henke on 24/12/2023 at 10:26
And a Merry Christmas to you, Jason Moyer!
Sent from my SM-G975F using Tapatalk
henke on 26/12/2023 at 18:44
Someone referred to Batman: Arkham Origins as a Christmas game, which made me remember I never finished it, but had only played the first 9 hours. So I reinstalled it and I've played a couple more hours. Now that I can crank up the settings all the way it's a pretty looking game. And being built on the bones of the previous Batmans means that the gameplay systems are solid and fun. Still, I'm frequently reminded why this is the lesser Batman game. Plenty of jank. Plenty of enemies ragdolling like crazy and bouncing out of the scene. One guy got stuck in a wall, while still alive. The lip-syncing is attrocious. But having had some distance from this series I'm astonished at how good even "the bad one" of these are.
Jason Moyer on 26/12/2023 at 20:36
Origins is definitely in the fun/don't regret playing it/will never play it again category for me.
WingedKagouti on 26/12/2023 at 20:51
I personally enjoyed Origins more than Knight. Mostly because I found the car unfun and forced.
Sulphur on 29/12/2023 at 13:47
(
https://haraiva.itch.io/under-a-star-called-sun) Under a Star Called Sun
Saw this on an RPS comments thread. Played it. Five minutes long. Less, maybe. Graphics are Atari 2600 glyphs and serrated pixels, there's a single music track, you navigate using four keys, there's no sound effects, and it's not a game.
But it hits quietly, and it stays. Especially if at one point in your life you had a friend you thought you'd speak to tomorrow, but tomorrow turned up without them. A concise illustration of making peace with what's left - and a warm, thoughtful experience.
henke on 29/12/2023 at 14:11
That was good. Thanks for sharing, Sulph. :)
Tomi on 29/12/2023 at 16:07
I noticed that there's a free trial for EA Sports WRC on the XBox Game Pass, so I thought that I would give it a try before I decide whether it's worth my money or not. The free trial lets you play the game for 5 hours and I've got about 1 hour left now, so here are my first impressions:
WRC feels like something in between Dirt Rally 1 and Dirt Rally 2, but still very much like a Dirt Rally game. It's not as unforgiving as DR1 (which is good in a way), but I find the car handling somehow better here than in DR2. The few stages that I've played so far are better designed and feel more fair than the ones in the DR games. The pacenotes seem a bit more detailed and you really have to concentrate on those, and sometimes their timing seems a bit off, but that's alright. There are some really long stages (the longest that I've played so far is 22km!) that are just exhausting to play sometimes, but I mean that in the best possible way - I love the long stages! I play without all the assists disabled and the game certainly feels realistic and challenging enough for me. It's worth mentioning that I haven't got a racing wheel though and I play with my XBox controller, so I don't even aim for "ultimate realism".
There are some minor performance issues at least on XBox Series X, and I must say that EA WRC looks rather mediocre for a 2023 game. I thought that Codemasters switched to the Unreal Engine to ensure that the game runs smooth as possible and looks great, but it's strange that Dirt Rally 2 (that uses the in-house engine of Codemasters) looked better (in my opinion) and ran more smoothly. Before this I never knew what "screen tearing" means in practice, but it's certainly a thing in WRC. There are occasional frame rate drops too that aren't too bad, but in a game like this even a small distraction can lead to a disaster. Hopefully these issues are something that can be fixed in future patches.
WRC seems like a decent game already, but I'll spend the last hour of my trial to decide whether I'm going to buy it now, or wait until they've fixed the game.
vurt on 31/12/2023 at 05:17
True Stalker, TC for STALKER.
If you love immersive sims its a must play. it has food and water requirements (like a sim should imo), so if you hate that you might not like it ;)
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:21CC20DC7309912ADA09222B91E9EE3F99C85F8C&dn=TrueStalker&tr=wss%3a%2f%2fwstracker.online
patches here: (
https://www.moddb.com/mods/true-stalker)
It's a stand-alone install, you don't need to install the game first or anything. Just install it, install all patches, play.
Really good, completely new story + maps(edited maps). Not even mad any longer that they stole quite a few of my textures. I both love and hate the stalker modding community, super creative, but they also don't give a shit if they just take people's stuff.
Edit: there shouldn't be a space after *tracker, the forum messes the torrent link up...
Edit: better translation patch is up: (
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14SlRqk6c1_03LLAVL4L-t3KvYKmQrLXu/view)
Renault on 31/12/2023 at 05:30
Quote Posted by vurt
it has food and water requirements (like a sim should imo), so if you hate that you might not like it ;)
That's really more of a survival game trait, not an immersive sim one. How many of the games that are considered classic immersive sims have food/water reqs? None that I can think of.
vurt on 31/12/2023 at 05:43
Quote Posted by Renault
That's really more of a survival game trait, not an immersive sim one. How many of the games that are considered classic immersive sims have food/water reqs? None that I can think of.
Almost none, which of course is extremely lame if they're gonna go under "sim"... They're not simulating much of anything apart from just basic mechanics needed for the game to be a game. But this topic belongs in the immersive sim thread where i already discussed this.
Survival game = very lame, usually MP driven game where you craft / build and run around PVP'ing and looting. One of my least favorite genres.
