Milestone sent over a copy of HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED 2 - Turbocharged to the GamingOnLinux Steam Curator and after blasting through various races, here's some thoughts on Steam Deck and desktop Linux compatibility.
Firstly the good news: It does work out of the box with good performance in the races. It looks good and it feels pretty great, even the AI is good and will give you a challenge. The races themselves all work fine, but there are some technical issues running it with Proton on SteamOS on Steam Deck and desktop Linux.
Tested across Proton 8, Proton Experimental and GE-Proton 8-21 there's missing backgrounds for the logo screen, main menu and settings screens. Additionally, some videos don't play in the Creature Rampage mode (bug reported). None of the issues stop it being playable and fun though. Another one noticed today, is that it will sync your game settings via Steam Cloud so that can be a nuisance swapping between PC and Steam Deck. Please developers, just stop doing that.
Pictured - HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED 2 - Turbocharged on desktop Linux (Kubuntu)
Apart from that, the game seems to run well with Proton 8. Online races work so it seems their Easy Anti-Cheat from Epic Online Services are fully enabled which is also good to see.
Some concerns though: the previous game is only two years old, and already has a full-priced sequel. I found that to be pretty surprising for the developer to so swiftly move on from everyone who picked up the original. I don’t know if that’s just my brain being rewired from oh-so-many live service games that go on for years, but even so, two years just seems ridiculously short for this.
Another bigger point of concern is the monetization. This is a full-priced game and it’s not particularly cheap either. The previous game has about 67 DLC and this game launched with a Deluxe Edition, a Legendary Edition, a Season Pass and two other DLC. The Deluxe Edition includes the first season pass, while the Legendary Edition includes their plans for a second season pass.
So it’s something to keep in mind that you’ll be paying £44.99 / $49.99 for the base game and then likely a lot more on top of that for the rest of the content. The first season pass alone is £24.99 / $29.99 that they say will include 25 vehicles and 2 new environments that will be all released by February 2024. Their extra monetization of this series is perhaps a bit over the top. Especially when you take into consideration the first in the series was moved on from after only two years.
Steam Deck video going over my thoughts:
Direct Link
HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED 2 - Turbocharged is an accessible and very fun racing game with fantastic performance, but with a few technical quirks as noted playing it in Proton. As long as the extra monetization doesn't bother you then you can have a huge amount of fun with it if you like racing games.
Have you played it? What are your thoughts?
You can buy it on Humble Store and Steam.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
), the anti-cheat/DLC/Deluxe-this/Legendary-that/season-passes-the-other is just completely off-putting to me. If they'd released a complete game without any of that, I'd be buying it, but that's clearly not their intent.To be clear, I wasn't willing to spend £44.99 on Super Bomberman R 2 in spite of that being a complete title and me being a huge fan of that series (I got it from Fanatical for £35.99, which was a much more reasonable price for what it is), so I certainly wouldn't spend that much on a licensed title that is openly acknowledged as being incomplete at launch and requires further spending to fix that issue.
QuoteAnother one noticed today, is that it will sync your game settings via Steam Cloud so that can be a nuisance swapping between PC and Steam Deck. Please developers, just stop doing that.ARGH!
QuoteI don’t know if that’s just my brain being rewired from oh-so-many live service games that go on for years, but even so, two years just seems ridiculously short for this.Nah, it is ridiculously short by modern standards, and even more so when the game before it was so big on large amounts of DLC to begin with.
Last edited by Pengling on 26 October 2023 at 3:34 pm UTC
I've preordered BF3 when I was playing BF Bad Company 2, and right after they released the first BF3 expansion(Back to Karkand) during the first 2 FRIGGING MONTHS of game life(BF3 was released in October 2011 and the expansion on December of the same year), there was BF4 advertising INSIDE BF3 game loading screens. Outrageous.
BF3 was a good game, and BF4 felt like a poor rewrite and a product to take money from players, and a lot of them got the BF4 preorder as well. I bought BF4 only a year after it's launch with some heavy discounts and all DLCs included.
One may argue "ah, but you could kept playing BF3" but at that time, everyone migrated to BF4, providers stopped hosting BF3 servers and the game while still fun was pretty much dead because of herd effect...
Last edited by nwildner on 27 October 2023 at 9:58 am UTC
BlackBloodRum Oct 27, 2023
QuoteAnother one noticed today, is that it will sync your game settings via Steam Cloud so that can be a nuisance swapping between PC and Steam Deck. Please developers, just stop doing that.If people don't want their saves synced, they can always disable steam cloud save sync. Generally, I prefer to sync my saves across devices though. :-)
Quoting: BlackBloodRumThis looks fun!It's not a question of saves, that's the point of Steam Cloud. But syncing settings? That's a no.
QuoteAnother one noticed today, is that it will sync your game settings via Steam Cloud so that can be a nuisance swapping between PC and Steam Deck. Please developers, just stop doing that.If people don't want their saves synced, they can always disable steam cloud save sync. Generally, I prefer to sync my saves across devices though. :-)
Quoting: BlackBloodRumIf people don't want their saves synced, they can always disable steam cloud save sync. Generally, I prefer to sync my saves across devices though. :-)The trouble is, you don't always want the PC settings synced along with the save-data.
EDIT: I just got ninja'd by Liam. Great minds think alike, or something.
Last edited by Pengling on 27 October 2023 at 5:14 pm UTC
Quoting: PenglingThere is after all this weird tendency where, if you're playing a game on two different devices (so the cloud syncing is relevant), they are often not the same device and so you may just, gasp! want different settings on them.Quoting: BlackBloodRumIf people don't want their saves synced, they can always disable steam cloud save sync. Generally, I prefer to sync my saves across devices though. :-)The trouble is, you don't always want the PC settings synced along with the save-data.
EDIT: I just got ninja'd by Liam. Great minds think alike, or something.
BlackBloodRum Oct 27, 2023
I figure now you mean settings such as graphic options and such. I'll just facepalm my self over here and it in a corner
*facepalm*
Quoting: Liam DaweIt's not a question of saves, that's the point of Steam Cloud. But syncing settings? That's a no.
I'd say the correct approach is to have separate configuration files for preferences (should be synchronized) and system settings (shouldn't be synchronized). Preferences are things like HUD configuration or gameplay options, while system settings are graphical, audio or input options.
This can be a lot of work to implement in some engines (especially if relying on a premade settings mehnu asset) so I understand why most studios don't bother though.
Funnily enough, Unreal Engine 1-2 came pretty close to realizing this ideal 20+ years ago with its `User.ini` and `System.ini` configuration files, though the separation is kind of blurry in practice.
Last edited by Calinou on 27 October 2023 at 9:59 pm UTC
Quoting: CalinouWhile that sounds like a reasonable approach in outline, I can imagine wanting my HUD configuration to be different on different-sized (or different-shaped) screens.Quoting: Liam DaweIt's not a question of saves, that's the point of Steam Cloud. But syncing settings? That's a no.
I'd say the correct approach is to have separate configuration files for preferences (should be synchronized) and system settings (shouldn't be synchronized). Preferences are things like HUD configuration or gameplay options, while system settings are graphical, audio or input options.
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