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Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Mordja posted:

I'm strangely proud of this.


:same: but with a few more additions. I must have gotten some special “tons of Valve junk” package when I bought HL2 or something.

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Frog Act
Feb 10, 2012



Orv posted:

What on earth is the algorithm it's using for Nostalgia.



some of the stuff is definitely off, it's recommending me a demo in one section

Mordja posted:

I'm strangely proud of this.


:same:

Mordja
Apr 26, 2014

Hell Gem

Tippis posted:

:same: but with a few more additions. I must have gotten some special “tons of Valve junk” package when I bought HL2 or something.

In my case it was before HL2 came out, a big box of Valve (and Valve-adjacent) titles, I guess they were the first things I added to Steam.

Frog Act
Feb 10, 2012



Mordja posted:

In my case it was before HL2 came out, a big box of Valve (and Valve-adjacent) titles, I guess they were the first things I added to Steam.

I've got the exact same set of "first" games and it's making me wonder what this package was called

EightDeer
Dec 2, 2011

There's something weird going on inside Stardock. Copies of GalCiv II were being given away on Humble a week ago, and now there's a Steam giveaway.

MMF Freeway
Sep 15, 2010

Later!

Frog Act posted:

I've got the exact same set of "first" games and it's making me wonder what this package was called

Half-Life Platinum Pack

WeedlordGoku69
Feb 12, 2015

by Cyrano4747

EightDeer posted:

There's something weird going on inside Stardock

i mean their CEO threatens people with bees at a whim so i feel like this is a fair statement most of the time

e: also, hell yeah, HL Platinum Pack buddies :hf:

kirbysuperstar
Nov 11, 2012

Let the fools who stand before us be destroyed by the power you and I possess.

EightDeer posted:

There's something weird going on inside Stardock. Copies of GalCiv II were being given away on Humble a week ago, and now there's a Steam giveaway.

There's the poo poo they're trying to pull with the Star Control creators, I guess? https://www.dogarandkazon.com/blog/2018/3/18/strange-settlement-on-an-alien-planet

Dunno what that'd have to do with giving away GalCiv2, unless they're trying to curry favour with the public.

Erotic Wakes
May 19, 2018

by Lowtax

Jusupov posted:

I remember old events that gave items in games, why did they stop those

People always found ways to break them and ruin them for everyone. I think the specific inciting incident was that one winter sale where you could earn coal by playing games, because several of the qualifying games were also featured in a current Humble Bundle back when you could get steam codes for one penny so the entire sale's worth of prizes wound up being depleted in hours by people using dummy accounts to harvest coal from dozens of copies of the same game.


Steam sucks because it doesn't exercise enough control on its platform, also because it exercises too much control on its platform.

Cowcaster
Aug 7, 2002



for the "play a game you bought in the past 6 months that you haven't yet" steam recommended codename: gordon, the 2d flash gimmick game that got bundled in with halflife 2

The Kins
Oct 2, 2004

Frog Act posted:

I've got the exact same set of "first" games and it's making me wonder what this package was called
I dunno if it's still like this (I dunno why it wouldn't be) but if you registered any normal HL1 CD key (including the ones on the commercial mods like TFC and CS, and also Gunman Chronicles for some reason) it'd activate the "Half-Life Platinum Pack" package that gave you all the HL1 stuff. Except Blue Shift. That was added later, I wanna say in the post-HL2 era.

Too Shy Guy
Jun 14, 2003


I have destroyed more of your kind than I can count.



Erotic Wakes posted:

People always found ways to break them and ruin them for everyone. I think the specific inciting incident was that one winter sale where you could earn coal by playing games, because several of the qualifying games were also featured in a current Humble Bundle back when you could get steam codes for one penny so the entire sale's worth of prizes wound up being depleted in hours by people using dummy accounts to harvest coal from dozens of copies of the same game.

I'm cautiously optimistic that these mystery gifts everyone's getting now are actually something really cool, because the element of secrecy helps keep people from abusing it.

Consider this an addendum to my recent ARPGpril series, now that I've actually gotten to play a newer, lesser-known ARPG. Kalypso gave me a copy of Vikings - Wolves of Midgard to kick around in, and it's a delightfully Norse adventure of looting and pillaging and warring with mythical beasts. It does a few things quite different from the normal Diablo style, but unfortunately some of those things are terribly arbitrary decisions that keep it from ranking with the greats.



Diablo may have shaped the action RPG genre, but its legacy has been a bit of a mixed blessing. New titles that challenge its dominance seemed to always come up short of the expectations it set, and only in recent years are we seeing games succeed while breaking away from the original mold. Vikings – Wolves of Midgard certainly tries to do just that, introducing a host of mechanics and refinements to the familiar formula that set it apart in key ways. Some of them work, some of them don’t, but the overall package is a solid one for hours of hacking, slashing, and looting.

You’re a viking, you sack villages and take their stuff. Except this time, the tables have been turned on you. A cadre of frost giants have shown up and leveled your village, leaving you as the new chief of like three dudes and a pile of kindling. From that humble beginning you forge forth to the towns and caves and strongholds of your foes, pillaging what you can and destroying the rest. Your journey will involve both war with mortal foes and dealings with demigods, eventually leading you to the very brink of Ragnarok itself.

Your ruined village is the centerpiece of the game, a hub for trading and upgrading that itself will be upgraded over the course of your adventure. Throughout the three campaigns you’ll unlock additional NPCs who’ll take up residence there to offer services like crafting items and socketing runes. These NPCs can also be upgraded to provide items closer to your current level, using the four resources you’ll collect in your adventures. There’s no crafting system to worry about here, shops just make things you need, but your balances of gold, wood, iron, and glowy magic rocks must be maintained if you want to keep your village on the cutting edge of pillaging technology.

With your village serving as a home base, you’ll set out in your trusty longship to the battlefields that comprise the campaigns. There’s no vast world to journey across here, just individual missions based around sacking towns or hunting down creatures of Norse myth. Each mission map is sizeable, of course, and comes with three side objectives that reward you with lump sums of resources. Following your objectives you’ll sometimes need to solve light puzzles to advance like runed locks or breaking things with a ballista, but most of the focus will be squarely on hacking through hordes of foes. At the end of each map is a boss with phases and gimmicks to contend with, a nice change of pace from the mooks you’ll slaughter on the way there.

They’re not exactly simple mooks to dispatch, though. Vikings makes an effort to turn its combat into a more active affair, and they succeed with a few caveats. You have a dodge roll bound to RMB that can get you out of harm’s way, and will be essential to surviving fights with giants or foes with heavy attacks. Your healing is also limited to charges on one of your equipment pieces, usually just 3 or 4 until you can reach one of the healing altars dotted sparsely around each map. These two factors together mean that avoiding damage is pretty important here, but at the same time most of the combat is still paced like a conventional ARPG where you trade blows with weaker foes. They strike a good balance between wimpy, numerous enemies and big, deadly ones but you need to be on the ball about dodging attacks if your health starts to vanish.

Honestly most of the innovations to be found in Vikings follow a similar pattern of working, but with their own unique drawbacks. Many maps have widespread environmental hazards like freezing temperatures or poison gas, requiring you to limit your time in exposed areas. It’s a neat idea at first but it can easily become a chore in later areas where safe zones are more spread out. Instead of experience you collect blood to sacrifice at altars for new levels and skill points, but you actually have to collect the blood that falls from enemies which can screw up your pacing and leaves the possibility of missing experience you earned just by not picking it up. And the skill trees are divided by weapon type and offer no respecs, so you’re pretty much going to pick a combat style at the start and ignore all other kinds of weapons forever.

It took some time to adjust to these differences, but overall they never really gave me pause when playing the game. What did were some of the technical issues I encountered in my adventures. Movement is fluid and responsive for the most part, and combat has a really solid visceral edge to it, but getting stuck on edges of objects is pretty common too. One level turns you into a giant golem-thing halfway through, but for some reason doesn’t let you pick up any of the loot your foes drop after that point (and you can’t backtrack after facing the level boss). And right now there’s a pretty hilarious bug where the pieces of the ultimate unique weapons you find magically duplicate and turn into finished weapons if you try to stash them, which can easily be used to gain infinite resources.

Despite all this, I still couldn’t help but enjoy ransacking coastal villages and kobold camps. The core combat is just a blast, with big meaty swings of giant hammers and swords, free use of your weapon powers, and some gory eviscerations that the game loves to zoom in on in slow-motion. The story is a solid tale of revenge and conquest that stretches into the mythic realms, propped up by some fine voice acting and detailed character models (most of the VO cast is straight from the Vermintide games, if you’re a fan). It’ll take you upwards of 20 hours to plow through the campaigns and there are additional difficulties to take on after that, though Vikings has none of the endgame progression that folks might expect now from Diablo III rifts or Path of Exile maps. You’re just here for the story and the killing, and there’s plenty of both if you’re looking for something that massacres to the beat of its own war drum.

Croccers
Jun 15, 2012

The Kins posted:

I dunno if it's still like this (I dunno why it wouldn't be) but if you registered any normal HL1 CD key (including the ones on the commercial mods like TFC and CS, and also Gunman Chronicles for some reason) it'd activate the "Half-Life Platinum Pack" package that gave you all the HL1 stuff. Except Blue Shift. That was added later, I wanna say in the post-HL2 era.
Holy poo poo that name.
What was the deal with that anyway?

The Kins
Oct 2, 2004

Croccers posted:

Holy poo poo that name.
What was the deal with that anyway?
It was a TC that was being developed by a mod team. I think they won a contest or something, and Valve lent them a corner of their office and one of their level designers to turn it into a commercial product. It never got re-released with the death of WON and dawn of Steam and Valve didn't respond to a relatively recent INTERNET PETITION to re-release it, so I dunno what the situation is.

If you have a retail copy there's a fan-patch here to convert it into a mod for the Steam version of HL1, fixing various compatibility issues on modern machines.

Justin_Brett
Oct 23, 2012

GAMERDOME put down LOSER
https://www.fanatical.com/en/bundle/bento-bundle

Good sale on Gate of Firmament if nothing else. That was supposed to be decent wasn't it?

The Kins
Oct 2, 2004
Humble Monthly's early reveals are Cook Serve Delicious 2 and Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth, whatever that one is.

Too Shy Guy
Jun 14, 2003


I have destroyed more of your kind than I can count.



The "Clear the Backlog" task went out of its way today to pick 10 games I actually HAVE played before, including one I played last weekend.

I truly do not understand how you could possibly screw up "display games with 0 time played".

mcbexx
Jul 4, 2004

British dentistry is
not on trial here!



Spring cleaning event made me fire up DEX yesterday.

Was planning on just launching it and getting the daily task done, played a total of 11.8 hours yesterday and today before finishing it.

Spring cleaning is cool and good. Working as intended I guess.
Very charming game.

If you consider playing it, invest your first skill points to fully upgrade Lockpicking and Bartering. The latter really pays off over time.

Also get the selfhealing augmentation as soon as possible to save tons of $$$ on healing items.

mcbexx fucked around with this message at 18:50 on May 25, 2018

Rookersh
Aug 19, 2010

Justin_Brett posted:

https://www.fanatical.com/en/bundle/bento-bundle

Good sale on Gate of Firmament if nothing else. That was supposed to be decent wasn't it?

Yeah, it's a neat take on RPGs, since it's neither JRPG or CRPG, but instead Chinese. It's got a really eclectic mix of systems pulling from both genre types, and I liked it a lot.

Chinese Paladin is also in that same boat of being a strictly Chinese RPG.

Both are really different and I'd suggest people at least give them a try, Gate of Firmament for sure. They are very much more reigned in from your FFs, instead being more of action combat based, and focusing a lot more on Chinese mythology/folklore. They tend to skew less towards knightly heroes and instead really push into the idea of like, the heroes are largely monks/martial artists/straight goddesses.

They are both like more big budget/RPG versions of Bioware's Jade Empire is what I'm saying. Less like Final Fantasy. Women tend to always be fully clothed, the women what fight are wearing gi's. You still do some crazy poo poo, but it's within the real of mythology so it works. There are no younger sisters to ogle here.

Worlds Dawn and Celestial Tales are also both worth it. World's Dawn is an RPGMaker take on Harvest Moon that sadly came out like a week after Stardew Valley. Less focus on farming, but still has a great town, lots of fun festivals, tons of really good memorable characters, etc. Highly Recommend if you like the genre and just want to get to know a new town full of people. Celestial Tales is a trilogy? that got Kickstartered awhile back coming from Indonesia. It's supposed to be a Final Fantasy type game with massive far reaching choices throughout it, where you play each of the five characters for a short period of time in their own contained chapters, then what they do influences the other characters chapters as it goes on. It's pretty complete for the first part of a trilogy ( ie it has an ending, it feels good, it's a good take on it's concept for being indie. ) so you don't need to worry about them not completing the whole thing.

If you do though, the next part comes out in a few months since it also passed it's Kickstarter goal.

No idea on the rest. Gurumin is a Falcom joint and apparently pretty good. Moekuri feels like I got put on the FBI watchlist for opening it's store page. Empire of Angels is a Taiwanese game published by the same group that published GoF/Chinese Paladin, but I've never played it since it sounds a little less my style/looks to be full anime.

StrixNebulosa
Feb 14, 2012

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

The Kins posted:

Humble Monthly's early reveals are Cook Serve Delicious 2 and Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth, whatever that one is.

oh ffs that seriously tanks my desire to get the bundle, I have CSD2 and I don't want a lousy adventure game. I mean I'll find out next week if I care enough about trying Destiny 2 to get it, but.. ugh. Thanks humble.

Koburn
Oct 8, 2004

FIND THE JUDGE CHILD OR YOUR CITY DIES
Grimey Drawer
Do I have to read a thousand page novel (or 3 thousand page novels) to enjoy Pillars of the Earth?

Xander77
Apr 6, 2009

Fuck it then. For another pit sandwich and some 'tater salad, I'll post a few more.



mcbexx posted:

If you consider playing it, invest your first skill points to fully upgrade Lockpicking and Bartering. The latter really pays off over time.
I bought literally all the possible augmentations (well, 9 augmentations) and all the skill / xp items. Still left the point of no return from the city with more than 10000 future $ to spare. It's not like there a dire shortage of skill points, but there's still no reason to spend any on Bartering.

CharlieFoxtrot
Mar 27, 2007

organize digital employees



The Kins posted:

Humble Monthly's early reveals are Cook Serve Delicious 2 and Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth, whatever that one is.

I actually think I might unpause it because of CSD2. Weren't people complaining about some gameplay aspects on release? Did that stuff get changed

il_cornuto
Oct 10, 2004

Hopefully my brother forgot to cancel his subscription again, I wouldn't mind playing CSD2

StrixNebulosa
Feb 14, 2012

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

CharlieFoxtrot posted:

I actually think I might unpause it because of CSD2. Weren't people complaining about some gameplay aspects on release? Did that stuff get changed

The core gameplay in CSD2 is even better (imho) than CSD1, even if all of the key presses are on the keyboard now. (Which I've seen some people say makes it less expressive than some of the dishes in CSD1)

Do not expect it to be a restaurant RPG like it was in the first game though - it's now more arcadey, where you can work in your restaurant or in others. More of a sandbox restaurant experience than the grind your way up to the top one.

I really, really like it, but it's definitely been a divisive sequel.

CharlieFoxtrot
Mar 27, 2007

organize digital employees



The grinding to get to new milestones was something that bugged me about the first game so that sounds a whole lot better!

mcbexx
Jul 4, 2004

British dentistry is
not on trial here!



Xander77 posted:

I bought literally all the possible augmentations (well, 9 augmentations) and all the skill / xp items. Still left the point of no return from the city with more than 10000 future $ to spare. It's not like there a dire shortage of skill points, but there's still no reason to spend any on Bartering.

Yes, credits snowballed in last 1/3 of the game, but I for instance needed to scrounge a bit to get over the hump of the 3500 for the selfheal implant when I felt I needed it. At that point I wished I had invested in Bartering early on. Do it early or don't do it at all, is all I'm saying.

Pigbuster
Sep 12, 2010

Fun Shoe

StrixNebulosa posted:

The Dark Souls comparison is apt - in a way it is a methodical platformer, where you have to improve your skills and learn the rhythms of the game to succeed. And by god it is satisfying to win - you outsmarted a predator, made difficult jumps, etc.

And... Presentation. The game never mocks you for failure. When you die, it lets you watch the last screen you were in. You can watch a predator drag your corpse off. It's just a... It feels nice? Death lets you watch this beautiful game without being focused on playing it, and you can of course instantly hit escape and resume play. "You died? Here's something nice to watch."

I like it a lot.

It seemed to be extremely rare, but occasionally, when lizards fought with each other over my body and my killer dropped me, the "You died" screen actually went away, and I got control again. It probably only happens when you get bit on the tail or something, because once I started going up against deadlier enemies it stopped happening entirely. It was still really fun to root for other lizards to come fight my killer and give me another chance at life, though.

il_cornuto
Oct 10, 2004

The steam event nudged me to finally try out Beholder, and it seems interesting but drat is it depressing. Maybe it's because I've spent time in poverty but when there's suddenly multiple very important things to pay for and you're struggling to afford any of them it really got to me. I might try and play some more but if it carries on being a darkly realistic poverty simulator I might have to move onto something more cheerful, like This War Of Mine.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.

Jusupov posted:

I remember old events that gave items in games, why did they stop those

Teaming up with various indie developers to do event stuff made sense when there were like, maybe 20 of them on Steam. Nowadays it would turn into a big mess because anyone who got a spot would get an unfair advantage in sales over anyone who didn't.

In general, Steam's ongoing problems are due to scale, and Valve is putting all of their eggs into the "algorithms!!!!" basket in the hopes that they'll magically unfuck everything.

Random Asshole
Nov 8, 2010

John Murdoch posted:

Teaming up with various indie developers to do event stuff made sense when there were like, maybe 20 of them on Steam. Nowadays it would turn into a big mess because anyone who got a spot would get an unfair advantage in sales over anyone who didn't.

In general, Steam's ongoing problems are due to scale, and Valve is putting all of their eggs into the "algorithms!!!!" basket in the hopes that they'll magically unfuck everything.

"Putting all their eggs into the '[technology buzzword]!!!!' basket in the hopes that they'll magically unfuck everything" is such a perfect encapsulation of the Silicon Valley mindset, and it also makes the behavior of Valve make much more sense to me. They're a startup in the final phase of their lifecycle, where all the visionary people died or left and they're just resigned to rent-seeking behavior, like Microsoft or (recently) Apple.

Random Asshole fucked around with this message at 20:45 on May 25, 2018

Albinator
Mar 31, 2010

LORD OF BOOTY posted:

i mean their CEO threatens people with bees at a whim so i feel like this is a fair statement most of the time

e: also, hell yeah, HL Platinum Pack buddies :hf:

:hf: back. I giggled when I reinstalled HL to get my Blast from the Past and it is not even half a gig.

Blattdorf
Aug 10, 2012

"This will be the best for both of us, Bradley."
"Meow."

Albinator posted:

:hf: back. I giggled when I reinstalled HL to get my Blast from the Past and it is not even half a gig.

It's such a weird thing seeing this. You'd think the entire saga would be concluded by now...

Hwurmp
May 20, 2005

Barkley 2 is going to be the real Half-Life 3

Barry Convex
Sep 1, 2005

Think of the good things, Pim! The good things!

Like Jesus, candy, and crackerjacks! Ice cream and cake and lots o'laffs!
Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Joe! Larry, Curly, and brother Moe!
Heard good things about Pillars of the Earth, for those who like narrative games in the Telltale-esque mold.

Lord Hypnostache
Nov 6, 2009

OATHBREAKER

il_cornuto posted:

The steam event nudged me to finally try out Beholder, and it seems interesting but drat is it depressing. Maybe it's because I've spent time in poverty but when there's suddenly multiple very important things to pay for and you're struggling to afford any of them it really got to me. I might try and play some more but if it carries on being a darkly realistic poverty simulator I might have to move onto something more cheerful, like This War Of Mine.

If it's too economically rough you should switch over to the trainee mode. It's much more lenient with money in that mode (and you still achievements!) I played in trainee mode and enjoyed the game much more when I could focus on trying to survive being a cog of an oppressive regime rather than focusing all my time on theft and blackmailing so my family wouldn't starve.

She Bangs the Drums
Oct 17, 2009

by VideoGames

Random rear end in a top hat posted:

"Putting all their eggs into the '[technology buzzword]!!!!' basket in the hopes that they'll magically unfuck everything" is such a perfect encapsulation of the Silicon Valley mindset, and it also makes the behavior of Valve make much more sense to me. They're a startup in the final phase of their lifecycle, where all the visionary people died or left and they're just resigned to rent-seeking behavior, like Microsoft or (recently) Apple.

except Valve is none of that because it is a privately owned company and has none of the typical motivators Silicon Valley companies have, such as being beholden to shareholders.
Also Valve being characterized as a Start-up when it is over a decade old...
finally Valve is based in Washington not Silicon Valley.

If anything Valve is a victim of its own flat management structure.

Orv
May 4, 2011

Koburn posted:

Do I have to read a thousand page novel (or 3 thousand page novels) to enjoy Pillars of the Earth?

I would be more concerned with the fact that the source material is incredibly stupid garbage.


E: If the characters in the game have even a little bit of personality or character but are still the characters from the book then the team behind that game should be given infinite money because they are the greatest writers on earth.

Orv fucked around with this message at 23:00 on May 25, 2018

Shaking lemur butt
Jan 5, 2015

:haw: :v: :ohdear: :cool:
I love Steam. Steam has the best source code:

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Cream-of-Plenty
Apr 21, 2010

"The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering."

She Bangs the Drums posted:

Also Valve being characterized as a Start-up when it is over a decade old...

That's understating it. Valve's been around for 22 years, and Steam's been around for almost 15.

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