Vidya Games Thread

[Thomas Talus]

I think I may have played on PC a bit before because I remember getting a mod that basically skipped the lockpicking and pickpocketing minigame shit because it was too fiddly with a mouse. Otherwise good tips that won't leave me feeling useless, probably.

I was using a controller on PC, which I think works better for the lockpicking. Depending on how long ago you played it, they may have improved the lockpicking system since then by adding better visual cues to help you track the correct position as the lock rotates, and I think doing some under-the-hood changes as well. If there were some filigreed spires breaking up the circle, then you were playing on the updated system; if it was just the outer rim and one wire connecting it to the center, that was the original. If you want to fully level lockpicking while still being an upright citizen, you'll still need to break into people's homes and pick the locks without taking their stuff or getting caught.

 

[Todd's Strongest Howard]

I was using a controller on PC, which I think works better for the lockpicking. Depending on how long ago you played it, they may have improved the lockpicking system since then by adding better visual cues to help you track the correct position as the lock rotates, and I think doing some under-the-hood changes as well. If there were some filigreed spires breaking up the circle, then you were playing on the updated system; if it was just the outer rim and one wire connecting it to the center, that was the original. If you want to fully level lockpicking while still being an upright citizen, you'll still need to break into people's homes and pick the locks without taking their stuff or getting caught.

No memory of what the visuals looked like, but it was in mid summer 2019, so it's been a minute.

 

[Thomas Talus]

No memory of what the visuals looked like, but it was in mid summer 2019, so it's been a minute.

The last big patch was a little before that, so it probably hasn't changed.

 

[Thomas Talus]

Went to the grocery store, after checking out I passed by the electronics section I saw a sign that said "PS5s now available". I asked them what exactly "now available" meant, and it turns out they had actual stock in store for purchase by the general public at MSRP. So you'd better believe I walked out of the store with one. The one with a disc drive, not the online-only version.

That was not how I was expecting my day to go.

 

[agility_]

How much did you pay for your Nogamestation 5

 

[AyoTempus]

How much did you pay for your Nogamestation 5

Seven quintillion pesos, just so I can play TLOU1 again.

Considering this is something of a "lesser known game recommendations" thread I've noticed, I'll post a couple of my own to the pile. These are both Early Access titles for people who are not into that, but they're fairly stable and pretty feature complete enough for their price tag imo.

First is Against The Storm, think of it like a city/colony builder sort of game that's been cropping up for awhile on Steam, but you only play the early game where you are just starting off and you need to chop trees quickly before winter kills you. It uses some rogue-like elements to add randomization and variety to what buildings and objectives you get per session but it is a pretty consistent to win city builder game once you get used to its systems as it has a lot of redundancy to make it really hard to be truly "screwed" from the RNG with good foresight. I love games like this, but I never really finish them or I just drop my save and reload a new one because the early game is the only really fun part to me. So this was perfect for me personally and it stands out a bit from the droves of colony city builders that have come out in the last handful of years because it is focused only on that early game feel.

For anyone who wants to find another Slay The Spire-esque game, I'd try looking into Chrono Ark. It is like a standard party turn based rpg in a deckbuilder roguelike shell. Everyone's party member's abilities are cards and you have to make a cohesive deck with your party members, as all members occupy the same deck space. It has some pretty wacky bosses that are what I'd define as "Controlled chaos" where the bosses almost always force you to play their game but it is a pretty manageable once you get it and you can blast through most bosses fast and easy if you know what you're doing.

Game is pretty swingy if you make a bad turn or misplay, so be mindful if you don't like getting just wrecked from nowhere because you made an error, but if you've played STS you are probably used to that. I play a lot of deckbuilder games, as I just love the genre since its roots with Dominion (which also has a digital steam cilent FYI), and this is probably the best successor to STS I've played so far. Although I love being on what feels like a knife's edge in RPG boss fights so YMMV if you're not into that, but normal difficulty is pretty chill once you get how the game works. The main unlockables are party members and not too much else, but that's frankly enough imo given most of them are quite fun to use and have a reasonable identity to them. There is a story and its okay, but I wouldn't play it solely for that at all.

 

[Fucking YTs]

I can safely say I hope the Intel Arc cards get a nice userbase and better drivers as these Nvidia/AMD prices for cards are retarded. I don't care if there is a chip shortage or not. I started with a 3dfx Voodoo card when Quake came out and slowly got on the Geforce 2 bandwagon. It used to be that $399-$599 was the sweet spot and now it's $1000s to get good hardware. My last upgrade was for a 3080 for work, but there is no plan in the pipeline to edit higher than 4K content, so I don't see any point in upgrading any higher.

Honestly, with my lack of interest in ray tracing or insane detail, I'm happy to run stuff on the Steam Deck and forgo graphical flourishes I don't care about when playing games.

I haven’t cared about consoles since the 360/PS3 generation and I refuse to pay more than $30 bucks for a game. If the games never goes down in price, well, yo ho ho.

I'm rambling. I'm just old I guess.

 

[El Rrata]

I can safely say I hope the Intel Arc cards get a nice userbase and better drivers as these Nvidia/AMD prices for cards are retarded. I don't care if there is a chip shortage or not. I started with a 3dfx Voodoo card when Quake came out and slowly got on the Geforce 2 bandwagon. It used to be that $399-$599 was the sweet spot and now it's $1000s to get good hardware. My last upgrade was for a 3080 for work, but there is no plan in the pipeline to edit higher than 4K content, so I don't see any point in upgrading any higher.

Honestly, with my lack of interest in ray tracing or insane detail, I'm happy to run stuff on the Steam Deck and forgo graphical flourishes I don't care about when playing games.

I haven’t cared about consoles since the 360/PS3 generation and I refuse to pay more than $30 bucks for a game. If the games never goes down in price, well, yo ho ho.

I'm rambling. I'm just old I guess.

The ARC's biggest issue is lack of compatibility with DX11 and below, AFAIK. Unless something has changed recently, DX12 games ran better than even DX9 games just because NVidia and AMD have decades of drivers built for DX11 and below, while ARC is literally starting from scratch.

And yeah, I am not interested in a new GPU any time soon thanks to my Steam Deck, as well.

 

[That Chuuba Enjoyer]

I can safely say I hope the Intel Arc cards get a nice userbase and better drivers as these Nvidia/AMD prices for cards are retarded. I don't care if there is a chip shortage or not. I started with a 3dfx Voodoo card when Quake came out and slowly got on the Geforce 2 bandwagon.

Thank you for making me feel young Mr. Fucking YTs! Wasn't even a thought then.

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Honestly, with my lack of interest in ray tracing or insane detail, I'm happy to run stuff on the Steam Deck and forgo graphical flourishes I don't care about when playing games.

And yeah, I am not interested in a new GPU any time soon thanks to my Steam Deck, as well.

I'm glad you guys been enjoying the steam deck. It's a honestly nice little machine. I found it comfy playing games like No More Room in Hell, Rimworld, Project Zomboid, and replaying Yakuza 0 on it.

I was hesitant in playing games like Rimworld with the trackpads, but it honestly is a good in between a joystick and a mouse. Take some getting used to but feels good doing games that are mouse heavy over using a joystick.

Only gripe I have is the d-pad. I can't really do diagonal inputs 100% of time with it and I think my bottom d-pad press sometimes does a double input.

I guess seeing how a few people got Decks here, what games have you been playing on it and your experience?

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I'll also leave this nice site here where people discuss how a game works on Steam Deck and give solutions to make a game work or improve performance on it. Very helpful for older games that don't work at first.

https://www.protondb.com/

 

[Fucking YTs]

View attachment 7713
Thank you for making me feel young Mr. Fucking YTs! Wasn't even a thought then.

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I'm glad you guys been enjoying the steam deck. It's a honestly nice little machine. I found it comfy playing games like No More Room in Hell, Rimworld, Project Zomboid, and replaying Yakuza 0 on it.

I was hesitant in playing games like Rimworld with the trackpads, but it honestly is a good in between a joystick and a mouse. Take some getting used to but feels good doing games that are mouse heavy over using a joystick.

Only gripe I have is the d-pad. I can't really do diagonal inputs 100% of time with it and I think my bottom d-pad press sometimes does a double input.

I guess seeing how a few people got Decks here, what games have you been playing on it and your experience?

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I'll also leave this nice site here where people discuss how a game works on Steam Deck and give solutions to make a game work or improve performance on it. Very helpful for older games that don't work at first.

https://www.protondb.com/

View attachment 7714

It’s nice to be older, honestly. I’d hate to be dating and trying to figure out my life still, but you’re welcome.

Also, download Decky and you can have an addon that shows ProtonDB results and badges on the games in your library.

 

[That Chuuba Enjoyer]

It’s nice to be older, honestly. I’d hate to be dating and trying to figure out my life still, but you’re welcome.

Also, download Decky and you can have an addon that shows ProtonDB results and badges on the games in your library.

I had Decky for a little but uninstalled it recently. My deck would crash for no reason when I hit home button or launch games sometimes. When I uninstalled it, no longer had those issues. I'll try it again in the future cause that powertool plugin was helpful for Gamecube emulation and other games I tried on.

 

[PassiveUnaggressive]

The ARC's biggest issue is lack of compatibility with DX11 and below, AFAIK. Unless something has changed recently, DX12 games ran better than even DX9 games just because NVidia and AMD have decades of drivers built for DX11 and below, while ARC is literally starting from scratch.

And yeah, I am not interested in a new GPU any time soon thanks to my Steam Deck, as well.

Apparently they've worked on and released a new driver that significantly improved performance with at least DX9

Improvements to DirectX 9 Games on Intel® Arc™ Graphics

Intel Arc graphics drivers now have a major update which improves performance in DX9 games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and others.

game.intel.com

People suspect maybe a vulkan translation layer a la dxvk/proton (something Arc GPUs do well enough), maybe other changes under the hood also. I don't have an Arc card personally, so I can't attest to things personally

 

[El Rrata]

View attachment 7713
Thank you for making me feel young Mr. Fucking YTs! Wasn't even a thought then.

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I'm glad you guys been enjoying the steam deck. It's a honestly nice little machine. I found it comfy playing games like No More Room in Hell, Rimworld, Project Zomboid, and replaying Yakuza 0 on it.

I was hesitant in playing games like Rimworld with the trackpads, but it honestly is a good in between a joystick and a mouse. Take some getting used to but feels good doing games that are mouse heavy over using a joystick.

Only gripe I have is the d-pad. I can't really do diagonal inputs 100% of time with it and I think my bottom d-pad press sometimes does a double input.

I guess seeing how a few people got Decks here, what games have you been playing on it and your experience?

---

I'll also leave this nice site here where people discuss how a game works on Steam Deck and give solutions to make a game work or improve performance on it. Very helpful for older games that don't work at first.

https://www.protondb.com/

View attachment 7714

I also find that slower K&M games like Rimworld are great. I also has a Steam Controller, so my learning curve with thr trackpads was not as bad, though. I would warranty it if you have issues with your DPad, though. Better sooner than later. They will send you a different one, though, which kinda sucks since you have to back it up again. If you backup your stuff is isn't the worst.

I also recommend using SteamGrid and SGDBoop for grabbing icons for non-Steam games. It is kinda jank to set up, but makes life a lot easier to add icons once you do.

SGDBoop

Download and share custom video game assets and personalize your gaming library.

www.steamgriddb.com

 

[GOD'S STRONGEST BUILDERBEAR]

My last upgrade was for a 3080 for work, but there is no plan in the pipeline to edit higher than 4K content, so I don't see any point in upgrading any higher.

Shits top of the line man! If you want a workhorse pc that can play games you can always rely on cheaper shit like mid radeons like rx6700/6750 or few used ones like rtx2060/2080 to not destroy your finances.

 

[That Chuuba Enjoyer]

I also find that slower K&M games like Rimworld are great. I also has a Steam Controller, so my learning curve with thr trackpads was not as bad, though. I would warranty it if you have issues with your DPad, though. Better sooner than later. They will send you a different one, though, which kinda sucks since you have to back it up again. If you backup your stuff is isn't the worst.

I also recommend using SteamGrid and SGDBoop for grabbing icons for non-Steam games. It is kinda jank to set up, but makes life a lot easier to add icons once you do.

SGDBoop

Download and share custom video game assets and personalize your gaming library.

www.steamgriddb.com

I'll look into getting mine check in January, cause I think warranty is one year right? Other than that yeah been doing good for me

I actually used Emudeck recently to play a ps2 horror game called Siren. It's this weird japanese game where you're hunted by people from a village and can use this weird vision thing to see the pov of the one's hunting you. Also has VERY UNCANNY motion capture irl faces on ps2 models that just add to the weirdness.



Really comfy system for emulation if that's all you care about doing on the go.

 

[El Rrata]

I have heard of Siren, but never really looked into it. Those facial animations are kinda nuts for a PS2, tbh.

Also, the Emudeck is great. The Deck is a pretty insane handheld Emulation device. You can play Switch, PS3, and 360 games on it, which is awesome.

 

[That Chuuba Enjoyer]

What are some Steam games y'all recommend people should get for the winter sale? Also which ones did you find good with Deck if you happen to have one you liked.

 

[thequ1eteye]

What are some Steam games y'all recommend people should get for the winter sale? Also which ones did you find good with Deck if you happen to have one you liked.

Depends, what genres do you like?

 

[That Chuuba Enjoyer]

Depends, what genres do you like?

Oh man I'm not really picky really. I enjoy RPGs, Horror, roguelikes/lite, Zombies, mechs, fps, etc. However, I don't play really any sport games or racing too much.

I've been scouring as of late for a game similar to Rune Factory and Stardew Valley lately. One where you can like farm or do combat in a game. My Time at Sandrock is a cute game that does that but kind of waiting for it to cook longer on the stove before I dive deep into it.

 

[El Rrata]

If you like classic Resident Evil games, get Signalis. It is basically a PS1 RE game with options for more modern controls or classic ones and with a space-SciFi theme.