Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: gradyvuckovicThe Witness

The Witness isn't very good, btw. It's pretty, but the puzzles kinda suck, and the whole game is trolling.

The Talos Principle is the bomb, though.

After loving Braid, I was hopeful for The Witness and was gutted that it was Windows only. I got it in a Humble Choice a couple of years back and completely agree with your assessment. The puzzles are unintuitive and repetitive and while parts of the island are quite pretty, it doesn't take away from the fact that the whole game is like 100+ of Talos Principle's "sliding key" puzzles over and over. It's very simply not fun.

I loved both the Talos Principle, and The Witness; though I do think that they're both a little too long.

I think The Witness would've benefited from more environmental puzzles (and those that combine environmental & 'slider' — where you have to tweak the environment, or your perspective, so that the slider puzzle becomes available).

I think people who like one should give the other a try.

(I'm aware that both are also a little too heavy handed on the cultural metaphors; but it's nothing that needs to be taken seriously.)

Quoting: wvstolzingI loved both the Talos Principle, and The Witness; though I do think that they're both a little too long.

I think The Witness would've benefited from more environmental puzzles (and those that combine environmental & 'slider' — where you have to tweak the environment, or your perspective, so that the slider puzzle becomes available).

I think people who like one should give the other a try.

(I'm aware that both are also a little too heavy handed on the cultural metaphors; but it's nothing that needs to be taken seriously.)

I didn't get a single cultural metaphor in The Witness. Wandered about solving sliding puzzles for a couple of hours, then got a baffling piece of unexplained puzzle + environment, where moving the puzzle in a certain way made you hear a rumbling in the distance... couldn't understand what was happening, and ditched it shortly thereafter. It felt like a hard wall - solve this or no more progress. When I realised how little I'd enjoyed the experience up to that point, it was almost a relief to ditch the game.

Meanwhile, the Talos Principle was constantly moving me forward in a very linear way, but offering non-linear environment puzzles if I chose to do them, both by ascending the Tower, discovering hidden stars around the island, and finally by linking the individual puzzle lasers in inventive ways (although I didn't pursue that to its conclusion).

I found them to be night and day, to be honest. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend that people try Talos (or Braid), but wouldn't even offer The Witness more than 2 stars out of 10.

Quoting: scaineI didn't get a single cultural metaphor in The Witness. Wandered about solving sliding puzzles for a couple of hours, then got a baffling piece of unexplained puzzle + environment, where moving the puzzle in a certain way made you hear a rumbling in the distance... couldn't understand what was happening, and ditched it shortly thereafter. It felt like a hard wall - solve this or no more progress. When I realised how little I'd enjoyed the experience up to that point, it was almost a relief to ditch the game.

There were sound recording collectables, short quotes from various luminaries in the natural sciences, literature & religion, vaguely related to the overall theme of the area where they were found; and solving a subset of puzzles unlocked some kind of projection room where you could watch video clips. I hate using the word 'pretentious' (since it's been highjacked by anti-intellectual asshats in general); but the vague suggestions these references seemed to be making with respect to the interplay between scientific knowledge & man's social/cultural/even 'spiritual' self-understanding 'felt' kinda pretentious to me.

(& Rich & Jack from Red Letter Media made this silly parody of its 'hidden ending', back when they had a gaming channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIDX4odnT3I)

I'd still recommend the game. I got it myself when ... gasp ... it was on an epic store giveaway. (Played it on my windoze partition.)

I know exactly where you're coming from with this! I recently played through (and 100%'ed) Psychonauts 2, an absolute blast I might add, where most of the time playing it was on my Nintendo Switch.

Well, my Switch which runs Linux that is, so I can stream games from my PC using Moonlight.
And I think this is where these kinda devices truly shine, games like Psychonauts, Final Fantasy 11 (or even 14), and also slower-paced FPS like System Shock 2.
At first I wasn't really interested, but the more I think about it the more I realize; the Steam Deck will make everything I use my Switch for much easier. And, I won't have to stream it from my PC, it plays on the device

Didn't see this the first time round, so shamelessly jumping in now:

I'm less interested in pushing the envelope of what the Deck can run, and more interested in it as a way to play the many lower-intensity, less demanding indie games in my collection. I've got a gaming PC for the heavy stuff or the stuff that takes a lot of concentration or brainpower; I expect this'll be my go-to for when I'm feeling like a slower-paced game for relaxing. (One exception is that I'd like to try CrossCode on it [and if you've played it you know just how hectic and hard it can be!], since the elemental switching is slightly clunky on mouse-and-keyboard, but apparently easier with a game pad according to a friend with a Switch.)

Tetris!

Post moved to the shiny new Steam Deck category.

wait, what




edit:

@liam any chance of moving this here ?

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/forum/topic/5076/

Last edited by pete910 on 5 February 2022 at 8:35 pm UTC

In preparation of my first week-long work trip (flight there and back) with the deck I've got the following games installed with the idea of it being a primarily single-player backlog-crushing device while also being able to get a jolt of nostalgia from my childhood favorites or play with my friends on the go.

On the 512GB internal nvme:

• Sea of Thieves
• God of War
• Elden Ring (Runs great at High/Max with low shadows locked @30fps)
• Tomb Raider: Underworld (Backlog)*
• Valheim (the first game I played)
• Titanfall 2 (Northstar*)

On the 512GB Samsung Pro Plus microSD card I picked up:

• Halo: The Master Chief Collection (All of the campaigns - childhood nostalgia injection)
• Spyro Reignited Trilogy
• Prey (Arkane - Backlog)
• Assassin's Creed Black Flag
• Crash Bandicoot Trilogy
• CS:GO
• L4D2
• Rocket League
• GTA IV (Backlog)
• Bioshock Remastered 1 and 2 (Backlog)
• Splitgate
• Dishonored
• 7 Days to die
• Darksiders II Remaster (Backlog)
• Fable III*
• Fable Anniversary
• I am Fish
• Golf with your friends
• Buccaneers!
• Beseige
• Clustertruck
• Snakeybus
• The Ball (Backlog)

* - game unsupported or requires drm bypass

The only two games I'd consider "missing" for me at the moment are Halo Infinite (vulkan extension limitation) and Hunt: Showdown (anticheat).

Non steam apps installed:

• Kodi (Separate USB media containing movies etc)
• Discord

Other Gear:

Headset: Bang and Olufsen BeoPlay Portal PC/PS5 Edition which works out of the box with either the USB C dongle or bluetooth but I did experience some audio cutouts while using the dongle (2.4Ghz interference?) so bluetooth appears to work the best. It's actually quite magical how SteamOS automatically switches audio to the external device once plugged in. I wanted a wireless audio solution with active noise cancellation for travel with a passable microphone and this is the best I've tried. Technically a separate app is used for configuration for the headset (iOS or Android) but it may work out of the box with just the dongle/bt, I can't say. Either way firmware updates are distributed via the app.


I don't think I'll have any problems finding something to play. If I don't feel like playing anything I can fire up Kodi while limiting the apu to 3 watts and happily watch movies for hours. I love this thing.

Last edited by drlamb on 17 March 2022 at 6:58 pm UTC