Brilliant review. I think you may have tipped me towards buying this! I'll probably play through Spec Ops: The Line first, then I'll be looking for something new. Funnily enough, like Flesk, I'm also about halfway through Outland, but I'm finding that game a tiny bit repetitive 6 hours in.

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Quoting: Ignis

Quoting: scaineWasteland 2 is excellent - I enjoyed it more than Pillars of Eternity which I found a bit opaque in terms of putting an effective team together. Some of the fight in PoE are just game-stoppers if you haven't pre-healed your characters and even others are almost "quit and restart" challenging if your team isn't effective. I found that a bit off putting.

Your party automatically heals after every battle using your remaining health, or do you mean health itself? The only thing I hated, personally, was last level Caed Nua boss, dealing "lol you die" area damage is way too cheap. I did beat it eventually, though.

Ah, yeah, I meant mage-like abilities. All that once-per-rest abilities stuff was just tedious.

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Quoting: IgnisI've recently finished Pillars of eternity, could use another game, but I'm not holding my hopes high with this title… Would be nice, I suppose. But then again, I still have a Freedom planet for now even if it's not an RPG :}

Wasteland 2 is excellent - I enjoyed it more than Pillars of Eternity which I found a bit opaque in terms of putting an effective team together. Some of the fight in PoE are just game-stoppers if you haven't pre-healed your characters and even others are almost "quit and restart" challenging if your team isn't effective. I found that a bit off putting.

To all the Kickstarter naysayers, I think you're over-reacting. Sure, I think we were taken on a ride by some developers who have no track record on Linux. I could mention 7 Days to Die, Contagion or Skullgirls here. But for each such set back, there's been several solid deliveries - Wasteland 2, Shadowrun, Pillars of Eternity or any of the Double Fine entries. And of course while it's easy to be disillusioned after so long, let's not forget that many of the no-shows are still promising to try to get something out of the door, so it's not all doom and gloom.

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I think the forum post which was linked to strikes an apologetic tone and they're clearly wanting to support Linux now, which is good. But it's easy for me to say that, because I didn't back this, so I've not had any promises of support broken by a Kickstarter pledge which to this day remains mostly meaningless.

Still looking forward to buying this though and it sounds like they're trying to climb a steep learning curve to deliver a product, so I remain hopeful.

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If his game costs $100k to port... then something horrible has happened. Sounds pretty neutral overall though. I suspect he's waiting on the result of the summer release of SteamOS/Machines to see if that 1% to 2% increases at all.

I take it from comments like that that he had nothing to do with the Braid port then?

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One of my first ever Kickstarters and a title that I'd given up on! Great news - will dig out my key and register it for some weekend play.

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I avoid all Early Access games, which form the bulk of this article and I wonder how many other Linux gamers do so too - our platform is often an afterthought in the development process, which means little incentive to get involved early.

Looking forward to buying/playing Soul Axiom and 4089 (when they're ready), but probably won't touch any of the others sadly.

Crea looks very Starbound-y, Goscurry is an exercise in frustration and Rust is made by Facepunch, who act like spoiled children.

I might take another look at Maia, but wasn't it the one that launched in Early Access that was so early that there was basically nothing to it? Which is another reason I'm not a fan of EA titles.

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Desperate for some Dishonoured action again...

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The Outward devs have clarified their position on GoD Factory: Wingmen when I queried them on the Steam Forums:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/262750/discussions/0/35221031821921844/?tscn=1429109542

It's a little big vague for me still. I'm not certain that backing Outward will actually result in a Linux release - it sounds like they'll aim for Windows again, then outsource the ports. Will attempt to clarify.

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Quoting: maodzedun

Quoting: scaineBut I'll bite anyway. Care to expand on what you think users won't like about the Unity Launcher? Be specific. As I say, I've been an Ubuntu user a long time and I agree that the 11.04 and 11.10 iterations were raw - I tended to revert my use of those versions back to... oh, I can't remember the name of it now... Docker? Something like that. But by 12.04, Unity Launcher was solid and since 15.04 is about to launch, that means that I've been using this Launcher for nearly 3 years and had no idea it was somehow magically "bad".

What's wrong with it?

Canonical took the worst from Windows' taskbar and OSX's dock and stuffed it into the Unity Launcher. You can't change it's position and you can't get rid of it - so much for Linux's flexibility. Also there is no Show Desktop button by default. It has no preview thumbnails and no click to minimize unless you force them (sort of) with Compiz. We're talking about basic Windows functionality, let alone comparing it to something as flexible as KDE for example. If they allowed me to get rid of the launcher for real, I'd just slap a Cairo dock or something and be a happy camper, but as it is - it's absolutely horrible.

Those are the pretty much the features that makes Unity so appealing to its target audience. I was willing to change my outlook to accommodate the Launchers way of working and it's wonderful when you do so. If you simply berate it for two of its strongest features, no wonder you'll hate it. Sounds like you're not the target audience though, so nothing is really lost, right?

For the avoidance of doubt - here's a brief breakdown.

You can't move it for many reasons. Best use of screen space, assumptions can be made about layout, fits with the phone/touch paradigm, code base is significantly simpler. With hindsight, the phone paradigm is the main winner here.

You only switch to windows and don't minimise them because there's fewer things more frustrating in Windows that clicking on the icon of a hidden but non-minimised window and waiting for it to appear, only to later realise it's now minimised. This is broken. Canonical fixed it. Hell, Gnome fixed this by doing away with the concept of minimise, didn't they? Or at least, they were going to. Have they done that yet? Fingers crossed.

Show desktop isn't a button the Launcher any more. But what's to stop you from turning it on, exactly? Settings/Appearance, Behaviour, click on "Add show desktop icon to the launcher".

Can't argue about previews - there's no option for that. I don't think even the Compiz previews add-on works properly. If that's a deal breaker, then so be it.

But yeah. Lots of hate (and not just you!) for something that is very tidily and specifically designed to be what it is. I'm not saying you should like it, really, but a lot of the complaints about it revolve around people who literally can't see past the fact that it's on the left. Just that.

But if their incredibly ambitious vision is to work, then Launcher on the left it is. Just for once, I'm willing to change to accommodate Linux, when for many years, Linux changed to accommodate me.

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