Community MetaSteam | March 2020 - Rise and Shine, Ms. Vance, Until It Is Done!

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Hektor

Autobahnraser
Nov 1, 2018
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Finished Judgement.
Guess the PC port will be announced on monday then.

Game was fun but a bit of a disappontment.
Fun, because it's a well made Yakuza game, just like the mainline ones with cool characters, great story, great presentation, fun mingames and combat,
Disappointment because precisely all the new Detective elements they made for this spin off suck.
Investigations are just pixel hunting and tailing missions are a borefest.
Thankfully you only spent like 10% of the game with those, the other 90% are the fun Yakuza we all know and love.
 

Line

meh
Dec 21, 2018
1,699
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Finished Judgement.
Guess the PC port will be announced on monday then.

Game was fun but a bit of a disappontment.
Fun, because it's a well made Yakuza game, just like the mainline ones with cool characters, great story, great presentation, fun mingames and combat,
Disappointment because precisely all the new Detective elements they made for this spin off suck.
Investigations are just pixel hunting and tailing missions are a borefest.
Thankfully you only spent like 10% of the game with those, the other 90% are the fun Yakuza we all know and love.
Playing a cop is always worse than playing a bad guy :smart-thinking-blob:
Hope it won't be too late on PC. Having EFIGS is a huge, huge deal for the franchise in general. I know friends that can't wait to start the series without having to understand English subtitles.

Much less convinced about Yakuza 7's gameplay however...
 
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fantomena

MetaMember
Dec 17, 2018
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Completed Opposign Force, pretty good and G-Man is so interesting. Decided not to play Blue Shift as Im not particularly interested in Barney. Or maybe I will, dunno.
 
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Hektor

Autobahnraser
Nov 1, 2018
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Playing a cop is always worse than playing a bad guy :smart-thinking-blob:
Hope it won't be too late on PC. Having EFIGS is a huge, huge deal for the franchise in general. I know friends that can't wait to start the series without having to understand English subtitles.

Much less convinced about Yakuza 7's gameplay however...
While you are not wrong, you don't play a cop, but a private detective who punches cops.
Really looking forward to Y7 myself, turn based sounds great.
 

FunnyJay

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Apr 6, 2019
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Completed Opposign Force, pretty good and G-Man is so interesting. Decided not to play Blue Shift as Im not particularly interested in Barney. Or maybe I will, dunno.
Blue Shift is really short though. I think I completed it in about 3 hours...
 
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Aaron D.

MetaMember
Jul 10, 2019
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So...The Longing. It's pretty amazing. Kinda breathtaking in effect.

But it's gonna go down as one of the hardest sells in quite some time.

Steam descriptions says, "An unusual mix of adventure and idle game. In utter loneliness deep below the surface, it's your task to wait for the awakening of your king... for 400 days."

That's 400 days in real time. There's a big countdown timer at the top of the screen and once you start a new game, the clock will continue to count down the days, hours, minutes, seconds. Even after you've exited the program.

So you point & click your little dude around the map, exploring the underground cave network of adjoining rooms. Some have lite puzzle elements but that's not the game's focus. You can pick up items to help pass the time with. Coal chucks the randomly drop from the ceiling to be used for drawing. Occasional books to read...real-world variety that are complete (i.e. Moby Dick).

Sometimes your progress is time gated. I entered a room with a stairway leading up. It had a huge gap in it but there was a stalactite on the ceiling over it. My guy said something like, "That looks like it'll probably drop in a couple weeks." (Two weeks in real time?!?) Another time I got to a huge set of stone doors that I activated. I could hear the stone slowly grinding open. Ol' yellow eyes says, "That'll likely take a couple hours to open."

Those are the only time-related roadblocks I saw in the first couple hours, so I don't think it's prevalent. But it's an interesting element nonetheless.

The true game-breaker for most will be the main character's walking speed. It's utterly glacial. It's by design. And you'll either love it or hate it. The authorial intent is plain as day. But that doesn't mean many or even most will be willing to put up with it. Crossing a single screen-sized room takes about 30 seconds. The game is very vertical and going up 3 or 4 switchbacks can take 60. So what gives? What's the point?

Pacing.

The Longing is a meditative game. You're one little guy. By himself. Underground. Alone for 400 days waiting for your god to wake back up. You're not forced into the situation. You're not unexpectedly lost and looking for a way out. Your job is to...wait.

As you slowly plod from one room to the next exploring new areas, your guy talks to himself. Reflecting on the nature of being. The impact of loneliness. Sense of purpose. The slow pace of traversal puts you into your character's shoes. You feel the weight of 400 days in isolation. It's a melancholy experience. And the game triumphs in transporting you to that moment. But at the same time it asks a lot of the player to get there. It urges one to give themselves up to the glacial pacing. I can honesty, with zero judgement, see how many will view it as a bridge too far.



It's like Mondrian's Composition No. 10 . Do you see art there? Many see it. Some don't.

But ultimately it's a harder sell than Rembrandt, who's finely detailed craftsmanship is easier to appreciate at first glance.

Quick note on presentation. The Longing is a damn fine looking game. The art is all hand drawn and it reminds me of 70s-era French animation. Soundtrack is synth-somber and suits the mood well. Foley effects are sparse but on point (the slap, slap, slap of bare footsteps on marble, etc.).

I think the title of the game is pretty genius. Because the whole experience reaches in and touches that lonely, longing part of us all. That existential, "We really are alone in the world." tenderness inside that we spend so much time unconsciously covering up with extracurricular activities and relationships.

The Longing may be more of an experience than an actual game. Well I guess that's just semantics as there is gameplay, but I think the experience part is the bigger selling point. It's certainly a mood piece. A successful one at that. Not gonna be for everyone, but it doesn't need to be. It's gonna resonate for many. And those few are gonna discover a valuable experience that just doesn't come along very often.

Highly recommended.
 

Tizoc

Retired, but still Enabling
Oct 11, 2018
7,627
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Oman
ko-fi.com
While Opposing Force's final section is annoying, I enjoyed traversing throgh Black Mesa.
activity feed says Murder by Numbers is the game of the week huh...do i need to buy too?
It's a light Visual Novel with some light Nongram going on. It's a nice chill game IMO.
 

PC-tan

Low Tier Weeb
Jan 19, 2019
3,807
6,161
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28
California
Should I play through Opposing Force and Blue Shift?
They are both good games and ya they don't take very long. There are some game play mechanics that are in them that you don't see in the other Half Life games. Well at least in opposing force (specifically), in Half Life 1 you can have security members and scientist follow you and you can do the same in opposing force but the difference is that the people that follow you are military members that have their own specialty. For the most part you are solo in Half Life 1, but in Opposing Force you do spend more time with a squad.
 

Swenhir

Spaceships!
Apr 18, 2019
3,534
7,621
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Maybe Randy will show up with some magic card trick....
The one he pulled with Homeworld was unforgivable. The user manual was a hallowed and venerated piece of literature, a unique piece of lore that immersed you in the game's world as much as it fascinated with technical and tactical tidbits. For a strategy game, it was unprecedented and an all-around good read.

He tore a page out for his trick.
 
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Arsene

On a break
Apr 17, 2019
3,280
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Canada
If "free" is the price that I must pay, then so be it.

It sort of sucks how they were not able to get more keys for those two games. They were able to get the bundle back up for cheaper, but it just was not the same.
Yeah its lame but im not surprising coming from SNK. Glad I was able to snag the bundle before it sold out.
 
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uraizen

Junior Member
Oct 7, 2018
698
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If "free" is the price that I must pay, then so be it.

It sort of sucks how they were not able to get more keys for those two games. They were able to get the bundle back up for cheaper, but it just was not the same.
SNK and PC go together like peanut butter and grate toilet paper.
 
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InquisitorAles

I know nothing
Oct 19, 2018
229
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www.youtube.com
Hey guys, I just published the video I was working on for the past few weeks!

This time I've tried to do in-depth analysis of the current trend of adding Battle Pass in every single game. While it's considered as a better alternative than lootboxes and paid DLCs, I think that way it designed it can be dangerous as well, so I've tried to explain in detail what's the main issues of Battle Passes in my opinion. Wonder to know what do you guys think about this trend, because I don't see much discussion about it in big gaming media, but after taking a 2-week break from gaming I thought about this topic a lot.
 
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lashman

lashman

Dead & Forgotten
Sep 5, 2018
32,078
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Augmented Steam has been updated to 1.4.2
  • Fix high disk & CPU usage and improve loading times
  • Improved games highlighting
  • Updated entries in page customizers
  • Added similar games from SteamPeek to app pages
  • Added quick links for youtube and twitch to app pages
  • Added sort to your groups
  • Added option to leave multiple groups at once
 

Ascheroth

Chilling in the Megastructure
Nov 12, 2018
5,312
12,286
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Hey guys, I just published the video I was working on for the past few weeks!

This time I've tried to do in-depth analysis of the current trend of adding Battle Pass in every single game. While it's considered as a better alternative than lootboxes and paid DLCs, I think that way it designed it can be dangerous as well, so I've tried to explain in detail what's the main issues of Battle Passes in my opinion. Wonder to know what do you guys think about this trend, because I don't see much discussion about it in big gaming media, but after taking a 2-week break from gaming I thought about this topic a lot.
I hate daily challenges/login bonuses/timed rewards. As you said in the video, it starts to feel like work and like it forces a routine on you and that's not what I look for in games.
I want to buy something once, and have access to everything forever, regardless of when and how much I play.
Which I realize is the exact opposite of what the industry is currently aiming for unfortunately, and that's why I just avoid GaaS games. My preferenes were always more singleplayer than multiplayer anyway, so that's enough to do fo now.
Though there are some GaaS games I think I would enjoy and I sometimes try some, but ultimately get put off by all the threadmill bullshit and go back to singleplayer games.
 

FunnyJay

Powered by the Cloud
Apr 6, 2019
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My preferenes were always more singleplayer than multiplayer anyway, so that's enough to do fo now.
I concur.
I have always thought that the majority of multiplayer have really short gameplay loops and just loops them indefinitely.
Multiplayer FPS are mostly short rounds were you just shoot everything and respawn.
Multiplayer RTS force you to follow exact build orders and have an APM of a 15 year old to have a chance.

Give me singleplayer games where you can take your time and do what you want! 😀
 

TheLetdown

A six-pack of letdown.
Oct 30, 2018
143
272
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^

... but also, fuck daylight savings time for robbing me (and everyone else stuck in a country which still carries on this wretched curse) an hour of sleep this night.

When you die, you get all of your daylight savings hours back + an endless Steam library.

But there's a catch.

What kind of person you are determines your download speed.
 
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