The base game is 50% off on Steam for a couple days. Tempting, but then the summer sale is coming... decisions, decisions...

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: razing32Besides the questionable devs with fragile egos , the system was being gamed for trading cards.
Voting groups would vote for the asset flips and get free copies.
Then they would leave fake reviews.
The dev gets the game sold and the voting groups and "dev" make money of the cards.

Couple of videos I would like to share on the topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjoYaJWzylI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tPLibNqNeE

Oh, clever. Reprehensible, but clever.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I kind of wish Connect worked the other way too so I could buy games on GOG and see them on Steam (even when they're not installed - I know you can add installed programs to your client-side library). As it is I'm just likely to forget I own a given game on GOG. Plus Steam's trading cards mean I can get additional rebates down the line.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: GuestThis games looks really cool. I didn't start playing "The Banner Saga" yet, but I must admit that the look from both games are very similar. Funny thing is that Arnie Jorgensen from Stoic is saying that the games looks beautiful :).

I didn't want to include that in the article since it's easy to make that claim and I can't be bothered to ask Mr. Jorgensen to confirm, but assuming it's true it does help make me at ease with regards to plagiarism. Aurum Dust are upfront with TBS being a huge inspiration, and if Stoic themselves don't mind, it leaves little to be bothered with as far as I'm concerned :)

I did have a bit of a knee-jerk reaction when I first saw the interface, though!

View this comment - View article - View full comments

The difference may simply lie in the right to publish that data. People who participate in the survey willingly submit their info for inclusion in the survey.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: bingusHmm. I really enjoyed Bastion, Transistor a bit less so. This doesn't really appeal to me at all though - and party RPGs are my bread and butter. I dunno what it is exactly, maybe the art style?

To be honest it doesn't look like it plays like a party-based RPG either. Sure you have three characters + yourself driving the story, but you can only control one character at a time during "combat" as far as I've seen. It looks more like an arcade and point & click crossover to me.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: tuubiI really like how their games look and feel, but I just can't seem to enjoy the actual gameplay. I have no idea why exactly.

Looking at the 20 minutes of gameplay video, I would probably hate the matches, but man did that story and design suck me right in. Putting this one down on the "watch a playthrough someday" list.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: liamdawe

Quoting: Samsai

Quoting: DolusThe streaming itself is functionally DRM. Not to get all Stallmanist about the matter, but if you're running things from the cloud, and it's not your cloud, it's basically an unbreakable form of DRM.

You need to have access to those games before you can play them with Parsec, so I just don't see the point you are trying to make. You could download a bunch of GOG games onto the cloud PC and your DRM-free access to those games doesn't just disappear. Plus, regarding the "your cloud" thing I quote the following from this very article:

QuoteSince you can run your own server for Parsec...

This.

Dolus you're confusing terms here.

You "own" the games, that's all there is to it. They are the same games you can install locally as you can on the cloud install. It is not even remotely a form of DRM. Don't spread FUD.

I think the point Dolus is trying to make is that if your ability to play games depends on the cloud server, whoever controls the server, or your ability to connect to it, controls your ability to play and can monitor your activity. Server down? No games. Provider goes out of business? No games. Provider increases prices? Pay up or find a new provider. I wouldn't call it DRM, but it's true you're giving up on some of the agency you have when you install software on your own hardware. However since you still own the game licenses independently and you can host your own cloud or switch servers anytime, I don't really have an issue with it myself. Though I still wouldn't use it because renting a Windows system totally defeats the purpose for me.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: KimyrielleVictor Vran isn't male because the story demands the lead character to be male. He's male because that's what his creators wanted him to be.

The story may not demand it, but writing a story without knowing your main character's gender (and sexual preferences where romance is concerned) is a far more complex task than writing for a single perspective. While it can be achieved reasonably well if you plan for it (e.g. Dragon Age), I can understand a studio not wanting to deal with the hassle of making every character interaction dependent on so many variables (does the NPC react differently to different genders? can this NPC be romanced by any gender? can your localization framework account for multiple possible genders in every sentence?). There's also the additional visual work of designing/animating an additional character model, which I presume can be a strain on very small studios. None of the foregoing is meant to defend male protagonists in particular, but I think it's an understandable choice to make a single, preset main character.

There's also simple artistic vision or personal preference involved in choosing what that preset is, which makes this an interesting problem that changes based on scale. If an individual studio feels like making their lead character male, why not? (And the same could apply to any work of fiction.) It's when you look at the industry as a whole that the statistical weight of that choice can become bothersome for some people. As far as I'm concerned, because I wouldn't blame a particular studio for picking either gender for their lead, it doesn't make sense to condemn the industry for it either, or to discriminate games based on it. But I seem to be an odd case in that I've never felt a need to relate to characters in fiction and I'm largely unconcerned by the gender, race, etc. of premade characters. Or maybe it's that I can empathize with anything presented as a character. Hm...

Anyway, I'm not arguing your preferences, just sharing my point of view. If you're tired of playing male characters in general, it makes perfect sense to avoid any given game where they're the only option.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: ShabbyXAnd where do they look to see who supports it?

In the Steam thread BTRE linked in the article.

View this comment - View article - View full comments