Quoting: scaineAnyone who's tried (good) VR and didn't feel sick wants more of it, but the cost is still sky high.

Counterexample: I've demoed a Vive once or twice, and played through I Expect You To Die 1 and (most of) 2 on a friend's PSVR, which I would consider to be quite good VR games that take advantage of the format well. I have zero problems with motion sickness. (Like, ever; I'm currently considering getting into FPV drone flying, even.) I also have zero interest in getting any sort of VR system for gaming.

I don't have anything against it, or people who enjoy it. Good on yah, there's some interesting experiences it can provide that are difficult or impossible to get otherwise. But it's not the case that every person out there just needs a good experience with it to be instantly converted. Some will, some of us remain uninterested.

Quoting: TheSHEEEPOr watch a playthrough of someone [playing Half-Life: Alyx] - but careful, you might get dizzy because of the camera movement. At least that happens to me (and I don't get dizzy when actually using VR), not sure if that's a common phenomenon.

Yeah, I don't enjoy watching feeds of people's views in VR* because it constantly jitters around all over the place as it tracks the normally imperceptible micro-movements of peoples heads (obviously it's fine for the person with the headset screen at a fixed location from their eyes). We need some sort of Rockstead/Reelsteady/Gyroflow for VR footage to smooth out all the micro-jitter and make it easier to watch for the people who aren't in the headset. 🙂 (Actually, I wonder if you could get the position information from the headset and put the footage through Gyroflow somehow? 🤔)

*Though I do it occasionally from various Youtubers I follow, and have actually watched something like the first 45 minutes of Half-Life: Alyx.

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Recently, mostly Slay the Spire and Pokémon: Infinite Fusion, a fangame whose gimmick is that you can fuse any two Pokémon together to get a new one (it has "only" 420 Pokémon, but that still means ~176,000 possible fusions; all fusions have computer generated sprites by default, and there are already [tens of?] thousands of hand-drawn sprites with thousands more being added per month). It runs quite well on Proton, and I haven't had any crashes or instability.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: PhiladelphusI like the new way to interact with pre-FTL civs now; it felt a bit clunky before, but Observation Posts now have buttons to go directly to the diplomacy view and espionage, which is how you carry out things like secretly providing technology or indoctrinating aliens towards your ethics. Wait, "diplomacy view?" Yes, pre-FTLs now have a diplomacy screen like other empires even before you've officially met, consolidating lots of information like their technology level (and progress to the next one), ethics, "awareness" of extraterrestrial life, etc. into one easily-accessible place. And, it's now possible to make contact before they achieve space flight (without landing troops on their world :wink:), allowing you to talk to them while they're in the Renaissance Era or whatever, which I just think is kinda fun.

That does sound rather nice. But isn't most of that stuff in the free 3.7 update?

You're probably right, base UI stuff does tend to be in the free update.

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First Contact is definitely a bit more of a niche expansion (which is why it's a Story Pack I suppose), but I'm enjoying it so far. I decided to do a Broken Shackles playthrough this time around, and I started with 29 pops from (I think) 19 different species. My planetary species breakdown pie-chart looked like a rainbow, and it meant I had species available with 8 out of 9 of the basic planetary type preferences immediately, allowing me to colonize any planet I found from the get-go. (A few of them were lithoids, too, or had the Survivors trait for +100% survival on Tomb Worlds, giving even more habitability options.)

I like the new way to interact with pre-FTL civs now; it felt a bit clunky before, but Observation Posts now have buttons to go directly to the diplomacy view and espionage, which is how you carry out things like secretly providing technology or indoctrinating aliens towards your ethics. Wait, "diplomacy view?" Yes, pre-FTLs now have a diplomacy screen like other empires even before you've officially met, consolidating lots of information like their technology level (and progress to the next one), ethics, "awareness" of extraterrestrial life, etc. into one easily-accessible place. And, it's now possible to make contact before they achieve space flight (without landing troops on their world :wink:), allowing you to talk to them while they're in the Renaissance Era or whatever, which I just think is kinda fun. (Though I feel like I've come across a disproportionate number of Stone Age civs on Tomb Worlds with the Survivor trait…maybe it's just random, but I'd be interested to hear if anyone else is seeing something like that.)

I've only recently unlocked cloaking so I don't know how big an effect it'll have on the game, but I'm trying out the new barred spiral galaxy shape and connection between the two halves is blocked by the Xenophobic Fallen Empire on one side and one of the only empires in the galaxy I don't have open borders with on the other, so I might try sending some cloaked science ships through their borders to continue exploring on the other side.

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Now now, there's no need to get fired up over this – let's all take a deep breath and coal down a bit.

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I've been playing Terraformers a lot throughout Early Access (I enjoyed it so much I submitted an article about it almost a year ago), and they've added some nice improvements with the full release. The biggest one that comes to mind is that there's now an indicator to give you an idea of when you might get the dreaded "Rising expectations" event based on how well your luck has been going. (That's one of the few things I might change about the game: having expectations rise steadily rather than jumping. But perhaps they tried that and it wasn't as fun, who knows.) There's also a new weekly challenge and the ability to create your own custom challenge instead of using one of the preset ones.

Besides that you can now build cities on Phobos and Deimos, there are a bunch of new projects and some new leaders, there are some minor visual changes that make cities look a little more lively, there are some new major random events you can get which add some unique new mid-game challenges (like a planet-killing asteroid strike or needing to rescue refugees from Earth), and there's just generally bit more polish on what was already a solid game. On the easier difficulty levels I find this to be a great relaxing game, just picking projects and expanding my cities to a chill soundtrack, while on harder difficulty levels every turn becomes an engaging puzzle to utilize every available resource and trick to maximize resource outputs and keep happiness up to stave off defeat. If you like terraforming Mars and turn-based games, I can definitely recommend this one.

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Oh, I played the demo for this at a recent Next Fest. It didn't quite grab me, I think I just don't really like top-down perspective or something. It seemed a decent-quality game other than that.

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Quoting: StoneColdSpiderYou will have to let us know what you think of it...... It is also on my wishlist.........

Finally tore myself away from other games long enough to put some more time into it. It's a nice enough game, though as mentioned the locked WASD and other controls could be a big problem. You can move your character around by holding down the left mouse button, but in practice I much preferred walking with WASD. The environments I found to be gorgeous, all these large well-crafted LEGO dioramas to move about in. Gameplay so far (~2 hours in) seems to be a mix of a Metroidvania traversal around (I've already unlocked two ability which open up new sections of maps) with collecting items and puzzle elements. These turned out to have a surprising (to me) structural component, as much of the time you need to build bridges or stairs to progress, and like Bridge Constructor there's a simulation element where you have to get a little robot across without your construction breaking. Once you've completed a puzzle (which have limited numbers of a pre-set set of bricks), you can go back and build on it in sandbox mode with more types and unlimited numbers of bricks if you want (which can be pretty fun, not having to worry about running out of a particular style of brick like in real life!). Storywise it feels like it's aiming at a kid audience, which isn't too surprising, though it may be a tad simplistic for adults. I haven't had any issues with stability or screen flashing myself. Overall it feels like a pretty high-quality effort, with good animations and visuals and a competent building mode, though I kind of miss a "run" functionality for getting around (maybe there's something later that helps with that, I don't know). That said, how fun you find it will depend on you; it was fun enough to keep going while I was in it, but now that I've quit to write this I find other games calling my name…

Quoting: KlaasDid they add support for multiple save slots? That was the other thing that was blatantly missing at release.

I didn't notice multiple save slots.

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Quoting: StoneColdSpider

Quoting: PhiladelphusIt's on my wishlist, ooh, and it's on sale until March 6. I quite enjoyed LEGO Builder's Journey, sooo…why do you keep doing this to my poor wallet, Liam? What did it ever do to you? :tongue:

Fake edit: Oh, it's also <1 GB, nice and small. :smile:

You will have to let us know what you think of it...... It is also on my wishlist.........

Will do. I've gotten sidetracked by PlateUp! again right after installing*, but I'll try to get around to reporting back before the sale ends.

*One of the best flow-state-producing games for me in years.

Quoting: CatKillerESDFers, southpaws, and the French are particularly affected.

Just the way you said that made it sound like the setup to a joke. "An ESDFer, a southpaw, and a French person walk into a gaming convention…" :smile: But seriously, good on ya for reporting that, and especially for providing information about how to fix it.

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Make the power button bulge out like the volume buttons instead of in; on not a few occasions I've tried to power on/wake up my Deck without looking only to realize I'm pressing the USB-C port which is right nearby and feels similar to my fingertips. 😂

Though realistically, I'm happy with what I have and not looking for any sort of upgrade at the moment, since I don't use mine for pushing the envelope with demanding games. Maybe the one upgrade I'd like would be a bump in screen resolution; for the games I'm usually playing it wouldn't really need more power, but it'd easier to read small text and just look nicer in general.

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