DiRT Rally is headed to Linux! Ryzen gets a release date, the EU probes Valve, and Deus Ex goes on hiatus. Then Owlboy faces the CHAIRQUISITION! All this, plus your hate mail.
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Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro
Steam News:
Bcuz Valve
http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=27111
- A little surprised they didn’t try to nip this in the bud on all of their hat/glove selling games when the issue first came up
- I can think of a few rea$ons.
- Mind you, this is valve we’re talking about.
- They’re not even sending strongly worded letters. They just made a blog post saying, please stop.
Blocked
https://betanews.com/2017/02/02/eu-investigation-asus-steam-valve/
- Better late than never?
- Regional pricing was always a cheap cash grab (see aussieland). Good to see that there’s some crack down on it
- Why yes, the page does autoplay music.
- Even the Walrus is excited.
- Weeeee… another racing game to throw chairs at.
- We’re going to get DiRT rally before Distance exits EA.
Gungeon
http://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791437852807/announcements/detail/688323441667871551
- This is free update for everyone who owns the game.
- And it comes with a whole lot of news enemies and weapons, as well as some stuff which in my opinion should have been there from the start.
ARRRRK
https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/articles.html/patch254/
- Oh, there’s Jousting… they’ve now caught up to Neverwinter Nights circa 2006.
- Oh my god girlfriend! You can finally get rid of those disgusting split ends you’ve been sporting
- And would you look at that, mech suits and robot dinosaurs. 8 year old Jordan is vibrating right now.
Hunt
http://store.steampowered.com/app/528450/
- So someone mashed up Werewolf and Kill Dr Lucky. It works on paper, but will it execute properly?
Vidar
http://store.steampowered.com/app/355370/
- Looks like something made in RPG maker
- True, but it smells of Unity.
- The random story every time element seems interesting. Would be interesting to see a dataisbeautiful style graph of the various relationship maps this game cand o
Bane of international Communism (Thanks Empty)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/567780/
- This looks proper boring.
- But it does claim to run on “any” distribution.
- It was built using “100% OSS”, which means it’s GODOT.
News:
3DFX 2.0
http://wccftech.com/nvidias-founders-edition-graphics-grow-competing-aibs-2017/
- Biting the hand that feeds you much?
- If I was an IHV, I’d be giving nvidia the side eye about now.
- This is full-metal seeing what they can get away with.
- That whole Founders edition from last year is called market research, bitches.
- In Q2 2016 NVIDIA had 70% market share compared to AMD’s 30% so they are in the position to try this.
- I’ll put a nickel on the release date being pushed back mid to late february
- An american nickel even. Not some crappy canadian monopoly money
- Still no word on price.
Deus Halt
http://gameranx.com/updates/id/91155/article/deus-ex-series-on-hiatus-for-the-foreseeable-future/
- Maybe a story about corrupt corporations ruling everything, rampant discrimination and an environment where everything can get hacked hits a wee close to home?
- Fueling the paranoia crowd, ‘ey?
- With all the preorder controversy around this critter i’m not surprised.
- That, and the game runs like arse in Windows and six arses under Linux.
- That sounds more than a little like a developer throwing a hissy fit because his game didn’t win.
- Considering Skullgirls’ sordid history with Linux in particular, to no fault of Cybik, I’d say a little Karma was due.
- Also, as much as I do enjoy Skullgirls, its reliance on infinite combos and how you’re completely fucked if you can’t pull it off is not exactly what you want to see in competitive tournaments.
- I don’t think I’m alone here when I say, I’d rather see someone fight the controls in Fighters Megamix for the Saturn than see the same 3 or 4 moves be repeated ad nauseum in Skullgirls.
- I mean, they lost a popularity contest. Big whoop. Start up a bunch of smaller skullgirls tournament catered to your existing player base.
- If Xonotic can have 20000 players active, and you’re a kickstarted game, I’m sure you can figure something out
Construct 3
https://www.scirra.com/blog/184/a-first-look-at-construct-3
- I had no idea what a construct was, let alone there being two prior ones
- It’s a highly abstracted HTML5/JS game development tool aimed at newbies
- A new version is on the horizon with offline editing
- They have a bunch of functionality that used to be provided by external libraries included via asm.js
- Supposedly they are going to be releasing a desktop version, which I suspect will just be an electron wrap job
CHAIRQUISITION:
Game: Owlboy
Webzone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/115800/
Devel: D-Pad Studio
Engine: FNA
Price: €22.99 / US$ 24.99 / CDN$ 27.99
Wazzat: Owlboy is a ‘hi-bit’ adventure game, where you can fly and explore a brand new world in the clouds! Pick up your friends, and bring them with you as you explore the open skies. Overcome obstacles and greater enemies, in one of the most detailed adventures of this era.
Mandatory Disclosure: They sent us keys
Makes with the working
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Shiny / Sounds
V-
- It’s really nice to have a hipster-pixel game that doesn’t make my epilepsy bleed.
- Looks like something from the never released Super Duper nintendo.
- Bright, colourful, and amazingly detailed.
- The sounds and background music are legit for what they were going for.
J-
- If you go look at the blogs of the artists who worked on this game, you can easily tell how much effort these guys put into the visual aesthetic
- Another example of pixel art done right. I like the faux-comic bookey style they use when they do that big siege cinematic
- Little environmental transitions
- I also love the little animations that all the characters do in dialogue.
P-
- It looks good… Really good.
- “OMG! Pedro likes how a pixel game looks. Fire and brimstone must be raining from the skies.”
- No, I simply hate lazy pixelated graphics made by people who don’t give a fuck and just want to skirt by on the “retro” look.
- The visuals in Owlboy, even though they’re evocative of the 16bit era, are really finely detailed and look very good.
- The background music didn’t really do it for me, though. It ended up getting muted because it actively got in the way of the atmosphere in some scenes.
- I guess they also tried to keep the sound effects simple but effective enough to compliment what’s happening on screen.
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Control
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- This is where most hipster-pixel fall flat.
- If you are doing retro platforming those controls best be wicked tight.
- These controls are wicked tight.
- Everything is spot on.
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- Bcuz fna
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FUN
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- The only real complaint I have is Owlboy is borderline to easy.
- It’s no Axiom Verge
- Yes, yes I know the game took 10 years to make.
- But at the end of the day that means FK and ALL #DN4E
- Wish it had came out five year ago.
J-
- This is just a really well put together game
- All the levels are big, there are lots of little secrets, and it really does encourage you to explore
- The carrying a guy around took a bit of getting used to, but it adds a lot of different option and approaches
- The story is exceptionally well written, and with the exception of your douchebag mentor, all of the characters are likeable and unique
- It’s also fun to see this story smack existing tropes in their face
- The gameplay is very solid, and the game doesn’t treat you like you’re dumb either.
- The puzzles only require a modicum of thought though. However, if your brain is drug addled like mine, they might give you pause for a few seconds
- Lots of little homages to all sort of past platformers in terms of enemy and boss fights
- All in all, this is a fantastic love letter to old SNES adventure/platforming games
- It’s a bit pricey at 30 bucks, but the devs didn’t slack off on any aspect of this game. I’d say it’s a $30 in terms of quality.
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- Do you remember how I’ve complained about how 2D hipster pixel platformers usually do nothing but fuel the delusions of the Nostalgia crowd and don’t innovate or push the limits of the genre?
- Well, Owlboy illustrates that point perfectly by proving that yes, you can innovate and you can push the envelope as to what constitutes a retro-inspired 2D platformer.
- It’s a Metroidvania which leans heavily on the Metroid-side, often the side I’m least fond of in that subgenre, and I still very much enjoyed it.
- Why? What is it that makes Owlboy so good when compared to even that completely fucking pointless AM2R?
- Well, it’s not a remake for starters. It’s an entirely new story which is only made all the greater, in my not so humble opinion, by having a relatable main character and using the story as the perfect narrative compliment for the mechanics.
- That is the mark of a great game. That’s what puts Owlboy leagues above the rest of video gaming mire we call Hipster Pixel Platformers.
- It stands wing to shoulder with Half-Life 2 and Silent Hill 2 in the Mechanics-driven-Narrative department.
- Otus, your main character in Owlboy, like Gordon Freeman in Half-Life, manages to convey more emotion and be more relatable without EVER saying a single goddamn thing, than Max Caulfield can ever hope to be.
- That glorified pair of protagonist pants you wear in Life is Strange has the emotional depth of a travel ironing board compared to Otus.
- And Otus’ big story isn’t completely invalidated by the end of game, either.
- I guess 10 years of development do make a difference.
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Hate Mail:
Doing it right
http://store.steampowered.com/app/572300/
