You can download a Steam Deck intro video where Game Mode boots up with her walking up to deliver a package.

They can’t decide between fighting for Control, eg centralization, and having more visibility into what people are like as people.

The mine they want to avoid is the total slacker - someone just collecting paychecks, leaning back on worker protection laws, with no concern for the store. Or, the single mom with 8 other responsibilities and no chance of making it to her shifts. Really, that concern could be resolved with 5 minutes of contact with any decision maker. That quick coffee chat where they say “Yeah, you’re all right”. But decisionmakers are now the people with ultra tinted SUV windows who hiss at any contact with the public.

I know the Nvidia driver gripes relate to real issues, but so far I’ve been okay with it on CachyOS. I’d even say it’s reassuring that team isn’t solely dedicated to the task of gaming; realistically there’s other stuff I’ll need to install on my PC, and general compatibility is appreciated.

I’d be really impressed if the oppressed gaming world finally decided No, and withheld purchases or even bought a bunch of brave indie games releasing that month. Realistically, I’ll admit that’s probably unlikely. A lot of people have been waiting for this for a long time, and have never heard about things like union busting, haven’t followed the brain drain of every major publisher, etc.

Can’t forget biting the towel and digging in for a riveting gaming grind to get better at advancing past the bouncing neon drum in Sonic 3.

Part of my point is that we don’t know how much of its implied expansive story is actually singleplayer. A game with three singleplayer tutorials missions that end with “Now play multiplayer!” can likely make a cinematic story-based trailer based around key protagonists, and advertise “A singleplayer experience”; Battlefield has basically done this several times.

I certainly hope it leans towards a complete singleplayer, but the past decade of GTA Online makes me worried otherwise.

GTA Online has introduced many characters and campaigns. It just doesn’t center around a specific voiced protagonist, or hold any kind of long-term writing stakes. It’s possible some of those cinematics come from their online missions as a result.

Lots of live service games have made that effort; apparently even Fortnite builds some semblance of “story” to justify each battle pass? (I don’t play it so I’m not sure)

YEs, yEs, wE gEt it, thE game has four chapters and you only get the last 3 after repeating the whole initial game once. They’re not really “endings”. It’s not even 9S’ perspective, you see a ton of extra shit that’s not related to his viewpoint.

The thing I wanted automated was the whole combat, at minimal difficulty AND minimal time spent. Not because I don’t play hard games (I’ve beaten plenty) but because I decided the combat wasn’t interesting to me and I wanted to fast forward to the story. The game didn’t offer that.

And when I finally did wait out those long auto boss fights, I got an extremely unrewarding story.

Japan still kind of has that situation as I understand it. They have more kanji than can fit on a keypad, so there’s a bit of grouping to form a particular one on larger keyboard buttons.

I definitely remember that pop-in. My entire ship just didn’t exist until I got within 20 feet of it. That specific area (basically the main “hub” of the game, setting aside planet missions) demanded the most of the machine with how vast it was.

I wanted to enjoy Nier Automata’s “astounding, award-winning story”, and so I slowly ended up using all automatic skills to fast forward the boss fights, frustrated that I’d ended up with a one-button character.

It was STILL a huge slog. Half the late game bosses were absolute bullet sponges that were rarely vulnerable and took 15-25 minutes to whittle down. There clearly could have been some RPG number disparity, but it wasn’t clear, and it wasn’t alleviated by the tools given.

To cap it off, story was abysmal. Literally the worst game I’d finished that decade.

I have no interest in any of those solutions. You can only form your build for one specific task, and Earplugs are just one that requires dedication to it. Basically “you can play the game, but can’t experiment”.

Applying a counterattack against a non-physical action that is extremely difficult to predict is counterintuitive and unsatisfying. It also kind of funnels you into weapons that can take that action.

If I could mod the games, I’d just make roars a “taunt” that has no effect on the hunter and lets you wail on them. Or, cancel that behavior.

I gave up on Monster Hunter almost entirely because of Roars.

It’s one of two things; either it’s a non-forecasted dodge roll moment, boiling down all of Souls design to “Use roll iframes at the exact right moment 8 times in a row”…OR, it’s a flow-breaker to the battle where you and the opponent are both stunned for about 5 seconds. Doesn’t matter what combo you were eager to practice with your 8-foot tuning fork-crossbow, all goes on hold because the monster wants a break.

Sorry, probably not so relevant but it broke me off the series so much I wanted to mention it.

I never did quite get much visual appeal to Code Vein. The character design is still very gray and dark to my eyes, as is the environment.

I finished this game, and I kinda hate that so many people get locked out by gameplay and performance issues. By the end, your unlocked abilities are great, the story and character development are very well-done, and there’s a lot of optional stuff if you like.

It’s especially impressive given the writing task is “The Empire is winning, there’s no imminent disaster, no sequels can mention anything Cal accomplishes, make an interesting story from that”. It even handles topics like the Dark Side a bit better than other Star Wars media.

Yeah, key detail being, if we started listing car crashes from the past month, it would take up the whole thread.

Some games on Steam are actually run without DRM; so if you find that out for some set of them, you can likely back them up as files.

Would Days Gone count for this? It didn’t hold my attention, but it seems pretty centered around a motorbike.

How can AAA games all be soulless if they’re all Soulslikes?

It’s claiming to be 6 times faster, and then it’ll turn out to be an Electron app.

Don’t get me wrong, I hope otherwise…