toxicitizen

Re:RTSS I messed around with it a bit more today and the newest version of Precision seems to be fucked, which is why the OSD wouldn't show up. I switched back to Afterburner, so I was able to test capping the framerate with RTSS and I can confirm that it does make the frame pacing more stable. Nioh still didn't feel good at 30fps, though, but I can confirm that even without RTSS it's pretty solid in Evil Within. That and the fact that it's a slow survival horror game is probably why it feels way better.

Doing the bonus dungeon is what broke the game?

Huh, a single year is much faster than I was expecting. I guess it's gonna be your typical Trails sequel where it reuses a lot of locations. At least, I'm assuming Cold Steel 2 is like that all the way through. I didn't get very far on Vita. But yeah, given the bump in graphical fidelity, I can't imagine they'll be creating a lot of new 3D assets if they actually think they can get it done it so quickly. Also, I guess it's likely that XSEED have begun working on CS3 by now. Would be nice to get some kind of hint so that we can stop worrying. I'm not as worried after how monumentally NISA fucked up Ys VIII but still. Falcom have proven themselves to not be above making incredibly stupid decisions.

Yeah, there are tools that will give you those numbers. It's impossible to tell just by looking at it. MSI Afterburner and EVGA Precision are good because they allow you to monitor other stuff like GPU and CPU temp, memory usage, etc. But like Mal said, if all you want is the framerate, Steam has a built-in counter now. It's what I use most of the time because it's less noticeable and distracting but I'll turn on the Precision display if I want to monitor temps or whatever else.

I wanted to look at the frametimes of Evil Within when I was playing just now but the EVGA Precision overlay wouldn't show up, for some reason. :/ Also, I've never tried it myself but apparently using RTSS to set a framerate cap can do wonders for frametimes. If you use MSI Afterburner, you should already have it installed. Maybe give that a shot and see if it feels any better next time you can't get a game to run at 60.

Yeah, I generally feel the same way. I played a lot of games with framerates bouncing between 40-50 because it looked smoother than 30. But I don't think it's something inherent to PC. Frametimes definitely play a role, I think. I don't know if id Tech simply has good frame pacing or what but when I tried locking to 30 in the Evil Within games I instantly went "hey that's not TOO bad". It obviously didn't feel as smooth but after a while it stopped bothering me. It was a little cathartic to realize I could stop obsessing about that shit for once. From now on I think whenever I can't get something close enough to a consistent 60 I'll just lock to 30 and stop worrying about it.

Played a bit of Nioh today. Made it to the first non-tutorial boss and got promptly splattered against the floor. Seems about right. So far I really like it even though I'm terrible at it. It's been a while since I've played a proper Souls game (that piece of shit Lords of the Fallen doesn't count!), so I'm a little rusty. The speed of the combat is also throwing me off a bit. I keep wanting to just run in there and cut everything to pieces like you would in a Platinum game but the game doesn't seem to want you to do that. I keep trying to dodge-cancel into a slash but there's a short pause between the dash and the attack where I often get fucked up. It's way faster than Dark Souls combat but there's still a crucial need to be careful with your dodge and attack timing. If I can get good at it, it might actually be more fun than the slower, weightier combat of Dark Souls. Oh and the port is actually somewhat decent! Serviceable, even, depending on what's important to you. It doesn't run as well as it probably should but I built this PC on a budget knowing I'd end up with a console-like experience, so it doesn't bother me all that much. I was able to turn some things down and get something close enough to a solid 60fps. I recently said fuck it with Evil Within 1 and 2 and locked them to 30fps just so I could max them out but with a fast-paced action game like this 60fps takes priority.

I'm a weak-willed dumbo and the current pre-order discount + VIP voucher deal on GMG looks too good to be true (almost 10 bucks cheaper than even on CDkeys), so just on the off chance that it's a pricing error... Now I just have to hope that this will be the game where Koei Tecmo surprise us all with a stellar port. I mean, there's no way in hell that's gonna happen but Durante's had access to it (presumably writing a port report for PC Gamer) and he talked about it without hinting at any issues. So, I'm assuming that it's at the very least not catastrophically bad or anything...

The Evil Within 2 confirmed for game of the year. I'm a little sad that I missed it in my two playthroughs. I would've lost my shit lol.

Don't worry, they only show up like three times. I think you can just run past them after the first one.

It's unfortunately not looking great. D2 is approaching 1mil units on Steam alone, though, which seems at least somewhat decent after a year, especially considering the rough launch it had on PC. It's been discounted a bunch of times but even then a lot of games never reach that figure. But it's such a bummer that Bethesda put out a bunch of truly great games in the last couple years and anything not called Fallout or Skyrim didn't do very well. This and Evil Within 2 deserved so much better and I think Wolf 2 isn't doing so hot either.

That and the bit about liking Zwei more than Gurumin make me more interested than I was, tbh. I wanted to love Gurumin and I still want to try to go back and finish it but it really didn't do much for me. I was just kinda bored by both gameplay and story. I think I'll still hold off on Zwei until at least the 60fps patch hits, though. We know Sara's working on it, so I see no point in playing the game right now.

That's because anyone with an ounce of common sense could tell this was a massive undertaking and your time table was way too short unless you had been secretly working on the revision for a while already! I mean, holy shit, I'm not one to hate on devs easily but just how fucking incompetent are these clowns?! This is getting so ridiculous that it's almost no longer funny. Almost... Also the PC version is yet again delayed to coincide with the new loc. Not gonna complain about that, I'd hold off until then anyway. But man, they are making it really hard for me to consider paying full price at this point. If they don't offer some kind of apology discount I might actually have to wait for a sale purely out of principle.

Well, how about that. About a year later, World of Final Fantasy is coming to Steam. First Nioh and now this. It's almost like Sony is paying these companies for timed exclusivity or something... Now please just announce Dragon Quest Builders. It's the one I want the most and it's also been about a year. You're porting it to Switch, ffs, just release it on PC too!

Yeah, I definitely recommend playing this one first. The sequel spoils the shit out of it right out of the gate. Hell, I'd even advise against looking at any marketing material for TEW2.

Grabbed this a few days ago. I almost bought it from Steam directly but thought to look for a better deal at the last second and ended up paying like 6 bucks less on IndieGala.

The Evil Within 2. Well, that was a completely different beast than the first one. And I'm happy to report that it's mostly for the better! It's less of a "ride" than the first one, it's not as intense and doesn't have as many memorable moments but it ultimately ends up being a much better game. TEW1 was pretty much what you'd expect a post-RE4 AAA survival horror game to be. TEW2 throws all of that out the window and decides to go for an open-world take on survival horror and it worked surprisingly well. It still looks, feels and plays like The Evil Within but the core gameplay loop is completely different. It's not a true open-world but rather has a few hub-like open areas that you can explore as little or as much as you want. There are optional side-quests, events and item pick ups but also some stuff that feels a little less optional. Like weapons, for example. The multi-purpose crossbow from the first game isn't exactly hidden out of the way but the game never pointed me to it, I found it completely by accident. This ends up making exploration feel rewarding and not like a chore. So, for once the move to open-world doesn't feel like a mistake. The game is actually better for it. Another thing that worked much better than I would've expected is the story. Without spoiling the original, it had a really surreal and disorienting quality to it that paid of pretty well with a late-game reveal. You already know this going into TEW2, so it doesn't really go for that same disorienting atmosphere. But the game made up for it by actually having a compelling story and giving its protagonist an actual personality and character arc this time around! It still does some cool things like the first game had but it knows the mystery is gone from that aspect of the game, so it's not leaning on it as heavily as TEW1 did. Oh and it actually has a pretty solid ending. There was one point where I thought I had finished the game and it was going into the final cutscene but then it went on for like another hour or so and it was a hell of a finish. It even felt oddly definitive. Like, the game is selling like absolute shit (which is pretty depressing because it's so fucking good!), so I'm not expecting an Evil Within 3. But if they end up making one, I'm actually not sure where they would go with it. The first game didn't have a cliffhanger ending or anything but TEW2 actually wraps up a lot of the world-building of the original game. Kinda like Dishonored after Death of the Outsider, the series could end here and it wouldn't feel unsatisfying. It would still suck, though... So yeah, overall it's a fantastic game and I wholeheartedly recommend it if you're looking for something spooky in time for Halloween.

I'm guessing it's not just textures but also stuff like uncompressed audio and whatnot. Devs probably feel compressing those files isn't as necessary on PC. The main problem with Doom is that most of that is the multiplayer. I kinda wish they did like Call of Duty and had two separate apps in your Steam library. The campaign was amazing but I don't give a shit about the multiplayer. But yeah, it seems a little ridiculous sometimes. I just bought Mortal Kombat XL and the download is 45GBs. I mean, it's a fighting game... O_o

Opus Magnum. I finally managed to beat a Zachtronics game! Feels pretty good, although it's admittedly their easiest one yet. Even the last few levels never quite reached the level of complexity there was in SpaceChem and Infinifactory. I remember when I reached the final world of Infinifactory, I looked at the first level and pretty much went Because of the simpler way the puzzles are set up in Opus Magnum, they're much easier to break down into clear steps and assemble. Doesn't make them any less fun to solve, though. Also, for an early access game, it's surprisingly polished and complete. All of the patches so far have mostly been bug fixes and small QOL improvements. I don't think there's any real content planned to be added other than the usual "second campaign" of player-made puzzles.

Zwei launching October 31. 10% launch discount... but they're charging 29.99$ for it. I mean, I'm usually happy to throw money at XSEED day one but I'm not paying 30 bucks for this game. I want to try it because it's Falcom but I'm just not feeling what I've seen of the gameplay. At this point I'm starting to get the impression that they know they have a certain minimum of guaranteed sales from super fans so they're just charging them as much as they think they can get away with. Can't say I blame them given how abysmal their sales usually are but this feels like a 20 bucks game to me, no more than that.

Why are none of you playing Opus Magnum?! It's so good! I mean, all of Zachtronics' games are great but this is probably their most accessible one yet. You don't need to learn any programming language and it's (so far) simpler than even SpaceChem. It even has a built-in gif generator to show off your terrible solutions! That last one gave me way more trouble than you'd think just by looking at it in action...

I started using beard care products a couple months back and finally got around to getting a beard brush since it's supposed to help get a more even application for oils and balms. As a guy with very curly and hard to manage beard hair, holy shit why did I wait so long to get one of these?!? Even ignoring the product application benefits, it's way more effective at training the hair to go straight down and stay there. I always end up trimming after a few months because it starts looking too messy on the sides but with this I might actually have a shot at growing a nice, long beard! Plus, it feel so fucking nice to use that I can't stop brushing my beard with it.

New Zachtronics game, fuck yeaaaah! Looks like a return to the SpaceChem style of gameplay but with an alchemy twist. I barely touched Shenzhen I/O after it left early access so I'm tempted to hold off on starting this one (especially since it's basically done and won't be in EA for very long) but I probably won't be able to help myself. These games are so good. I really should try to actually finish one of them some day...

Dishonored 2 + Death of the Outsider. Finished the main game a few weeks ago but I figured I'd hold off on posting since I was jumping right into Death of the Outsider. Then I got distracted and completely lost the momentum I had coming from the main game. I only got around to finishing Death last night. Dishonored 2 is basically what you'd expect. For the most part it's essentially the same game, which is all I ever wanted from it. But then I got to that mission, mission 7 I think? Hoooooly shit, that was some fucking insanity. Just when I thought I had seen it all, it kept blowing my mind by getting crazier. That was the most creative bit of mission design I had seen in a very long time. It's a shame about the performance issues on PC, though, because essentially rendering two environments at the same time is... not free. Death of the Outsider is essentially more of the same, which is weird since at first it seemed to be going for a "playing as someone without the mark of the Outsider" thing but then you get some powers anyway. Billie Lurk is a cool character to play as but her abilities felt only superficially different. And I think I might've missed a bunch of them because of how they work. I never found any new ones but the loadout menu makes me think there had to be some. I know D2 didn't sell too well, so I don't know if the series has a future or not but if it's dead then Death of the Outsider at least provides something of a satisfying send-off. I still need to replay the main game as Corvo anyway and go back to the first one for achievements and stuff, so I'm not done with the series even if we never get another one.