Community MetaSteam | November 2019 - You Can't Spell Steam Without EA

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BlackRainbowFT

Mouse Accelerated Member
Apr 17, 2019
508
1,179
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Switzerland
During the sale I bought this:

Whether you hate puzzle games, you are indifferent to them or you are a puzzle nut like I am... stay away from it.

The first few levels are so easy that I wouldn't even dare qualifying them as puzzles. Then the complexity increases and it's basically the same pattern/logic/elements repeated ad nauseam. Once you reach a certain level the number of "cognitive leaps" *** you have to take becomes frustrating.

***I wouldn't know what to call this process... but I'll try to explain anyway.

A 0-leap: assume you're seeing two yellow lights, two blue lights and two purple lights. If I were to ask you how many red lights I should turn on, you'd probably say "2". The inference you just made was based on a very simple pattern (some sort of law of symmetry) and the material that gave you the hint (i.e., the already lit lights) was of the same type as the one you had to manipulate (i.e., red lights).

A 1-leap: you have a monitor with something that looks like an EKG (at regular intervals you see two spikes), at random intervals you also have an old gramophone that emits two "beeps" and on the wall you have a picture with two penguins. How many red lights should I turn on? The answer is again two. The link between the hints is less obvious because the way they're presented (i.e., an heterogeneous set of stimuli: moving spikes on a monitor, beeps, static image) has nothing to do with what you are allowed to manipulate (i.e. lights). You basically need to identify and then ignore the irrelevant characteristics in order to extract a very simple pattern (i.e., everything comes in twos). The logic is the same as my "0-leap" example but it's "further away".

These two examples were completely made up, but here's a real puzzle from the game. You get a box with three sides.

1) a safe-box looking thing with a dial (two rings).


2) A blue sliding puzzle



3) A yellow sliding puzzle


Under every yellow and blue square you get blank spaces with the exception of two spots under which you can find the numbers 35 and 4.
Now, I solved it in less than a minute but it pissed me off nonetheless.
The dial is basically a clock. The outer ring is the minute hand and the inner ring is the hour hand.
You just need to move the larger ring to the dot indicating 35 minutes, and the shorter one to the one corresponding to 4 hours.
I mean... this is awful. What is this? a 6-leap?

Final example and this was the straw that broke the camel's back.

You get a cube with four sides... every side has four red squares (locked) and four blue squares that can be moved freely. On every face the four red squares are in different (but symmetrical) positions.

Here's one example:

Face 1:


Now, this one took me at least 10 minutes. This is a Nth dimensional-leap. Quaternions are probably involved.
The only reason I found a solution was that I shifted my thinking process from "let's figure out how this works" to "let's ignore any cue our hint... let's just enumerate every conceivable pattern the developer could have come up with".

Let's try to:
  • build the same shape on every face: NO
  • connect all the red squares together by using the blue squares as wires: NO
  • position the blue squares so that if I were to overlap every face I'd get a perfect 4x4 blue square: BINGO.
Okay. Done. My refund is already pending.
 

Stone Ocean

Proud Degenerate
Apr 17, 2019
2,360
7,487
113
I feel like Soul Calibur 6 just came out earlier this year. Turns out it was a year ago.

How forgettable the game was. People were waiting for it for a long time, and yet after it's out it's just.. there.
The game sold really well and is getting a second wave of DLC, I wouldn't really call that forgettable as much as its just "old" and not exactly making waves as a competitive game.
 
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Le Pertti

0.01% Game dev
Oct 10, 2018
8,595
22,054
113
45
Paris, France
lepertti.com
Humble monthly today can't be good today, just because the early unlock was kind of crazy. They already blew their load so what else can they later up?

Of course, would be nice if they indeed did deliver on those other unlocks too.:D
 
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Stone Ocean

Proud Degenerate
Apr 17, 2019
2,360
7,487
113
Humble monthly today can't be good today, just because the early unlock was kind of crazy. They already blew their load so what else can they later up?

Of course, would be nice if they indeed did deliver on those other unlocks too.:D
Do the hidden unlocks only show after the bundle is over? Never subscribed and I'm super tempted to get it still.
 

fantomena

MetaMember
Dec 17, 2018
9,844
26,502
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X019 in 2 week. Wonder what additions PC game pass will get. Control? We will also most likely finally get a look at AoE4.
 
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Kyougar

No reviews, no Buy
Nov 2, 2018
3,282
11,713
113
Uh, no?

Almost every single open world game (even the ones people consider "good") from the past two decades is about moving from point A to point B, generally as fast as you can. The space between Crow's Perch and Novigrad in TW3 is not a space where you're going to be having emergent, interesting gameplay experiences. You're just trying to get from the quest giver to the quest objectives and hoping Roach doesn't clip on some fecking rock again.

The only open world games that focus on the "journey" between the points that I can think of are probably RDR2 and BotW (both of which I immensely dislike actually). I suppose you could argue, and I wouldn't necessarily be against this argument, that all open world games besides those two are actually bad and would be better off without their open worlds, but that's a very different argument.

My personal feeling is that playing DS will give me the same feeling those other aforementioned two games gave me: awe and immersion at the emergent gameplay early on (Whoa! Being robbed on the road in RDR2 and Whoa! Discovering shrines and plotting a map in BotW), but after a while, it'll become boring and a poor substitute for an actually crafted storytelling experience.

As someone who thinks he would hate this kind of gameplay, and who disliked the shit out of MGSV, it once again feels like people are intentionally missing the point around a Kojima game so they can whine about him and platform war lol. An open world game that's focused more on traversal systems than actual questing is pretty clearly unique.

All open world games require you to advance the "journey," so obviously yes, it's still an open world.

:rolleyes:
chuckles Morrowindly oh you sweet summer child.
 
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Trisolarian

Junior Member
Jul 12, 2019
1,284
2,249
113
Kojima is Apple? 🤔
The bravery. If I was ever made President, I'd be giving the IPhone 7 plus the Presidental Medal of Freedom for courage. Yes, picture a middle aged (at that point I'd be like 50) white male President Dude, still ruggedly handsome btw, pinning a medal on an IPhone.

In gaming news, I 'got' Resident Evil 2 (PS4) yesterday. I'm still not in love with it but its playable and I've got the flow of gameplay and the mechanics down. For Halloween night proper it was Costume Quest II and Silent Hill HD Collection. Btw, I consider Halloween season to end the Sunday after Halloween, so pumpkin it up peeps! Get that last gasp before all of our bells get jingled in ways we don't like for the next two months.
 

r3n4ud

Dr. Boom Boom
Oct 17, 2018
615
1,921
93
Quebec, Canada
Guys, I'm quickly dropping by to thank you all for your well wishes. :cat-heart-blob:
I'm officially a married man. :giggle:

And, I'm back online, since I have internet already in the house.

Have a Happy Halloween! 🎃
Congratulations! Wanna know the secret to a long marriage? If you find out, lemme know 😋

I’ve been married for almost 20 years, so I must be doing something right
 

derExperte

MetaMember
Dec 9, 2018
1,890
5,443
113
Talking about slowing down, I think I saw you got ToCS2 recently. I hope everything's working for you! And thanks for the €
Glad to support good excellent ports, though who knows when I'll get to it. And I'm curious, do you really get a cut of every game sold or was that a one and done deal?
 
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Ruvon

Chaotic writer
May 15, 2019
707
1,642
93
France
cabinetdechaologie.wordpress.com
"the most fascinating game of the year"


Along with another few 9-10 range reviews from Dutch, German and Italian sites. I'm telling you all, this American/non-American split is whacky.
Are you seriously giving visibility to this guy ? He's the worst video game "journalist" in France, get paid to promote games then consider himself "neutral and objective".

He's not always wrong or biaised, but he can't be trusted for one bit on anything about video games.

I just learned the origin of this "Keep Calm and" poster, on this very well written (french) website : Merci de paniquer - En marge
 

Bonney

old and bad
Apr 17, 2019
76
209
33
Welp. One of my irl friends convinced me to buy Modern Warfare to cross-play with him. First time I've bought a CoD game since 2009.

:expressionless-face:
 

Kuro

"Oh yeah? Aren't you gonna punish me?"
Dec 22, 2018
597
806
93
Welp. One of my irl friends convinced me to buy Modern Warfare to cross-play with him. First time I've bought a CoD game since 2009.

:expressionless-face:
Full price?
I'd honestly buy it too if I could find it cheap.
 

Durante

I <3 Pixels
Oct 21, 2018
4,045
19,521
113
Glad to support good excellent ports, though who knows when I'll get to it. And I'm curious, do you still get a cut of every game sold or was that a one and done deal?
In that particular case, due to the generosity of XSEED, I get a small single-digit percentage of all revenue above 1 million in the first 2 years after release (which ends Q1 next year I think) as an extra bonus in addition to the initial fee.

That's not usually the case for ports though, most are based on a single predetermined payment.
 

Li Kao

It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.
Jan 28, 2019
7,870
15,903
113
I need a Steam handheld :loudly-crying-face:
Y u no good to me, Gabe ?

I don't have a hackable Switch anymore and even if the new rumors are true it won't do me any good as I tend to like having access to the eshop. Steam streaming on ios works but the aspect ratio is killing me. Would have been cool if Rainway wasn't a bunch of opportunistic liars.
 
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lashman

lashman

Dead & Forgotten
Sep 5, 2018
32,061
90,263
113
I need a Steam handheld :loudly-crying-face:
Y u no good to me, Gabe ?

I don't have a hackable Switch anymore and even if the new rumors are true it won't do me any good as I tend to like having access to the eshop. Steam streaming on ios works but the aspect ratio is killing me. Would have been cool if Rainway wasn't a bunch of opportunistic liars.
just wait for Win 3 ;)
 
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