I'd rather take three handcrafted planets than those generated trillions of them.

I haven't touched NMS in a long, long while, but one of its appeals to me was that whatever place you visited, you were most likely the first and last to do so. And it's not like you'd do anything meaningful on any of the planets anyway, other than harvesting whatever resources they happen to provide, with more or less hassle. I don't think that would have worked with just 3 handcrafted planets, no matter how much effort went into them.

Though in general, I tend to agree. Designed is almost always preferable to procedurally generated.

As for NMS itself, I'm almost enticed to give it another spin. Though in the end, the core gameplay loop of collecting stuff to upgrade your stuff to collect more stuff to upgrade your stuff to collect more stuff to ... and so on and so forth felt more like busywork than entertainment. At least to me.

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Pictured - Far Cry 5

Looks more like Farming Simulator 24, Texas DLC, but what do I know!?

As for DXVK, it's basically a requirement when using vanilla Wine. Really a great project!

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As others have mentioned, the game was given away by GOG recently. Which was extra nice, as it was one of the few Daedalic adventures that were originally burdened by DRM, even if you picked up the physical release.

But even if you missed the giveaway, it's a great adventure game worth buying, with some of its puzzles amongst my most favorite, and a great overall atmosphere (especially if you're into The Dark Eye). And, of course, its story continues in the, IMO, even better Memoria.

Too bad Daedalic didn't make more P&C adventures in that franchise, just a couple okayish tactical RPGs.

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Fantastic. Chained Echoes really ticked all the right boxes with me: lots of exploration, combat not dragging out so much (looking at you, Sea of Stars!) and a bright and vibrant art style. More of that? Count me in!

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If all goes well, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 comes out February 11th, so I don't think I'll need another large RPG in that time period. But will be interesting to see how Avowed turns out compared to the more old-school Pillars of Eternity games.

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Looks neat. I have not really played a game like this since the original Railroad Tycoon, but I've been looking for something focused on laying tracks and watching the trains zip around for some years now. Something like Rail Route, perhaps, but less abstract. Or like the free play mode of Station to Station, but with more gameplay.

Iron Roads actually seems the closest so far to my ideal train sim game. I'll keep an eye on it!

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While it does look fantastic overall, the combat system has me worried a bit. If it requires more than mashing buttons as quickly as possible (and it sounds like that), it's likely not for me.

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Loco Motive [External Link] is the only game from my wishlist that has a demo up.

This is an expanded take on the game jam entry [External Link] of the same name. I liked the game jam version, and I'll certainly get the expanded version, too.

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Quoting: Cyba.CowboyI used to buy all of my games through them, but there's so many games they just don't have these days

I still would love to continue buying all my games there, but even (or especially) many indie titles that might be a good fit will not show up there, or they will show up much later.

Nowadays I often end up not buying games at release (and full price), as I wait and see if they make it to GOG eventually. If it becomes clear they don't, I've either lost interest by then, or buy during the big sales, as a couple more weeks or months of waiting doesn't make a difference anymore. Which means I get my games cheap and in the most polished state ... so maybe I should be happy!?

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Quoting: dziadulewiczOh geez come on!

I'm pretty sure there are plenty of advantages that snaps or flatpaks have over traditional packages, but what I notice is mostly how clunky things are:

- Want to update your browser while it's running? Tough luck! (Never noticed that issue with the .debs.)
- Want to use extensions with a native component? Finally can do that again! (Took only two years to sort it out.)
- Want the snap store to update itself? Again, tough luck! (Can be done from the command line.)

And that's on a system that only has 10 snaps, I really dread the day when that number increases. Though maybe a do-release-upgrade will be safe for now ...

Quoting: dziadulewiczUnity was a huge step forward for Linux desktop when introduced. To this day a lot of people want it back

Me included. But as it's not returning, that's one less reason to remain on Ubuntu.

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of stuff to like about Ubuntu, otherwise I would not have stuck to it for such a long time. But if something keeps nagging me constantly, maybe it's time to look for alternatives. If I had not done that in the past, I might still be using Windows or macOS after all ...

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