Community MetaSteam | March 2023 - You know, Wo Leon, we really are the last of March

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PC-tan

Low Tier Weeb
Jan 19, 2019
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Man... Epic had a whole day of sponsored streamers and the GDC thing today, they probably did spend a lot of money on everything, and than Valve released the CS2 beta. lmao
I think the most money that Valve spent in regards to CS2 and PR stuff (sort of) was to fly in people to the Valve HQ and have them play CS2 but they did have them under NDA.

It sounds pretty crazy at how fast Valve was able to "fix" things




He talks about his experience. Just what is Valve feeding it's devs? Valve is known for some bad things but Gabe knows a thing or two about paying top dollar for highly skilled devs.
 

manchego obfuscator

MetaMember
Jan 23, 2020
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I started playing Trek to Yomi 2 weeks ago and since then i am trying to be calm enough with every atom of my being to finish it but i feel that i am reaching my limits (and i am usually calm person in real life). I don't know how this combat system went through QA and got released (and never got fixed) in this state. It is basically RNG. And main issue is parry mechanic that is basically key to pulling out combos. It is simply random and works half time. Game teaches you to press parry/block button when you see glint on enemy sword but it simply doesn't work. And i was even fine with that because i though i will use block and sacrifice stamina but further you go, harder it gets to pass enemies with that tactic. They just start throwing so many enemies between shrines (only places where you can replenish health) and by blocking attacks you basically can't do combos that can stagger enemies that you then take finish with finisher and gain some health back. So you end up repeating sections of the game over and over again in hope that RNG will be kind to you and you will be able to do some parrying.

And it is shame because i really like visual style of the game and story is ok. But game is pushing me to the brink of losing it and i even rage quitted today, thing that i didn't do in years. And to put things into the perspective i played and finished games like Sekiro, Bit.Trip Runner and Thumper where timings are really important without going crazy like with Trek to Yomi. And i even tried it on my PC because i thought that Steam Deck latency was issue (even though i played and finished Hi-Fi Rush on Deck without issues few weeks ago doing S rank in combat without issues) but nope game was driving me crazy even on PC.
played it on Game Pass around Christmas, and yeah, it’s definitely a game that prioritized art direction and visuals above everything else in its development. Worth trying on easy difficulty, but very much not for the actual gameplay
 

Alextended

Segata's Disciple
Jan 28, 2019
5,690
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Let's hope they don't screw them up. That's a pretty low price too, I guess they haven't been doing so hot despite cult classic releases all the fans have been praising (it does mention a revenue of US$3.0 million for all of 2022 so I guess €30 M bonds and US$20.0 million over 3 years sounds ok).
 
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Li Kao

It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.
Jan 28, 2019
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Jesus, I guess it speaks volume both about my awakening level AND Atari street cred that I first understood it as Nightdive acquiring Atari.

In the correct way, that news sucks.
 
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spindoctor

MetaMember
Jun 9, 2019
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Yeah the Nightdive news makes sense. I imagine they have or are about to run into the same problem gog.com ran into a few years ago, which is that they have exhausted the pool of good classic games that they can easily acquire redistribution rights for. There are still probably licenses they could acquire but would not be worth the input cost of remastering the games because they're just not popular enough and wouldn't sell enough. Then there are games like NOLF which would be a huge sellers (relatively speaking) but getting the rights to them are just a dead end.

And then you look at the System Shock remake saga which must have been a huge headache for them. Recall that it was a Kickstarter project 7 years ago and was meant to release 6 years ago. It was originally promised to be a faithful remake and then they changed their minds and decided to 'modernize' it before going back to the original idea after the predictable backlash. In the 7 years they have paused development, rebooted the game at least once, changed engines from Unity to Unreal, added platforms for release and had to find a publisher. Plus all the pandemic related problems they must have dealt with. In short, a total nightmare of a project.

Not even remotely surprising that they would look to cash out if the opportunity presented itself. The only surprise is that Atari is actually still alive and kicking and they somehow managed to raise enough money to go through with the deal.
 

BlackRainbowFT

Mouse Accelerated Member
Apr 17, 2019
508
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Quick Q. I've been sort of playing Inscryption. I really like the meta-stuff, but I hate the fact that it's a rogue lite. I died after reaching the third boss and the idea of having to play through all of it again (despite the unlocks) is preventing me from even launching the game again. Is it really worth playing it?
 

C-Dub

Makoto Niijima Fan Club President
Dec 23, 2018
3,992
11,886
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what C DUBS got a fucking concussion?

What exactly were you doing buddy?
I have an ear infection. Lost my balance, fell and banged my head.

No serious injury by the looks of it (so far) but I need to rest my brain.

That means I can’t spend too much time reading or doing anything else where I need to concentrate. My brain needs rest and lots of protein.

No video games, no sports, no work, no writing or reading, only a small amount of screen time.

My doctor would probably tell me off for posting this message.
 

DrShrapnel

Shuwatch!
Oct 14, 2021
183
421
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Didn’t Atari recently acquire Berzerk?

That should be Nightdive’s first assisgment. Hmmm I could imagine that in VR drool
 

LEANIJA

MetaMember
May 5, 2019
3,221
7,866
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Austria
Regarding State of Unreal:

Ive seen that clip from Hellblade 2 lauded on Twitter but I think "sure it looks cool" – does it make the game better? I believe we reached a graphic fidelity a couple years ago that is just "enough" for me. Games like the first Hellblade or the first Horizon still look fantastic.
What is there really to be gained from all these details on Senuas face? It'll have a "wow" effect when you see it, sure, since Hellblade had various up close scenes, but in gameplay terms, what does it add? How much immersion do you really need?

And the graphical fidelity arms race prolongs dev cycles which leads to fewer titles, higher prices, more monetization, buggier launches, stutterfests, needing expensive hardware + DLSS/FSR to make games look and run halfway decent that are supposed to look lifelife...


Plus, I would really, really like it if this push towards "lets all use Unreal" would stop and we'd see more engine diversity again. Not just because I dislike Epic – if it was all Unity or whatever, it would also not be great.

Its a shame that id Software stopped licensing their engine out (thanks to Bethesda, if I recall correctly), and that engines like the Fox engine didnt get developed further (in case of the Fox engine because Konami ousted Kojima and then stopped bothering with games for a while).


_
Regarding Atari and NightDive: huh thats a bit weird, but as others have said, they probably reached the endpoint of what IPs they can get. Also, other companies have jumped on the train of getting old games and re-releasing them, like Pixel Games UK, or Ziggurat. I wish bigger publishers would go and re-release more (or; all) of their older titles digitally. Activision has released a lot, EA some, Ubisoft very little. I'd love to have the original Lemmings, Ski or die, Prince of Persia, SimCity ....
 

ezodagrom

JELLYBEE
Nov 2, 2018
1,867
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Portugal
www.youtube.com

Seems like this is coming to Steam, despite being a fan game based on Hololive vtubers?
Other Hololive based fan games have avoided Steam to avoid legal troubles, since only non-commercial derivative works are allowed by Cover corp.
Saw a comment mentioning that due to Steam being a commercial platform, releasing the game there even if free could not be okay?
 
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Hektor

Autobahnraser
Nov 1, 2018
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gabbo

MetaMember
Dec 22, 2018
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Toronto
They have a lot of the IP & published The Anniversary Celebration recently that has good comments for its emulation quality etc. (but also some big omissions).
So it's the Infogrames side of the Atari split. I've read that they've recently turned things around, in some ways with that Atari 50, so we'll see.
If this allows Nightdive to go for the NOLF holy grail and work on Blood more, and other 90s/2000s titles, then I am all for it. But I am weary of anything this Atari does, as it always seems to 1 awesome step forward, one NFTs-and-an-atari-console step backwards into doing really stupid stuff needing to be sold yet again.
 
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Kyougar

No reviews, no Buy
Nov 2, 2018
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There is this strange belief that the Campo Santo people would love love LOVE to work on this game but are held back by Valve.
The thing about Valve is: if no one (or not enough) people want to do something, then you can love a project as much as you want, it will not be made.

Reality is, if your company got bought by Valve and you have the freedom to choose any project within Valve...
then an indie game that was pitched by your indie boss, where you possibly had no input in the direction, and was a project that your boss thought would let his company make the next paycheck...
is not something you want to work on when you are an employee of Valve.
 

Censored

I didn't delete that post!. Get my post back!.
Oct 8, 2021
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Better Campo Santo people get involved with vaporware and other projects than reviewing Steam games because what they usually love is ban japanese VN games.
 

gabbo

MetaMember
Dec 22, 2018
3,524
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Toronto
There is this strange belief that the Campo Santo people would love love LOVE to work on this game but are held back by Valve.
The thing about Valve is: if no one (or not enough) people want to do something, then you can love a project as much as you want, it will not be made.

Reality is, if your company got bought by Valve and you have the freedom to choose any project within Valve...
then an indie game that was pitched by your indie boss, where you possibly had no input in the direction, and was a project that your boss thought would let his company make the next paycheck...
is not something you want to work on when you are an employee of Valve.
Just give them the time to record Idle Thumbs dammit. Though I had heard some of the team had already left valve, killing the dream one puffin at a time.
 

ezodagrom

JELLYBEE
Nov 2, 2018
1,867
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Portugal
www.youtube.com
In the Sonic Frontiers update, clearing both new challenge modes fully with S rank, seems like it unlocks an extreme difficulty mode with the following:

  • Can't level anything up
  • Enemies are stronger
  • Must be a new game, difficulty can't be changed
  • Sonic dies in one hit
  • Cyber Space S-ranks are steeper
EDIT: Correction, unlocking the extreme difficulty mode only needs S ranking the boss rush challenges.
S ranking the stages challenges unlocks the power boost (max ring boost) in cyberspace stages.
 
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Aaron D.

MetaMember
Jul 10, 2019
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I was thinking the seal ended next Tues. for whatever reason.

My plan was to carve out some time this weekend to leisurely browse through my Wishlist to nab some gems.

Instead I did a quick & dirty pass and came up with a few titles of interest.






I got off pretty easy this season with the damage only being around $20 USD.

Already feels like a Big Win after spending some time with Astrox.

Another one-man project like SpaceBourne 2 that just makes my jaw drop over the ambition of it all.
 
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