Valve teases Half-Life: Alyx! Fantasy Strike gets full crossplay support, Steam Play Together exits beta, and experimental Linux drivers for your force feedback devices. Then NieR:Automata faces, the CHAIRQASITION!
Special Thanks To:
- Reuben (new pat)
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Timestamps:
04:39 Steam beta client
07:09 Steam play together exits beta
08:58 Steam Achievements manager
11:59 Operation Shattered Web
13:59 Fantasy Strike crossplay
16:04 Half-Life: Alyx
24:09 Steam Marines 2
26:19 Cthulu’s Catharsis
28:44 Shameless self promotion
31:39 Mesa 19.2.5
33:19 Montezuma’s source code
36:39 Experimental Logitech fore feedback
39:34 vkBasalt
42:29 Flax for Linux
44:54 Matric OBS support
49:39 CHAIRQASITION: NieR:Automata
01:05:34 Hate mail
Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro
Steam: News
- Split shared games is something I’ve seen people screech about.
- That was a thing with the old library
- Fixed possible client crash when there are more pending gifts than installed games
- That’s a weird freaking edge case
- Not when you’re building your account back up after your previous one was VAC Banned.
- That’s a weird freaking edge case
- As of last week it was working well enough for Sandy and I to play megabyte punch, and if it’s good enough for Canada, it’s good enough for you
- With a SALE!!1! To go with it: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/together
Steam Achievements Manager 201911
- Lengthen or shorten your e-peen. On linux!
- Oh look, a search bar!
- So… is VALVe okay with people cheating their system to unlock achievements?
- I don’t really want to tempt a VAC Ban.
Steam: Game Updates
- Counter strike gets their own edgy mascots after 22 years
- Can’t let Forknight have all the fun.
- Co-Op campaigns for the fans of Condition Zero and Deleted Scenes who wanted more.
- More people to get instakilled by.
- Until now we could only tango with PS4 heathens.
- Sony was being a doofus with their crossplay rules, but they’ve changed their tune. For now
- There’s no technical reason why it wouldn’t work, but Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo wanna ship more units and one way to do that is FOMO
- That’s awesome!
- I hope Fantasy Strike can come back from the 6 concurrent people playing it on average the last month.
Steam: New Games
- I look forward to Team Fortress: Alyx and Left for Dead: Alyx.
- This is apparently #1 of two VR games that Valve is developing
- Signs point to this being a midquel between HL1 and 2?
- I really don’t see this selling well unless they a) have a compelling non-vr option or b) the hardware costs reduce drastically
- Yeah, this makes as much financial sense as HL-3 being Linux exclusive.
- Then again, Valve doesn’t have shareholders so whatevs.
- It’s set before HL2? FFS.
- Would it kill them to continue the story.
- Windows only.
- Unfortunate the whole windows only thing, but with proton many things are possible
- If we wanted that tinfoil hat optimism, this could be in part a test to see how well Proton handles VR
- Will this be that game that brings VR to the masses?
- Not when it requires a very expensive bit of equipment.
- Not when it requires two functioning hands
- It may be the most successful and, by all measures, the best VR game when it comes out.
- But it’ll still be a VR game.
- I had a think on this while trapped in a booth today.
- It’s not the price of the VR, well, not entirely.
- I say that since we all have more than $700 tied up in our systems.
- It’s the price, hassle of wearing shite on our heads, and needing a spare room to set the damn thing up.
- Perma-ironman X-Com gets a sequel
- They’ve progressed from SNES graphics to Early XBOX
- They say it’s in the Steam Marines franchise on the side of the store page but they never went back and added the previous one to said franchise.
- Be a lovecraftian elder horror they said. Destroy the world they said. It would be fun they said
- It’s got online PvP so that could be interesting.
- Risk at the Mountains of Madness?
- Ry’lyehsk?
News:
- Gotta fix GLXgears on POWAH
- Some game fixes for STK and Tropico
- CIV6 now runs if you’re on AMD graphics
- A very “boring” release, which is not a bad thing.
- Everything is chomping at the bits for 19.3 for the ACO and proper Navi bits.
- Just so ya know, losing a key is a BS excuse.
- It would be nice to see the code one day even if it’s an incomplete form.
- I liked that game!
- It’s a first person platformer/collectathon
- Still, of the three people involved in this story, Richard Geldreich’s only fault is that of laziness
- For those of you who do use logitech driving wheels and like authentic resistance, get ready to build some kmods
- No DKMS provided, which can get a little annoying if you like to keep your kernels kurrent
- Still experimental, if you have a Logitech Wheel that isn’t the G920, give this a go and let the person know.
- It’d be great to have this in the kernel
- Turn left, turn left.
- Still a big old “USE AT YOUR OWN RISK” sticker slapped on this boy
- Stick to testing it with single player games
- Better Anti-aliasing and making it so you don’ t need to set a separate environment variable for 32 bit apps is nice
- I do wonder what the performance hit is.
- From my testing with Fallout 4 it didn’t have a noticeable impact.
- However, since they’ve improved the AA quality it may become more noticeable.
- Especially if you jack up the subpixel AA amount.
- X11 is used for window system and mouse/keyboard input.
- Much like Unity, these guys decided to re-invent the wheel and not use SDL2
- More open source engines are nice though
- Beta is still coming soon with this one.
- Getting it to work on Linux, as we have discovered, can make porting to other “unix-related” platforms that much easier.
- Like the PS4 and the Switch.
- Can’t get it to connect.
- If it was working shite could get real with a quickness.
- This thing has settings for games, Netflix etc.
- With OBS you would have a wicked-custom desk for macros, scene switching and the like.
CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope
– Not sure if want
– Check it out
– Shutupandtakemymonies
Game: NieR:Automata
Devel: Square Enix, PlatinumGames
Engine: Custom (Platinum developed, specifically for NieR:Automata)
Price: £29.99 / US$ / CA$
Wazzat: NieR: Automata tells the story of androids 2B, 9S and A2 and their battle to reclaim the machine-driven dystopia overrun by powerful machines.
Venn:
Does It Launch
- Everything works OOTB.
- Only grips is setting it to a non-primary monitor is impossible.
- Can only select the primary monitor.
Performance @ 1080
- 1080 on YOLO it slams 59.96 minus random chunky parts.
- Japan tax.
Graphics
- Quite the bit-o-pop-in.
Control
- Works with the Xclone and PS4.
Jordan:
Does It Launch
- It doesn’t seem to like level 2
- Too much white?
- No issues with 440.36
Performance @ 1080
- I made the mistake of playing half the tutorial in UHD
- Once you knock it down to 1080P, it holds 59
Graphics
- Oh it pretty
Control
- It works fine with the dualshock 4
Pedro:
Does It Launch
- It do
Performance @ 1080
- With Max settings and Blur off
- At 1440p on the Ryzen box it goes anywhere between 45 and 60
- El Cheapo, at 1080p, goes anywhere from 22 to 60
- Performance is a bit shit, but the game is still playable for the most part.
- Turning down the graphics to Medium (with Blur off) on El Cheapo puts the FerPS count on par with the Ryzen box.
Graphics
- Grass and higher res textures can be seen popping in quite a lot.
Control
- DualShock 4 worked out of the box and it lets you customize the layout.
- I did run into an issue between this box and El Cheapo because the games syncs the controller config to the cloud.
- And since the DS4 config couldn’t be applied to the Steam Controller, it just reverted to defaults.
- But most of you wouldn’t necessarily run into this issue.
QA Score:
Fedora:
Neon:
Debian:
Fun section:
Fun?:
- Venn:
- It’s not often I play a game that makes me question what qualifies as intelligence, or AI? Human?
- More to the point I have never been hit with a “OMG WTF” moment like this game drops on your face from orbit.
- You don’t expect it since at first everything is all “yeah yeah, robots think they are android, androids wanna be people” I get it game, I get it.
- Then on the third playthrough with all the backstory a thing goes down that made me tap the pause button and take a moment.
- It was a deep-fried fkd up thing that for lack of a better explanation shows the dangers of being human.
- Or at least attempting to emulate them.
- Game wise the combat it solid but repetitive and the world is a lot smaller than it seems.
- That said there is still plenty to explore and… smash the shite out of.
- If you like doing the upgrades by collecting chips and finding secrets this game will consume you.
- RIP Pedro.
- I don’t, so whatevs.
- For me it does what I want in a brawler, wait…
- Can we really call it a brawler?
- I mean, rush head on into damn near anything and you will come back in a robo body bag.
- Regardless, you get to smash shite and look good doing it while enjoying a solid story that they SOMEHOW managed to deliver over three playthroughs without coming off as gimmicky.
- It took me some 30+ hours to Venn my way through it and I rather enjoyed it.
- Performance is still a little hit-or-miss and it has some bugs.
- Unfortunately two+ years later not so much as a single patch has come out to address any of the outstanding issues.
- Still, if you can find it on sale pick it up, you’ll dig the experience.
- Oh and the ending ending… is heh, but WTF heh with a side of REALLY?
- Jordan
- Never have I seen a game truly incentivises the amount of moose-violence that is required in this game
- This game is weird as fuck, and I’m kinda into it
- First there was the boss with not one, but two bagger 288s for arms
- Then there was the wombo combo of the juggalo tank immediately followed by creepy robot android-corpse diva
- Not to mention the urban decay aesthetic is really pretty looking, and the areas you run around in are aweomely barren
- Except for all of the saassage robots
- Gameplay is pretty fun too. It’s the devil may cry, bayonetta, metal gear revengeance air juggly flashy fighting, and it’s s god damn enjoyable
- Story wise, it’s pretty clear you’re playing the baddies
- “Robots don’t feel fear” he says as we mow down robot civilians who are running for their lives screaming about how scared they are
- Normally I find these sorts of games a bit monotonous considering how stage based they usually are. The open world fixes that for me
- Pedro
- Between Nier and Bayonetta, I much prefer Nier!
- It’s got a bit of the Squeenix influence but the over the top choreography, penis shaped robots, and sexy protagonist androids in maid/school boy outfits are very much on brand for Platinum.
- Nier is Bayonetta with more of an open world and with the Final Fantasy like RPG elements built around the highly choreographed combat.
- It’s unfortunate the performance is a bit jank in places because I very much enjoy everything else about this game.
- The combat feels awesome.
- All the weapons have different interactions and moves when you combo them together.
- Different enemies react differently to combos and counters.
- Honestly, this is an awesome game.
- And much like the previous Nier, you don’t get to play the “whole” game until you’ve beaten it several times over.
- I like games that aren’t afraid of hiding content away from players
- Dark Souls, Skyrim, Fallout 2, and NieR Automata.
- So while the performance needs improving, I honestly did not see it as a hindrance to my enjoyment.
Fun Score:
Venn:
Jordan:
Pedro:
Hate Mail:
