That's the whole problem of ME2, though. In a mission of such scale that the whole universe is in peril, caring for individual characters, is a bit ridiculous. And going from a half-science/half-space-magic based story to a drama based story, with stupidity reaching new level with the

Spoiler, click me

creation of the humanoid reaper.

I'll continue in spoiler in case someone has not played it yet.

Spoiler, click me

The reapers have been wiping civilizations for eons and it doesn't occur to them that creating a biped reaper with opposable thumbs is better that the squid form until they meet the humans.

Or the fact the humans have been out of their home planet for mere 200 years, and they go from being looked from above, being patronized, etc to be in charge of everything. Where does the last battle happen? In earth.

The propaganda of humans > aliens just because and the deidity of a single character than can be resurrected from death (almost like Jesus) and command the whole galaxy against a huge threat is what destroyed ME2 and 3.

That only at the story level. Killing the mako, cutting exploration, adding bullets to the weapons and adding a bit more of bum and tits here and there deepened the above mentioned fails.

Basically all of what you said boils down to: things you don't like vs things you like vs. things other people like vs. things other people don't like.

There's no objectively good or bad here. We don't all want the same things from games/stories. If you don't like the thing, maybe the thing just is not for you and you can move on.

Yes, of course. But what would be of the internet if we didn't try to convince someone else that what we like is better? :P /s

I love it when people try to do that. Enthusiasm is great to see. Sadly, it's much more common to see people shitting on things other people love, as if we should all be cynical haters of everything by default, and we're only allowed to love something if that thing is perfect, and therefore mystically beyond criticism.

That's not me. I love all sorts of flawed but still wonderful things. I still occasionally take a stab at stuff, but (hopefully) more in the vein of trying to understand why people love it (e.g. Stadia).

Quoting: wvstolzing

Quoting: Purple Library GuyBy the way, does anyone else find annoying the fashion among big corporations to rename themselves by the acronym of what used to be their name, except now it officially doesn't stand for anything it's just this free-floating brandable signifier?

So like we got EA which used to be Electronic Arts but now is just two meaningless letters. In Canada, our big banks all went that way--the Bank of Montreal is BMO (not just BM, heh), the Royal Bank of Canada is RBC and so on. And the slogan is "Our name stands for nothing, and so do we!"

At least they didn't pull an 'Xfce' (from https://docs.xfce.org/faq#what_does_it_mean [External Link]):

The name Xfce originally stood for XForms Common Environment, but since then, Xfce was rewritten twice and doesn't use XForms toolkit anymore. The name survived, but the F is no longer capitalized (not “XFce”, but “Xfce”). Currently the abbreviation doesn't stand for anything (suggestion: X Freakin' Cool Environment). It's not pronounced “X-Face”. There is no “a” in it.

... or a 'GNOME': (from https://mail.gnome.org/archives/marketing-list/2010-April/msg00050.html [External Link])

Am Dienstag, den 06.04.2010, 08:08 -0500 schrieb Bharat Kapoor:
> At least now I know what GNOME is an acronym for :)
> The talk is about name or rename (if our mission is consistent with)
> GNU Network Object Model Environment

Once again: GNOME WAS an acronym. GNOME is NOT anymore an acronym.
GNOME stands for GNOME nowadays. Only. That's all.

andre

Though if GNOME ever goes back to an acronym, I suggest the gloriously recursive:
GNOME has NO MErcy.

In defense of gnome moving away from the acronym, it was very forced in the first place. Now can we finally pronounce it with a silent G like the short stocky inventor creatures it is named after?

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Quoting: wvstolzing

Quoting: slaapliedjeIs it me, or is this just a ploy to get people to install Origin. Like EA finally realized it was a failure, but so they went back to allowing games to be sold on Steam again... but still require origin so they have a reason to say the software still lives?

Of all the 'trademarks' that EA bought & made a travesty of, the case of 'Origin' is possibly the most bizarre.

Thought I think the name will be laid to rest soon: https://venturebeat.com/2020/09/14/electronic-arts-doubles-down-on-ea-play-brand-with-ea-desktop-app/ [External Link]

Seems to me Origin Systems was their subsidiary that made their best games. When they killed that off and now hoard the rights to the Ultima name... shame on you EA...

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Most games these days are too shiny. Overuse of shaders or sonething.

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