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STEAM Announcements & Updates 2014 III - Don't Believe The Tags
- Thread starter MRORANGE
- Start date
- Status
BinaryPork2737
Unconfirmed Member
All of this slang just reminds me of the special levels from Super Mario World. Does anyone still use tubular?
Was that the stage where you have to maintain a hot air balloon mario while shit was flying in your path? Screw that.
Star Road? I don't think I've ever heard anyone say "tubular" except when describing, like, rigatoni.
Krappadizzle
Member
Awesome giveaway. I'm determined to win one sooner than later!
I'm so balls deep in The Witcher 2 that I wish I knew when the 3rd one was coming out. CDPR have their work cut out for them.
I'm so balls deep in The Witcher 2 that I wish I knew when the 3rd one was coming out. CDPR have their work cut out for them.
8 X 11 Printer Paper
Member
This is just making me sad about Rocket Power being dead still...
crimsonheadGCN
Banned
The Walking Dead: Season 2 for $10 is a pretty good deal. I <3 TF2/Dota 2 key trading.
Yeah, I've been wanting to play through the two games again but I told myself that I wouldn't do so until I could plan it around 3's release. When I played through The Witcher 2 it was just the regular edition, but even so I'll opt for the Iorveth path the second time through as I partnered with Roche originally.
SUBZERO-08
Member
For Family Sharing, if you reach the 10 account limit (unlikely I ever will, but curious) are you able to remove access from an older account and give access to a different account instead? Or are you stuck with the first 10 you grant access to?
Stallion Free
Cock Encumbered
Iorveth sucks dwarf cock tho
Christ, Arkham Origins is 34GB installed with all the DLC.
It's actually 5 accounts per system now, and, yes, you can select which of the 5 detected accounts have access from Steam -> Settings -> Family.
That's okay, I don't judge.
It's actually 5 accounts per system now, and, yes, you can select which of the 5 detected accounts have access from Steam -> Settings -> Family.
That's okay, I don't judge.
Does Sexy Beach even have gamepad support?
Dice
Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
Me too. My controller is so old. I just want something fresh.
SUBZERO-08
Member
Great, thanks.
Microsoft has yet to clarify the anticipated release window of "2014".
Syphon Filter
Member
maybe valve makes the steam controller with analogs and stuff.
Xinput would be the right thing for Microsoft to do...that is the opposite of what they will do though.
PepsimanVsJoe
Member
I just hope the Steam controller isn't ridiculously priced.
Even 49.99 is pushing it. The son of a bitch would have to have a Saturn quality d-pad to justify that.
Even 49.99 is pushing it. The son of a bitch would have to have a Saturn quality d-pad to justify that.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
I 100% completed Tomb Raider (2013) today. I'm pretty torn about the game, because there's a great deal of things I liked a lot, and a great deal of things I really hated simultaneously. That's a pretty unusual reaction for me with a game.
Things I liked a lot:
- Game feel: Movement feels great, shooting enemies with the bow is incredibly satisfying, jumping and climbing is really smooth, the sort of half-sticky half-cover system is really flexible and felt excellent. I can't stress enough how great it is just running around in the game. This has some of the best auto-platforming I've ever played in a game, it also has the thing Uncharted has where if you try to make a jump you can't quite make, it gives you credit for trying and bends your jump arc / animation in order to get you where you need to be.
- Visuals: The game is really, really gorgeous. Weather effects are great. Environments are mostly excellent and there's quite a bit of variety given that it takes place on a single island. Lara's model keeps changing throughout the game as she suffers more and more abuse--and they very creatively have plot reasons to clean her up every once in a while only to make her bloody and dirty again.
- Enemy AI: I generally liked the enemy AI. There are only a few regular enemy types (guy with bow, guy with gun, guy with machinegun, guy with knife, guy with shield and sword, guy with molotov, guy with dynamite, mounted turret guy, wolf-dog), but they combine them interestingly. I generally felt like I had to move around a bit to avoid getting pincered or my cover shot out or blown up. It felt frenetic and engaging generally.
- Bar filling: This game is more stuffed full of bars to fill than any game series other than Assassin's Creed. You are collecting scrap. You are collecting experience. You're using experience to upgrade skills and scrap to upgrade weapons. You're collecting weapon parts. You're collecting GPS pickups. You're collecting relics (like in Uncharted, they have a little 3D Model) + most relics have a hidden thing for you to find if you rotate the model. You're collecting text diaries. Every area has something to shoot or burn or find as a per-level sort of thing. There are like 999 combat bonuses for extra experience. For a mostly fairly linear kind of action-shooter, I felt constantly stimulated with tons of shit to do.
- Ziplines: I don't think people in the real world use ziplines but I love them in video games.
- The Puzzle Tombs: The game has optional tomb areas which are basically little mini-puzzle areas. This is good because the main game doesn't have many puzzles. These work great, they're very unique and interesting. Totally totally enjoyed these, wish the game had three times as many.
- Tension and Release: The game does a great job alternating between high excitement and low excitement periods.
- Long, substantial: This is a 15+ hour game easily. I took 19 to 100%, but that's including maybe 3 hours of replay because of lost save progress.
- Performance: My computer is a $800 build from mid-2008 with no gaming-related parts upgrades since. I played on my monitor's native resolution with Medium settings and got a great framerate with no drops and v-sync on, and it looked excellent.
Things I didn't like:
- Game feel: All of the guns sucked in comparison to the bow, the grenade launcher is incredibly weak.
- "Big" enemies: Every single shooting game that features a 10 foot tall enemy that wears tons of armour and takes 999999 bullets and then you have to QTE to kill it and the enemy has lines like "YOUR PUNY WEAPONS WON'T HURT ME" is stupid. There are no 10 foot tall human beings. This is not enjoyable. No one likes this. Tomb Raider has this multiple times, including two separate boss fights.
- End-game combat: About three quarters of the way through the game, all the enemies start having armour and machine guns and combat takes a nosedive. It's much more frustrating without being more skillful. Bullet sponge crap. The last boss fight is like four QTEs.
- Setpieces: The game has an enormous number of setpieces where you're in a collapsing building, running from explosions, parachuting through trees, tumbling down a muddy slide, being pushed down rapids, falling large distances and hitting the ground, etc. These suck. They suck in every game that does them. It's not good gameplay, because it's basically an extended low-control QTE. But the worst part is that after the first time, the spectacle wears off. It's just boring and blasé. You see a bridge and you say 'gee whiz, I wonder if the bridge will collapse as I'm walking on it" and then it does.
- Emphasis on killing animals: I don't like games that reward you for killing animals. Tomb Raider features a hunting element. You get significant experience, scrap, and a large number of achievements for hunting animals. You can hunt crabs, seagulls, crows, rabbits, rats, deer, pigs, and wolves. The game forces you to kill a deer about 20 minutes in. Eventually I sort of got over it, but I wish they had rethought this. There's no plot reason, the game doesn't have a food system, it's just gross.
Things I hated:
- The intro: The single worst part of the game is the introduction section. How the hell does this happen in so many games? It has forced slow-walking.
- Lara getting the shit kicked out of her: Lara gets shot, burned, inappropriated touched, beaten, falls, stabbed and impaled, hung upsidedown multiple times, etc. If you lose a QTE, you are going to get brutally dismembered by an enemy or environmental obstacle. The Conan Clueless Gamer review that emphasizes this is right to. The sounds here are really disgusting too. This is the definition of pornographic. The scenes aren't done to provoke any response other than titillation. It's just stupid.
- Genocide: Lara kills maybe 1000-1200 people during the run of the game. Lara kills more people than Kane and Lynch did combined. This is ridiculous. You can't have a moment in the introduction where the game is like "omg big emotional moment lara has to use violence to defend herself killing people is such a big moral responsibility" and then have her headshot 15 people in a row five minutes later. Either learn to make games with less combat, or stop trying to make it a major plot/character theme. Oh and by the way, the first time you kill someone it's in the context of a group of people burning down a village and killing dozens of innocent civilians and trying to kill you after groping you--there is absolutely, positively no shade of grey here. There's no moral dilemma.
- The characters, the writing: The characters are awful. You have a team full of shitty sidekicks. There's "Grumpy Old Crazy Man", "Wise and Caring Father Figure", "Best Friend", "Big Dumb Muscle Gronk", "Socially Awkward Nerd" (this guy actually wears a t-shirt with an Esc key, it's just a total joke), "Oily Used Car Salesman Jerkoff
", "Sassy Black Woman". It's pitiful. They're all terrible. The only character who gets any writing behind him at all is the father figure guy, who keeps telling Lara he believes in her, she can do it, etc etc etc. Which is why it's obvious
. And speaking of shitty characters, Lara sucks. She spends half the game yelling "nooooo" instead of intervening. She has at least two opportunities where she is hiding and could easily headshot the main bad guy, but instead she just sits and stares. Her delivery isn't particularly good. It's all so flat and telegraphed. It's so phoned in. And half the dialogue is cliche stuff. Even the ambient enemy dialogue sucks--the last enemy in the game fired a random audio cue where he said "Hey guys, she's got a gun!" No shit moron, I just laid waste to an entire civilization. I was really tempted to skip most of the cutscenes. The villain is also your stock psychopathic idiot. Oh yeah and the ending features a fade to white where the words "A Survivor is Born" appear on screen. Give me a break. Did the same people who write Final Fantasy games now write this?
- The story: Hey, you know the supernatural bullshit I hate in every Tomb Raider game? And every Uncharted game? Well, it's here and it's just as stupid here.
Wow that's a lot of words about Tomb Raider. I'd play another one. It's a big dumb mega-budget AAA game. I think in a lot of ways it's one of the better examples of what it's trying to do this generation. I definitely think it's a better game than Uncharted 3. A lot of the baggage of the game comes from the fact that it's a big dumb AAA game. I totally see how they were targeting 5+ million sales here. Fire the writer for the next one.
Things I liked a lot:
- Game feel: Movement feels great, shooting enemies with the bow is incredibly satisfying, jumping and climbing is really smooth, the sort of half-sticky half-cover system is really flexible and felt excellent. I can't stress enough how great it is just running around in the game. This has some of the best auto-platforming I've ever played in a game, it also has the thing Uncharted has where if you try to make a jump you can't quite make, it gives you credit for trying and bends your jump arc / animation in order to get you where you need to be.
- Visuals: The game is really, really gorgeous. Weather effects are great. Environments are mostly excellent and there's quite a bit of variety given that it takes place on a single island. Lara's model keeps changing throughout the game as she suffers more and more abuse--and they very creatively have plot reasons to clean her up every once in a while only to make her bloody and dirty again.
- Enemy AI: I generally liked the enemy AI. There are only a few regular enemy types (guy with bow, guy with gun, guy with machinegun, guy with knife, guy with shield and sword, guy with molotov, guy with dynamite, mounted turret guy, wolf-dog), but they combine them interestingly. I generally felt like I had to move around a bit to avoid getting pincered or my cover shot out or blown up. It felt frenetic and engaging generally.
- Bar filling: This game is more stuffed full of bars to fill than any game series other than Assassin's Creed. You are collecting scrap. You are collecting experience. You're using experience to upgrade skills and scrap to upgrade weapons. You're collecting weapon parts. You're collecting GPS pickups. You're collecting relics (like in Uncharted, they have a little 3D Model) + most relics have a hidden thing for you to find if you rotate the model. You're collecting text diaries. Every area has something to shoot or burn or find as a per-level sort of thing. There are like 999 combat bonuses for extra experience. For a mostly fairly linear kind of action-shooter, I felt constantly stimulated with tons of shit to do.
- Ziplines: I don't think people in the real world use ziplines but I love them in video games.
- The Puzzle Tombs: The game has optional tomb areas which are basically little mini-puzzle areas. This is good because the main game doesn't have many puzzles. These work great, they're very unique and interesting. Totally totally enjoyed these, wish the game had three times as many.
- Tension and Release: The game does a great job alternating between high excitement and low excitement periods.
- Long, substantial: This is a 15+ hour game easily. I took 19 to 100%, but that's including maybe 3 hours of replay because of lost save progress.
- Performance: My computer is a $800 build from mid-2008 with no gaming-related parts upgrades since. I played on my monitor's native resolution with Medium settings and got a great framerate with no drops and v-sync on, and it looked excellent.
Things I didn't like:
- Game feel: All of the guns sucked in comparison to the bow, the grenade launcher is incredibly weak.
- "Big" enemies: Every single shooting game that features a 10 foot tall enemy that wears tons of armour and takes 999999 bullets and then you have to QTE to kill it and the enemy has lines like "YOUR PUNY WEAPONS WON'T HURT ME" is stupid. There are no 10 foot tall human beings. This is not enjoyable. No one likes this. Tomb Raider has this multiple times, including two separate boss fights.
- End-game combat: About three quarters of the way through the game, all the enemies start having armour and machine guns and combat takes a nosedive. It's much more frustrating without being more skillful. Bullet sponge crap. The last boss fight is like four QTEs.
- Setpieces: The game has an enormous number of setpieces where you're in a collapsing building, running from explosions, parachuting through trees, tumbling down a muddy slide, being pushed down rapids, falling large distances and hitting the ground, etc. These suck. They suck in every game that does them. It's not good gameplay, because it's basically an extended low-control QTE. But the worst part is that after the first time, the spectacle wears off. It's just boring and blasé. You see a bridge and you say 'gee whiz, I wonder if the bridge will collapse as I'm walking on it" and then it does.
- Emphasis on killing animals: I don't like games that reward you for killing animals. Tomb Raider features a hunting element. You get significant experience, scrap, and a large number of achievements for hunting animals. You can hunt crabs, seagulls, crows, rabbits, rats, deer, pigs, and wolves. The game forces you to kill a deer about 20 minutes in. Eventually I sort of got over it, but I wish they had rethought this. There's no plot reason, the game doesn't have a food system, it's just gross.
Things I hated:
- The intro: The single worst part of the game is the introduction section. How the hell does this happen in so many games? It has forced slow-walking.
- Lara getting the shit kicked out of her: Lara gets shot, burned, inappropriated touched, beaten, falls, stabbed and impaled, hung upsidedown multiple times, etc. If you lose a QTE, you are going to get brutally dismembered by an enemy or environmental obstacle. The Conan Clueless Gamer review that emphasizes this is right to. The sounds here are really disgusting too. This is the definition of pornographic. The scenes aren't done to provoke any response other than titillation. It's just stupid.
- Genocide: Lara kills maybe 1000-1200 people during the run of the game. Lara kills more people than Kane and Lynch did combined. This is ridiculous. You can't have a moment in the introduction where the game is like "omg big emotional moment lara has to use violence to defend herself killing people is such a big moral responsibility" and then have her headshot 15 people in a row five minutes later. Either learn to make games with less combat, or stop trying to make it a major plot/character theme. Oh and by the way, the first time you kill someone it's in the context of a group of people burning down a village and killing dozens of innocent civilians and trying to kill you after groping you--there is absolutely, positively no shade of grey here. There's no moral dilemma.
- The characters, the writing: The characters are awful. You have a team full of shitty sidekicks. There's "Grumpy Old Crazy Man", "Wise and Caring Father Figure", "Best Friend", "Big Dumb Muscle Gronk", "Socially Awkward Nerd" (this guy actually wears a t-shirt with an Esc key, it's just a total joke), "Oily Used Car Salesman Jerkoff
Who Is Obviously Being Set Up For a Heel Turn Later
that he's going to die, but not before he gets to have a dying breath monologue where he tells Lara to be strong
- The story: Hey, you know the supernatural bullshit I hate in every Tomb Raider game? And every Uncharted game? Well, it's here and it's just as stupid here.
Wow that's a lot of words about Tomb Raider. I'd play another one. It's a big dumb mega-budget AAA game. I think in a lot of ways it's one of the better examples of what it's trying to do this generation. I definitely think it's a better game than Uncharted 3. A lot of the baggage of the game comes from the fact that it's a big dumb AAA game. I totally see how they were targeting 5+ million sales here. Fire the writer for the next one.
BoosterDuck
Banned
Dualshock 4 and XBone controllers are $60 tho
Low blow. But left-handed mouse is the only way to play that.
Also, Croixleur, from Comiket 83, has been greenlit for quite a while now. Hopefully this does well in sales to open the floodgates for more Japanese games.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
I went to tag Dupy for his/her generosity when I realized I had already tagged Dupy for his/her generosity before now. Hahaha.
Oh gosh, I don't know if I'll bother if they forgo compatibility with xinput supported games.
yeah, late response, but it's still part of the gta complete bundle
Stallion Free
Cock Encumbered
I think Tomb Raider and Thief 2014 share the same writer. The plot somehow makes less sense and the characterization felt nonexistent. Like most characters show up twice in the plot in a 15+ hour game.
PepsimanVsJoe
Member
corrosivefrost
Member
Well since Tomb Raider 2013 was a better Uncharted than the Uncharted games, I think that says you have reasonable gaming tastes, sir. Congratulations.
You don't need an excuse. Go buy a DS4 and a bluetooth dongle. Upgrade done.
Well since Tomb Raider 2013 was a better Uncharted than the Uncharted games, I think that says you have reasonable gaming tastes, sir. Congratulations.
You don't need an excuse. Go buy a DS4 and a bluetooth dongle. Upgrade done.
Most games don't show you sony controller button prompts though. That pisses me off
Rickenslacker
Banned
While I more or less share the same opinion on the rest of your points, I didn't feel this to be the case in my playthrough. I thought the enemies avoided feeling like sponges by actually having visual indication of attack absorption, you could see the armour, you can plan your attack around that, you can see the armour falling off them after and reveal vulnerable spots. The feedback went a long way to avoid the problems of other games where it's just oh, these guys just... take more bullets for reasons! You also had weapon upgrades and skills for working around armour, so the game just lets you power creep their upgrades.
Umm, actually yes, Rhianna Pratchett worked on both of them (and Mirror's Edge and few other games).
oipic
Member
Congrats, Caerith - enjoy, and let us know what you think of it.
I've run out of superlatives and ways to thank Dupy, but simply enjoying the games Dupy so generously gifts is probably the best way, I guess? Thanks again, Dupy.
Thanks for the Tomb Raider review, stump. I'm surprised there's no food system attached to hunting considering her circumstances.
Anyway, I'll probably play it once I finish Colonial Marines.
That's good to hear.
Anyway, I'll probably play it once I finish Colonial Marines.
That's good to hear.
PepsimanVsJoe
Member
I really enjoyed the end-game combat in Tomb Raider. Everything just sorta clicked and I liked how everything was armored. It was very crunchy and satisfying mowing down the bad guys.
The hunting system had to have been a last-minute cut because it's really half-baked. At one point Crystal Dynamics probably worked on a system that required Lara to hunt for food, animal skins for bandages/warmth, whatever. It's glaringly obvious when knocking over all those medkits. Wish they bothered to revisit this with the "next-gen" version instead of screwing with Lara's face but...eh oh well.
The dialogue/writing/characters/story are all awful. But you know what? After a certain point I got the feeling everyone was taking the piss.
Take this scene in particular (spoiler warning)
http://i.minus.com/iq1AGq5Zq4vSu.jpg
Fuck you
Also there's this (more spoilers?)
At one point Lara loses all her guns.
http://i.minus.com/ic4piKEiZB9vY.jpg
Gotta love it.
So yeah. Enjoyable in its badness, looked damn good, and was fun.
There's no defending the pornographic levels of violence that befall Lara though.
The hunting system had to have been a last-minute cut because it's really half-baked. At one point Crystal Dynamics probably worked on a system that required Lara to hunt for food, animal skins for bandages/warmth, whatever. It's glaringly obvious when knocking over all those medkits. Wish they bothered to revisit this with the "next-gen" version instead of screwing with Lara's face but...eh oh well.
The dialogue/writing/characters/story are all awful. But you know what? After a certain point I got the feeling everyone was taking the piss.
Take this scene in particular (spoiler warning)
When the nerd bites it I realize it was all over a fucking wrench and a screwdriver, the two most common tools in the world yet it took a daring trip through a sinking ship to find them.
Fuck you
Alex......
Also there's this (more spoilers?)
At one point Lara loses all her guns.
THEY GIVE THEM ALL TO ONE GUY AND HE GETS KILLED IN A CUTSCENE!
Gotta love it.
So yeah. Enjoyable in its badness, looked damn good, and was fun.
There's no defending the pornographic levels of violence that befall Lara though.
8 X 11 Printer Paper
Member
Goat Simulator Beta is coming us April 1st. http://www.goat-simulator.com/
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Another great part about this -- they take all her guns, but not her ice pick axe. It's not like it's a small hidden knife she had tucked in somewhere, it's a gigantic climbing axe that's hanging from her belt.
What a coincidence, I just started playing it today (on ps3).
I agree with almost everything you said. The only two things I disagree with is the collectibles. There's just too much crap everywhere and it just feels like filler. I'm not having fun grabbing all this garbage (Although I'm still doing it out of a compulsive need to complete things). The only collectible that is neat are the relics. Also the tombs have been insultingly easy so far. I thought it might have been hyperbole when I heard people saying how easy these 'puzzles' are, but it isn't, it's even worse.
It's a good Uncharted game but a mediocre Tomb Raider game.
Actually, no. The story is unbelievably bad. These characters are horrible, this story is utterly asinine, the characters are HORRIBLE, this supernatural twist is horrible, everything but the gameplay is just bad.
Uncharted had characters I liked, and a storyline which was generally fun and engaging.
So it's really more of a bad uncharted game and a mediocre Tomb Raider game.
I 100%'d Lego LOTR-- how is Lego Marvel?
There's no food system because the new Lara is six foot twenty.
pretty done
Member
My DS4 is literally falling apart from playing South Park. It's a great controller that I wouldn't tell anyone to buy till they fix the analog issue.
Not gonna lie that one with the electricity/water stumped me for a bit.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
The Tombs stay pretty easy, in part because they're single puzzles rather than "dungeons" per se, but I still found them a satisfying departure from the rest of the game and there's some good thematic variety later.
Collecting all the heroes is awesome. Game is a bit easy, expected, but the mini-games are numerous. The open world New York City is fun to fly, run, float and smash through too. I've got to say, the Spiderman swinging mechanics is well done here, still suffers from webbing attached to invisible skybox and is a bit slow, but he controls like a dream. Still waiting for my Spiderman game with Spiderman 2 web mechanics.
NingenJanai
Member
Bla bla bla
ModBot said:Instructions for participants:
I am giving away 2 Steam keys. To enter this giveaway, send a PM to ModBot with any subject line. In the body, copy and paste the entire line below that corresponds to the key you want (if you include more than one game, you will be blocked from entering).
Rules for this Giveaway:
- If you are a lurker you are not eligible for this giveaway. You need five or more posts in either the current Steam thread or the previous one to be eligible
- Do not trade keys you win off-site to enrich yourself. Don't try to claim games you have no interest in collecting or playing. Don't claim games to give them to friends off-site.
- If the key is already taken you will not receive a reply. Replies may take a minute or two:
Euro Truck Simulator --MB-4002527972E28B6A- Taken by Shalashaska
Trainz Simulator 12 --MB-4FD63DB5F99EF04E- Taken by zeroOman
Shalashaska
Member
Cheers!
Whoa! Pier Solar is on Greenlight? When did that happen?
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