Yeah the war has definitely affected the team a lot, and it’s very admirable they managed to release the game at all. Here’s hoping that with a few bug fixes and patches the game can be a solid entry to the series.

It’s a free update, but it’s listed as its own free DLC on Steam which is weird. I guess since it still has issues, they wanted it to be opt-in.

What’s wild to me is, that Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom didn’t appear once on this list.

Makes sense to me IMO. 2023 was a stacked year, and while TotK was a pretty good game, it was way too close to Breath of the Wild for me to even consider it as game of the year. Other games that could’ve won the award over it include Alan Wake 2, Resident Evil 4 Remake, Hi-Fi Rush, and Octopath Traveler 2.

Almost every content creator I watch say their VR headsets are collecting dust. Part of that is because there aren’t many good VR games, but also I think there are very few types of games that are fun in VR. They’re just not made for long-term play, you’ll quickly get exhausted in half an hour and want to rest your eyes (or if you’re playing something movement heavy like Beat Saber, rest your body as well).

I tried Skyrim VR, albeit the vanilla version. It sucked. Once you get over the initial hype of “wow, it’s like I’m really there!” you quickly start to realize that VR adds nothing to the experience. It’s the same game, except way clunkier with broken combat and makes you dizzy after some time. Most VR games feel similarly shallow. Even when it comes to racing games which I thought would be killer in a headset, I came away realizing I’d prefer just playing it on a flat screen.

I don’t know where you live, but here there are a couple of places where you can try a headset. I would recommend finding a way to try it first before buying.

Even more confusing considering Citra is a well-known 3DS emulator, so you’d think that’s a fork of that

Sweeeeeeet! I had HL2 on my ancient Steam account that I lost ages ago, it feels right to have it back in my library all these years later.

The anniversary update sounds tempting, but I think I’ll wait for HL2 RTX before replaying it.

Oh thank god, I might actually consider buying one now that it’s not Exynos

Fair warning though: Vintage Story is vveeeeeerrrryyyyyy slow paced and involved. Making a pickaxe for ex requires you to find copper nuggets scattered on the floor, making a mold, heating the copper in a crucible, casting it, then waiting for it to cool.

Hell yeah, that’s awfully nice of them. I have fond memories of playing Unreal Tournament '99

I have seen a TON of ad postings for the Gamurs group which the article talks about. Every time I browse jobs, I see at least one of the websites they own having a vacancy. The job description is just abysmal, saying things like you’re expected to make ~30 articles a month with around $20 per article. Glad this is being called out.

You’re not mistaken actually, this game changed a lot and was apparently supposed to release in 2022 as a looter shooter. They delayed it, changed it to be a slower paced extraction shooter instead.

That’s how any platform or store works. I don’t understand what you want to be happening. Consumers will go to whatever store they like more and you’ll always have the choice to use another store.

If you’ve got a ton of games on Steam, but want to switch to GOG for the DRM-free stuff?

Why not use both?

They’ve trapped us in these separate little worlds where each one has its own “exclusives” and sales, forcing us to juggle multiple accounts just to find a good deal or play the games we want.

So do you just want one platform, or…?

That the devs helped create apparently.

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The second one is an older application of the first patent (pokeball again). The third one is literally just being able to mount an object or creature with some caveats like a flying one having to come down and carry you up, that one is ridiculous and a lot of games do something similar all the time.

That’s not exactly it. I read the description of '191 and it seems to be more like “throwing a ball to capture a character and place it in the player’s possession or throwing it to release a captured character”. You can see the patent drawings also depecting that, so it’s basically a patent of the Pokeball.

Not a lawyer so I have no idea how it’ll go in court but it does sound like Palworld infringes on this. It’s kinda funny that they could’ve avoided this by being a bit more legally distinct, like how TemTem throws cards instead of balls.

Yeah, but that’s a bizarre decision. What’s the point of grinding combat if none of it carries over to the rest of the game? What’s the point in going back to the starter area to grind again?

I played it for 90 minutes now and I think it’s OK. It feels like an MMO that came out 20 years ago, whether that’s good or bad depends on you. Lots of grinding, running back and forth, and doing fetch quests.

Some parts of the game are really nice, I love how streamlined everything is and how the map tells you exactly which resources can be found where. The game overall is very, very polished for a smaller indie MMO. That said, it feels overly simple and grindy. The first quest literally starts by telling you to come back when you’re level 60, which is insane. The map is also very limited and not really open world, it’s like a bunch of interconnected rooms.

The worst part is one I didn’t even face yet, but everybody is saying that your character resets upon entering a new zone. That means all your skills reset back to level 1 and you don’t carry over any armor or weapons or anything like that upon finishing one section of the game. The entire game is episodic, so you could grind a hundred levels in combat only to walk into episode 2 and start all over. That sounds bizarre to me. Not sure if I’ll play any further.

I completely missed the fact that it’s out, thanks for the reminder

You can do a lot of things by pirating. Most people aren’t interested in loading a Switch emulator and downloading roms.