The Miscellaneous PC & vidya Games Thread

[Syt]

Coincidentally(?), 101st Airborne (the original game to 82nd) released on Steam now:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3863630/101st_Airborne_in_Normandy/?curator_clanid=32949234

(Weirdly, it's not on GOG)

[Tamas]

It's Microsoft's fault because they keep coming out with more versions of Windows while they toil away. 

[Syt]

Yeah, that was funny. And with Win10 support running out this year ....

[Tamas]

Yeah, that was funny. And with Win10 support running out this year ....

Another 8 years of development down the drain!

[crazy canuck]

This is mainly for Brain - Titan Quest 2 is now in early access.

[The Brain]

This is mainly for Brain - Titan Quest 2 is now in early access.

Oooh! Thanks!

[garbon]

I liked this exchange in the comments for that apparently terrible Shire game.

https://www.eurogamer.net/tales-of-the-shire-review?view=comments

Unsolicitied editor:

Guys. I LOVE Eurogamer, in part because you take games writing so seriously, but it feels as if this review wasn't edited at all. Just so I don't seem like I'm making this up, I'll quickly note the most obvious stuff in the first two paragraphs:

When I was small, my Dad would read to me before bed. [You don't capitalize dad unless it's being used as a name.] One night I asked if he would re-read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe only to be told he'd had enough of 'Jesus Lion.' [Book titles need to be formatted, either with italics or quotes depending on the system.] Instead, he brought out a book with a dragon raging above a burning town on its cover. It was called The Hobbit. I was easily enchanted with Bilbo's journey - talking eagles, riddles in the dark, Smaug - and, best of all, there was more. [Not sure why you'd say "easily enchanted" instead of just "enchanted," but again, book titles need to be formatted.]

The Fellowship of The Ring came along and planted its signature sense of adventure, as Middle Earth's horizons broadened. ["planted" is not the right verb here, nor am I quite sure how "signature" it is, but if nothing else, the series title needs to be formatted.] I laughed alongside Tom Bombadil. I was relieved when the hobbits escaped the Barrow-downs. I was terrified when, during a combined thunderstorm powercut, my Dad finished our current adventure at Weatherstop with 'he felt a pain like a dart of poisoned ice pierce his left shoulder.' ["powercut" isn't a word, nor do I understand what is being combined (I believe the intention is "during a thunderstorm, the power went off"); yet again "Dad" is incorrectly capitalized; finally, the meaning isn't "finished our current adventure" but "stopped reading for the night."] I was five, and thought Frodo was dead.

This may seem obnoxious, but Eurogamer is supposed to be one of the outlets that really cares about the quality of the writing. This is a real step down from the usual, which is a bummer.

Then there was some dull commentary back and forth on whether AI should be used or human editors should be better paid.

Then:

I am guessing you didn't grow up with English as a first language? These are all common quirks of native speakers.

Capitalising Dad as though it's a given name is something you'll often grow out of but then fall back into whenever you mention your own parent, because few people think to call a parent by their given name. It's fairly common to then capitalise it within a sentence when not being used in this sense, simply out of habit.

"Easily enchanted" is communicating the ease with which the author was spellbound by the tale within the book. We have such descriptive language we combine for the purpose of providing more detail on the nature of how we are using the words presented.

"Planting" a concept is a natural way of speaking. It implies that once you have planted the idea, that idea "takes root" within your mind. This is a fairly easily understood metaphor. Also, the word "signature" is being used to express the uniqueness of the property being described as it relates to the thing possessing it.

A power cut, sometimes shortened to powercut (it's right there on several electricity providers' websites in both formats, depending on the company) is literally the term UK electrical companies themselves use for an interruption in supply. This is probably the biggest giveaway of you not being from this country, so that explains my earlier observations. It's from the concept "to cut out".

Also, I am going to possibly on your final point ponder if you experience aphantasia, like one of my friends does, since you clearly seem incapable of conceptualising how someone immersed within a story would naturally communicate that experience through prose themselves. In the mind of the person experiencing it, they have not been "listening to someone read to them", they have been sharing in an adventure, visualising the whole story, a participant observer within in the narrative. Yes, one very much "finishes our current adventure". This IS a mark of quality writing, it conveys far more of the emotional tone of the deeply personal experience that is being communicated and to which the reader can as a result relate than flat, monotone narration of a list of events in sequence could.

You're not necessarily being obnoxious per se, but rather betraying how little you comprehend of the deeper foibles of the language utilised in the text you are more shallowly critiquing.

Everybody is a snarky jerk!

[Josquius]

Wait wait. Their dad read LOTR to them when they were 5 and they liked it!?

[crazy canuck]

No, their Dad read Lord of the Rings

[Tamas]

No, their Dad read Lord of the Rings

 

[The Brain]

Non-native English-speakers acting superior is the worst.

[Syt]

Nightdive is making an Outlaws remaster. (They also remastered Dark Forces recently.)

Also, there's a souls-like coming set in the (horror-fied) Napoleonic Wars

You know, between this and that steampunk Napoleonic strategy game (and Steel Rising which is set in French Revolution with robots), I wish we would get proper historical grand strategy games about the era.