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- Valve released the Best of Steam - 2024 showing off the highest earners and most played games
- Fan-made PC port of Star Fox 64 is out now
- Open source evolution sim Thrive v0.8 brings more graphics improvements and new game mechanics
- Proton Experimental updated with fixes for Marvel Rivals on Steam Deck / Linux and other game improvements
- ScummVM 2.9.0 is out now for expanded retro gaming support
- > See more over 30 days here
Half-Life: Alyx
Took me quite a few months since we got the native version, I'd say about 20 hours in game time. I found it hard to start playing what with getting up from the chair and putting on the headset and usually having to redo the room setup, but once I did I played for hours.
It's the best gaming experience I've had in the last 10 years, if not more. It's so intense, sometimes downright scary, when you know that headcrab will jump on your face in 2 seconds if you don't kill it first. It's typical HL, with its very cool eastern European setting, even for me (Polish dude here) and something new around every corner. On the other hand, the journey is definitely more interesting than the destination, as the ending section is very brief, despite managing to interestingly change the rules, and the ending itself is decidedly low key with required knowledge from HL2 and its episodes to at all be able to understand what's going on.
I had to use the most comfortable settings (teleport movement and snap turning) to play, unfortunately any sort of smooth movement in VR makes me instantly nauseous - to the point that when there's a spot towards the end when you rise in an open area (there are elevator sections before, but they're mostly enclosed and the movement is not so pronounced) and it immediately provoked a tiny lurch in my stomach.
I had technical issues galore. My 980Ti is barely fit for VR, mostly because Nvidia doesn't have async reprojection in their driver, so there was horrible stutter to start with. I had to set the game's gfx settings to medium (it still looks amazing), reduce rendering res to 100%, refresh to 80Hz and enable legacy reprojection to get smooth movement, with stutter only appearing for brief periods during loadings. Interface windows often went empty, mostly annoying when I died and the only thing I could do was load a save (or quit the game) and the window was empty. Furiously pressing all buttons on the controllers would bring back the window contents (often for just a second before it disappeared again) and usually within a minute or so I was able to load the game. I had some graphical glitches during gameplay, too, with some pools of alien blood flickering and the wrong colour, plus a peculiar corrupted rectangle positioned somewhere outside the level appearing through walls in a couple of places.
Add to that problems with SteamVR, like the headset no longer working after system suspend and having to restart the computer to play again, and it's not an experience for the faint of heart.
Despite all that it's absolutely glorious and everyone should play it.
10/10
I also completed "The Fall" a 2D platformer/puzzle game with similar qualities.
I now started playing "Divinity: Original Sin Enchanted Edition" and after that I have these games on my TODO list:
Fallout: New Vegas
Metro: Last Light
Shadowrun: Dragonfall
Wasteland 2
...
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It's absolutely beautiful. The music is good and so are the characters.
The game unfortunately makes you restart from the very beginning every time you want to take a different path and you really need to draw a chart if you wish to follow every character's story. That last I actually enjoyed a lot as it turns out, it's been a while since I used a pen and notebook at length. You can also fast forward through dialogue so subsequent playthroughs take just an hour or so.
There are 8 endings so at least 8 playthroughs if you want them all, though I found the prerequisites for a few of them very random with little chance of stumbling on and I had to look up online for the last one. The endings don't differ much, even if the journey to get there can be quite varied, including some
Spoiler, click me
I really wish the endings were longer and more varied, with perhaps a true end that can only be achieved once you do all the others, like some Japanese VNs tend to do. As it is, I'd say seeing 3-4 should be enough and getting all of them seriously dampened my enjoyment of the game.
6/10
Last edited by damarrin on 23 October 2020 at 8:04 pm UTC
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Finished it with the Good Ending. Didn't feel like doing anything evil this play through.
Also another run through Portal 2.
Defo in my Top 5 of all time greats. Cave Johnson is a Legend.
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http://icculus.org/~hamish/gameslist.txt
Not since high school, but going well back to 2014. Not going to post it online, because that's one embarrassingly long list...
My list starts around 2007, although I think I could pinpoint month/year for pretty much every game I ever completed. Playing games is such an integral part of my life, 'I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.' All those moments stay with me. Forever. :)
Sadly, with so little time, my yearly lists of completed games are getting embarrassingly short. :(
Last edited by Gooda on 25 October 2020 at 10:36 pm UTC
Still need to finish my first play through of Shadow of the Tomb Raider. It's so good! ... but I've been playing it in like 1 hour increments since the Feral port came out. Gosh... That's got be like a year now? Last November?
@damarrin Ah, yes HL Alyx was fantastic! I've played it through twice now, once in Proton when it came out and a second time in the native version. I do VR work for a living and have been doing it from Linux for like a year now because... why not? The vrserver process definitely doesn't like it when you suspend, though I found simply quitting it before suspend fixes almost all of my non-Unity3D issues though.
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!link
The massive spike this year is mostly due to the BLM bundle from itch.io, but it seems I generally play more games now than back when. Though a lot of games I played in recent years are short indie titles, while as a kid or student those were mostly time consuming AAA games. (I still think I should not let my wife see that graph ;-))
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I completed Diablo 1 (Via DevilutionX on a PineBookPro). Nice nostalgia trip after 20 years. Back in the day I 255 maxxed out my mage character ;)
Was a bit surprised how short the actual single-player campaign of Diablo1 is.
Last edited by Julius on 27 October 2020 at 11:23 pm UTC
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And just maybe those years weren't particularly great for PC gaming anyway, or at least had few games I would have been interested in. My collection to date doesn't contain a single entry that originally released in either 2003 or 2004.
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Props for actually making and releasing a game... my projects from that time barely got beyond the brainstorm phase :(
Last edited by Julius on 28 October 2020 at 9:05 pm UTC
A very relaxing puzzle game, some nice environments and a pretty good story.
Almost perfect with the latest Proton. There are a few occasions where you read a letter and apparently there’s a video that’s supposed to be playing in a rectangle that appears on screen, but the letter is read aloud so no story bits are lost.
It’s quite buggy, apparently on Windows people are having serious problems with it. I did have some, but nothing completely game-breaking. Although I did have to restart a chapter at one point.
Recommended.
I liked it better than the first one, or at least I felt like I knew my way around it better. The atmosphere, the setup, graphics, sound... everything was pretty exciting. Consequently, I bought Shadow of the Tomb Raider, but haven't started it yet.
It's also a native game, which it gives it more points.
Recommended.
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Nuclear Throne - no way near (it is much too quick for me on keyboard and mouse)
Crypt of the Necrodancer - final bosses keep on beating me
Darkest Dungeon
Cultist Simulator
..
Plenty of games I start and then put down, and don't pick up again:
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Pathway
Forager
Metro 2033 Redux
Saints Row: Gat out of Hell
Curious Expedition
Fallout 3
Valley
Okay, I have finished some:
FTL: Faster Than Light
Slay the Spire
Mad Max
Serious Sam 3: BFE
Dying Light
Torchlight 2
Sky Force Anniversary
Shadow Warrior
Ziggurat
I guess I could add - It's the journey, not the ending.
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I did manage to best Factorio over the summer. That was nice. I've also been on a bit of a FPS kick recently and am playing through the STALKER series. Runs fine in wine. I'm on the third game, but the first so far it's my favorite (#3 is a very close second and very fun)