Videogames: All Valves on Deck

[IlyaP]

8 hours ago, Ran said:

They have in the past. Last year, they gave out Death Stranding. Other big titles over the years  ... The Dishonored games, Control, GTA V, Bioshock Collecton, the Tomb Raider Trilogy, Civilization VI, Homeworld Remastered Collection, Metro 2023, the Batman Arkham trilogy, Fallout: New Vegas, Hitman, Destiny 2...

To build on this, looking at my Epic library: A Plague Tale: Innocence, Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, Bioshock: Complete Series, Breathedge, Borderlands 2 & 3, Control, Dishonored: Definitive Edition, Fallout 1, Fallout 2, Fallout: New Vegas, GTA 5, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Guardians of the Galaxy, Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Pillars of Eternity: Definitive Edition, Prey, Rage 2, Tomb Raider: Survivor, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Saints Row 3 & 4, Star Wars: Squadrons, The Outer Worlds, Tyranny: Gold Edition, all obtained for free on Epic.

[Ramsay B.]

Obviously late to the party but started Hades on the Steam deck the other day. It’s the perfect time waster for slow days at work. Fun shit.

Also have Cyberpunk locked and loaded. Will finally get to that someday. 

[Werthead]

An unofficial Portal 1.5 has been made and dropped on Steam already. It's an interquel set between Portal and Portal 2.

 

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

12 hours ago, Ramsay B. said:

Obviously late to the party but started Hades on the Steam deck the other day. It’s the perfect time waster for slow days at work. Fun shit.

Also have Cyberpunk locked and loaded. Will finally get to that someday. 

If you enjoyed Hades, do  give Bastion and Transistor a try as well, also made by Supergiant games. They aren’t complete roguelikes but have a very similar feel and narrative flow to them and equally addicting gameplay. Supergiants has fast become one of my favourite game developers. 

[mcbigski]

On 1/5/2024 at 12:32 AM, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Only game I’m tempted by is Alan Wake II but I’ll wait till it’s at 75% discount as I really don’t wanna use EGS unless it’s a steal or if it comes to Steam I’ll buy it immediately.  The irony of how Epic sues Apple or Google for monopolistic practices but then walls off it’s own games on PC hasn’t escaped me…

I bought Alan Wake the first, might still have the DVD.  Only got a few hours into it.  Maybe it's meant to be more atmospheric storytelling and I blew past too many clues, but it was kind of a drag.  If I were to revisit it, how should I frame my expectations?

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

1 hour ago, mcbigski said:

I bought Alan Wake the first, might still have the DVD.  Only got a few hours into it.  Maybe it's meant to be more atmospheric storytelling and I blew past too many clues, but it was kind of a drag.  If I were to revisit it, how should I frame my expectations?

I enjoyed the first game but honestly I don’t think it’s aged all that well. It’s half a Stephen King Parody and half a serious,twin peaks like, survival horror game. If you stop trying to understand the plot and just go with the flow you’ll probably enjoy it a lot more. It’s a game that’s a bit confused about what it wants to be ,I’ve heard the sequel is better in this regard in that it’s straight up horror. I enjoyed it back in the day( literally 2013) for it’s atmosphere mainly.

Edited January 7 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

An unofficial Portal 1.5 has been made and dropped on Steam already. It's an interquel set between Portal and Portal 2.

 

You think Valve will ever release a new, full blown game this decade ? 

[Argonath Diver]

19 hours ago, Werthead said:

An unofficial Portal 1.5 has been made and dropped on Steam already. It's an interquel set between Portal and Portal 2.

 

Thank you Wert. It's nearly 5am when I saw this and there's no way I'm going to bed before I at least finish the first level, now. Apologies to my parents for not going to their house in the morning, surely you'll be able to explain to them why I stayed up til past dawn. Cheers.

 

Next day edit: I indeed stayed up and put 2 hours in before calling it. What a well-crafted independent project. Of course it doesn't have the true polish of a Valve production. Although I'm not to the finale, I breezed through every level without much hesitation at all - frankly, though, I'm adept at sorting out the puzzles in the previous games unlike many other titles which I'm awful at. The AI voice I found particularly grating, but the voice actor gives it his all. 

So far it's been great fun even as an indie mod, and I'm really glad you linked it!

Edited January 7 by Argonath Diver

[Werthead]

4 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

You think Valve will ever release a new, full blown game this decade ? 

They already did in 2020. If you mean another one this decade, unclear!

Edited January 7 by Werthead

[Impmk2]

Really loving Sekiro this time around. Jedi Survivor was indeed a pretty reasonable proxy for the playstyle, though the parry timings are much tighter and the boss fights seem better designed (ie no bullshit, no overlevelling, hard but fair). In some ways the trash mobs were harder in Survivor, given you can just sneak up to and execute basically everything in Sekiro with a degree of patience.

Currently working on Owl (mk.2 Hirata estate) which is supposedly one of the harder fights in the game... Feel like I'm getting there.

[Ser Not Appearing]

Playing Elden Ring again and having a blast.

But I had forgotten how annoying it is to find 90 weapons but only be able to effectively use 2.5 of them. Feels super dumb.

[The Anti-Targ]

I've always wanted to give Alan Wake a try, but there are so many games higher on the priority list that I may struggle to get around to playing that I might never get to Alan Wake.

On a different note, has anyone been watching the Silent Hill TV series with audience influencing the course of the series? Is it a possible future of video game adaptation, including using AI to completely adapt in real time to the personal preferences of the viewer? I'm thinking of potential future adaptations of Mass Effect and Dragon Age and other games where there are a lot of choices to be made where the individual viewer does not have to accept the decisions of the writers or even the will of the majority at key moments. You get to pick background/origin, paragon / renegade or chaotic(?) path, gender, sexuality, race, romance etc. 80% of the story happens the same in every telling just as it does in the games, but you get to choose pivotal character moments just like you do in the games.

Not sure the tech is quite there to seamlessly switch between real actors on screen for the 80% fully scripted scenes and CGI when the viewer choice moments happen, but it may not be that far away. And of course there are filming techniques that reduce the need for CGI rendition even in those scenes.

[Rhom]

8 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I've always wanted to give Alan Wake a try, but there are so many games higher on the priority list that I may struggle to get around to playing that I might never get to Alan Wake.

On a different note, has anyone been watching the Silent Hill TV series with audience influencing the course of the series? Is it a possible future of video game adaptation, including using AI to completely adapt in real time to the personal preferences of the viewer? I'm thinking of potential future adaptations of Mass Effect and Dragon Age and other games where there are a lot of choices to be made where the individual viewer does not have to accept the decisions of the writers or even the will of the majority at key moments. You get to pick background/origin, paragon / renegade or chaotic(?) path, gender, sexuality, race, romance etc. 80% of the story happens the same in every telling just as it does in the games, but you get to choose pivotal character moments just like you do in the games.

Not sure the tech is quite there to seamlessly switch between real actors on screen for the 80% fully scripted scenes and CGI when the viewer choice moments happen, but it may not be that far away. And of course there are filming techniques that reduce the need for CGI rendition even in those scenes.

Please. This is nothing new.  In like 1990, There was an episode of Married… With Children on Valentine’s Day where at the end, viewers could call in and choose if Al had to say “I love you Peg” or not at the end.

Truly innovative interactive television!

[Ser Not Appearing]

I'm going to wade, perhaps foolishly, back into the romancing and nudity in video games discussion to say:

My opinion on the value of these elements notwithstanding, it's wild to me that Xbox appears to be standing by bans (https://x.com/XboxSupport/status/1744445540278907321?s=20) for people who game-capture those scenes and upload for sharing. It's a game they sold and it's being captured without manipulation on the system it is intended for. That simply should never result in a ban.

Edited January 8 by Ser Not Appearing

[Ran]

4 minutes ago, Ser Not Appearing said:

That simply should never result in a ban.

I don't have an Xbox, but when I look at the links, they talk about how the clips can be uploaded automatically to

Quote

 profile’s activity feed, clubs, or messages.

If profile feeds or clubs are public and age isn't used to bar people from content, I can see the issue. They talk about auto-uploading being the real problem, so I guess my question is does auto-upload immediately publish to your feed?

But someone points out, rightly, that people should be asked to opt-in into auto-upload, not opt-out.

[Ser Not Appearing]

21 minutes ago, Ran said:

I don't have an Xbox, but when I look at the links, they talk about how the clips can be uploaded automatically to

If profile feeds or clubs are public and age isn't used to bar people from content, I can see the issue. They talk about auto-uploading being the real problem, so I guess my question is does auto-upload immediately publish to your feed?

But someone points out, rightly, that people should be asked to opt-in into auto-upload, not opt-out.

 

Yeah, you can opt out of auto upload. It's the default but you can opt out.

The issue, as I see it, is that I can't even manually upload these for sharing. I don't think you can even upload it and have it private where you're the only person who can see it. Ultimately, if you sold me the game and I capture video while I'm playing and I use the on-system mechanics for uploading that to share, there should be no ban (my opinion).

If they need to add a restrictions on the back end elsewhere, go ahead and do that.

Edited January 8 by Ser Not Appearing

[Kalbear]

Per this the bans are starting to be lifted:

https://gamerant.com/baldurs-gate-3-xbox-bans-lifting/

Including the one that started the whole hullabaloo. 

https://www.eurogamer.net/baldurs-gate-3-devs-working-with-microsoft-to-sort-annoying-and-uncool-xbox-bans

37 minutes ago, Ser Not Appearing said:

The issue, as I see it, is that I can't even manually upload these for sharing. I don't think you can even upload it and have it private where you're the only person who can see it. Ultimately, if you sold me the game and I capture video while I'm playing and I use the on-system mechanics for uploading that to share, there should be no ban (my opinion).

If they need to add a restrictions on the back end elsewhere, go ahead and do that.

Yeah, you can save clips all you want. The bolded is completely inaccurate. The problem is uploading it to your feed, which is not super-well protected for mature content in that way. I think that's a problem but I don't see that there's an issue with someone saying that you can't post things to in effect a social media content. 

The issue is more about what you should be able to do on social media. Xbox the game platform is different and has different rules than Xbox the social media platform. You can play many mature games on the game platform, but you can't upload whatever you want - just like you can watch explicit content on Netflix via your Xbox but you can't upload clips of that and post it on the xbox media there. 

[Ser Not Appearing]

2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Yeah, you can save clips all you want. The bolded is completely inaccurate. The problem is uploading it to your feed, which is not super-well protected for mature content in that way. I think that's a problem but I don't see that there's an issue with someone saying that you can't post things to in effect a social media content. 

 

This point is unclear to me.

You can restrict your feed to disallow anyone but you from seeing it. If I upload a clip to my own feed and viewing by others is restricted, my understanding is that a ban can still result.

Are you saying otherwise?

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, Ser Not Appearing said:

This point is unclear to me.

You can restrict your feed to disallow anyone but you from seeing it. If I upload a clip to my own feed and viewing by others is restricted, my understanding is that a ban can still result.

Are you saying otherwise?

I am saying that saving clips and uploading clips are two separate things. You can choose to save game clips all you like and that is not restricted. You can upload clips to the Xbox social media system, and even if you restrict that to just yourself to start it can result in a ban. 

That is because there is nothing that requires that those clips remain private on your uploads. And Microsoft has taken the position that they would rather catch content uploaded to their social network when it's uploaded, not when it's displayed publicly - probably because it's a lot harder to do the latter than the former. 

My point is that there is nothing stopping you from getting a clip and saving it and watching it as many times as you want on your box. But uploading it to a social network has greater restrictions. 

[Ser Not Appearing]

Ok, that's what I thought.

In that case, I agree with me. Thanks me, good point! Restricting my sharing clips of the game they sold me is super problematic in my eyes.