LinuxGameCast Weekly 271: Tickled Jordan

The Steam Halloween sale is live! F1 2017 heads to Linux, Descent: Underground gets delisted, and GOG connect adds several spooky titles. Then Observer faces the CHAIRQUISITION!

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Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam News:

SALE!
http://store.steampowered.com/sale/halloween/

Meh?
Dying Light is $20 so that’s worth picking up if you have a beefy system.
Just yoinked Black Mesa for $7.99.
There have been a few games stuck in limbo on my Wishlist for awhile.
Quite a few dropped below £5 so I may be picking a few of them up.
Gave myself a limit of £20 and bought 6 games:
- In Exilium, Magicka 2, Guns of Icarus: Alliance, Valley, Finding Teddy, and Defender’s Quest.
If crack is your thing, Darkest Dungeon is 50 percent off
Still waiting to see if tyranny will dip below 50% off in winter sale

Digital Steam
http://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1455086641079110715

Erm, the type of people who buy Steam gift cards are usually the same ones who don’t want to buy them online.
- Old People
- People without bank accounts.
Could this be used for laundering on steam? What would we call that? Pressing? Ironing?
Can’t use wallet money
Interesting
- If this is VALVe’s way to “stop” the card bots from gifting each other money and continuing to fuel the blackmarket going on with Steam, they’ll soon find out it’s easy enough to code a 3 day delay into the bots whenever they get one of these “gift cards”.

Curator update
http://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1455086714383179848

Developers get more insight into the curators they share game keys with.
Curators — or groups of curators — via select parameters, such as name, operating system, language or specific tags.
They’ll be able to see curators’ follower counts and linked social media accounts to help verify their identity.
Of course, we didn’t get picked for the beta curator thing.
I am curious to see if… say, we want 3 keys for a game if that option will be available for us.
- Probably not. We’d all need them curator pages
I am tickled by the prospect of one day seeing the Chairquisition featured on steam though. That makes me laugh. Ha ha ha

VALVe dev on Linux
https://twitter.com/Plagman2/status/923304477049810944

“People tend to have strong feelings about people saying dumb stuff on Twitter. Maybe you should run for president!”
- …dude
Perhaps we should wait until the next steam survey results before we make any comments on VR adoption
That said, I do think the linux numbers are definitely skewed due to how Valve tracks what games are played on what system
That’s one way to say “We’ve stopped pretending to care about Linux because the per capita money we get from them is less than even VR.”
Well no shit, Sherlock! If you market something to the people willing to spend a shitton of money on a fucking gimmick, then those people are far more likely to spend more money on their niche.
You want Linux gamers to pay more? Do something about it and actually promote/help Linux development.
So far, all we’ve seen are half-assed attempts. Remember the Steam machines?
Could have been great!
But let’s stop focusing on the past, instead let’s focus on the past…

Steambox Take two|
http://wccftech.com/ataribox-creator-explains-console-succed/

So the main difference here, as Atari puts it, is that they are willing to actually advertise the damn thing and leverage their name recognition
Integrating features the established consoles have, while providing old games built into a retro console type deal is what a lot of people seem to want.
The rampant demand for the NES Mini and SNES Mini are proof of that.
If VALVe had gone with say Alienware and said: “This is our console.”
They would have been far more successful than the shit show of nothingness we ended up with.
That said, I don’t the Atari box is going to do much better.
Not when the creator seems to be basing his expectations on feelings and anecdotal analogies of people wearing $10 Ramones t-shirts, equating to multiple hundreds of dollars in console sales because of “Brand Recognition”.
Which, if you’ll recall, the Atari that exists today is in itself a rebrand of Infogrames after they bought the Hasbro videogames division in 2001.
The original Atari died along with the videogame market back in 1984.

Creating Decent
http://steamcommunity.com/games/360950/announcements/detail/1492238800024274472

Yall motherfu*kers barely made updates to the Early Access build in the first place.
So, yeah, don’t tell me supporting it was becoming a “distraction”
Now they are wanting to direct all communication to brightlocker, a place where you can continue donating money to fund the development.
Don’t try to drive people onto some a new feedback platform (created by your friends) to solicit more $$$.
It’s a hard sell for a game that supposed to be delivered in March… of last year.
Expect a buggy ass campaign, then. Gotcha!
Single sales don’t seem to be keeping them afloat anymore
Especially because a lot of interested parties yoinked this game for a buck a few years back
Moving to brightlocker means that they’ve hit peak exposure on steam and are going to “need more money to finish the game”
- Project management isn’t for punk ass bitches

Oh, tanks
http://steamcommunity.com/games/TankForce/announcements/detail/2971673269664095858

Only has servers in EU and Asia.
It launches, played the tutorial, meh.
Meh seems to be the general consensus of everyone who’s played it, looking at the reviews.

Tiny B Now on Linux
http://store.steampowered.com/app/253350/Tiny_Barbarian_DX/

Dat price.
After some looking about seems the devel raised the price to be inline with Nintendo store.
Another retro style hipster pixel platformer to throw on the pile.
Hey, it does have network multiplayer though. So that’s a plus
It doesn’t look Owlboy good to justify this price-tag, though!

AER
http://store.steampowered.com/app/331870/AER_Memories_of_Old/

This looks like some straight-up artsy shite.
That said, sometimes artsy shite can be fun.
It looks like something similar to that PS3 game Journey.
Which was actually pretty fun.
This was probably the highlight of the week in games that don’t like complete ASS on Steam, for me.

News:

Now how much would you pay
https://www.evga.com/products/product.aspx?pn=08G-P4-6775-KR

That’s only around $60 less than the 1080.
Shipping on November 2nd
Limiting it to two per household isn’t going to stop miners from yoinking them all
- I still think everyone made a BFYTW amount of these.
Barring that I don’t know why this card exists.
It pisses of anyone who picked up a 1070 in the last 6 months and anyone in the market is going to go for the 1080.
Yeah, the price difference between this and the 1080 make it hard to justify.
Especially after the miners scoop them all up and the price inevitably rises.

Unreal
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/unreal-engine-4-18-released

Ctrl-f linux returns a new version of CLang, the new unreal audio sauce by default and support for visual studio code.
You need mono-complete to get the debug functionality on visual studio code for Linux.

MSdot
https://godotengine.org/article/introducing-csharp-godot

It seems like a harmless “buy some goodwill” donation, seems.
Also possibly a move to try and snag some unity developers who’d rather not switch to C++.
- Like a bunch of babies.
C# is wicked-easy to learn, poorly.
Is this why they don’t want to support Vulkan?
- No
Would it piss off their MS benefactors and any possible future donations?
Is this Godot’s way of saying we can expect Dx12 to happen?

New connected games on GOG
https://www.gog.com/connect?pp=df977a48f2a8bd3b1f399855135dc28faaaf09be

Got me 7 games.
Got 6, including one windows game I bought years ago. $123 bucks
All Spoopy ones too!
- I wouldn’t say Postal and Hand of Fate qualify as spoopy.
  - Spoopy pissing. And Gambling addictions are both terrifying and profitable for some
That’s another $215.27 worth of 11 games to the GOG list.

V1
https://twitter.com/feralgames/status/923977346561998848

This is worth a mention since it’s the first title from Feral to officially support the Vulkan.
It will be nice to have another Vulkan benchmark.

OpenSky
https://forum.openmw.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4232

It’s quite wishful thinking that they’ll get a full rewrite of the bethesda engine that supports the fallouts, skyrims and the like
- Lovely pipe dream though
  - If any other team had said that I would have agreed with you.
Welp, you lot just got yourselves a dedicated QA team.
Man, native Fallout 3/New Vegas and Skyrim on Linux would make me very happy!
Especially since Bethesda’s not involved.

JRPG from a rose
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/153039232/fell-seal-arbiters-mark-classic-turn-based-tactica/description

Sorta want…Sorta really want! We need more grid based tactics games to torment Venn
And they have a demo even!
But it’s kickstarter. Not sure if I wanna commit my money

The debate is over
https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmasterrace/comments/78e93j/pirates_are_now_packing_windows_games_with/

So the pirates have basically stolen VP’s model. NIce
Also, I wonder if Strider is going to start cruising pirate boards now to snag some of this stuff

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies

Game: Observer
Webzone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/514900/observer/
Devel: Bloober Team SA (published by Aspyr)
Engine: UE4
Price: £22.99 / US$29.99 / CA$32.99

Wazzat: >observer_ is a cyberpunk horror game from Bloober Team, the creators of Layers of Fear. Discover a dark cyberpunk world beset by plagues, war and squalor. Play as the new front line of neural police as you hack into the jagged minds of the insane.

Mandatory Disclosure: Aspyr sent us keys

Makes with the working

V-

This games problems have problems.
Stuck playing @1080 in a window. Known problem
- “We are able to replicate this issue. It has been bugged and will be added to a to fix list. Sorry I cant provide you with an immediate solution.”
Fullscreen cranks it to 2160 no matter the setting, unplayable.
Cursor stays on-screen if you touch the keyboard while using the controlla.
Can’t take pics with overlay.
Only pulls 55/60 @1080.
It’s using 89/90% of the 980.
Barely registers on the 1700.
Seems Ass-Pyre didn’t port this one, only published… it shows.
Twice I have had the game stick me to the floor forcing a reset.
One last thing, don’t white-knight games just because they are on the Linux.

J-

Runs like a butt

P-

It seems to have issues keeping the mouse cursor contained if you alt-tab.

Total-

Shiny / Sounds

V-

It does an amazeballs job of simulating a failing video card.
That, however, is part of the game.
Take your drugs or things get blurry.
The building is incredibly detailed, even the parts you might look over.
The environments during the brain-humping segments are all over the place.
I might even say they are trying a little too hard to be “trippy” or “booga booga”
Good job on the audio, were talking Frictional level.
Voice acting is good for an indie game, take that how you will.

J-

It’s UE4, so it gets all the nice texturing and graphical effects that come with it
That said, when you start jonesing for your medications, the effect gets more than a little annoying.
- Venn’s not kidding when he mentions failing video card
Rutger Hauer doesn’t seem very into it. I keep expecting him to get fed up and pick up a shotgun.
The rest of the voice acting is relatively well done
They also have a good sense of ambiance. It gets spoopy quickly

P-

Disregarding the facts like Rutger Hauer has one tone throughout the whole thing, he clearly phoned his lines in and that this makes dialog sound even more disjointed than I guess they intended it to, this is a very good sounding game.
Assaultingly so, at some points.
The human characters all look like they were slapped so hard down the realism slope they landed face first in the Uncanny Valley, but with the whole undertone of cybernetic implants and body modifications, I will excuse it.
In fact, this game put me in the mood to excuse a great deal many things!

Total-

Control

V-

No issues with the XClone
Same with Areola Controlla

J-

This game tries to do the frictional grab and stick, but it’s not quite as smooth as the game it takes inspiration from

P-

The framerate jumping around like crazy and, every now and again, the cursor slipping from the confines of the window make it so I can’t give it 4 chairs.
But it would have to be really bad for this game to fuck up controls when I can play it with just the cursor keys, ctrl, shift and my 10 button mouse.

Total-

FUN

V-

Doors, doors everywhere #calledit
Really, it’s alright.
Don’t really have any of the immersion since I’m playing in a little 1080p window.
Bit on the slow side.
Think visual novel with some interactive bits.
Puzzles are fairly easy to sort.
Lots of unintentional puzzles due to not being able to figure out what exactly you’re supposed to interact with.
For the most part does not rely on jump-scares.

J-

It’s another one of those walking simulators with a few “puzzles” strewn about
Most of the investigation you do is simply a scavenger hunt in one of 3 different modes.
Then you get to dive into people’s brains, at which point it just turns into layers of fear
While it’s a well done example of this sort of game, I’m not that into it
It’s just random spoopy shit shit thrown at you
As has been mentioned though, the “horror” here comes from a bunch of unnerving sounds and visuals, with not too many jump scares. That in itself deserves some recognition. To many games conflate startling with scary

P-

Even the few jump scares that it does have feel organic.
It’s like they were thought out to feel as natural as possible.
It’s like someone actually listened to criticism of Layers of Fear rather than throwing a hissy fit and standing their ground.
Observer is the symmetrical opposite to Frictional’s SOMA.
While SOMA took elements from Amnesia and Penumbra and wasn’t as good a game because of it, Observer took elements from Layers of Fear and brought them to the sci-fi thriller genre with great success!
I love to see developers actually take the criticism of their past mistakes and improving on them.
You’d expect this to be the common, sensible thing to do.
But we’ve seen the opposite happen so many times, it’s refreshing to actually see good decisions and improvements for once.

Total-

Final –

Hate Mail:

Nope
https://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?j81qdED

PLEH
https://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?X7UcF8T

Magic
https://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?p5W9cxS