Bought Titan Quest 2 in Early Access and played through the current content (Prologue + Act 1) with two characters.

While the game is fun, the current masteries (classes) are kinda boring (except Storm). For some reason, only the Storm mastery gets different basic abilities (low cost, spammable attacks), and everyone else is stuck with the dinky basic weapon attack. I also wasn’t too hot on the active abilities for the Rogue and Warfare mastery, so I basically just ran around with two passives and the default attack otherwise (which you can upgrade) on my Bowman. My first character, a Frost caster (Storm+Earth mastery) was a lot more fun, with better abilities.

I wouldn’t recommend at its current non-sale price, but it’s a good foundation, as long as the devs can keep updating the game with more stuff.

As I said, the video is about general types of SSDs, not specific games. It’s also mixed between first load after launch, reload of a save and sometimes fast travel, no real methodology.

When the game uses DirectStorage, a PCIe SSD will be a lot faster than SATA or HDDs. Games like Last of Us Part 2, Spider-Man 2 or Ratchet & Clank were shown. Indiana Jones doesn’t use DirectStorage, but still shows this kind of behavior.

Without DirectStorage, it mostly doesn’t matter, as long as it’s an SSD, although PCIe drives were almost always faster. If you reload a save, a lot of time, it often also doesn’t matter if you use an HDD, although you might still get the glitches and pop-ins from slow asset streaming.

Here’s a list of Steam games, that use DirectStorage. It’s not a lot right now, so you definitely don’t need to switch right this second, especially if you already have a SATA SSD, and you’re not playing the latest AAA games constantly. It is something to keep in mind, when you’re upgrading though.

The video even shows it makes a difference, although it only touches on that part, with no in-depth analysis. Some modern games don’t work properly on HDDs and you get tons of glitches and pop-in.

In older games it probably won’t affect much more than load times though.

Watch the video instead of talking nonsense.

This is not about specific SSDs, but a general comparison between SSD types (and some basic HDDs). It shows that some modern games actually take advantage of the increased speed, but once you’re using PCIe SSDs, it basically doesn’t matter if it’s 3.0 or 5.0, so just get the cheapest drive you find.

With stuff like this, it’s always possible that’s just the slowest hardware the devs have on hand to test with. The Doom and Quake re-releases are the same, I think all of these use the Kex Engine.

I got an email from Bandcamp about the soundtrack from Andrew Hulshult and had to check if these games finally got a remaster/re-release/sourceport.

Pumped for this, and I don’t have to pay anything extra for the update, since I owned the old games on Steam already.

Yes, same, been waiting for this one.

I played through Heretic on Steam (not on the Deck) a few years ago, but I definitely didn’t use the Dosbox version, but some sourceport (probably Chocolate or Crispy Doom). Guess I have to re-play it.

There are a few games/genres like this for me. Like the Anno games, whenever I play one, I just turn it down to the lowest difficulty, and just build and expand. I kinda treat it like an idle/incremental game. That’s also why I normally don’t play any of the survival city builders, like Banished or stuff like that, it’s just not what I’m looking for.

I’m usually a normal-difficulty gamer and usually don’t turn down the difficulty from there. However, as the article says, If I started on a higher difficulty, I’m more open to go back down to the default.

Probably should have just posted this in that thread about people on Steam switching to Linux. Without context, this seems just like some weird post.

MS is not going to get them back

Until they want to play a multiplayer game with their friends, that doesn’t work because of Anti-Cheat. Or maybe Linux is a bit more involved than they initially realized.

Most of those that switched probably won’t go back, but I think with Linux it’s going to be more than someone might think (however it’ll still grow, especially over the coming months with Windows 10 support ending).

Just finished The First Berserker: Khazan earlier today. For some reason, the final boss was extremely hyped up in the game’s subreddit, and it ended up just being alright. Overall a good game, I had fun with the combat, but the story is trash and the characters are nothing, not even cardboard cutouts.

I’ve been playing The First Berserker: Khazan. I’m maybe two-thirds through the game and generally have a good time. It’s basically Nioh with the faster paced combat, loot and mission based level format. For the first two regions, I mainly used the Spear, but recently have switched to the Greatsword. The monster bosses are fine, but some of the human bosses can be extremely infuriating, with how their stamina regenerates so quickly.

I guess Gabe did another interview, so now PCGamer is gonna post some article every day for the next couple of weeks, about every little thing he said?

That’s his super old look. I think since Covid he’s been staying in New Zealand most of the time, owns a Marine Research company, and occasionally does interviews, so there’s like two sets of pictures, that constantly get posted, when an article is about Valve/Gaben.

The white beard has even been a thing for years before that though, just now his head is also starting to match the color.

That’s an old photo, I think, articles just use the same one over and over again.

Apparently this is a picture from last year, during his introduction to The International. Lost more weight, but also looks older.

Another great performing UE5 title, with a Mostly Negative rating.

Seems like the Chinese are review bombing though, partly for the performance, but also that people got Deluxe Edition skins with even though they bought the Standard Edition, so they wasted their money by getting the Deluxe Edition? Or lower price outside of China? Maybe something about the time period it’s set in. I’m not really sure.

2k English reviews, 67% positive, still not great, but better.

I recently checked my box with old game CDs and DVDs, just out of curiosity, not because I wanted to play something. Most of the stuff is just sentimental value/nostalgia, but there’s one promo disc/game, I tried to archive because I found nothing about it on the net, but I couldn’t even read it. Others also have read errors, but I don’t know if a better drive could still work (just have a cheap external one).

I think the last PC game I bought on disc was SC2: HotS, but I don’t even know if I ever used them, since you can just download the game, after you’ve added it to your Battlenet account. Definitely haven’t used game discs since 2014, because I remember building a PC then, putting in my old drive, but then I gave it away, because I just never needed it.

The Bluesky post is already over 10 hours old, and it’s supposed to only last 666 minutes (a bit over 11 hours), so get it quick, if you’re interested.

I’ve bought the game in the recent Steam sale and played it on launch through PC Game Pass before. My biggest complaint are all the loading times and screens, especially when you want to get into a race. Just constant waiting, for hundreds of races.

Back on launch I just eventually did more and more open world stuff, like the XP boards, Danger Signs, Speed Traps, etc. and then quit. I’m kinda doing the same already now on Steam, but I still do want to do more proper races.