The Miscellaneous PC & vidya Games Thread

[crazy canuck]

As much as Sony was in the wrong/messed this up, I understand them being fired.

Yeah, he seems to have forgotten who he was actually representing.

[Solmyr]

Sony pulled the same thing with the upcoming Ghost of Tsushima for PC. People in regions where PSN is not available got their Steam purchases suddenly refunded, even though only the (very small) multiplayer part of the game requires PSN.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/ghost-of-tsushima-directors-cut-no-longer-available-on-steam-in-almost-180-countries-due-to-psn-requirement

[Josquius]

Seems terribly managed. Honestly not getting why it should be such a big deal. Plenty of games on steam need accounts with the developer to play. Paradox games for instance.
Something is blocking sony from opening up psn outside of a handful of countries? They just don't like money?

[The Brain]

New Diablo 4 season is basically a big loot rework and QOL stuff. As is the way of these things now you can just breeze through monsters dozens of levels above your own.

[Josquius]

Last night I decided to start Eiyuden Chronicle.
I've mentioned this game before. I supported it on kickstarter years ago. It's basically an unofficial suikoden sequel made by all the people behind the old suikoden games.

It's... Really got retro styling. The graphics are somewhere between suikoden 1 and 2 as is the gameplay. Delightfully old school.
The loading screen is particularly cute and nostalgic with the main character running.
But they've really overdone the retro styling - you see that loading screen A LOT.
Enter a building? Load. Leave the building? Lonnnng load. Random battle? Load.
I am sure even proper psx era Rpgs didn't have such terrible loading.
This renders the game very unfun.
I don't think I'll be playing it further until there's an optimisation patch. Fingers crossed.

[Syt]

Thanks for the info. I was eyeing it, but will hold back for now.

[Syt]

Ghost of Tsushima is out on PC and by all accounts seems to be good if you like open world Samurai action.

Reminder - the game has a "Kurosawa mode" that changes the image to black and white, adds film grain/scratches, and adjusts the sound to mimic mid-20th century movies  (the Japanese voice over gets lip syncing, supposedly?).

Anyways, here's what a cutscene looks like in the style: https://youtu.be/W94RSmap9VU

Tbh, I find this fascinating. I always played L.A. Noire in black and white. I always thought it looked better and the gfx not quite as dated in that mode. YMMV

[Grey Fox]

Just completed Chants of Sennaar. What a awesome language based puzzle game.

Everyone should play it.

[Syt]

Shower thought this morning: if Sony really wanted to harvest PC users for their database, they would have released Bloodborne for PC with PSN required for the online component.

[The Minsky Moment]

Shower thought this morning: if Sony really wanted to harvest PC users for their database, they would have released Bloodborne for PC with PSN required for the online component.

This all gets to Sony's in between strategy of dipping their foot in.  The FF7 remakes for example have gotten a rave reception but the sales have been very disappointing; contrast with Helldivers 2 which was a more obscure IP but has been a big hit on the back of Steam sales.  The obvious solution is to send all PS games to PC, but what will that do to hardware sales?  Microsoft seems content to live in a world of slow XBox sales if they can ship lots of product from their owned game studios and keep Gamepass revenue flowing. Sony however, still seems committed to maximizing console hardware sales, and thus is reluctant to give up the concept of console exclusives. 

[Josquius]

Isn't it still the case that basically all consoles bar Nintendos make a loss on hardware?
The profits they'd be missing from releasing all their stuff on steam is from other developers releasing their stuff on PlayStation and the fees/cut they get from that.

Certainly for my part I had been tentatively considering a ps5 at some point - I missed the ps4 so there's a lot of games there I'd want to play too. But it does seem 90% of the interesting games are on steam too.

[Grey Fox]

Sony seems to be inching towards having a console costs where they will make a profit.

Microsoft is still a loss leader.

[Syt]

Field of Glory: Kingdoms is out. I played the tutorial yesterday. If you played Field of Glory: Empires, much will feel familiar, though religion and dynasties now play a greater role.

No firm opinion yet. It sure feels a lot more strategy boardgame than CK3.

It comes with several smaller scenarios (End of Angevin Empire, El Cid, Manzikert), while the Grand Campaign has 440 turns from 1054 to 12-something (which is about the length, in turns, as Empires was IIRC).

[Richard Hakluyt]

Started a game as Scotland in FOG Kingdoms; its a manageable start with only 4 counties, one vassal and a couple of adjacent independent counties that provide easy pickings for the first war. Enjoying it so far but not really sure what I'm doing; stockpiling piety and stewardship seems to be effective. Army feels very weak compared to those in Empires.

[Josquius]

Guy makes Mario 64 VR... On a real N64.

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/super-mario/you-can-now-play-super-mario-64-in-vr-on-an-actual-nintendo-64-but-the-frame-rate-is-so-bad-youll-probably-get-really-bad-motion-sickness/

Always amazes me there's people with such skills and they use them for amazing but non practically applicable/useful stuff like so.