What are you playing right now?

Post Reply New Topic

Gaming has been harder and harder to keep track of, due to many releases. Magazines like Nintendo Power and Game Informer were pretty biased too. Generally all Nintendo made games got the high scores, while other stuff got mixed reviews (with some exceptions). Steam's 2 hour refund policy is a good way to "rent" a game I suppose (I personally havent refunded a game yet though). I honestly wish there was more ways to rent games these days. But there isnt- so you literally have to go by reading reviews and watching gameplay videos, then using best judgement. It doesn't always work out, but not much else we can do really.

We simply can't hope things will just revert back to how they were (tiny gaming market, rental stores, etc), because its not going to happen. Things change- its a way of life. Dwelling on the past honestly doesn't help us right now.

Well it's not like things like rental stores didnt have their issues either.

I have fond memories of them and also not-so-fond ones.

And I recall getting into the odd habit of renting certain games over and over and over again instead of just buying them, because... oh I have no idea. I'll just blame the autism and for whatever reason the weather. Weather is easy to blame.

And then certain rental stores around here randomly collapsed (Blockbuster showed up, is why) and I ended up owning the very copies of the games I kept renting. I'm not ENTIRELY sure how that came about, but I have alot of them. Complete with those strange plastic cases that had a sheet of extremely simple game instructions printed on them.

Blockbuster itself, on the other hand, I never liked. Just... eh. Maybe locations in other areas were decent, but the ones around here rather sucked. I dont miss those.

These days I'm just glad for Steam. Dunno what I'd do without it.

Steam is good, but honestly its a bit frustrating that Valve has the monopoly on PC digital services. Due to this- they half ass so much stuff. Reviews should be fixed, suggestions should be fixed, etc. Until some competition comes along- Steam likely wont change much. People want their precious sales, even though the actual Steam client is crap a bit.

Eh, I just use Steam because it's convenient and the only way to quickly find new stuff. Dont like any of the other vendors at all.

With my financial situation, the sales mean nothing to me. I dont notice them and will buy regardless. Though I understand that they are seen as a major thing by most users.

Review system I dont mind; it's quirky, but then... I dont really care too much, so that's fine.

The suggestion system is indeed a mess though, but... to me it's not that much different than any other vendor that shoves stupid things in my face that I wont buy. I tend to just ignore it. Indeed though I dont see that bit changing anytime soon. Even though some of the solutions are more than a bit obvious (like giving me the option to say "IM NOT BUYING ANY VISUAL NOVELS DAMMIT, STOP WAVING THEM AT ME", needless to say I'm tired of those things...).

New Baldur's Gate expansion. Siege of Dragonspear or whatever. Kinda funny playing a newly released expansion to a game I was playing over a decade ago.

Decent enough so far, and it's pretty close to ToB (the expansion to Baldur's Gate 2) in quality.

This isn't true.

Many publishers/developers are skipping Steam, Origin and GoG to support Windows 10 Store and UWP (United Windows Platform)
Rumor has it Microsoft is paying publishers/developers to support Windows 10 Store and UWP over the rest.

Epic and Valve are claiming that Microsoft is trying to monopolize Windows 10 via the Windows 10 Store and UWP

UWP makes it quite easy for a publisher/developer to port/develop for Windows 10 and Xbox One.

Anyways you can buy digital PC game codes from Best Buy, Amazon, Walmart, Gamestop. GoG and a few other places for Steam, Origin, and Windows 10 Store.

Anyways Gabe (Head of Valve) says the majority of Steam users and developers are happy with Steam in it's current form and a small amount of angry users are making it look bad. He said would you rather use Microsoft or EA services.

With that said Origin has the best customer service out of all the digital PC/Mac gaming platforms.
They have the best refund policy, the best policies on accounts and they give you free games for your troubles.
EA might be questionable everywhere else, but with Origin they are top notch.
Oh it's also easy to get your account fixed if it gets hacked.

Getting Valve to reinstate your account after you've been hacked is near impossible, same if you have any issues with anything.

Same goes for Winows 10 store.

Though to be fair Valve has ~300 employees, while EA has ~9,000.

Valve won't do anything until it hurts their bottom line or a major controversy happens.

I have no trouble getting news on what I want regarding gaming.
I have specific sites I use and Apple News app (which is better than people give it credit for).

NP was good for few things, but it wasn't as good as people remember.

Oh yeah, I know NP wasnt exactly perfect. Though, I'm speaking of the older version of the magazine; I didnt have it when it was getting nearer to it's end. I'm always thinking of back when they used to do things like map out game areas and give alot of tips and stuff like that... for whatever reason I always found it easier to get info out of that sort of thing than your basic "review" write-up. It's like, I dunno, I could easier see how the game was structured and such and how things might work. Hard to explain. I never seem to get all that much out of traditional reviews.

But that was a LONG time ago and the game market sure was different back then. I stopped subscribing after it all had changed too much.

Dunno what this Apple News app is. I use the Touch Arcade app to keep track of alot of mobile games (rather than browse the awful app store, ugh). Of course right now I'm seriously out of space on the damn iPad, bah.

Apple News app is essentially a new take on RSS newfeed that is built in app of iOS 9.
It lets add websites, which shows you all the articles of that website that is posted updates when the website does (Websites do not have to support Apple News, though all they have to do is fill out the form on Apple's site to get supported).
It also lets you add topics, when you click on topics it will show you all the articles published that day and also going back a few weeks.

If you add the topic Wii U to your Apple News App, when you click on it, it will show you all the articles posted about Wii U starting with today going back a few weeks.
I do this for a few topics and I enjoy doing it.

Look for said icon.


http://www.apple.com/news/


Anyways I remember the old NP I had a subscription to it until ~2000.
Then I switched to Next Gen Magazine, which I liked better but that died in late 2000s.
I still bought NP very few moths at the stand.

I don't do gaming mags this day in age due to all stuff being online.

P.S. I am glad my new iPhone 6s+ is 64GBs.

Here is an interesting game I just picked up on steam for $3.39: ROOT. It's basically if the original Deus Ex and Quake 4 had offspring that became combined with Half Life 2. Very interesting game, and as a plus, it is basically cyberpunk. It has a very weird visual style, but it is easier on the eyes than any modern FPS. I am having a lot of fun.

I am also pretty sure one of the characters is a Ghost In The Shell reference. It was mildly humorous when i noticed it.

Resident Evil 4 was on sale on Steam, so I snatched it up and started playing it. I had played/beaten it on PS2 back when it came out, but I wanted to relive the game again. The game has aged pretty well, but the controls on PC just feel a little stiff compared to what I'd like. After having played Metal Gear Solid 5, every other games controls feel sh***y.

Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne

One of the greatest PS2 games ever released.

Some number of pages back I was bigging up Nocturne, it's probably my favourite JRPG. Although my last attempt I tried to play hard mode and burned out in the sewers just prior to Matador D:

just started skullmonkeys. ps1.

the scratched disc isn't entirely comforting.

Yep, marvelheroes2016 gets ever more interesting especially the news that Nick Fury will be eventually added to the playable hero roster

Xortex from The Lab. It's an incredibly original game made by Valve that's sort of like a Japanese bullet hell shooter but in 3D space in VR where you hand control your ship.



Also a fair bit of Hover Junkers. It's a VR cover based shooter on hovercrafts in the desert. Really fun, also really physically exhausting and I need to get better endurance in my quads to play for longer periods comfortably.