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Videogames - The definitive Edition, remastered


Toth

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Humble Bundle has a great deal today. The first five Tropico games (Tropico 1 and 2 are listed under Tropico Remastered) plus their DLCs for under £10. I only played Tropico 4 and it hit the sweet spot of being a fun and accessible city-builder without going overbord with the detail (like arguably Cities: Skylines can do). Plays a lot like I imagine a Bullfrog city-builder would, just the right level of complexity and challenge-based gameplay. I didn't get Tropico 3 or 5 as they were effectively the same game and engine as 4, which seemed a bit steep for full price, but at this price it's a steal.

Tropico 6 came out last year and has a lot of new features, like building a persistent city extending over multiple islands, but obviously that's too new to make it into the deal.

Also, in yet another sign of the impending End Times, I bought myself a console for the first time ever, a Switch. Pretty much for the upcoming Mario re-release (I played through Galaxy on my ex's Wii and felt nostalgic for it).

5 hours ago, The Winged Shadow said:

Also, after playing Phoenix Point, I despise these outdated %hit chance systems. Missing at 98% is infuriating. I really like the control of Phoenix Point where you can go 100% or take a calculated risk if you wanna hit a vulnerable body part etc. Feels like you are buying into the risk and makes it easier to accept the misses. But the 95% 98% misses are so enraging!

I mean, you can still miss at 95-98%. That's why it isn't 100%.

Based on the percentage complaints in XCOM, Phoenix Point and most recently Axis & Allies (which has more legitimacy, as it's a d6 roll and the third-party seed system they use to generate random roll results is known to be heavily flawed), I wonder if there's some system for having an actual physical dice-roller you connect to your PC by USB where the PC can actually read the results. Should be doable, and would be useful for playing P&P RPGs online as well.

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1 hour ago, Werthead said:

I mean, you can still miss at 95-98%. That's why it isn't 100%.

Based on the percentage complaints in XCOM, Phoenix Point and most recently Axis & Allies (which has more legitimacy, as it's a d6 roll and the third-party seed system they use to generate random roll results is known to be heavily flawed), I wonder if there's some system for having an actual physical dice-roller you connect to your PC by USB where the PC can actually read the results. Should be doable, and would be useful for playing P&P RPGs online as well.

I've become a fan of more deterministic systems over the past couple years. Games where everyone always hits (and modifiers like cover do something like reduce damage by half rather than lower odds to hit) and the game becomes more of a combat puzzle of trying to avoid hits (either moving out of the way, or killing the enemy before it gets the attack off, or deciding how many hits you can absorb, etc.).

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7 hours ago, The Winged Shadow said:

I'm in similar boat as you. I don't mind the combat, it's a lot more interesting in higher difficulties where you have to utilize smoke grenade/robots/debuff combos to kill the tougher units quickly and actually need a dedicated healer. The story is where it falls flat. It didn't hook me. It just doesn't have a sense of urgency and doesn't feel like there is a whole lot at stake (even though there supposedly is). The car/world map is ok, but nothing to brag about. The companion characters are a bit meh as well (just unlocked Scotchmo).

Also, after playing Phoenix Point, I despise these outdated %hit chance systems. Missing at 98% is infuriating. I really like the control of Phoenix Point where you can go 100% or take a calculated risk if you wanna hit a vulnerable body part etc. Feels like you are buying into the risk and makes it easier to accept the misses. But the 95% 98% misses are so enraging!

I always liked the system in Jagged Alliance 2 best. No other tactical role-playing game ever came close for me although Wasteland 2 was fun. The people that can join your group are mostly uninteresting though. I Just created 4 characters, used the portraits of SG-1 and had some fun. It is not something I would replay countless time like Jagged Alliance 2. The only other game I replayed more was BG2 which is a completely different game.

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6 hours ago, Fez said:

I've become a fan of more deterministic systems over the past couple years. Games where everyone always hits (and modifiers like cover do something like reduce damage by half rather than lower odds to hit) and the game becomes more of a combat puzzle of trying to avoid hits (either moving out of the way, or killing the enemy before it gets the attack off, or deciding how many hits you can absorb, etc.).

Yeah, Mutant Year Zero uses that system and so does the follow-up game from the same devs, Corruption 2029.

7 hours ago, Gorn said:

Does anyone have a good PC-gaming related news website to recommend? Rock, Paper, Shotgun is currently my go-to website for daily browsing of news and articles, but their quality has declined a lot lately.

Most of the old-skool RPS team has left over last few years and replacements have come in, some of who are good and others who are not. They probably still are the best PC-centric games website around though.

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Haven't owned a console since the Super Nintendo. That said, the Xbox S pricing is really impressive. And Xbox X of course, shots fired at Sony there and it'll be interesting to see where Sony will price the Playstation...

The only thing I wonder at is the Xbox cloud service. If I understand right, for $15 a month you can stream content from the cloud to your console. That includes content you own? If I have a fast, low-ping connection to the local Azure data center, and I'm not playing twitchy multiplayer games, why would I ever spring for Xbox X, assuming that the streaming servers will be specced similarly to Xbox X?

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6 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Who needs a new Xbox?

At this point, possibly me. If these new consoles do force PC specs upwards, I still only have a GTX1070, and most of my storage is HD. It would be much cheaper for me to buy an Xbox rather then upgrade. Especially since I still only have a 1080p TV.

The $299 Xbox is a crazy good deal; and the $25/month contract for 24 months to pay for it and have gamepass is a hell of a thing.

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I'll be getting a Series X. 

I'm looking at a list of games right now and it is fucking depressing how many I investigate that look really cool and then I see the words first person and then I stop reading about that game.  

Still...Hellblade. 

 

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8 hours ago, Kalibear said:

So what do people think of the Xbox announcements?

It's just a small, less useful / flexible PC. I don't really see the point of these type of consoles these days. Despite their Nintendo bullshit, Nintendo continues to be the only console manufacturer that offers anything substantially unique in its consoles.

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44 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

Even I think the new XBox sounds like a good deal, especially the S, and I've never bought one before or considered buying one. I actually don't understand how they can make a profit off it.

Gamepass. The S especially (and probably also the X) aren't there to make money on the hardware, they're there to get you into the Xbox ecosystem. Getting you used to paying a monthly subscription fee, and occasionally also buying a game.

The attach rate (number of games a person buys over the lifetime of a console) is really low; for most consoles the average is somewhere between 6 and 9 games. People who post in video game threads on message boards, or are on reddit or wherever, are extreme outliers to the average gamer. The Xbox One's attach rate is 6.5. Not all of those games are likely to be full-priced at $60. But let's say they are; that's $390 in software sales on average for each sold console.

Xbox gamepass is $10/month. That's $120/year. If the next console life cycle is the same as this one, it'll be 7 years. That's $840. (but on the consumer side of things, they are getting access to hundreds of games rather than 6.5; so its a good deal for them too)

Of course, not everyone will but a new Xbox at launch, but there's a pretty big delta there before the average person is spending  less on gamepass than on new game purchases. And I bet the average gamepass subscriber still buys at least one or two games. Plus some will make micro-transactions in their favorite games, and Microsoft gets a cut of that too.

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1 hour ago, Poobah said:

It's just a small, less useful / flexible PC. I don't really see the point of these type of consoles these days. Despite their Nintendo bullshit, Nintendo continues to be the only console manufacturer that offers anything substantially unique in its consoles.

Price to performance. An Xbox X based on the announced pricing is substantially cheaper than building an equally-specced PC, and includes some stuff that is not yet common among PCs (like the rapid IO stuff). An RTX 3070 alone costs as much as the Xbox X.

Buy that, buy a cheap Chromebook, and you can do most anything someone with a $2000 computer can do.

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As Ran says price to performance is awesome.  However I just don't see the need of ever buying one personally. I have a comp that can do all the stuff it does already so there is literally no reason to ever buy one as all the games will be playable on PC. (Not that there are interesting games coming for it IMO).  I guess we shall see how successful their plan of "its cheaper short term than a computer but not as versatile" will work.

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45 minutes ago, Ran said:

Price to performance. An Xbox X based on the announced pricing is substantially cheaper than building an equally-specced PC, and includes some stuff that is not yet common among PCs (like the rapid IO stuff). An RTX 3070 alone costs as much as the Xbox X.

Buy that, buy a cheap Chromebook, and you can do most anything someone with a $2000 computer can do.

Comparing 3070s and 3090s to the new X-Box is a bit of an overkill. Those graphic cards will comprehensively smoke the new consoles (which are built on more mature and thus cheaper hardware). The new streaming tech in the 30xx series - which apparently is compatible in software with the 20xx series as well - is reportedly a hundred times faster than what the new consoles can manage when combined with a moderately new SSD. This year and next year's PC gaming tech is probably what you'll find in the mid-lifespan PS5/XBX "upgrade" console.

It is true that to get comparative performance cost you'll need to pay more for a PC, probably between $800 and $1000, but in a couple of years that'll come down a lot, and bang-for-buck game pricing should go a lot further on PC. That advantage has been eroded by rising PC game prices in recent years though, and the X-Box Game Pass and Sony's comparable offering are making that questionable.

I am wondering how long it is before Steam, Epic and GoG roll out Game Pass equivalents. Origin already has one.

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2 hours ago, Poobah said:

I don't really see the point of these type of consoles these days.

Think there are plenty of us out there who don't like playing games on a computer, and strongly prefer the experience on a console.  I used to play on a computer, switched to console, and enjoy it a lot more.  Less complicated.

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9 minutes ago, Whiskeyjack said:

Think there are plenty of us out there who don't like playing games on a computer, and strongly prefer the experience on a console.  I used to play on a computer, switched to console, and enjoy it a lot more.  Less complicated.

That and I don't have a good set up for a PC in my one bedroom apartment whereas it's pretty easy for me to plug a console into my big tv, sit on my sofa and play with my controller. Also easily allows my wife to participate as she loves the stories in the types of games I play.

Totally cool with those who like PCs and playing games on them just as I'm cool with people who play on consoles. That's why both exist.

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13 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Comparing 3070s and 3090s to the new X-Box is a bit of an overkill.

Who spoke of 3090s?

The specs of the Xbox X put it roughly around the GTX 2080 Super. The GTX 3070 is a bit superior, depending on the game, but the teraflops that Nvidia claims for it are a little bit misleading (since it assumes all CUDA cores are being used for floating point operations when in fact as many as half may be doing integer work). 

As to "more mature hardware", I don't know, it's built on the AMD RDNA2 platform which hasn't even been released to consumers and won't even have a public reveal until late October. 

 

 

13 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The new streaming tech in the 30xx series - which apparently is compatible in software with the 20xx series as well - is reportedly a hundred times faster than what the new consoles can manage when combined with a moderately new SSD.

I don't think that's right. As I recall, RTX IO is supposed to bring 100x the performance of current tech ... but the next-gen consoles are using the new tech from launch. They should be fairly comparable. And bear in mind, Microsoft is planning to release a developer preview of DirectStorage for Windows 10 next year, whereas the PS5 and Xbox X are coming now. Like, Ratchet and Clank is not going to be a game that you will be able to play on a PC if they release it for PC this year, IMO.

13 minutes ago, Werthead said:

It is true that to get comparative performance cost you'll need to pay more for a PC, probably between $800 and $1000

$1000 would be a minimum. $100 motherboard, $200 NVMe, $500 ($350 if you want to go down to GTX 3060 pricing) GPU, $300 CPU (Ryzen 7 3700X, which seems to match the specs most closely), plus a PSU and case. And I think you may need a more expensive mother board to have a PCIe 4.0 slot/m.2 for the SSD as well as one for the GPU.

They get the prices down in a way no PC manufacturer can, hence you have to wait for price parity.

13 minutes ago, Werthead said:

, but in a couple of years that'll come down a lot,

True, but if you're not playing bleeding edge then you won't really notice.

 

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