Community MetaSteam | January 2025 - Remember cloud, a great remake comes with great responsibility, kuppo.

[Lashley]

This is a bit, right?

Sadly, no.

 

[Sadrac]

Didn't expect this. Sales and pre-orders for Sony's games must have been in decline since the mandatory PSN login.

Anyway, I'm happy with this. I removed these games from my ignore list.

Oh and a huge finger towards the corporate bootlickers who told us that complaining about this wouldn't change anything.


This would be incredible for me. Hope it's true!

Immortals of Aveum right now is 85% off on steam, so it makes me think it's true.

 

[Knurek]

This is a bit, right?

 

[kio]

rip bioware

Theseus ship logic. They've been dead for long.

Yeah, Bioware has been striking out for a while now. If EA wants to make a good RPG they should call Swen Vincke and give him the keys to Ultima.

Why would you wish an evil like this upon the world? Larian's one the few bright spots in this silly hobby, keep them as far away as possible from ea and others like them.
Plus the last good Ultima was 30 years ago, the IP is dead and buried.

 

[STHX]

This is a bit, right?

I assure you It's a lot

 

[Alextended]

New Sniper Elite looks and runs surprisingly nice on my old PC, I can play it maxed comfortably, if the first mission is indicative at least, but it's not some small scale indoor corridor or whatever. Definitely not super great next gen visuals or anything but it's well realised. TAA isn't great & seems over-sharpened with no option to reduce that but since it runs so nice most folks can probably just supersample it comfortably and get rid of any remaining jaggies. Gameplay feels so polished, no jank whatsoever so far, the cover system as you're just crouching about and approach corners is so seamless and smooth. Oh, it also uses Denuvo anti-cheat but if you don't play multiplayer you can actually refuse installation, it specifically asks you a couple times as you start a game, so that's something.

 

[spindoctor]

So after 50 hours of the First Descendant, my recommendation is to play Warframe.

My issue is that if you get certain characters in your party then you don't actually get to play the game. These characters have OP Nuke options that just wipe everything at all times. When you get the lesser used characters joining a party it's a lot of fun and the gameplay is great. You can run solo as well and it works well, but if the game can't be played as "intended" I think it is a bit of a failure.

Also there isn't a lot there at the moment. A bit unfair to compare to Warframe seeing as the First Descendant is only a year old and Warframe is 11 years old. However that is the competitor and the baseline you will always be compared to.

Also logging in to bare arses every time wears thin very quickly.

Game balance is very important for multiplayer games that feature different classes or weapons, but there's often a disconnect between gamers and developers on how that balance should be achieved. When a game has a skill or class or weapon that is too powerful, gamers will ask the developers to buff all the other alternatives instead of nerfing the super powerful thing they're having fun with. The idea being that everything should be just as good as the strongest thing so that everyone can enjoy the power fantasy. Developers almost never listen to this and will nerf the powerful thing to bring it in line with the rest of the game. The developers of the First Descendant are possibly the first dev team I've ever seen that actually seems to subscribe to the former idea. They refuse to nerf things that are too powerful in their game.

The fact that Bunny is broken has been known since day one. She can run faster than everyone and she can clear rooms before others even arrive. They shouldn't have let the game go live with how incredibly powerful she was but I do kind of understand why they'd be hesitant to nerf her after the fact. She is or was the poster girl of the game and I imagine they made a lot of money from selling her bundles and stuff. Then they buffed Freyna a couple of months later and gave her the ability to blow up entire rooms of enemies. I thought that was their idea of slowly wanting to buff all the other characters instead, but if it takes 2 months to buff one character, and you have list of 20+ characters you need to buff and you need to keep introducing new ones, I don't think they'll ever be able to catch up.

Incidentally, there have been instances of things being too powerful in Warframe where the developers have wielded the nerf bat hard. At one point there was a technique in the game called 'zorencoptering' that allowed players to fly across maps if they had specific melee weapons equipped and used a physics exploit. It was fun as hell and harmless but the developers not only nerfed it, they completely overhauled the melee system to stop it. Likewise, Ember was a super popular warframe at one point because she had the ability to clear rooms with her ultimate and they nerfed her into the ground and people just stopped using her altogether.

I don't know which approach is correct to be honest. And especially in a loot hunting game like First Descendant or Warframe or any Diablo like and such. In these kinds of games, you only experience the content once or a few times before you just want to optimize it to get the best rewards. Meaning you will do the thing that lets you get the drops or the items or resources as fast as possible. For example, if you can level up to max in a game like Diablo by playing normally and it takes 25 hours, but you can also repeat the same dungeon 100 times and you can level up in 20 hours, you'll find a lot of people will choose the dungeon. So in the First Descendant, having a Bunny or two in your team might not be fun if you're trying to play another class, but for the most part people are probably happy to either play Bunny themselves or to just run behind and collect all the loot without needing to do much.

As a general observation, I do think the developers of First Descendant are extremely responsive to what their community wants. People ask for a feature or QOL update in a livestream or something and it gets patched into the game within 2 patches. They've done everything they can to keep the community happy except for this one thing where they allow a couple of classes to be too good at trash clearing content and a couple of classes are just too good for boss hunting. I think the bigger issue with the game is that they need to ship more content a lot quicker than they have been doing. They have these beautiful open world maps but there's nothing to do there once you finish the campaign aside from going there for specific drops. They could do what Warframe does and time gate a lot of content and that would work but I'm glad they avoid using that trick to keep people engaged. The one time they did that, they went overboard (Hailey farm) and they had to tone it down drastically after the community hated it.

The game is losing players dramatically (on PC at least, I hear console numbers are better) so they're in a difficult position on what they can do to keep it popular. They keep giving out all the resources that you're supposed to farm in the game to craft stuff, which helps people get those items faster, but it also means there's less for them to do while playing the game.

Despite the challenges, I would not recommend Warframe over this game. Honestly, the only good thing that Warframe has going for it is the story which they retroactively patched in 3 years after the game came out and the music is amazing. The rest of the game is a mish-mash of disparate ideas with (often) poorly executed and abandoned content. 10 years worth of shit to do in that game and so much of it isn't actually worth doing at all. The star map is the tutorial and the cinematic story missions have a 50-50 hit rate. The game is littered with abandoned content ideas like archwing, open worlds, ship building and so on. They release so much content that nothing ever gets tested beforehand. Their playerbase is literally their Q&A department. Everything they release is always overtuned to be grindy before they rationalize it right around the time next big thing is due. But the biggest strike against Warframe is this... every live service is meant and designed to be a treadmill. Everyone playing these games understands that. The good ones are always trying to make the time spent in a game worth it. Warframe went in the other direction. They no longer even try to hide the skinner box. Pre-requisites, time gates, reputation systems, RNG upon RNG... everything is just designed to keep you playing the game. The odds of a person getting a good Riven by themselves (without trading) are nearly zero. The odds of getting 2 good Rivens are actually zero. They have shifted away from the idea of keeping it fun and more towards the idea of keeping you hooked, as a habit. Once you see through the veil it is impossible to ever go back to Warframe. The game is so archaic with so many different things that keep getting added that even people who played for thousands of hours over years (e.g. me) would be lost if you take a break for even a year or two. The First Descendant rips a lot of Warframe's systems but it comes with a fresh start and I hope they can continue to build on it without incorporating all the rust and grime that Warframe has accumulated over the last decade.

That said, I don't actually see a future for the First Descendant either. They need to do something dramatic to increase their popularity and I have absolutely zero idea what that looks like.

New in-game content incentives coming to PlayStation games on PC

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, The Last of Us Part II Remastered, and God of War Ragnarok to offer in-game content unlocks for users playing with a PlayStation Network account

blog.playstation.com

That's what they should have done from the outset.

This is only meaningful if they actually start selling the games in all the countries they were arbitrarily blocking because they're too fucking stupid to set up a global account system.

There's also a school of thought, mostly from people who were unaffected by the PSN requirement, that the 150 countries excluded from buying those games didn't matter because the amount of sales/revenue from those places would be negligible. If they do start selling the games in those countries then we can put that theory into the dustbin.

And just generally speaking, example #5325343 that complaining actually does work and the PC community will at least stand up to some of the bullshit that the industry tries to pull off.

Where are we going PapEA?
BioWare Studio Update
https://www.ign.com/articles/mass-effect-5-bioware-doesnt-require-support-from-the-full-studio-ea-moves-some-staff-to-other-teams

The PapEA comic has to be the longest running joke in the game industry now. Bioware is a low quality company staffed by low quality people who have been shitting out turds for well over 10 years. Several lousy games in a row and three consecutive, confirmed bombas and yet somehow they have still managed to cheat death all this time. It is the single biggest con job in modern gaming. The job security almost matches government jobs at this point. The crazy thing is the level of hubris these people have... believing that they are capable of producing the 'Janis Joplin' or 'Bob Dylan' of games when the reality is that their actual output doesn't even compare favorably to smaller, less funded studios like (no disparagement meant here) Spiders or Piranha Bytes.

One last thing I wanted to talk about but this is already a wall of text. I finished Dynasty Warriors Origins the other day. And by finished I mean I completed one story path out of a possible three that the game has. There's a lot I could talk about with the game but the gist is that I thought it was absolutely fantastic. It looks amazing maxed out on PC (and runs really well on Steam deck as well for the kind of game it is). Annihilating hundreds of enemies at a time never ever gets old in the 30+ hours I spent playing the game. The game slowly unlocks more and more powerful abilities as you play so you just keep getting stronger all the time and it's just so much fun.

I know the game is very expensive, especially with crap regional pricing, but I would strongly recommend checking it out if you are able to. If you're a fan of 1v1000 games it's a must try and if you're new, then this one is a fantastic starting point. They have a demo up on Steam that everyone should try even if you're not familiar with this genre.

 

[Alexandros]

Why would you wish an evil like this upon the world? Larian's one the few bright spots in this silly hobby, keep them as far away as possible from ea and others like them.
Plus the last good Ultima was 30 years ago, the IP is dead and buried.

I think it would be a good time to revive it. Swen is a huge Ultima fan and after BG3 he has the clout to dictate terms to EA and not the other way around.

 

[Arulan]

I wouldn't say no to a Larian Ultima, but I also just feel they should do their own thing, in a new setting. Several of the Divinity games were great, but not because of the setting. Surprise me.

 

[thekeats1999]

Game balance is very important for multiplayer games that feature different classes or weapons, but there's often a disconnect between gamers and developers on how that balance should be achieved. When a game has a skill or class or weapon that is too powerful, gamers will ask the developers to buff all the other alternatives instead of nerfing the super powerful thing they're having fun with. The idea being that everything should be just as good as the strongest thing so that everyone can enjoy the power fantasy. Developers almost never listen to this and will nerf the powerful thing to bring it in line with the rest of the game. The developers of the First Descendant are possibly the first dev team I've ever seen that actually seems to subscribe to the former idea. They refuse to nerf things that are too powerful in their game.

The fact that Bunny is broken has been known since day one. She can run faster than everyone and she can clear rooms before others even arrive. They shouldn't have let the game go live with how incredibly powerful she was but I do kind of understand why they'd be hesitant to nerf her after the fact. She is or was the poster girl of the game and I imagine they made a lot of money from selling her bundles and stuff. Then they buffed Freyna a couple of months later and gave her the ability to blow up entire rooms of enemies. I thought that was their idea of slowly wanting to buff all the other characters instead, but if it takes 2 months to buff one character, and you have list of 20+ characters you need to buff and you need to keep introducing new ones, I don't think they'll ever be able to catch up.

Incidentally, there have been instances of things being too powerful in Warframe where the developers have wielded the nerf bat hard. At one point there was a technique in the game called 'zorencoptering' that allowed players to fly across maps if they had specific melee weapons equipped and used a physics exploit. It was fun as hell and harmless but the developers not only nerfed it, they completely overhauled the melee system to stop it. Likewise, Ember was a super popular warframe at one point because she had the ability to clear rooms with her ultimate and they nerfed her into the ground and people just stopped using her altogether.

I don't know which approach is correct to be honest. And especially in a loot hunting game like First Descendant or Warframe or any Diablo like and such. In these kinds of games, you only experience the content once or a few times before you just want to optimize it to get the best rewards. Meaning you will do the thing that lets you get the drops or the items or resources as fast as possible. For example, if you can level up to max in a game like Diablo by playing normally and it takes 25 hours, but you can also repeat the same dungeon 100 times and you can level up in 20 hours, you'll find a lot of people will choose the dungeon. So in the First Descendant, having a Bunny or two in your team might not be fun if you're trying to play another class, but for the most part people are probably happy to either play Bunny themselves or to just run behind and collect all the loot without needing to do much.

As a general observation, I do think the developers of First Descendant are extremely responsive to what their community wants. People ask for a feature or QOL update in a livestream or something and it gets patched into the game within 2 patches. They've done everything they can to keep the community happy except for this one thing where they allow a couple of classes to be too good at trash clearing content and a couple of classes are just too good for boss hunting. I think the bigger issue with the game is that they need to ship more content a lot quicker than they have been doing. They have these beautiful open world maps but there's nothing to do there once you finish the campaign aside from going there for specific drops. They could do what Warframe does and time gate a lot of content and that would work but I'm glad they avoid using that trick to keep people engaged. The one time they did that, they went overboard (Hailey farm) and they had to tone it down drastically after the community hated it.

The game is losing players dramatically (on PC at least, I hear console numbers are better) so they're in a difficult position on what they can do to keep it popular. They keep giving out all the resources that you're supposed to farm in the game to craft stuff, which helps people get those items faster, but it also means there's less for them to do while playing the game.

Despite the challenges, I would not recommend Warframe over this game. Honestly, the only good thing that Warframe has going for it is the story which they retroactively patched in 3 years after the game came out and the music is amazing. The rest of the game is a mish-mash of disparate ideas with (often) poorly executed and abandoned content. 10 years worth of shit to do in that game and so much of it isn't actually worth doing at all. The star map is the tutorial and the cinematic story missions have a 50-50 hit rate. The game is littered with abandoned content ideas like archwing, open worlds, ship building and so on. They release so much content that nothing ever gets tested beforehand. Their playerbase is literally their Q&A department. Everything they release is always overtuned to be grindy before they rationalize it right around the time next big thing is due. But the biggest strike against Warframe is this... every live service is meant and designed to be a treadmill. Everyone playing these games understands that. The good ones are always trying to make the time spent in a game worth it. Warframe went in the other direction. They no longer even try to hide the skinner box. Pre-requisites, time gates, reputation systems, RNG upon RNG... everything is just designed to keep you playing the game. The odds of a person getting a good Riven by themselves (without trading) are nearly zero. The odds of getting 2 good Rivens are actually zero. They have shifted away from the idea of keeping it fun and more towards the idea of keeping you hooked, as a habit. Once you see through the veil it is impossible to ever go back to Warframe. The game is so archaic with so many different things that keep getting added that even people who played for thousands of hours over years (e.g. me) would be lost if you take a break for even a year or two. The First Descendant rips a lot of Warframe's systems but it comes with a fresh start and I hope they can continue to build on it without incorporating all the rust and grime that Warframe has accumulated over the last decade.

That said, I don't actually see a future for the First Descendant either. They need to do something dramatic to increase their popularity and I have absolutely zero idea what that looks like.

This is the thing, I actually stopped playing Helldivers 2 because they originally approached everything with the nerf hammer. They wanted their game to be a challenge and push people into trying all weapons. I think this was almost disastrous for the game and took them something like 3 months to realise they needed to stop and a while longer to bring the game around. However it seemed to work for them.

However, even if they buffed every single character in The First Descendant I can’t see that helping too much. Bunny would still be running ahead, Freyna would still be 1 button instakill. They would then need to overhaul the mobs and bosses.

Now, if you are playing solo, I agree with you fully. The First Descendant is the better game. But if you are jumping into group content just don’t expect to actually play the game. Hell I am thinking of reinstalling and generally playing solo anyway.

Anyway, still enjoying Warframe at the moment, but some frays are starting to show around the edge. Hell, at this rate I may even end up giving Destiny a shot…

minor edit: also intrigued to see what happens when they release Warframe 1999. If this will be another half baked system or the way forward for the game.

 

[lashman]

 

[Lashley]

If the Spidey 2 port isn't buttcheeks I'll probably be dumb and buy it later today

 

[Mivey]

If the Spidey 2 port isn't buttcheeks I'll probably be dumb and buy it later today

It's Nixxes, so pretty much guaranteed to be a decent, if even outright amazing port. That said, there seems to be some fuckery going on with this Steam release. Why so late on everything? I wonder if Sony gave them an impossibly short amount of time to complete the port.

 

[Arc]

Japanese developers on Steam can’t receive revenue from adult games due to Japanese banks blocking transfers - AUTOMATON WEST

Japanese developers of adult-oriented games on Steam are having their money transfers blocked by Japanese banks- but why is this happening?

automaton-media.com

Some Japanese adult game developers on Steam aren't getting paid due to it getting blocked by banks.

 

[lashman]

It's Nixxes, so pretty much guaranteed to be a decent, if even outright amazing port. That said, there seems to be some fuckery going on with this Steam release. Why so late on everything? I wonder if Sony gave them an impossibly short amount of time to complete the port.

it's the gaming industry, so Nixxes probably found out they're doing the port at the same time we did

 

[Lashley]

It's Nixxes, so pretty much guaranteed to be a decent, if even outright amazing port. That said, there seems to be some fuckery going on with this Steam release. Why so late on everything? I wonder if Sony gave them an impossibly short amount of time to complete the port.

Release is weird as fuck so I'm holding off

I'm going to stupidly pre-order FM25 despite that looking a mess too

 

[edin]

Release is weird as fuck so I'm holding off

I'm going to stupidly pre-order FM25 despite that looking a mess too

That's the first one on Unity / new engine for them as well right? I'm just gonna play the touch version on iPad I think unless I'm reviewing PC.

Also re: Spider-Man 2, since there's no pre-order or early bonus or whatever, can just wait on impressions and Alex's DF coverage. I don't really wanna replay it even though I loved it. Too long and too many new games out now.

 

[Dinjoralo]

Meanwhile, I'm still playing through Kingdom Hearts.

Birth By Sleep is ass. Don't play it on Critical difficulty, all of the "harder" endgame fights are just terrible. I'm about 2/3rds of the way through, then I could maybe skip 3D to get to the newer games since I already played it when it came out on the 3DS.

 

[LEANIJA]

out now

The Accolade "Winter Challenge" included here is one of my favourite games and Im glad to now have it on Steam.
Its also, in a different collection, available on GOG; however, it released with a buggy version. The Steam release, as far as I can tell, seems in a better shape. But it is, for some odd reason, the Sega Genesis version, which looks a bit worse, compared to the DOS version Im familiar with. Odd choice...

anyway, it also has the Summer Challenge counterpart (which is also nice), and some other games I dont know.

 

[Lashley]

That's the first one on Unity / new engine for them as well right? I'm just gonna play the touch version on iPad I think unless I'm reviewing PC.

Also re: Spider-Man 2, since there's no pre-order or early bonus or whatever, can just wait on impressions and Alex's DF coverage. I don't really wanna replay it even though I loved it. Too long and too many new games out now.

I believe so, Unity sucks too

 

[fantomena]

Dammit, I was too late, decided to try and buy a prebuilt with components chosen by me, but was too late.

 

[toxicitizen]

AC Rogue got Steam achievements.

For Honor also got them last week but that one wasn't really on my radar so I hadn't noticed. There's been some updates on a lot of their games so I think more are likely coming like the Far Cry spin-offs and Watch_Dogs.

 

[lashman]

 

[ezodagrom]

With the newest Nvidia drivers and newest version of the Nvidia app, it's now possible to force the newest DLSS model with the app on supported games.

Nvidia has a list of the supported games here, in the case of the super resolution and the DLAA lists, the ones that support forcing the new model are listed with "NV, T".

NVIDIA DLSS & GeForce RTX: List Of All Games, Engines And Applications Featuring GeForce RTX-Powered Technology And Features

See which games, engines and applications support NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution, DLSS Frame Generation, DLSS Multi Frame Generation, DLSS Ray Reconstruction, DLAA, NVIDIA app DLSS 4 Overrides, and AI technologies when you have a GeForce RTX graphics card, GPU, or laptop.

www.nvidia.com

 

[Lashley]

£50

No launch discount

LOL

With the newest Nvidia drivers and newest version of the Nvidia app, it's now possible to force the newest DLSS model with the app on supported games.

Nvidia has a list of the supported games here, in the case of the super resolution and the DLAA lists, the ones that support forcing the new model are listed with "NV, T".

NVIDIA DLSS & GeForce RTX: List Of All Games, Engines And Applications Featuring GeForce RTX-Powered Technology And Features

See which games, engines and applications support NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution, DLSS Frame Generation, DLSS Multi Frame Generation, DLSS Ray Reconstruction, DLAA, NVIDIA app DLSS 4 Overrides, and AI technologies when you have a GeForce RTX graphics card, GPU, or laptop.

www.nvidia.com

Just use DLSS Swapper and then you can do it on any game with DLSS

 

[fantomena]

So what is the negative with a pre-built computer (where I however choose some of the components myself)?

 

[Arc]

I believe so, Unity sucks too

Could be worse. Could be Unreal.

So what is the negative with a pre-built computer (where I however choose some of the components myself)?

Prebuilt PCs are sometimes more expensive, but with how FUBAR component prices are now the difference isn't that big. The biggest downside is that some parts may not be as high quality as they can skimp on things like the PSU to lower costs. As long as you aren't planning to do any extreme overclocking you should be fine.

 

[Snakethesniper]

Apparently the performance of Spiderman 2 sucks

edit: apparently they pushed a hotfix like minutes after and now it's better

 

[lashman]

i don't suppose anyone wants an EU spiderman deluxe key for $55?

 

[Alexandros]

So what is the negative with a pre-built computer (where I however choose some of the components myself)?

If the system builder is reliable, I don't see any other than price.

 

[NarohDethan]

Downloaded Sniper Elite Resistance, it’s shooting nazis time

 

[BaoIzumi]

The Video Game History Foundation (@gamehistoryorg.bsky.social)

The Video Game History Foundation Library is now in early access. For free. For everyone. Wherever you are. Read more: https://gamehistory.org/vghf-library-launch/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Tysm_Wf60Q

bsky.app

The VGHF Library opens in early access | Video Game History Foundation

For free. For everyone. Wherever you are.

gamehistory.org

 

[spindoctor]

So what is the negative with a pre-built computer (where I however choose some of the components myself)?

The headline components will be fine but they might stiff you on the lesser known/talked about stuff. So maybe the RAM they use has poor CAS latency, the SSD uses a low quality controller, the PSU rating is low, the fans aren't great and things like that. I don't think a premade is the way to go unless there's a dramatic shortage of components or you absolutely do not want to build it yourself.

 

[Lashley]

So what is the negative with a pre-built computer (where I however choose some of the components myself)?

It'll be a bit costlier, but that's all

 

[toxicitizen]

Forza Horizon 5 coming to PS5. I really hope at some point Sony starts putting games on Xbox as well. Just to see the usual suspect have an even bigger meltdown lol.

 

[NarohDethan]

Forza Horizon 5 coming to PS5. I really hope at some point Sony starts putting games on Xbox as well. Just to see the usual suspect have an even bigger meltdown lol.

I hope I can launch FH5 on Steam, it just refuses to run lol

 

[Sobatronix]

Apparently the performance of Spiderman 2 sucks

edit: apparently they pushed a hotfix like minutes after and now it's better

haven't played it but it's running at 35 fps on the Steam deck without frame generation. Not too bad in my opinion