Welcome to the Free Talk Tuesday Discussion!

What are you up to this week? Want to discuss gaming news? Or maybe share your progress in a game. Any non-gaming related posts are also allowed in this thread to be shared with like-minded people here.

Today's game is Cyberpunk 2077. I've been wanting to save this for my new gaming rig i've been planning (i think Lemmy will be happy to know i'm planning to stay with Linux lol), but after getting news some of the parts won't be here until Febuary, i've decided my Steam Deck can go through one last Marathon Sprint through hell trying to drive a AAA game at 1080p before it gets retired to Emulation on the go, Alan Wake, and the Occasional Indie Game.

This game does an amazing job of capturing the feel of the American Interstate System i feel like. On top This is the first time i've played a game and gone "Wow. I feel like i'm really experiencing California Traffic. It's just as bad as the real thing." I mean this as a compliment, because i feel like it helps sell the vibe and make the city feel more realistic. And the skyline feels like an extra buit of realism too it.

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I also got sidetracked petting this cat. The game gets an extra 10 points from me for letting me pet it:

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And after visiting Viktor, i think he has to be my favorite character. He seems very chill and relaxed. I'm hoping he survives the game:

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I wanted to make sure Dolphin was working after shifting Emu Deck over to a new Drive, so i tested it with Mario Kart Wii.

Mario Kart Wii is one of the few games i still own my original disk for that still works. Though i have much fonder memories of MK64 (through the Wii VC ironically enough), this one is still one of my favorites due to how chaotic it can get. Not to mention the Inclusion of Waluigi and Funky Kong is awesome. Never have i ever wanted to drive as an ape with sunglasses more than i have playing this game. Not to mention the retro track collection is pretty solid IMO.

I took this screenshot on Mario Circuit after getting my ass handed to me by a Ghost Baby. Poor Waluigi deserved better than this.

I also did Sherbert land, and though my time was way worse than when i raised the ghost child, Waluigi was happy, which is all that matters to me.

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Shortly after though, I sadly lost to Daisy though after a race in Coconut Mall as Waluigi isn't allowed an ounce of joy in this world apparently.

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The original petition failed due to two issues:

• UK government misinterpreted what the petition is about and didn't really answered to what was being asked
• early general elections canceled all ongoing petitions at the time

This attempt has a new, reworded petition to, hopefully, make it simple and clear enough to avoid any additional problems.

There are two thresholds for UK petitions:

• 10 000 signatures: official government response
• 100 000 signatures: petition will be considered for debate in Parliament

Here is a video from Ross Scott (the main organizer of the Stop Killing Games initiative) about this update.

March 4.

>Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 feels like a hobgoblin game. A game for late nights, sick days off work. A game you can obsess over. It's a wonderful historical romp for the average video game-enjoyer, if they have the constitution to munch on the occasional wave of tedium. Allow me to make a case for the game's merit by comparing it to the inevitable rival it'll have in the eyes of gamers: The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim for good measure.

I'm not talking about physical case/disc/cartridge based games. But moreso, digital games. It would be a solution for gamers that fret about backlogs and knowing completely that they're never going to play the games that they have. That they've acquired from impulse, FOMO and other issues. May have been gifted a game that they liked for only a little while and may have nobody at all to play with for years.

I've learned that over in the EU, people can actually re-sell their games on Steam. I don't truly see that happening in America, though there's some small hope. But I want to take the idea a little step further.

Instead of just simply re-selling games, you could re-gift them as a way of recycling. Because I find that simply deleting them "permanently" (you can just revive a game to your library on Steam) is wasteful. You know you're not going to play it again, you know you've wasted however much money on it only to see it deleted to not be touched again.

Valve, publishers and the developers have already made their money and I know it'd be an uphill fight in America's case to try and re-sell. Because they'd just bring up the refund policy and it can be fair, at times, except for the 2 week time limit.

But I don't see a huge of a loss in re-gifting. Sure, I can see the argument of people gifting back so much, it defeats the purpose of buying the game again. I never said that there wouldn't be some regulatory practice in place to prevent such abuse.

That matter would be up to Valve/Publishers/Developers to agree on. My idea of regulating it would be that you're allowed to gift X amount of games for Y amount of time. That and you have to fill out a form per gift as to why you're gifting this game and you're placed on some cooldown timer from buying said game again. Just a concept idea.

There are tons of games that I do not play anymore and would love to see them go into the hands of other gamers that would play them. If the Publishers, Developers or even Valve think that they need to have some monetary value into this, fine, then users can at least pay a very low sum amount of money to be able to gift the game. Something no more than $1 at the least.

I've been playing some retro games recently (PS1 and prior) and I've been discovering a lot of games that I never thought I would enjoy. Particularly 90s arcade shmups and arcade style sports games.

What are some of your favorite retro games that you always find yourself coming back to?

After seeing someone bring up Starfield on a post here, i wanted to revisit No Man's Sky and discover some new things. I feel like this game always has some new discovery for me to find every time i play. This time i discovered this weird Planet full of Rectangular Prisms. It was really cool.

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Everywhere i went these things were here. It was to the point even the local fauna were Rectangular Prisms, such as this little guy here:

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It was ominously called a "Doommacinoe" by the game. I don't know if it's a randomly generated name or if it's something specific too it, but it's ominous none the less. I want to tame one as a pet eventually. The planet didn't seem to have any Oceans which was interesting And some of the cubes almost seemed too be dissolving into the air with purple wisps.

When night fell the planet became even prettier as the Formations were one of the few light sources for the planet:

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Overall it was a really pretty planet i'm glad i found. It had some really cool sights and i want to setup a base here eventually.

Always online games. What could go wrong?

Jeff Grubb confirming. It's a 2-step reveal. On the 16th will be almost 100% hardware with little to say about software. It's expected to launch by summer.

I finished Max Payne 2 today. I didn't realize going into this how much Max Payne had setup for other Remedy Games, specifically Alan Wake. The in-game show Address Unknown has so much in Common with Alan Wake II such as the evil double, alternate reality New York, and the implication of a "Next Level". it's uncanny.

There was also the in game show Lords & Ladies, which i would be lying if i said i didn't stop to watch every episode I saw. !

I also liked how it had you switching back and forth between Max and Mona, and also had missions where you had to escort the other. It did it in the right quantity where you were being forced into a escort mission every 5 minutes. Having to cover Max with sniper fire as Mona was especially fun, and seeing how their stories met up was awesome.

The boss fight was also a lot of fun, i was expecting it to be a rehash of the first game's, with the Spike crushing the boss and that's the end, but actually being able to fight him was a fun experience, albeit a little hard because max was always two steps away from death.

The game had some really pretty reflections too. I assume this uses the old flip the world for the reflection trick, but it's done really well, i honestly couldn't tell if it was or not (though i don't know what else it would be using)

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Battlefield 1, my previous favorite game, has like 8k players on Steam, I remember when it had 50k+. It's hard to find a match now, all 3 of their titles are seemingly dead. Call of Duty Black Ops is alive, I guess. But for $70, they can get lost, that price is just stupid.... I tried COD warzone and I am shocked at how buggy it is, like barely even playable for me on a freakin RTX 4080.... wow.

So I'm curious what other FPS's people play?

So, Starfield was a disappointment (in my opinion). The story isn't interesting. The lore and world-building do not make sense. The game mechanics do not mesh together. (And it doesn't run well on the Steam Deck.)

But the promise of Starfield? The big space game? The big space RPG where you can play as Captain Reynolds type character? That's something I can get behind. I want to traverse space, visit different planets, get lost, meet interesting characters, solve their problems, and shoot some stuff. Two games come to my mind when I think of this:

• No Man's Sky
• Mass Effect

I've only played a few hours of No Man's Sky, but I think it does space traversal well. To put it bluntly, flying from planet to planet without interruption is better than fast travel. But the gameplay loop did not

Mass Effect nails the space adventure side of things. You visit multiple interesting places, you meet different people with curious problems, and you solve these problems (mainly by shooting). But it's a typical Bioware game: The places you visit are small and confined, and there are (comparatively) few of them. The space traversal is done by clicking a few buttons in a menu.

My question is: Are there any “big space games”? Are there any games that deliver on the promise of Starfield? What are your favourite sci-fi RPGs?

So I'm re-doing some of my Do Not Press The Button (Or You'll Delete The Multiverse) character models and I have this duck that is kind of inspired by the Companion Cube in Portal. I want to make it as appealing as possible so the players will attach to it and carry it around with them. Which looks better! I'm more partial to the neck tie (because I like wearing them) but what do you guys think?

(If you want to follow how development of the game is going, a simple wishlist on Steam will be well appreciated STEAM )

My wifi was still out until this evening, so i decided to finally pick up Max Payne 2 since i had it installed, if only so i can finally clear it off my list. I made it about halfway through the entire thing today before stopping when my Wi-Fi came back on.

The game has this pretty backdrop of rain, though i still think the first game's snow was my favorite. The game feels a bit more refined than the first one, though this may just be the higher poly models making it easier to tell what i can and can't shoot through. It also feels a lot easier and forgiving with Ammo. With the first one i felt like i had to make each shot count, this one i feel like i have had no shortage of ammo.

! > The rain I mentioned

The soundtrack for this game is just as good as the first one too and i love how some of the levels sprinkle in references to the first one. There's a bar sign that references the bar from the first game, and you even got to go there in reverse of what the first game made you go through too.

! > The fun house

there was also this fun house section that you go through and it was a unique change of pace, especially when it's revisited later. There's a section with a giant ass needle, and as someone who's unsettled by needles, i think i can safely say that's the first time this game has unsettled me.

Robocraft was near and dear to me. It's also the reason I don't bother with live service games anymore. In 2017-2018-ish, Robocraft was one of my favorite games, ever. Then they were able to take that game away from me and replace it with something I liked far less. This is inevitable for any live service game; if not replacing the game you liked with something else, then its removal altogether so that no one can play it anymore in any form. It sucks.

> It’s with a heavy heart that we have to tell you all that we’re ceasing production on Robocraft 2 and closing Freejam as a studio. With the current market conditions and the server costs required to keep a game like RC2 running, we’re simply unable to launch or sustain development.

You know, if you let your customers run the servers themselves, we'd be able to keep playing the game and you wouldn't have to bear the burden of those costs!

I've sunk probably a thousand hours into Slay the Spire, have beaten Hades, and just finished Cult of the Lamb. Looking for something else to scratch that itch- preferably on switch. Any suggestions?

Update: Y'all convinced me. I bought Binding of Isaac and am excited to start. I also tried out Dead Cells via Netflix, but feel like I'd prefer it with a controller compared to mobile. Gonna start with Isaac, and wait for a sale on Dead Cells. Thank you for all the recommendations! I'm saving this thread for future reference.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/23884313

> I got this thing recently and wanted to share my thoughts on it :)

My Wi-Fi was out today, so that knocked all multiplayer things out and for whatever reason Sackboy wouldn't load with the Wi-Fi out. So instead i booted up Breath of The Wild on Cemu and played that. After i got the Camera upgrade i went crazy taking photos of everything i could (instead of, yknow, stopping the giant evil presence that wanted to destroy the world). I didn't realize how badly the System compressed the images though so a lot of these came out crunchy.

I got the photo of the dog right outside of Dueling Peaks Stables. I had a different one saved of a dog rolling on it's back but this one turned out far better than that one because it was too dark.

I've been trying to walk everywhere to familiarize myself with the world (i also turned on the Pro Hud to help encourage me to navigate by sight too). While on my way to the Stables i blew up some fish and got a photo of them right before grabbing them to cook:

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I also got this photo of beetle looking concerned. Probably because i was all up in his face and he kept turning to look away from me. I ended up selling some Gems to him afterwards to afford my horse i named Darren.

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This was one of the first photos i took by myself. I went out back and this lizard was posing majestically, so i grabbed a photo of that too for the compendium.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/24129356

> Because why the hell not!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/36875952

> Everyone is welcome to join through the channel invite link. > > Here is Ross announcing the server launch. > > Let's coordinate together in advocating for game preservation.