Video Games Randomness - Prioritize specific game threads!

[Daehawk]

Dont know whats up with Team Fortress 2 lately but Im loving it. Used to be you could barely find a match and it took it forever to find one for you. Then it was all bots server after server.

Now it finds you matches almost instantly. The first one has a 50% chance to be filled with bots but I just join a new one quickly and its fine. And when I tire of the server Im on or map and switch it again finds human filled matches quickly.

But the weirdest part is these matches are filled with pro players..not people goofing off and doing emotes and dancing but serious players with about 15 or more per side. I still spot an occasional cheater but we kick them fast and bots even faster. The games just flow with crazy violence and action. It doesn't let up. Its so nice. Great players all playing great and all having fun. Its what TF2 used to be.

[jztemple2]

[jztemple2]

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, the newest Test Drive Unlimited game, will be released (hopefully) on September 12th of this year. One of the big appeals for me is that Hong Kong island will be recreated at 1:1 scale, which ought to be interesting.

Below is the announce trailer.

[hitbyambulance]

SKALD: Against the Black Priory

https://www.gog.com/en/game/skald_again ... ack_priory

i like the 1990-era art style on this

[Isgrimnur]

[Blackhawk]

Ooh, new Let's Game it Out.

[hitbyambulance]

i now get the Balatro background music stuck in my head at random times

[Skinypupy]

SKALD: Against the Black Priory

https://www.gog.com/en/game/skald_again ... ack_priory

i like the 1990-era art style on this

I have no particular nostalgia for this type of game, but this does look pretty dang cool. I watched a live playthrough this morning and may pick it up to play next.

[Daehawk]

Valve officially confirms Steam account libraries die with their owners

Steam support has confirmed to a user that accounts aren't transferable even in the event of the owner passing away and outlining the account in a will.

[disarm]

Must be a slow day for TweakTown. Unless Valve starts asking for death certificates and locking/deleting accounts when people die, and the user fails to leave their account access info to an heir, this is really a non-issue.

If a user cares enough about their Steam account to include it in their will, I'm sure they'll have no problem leaving the password behind as well.

[GreenGoo]

I think it's the principle though. If you want to do things on the up and up, you're screwed. Plus, without the account being owned legal property, Steam is free to turn it off on a whim. Which they are already of course, just ask Smoove.

Everything you said is correct, in that you can just hand over access to the account to anyone you want. Clearly, Valve is opposed to that. As long as they don't notice, everything is likely fine. It's still an unethical solution to an unethical problem, imo.

[stessier]

It is likely not totally up to Valve. It very well could be written into the licensing terms of the games they sell. Valve has been pretty good for customers - such as allowing family libraries and local co-op with only one copy of the game.

[Zarathud]

Valve likely doesn’t want to deal with the legal issues, and would rather force you to rebuy games. They’ll eventually notice based on the payment system. You won’t have a valid credit card attached to the account owner.

[Blackhawk]

I doubt that would matter - lots of accounts have cards not associated directly with the owner of the account. Both of my kids (adults) have long-standing Steam accounts, but the only credit card is mine. Other people don't keep a card associated with the account at all, and only use Steam cards.

[Skinypupy]

This is a weird gaming year for me.

I didn't finish any games from January through the end of March. Between now and then (so about 9 weeks), I've completed nine games.

Three of those (Jedi Survivor, Triangle Strategy, and ESO Skyrim) are games that I had completely bounced off of multiple times previously. For some reason, all three of them simply "clicked" on the third or fourth try and I had an absolute blast with all of them. Goes to show how much of my enjoyment of a game is simply dependent on my particular mood at the time, I guess.

Weird year.

[jztemple2]

Deleted

[Punisher]

Can hard you but for me it's very difficult to process what
You are saying but that could be a me issue.

[jztemple2]

Deleted

[Blackhawk]

Barely.

I know that a lot of commentators actually record the voice as a separate audio stream (IE - everything coming in through your mic goes into a different file from what comes out of the game), which allows them to play the game at reasonable volume, then crank the game volume down afterwards (even to 20% or less) in order to emphasize the voice. Maybe try turning the master audio really, really low, then turning up your headset so that it still sounds loud to you - but records low.

[Skinypupy]

Definitely need to lower the game sounds. I could barely make out what you were saying.

[YellowKing]

Both Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth are on sale right now. Which one I should get? For the record I absolutely love both series so you will have to come up with compelling reasons other than "the one you like the best." Since I have no opinion either way, I'm putting my total faith in the OO hivemind.

[Skinypupy]

Both Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth are on sale right now. Which one I should get? For the record I absolutely love both series so you will have to come up with compelling reasons other than "the one you like the best." Since I have no opinion either way, I'm putting my total faith in the OO hivemind.

IIRC, you don't have any particular nostalgia for the original FF VII, correct? If so, I think it really depends on which setting you prefer as they both seem to be good games. I didn't care much for the real-world setting of Like A Dragon, but that's just personal preference.

The storytelling in FF VII Rebirth is superb, but I thought the open world got kinda dull. Nostalgia for the locales carried lots of weight for me in that regard and I don't know that I would have been nearly as interested otherwise. My non-spoiler thoughts after finishing it are here.

I played the original Like A Dragon (about 10 hours) but haven't tried Infinite Wealth. Figure I'll try it if/when it hits PS+ sometime down the road.

[YellowKing]

Thanks Skiny,

I wound up going with Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth as it had the deeper discount. I may regret it because I feel like it's going to be discounted heavily far sooner than FFVII, but having just finished Like a Dragon a few months ago I thought it might be nice to jump into the sequel while the story is still fresh. And since you start out in the same city, it has been quite fun to just know where everything is right off the bat and see the old familiar NPCs in their old familiar places.

I'm still in the middle of Trails of Cold Steel III, but I just had to take a break from that one after plowing through parts 1 & 2 back to back.

[GreenGoo]

I have a confession. When Divine Divinity came out, which by most accounts was a good to excellent RPG for the time, I HATED it without knowing anything about it besides the name.

Divine Divinity.

I hope the person who came up with that has boils on their tongue. Grrr.

I have since mellowed on my opinion. I no longer hope for incurable boils.

Some game names are ridiculously stupid. Are there any that come to mind for you?

[Blackhawk]

I have a confession. When Divine Divinity came out, which by most accounts was a good to excellent RPG for the time, I HATED it without knowing anything about it besides the name.

Divine Divinity.

I hope the person who came up with that has boils on their tongue. Grrr.

I have since mellowed on my opinion. I no longer hope for incurable boils.

I had the same reaction, and I was just talking about this title with my kids a day or two ago. Why not 'Warm Warmth', or 'Violent Violence'?

Some game names are ridiculously stupid. Are there any that come to mind for you?

But any discussion of stupid names should probably exclude names translated from Japanese, or that's all the thread will be about. For whatever reason, the norm in JRPGs and anime is literal translation (translating word for word) rather than actual translation (translating the meaning of the phrase), and it leads to completely meaningless combinations of words, like "Infinite Undiscovery", or "Bravely Default."

Proper translation would be taking something like (pulling from German) handschuh and translating it as glove. Literal translation would be, "The surgeon was wearing blue hand shoes."

[Jaymann]

I have a confession. When Divine Divinity came out, which by most accounts was a good to excellent RPG for the time, I HATED it without knowing anything about it besides the name.

Divine Divinity.

I hope the person who came up with that has boils on their tongue. Grrr.

I have since mellowed on my opinion. I no longer hope for incurable boils.

I had the same reaction, and I was just talking about this title with my kids a day or two ago. Why not 'Warm Warmth', or 'Violent Violence'?

Some game names are ridiculously stupid. Are there any that come to mind for you?

But any discussion of stupid names should probably exclude names translated from Japanese, or that's all the thread will be about. For whatever reason, the norm in JRPGs and anime is literal translation (translating word for word) rather than actual translation (translating the meaning of the phrase), and it leads to completely meaningless combinations of words, like "Infinite Undiscovery", or "Bravely Default."

Proper translation would be taking something like (pulling from German) handschuh and translating it as glove. Literal translation would be, "The surgeon was wearing blue hand shoes."

Although the Blue Hand Shoes would make an excellent band name.

[Isgrimnur]

Zwei mal zwei Hände in Blau

[Jaymann]

I couldn't think of any horrible game names offhand, so I did a search and came across:

Extreme Sports with the Berenstain Bears

Everyone knows it should be Berenstein!

[Skinypupy]

"Triangle Strategy" takes the cake for me.

Just an awful name...fantastic game though.

[Blackhawk]

(I still don't know what an octopath is.)

[Blackhawk]

Zwei mal zwei Hände in Blau

I remember just enough to laugh.

[Jaymann]

(I still don't know what an octopath is.)

That one is pretty easy. There are eight characters taking their own path.

[Blackhawk]

...which is why I don't cite many examples - it's hard to know what actually has meaning from the lore.

[hitbyambulance]

I have a confession. When Divine Divinity came out, which by most accounts was a good to excellent RPG for the time, I HATED it without knowing anything about it besides the name.

Divine Divinity.

I hope the person who came up with that has boils on their tongue. Grrr.

as usual, blame the publisher:

First, let’s tackle that name. According to developers Larian Studios, the game was originally to be named Divinity: The Sword of Lies, but the publisher changed it to Divine Divinity because they’d had a hit with the game Sudden Strike and felt all their games should have alliteration in their titles. This was proven incorrect when the prevailing opinion among critics and the public was that the name Divine Divinity is very silly. Still, most reviewers liked the game itself, and Larian has made several more games in the series.

https://waltoriouswritesaboutgames.com/ ... ty-part-1/

[jztemple2]

We've discussed this game before... it has now been released:



I'm not sure about it yet. I did find these "Let's Play" videos that show quite a lot of gameplay, it appears the second video is a follow-on from the first.





I took a look at the way the movies are actually made within the game and it seems like there are a lot less animations for characters than in Lionhead's THE MOVIES. Otherwise it is pretty much your typical tycoon game; build buildings, hire staff, place decorative items and keep the staff happy. I might pick it up some time, but maybe not.

[GreenGoo]

as usual, blame the publisher:

I assume publishers have tongues.

[jztemple2]

There is now a demo for Hollywood Animal

[jztemple2]

By the way, the Steam "Summer Showcase of Summer Showcases" has now begun.

[GreenGoo]

Finished the first 3 areas with zero deaths finally. Still working on completing stage 4 without dying. Should be easier, as it's shorter. The last level is barely a level at all it's so short.

Finished 4th stage without dying. It was not easier

Now just the (very short) final stage and final boss who I have yet to beat even once. He's kind of a jerk compared to the rest of the game, but I've made it halfway through the second stage so it's only a matter of time now.

[jztemple2]

There is now a demo for Hollywood Animal

Played the demo and this is going to be a day one purchase for me