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STEAM announcements & updates 2012 Thread 4 - winter seal is coming

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1

1-D_FTW

Member
I thought 2 was the best. But even at release, the games were very rough. I can't even fathom trying to play them now. Seems like a form of torture.
 
R

Rickenslacker

Banned
I think the most fun I had in a game starring Lara Croft before Guardian of Light was the Tomb Raider 2 demo where you'd start inside of a cave. I'd climb up some rocks and then dive to the ground where she'd die with an audible snap to her neck. Those were some good times.
 
B

Blizzard

Banned
SteveWinwood said:
How's this Miasmata game? I just read the description and it is really turning me on.
Click to expand...

I tried it last night and posted these impressions earlier:
Blizzard said:
More Miasmata thoughts:

1. Graphics vary. Effects and atmospheric details tend to be nice, but individual textures or animations tend to look bad. I'm guessing the game was made by 2-3 people, so that's rather to be expected in a 3D game. The water looks ultra jaggy in certain spots, but really nice in others. Ponds sitting by themselves reflecting the sky and trees look nice.

2. Performance is rough early on, on my machine. I get 30-ish fps around the starting lab, with an e8400 and 5850, all settings max. The game doesn't have a vsync option so I'm using D3DOverrider.

3. Alt-tabbing, as mentioned, seems to make the game freeze forever. There are three save slots, but no obvious way to copy them. You can touch a
lantern
you find early on in the game to save.

4. Controls seem very janky. There is a combination of interesting first-person body awareness with strange jank. I'm reminded of DayZ and the ARMA II engine. The game seems to have sound effects and creative, interesting details for motions like sliding down small slopes, or slipping sideways if you turn suddenly. However, trying to figure out things like inventory or items is confusing to me. I picked up a knife, clicked a couple of times, and then it apparently went away forever. Oops, I hope I don't ever need that...

5. There are lots of little nice atmospheric touches, like the flowers, how you hold them in your hands, bright green grass, colorful little bugs, birds, butterflies, etc. flitting around, and sometimes skybeams. When I stopped playing it seemed like it was getting dark. I imagine the game would become terrifying shortly afterwards.

6. There is some sort of ingame help system. When I first wandered into some water,
I started making swimming motions, only to learn I apparently either can't swim or am too weak to swim. A help system thing told me about this when it happened. I started drowning, which apparently gave me a fever/made it worse.
The help system pops up when you get near things for the first time. Downside, if you happen to walk past something and miss the help popup prompt, I haven't found any way to bring it up again, so you just have to experiment on your own. Some things you find (notes) go into your journal, but there are specific things you might expect to be in your journal that aren't. For instance, you combine flowers to make medicine, and it saves a new journal entry describing the medicine...but doesn't actually make a note of WHICH flowers were used for the medicine (unless maybe it was on the individual flower page, I'll have to check that).

7. When you get sick, or I imagine injured, there are screen effects to indicate this, like blurring vision or dark, faded vision. I imagine this could get annoying and/or be effective. I died the first time it happened. Again, I'm reminded of DayZ.

From very early impressions, I would recommend it to someone who wanted a first-person exploration experience in which you pick flowers, hide from some hunting monster, and explore an unknown island which saw some sort of unfortunate event...if the person I was recommending it to can tolerate janky graphics (maybe Far Cry 1 level) and janky mechanics (maybe DayZ level). I'd say $5, maybe $10 is a fair price for experimentation, or full/current discount price if you really like the concept.

Here's a screenshot of early on.

miasmata2012-11-2900-p2ojr.jpg
Click to expand...

Basically, I don't recommend trying it now unless you really like the concept, and you're okay with DayZ/Penumbra level of jank/animations/graphics. The birds, butterflies, and sounds are nice though.
 
I

ithorien

Member
spindoctor said:
I don't think considering the second option makes it any more profound.
The game makes you do something and then tries to make you feel bad about it. How does that work? When you do the white phosphorus thing and burn up civilians, are you supposed to feel bad when the game makes you walk slowly through them? There was no player agency in what happened and it's not like you had a choice in the matter. You can't advance the game until you go through that completely scripted sequence and that's going to make you feel bad? This is not that different from Call of Duty where you have to take a sniper shot at someone with a bag over their head and then you find out 2 minutes later that it was your friend. How are you supposed to feel bad about something the game makes you do?
Click to expand...

http://www.polygon.com/2012/11/14/3590430/dont-be-a-hero-the-full-story-behind-spec-ops-the-line

Easily one of my top 5 shooters of all time. Where any of the CoD shock value moments have me entertained, this game evoked genuine emotion. I felt uneasy about most of the moments I was tossed into, starting with
opening fire on American soldiers to slaughtering civs mistakenly to finally firing on the crowd when my teammate was strangled helplessly, not realizing my instinct took over and there were other solutions to the problem.
Brilliant game.
 
AHA-Lambda

AHA-Lambda

Member
spindoctor said:
I don't think considering the second option makes it any more profound.
The game makes you do something and then tries to make you feel bad about it. How does that work? When you do the white phosphorus thing and burn up civilians, are you supposed to feel bad when the game makes you walk slowly through them? There was no player agency in what happened and it's not like you had a choice in the matter. You can't advance the game until you go through that completely scripted sequence and that's going to make you feel bad? This is not that different from Call of Duty where you have to take a sniper shot at someone with a bag over their head and then you find out 2 minutes later that it was your friend. How are you supposed to feel bad about something the game makes you do?
Click to expand...

Thank you! I've been saying this for months and find myself on the other side of the consensus on spec ops all the time it seems.

Most overrated game I've played this year; ironic given its metacritic score.
 
J

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Stupid AssCreedBro bug #ihavelostcount: The final checkpoint/cutscene trigger of the game Ezio campaign will not execute if vsync is disabled. Cesare and the two men he's fighting will just stand there, swinging their swords around in an infinite animation loop.
 
X

xenoflux2113

Member
JaseC said:
Stupid AssCreedBro bug #ihavelostcount: The final checkpoint/cutscene trigger of the game will not execute if vsync is disabled. Cesare and the two men he's fighting will just stand there, swinging their swords around in an infinite animation loop.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the heads up on that one. I'll try to remember it when I get to that point.
 
S

Stallion Free

Cock Encumbered
JaseC said:
Stupid AssCreedBro bug #ihavelostcount: The final checkpoint/cutscene trigger of the game will not execute if vsync is disabled. Cesare and the two men he's fighting will just stand there, swinging their swords around in an infinite animation loop.
Click to expand...
In game sync is awful anyways, triple buffer-vsync through d3doverrider and it should work fine.
 
J

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Stallion Free said:
In game sync is awful anyways, triple buffer-vsync through d3doverrider and it should work fine.
Click to expand...

I wasn't running any vsync at all. I'd tried to force triple buffering in AssCreed 2 via D3DO, but it didn't take, so I didn't think to try the same in Brotherhood... not that it matters now I've reached the final act of the game.
 
S

Stallion Free

Cock Encumbered
JaseC said:
I wasn't running any vsync at all. I'd tried to force triple buffering in AssCreed 2 via D3DO, but it didn't take, so I didn't think to try the same in Brotherhood... not that it matters now I've reached the final act of the game.
Click to expand...
Smaa breaks d3d
 
K

krzy123

Member
JaseC said:
Yeah, I recalled reading as much, so I deleted the SMAA files from the AssCreed 2 directory before installing D3DO, ultimately to no avail.
Click to expand...

I'm playing asscreed2 right now, and can't get d3do to work either. As a matter a fact i can't change any in game video options (well they change but don't save if you exit the game), and I can't override any vid options through nvidia inspector.
 
H

HoosTrax

Member
For those unaware, if you have the old-school disc version of Unreal Tournament III, that does activate on Steam despite predating Steamworks. (It'll show up as the Black Edition version in your Steam library regardless of whether or not you bought the original version or BE)
 
J

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Weekend Deal #1 is 66% off (some of the?) Unreal franchise. The Unreal Deal Pack is $13.59.

Weekend Deal #2 50% off Endless Space ($14.99). It's also free for the weekend.

The Daily Deal is 75% off the Trainz franchise.

krzy123 said:
I'm playing asscreed2 right now, and can't get d3do to work either. As a matter a fact i can't change any in game video options (well they change but don't save if you exit the game), and I can't override any vid options through nvidia inspector.
Click to expand...

How strange. I'm rather certain I had no issues with in-game settings and was able to force 8x AF through nvidia Inspector.
 
M

MagicWithEarvin

Member
I'll pay over the average just to get Saints Row 3 and the Company of Heroes games. I'll drop Darksiders and Metro 2033 codes on here later.

HoosTrax, I'll give you Red Faction.
 
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