One bit that’s nice about being a gooner game is, there’s enough outfit options you can just pick something “cute” and tasteful, and then just play the game. So while many people are ogling, people that are not as interested can just play the game.

EDIT: Adding onto this, though I consider myself a gooner I actually had the opposite reaction to Nier Automata, the game’s carbon copy. I didn’t quite like the bare-ass-thong look of 2B, and it felt like it was consistently distracting enough to make the game’s emotional moments feel silly. At the least, if I put SB’s “Eve” in a denim skirt, that’s my own choice.

I abandoned it.

I found some cool stuff. I even coincidentally solved a puzzle involving an ice box on my first go. But it was taking waaaaayyyy too long to find anything interesting, and I had multiple runs where it felt like there was no chance to build anything other than a straight path of rooms leading to a dead end, either from lack of doors, or lack of keys.

I actually like the dice roll of getting different encounters and adapting to what comes up; but only when the goal is generally to do well, eg dealing lots of damage or exploring new directions. But often there’s very particular objectives in BP and the UI doesn’t do a lot to help you track them.

Would be great if the matchmaking world could set some criteria restrictions.

PlayStation controllers have a mic built in; make an expectation people will use it, and speak English. If people matchmake games, and then leave those games 45 seconds in, penalize them and prevent them from joining new ones.

I know those things are idealistic, but I also think with a very dedicated effort an online network could create that space.

I don’t even care about propagandist views. I’m just like “Hey devs, has your government stopped invading a sovereign country? No? Okay, no buy.”

Don’t worry, the controls on PC are just as unbearable. It’s that style of mouse movement that would be fine in an RPG but is absolutely terrible with an FPS.

Oh look, another day where I barely ever even got rooms that had more than one door, and now that my winding path has hit a dead end all my resources are useless. Next day I guess.

I don’t see people playing Sea of Thieves much anymore. I never liked the top level pro PVP aspect but I do enjoy joining people for simple treasure hunts.

DM me if you’re looking for more players.

Maybe I’m a simp for IOI, but the CEO’s allegations that the game might be getting paid-off negative press makes me curious. There have definitely been games in history that I’ve seen overwhelming negative reactions to from the internet, I tried them out and…they’re actually really fun. Sometimes it just feels simpler to join the bandwagon without trying a game out, not knowing a good 60% of that bandwagon might be paid trolls. I’ve always hated vague statements like “The game was released unfinished” or shit regarding paid extra content.

Anyway, all that is just my opinion that I’m going to wait and see, at the very least.

The Geforce app used for drivers, and the app to connect to Geforce Now, are installed separately. In fact, you’d likely install the latter on weak devices that don’t even have an NVidia GPU.

Yup. You log in to something like Steam or UPlay, and it lets you play games you have on your account. It’s only their supported list sadly.

The service is fast enough I’ve been able to play mouse-based shooters. Latency is not perfect, but home monitors and input devices sometimes have comparable imperfectness.

So far as I can think, wasn’t the only handheld that failed the Playstation Vita? And that had very visible reasons for the failure - designing itself around an obtuse storage medium, and requiring first-party memory cards. Even with those drawbacks and with no first-party support, it had a tremendous following.

It honestly could still be a worthwhile device to chain off of, since none of the current offerings fit in a pants pocket.

For those who don’t know, GeForce Now is a cloud option when you don’t have access to a strong PC to run a game. Back when Cyberpunk 2077 was unattainable for many, my advice to some was to run it through GeForce Now.

Interestingly, they also have “day passes”, making it practical for when you are out spending most of a day away from a gaming computer. Save files still synchronize to local games when you’re back.

I’m guessing this is basically how the Xbox works already.

I’d really rather gamers focused their energy into showing support for the developer groups making cool projects, than specifically deriding any works made under publishers they dislike.

Once every few years, EA and Ubisoft produce something that’s really cool; and much as we’d rather the publishers were replaced with better ones, at the least we can be happy that developers got to put out one or two good games through them.

It will be very funny if Microsoft releases their handheld, and is instantly better with Linux.

This gets trickier with games, because an experienced game designer can, for instance, look at the UI design and graphics programming of a Ubisoft open world slopfest, and say those parts were masterfully done (even if the overall game isn’t so fun). And, even the best of video games have bits of them that weren’t as good.

I am a little curious how something like Ubuntu would do on one of these gaming handhelds. Steam OS is a nicer user experience but I always wonder if it also adds any significant optimization.

Wait, that’s online?

I want to appreciate the additions, but…this is also not a good way of doing it.

The difficulty is often the point in Soulslikes, but quite often it feels like these games are hard in 17 different ways, and a player may only have trouble with 1 of them.

Maybe that’s navigation, and finding the next path forward. Maybe that’s working out how to put together a functioning build, and realizing what each weapon does. Maybe it’s that the parry window is just a few frames too tight because they’re playing with an input delay.

That’s why the games I’ve liked have varied accessibility options to let you change just one thing, like getting your souls back on dying, slowing down the game, slightly decreasing damage values - or increasing them on both sides.

Back 4 Blood was the game that served as the idea for this post.

I recently felt like picking up some cheap copies of it to play with a few friends, and decided to launch it once ahead of time just to test it out and see how it ran. I picked “Online” mode out of habit, feeling it would likely search for a bit before handing me 3 bots to play singleplayer. Instead, I actually got a decent group of people together several days in a row.

In B4B’s case, while the developers visibly “abandoned” the game in news headlines, the form it exists in is very playable and generally bug-free, even if its ultra-highest-difficulty “endgame” allegedly lacks some refinement. It got a lot of outlash for not matching the playstyle of Left 4 Dead; having players use a deep system of roguelike-style upgrades. Since the enemies escalate in difficulty, those upgrades are often necessary and can connect with team strategy. It’s now on PS+, and since it’s crossplay, Steam players will get a lot of queue buddies. It’s also playable with just 2 people since the other 2 characters will just be bots.