theheadofabroom

@videoman190 the problem is that the CEO answers to the shareholders, and if he doesn't do what they want that can just replace him. A couple of the shareholders who were with IronSource happen to be mates with a certain billionaire who's been obsessed with running a particular social network into the ground, so you can guess how reasonable they are (there was also a story about a games industry union having their paid-for blue tick removed after speaking out against Unity, which was only resolved after they threatened legal action for Union busting)

This is such a meme that I'm sure it'll find commercial success, even if I feel like it shouldn't.

@belmont as modern 3d engines go, Unity has pretty much the lowest barriers to entry when it comes to getting something to work, but then there's a lot of pain points later in development when it turns out that advertised features don't work how you'd expect and you end up having to either integrate a load of 3rd party middleware or make those features yourself.

In terms of actually getting a project out of the door, in my experience, Unreal isn't actually much more complicated as long as you hold your nose and suck up writing C++, and tends to be easier to optimise well. Godot on the other hand is perhaps a little more complicated, but being open source you can change everything about the engine, right down to the nuts and bolts, and has no fees associated, instead relying on voluntary contributions to fund further development

@Martijn87 it's all about IronSource - the advertising platform they bought recently, but in doing so they gave its shareholders enough money to pay much perform a hostile takeover of Unity. On mobile they're waiving the install fees for anyone who integrates IronSource, which says it all, but then there's controversy over whether IronSource itself is malware.

I'm not sure why suggesting that colonialism was bad for Australia was an inappropriate comment? Feedback would be useful so I know what to avoid in the future?

Setting the beep to low seems like the best comprise. It's an indicator, but not one I have to hear across the other side of the house

The trailer feels like an overcorrection, trying to reassure people that there will be combat in the game.

I think this is going to be good, I'm just worried that it won't be a worthy sequel to the original Bloodlines game, which 20 years on is still one of my favourite games of all time. I probably play it again about once every other year

Price rises always suck, but I've got a lot more than £100 of value out of Extra in the past 12 months, so I'll stay subscribed when that's the price.

I just bought some clamps and some wood glue today and it set me back £53 - a year ago it would have been more like £45 because that's how prices are going everywhere. Games are about the best bang for your buck out of pretty much any hobby out there

@Futureshark what annoys me there is that yet again they focus entirely on bandwidth when latency is just as important.

Connecting from my phone to my PlayStation writing the same house I get single digit latency and things are great, but if I connect from elsewhere it's not uncommon to get 20-40ms ping with horrendous jitter which can make anything that's not entirely turn based essentially unplayable.

Continuing with The Witcher 3 which I'm enjoying, but I feel has been overhyped by the community, and if I'd played it first I would have had lower expectations for Cyberpunk

The quests are pretty engaging, but the movement controls are kinda bad and the cutscenes and dialogue are a little painful, I feel like I can definitely notice a small improvement in these areas for Cyberpunk even though that game was a fair bit behind the cutting edge due to engine limitations.

The RPG elements, meanwhile, feel like they get in the way rather than complementing the story and sidequests, and that's absolutely something that was carried forward to Cyberpunk, and it remains to be seen whether those areas are improved in the incoming patch

The only way I can really see this working is if it's a mini-sequel. The game itself doesn't need anything added.

Great to see. Just bracing myself for the influx of people moaning that games being accessible makes them feel like less of a special snowflake for managing to get the same set of trophies as tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of other people

@WhensDinner it's harder, but it's not unheard of and Sony certainly seem to have pulled it off. The number of hardware issues caused by liquid metal related failures is miniscule, and it gives great performance. I'd be more worried about vapour chambers honestly.

flashbacks to the terrible N64 game

@Ravix I was, I went on to the main quest-line and then next mission gave me 2 levels, which was then enough to easily clear the region's side content, just met Emyr so I'm guessing I'll have to do a bit in the next region before I clear the side content there too

@Ravix I think I'm just falling into the open world habit of "do all the things you can before continuing the main quest, in case any of it disappears"

Yesterday I started The Witcher 3, and ye gods the leveling is slow. I wondered why I was getting my arse kicked so much until I realised I was still level 1 and I was fighting groups of level 5+ enemies

@VRjunky unless you have twig-like wrists that's pretty hyperbolic, but I'll give you that it would definitely be nowhere near as effortless as the video shows. It could be fake but it could also be a retail dummy unit or similar

Look, a 1:8000 failure rate evidently means it's not worthwhile to improve the thermal performance /s

I've heard it's bearbare good

@kyleforrester87 hope you had fun, IMHO the first was the best and every game after added stuff which detracted from the so close to perfect core of a game they had there.

I'm going to dip into Dreams this weekend as we've got construction going on so I don't want to get into something of any substance with all the noise and disruption. After that I'm trying to decide between Ghost of Tsushima or The Witcher 3 which have both been mouldering on my backlog for some time.

I've been away overnight, but when I get home I'll probably be finishing off Sniper Elite 5, and contemplating whether to do it all again on Authentic to get the platinum

I came to this article to make a Star Wars joke and was dismayed to see that the author and another commenter had got there first

I can imagine Hutt Cracklings being particularly bad

After playing Rachet and Clank: Rift Apart and Sniper Elite 5 this week, I'm finally jumping into Horizon: Burning Shores

Am I the only person who thinks it should in fact be limited to two per household, so you can have a complete two-stick setup?

@rusty82 sounds like R&C is the winner then!

I'm currently in between games having just played through the excellent Forgotten City. Trying to decide between Ghost of Tsushima and Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart

It's great that this is finally coming out, but I really hope they provide deals on a matched pair, because on its own this isn't enough to play most games, and £160/$180 is a large amount to add on top of a £450 console for those who need it. (For reference £160 is about 1½ weeks worth of higher rate UK disability benefits, but given how said benefit is supposed to cover how much more expensive daily life is for disabled period, and many of us struggle to get by, it likely represents a significant period of saving)

Being disabled myself I'm lucky enough that my disability doesn't often physically stop me from using the Dualsense, but gaming is huge for quality of life when so much of the physical world is inaccessible, and it's something I'd hope more people can get access to through this.

Finally playing Kena: Bridge of Spirits and it's absolutely charming

As good an excuse as any to revisit Coteries of New York (originally played on Steam)

@wiiware I have no idea what the Cleopatra documentary you keep going on about is, and I also find it hilarious that you think living in a western country means I don't meet people from around the world on a regular basis, and that I haven't travelled.

You seem really het up about nothing but your own colourism, which while amusing, I'm going to leave you to it. Peace out

@wiiware my dude, that right there is what we might describe as an olive skin tone, which is common in people from the middle East. Just because people in America can also have that skin tone, doesn't mean people with that skin tone are American.

@wiiware I see you haven't met many Iranian folks

@wiiware looks like he could be from modern day Iran to me, which is where Persia was?!?

@dimi exactly. It's kinda weird to me that I'm able to convey so much more information with two comments than the professionally written article above?

I'm sure that as with the earlier games, I'll set to the animated suits asap and stick with them

Here's some new screenshots shared on the WoD Discord server, which are described as post-alpha

And here's an update summary for this week from the Community Development person:

Short Summary

https://youtube.com/watch?v=04O1AGH4Cvc

This article is somewhat misleading as the announcement states that there will be need at the end of September including who the new studio is.

The pre-orders have been cancelled because what will release is significantly different to what people were promised, and the physical items with collectors editions will be different if they even exist.

I'm not worried given how the Discord server has been reorganized and they've revealed a new community manager for the game.

@Khayl would it be possible to include any of this in the main article body? Maybe a screenshot of the linked message for those who won't click through?

This looks like it could very much be a game of two halves, the gunplay looks like a slog, but the detective game side of things looks interesting.

@REALAIS ah, I don't shop with them often enough to make gold worthwhile, but it's useful info

Just took advantage of this for another year of Extra. The best discount on ShopTo right now is the £84 card for £69.85 which is 16.8% off. The £80 card is 16.4% off, etc (I ended up writing a script to crush the numbers, output at the end).

That left £21.01, of which I spent £15.99 on Burning Shores, so I still have £5.02 sitting in my wallet

£10 costs £9.85: 1.50% discount
£5 costs £4.85: 3.00% discount
£20 costs £18.85: 5.75% discount
£15 costs £13.85: 7.67% discount
£25 costs £22.85: 8.60% discount
£30 costs £26.85: 10.50% discount
£35 costs £30.85: 11.86% discount
£40 costs £34.85: 12.87% discount
£50 costs £42.85: 14.30% discount
£100 costs £84.85: 15.15% discount
£90 costs £75.85: 15.72% discount
£45 costs £37.85: 15.89% discount
£32 costs £26.85: 16.09% discount
£80 costs £66.85: 16.44% discount
£84 costs £69.85: 16.85% discount

I guess that just shows what a big franchise name can do to sell a game without it actually being any good, and that your average punter doesn't read reviews?

It can't all be streamers buying it for some sort of meme value?

To me the Spider-Man games are good, but not the masterpieces they seem to be described as. Decent stories and fun movement mechanics, but the combat and the crime fighting leaves a lot to be desired. It feels like they're 7 or 8/10 games which are hyped as 10/10s and they just don't hold a candle in my mind to GoW or Horizon.

All of that said, I can definitely see improvements in the trailer, and anyone who thinks it looks like the PS4 game is tripping

I'm not sure I'd frame those stats this way. 28% of respondents said it's was better than Okay, whereas 44% said it was worse than Okay.

@AaronBayne why don't you tell us what you really think? 😂

I'm kinda actually impressed they managed to do such a poor job of this without apparently managing to conjure any charm.

Things must be dire if there are only 9 strategy games better than Evil Genius 2. I played through it for nostalgia's sake but it was such a drag

@lolwhatno presumably because it makes it a much easier trademark to defend