• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

STEAM | January 2016 - Out of cash, out of cache

Status
Not open for further replies.
P

Popstar

Member
lashman said:
Don’t trust indie publisher Black Shell Media (my story)
Click to expand...
There's several companies like this.

They offer to market your game for a cut. The logic being that of course they'll do as good a job as possible because the more money you make the more they'll make.

Of course, it also means they can sit back and do nothing at all and still get their cut while you try and frantically market the game on your own.

Even some more "legit" publishers offer deals like this. With no guarantees.
 
N

NicoNizza

Neo Member
jshackles said:
I don't think they're too bad honestly, and this coming from a huge fan of the series. VI is obviously the worst offender in many ways, but Nyxo's bilinear filter patch really helps and steady progress is being made to mod the character sprites from the SNES version back into the game, which quells about 99% of the issues I have with it. See here for a sneak peek

V's translation is much improved over the previous ports, and also benefits from having the bilinear character filter removed via a mod.

as for III, IV, and IV: TAY I suppose that's just a matter of personal preference. I liked the 3D versions of these games but wish the battles weren't hindered by 15fps performance. Obviously with IV and TAY we all would have preferred the fantastic PSP ports, but it's not like those aren't otherwise unavailable elsewhere.

The rest of the games (VII, VIII, XIII, XIII-2, and XIII-3) are are various degrees of from "okay" to "passable" ports but I think are all technically superior to their original console counterparts. IX looks like it will fall under the same category: not great, but passable and better than anything else available.

XI and XIV were always on PC so there isn't really much to talk about there in terms of porting.

It's a shame the series doesn't get more love in it's ports, but I'm ultimately happy with what's available.
Click to expand...

I agree with almost everything you've said. Being a maniac soundtracker myself, It always dissapointed me that Square Enix never tried to a) keep the original compressed audio and not the stereo-midi thing that they did in, for example, FF VII's port (It has a lot of blank spaces between notes which are very notorious) or B) using something like Distant Worlds or a more advance technology to improve the tracks (Uematsu can imitate an entire orchestra in his studios, but he never needs to since he keeps recording with live orchestras instead)

Apart from that, it's true that FF VI's port is the worst by far. Also agree with FF IV's and TAY's ports. They should have totally used the ones in PSP.

Still, I'm grateful they are being added and supported by Steam, since you feel a lot more guarded than buying the physical game and playing it in you PSX.

I've played the ones for Android. The first thing that came to mind was "I wanna kill myself".
 
Z

zkylon

zkylewd
tuxfool said:
Not enough bones in the base model.

It would take more than a reskin to get that working.
Click to expand...
i mean

not to get too deep into this stuff

but im pretty sure modders do a whole lot more than reskins to make them bouncies big bottom calientes mods

i mean

just throw in 3 bones in there

you can get that thing flopping and flapping all over the place in no time
 
T

tuxfool

Banned
zkylon said:
i mean

not to get too deep into this stuff

but im pretty sure modders do a whole lot more than reskins to make them bouncies big bottom calientes mods

i mean

just throw in 3 bones in there

you can get that thing flopping and flapping all over the place in no time
Click to expand...

*shrug* it could be possible, mods don't have to actually work properly, or even be good.

I've not seen these mods, and I haven't looked at the stuff CDPr has released so I wouldn't know what can be changed in the character models. I'm actually not that interested, beyond a few idle thoughts. It also occurred to me as pretty amusing that they rejected naked Geralt for technical reasons only.
 
S

Soulflarz

Banned
Finished RotTR, did a decent bit of sidequests?

Super pretty, but only mediocre as a game. Still an uncharted clone, now with uninspired sidequests and an psuedo-open world without incentive to explore it. Would have preferred a fully fleshed out one (which I doubt the dev team wanted to put the effort into, as it would have been a lot larger of a game) or a more well designed single player closed level game.

Regardless, one major stupidity that this game does that countless games do-- and i'll tag it, even if I'm not giving the context at all-- but seriously, games, stop doing this
giving me the choice to spare/kill someone as a moral decision and then killing them in the same scene if I choose spare, you're ruining the whole damn point of the choice and giving up an opportunity to flesh out your character.

Now, actually identifiable spoiler of sorts
also not a fan of "use item to kill whole room" *everyone dies but important dude because he has last words to give off against all logic even though it's an instant kill by nature*
because this feels like you could have done it better without that happening at all.
 
D

dex3108

Member
Soulflarz said:
Finished RotTR, did a decent bit of sidequests?

Super pretty, but only mediocre as a game. Still an uncharted clone, now with uninspired sidequests and an psuedo-open world without incentive to explore it. Would have preferred a fully fleshed out one (which I doubt the dev team wanted to put the effort into, as it would have been a lot larger of a game) or a more well designed single player closed level game.

Regardless, one major stupidity that this game does that countless games do-- and i'll tag it, even if I'm not giving the context at all-- but seriously, games, stop doing this
giving me the choice to spare/kill someone as a moral decision and then killing them in the same scene if I choose spare, you're ruining the whole damn point of the choice and giving up an opportunity to flesh out your character.
Click to expand...

There are other stupid things like text popping up every time when optional tomb is nearby, color coding claimable surfaces (in Uncharted they use yellow and in TR that is white), in first few hours they are taking controls from your hand too much, Lara is still clumsy and in first few hours she end's up falling and hurting herself way too much (we need to save her from her self not from others)...
 
T

Turfster

Member
Soulflarz said:
Y-yes? There was quite a lot of them
Click to expand...
Yes, but it doesn't actually drop down on my system.
So it's not linked to windows language or anything, and Steam is just being a dick?

(I don't need it right now, but I want to do my eventual second runthrough in Japanese again. It's tradition!)

dex3108 said:
color coding claimable surfaces (in Uncharted they use yellow and in TR that is white)
Click to expand...

Signposting climbable/hangable stuff has been a staple of platformers since the early 90s tho ;)
 
lashman

lashman

Steam-GAF's Official Ambassador to Gaming-GAF
Turfster said:
Yes, but it doesn't actually drop down on my system.
So it's not linked to windows language or anything, and Steam is just being a dick?
Click to expand...

gH4LnKN.jpg
 
S

Soulflarz

Banned
dex3108 said:
There are other stupid things like text popping up every time when optional tomb is nearby, color coding claimable surfaces (in Uncharted they use yellow and in TR that is white), in first few hours they are taking controls from your hand too much, Lara is still clumsy and in first few hours she end's up falling and hurting herself way too much (we need to save her from her self not from others)...
Click to expand...

This
"OPTIONAL TOMB NEARBY!" please, if I didn't go to this specific tomb the first 8 times you mentioned it, stop.

*Lara offers advice as I aim at something*
*miss target*
*Lara offers advice again*
*reaims*
*Lara says line a third time*

I like the game, but it has awhile to go before I stop calling it the vastly inferior Uncharted clone. It has the problems of an uncharted game but as if it was made by ubisoft world design-- that is to say, uncharted 2 did it better last gen, learn from the game you're copying.

Other issues on my mind, because others have said the positives
-Adding collectibles that affect your game also is never going to actually boost peoples views of your game too.
-Color coding objects is really stupid and uncharted has the one and done on that- you can't infinitely have nothing be climbable except the one path to the goal, else that section is automated. I didn't even like this in my uncharted 2 replay 2 days ago. I think my issue with it more in RotTR is they go beyond the idea of you can only touch white objects to the fact that "hey look this is conveniently here. In one set path. Always."
-I don't believe rope is nearly as commonplace for keeping things together as the game wants me to believe.
-Flesh out the open world or ditch it for well designed levels.
-Compare your game to an 'ubisoft' game and see the similarities, then ask how can you change this.
-Pick realism or fantasy styled. I'm supposed to actually take at face value Lara is doing this stuff, then the game randomly throw in fantasy, regardless of Lara being dramatic the whole game.
-Add run and gun and proper cover mechanics -- core gameplay should be strong, you shouldn't need upgrades to make your game not feel stale, or else by game n it will be stale no matter what you do.
-Make sidequests interesting or don't put them in at all- no one wants to sit around collecting x all day, it's 2015 (from release, 2016 now I guess)
-Don't make tombs that need items you won't get for half the game. That stupid popup doesn't go away and you can't solve it. Also-- when you segment your levels by where you are in the story, why the hell would you put an endgame item needed in an area a third in? This isn't metroidvania, people aren't generally going to want to go back.
-Rely on tropes less. Write a better plot :V


I'm sure theres more :p
 
corrosivefrost

corrosivefrost

Member
Gather round kiddos...
While I'm not sure it was ever really a popular feature, it's time for another installment of "Hey Frost! Where ya been?"
wZMALcH.png
Click to expand...

Apparently the answer is "playing Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen". I'm hoping I can get it's damn hooks out of me and get back to playing some other games. I've done just about everything achievement related, outside of the 3 that are shown as locked which are for hitting the level cap (200... I'm at about 108 or so, I think.), doing a hard mode playthrough, and doing a speed run playthrough (both of which, I believe, can use your same save file, so I should be in good shape to do those at some point in time in the future, when I've had a good break from the game, I guess).

What'd I think of the game overall? Even with a ridiculous amount of hours sunk into it, I don't know that it lived up to the hype that people had built around the game when talking about the PS3 version. The combat is definitely the most polished aspect, I'd say, but this is expected since this game is what DMC team made after DMC4 (instead of making DMC5, leaving Capcom to go get NT to make DmC instead). The variety in classes is welcomed too, though I never spent much time in the fighter tier, I spent the majority of the hours clocked on the game switching between mage, strider, ranger, assassin, and magick archer... and each one played similar to those you would expect it to with enough variety in the vocation skills to make them feel unique and mostly worthwhile (except for assassin, I think, looking back on it).

Outside of that, a lot of stuff (outside of the enemy design) leaves a lot to be desired... there's a distinct lack of enemy variety until you either clear the "final" mission or you've beaten the DLC area (Bitterblack Isle) at least once... and then some of the enemies that show up are a bit ridiculous in terms of balance. Loot drops, particularly those from Bitterblack island can be a bit of a frustrating endeavor, as I've been trying to get the ring for the magick archer class that turns sixfold bolt into ninefold bolt (preferably with the bonus for explosive rivet as well) for what seems like forever... I wanted to get that and switch back to magick archer, but I ended up finishing the game out as a ranger instead and I *still* don't have that ring. I've read up on it and there are places people spend hours reopening chests to try to get the rare drops they covet... this type of loot system drives me nuts. And we haven't even gotten to the traversal yet... I'm not sure when Capcom added in the eternal ferrystone (nice touch) but the lack of being able to get enough portcrystals so you can set up warps in all the places you'd like them before getting to NG+ is a real bummer. An easier way to handle it would've been to allow for fast travel between discovered riftstones a la Dark Souls 2 bonfire fast travel, but alas, this is not an option.

Now it may sound like there's a lot of negativity there... and there is, I guess. But at the core of the game, there's just something that sinks its teeth into you; I imagine this is what people who get pulled into the vortex of an MMO feel like... I'd find myself saying "eh, I'll boot this game up and do a few quests, or try to get achievements x, y, and z, shouldn't take more than an hour." Then 4 hours later, I'm looking at the clock thinking "holy schnikes, have I really been playing that long? Oh, well, I should just finish up this last thing before I save and quit..." and you know what happens next.

It was a mostly enjoyable ride and I'm glad I finally got a chance to play this, as I've been waiting for the day Capcom would hopefully port it to PC with a stable framerate, as the horror stories of single digit dips had me steering clear of the game, even when I got it "free" through a PS+ subscription. The port is good and the core of the game is extremely well crafted, even if a bunch of the more superficial aspects of the game suffer because of it.
 
L

LurkerPrime

Member
TellTale's Game of Thrones is horrible. It's like half a game. Avoid it unless you're also planning to get Episode Sev-- I mean, Season 2.

Can't believe they made that while also working on Tales From the Borderlands... it's like polar opposites, quality-wise.
 
corrosivefrost

corrosivefrost

Member
LurkerPrime said:
TellTale's Game of Thrones is horrible. It's like half a game. Avoid it unless you're also planning to get Episode Sev-- I mean, Season 2.

Can't believe they made that while also working on Tales From the Borderlands... it's like polar opposites, quality-wise.
Click to expand...

Nah.

It's nowhere near the gem that Tales from the Borderlands is, but it's not the worst thing they've ever done. And aside from the strange ending to it all that seemed out of place, it felt very much like GoT to me.

I wouldn't recommend it to casual fans, but as someone who had recently finished the last available GoT book, I was looking for something more in the universe and the game kind of scratched that itch. Especially since there wasn't a lot of opportunity for me to compare it to what happened in the books (say, if I were to start watching the HBO series) and become irritated because of it.
 
Z

zkylon

zkylewd
grim fandango was so cool

i'm having such a good time replaying it

the dev commentary isn't the greatest and the remaster is kinda buggy in some parts, but grim is such a timeless story so full of character
 
L

Ludens

Banned
zkylon said:
grim fandango was so cool

i'm having such a good time replaying it

the dev commentary isn't the greatest and the remaster is kinda buggy in some parts, but grim is such a timeless story so full of character
Click to expand...

So it's still buggy after months? Lol.
 
D

dex3108

Member
Turfster said:
Signposting climbable/hangable stuff has been a staple of platformers since the early 90s tho ;)
Click to expand...

Yes but this is 2016 (2015 really) and many other games did it better. Even Naughty Dog tried to incorporated it better in TLoU with police tape and subtle pointing to right direction. In RotTR it looks like some lunatic went around with buck of paint and painted every claimable object. I mean if they put story about crazy guy with bucket of paint in game it would make more sense. If there is piece of wood attached to rock that is good enough sign you can climb it but no they had to paint it white for some reason. Even worse is when you see wall painted white under the window.
 
Z

zkylon

zkylewd
Ludens said:
So it's still buggy after months? Lol.
Click to expand...
some parts. i've had a few scenes that you couldn't properly navigate with point and click controls, one scene that got stuck in one state and i had to restart the game and that's about it. it's nothing major for sure

most of the game is painless
 
L

Lingitiz

Member
Soulflarz said:
This
"OPTIONAL TOMB NEARBY!" please, if I didn't go to this specific tomb the first 8 times you mentioned it, stop.

*Lara offers advice as I aim at something*
*miss target*
*Lara offers advice again*
*reaims*
*Lara says line a third time*

I like the game, but it has awhile to go before I stop calling it the vastly inferior Uncharted clone. It has the problems of an uncharted game but as if it was made by ubisoft world design-- that is to say, uncharted 2 did it better last gen, learn from the game you're copying.

Other issues on my mind, because others have said the positives
-Adding collectibles that affect your game also is never going to actually boost peoples views of your game too.
-Color coding objects is really stupid and uncharted has the one and done on that- you can't infinitely have nothing be climbable except the one path to the goal, else that section is automated. I didn't even like this in my uncharted 2 replay 2 days ago. I think my issue with it more in RotTR is they go beyond the idea of you can only touch white objects to the fact that "hey look this is conveniently here. In one set path. Always."
-I don't believe rope is nearly as commonplace for keeping things together as the game wants me to believe.
-Flesh out the open world or ditch it for well designed levels.
-Compare your game to an 'ubisoft' game and see the similarities, then ask how can you change this.
-Pick realism or fantasy styled. I'm supposed to actually take at face value Lara is doing this stuff, then the game randomly throw in fantasy, regardless of Lara being dramatic the whole game.
-Add run and gun and proper cover mechanics -- core gameplay should be strong, you shouldn't need upgrades to make your game not feel stale, or else by game n it will be stale no matter what you do.
-Make sidequests interesting or don't put them in at all- no one wants to sit around collecting x all day, it's 2015 (from release, 2016 now I guess)
-Don't make tombs that need items you won't get for half the game. That stupid popup doesn't go away and you can't solve it. Also-- when you segment your levels by where you are in the story, why the hell would you put an endgame item needed in an area a third in? This isn't metroidvania, people aren't generally going to want to go back.
-Rely on tropes less. Write a better plot :V


I'm sure theres more :p
Click to expand...

Having just come off a replay of Uncharted 2, I'm really liking Rise. I just enjoy the core feel of the combat and greater control over the way Lara moves way more. Part of that comes from me realizing Uncharted 2 has not aged very well, which is a bummer since I once considered it real classic. Aside from the collectibles I've really enjoyed the side content in Rise, too, and I think the hub structure isn't bad. It doesn't feel too bloated and is just big enough to give you some options in what to do next. The optional tombs are pretty easy but they're fun to figure out.

Oh and it plays amazingly with the Steam Controller (gyro+mouse aim). Popping off bow and arrow headshots with the preciseness of the gyro feels so good.
 
J

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
I think it was Miyamoto who once said, "A game with lots of collectables is eventually good; a bad game is bad forever."
 
L

LurkerPrime

Member
Ubisoft took Miyamoto's wisdom to heart and built towers around it.
corrosivefrost said:
Nah.

It's nowhere near the gem that Tales from the Borderlands is, but it's not the worst thing they've ever done. And aside from the strange ending to it all that seemed out of place, it felt very much like GoT to me.

I wouldn't recommend it to casual fans, but as someone who had recently finished the last available GoT book, I was looking for something more in the universe and the game kind of scratched that itch. Especially since there wasn't a lot of opportunity for me to compare it to what happened in the books (say, if I were to start watching the HBO series) and become irritated because of it.
Click to expand...

If it actually went somewhere I could see defending it, but as it stands... there's just nothing satisfying about the whole thing. It's a giant dance of nothing, with either crushingly inevitable or oddly impossible consequences. I don't wanna go as far as saying that GoT and TT's adventures are incompatible, but man, they could not have handled it much worse.

Maybe it'll be easier to look back on GoT S1 once Season 2... invariably leaves everyone waiting for Episode 13.
 
D

Deleted member 125677

Unconfirmed Member
Don't play The Witness close to bedtime. Just sayin'
 
Wok

Wok

Member
24 hours in The Witness, and I am 326(+13) puzzles in. I am now confident the amount of contents that Blow announced was correct.
 
Endruen

Endruen

Member
strafer said:
That's really cool.

And I must be one of few people on GAF that actually likes Alien 3.
Click to expand...
Really? It's been a while since I watched them, but I've always thought that the 3rd was the best one.

zkylon said:
ok i was bored and goofing around on the nexus so i decided to look to witcha 3's top nsfw files section and found this guy called hansdergrosse that uploads like the most hilarious mods

gonna post a picture of the only sfw one but these descriptions are amazing



Horses Mod red eyes and added tattoo


Women bigger Vag... and radioactive Nippels


Gwint Anime Bodys Naked


Women look like Leopard


i have to do something better with my friday nights
Click to expand...
WTF? Those anime girls images are from Artificial Girl 3.
Don't ask me why I know it.
 
D

dex3108

Member
The Dear Leader said:
Typical scumbag Nvidia move per usual.
Click to expand...

In first two minutes of that video he showed me that his research was shallow. Then i stopped watching it. If you want to claim something then better do good research and present concrete evidence instead of reading couple of old articles that has been proven wrong and talking about thing that is part of the Engine like it was Nvidia who did it (i am talking about water under the level in Crysis 2).
 
D

Dr Dogg

Member
tuxfool said:
Twitter is the place where reasonable discussion goes to die.
Click to expand...

I thought that was Gaming side :p

JaseC said:
I think it was Miyamoto who once said, "A game with lots of collectables is eventually good; a bad game is bad forever."
Click to expand...

So that's why Rare's platformers were collectathons. DK64 and Banjo still give me nightmares!

dex3108 said:
And here we go again

Nvidia's Gameworks nerfing AMD cards and its own previous-gen GPU's?
Click to expand...

Urghhhhh. How about not having any meaningful driver enhancements for Kepler cards is close to 18 months. It's not like this is anything new to someone who has been an Nvidia user for any length of time and holds onto their GPU for a while. Just look at 2014's big hitters at the end of the year and the performance difference between Kepler and Maxwell cards.

I kept a couple of 480's longer than I should as nothing was tempting me off them... until it got to the point where a 750Ti could go toe to toe with 1 of them. Same before when I had a couple of 9800GT's, eventually when Nvidia had moved on and the newer architecture got support via driver updates then the gap only starts to widen on newer stuff. But Gameworks is the new villain is some folks eyes.
 
T

The Dear Leader

Banned
dex3108 said:
In first two minutes of that video he showed me that his research was shallow. Then i stopped watching it. If you want to claim something then better do good research and present concrete evidence instead of reading couple of old articles that has been proven wrong and talking about thing that is part of the Engine like it was Nvidia who did it (i am talking about water under the level in Crysis 2).
Click to expand...

He goes into some pretty interesting stuff that I didn't know about.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Age of Empires III Definitive Edition free trial on Steam
Deals
3
555
Krathoon replied
[notebookcheck] GOG Pokes Fun at Steam's Game Licensing
2
59
3K
pudel replied
Apex Legends is taking away its support for the Steam Deck and Linux
11
672
Wolzard replied
Devil Road Run (Genki) Now Available on Steam!
1
395
Holammer replied
The time is now for Valve to re-enter the console market
Analysis Hardware Platform 2
73
4K
ArtHands replied
Top Bottom