UNCHARTED gets Steam Deck verified! Return to Monkey Island (beta) for Linux, NVIDIA unlaunches the 12GB 4080, RGB powered “gaming” Chromebooks, UNIGINE taps that Vulkan button, and no ARC for old Venn.
Special thanks to:
PTDave (twitch resub)
Listen:
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Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
03:30 Where is the Intel Arc stock?
05:09 USB audio with kernel 6.0
STEAM NEWS
11:04 Updated Steam mobile app
STEAM NEW GAMES
13:36 A.W.O.L boomer-shooter on Build
STEAM GAME UPDATES
16:30 Return to Monkey Island Linux beta
18:50 In Golfing Ather Linux beta
22:40 UNCHARTED is Steam Deck verified
NEWS
31:26 NVIDIA Linux driver with auto updates
35:46 NVIDIA unlaunching 12GB 4080
44:08 Gaming Chromebooks
48:52 UNIGINE gets Vulkan support
52:08 WTF is WINE?
55:02 Jazz Jackrabbit 2 C++ rewrite
REVIEW
58:12 Blossom Tales 2: The Minotaur Prince
EMAIL
01:10:49 Pew pew power
Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro
Steam: News
- I managed to get the QR code login to work, once.
- I signed out on the Toshiba Portege and then used the QR code to sign back in, I consider that a win.
- Had to log back into the app but it looks pretty slick.
- A little unresponsive though.
- QR sign in does work, but it’s not instant like discord. You still need to press the sign in button
- On the plus side, getting to my curator connect offers just got a whole lot less painless. Any word on fixing that workflow Valve?
Steam: New Games
- It’s nice to see the build engine have a bit of a resurgence.
- This one’s free to boot
- Free boomer shooter!
- Ok, the squad based shenanigans are hilarious.
- Your squadmates can be standing in front of the enemy actively being shot but don’t shoot back unless they’re in the same room.
- So I ran out of ammo on the first level and was down to the knife and I eventually died.
- It’s free so it doesn’t bother me so much, but… yeah.
Steam: Game Updates
- Native Linux build for Return to monkey island.
- Seeing the post requires you to login and own the game.
- Cross platform multiplayer and done in Vulkan
- Not quite enough for me to forgive it for being a golf game
- Writer claims to not have Deck but that screenshot looks a lot like SteamOS 3.
- HoloISO?
- Hopefully Uncharted performance is a better love story than Spider man. Or the movie. Man, that’s a lot of Tom Holland
- Running on Proton stable, huh?
- That’s awesome, and I hope it sells really well.
- Whar Bloodborne?
- WHAR last of us?
- Yeah, Spiderman was/is not a good experience with Proton on my system.
- I will hold off on this because I know fk all about the series.
News:
- Treating Linux desktop users as first class citizens.
- When can we use emails for driver downloads?
- Fk all idea how to enable the proton thingy.
- Gotta set PROTON_ENABLE_NGX_UPDATER=1 to when you launch your games if it supports it
- Works with kernel 6.0.
- So proper DLSS 2 support with OTA updates?
- That took a while.
- A lot of Vulkan extensions drop the uvm kernel module requirement.
- Paving the way for better Open Sauce driver support.
- Thanks, NVidia.
- Most of the vulkan extensions that lost the nvidia-uvm.so dependency have to do with ray tracing
- The progress bar is less of a filthy liar?
- Slap some 4070 stickers on them and call it a day.
- Imagine all the AIB partners sitting on stock.
- NVIDIA is allegedly eating some of the cost for remaking the AIB boxes.
- They still have to reflash the firmware.
- Yeah, EVGA pulled a neo dodge bullet on this one.
- Never forget that the inflation-adjusted launch price of the GTX 1080 is $740.
- Someone didn’t feel terribly confident in their line up pricing in the face of AMD’s impending announcements, huh?
- I wouldn’t mind the 12 GB card at like a $700 price point.
- Still, could do without the kickstand though
- I can imagine someone at NVIDIA was all “welp, we had to try”.
- Tsk tsk, not even packing IRIS or ARC gpus, just basic bitch i3s
- Gaming == 15 inch + Form factor
- At that price point you’re better off getting a steam deck. You can even get one in a few weeks now
- I wanna see some beefy chromebooks that can run some shit in proton Google.
- “Gaming” Chromebook? Slap a RGB keyboard on it. Done!
- I wonder if they come with stickers on the boxes with GeForce Now/Luna over where the Stadia logo is.
- Wonder what they really think about DX12.
- Years after the “we’ll add vulkan to the benmark soon ™“ they have in working in the engine.
- The ZOMG it’s so much faster falls a little flat after Vulkan has been around for so long.
- Can we get that promised Vulkan bench on Superposition?
- How about that Steam release? Y’all did get through Greenlight, remember?!
- Are we going to get a new version of Oil Rush? Or that Skiing game? Or what else is made with unigine?
- Cradle
- Oversimplified as the author claims it to be, that’s still a better explanation than most of the ones I read back in the early days of my Linux usage.
- Highly recommended read if you’re looking to win a Twitter argument against those people.
- And now we know why is not an emulator
- Full rewrite to modern C++
- Browser based version is nice
- It works!
- The upscalers all look terrible and make everything look too soft.
- Thankfully they give you the option to just linearly scale the pixels up.
- Gimme that pixely Jazz!
- Controllers also work, and they added a weapon wheel for selecting the multiple projectiles with the controller.
- It’s really well done, and only having to drop the original/extracted GOG files in the folder is awesome!
- And you can go right back to giving people deep loving kisses in the mouth.
CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope
– Not sure if want
– Check it out
– Shutupandtakemymonies
Game: Blossom Tales 2: The Minotaur Prince
Webzone: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1747830/
Devel: Castle Pixel, LLC
Engine: FNA
Price: £11.39 / $14.99 / $17.49
Wazzat: The Minotaur King has returned…and it’s all your fault! Lily’s back for a new “classic” action-adventure set hundreds of years after The Sleeping King!
Mandatory Disclosure: Devs sent us keys
Venn:
Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control
- Fullscreen and windowed.
- Volume & sound.
- No rebindable controls in 2022.
- Sharp & crisp pixel graphics.
- Something the original games avoided like the plague.
- Respectable soundtrack.
Fun?
- Imagine if Zelda was a girl.
- Then shave a few million yen off the budget and you get Blossom Tales II.
- Not to be confused with Blossom Tales -13. Common mistake.
- This is yet another “I played Link to the Past growing up” clone.
- Top-down hipster-pixel adventure action… ish.
- You’ve played This Game ™ before and you will play it again.
- The twist on this one is that grandpa is telling the tale and that causes the story to switch up a bit from time to time.
- It does a good job explaining the game mechanics at the get go.
- Combat is really floaty nonsense but serviceable.
- Movement is on the slow side of slow.
- I gave it 60 minutes to catch me but instead it introduced crafting.
- Then I was killed to death by some frogs.
- If fan-fic Zelda games are your jam this might be your jam.
- Has plenty to keep you occupied if you like exploring.
Jordan:
Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control
- Launches OOTB
- The Graphics are acceptable. It’s hewing very close to zelda, but in simpsons world where everyone has yellow skin
- DS4 works OOTB but you gotta deal with xbox prompts
- The controls are responsive. The combat feels good
- The soundtrack is very much “not zelda”
Fun?
- It’s Zelda! For kids!
- Grandpa’s got a story for you pesky kids who won’t go to sleep!
- Honestly, fuck the little brother. He’s a piece of shit who deserves to get kidnapped
- Gameplay wise though, this is a solid zelda like. 2nd Dungeon is straight up the water temple from A link to the past
- The bosses are a little more forgiving as you can just kinda wail on them and chug healing potions but that’s not necessarily a bad thing?
- If you’re gonna rip off a successful thing, at least try to do it as well as the original, and this game definitely did that
- It’s certainly a lot more linear than your average zelda game, but since it’s aimed at kids that’s probably not too bad a thing
Pedro:
Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control
- Launches out of the box both on the desktop and the Deck
- Seems to be using an older version of FNA since Vsync on the desktop doesn’t go to 144 FerPS
- Controllers work and they rumble as you’d expect.
- When I was playing Nory commented “That is a very bouncy girl!”
- And I felt a bit icky for the obvious lewd jokes that popped into my head.
- But yes, even at a cursory glance everything is very perceptible in its hipster pixely-ness.
- And the audio is also very much along the SNES 8bit audio level of beeps and boops.
Fun?
- Did you like A Link to the Past’s graphic style but wished you could play something more along the lines of the original Legend of Zelda?
- There you go!
- Grandpa tells the story of the Minotaur King’s return using the grandkids as the main characters.
- Granddaughter takes on the main role of aforementioned bouncy protagonist swinging her sword and fishing for piranhas.
- While the grandson becomes the plot device/antagonist.
- The titular Minotaur Prince, if you would.
- And it is very much like Zelda with some pop-culture references that wouldn’t go amiss around the time Link to the Past came out, others probably would go very much amiss.
- Honestly, it’s a perfectly serviceable game which will probably be a very good game to introduce a young child to the vidjagames.
Verdict:
Venn:
Jordan:
Pedro:
Hate Mail:
