Finished Black Ops 2. Enjoyable campaign, but that story goes off the rails quick, haha. The set pieces were quite impressive considering the age of the game.

Wow, Darkhaven got 20% of its goal within last 24 hours. It has a long way to go and I'm not getting EA but it will probably be one of the better aRPG at 1.0 :)

Finished Planet of Lana 2. As beautiful as the first game, story is still very vague, but nevertheless cute and fun to play through. Kind of a sad game.

I just noticed Benedict Fox is only 5€. Highly recommended! It's such an amazing world building. Be prepared for confusing puzzles and orientation. HLTB says 11 hours game, it took me 23 hours

Ugh.. even disabling multi, survival and spec ops as DLCs for CoD 2023 it still takes ~110GB and take ~2.5 hours to download.

Finished Unavowed. Very very nice adventure game, great narrative and storytelling. Things get wild and the game goes places with some unexpected turns.

I finally got Vox Machinae that was developed in VR first but internally also made a flat version. Going to try flat but save most of it for Frame. Same company made Signal Ops, got Steam version in case it's easier to setup playing in Frame (just monitor but still charming considering you control spy characters through VR terminals).

SteamWorld Heist 1 is only 1€. The universe in the SW universe is so charming need to get all their games lol

I'm contemplating getting Call of Duty 2023 that has surprisingly good reviews of the campaign, maybe Ele knows more. 90% of a Blizz-Act game is unheard of too lol

Maybe they will pull a No Man Sky so you know in 5-10 years it will be something else with mods and stuff xD

But not Death Stranding 2! People write "how the hell did you optimize this amazingly looking game??" xD

Crimson desert shat the bed after all

Finished SteamWorld Build only to see Spring sale with like 15 games on discounts at ITAD xD

You know you found a great game when starting over is almost exciting as the first time. I messed up layout in Steam World Build so I got into debt (it has a cap though) but it's free to move buildings, they build instantly and most buildings you sell at at buy value so simplifies mistakes. I'm really digging chill build / strategy games nowadays. Of course figuring out the right layout is like half the game, adding defenses while more micro management in the Mines with Mech DLC was not a big deal but still a welcome challenge.

Tracking upkeep should have been better and unlock ability to sell resources for cash later in the game. Placing boxes to slow down enemies in the mines should also be more clear, it feels like spawns are mostly random.

The game is like a mix of Dungeon Keeper and Anno so of course I forgot time haha

Either disabling or not getting the DLC or just set easy is fine if one wants only chill.

Indeed, they sure made effort to prepare for a good release.

I swear I had read that most of the team was fired illegally and Krafton basically stole the company but it might have only been the CEO. They don't have a good reputation, it's some South Korean conglomerate that likes to turn everything into a pretty casino. They bought developer company behind Last Epoch so people panicked about milking DLC and turn it into Asian mobile gaming but it has fortunately not happened.

And Crimson desert looks like it may actually not be a disaster after all

I don't care about professional or private lives of CEOs too much, yes :P

Crimson Desert and Death Stranding 2 out tomorrow. Quite intrigued about opinions during early release.

I know but I'm taking a break on platformers, have a bunch of strategy games to play. I played some Trine 5 and while it's fun, I exhausted the genre for now lol

You don't care that people get paid fairly and not be controlled by their employer? :o

Who cares, buy constance while it's on promo xd

"Judge orders Subnautica 2 studio CEO Fired by Krafton to be reinstated and gives him full control over EA Steam launch". Good news.

Going to try new aRPG Dragonkin. Almost no marketing and 1.0 was released today. This one excels on creating your own skills by putting together ancestral fragments but they need to match to make a combo. I watched a video and it went over my head haha

Finished The Knightling. Exploration and puzzles were great, side quests decent and variable, combat was fun in the beginning but the arena form of it especially in some circumstances were too cramped with enemies stagger and even heal I was satisfied when it ended.

First impressions on Tempest Rising is great! Still looking forward to tweak a Win7 rig to run C&C Generals and RA2 in 60FPS but good to know there are modern titles that just run on their own.

TCL first OLED Monitor will have 4K 32" 240Hz 6.4mm design at ~$800 in China. Got stuck on Asus ProArt and I trust Asus but that's very competitive for someone who wants to try out OLED.

Count, Zaida, multiple elites or duelists in small area are tricky but overall it was fun

From what I remember it wasn't even that difficult, and kind of fun to repeat a few times, just frustrating that I always failed at the end. Probably not patient and concentrated enough

Environment helps against the count so you defeat the smaller first so one xns focus on the boss but imo only first 2 missions are worth it

The Count -Duke? That was the fight where I stopped. Apparantly it starts with three guys, later smaller opponents join in.

Tomorrow I can finally play Tempest Rising!

With the fencing I'm looking forward to Ass Creed 4 remake even more.

I think 3 bosses with opponents at the same time. Worse is the pirate woman who is so random and zero environment, typical limited arena game.. Not my thing but the early laughter was worth it

I played it until that boss fight where you have to defeat a whole lot of opponents and one boss. I think it was the second boss? Or the first real one? Or end of first chapter? I played that battle several times and always managed to defeat the smaller opponents after a while, but never the boss. I think it was quite hard to get his HP down? Or I hadn't really mastered some move yet and the battle was completely relying on me using it to beat the boss?

En Garde was comedic and fun when you were learning the ropes but damn the bosses at the end is no fun, too much health, random attacks that are either hard to dodge or parry, barely any environmental weapons too..

Which game was that?

Yeah, and i got banned by Russian developer for saying their game is propaganda piece

So much worse people out there but yeah it's a cess pool. They moderate ineffectively too. Some grammar demand, no politics rule and zero insult policy would help.

Wow, Steam forums really are a cesspool. Ex Voto threads are full of gleeful trolls celebrating that the game allegedly flopped because it wasn't made for "manly masculine GAMERS". At least, I hope they're all trolls, because the alternative would be even more depressing ...

Oh and Deck verified, runs great but it's quite short only 4 missions.

En Garde! Is $5 at games planet. Recommended fencing game with a comedy edge. You use environment to even the odds with multiple enemies. I mostly bought it for the comedy though haha

Read up on upcoming Asus ProArt monitor series. The CDV model will retail for $1300 but 4K, OLED and 120Hz. Most excited about Steam Frame due to portability but good to look forward to next stationary upgrade.

Last chapter / fight in RE Requiem. Pretty good game overall, though the first half was much stronger than the second. Raccoon City kind of felt boring and dragged out too much.

Digital Foundry reports Crimson Deserts plays well with PS5 Pro, consistent 60FPS with some AI scaling at 4K. Surprisingly low issues. They added Denuvo on PC version 7 days before release, it will be interesting to see how fast a scene release will arrive for such a high profile novelty IP. 4th highest pre order right now on Steam.

Unity is expanding "..full native Linux builds, dedicated optimizations for the Steam Deck, improved support for the upcoming Steam Machine, and built-in Steamworks integration through Unity's Platform Toolkit."

We might see some jump in Unity games now that SteamOS will be expanded to Frame, Machine and future Decks.

Hyper competition will force creation of MVPs so you can test if you have a potential brand. Optimizations can be done after the fact when money and trust is no longer an issue.

Lately modern demos tend to start the game with highest settings so even main menu is lagging and takes longer to load shaders quite common with UE5 games.

indie devs are probably spamming too many rendering processes without proper optimization work

but that's an issue that many indie games developed on UE5 have. I've been playing this WWII Medic simulator demo or something and it also ran way poorer than it should.

especially that most levels are corridor - based, so there's not that much going on that should strain on your graphic cards

well the game does have resolution scaling options, but at the default 50% scaling it looks like crap imho. So I changed to 100% and i get 50-60 FPS on RTX 5070, which shows the game isn't really optimized that well.

But at least it doesn't look terrible now

Unfortunate but I've played enough low poly old games I'm fine with issues like that. Too obsessed about stability & frame drops to the point I have a general feeling it's not ready for its optimal state, I just skip it as low priority and play something similar but well run. It's sad, it feels I will never be able to return to HOMM 4 without worrying about it :(
Fortunately I've the music on my phone to revive old memories :)