Community MetaSteam | December 2024 - Top Men Belong in a Museum

ZKenir

Setting the Seas Ablaze
May 10, 2019
3,500
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which one? I recently got an Ipad and was wondering if there was anything fun
I'm playing FGO since it's basically a VN with turn based gameplay, but I would reccomend something like ZZZ as NarohDethan suggested or Honkai Star Rail.
Zenless Zone Zero needs a controller imho, it's an action game and HSR is turn based instead.

You can also try Infinity Nikki for the cozy gameplay (which is also on PC).
 
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fantomena

MetaMember
Dec 17, 2018
9,894
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It’s not a competition, both can be good and they both have different strengths. Like veilguard is much more open than remake so for me that makes it more enjoyable.
I honestly don't see many strengths with Veilguard. If you like openess, Rebirth beats Veilguard handsomely.
 

CommodoreKong

Mercenary in the Badlands
Jun 15, 2019
771
2,177
93
Played about 1 hour of Veilguard with EA Play. Gonna wait for a deep sale on this one. Game feels very outdated and repetive to play, decent fun at times, but coming from a lot of other RPGs (especially BG3). this game feels very mediocre so far.
Yeah I played through the whole game and it's probably a 7/10 at most in my eyes.
 

fantomena

MetaMember
Dec 17, 2018
9,894
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You played one hour, doesn’t really represent the game. It is uncomfortably linear at the start, it does open up. Also we didn’t talk about rebirth. Which granted does indeed seem great.
I have so many games to play, if I have to play more than 1 hour to "meet the actual game" then the game has failed it's first impression.

I could have used that 1 hour of Veilguard to play a truly amazing indie game.
 
OP
lashman

lashman

Dead & Forgotten
Sep 5, 2018
32,418
91,364
113

The 23 steps of purchasing my kid a Sony PC game on Steam for Christmas

Back in my day (yep), you got a game for Christmas, you opened the box, you installed it from the physical media in the box, and you played it. 3 steps, roughly, if my counting fingers are still good in my advancing years.
In 2024, you get a PC game for Christmas, and this is what happens:
  1. Santa purchases a digital license for a game.
  2. Child receives game and installs it. Parent leaves, thinking child will be happy with their new game.
  3. Child opens the game, is greeted with a message that they need a Sony account (in addition to their age-appropriate Steam account, which is in addition to their age-appropriate Google account needed to have an email address and their age-appropriate Microsoft account to have access to Windows).
  4. Child calls for parent that they need a Sony account.
  5. Parent clicks through "child account creation" page, which requires an adult account to provision.
  6. Parent forgets their adult Sony login information (we're on a PC, not a PS5), has to look up their credentials, which are locked behind MFA on their phone.
  7. Parent must satisfy Sony MFA via emailed auth code.
  8. Parent signs in -- must re-auth email for the adult account (despite MFA already using said email).
  9. Parent signs up for child account.
  10. Parent must verify child email by signing into child Gmail account.
  11. Parent must provide payment info to demonstrate that they are an adult. $0.50 must be charged to their adult-shaped credit card.
  12. Parent enters credit card info.
  13. Parent agrees to the $0.50 transaction using newly added credit card.
  14. Unknown Error
  15. Parent agrees to $0.50 transaction.
  16. Unknown Error
  17. Parent uses semi-child-appropriate curse word ("for crap's sake") signs out of adult account, signs back in, finds where to create a child account, goes back through child account creation, agrees to $0.50 transaction. Success.
  18. Parent must specify child account settings (age limits, etc). 1 or 2 EULAs here.
  19. Parent goes back to game, signs in as child with new child account.
  20. Parent must verify email account with MFA token sent to child account email.
  21. Error
  22. Retry. Probably another EULA. Success.
  23. Child plays game
Literally, this is the process I went through to get Lego Horizon Adventures working on my kids PC via Steam. It was INSANE. I've been gaming my whole life and the way things have gone is just so depressing and so dystopian. It's a goddamn video game. I felt like I was trying to get a car loan!
Obviously the answer here is "just sign up as an adult" or better "don't buy Sony PC games," but this is the "proper" method that Sony wants their PC customers to follow. It's unhinged. I'm not the type of person to pick a specific game launcher or bandwagon hate on whatever is the hot topic to hate at the moment, but boy howdy did this experience make it plain to me how godawful things have gotten.
I'm thankful most purchases on Steam are NOT like this, but I'm going to be on the lookout for any future titles that are and avoid them like the plague.
 

yuraya

MetaMember
May 4, 2019
2,816
6,466
113
It would be nice if Valve became more strict with all the account creation and additional launcher bs.

The relationship between the customer and publisher should be over after the exchange of money. All this additional shit is so anticonsumer and unnecessary.

And the MAU data harvesting excuses can fuck off too. Devs have enough public steam data to ball park some figure they can brag about.
 

Ge0force

Excluding exclusives
Jan 12, 2019
4,146
14,432
113
Belgium
Aaand banned for 2 months XD complaining about Sony account is now encouraging platform wars.
Incredible. I'm so glad I left that site. Almost every thread about PC gaming results in a huge shit show. I guess lots of console gamers are still angry that "their" exclusives are coming to PC as well.
It would be nice if Valve became more strict with all the account creation and additional launcher bs.

The relationship between the customer and publisher should be over after the exchange of money. All this additional shit is so anticonsumer and unnecessary.

And the MAU data harvesting excuses can fuck off too. Devs have enough public steam data to ball park some figure they can brag about.
I'm not sure Valve should do anything about this. I mean, PC gamers are free to accept or reject the BS that publishers like Sony are throwing at them.

I just press the ignore button for every singleplayer game that requires an additional account to play. It's that easy. PC gaming was fine for years without Sony's games, and it still is today.

We already see several publishers reconsidering additional launchers and/or accounts.
 
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Mivey

MetaMember
Sep 20, 2018
4,338
12,334
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So maybe some oldheads here can answer this one: how was the reception of Tomb Raider 2 back in the day, compared to the orignal? Because I'm playing the remaster, and I really do not like TR2. It adds nothing of value ontop of TR1, except vapid set pieces that last all of 5 minutes and then you are back to the samey levels and puzzles from TR1. Except now there are enemies on every corner, and the combat so far is just horribly boring. It was also super bad in TR1, but at least there it just served to break up the monotony of puzzle solving. In TR2 it is a constant stream of enemies.
Feels like the worst of modern day AAA was already present here: a focus on flashy nonsense over interesting gameplay.


Btw, I remember someone complained about the modern controls, and once you look up a tutorial on how they work (because whoever developed the remaster is a very smart person who thinks tutorials are not needed), it's fine. In fact, I think you can easily pull of some moves that are impossible using tank controls.
 

Le Pertti

0.01% Game dev
Oct 10, 2018
8,704
22,443
113
45
Paris, France
lepertti.com
Mivey i can only say what I thought back then, never got super into the first game and it was also at the time when 3d graphics were evolving on pc, so with the second game it felt more polished, has full 3d acceleration and was more action. So for me at the time it felt like a much better game. But granted I haven’t played neither since they released.
 
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LEANIJA

MetaMember
May 5, 2019
3,255
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Austria
about TR2
I can really only tell you what I remember from reading games magazines, but as far as I recall, Tomb Raider 2 was well received and seen as an improvement in many ways; and only afterwards people kinda caught on that Core Design was churning these games out too fast. I think by TR4 the consensus was that the games were getting stale.
But I also didnt play TR2 when it came out; I played TR1 and TR3 (not on release either, maybe in 2000...ish?) and then TR2, and only a little bit, since by that point, having played those two, I didnt see the need to play another.
As I have surely mentioned before, however, I did play all the TR games from Crystal Dynamics later on (and a bit of each of the Core Design games since they were all super cheap on Steam at one point or another).




regarding PSN and other third party accounts/launchers on Steam: I have accounts with Ubisoft, EA, Larian, Microsoft, Sony, Blizzard, GOG, and I dont even remember what else—its a lot!
I dont really mind so much if the account creation is fast and doesnt need more than an email and links to my Steam account so I can bury the password somewhere and basically forget about it....
However: its just not how it should be, especially if youre locking out regions from creating accounts (or making ID mandatory or something like that). Some account systems are also very happy to regularly log you out, making them even more annoying.

Extra launchers — if they are quiet! — also dont bother me too much, but again, its not how it should be.
If I buy a game on Steam, the Steam account and launcher should suffice.

Ideally, the publishers should make sure to keep the games DRM-free, as well (at least after a while). DRM-freedom is often an argument against Steam; and its one that I find silly, given how its up to the publisher to implement DRM (and there's plenty of DRM-free games on Steam!).

I think its just that Valve tries to appease publishers as well as they can — and would rather have them annoy people with things like that instead of not shipping their game at all. They sure have a history with publishers leaving the platform and I think its quite obvious Valve wants as many games from all sorts of publishers on Steam as possible. At the same time, they want to be as user-friendly as they can; and its quite a tightrope to walk. I'm sure there are plenty of publishers who would want to remove the community reviews or community forums before they'd consider bringing their games over. (and my assumption is some got discouraged to publish more due to overwhelming negative reaction, like Blizzard. I cant imagine their plan was to only release two games on Steam and call it a day)

On topic of community forums – on bigger game releases, they can get quite bad; and I dont think Valve can realistically moderate all the subforums. Thats a problem every big platform has, at some point there's too much shouting and the reasonable discussion gets drowned out.
I do think game publishers should moderate the forums more — and we should get more self-moderation tools: word blocking comes to mind; or better user blocking—not just labelling a topic "topic by blocked user" and still have it show up in the community hub frontpage...there's surely more they could do!
 

Dragon1893

MetaMember
Apr 17, 2019
1,711
4,178
113
This is one of my favorite games of all time, if they mess up the PC version of the remake I'm gonna be pissed.
So maybe some oldheads here can answer this one: how was the reception of Tomb Raider 2 back in the day, compared to the orignal? Because I'm playing the remaster, and I really do not like TR2. It adds nothing of value ontop of TR1, except vapid set pieces that last all of 5 minutes and then you are back to the samey levels and puzzles from TR1. Except now there are enemies on every corner, and the combat so far is just horribly boring. It was also super bad in TR1, but at least there it just served to break up the monotony of puzzle solving. In TR2 it is a constant stream of enemies.
Feels like the worst of modern day AAA was already present here: a focus on flashy nonsense over interesting gameplay.


Btw, I remember someone complained about the modern controls, and once you look up a tutorial on how they work (because whoever developed the remaster is a very smart person who thinks tutorials are not needed), it's fine. In fact, I think you can easily pull of some moves that are impossible using tank controls.
The game was very well received. I remember the press being blown away when they showed off the Venice level.
 

Sobatronix

MetaMember
Mar 9, 2021
826
2,669
93
Uh oh.
Was planning to give Outer Wilds a quick test spin.
Suddenly an hour was somehow gone.
I'd love to beat that game since most people say it's amazing but the open space travel and big celestial bodies trigger some sort of irrational fear in me. I was hyperventilating while landing on the planet with all the tornados. So stupid lmao