I always felt iffy about their pro-XYZ stance as well. I’m not against bringing awareness to bullying or burnout or supporting marginalized groups, but it feels so disingenuous when your game (Destiny) is obviously predatory. I guess getting people addicted and organizing their lives after the game is not something to oppose.
Yeah, that’s not the best example. I think the ac-130 mission is a much better example because I don’t remember it getting a lot of controversy despite it being pretty non-chalant about you decimating the ground forces like it was just another day in the office (or rather in the air). It’s the ultimate “dehumanize the enemy” mission because you could replace the targets with pretty much anyone and the mission would play exactly the same.
There are so many games that I don’t even care about all the games available on Steam (that I’d be willing to play). We have so many games coming out that I’d have to play game for a living to play all the games I want to play, and even then I’m not 100% sure I’d be able to play everything I’d be open to play. I have multiple games that I’ve purchased and installed thinking “I’ll get to them soon enough” and they’re just taking drive space. I also have multiple games on my wishlist that are “waiting for a discount” but I’m probably never going to pick them up because actually they’re waiting for my backlog to clear and it will never clear.
Does it suck that Alan Wake is Epic exclusive. Sure. Does it really matter to me? Not really because I’m oversaturated with games I want to play. Missing one great game doesn’t matter when I already have a backlog of great games I won’t purchase because I have a backlog of great games I’ve purchased that I won’t play because I have a backlog of great games I really want to play.
I think that’s really the issue with Ubisoft, they just don’t make “must play” games anymore. Seriously, what’s the last universally liked Ubisoft game that everyone wanted to play? Far Cry 3. Close second is probably AC: Black flag but that was already suffering from AC fatigue and its critical acclaim has come retroactively. Those games are over a decade old. Ubisoft hasn’t released anything in the last decade where the mainstream gaming goes “We must play that”. Ubisoft simply doesn’t make exciting games anymore. They make games that are for everyone which also means they’re for no-one.
The older stalker games are worth it only if you want the story. If you want to experience the gameplay you can download stalker Anomaly for free. Anomaly is a standalone mod that combines the 3 stalker games into one (minus the story) and adds cut content and has been “modernized” over time. It’s a much better experience than the original games and the community considers it THE way to play Stalker, and ontop of being a mod it also has a healthy modding community.
I don’t remember how beginner friendly it might be (probably not very because the mod gives you a lot of customization options before you even start the game) but I’m sure there are some beginner guides on YouTube. And for the price of free the only question is how much time you’re willing to invest to play Stalker. And if you think the OG games will be much easier, not really. No matter what stalker game you start with you’re bound to meet the relatively steep learning curve.
okay, that makes sense. The online/offline terminology was just confusing.
Online spawner?
Ugh, you had to mention the fast timescale… Now I’m seeing it too and it’s so annoying.
I guess I’ve gotten lucky. I have stable FPS, performance doesn’t tank in the first village, no crashes and the only stuttering I had was when I was killing everyone at the military base and I had about 20 bodies at the building entrance because they just kept coming.
Looking at the reviews and what others are saying I think I’m very much the exception here. I can attest that if the game works it very much is the STALKER experience and if STALKER is your jam then the game is worth playing.
My only negatives so far are the key binds (I checked, I can’t set them how I want to because some actions can’t be changed from the settings menu), there’s no overview of your standing with a faction or who belongs to what faction (maybe it unlocks later as I’m still in the first area, but I do miss that feature) and some mutants seem too beefy (would’ve never imagined running away from a pack of flesh, but I do run away because they eat buckshot for breakfast).
My first hour of gameplay didn’t feel like as bad as the reviewers put it. I have a relatively beefy machine (5800x, 4070 and 32gb of ram), the game defaulted me to epic settings (with DLSS and frame gen) and I’m getting a pretty stable 50 FPS. The only bug I’ve encountered is the audio not playing, and I guess also the sun not reflecting correctly off of windows.
The first hour isn’t much but I was expecting a much worse initial experience. My biggest issue so far has been the default keybinds but I’m hoping to solve it when I have more time to tinker in the settings menus. I’ll update my experience when I’ve had more time to play. So far I’m happy.
Assets get reused all the time. Elden Ring base game is reusing assets from Sekiro and Dark Souls 3. I haven’t played Rebirth but I’m pretty sure it’s also reusing assets from the previous Final Fantasy remake.
To be honest, I also can’t fathom it being such a massive flop. On Steam it peaked at 700 players. Shadows of doubt release peaked at 2200. Something had to go seriously wrong when a niche indie title with no mainstream appeal has a better launch than a AAA game. I don’t think it should’ve been a success, but it definitely should’ve done better than that.
I think they still need to be called out for their BS. The response wasn’t just for him, it was also for others who might read it and think that’s somehow an acceptable opinion to have.
As a foreigner, if you voted for a genocider (there was two in this race), I do not think you are human.
I feel like that’s such an idealistic way of viewing things. Hypothetically, if you had a choice between indirectly supporting genocide or throwing your entire life into chaos you’d rather ruin your own life? If you’re actually willing to ruin your own life for it you’re more passionate about this issue than 99% of the population. For example I don’t have an issue supporting Ukraine, I’ve donated to support packages going to Ukraine. But you won’t find me on the battlefield because there’s a limit to my support and that limit is at not throwing away my life. I guess that makes me inhuman because I could do more and I’m choosing to not to.
If the table turns sometime, if I have to pick between genocide in the US and fascism here, well, I hope you have a place to hide lmao
How hypocritical and vindictive. I won’t do what I consider humane because you deserve it.
Counterpoint. Get out of here stalker.
I think Stalker 2 needs a mix and match option where we can choose the language of the dialogue line by line. Or at least a future “meme” language option where the best lines of every translation is used.
And how exactly does a free fly invalidate the article about refunds requiring an NDA? Nobody is questioning whether there’s is some semblance of a game in a project that has been in development for over a decade, it would be a massive red flag if there’s wasn’t. What people are questioning is why is there a secret shop page that players can access ONLY after they’ve spent a thousand dollars on the game, and then another secret shop page after they’ve spent 10k? What’s up with the predatory practices?
Is your response “No no no, don’t look at those controversies. Look at how pretty the game is”? A free fly event doesn’t invalidate the claim that you might need to sign an NDA to get a refund. It doesn’t invalidate the claim that the devs had to pull 7 day work weeks. There are loads of criticism that the free fly does not address at all. These articles would exist even if everyone tried the free fly.
From my experience games that get “hate articles” are games that are already doing questionable things. You don’t get such articles circulating about good games because that shit just won’t stick. When it comes to SC and CI that shit does stick.
Ah, didn’t remember that. That’s cool.
You need to progress the story to a certain point and I think you also need to be a certain level. I would recommend being high level because some of the content is definitely felt designed for high level.
Actually I’ve grown more fond of my ultrawide monitor and I don’t really couch game anymore, so I haven’t bothered to troubleshoot why it does that.
I agree that my specific issue is an uncommon one as it took a bit of digging on the web to find a working solution, and that alone isn’t an indication that the official dock is bad. The purpose of my comment was to shed light on the fact that it’s not as plug and play as the Switch dock is. You can’t just buy the official dock and expect everything to work.
Maybe a third party dock works better. I don’t really know, but it’s something to look into when you plan to buy a dock for the deck.
Even home appliances don’t come with the full spec technical manual. They come with the user manual so you’d know how to use your appliance, not how to fix your appliance (with the exceptions being some easy to fix user errors). When people get technical errors on their home appliances they call a technician to fix those errors, because most people lack the technical knowledge to fix things themselves. And I imagine it’s the same for you. I’m pretty sure you don’t fix your own car. Now imagine if you went to a mechanic to have your car fixed and they say “Just read the fucking manual and don’t waste my time”. What are you going to do? Read the manual that you didn’t even know existed until that point and you’d first have to spend some time actually finding the manual (because some of those technical manuals are a fucking pain in the ass to find, if they’re even readily available), or find another mechanic that would fix your car? What if all the mechanics tell you to go read the manual? How much of your own time would you be willing to invest into fixing an issue you didn’t want to fix by yourself in the first place? What if someone offered to replace your entire car for free? Would you still spend time fixing your car or would you go “fuck it, I just need it to work”?
And that’s the average Windows/Linux user. They just want an operating system that works. They don’t want to understand all the technical stuff that goes on under the hood and when something breaks they want “a technician” to give them a quick solution, because knowing the inner workings of Linux is not a priority for them. Maybe they’re the car mechanic that would fix your car and they’ve spent their time learning the inner works of a few dozen cars. People focus their time and attention on different things so getting angry at someone not wanting to learn Linux is like a car mechanic getting angry at you for not wanting to learn how your car works or a personal trainer getting angry because you don’t know how your own body works etc… Just because you know how Linux works does not mean everyone should know how Linux works.