Castle Magus

Full headline, which didn't fit up there because of the usual reason: "Too many games released busted, broken, and basically in early access this year—it's time for it to stop"

I kind of agree with this, in a sort of "better late than never" sort of way, but I agree way more with all the comments under the article saying that the actual time for this to stop was many, many years ago, back when the trend was first getting started.

Just finished a playthrough of Overlord II, which came on the heels of a playthrough of Overlord: Raising Hell. (Not to be confused with those other two video games called Overlord or any of the other stuff.)

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Playlist.

I've said before that sometimes the best advertisement for a video game, better than any slickly made, official commercial, is a video in which a bunch of chucklefucks get together and just (try to) play the game.

This... ...um... ...is not such a video. ¬_¬

Sure, the video is funny and entertaining (kinda, I guess), but it does not, in any way whatsoever, make me want to rush over to Steam and buy/play Helldivers 2 myself. Not even a little bit.

I reinstalled Vampire Survivors for the first time in a while to try out the new DLC thing, which I bought the other day for something like 36% off, thanks to the bundle trick.[1]

And my save was completely wiped and gone. I was able to restore a backup via the options, but it still looks like everything from before I got the other two DLCs is still gone. Bits and pieces from the DLCs are still weirdly showing up, though.

Honestly, since I don't actually trust that backup save at all, I am tempted to do one of two things, right now. Either (1) delete my save entirely and start over completely fresh, or (2) just say fuck it, uninstall Vampire Survivors altogether, and never touch it again, ever. I might just end up doing a bit of (1) before getting tired of it and moving on to doing (2) anyway.

Interestingly, the way to clear your saves is a bit arcane (in-game, at least, since you could just manually delete them in OS). Google told me that you have to go into the options and click on the "Account" icon seven times, which brings up an otherwise hidden "Delete Save" option. A bit weird, that. And then, if makes you confirm at least three times before you can actually delete the save.

[1] - The bundle "trick" is that when you buy a game/DLC in a series for which you've already bought all or most of the rest of it, and there is a Steam bundle for that game/DLC/series, the "bundle discount" is almost always bigger than the individual game/DLC discount. In this particular case, when I bought the Among Us DLC thing for VS, the DLC by itself was something like 30% off or whatever, but the bundle (which, for me, contained only the Among Us DLC, since I already had everything else) was 36% (or whatever it actually was, but I'm pretty sure it was 36%[2]) off.

[2] - On checking my purchase history, I got it for $1.59 (not counting tax), and the DLC is $2.49 USD normally, with no discount, so yeah, it was 36% off with the "bundle" discount.

This video is entirely ranting about Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. Aside from the title, I don't think they mention Redfall at all. And... I've heard some bad things about Jedi Survivor, but if even half of what Pat and Woolie say in this video is true, then it's far worse than I was aware. I'm not surprised or shocked by that in any way, mind you, it's just that I haven't really been keeping tabs on the game at all, outside of stuff like this. And though they're mostly focusing on the horrendous PC port of the game, they mention at several points that the console versions are just as fucked up broken in their own ways as well.

And on top of all of that, which Pat and Woolie don't even mention at all, the game is contaminated with the malware Denuvo on PC, because of course it is. (Which, yet again, is not disclosed on Steam [outside of the warning from the third party "Denuvo Games" curator, which wouldn't be seen by anyone who doesn't follow that curator], because, for whatever asinine reasons, Valve continually allows EA to get away with not doing that.) The Denuvo infection, in and of itself, is probably a not-at-all-insignificant part of the reason why it runs like dogshit. It's also reason #1 as to why I have zero interest in buying it, even ignoring the fact that it's still a broken piece of shit otherwise, regardless.

I bought the first game in the series, Fallen Order, back in December, when it was on a 88%-off sale, i.e. for $4.79 USD, a while after they wisened up and removed the Denuvo malware from it (because if it had still been defiled by that shit, I wouldn't have bought it for even $0.479 USD, let alone $4.79). It runs okay on my 10-15 year old PC. It's pretty fun. Mind you, I never finished it, but still. If and only if they ever get this new game into a working, optimized, non-Denuvo-infested state will I even begin to consider maybe someday getting it possibly in perhaps three to five-plus years or so.

In any case, at this point in time, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is like a textbook example of everything that is wrong with the modern video game industry.

I never knew before today that "Kennel World" was a thing that existed. It's kind of like the Minus World in Super Mario Bros.

I did know about the screen warp glitch, as that was something I managed to find on my own by complete accident back when I was playing the hell out of Link's Awakening as a kid. (I remember it was possible, when abusing the screen warp, to end up with Marin, Bow Wow, the ghost, and the Flying Rooster all in your "party" all at the same time, for one thing. Or... wait, maybe not all of them at once, but I know you could have Marin, Bow Wow, and the ghost, at least. I also recall that if you manipulated the screen warp glitch enough, you could basically go straight to the Wind Fish end game dungeon right from the start of the game, though you couldn't really beat it. Anyway, it was all screwed up.)

And so, given that it's apparently possible to get stuck in the Kennel World glitch stuff, it makes me wonder if anyone's tried combining the two glitches to open up more traversal options. (I haven't watched all of the Youtube videos about the Kennel World stuff to see if that's the case or not, though, but even if they don't do it in those, I'm still sure that I can't be the first person to think of trying to use the screen warp glitch inside the Kennel World glitch. Though, apparently, the screen warp glitch was fixed in the DX/GBC version of the game, so I guess it wouldn't even be possible to try in that one.)

Besides the "Kennel World" and the screen warp glitches, there were quite a few others as well. Anyway, as is the case with so many things, I found out about this "Kennel World" stuff thanks to TV Tropes (speaking of Minus World and all).

(Putting the "game bugs suck" tag on this one to be able to find it more easily in the future if I want to for some reason, since I don't have a separate "game bugs" or "good bad bugs" or whatever tag.)

Okay, I appreciate that The Sims 4 allows you to select "they/them" pronouns for a Sim when creating them (as I did for the alien Sim in my "Cryptid Buddies" household[1]), but... the display of said pronouns in-game is completely broken in a bunch of places. As in, far too often, you'll see a "their" when it's supposed to be "them," or "them" when it should be "their," or either of those when it's supposed to be "they," or even if the right pronoun is used, the verb will be wrong, e.g. "they is" instead of "they are," etc. Things like that. It makes sense that it would be that way, if all EA did was run an automated search on things like he/she, him/her, and his/her and just replaced it with they/them/their or whatever without bothering to have a human look at the results and edit them appropriately, because in such cases, it was inevitable that the wrong word would be used. Meh, it's obviously not a dealbreaker or anything, and again I'm glad that they at least tried to do something good, but the implementation of it leaves a fair bit to be desired.

[1] - It's a household that I started with a vampire, a werewolf, a spellcaster, a mermaid, and an alien, with the alien later building a Servo. At some point, I'll probably adopt a (normal, human) baby and later make them into a PlantSim. There's also a Patchy living in the greenhouse, though he's not technically part of the household itself, as I can't control him. And, for what it's worth, some of the above Sims are friends with both Father Winter and the Grim Reaper. None of them have met a Flower Bunny yet, though. Also, I haven't bothered with ghosts much, other than using in-game abilities (or sometimes just cheats) to bring back to life a few NPC Sims that had died.

So Tortured Hearts - Or How I Saved The Universe. Again. is currently on sale for $6.24 USD (75% off, normally $24.99). It had been on my wishlist for a while, so I thought I might buy it.

However, I tried the demo first instead. I made it through the character creation process and... then ran into this issue, where the lighting is completely busted, making the game unplayable because you can't see much of anything at all. Apparently, the game doesn't like AMD graphics cards, for whatever asinine reason. (I have a Radeon RX 570, with the most recent driver, as of about a week ago.) Doing that trick with the dxcpl thing as suggested later in that forum thread there led to the same results (i.e. if you set it to use DX11, instead of DX12, it still doesn't work, but if you do the "Force WARP" thing, you can see the graphics at that point, but the game is still unplayable because it just becomes a slideshow at that point, as that apparently just disables the Radeon driver entirely and uses whatever basic Microsoft thing).

And yet, despite all that (and perhaps against my better judgment), I still took a bite on the full game, on the off chance that it was maybe just an issue with, like, an outdated demo or something. Nope, still an issue in the full game as well.

But then I saw this post (top most post on the game's page in my Steam library, even though it's from July of last year) about the so-called "enhanced" version being available as a pre-release Beta, specifically the part about "I would like to get feedback from Radeon users in particular on rendering lights or other possible problems."

So, instead of just refunding the game at that point and being done with it, I switched it to the "enhanced" Beta thing in Steam and, after sitting through another 10GB download, I launched the game, hoping the issue had been fixed...

...only to be immediately hit with a cheeky yellow Comic Sans text on purple background "ATI graphics cards not supported, sorry..." screen, after which the game just unceremoniously dumped me out to the desktop.

And, so, now I've uninstalled the game, refunded the game, and, once the refund has gone through (Pre-post EDIT) and it just went through, even before I got finished writing this post (/Pre-post EDIT), I will be putting the game on Ignore forever, and then never thinking about it again (outside of any future instances where I may happen across this here post, anyway). It's a shame, because the game seemed like it might have been interesting, but I guess I'll never know. *shrug* Oh well. If the dev somehow manages to fix the game in the future to work on Radeon cards (perhaps when the supposedly "enhanced" version is actually finished, if ever), then good for any future people with Radeon cards who may get to play the game. I won't be one of those people, however, because this whole experience has soured me on the game (and on the dev), for good.

Just to note, this is the only Unity game, of the several Unity games I've played, with which I have ever had an issue like this. So, no, I don't think the issue is solely AMD's fault and/or Unity's fault like the dev was trying to claim in that thread above. I think it's the dev's fault, first and foremost. And I think they're shirking responsibility by just utterly shutting out anyone with an AMD card from being able to play their game with a shitty "sorry, not supported, comic sans lol" message, especially when they explicitly asked for feedback from people with Radeon cards. (I guess most of the feedback was along the lines of "shit's still broken, still can't play it.")

(EDIT) Oh, even worse, the dev is now just straight up saying derp looks like Radeon only cares about cryptomining now herp and is using that dubious claim as an excuse to apparently never bother with fixing their busted-ass game to work properly with Radeon cards. Again, this is the only game with which I've personally ever had such issues, and I've been using Radeon cards for years. It's not a problem with Radeon cards, it's a problem with this dev's ability to code their goddamn game properly. To fucking hell with this dev. (/EDIT)

Kind of fitting, in a way, that the full price I'd paid for the game, after taxes, was $6.66. ¬_¬

(Another bit of trivia: apparently this game started out as a failed Kickstarter project from over a decade ago.)

Yeah, I'm sure glad I decided to play Saints Row IV before they decided to make it "better" so that I didn't have to deal with any of this shit. I only had to deal with all that other shit, is all.

Ignoring all that other shit, though, it was still a pretty good game overall. With that said, I think I liked Saints Row: The Third better. (Still haven't played Saints Row 2 or that new reboot thing yet.)

(Pre-post edit) Oh... and I just found out that with this new "update," it now apparently installs Epic Online Services with the game, which it did not do before. So yeah, fuck that asinine dumbshit right to hell and back and then to hell again, where it should stay. If that continues to be the case going forward, and isn't (hopefully) backpedaled super-hard at some point in the future, then I'll probably never install this game again, because to hell forever with Epic Games and anything and everything to do with Epic Games. *weary goddamn sigh* (Pre-post edit)

As a student project and a free game released on Steam, Fayburrow is pretty cool. However, it is extremely short (Steam says I played it for 62 minutes, and that was me taking my time, futzing around, and exploring everywhere I could, as I usually like to do), and it feels like the barest whiff of a prologue to a much, much larger game, one which will almost assuredly never be made. And that's a crying shame, because I absolutely would've played a full game of this.

For what it is, it's pretty great. For what it could be, though, it's sadly very lacking.

Putting the games with potential tag on this rather than the game recommendations tag, because while it certainly does have potential, I would only recommend this game with the strong caveat that, as I said, it is not a full game or a full story (which ends on a serious cliffhanger right as it was really getting interesting). If you go into this knowing that you're not going to get a complete story and just want to play through a really nice (but really short) student project, then yes, by all means go right ahead. I just wish I'd known that going in, myself. I mean, I knew it was a student project, going in, but I wasn't aware it was quite so short or that the story would end on a cliffhanger. I mean, if you squint really hard and tilt your head at a 90° angle, maybe you could view it as a "proper" ending, but looking at it normally, I just saw it as "What? It just stopped right when it was getting good?"

(Another caveat: at least based on the forums for the game, there might be some game-breaking, progression-blocking bugs in this. Fortunately, I never ran into such, myself, as I was able to reach the end credits mostly without issue. The only real bug I ran into was a minor one involving the crouching animation while sneaking around in the professor's office, which resolved itself on its own somehow and didn't actually hinder gameplay.)

Honestly, this is why I tend to actively avoid "teaser", "prologue", "chapter 1" and other such games when I see them in my Discovery Queue on Steam. And it is also why I avoid playing episodic games until all of the episodes are available (e.g. I still, even to this day, have not yet touched The Silver Lining). This one was not presented as such, however. And, I guess, to be fair, it isn't any of those things, not really, and is indeed a "complete" experience, after a fashion, taking into account that it is "merely" a student project and all (and as such, again, it is incredibly impressive to me). And I definitely wouldn't say it was "abandoned" or whatever. However, it certainly left me wanting "the rest of it." Then again, I suppose this is even worse, in a way, because with all those "prologue" games, as well as with the episodic games, there is at least the promise that there might be more to come later, which is most likely not the case with this.

(EDIT) I'm trying to come up with a comparison for this, and the closest thing I can think of would be like if you were playing The Longest Journey, and then the game just ended and went to credits immediately after April went through her first Shift. Or if Dreamfall had ended the first time Zoë used a Dreamer console. (I mean, Dreamfall did end on a cliffhanger, too, but only after a full game's worth of content came before it [and even that was still highly disappointing and vexing to me when I played it the first time].) Or if Dreamfall Chapters had started playing the end credits immediately after Zoë woke up the first time, at the end of Chapter 1 of Book 1, and that had been the entirety of Dreamfall Chapters. (/EDIT)