I played chapters 1 and 2 already and was waiting for the closing chapter. Just finished it. Very much liked it.

The game is short (4 hours per chapter for the first two, and 5 hours to complete chapter 3), 13 hours in total, but I was playing at a leisurely pace.

The puzzles are on the easy side and don't offer much of a challenge, but still are enjoyable. What drew me to the game is the very interesting Africa-inspired visual style and the atmosphere. Voice acting is above average, of a much higher caliber than what you'd expect from an indie game coming out of an unknown developer. The original soundtrack is also quite immersive and befitting the setting / storyline / visual style.

I still recommend the game if for no other reason than the fact that they did day-1 linux releases.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Ah, good to know. Thanks, Liam, for posting this info here. As as gamer in his early 40s I no longer am aware what's hip and trending at the moment, so I didn't even know review bombing was a thing. And as I make my purchasing choices based to a large extent on user reviews, I would have been unwittingly manipulated by this scummy practice.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Hands down, one of the best games I've ever played. Amazing level design, memorable characters, good platforming mechanics (played it with a keyboard and mouse, but would strongly recommend a controller), witty humor. Graphics are now slightly dated, but it's a 11 or 12 year old game.

I cannot recommend it enough. And you can play it with young children too, due to the lack of violence and the cartoonish style.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Solitary

Quoting: liamdawe

Quoting: SolitaryToo bad this kickstarted indie title became another "AAA" game after deal with Gearbox, now with pre-order bonuses, season passes and hiked up price.

It's not instantly a bad thing. For one, this could easily turn out to be one of the best new games released for Linux when it arrives, instead of being a smaller indie title. We do need bigger popular titles to help push us forward after all.

Even though this game might be good, I seriously doubt it will make any dent, it is yet another survival game. Yes, we need big popular titles, but I don't think this is the way to do it. I don't think bad triple-A practices is what will save us. Greed is what usually kills the game in the end, because in this type of business, it's always money first.

Rome, as they say, wasn't built in a day :-) There won't be a single killer game for linux that will overnight "win" the desktop. It will be a slow and seemingly desperate trudge towards that goal, with naysayers giddily proclaiming "See, I told ya, even game X wasn't sufficient to make linux popular enough for the masses." And then one day we'll realize that linux is popular enough and we have plenty of games to play.

Never give up hope.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Having thought about this a bit more, I agree with all the other people who wrote that it makes no financial sense for Feral to port games older than 2-3 years. If you wanted to play it, chances are you already bought and played it under windows or with a bit of luck with wine. So we need to request games that have come out in 2017 or 2016, or better yet, games that are about to come out this year or in 2018.

So, here's my revised list:

Cyberpunk 2077
Kingdom Come: Deliverance
GWENT
GOG Galaxy (only because GWENT will require it, but for it to make sense, it *must* allow cross-platform multiplayer, ie play with folks on windows)
Assassin's Creed: Origins
Skull and Bones
South Park: Fractured but Whole
Far Cry 5
Red Dead Redemption 2 (very unlikely it will come to PC at all, seeing how it is a console exclusive)
Final Fantasy 7 Remake
StarCraft Remastered
Call of Duty: WW2 (absolutely with cross-platform multiplayer)
FIFA 18
God of War (very unlikely it will come to PC at all, seeing how it is a console exclusive)
Overwatch
Star Wars Battlefront 2
GTA 5 / Online (this is still a popular game)
Star Citizen
Mount and Blade: Bannerlord
The Crew 2
Phoenix Point
Unreal Tournament
Life is Strange: Before the Storm
Life is Strange 2

View this comment - View article - View full comments

GTA 5
GTA 6
Witcher 3
Cyberpunk 2077 (get in touch with CDPR early on in the development cycle, so porting would be easier)
Life is Strange: Before the Storm (releasing on August 31st, that is two weeks away. I imagine they'll be using Unreal Engine 3, so you can use your porting experience from Life is Strange for a quick and easy port)
GWENT
Spintires (works flawlessly under wine, but due to its wealth of mods and user-made maps, it has a limitless replayability value)
South Park: Fractured but Whole

I just finished Life is Strange and I fell in love with the story and character-driven narrative. The sad truth is that I would have panned this incredible gem of a game if Feral had not ported it. So I believe that Feral is capable of picking good, indi, lesser known games.

Thanks for asking for our input.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Following the article on Wine Staging 2.11 from last week that piqued my interest with the GTA5 & Witcher 3 improvements, I decided to give wine-staging a try. I was overly impressed:

What worked flawlessly:
Assassin's Creed (I've been hearing it was working for a long time, no surprises here)
Assassin's Creed Bortherhood
Assassin's Creed Revelations (albeit with a very annoying bug where the screen would get an exaggerated bloom effect / light over-exposure, after using eagle vision)
Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag -- I was the happiest about this game, it's my all time favorite in the series and my yardstick for future naval sims / pirate games. Except for some graphical weirdness in the map and the menus and the fact that Ctrl-Tab doesn't work, the game deserves a Gold rating. Once I complete a 100% run, I'll create a winehq.org appdb entry. I'm ecstatic about it. I'm already halfway through the campaign and no crashes, or anything that would make the game unplayable. Playing on a i7-5960x, GTX980, 16G DDR4, 1920x1080, I get 30fps (I believe the game is capped at 30fps) with occasional dips to 20fps, or even 17. But the game feels quite playable even then. Oh, and one more thing -- uplay complains about not being able to sync achievements before it launches the game, just press Skip to play. And a second, bigger oh, yesterday or the day before (July 10 or July 11, 2017) uplay updated itself and now it doesn't work. For some miraculous reason there were *.old files in the Uplay direcory. So I renamed the *.old files to their proper names and put the new uplay version (5355) into ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Ubisoft/Ubisoft\ Game\ Launcher/version.txt. After that uplay worked again even though it was running the older version, but now it was tricked into thinking it was running an up-to-date version. I had to make a backup of this whole directory for when uplay tries to update itself again.

What kind of works:
Assassin's Creed 3 -- the game starts fine, up to the title screen, then goes to black, but judging by the sounds, the menu screen is active (pressing Escape produces the sound effect of when the menu is opened). Really hoping 2.12 fixes this. Will try tonight.
Witcher 3 -- I have the same visual issues as everyone who has tried the game has experienced. Let's see what 2.12 does there.

What did not work:
Assassin's Creed 2 -- this is a real surprise, as the game uses the same engine as Brotherhood and maybe Revelations, and it's older than either. So if Brotherhood or Revelations worked, I expected this one to do so too. I believe (quoting from memory) that actually it was a uplay bug -- some warning about not being able to download save files or something like that.

I also just now realized why I did not have an install button in Steam for GTA5 -- I was running a 32bit wine prefix. As soon as I created a 64bit one, the install button was there and I installed the game. Eagerly awaiting the end of the work day so I can go home and try it.

I've been duly impressed with the progress wine has made in the last 5-7 years. I know this is not the future of gaming on Linux, but it's a way for us to enjoy some AAA-grade games at a time where Linux is not even a consideration for some big studios.

Keep on the great work wine/wine-staging devs!

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: malek69Witcher 3
View video on youtube.com

malek69, Witcher3 requires wow64, right? Is that the GOTY or vanilla Witcher3? Updated to latest version?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Jesus Christ, Liam!!!!! You gave me a heart attack with that title. My all-time favorite games, GTA5 and Witcher3 in the same sentence with the word Wine!!!

I haven't read the article yet and I'm off to compile and test it. NOW!!!! :-)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I think the last kickstarter project from an unknown developer/publisher I supported was back in 2014 or early 2015. If memory serves me, I have backed 13 projects, of which 7 have delivered. Some of them with considerable delays (a year to two years). So I have a return-on-investment of more than 50% which is not too bad. So, naturally, I've now become more discriminating when it comes to investing money into uncertain ventures.

Having said that, I *always* support any project by King Art Games, if they promise a linux port, which they so far have always done. Not only do they always, and I mean ALWAYS, stick to their promises, but they always, and I stress ALWAYS, deliver on time. Must have something to do with the well-known German work ethics. I take their word at face value and they have never disappointed me.

So, yes, while kickstarter projects are a risky proposition, we should not shun the platform outright. There are some good, responsible developers, who get the freedom to experiment with new ideas without the pressure of having to get approved by publishers, who are by nature risk-averse and prefer sequels of successful franchises to interesting, but perhaps not so marketable ideas.

View this comment - View article - View full comments