it will take a bite out of Horizons sales numbers.

Press X to doubt

With the focus on PC and Mobile in China, the big console franchises don’t strike me as super popular over there (based on nothing but feelings).

TBH the layoffs were already yesterday’s news, with basically no one talking about them. I don’t think MS needs any diversion tactics for that, and even then, Silksong wouldn’t be it.

It’s mainly just talking to people, but if you want to fight as few times as possible, you probably need to know the game or tons of save-scumming. You’ll also have to be ok with just missing a bunch of stuff, or pick and choose your fights, which again, needs prior knowledge.

I don’t think it’s a good way for a first playthrough.

IIRC there are six fights you always need to do (two of those in the tutorial and another shortly after, although technically you can use glitches to skip these). But if you only wanted to do these fights, you’d basically do an evil playthrough and miss most of the game, especially Act 1 and 3. And if you’re not talking to people, save-reload the correct dialogue choice, you would just sneak around everywhere, trying to avoid enemies, constantly saving and reloading, because you were spotted.

If you add a handful of boss fights, a good run is possible, but still, there’s going to be a lot of sneaking around and save-scumming.

I think you can only be non-lethal, not truly pacifist, if someone cares about this difference. You still need to knock people out and do stuff to them, even if they don’t die by your hand.

I guess Gabe did another interview, so now PCGamer is gonna post some article every day for the next couple of weeks, about every little thing he said?

That’s his super old look. I think since Covid he’s been staying in New Zealand most of the time, owns a Marine Research company, and occasionally does interviews, so there’s like two sets of pictures, that constantly get posted, when an article is about Valve/Gaben.

The white beard has even been a thing for years before that though, just now his head is also starting to match the color.

That’s an old photo, I think, articles just use the same one over and over again.

Apparently this is a picture from last year, during his introduction to The International. Lost more weight, but also looks older.

I remember playing this on my Voodoo graphics card back in the day.

I always wanted to check it out again, but there are no proper discounts of this game anymore, and the price even increased to 20€ a couple of months back. Who thinks that anybody will buy Descent with DOSBox for 20€ in 2025? Might as well just use my old pirated copy on a burned CD I have somewhere.

Another great performing UE5 title, with a Mostly Negative rating.

Seems like the Chinese are review bombing though, partly for the performance, but also that people got Deluxe Edition skins with even though they bought the Standard Edition, so they wasted their money by getting the Deluxe Edition? Or lower price outside of China? Maybe something about the time period it’s set in. I’m not really sure.

2k English reviews, 67% positive, still not great, but better.

I recently checked my box with old game CDs and DVDs, just out of curiosity, not because I wanted to play something. Most of the stuff is just sentimental value/nostalgia, but there’s one promo disc/game, I tried to archive because I found nothing about it on the net, but I couldn’t even read it. Others also have read errors, but I don’t know if a better drive could still work (just have a cheap external one).

I think the last PC game I bought on disc was SC2: HotS, but I don’t even know if I ever used them, since you can just download the game, after you’ve added it to your Battlenet account. Definitely haven’t used game discs since 2014, because I remember building a PC then, putting in my old drive, but then I gave it away, because I just never needed it.

The Bluesky post is already over 10 hours old, and it’s supposed to only last 666 minutes (a bit over 11 hours), so get it quick, if you’re interested.

I’ve bought the game in the recent Steam sale and played it on launch through PC Game Pass before. My biggest complaint are all the loading times and screens, especially when you want to get into a race. Just constant waiting, for hundreds of races.

Back on launch I just eventually did more and more open world stuff, like the XP boards, Danger Signs, Speed Traps, etc. and then quit. I’m kinda doing the same already now on Steam, but I still do want to do more proper races.

2XKO will never not sound like a dumb name.

I’m someone who tried a few Fromsoft games, but only really got into Elden Ring and that was the first (and so far only) game of theirs I finished.

If you want more Fromsoft, there’s going to be a lot of overlap with their Souls games, because of how From reuses assets.

Dark Souls 3 will be the most mechanically similar, but depending on what you liked in ER, it might get too similar and just feel the same, or you get frustrated when muscle memory kicks in when you do some Elden Ring move, that doesn’t work in DS3.

Dark Souls 1 might be a nice palate cleanser, as another user already stated.

If you play on console, Demons Souls or Bloodborne are also options, the latter probably being the fan favorite (or you can try to emulate it on PC). I think BB combat is supposed to be more aggressive because you can get back health, when you attack enemies after you’re hit.

Sekiro is focused on parries, and a lot faster, and more difficult.

If you want to try other developers, Lies of P is a recent one, that’s pretty good, more focus on blocking and perfect blocks, along with the BB-esque health-leech after you get hit, so you’re supposed to be more aggressive.

If you’re a Star Wars fan, the Jedi games, Fallen Order and Survivor aren’t bad, but they have some open world bloat, that you can ignore. Also, it’s an EA game.

If you like old school Zelda and puzzles, maybe check out Tunic.

If you like Crabs, try Another Crab’s Treasure, that was already mentioned here.

If you like 2D Metroid and bugs, check out Hollow Knight.

If you like 2D Metroid and little girls (what?) take a look at Ender Lilies.

If you like FPS and have friends, try Remnant for some coop fun.

If you like fast-paced action games and loot, with some souls stuff, Nioh and The First Berserker Khazan have you covered. If you want more of that along with Final Fantasy, there’s Stranger of Paradise.

If you tried Sekiro and liked it, or maybe you thought it was too hard, but it’s good in concept (and like loot) you can check out Wo Long. Also helps if you’re super into the Three Kingdoms stuff.

If you want Chinese mythology, take a look at Black Myth: Wukong.

If you like anime tiddies, there’s Code Vein, a decent game like this, on the easier side.

If you’ve tried a bunch of these games and just look for more, The Surge games are alright, nothing special I think.

If you want to defeat the woke mind virus and are extremely based, but don’t like good games, take a look at the Lords of the Fallen (2023).

If you can get the B580 for like $250 or close to it, it’s good, but otherwise there are better options. The 9060XT 8GB is 20-25% better, but you have to know, if 8GB of VRAM are sufficient. Otherwise, something used might be the way to go.

“Works fine on my system” and so on.

I played it at launch on PC, and the only thing I remember is terrible performance in certain areas. Don’t think I had any real gameplay bugs, but maybe I just forgot.

I still didn’t like the game, but bugs weren’t really the issue for me.

“But Godot doesn’t assume that, you need to fiddle around to make it look nice.
[…]
you probably are better off using Unreal at this point in time, unless you really want to get into the weeds.”

This seems like a silly take, especially with all the lighting upgrades shipped in Godot 4. The tools are there, users just need to configure an environment node to suite the needs.

Truly silly, you just have to do, what he said you need to do. Why didn’t he think of that?

If it passed in its current form, my fear is that it would effectively be an extra tax and burden just for choosing to make games instead of some other type of media, and I’m concerned investors would see it that way too, and move their financial support to these surer bets, ultimately harming individual game developers and lessening game releases.

But for most games, I don’t think it would it be an extra burden? As an armchair developer, most games might do a DRM check online, which would have to get removed or emulated or something.

For multiplayer shooters, I don’t know if dev hosted servers are somehow a lot easier to do, compared to dedicated servers of yore, even if they’re just internal, and would get a public release when the game is EOL. Depending on how things are defined, a single player, offline mode against bots might also count and “just” the multiplayer aspect gets shut down.

Games that would have a harder time are probably MMOs or Live Service games. I don’t know how those would get sold/made, if you can never shut down the game. Maybe those types of games would basically have to be rented or something, so it’s explicitly clear you’re not getting a perpetual license.

If that counts as a console, every PC counts (everything’s an Xbox, according to MS), then a $6000 prebuilt is a more expensive Xbox.

I mean the former leads (or at least one of them) say the game was ready for Early Access, the publisher says it wasn’t. This could be the deciding factor if the studio gets the bonus or not.

Although today the publisher said some previously leaked slides were real, that show how the potential EA release fell way behind schedule over the years and would have been pretty bare-bones and that a delay would have made sense.