Stillhart

ARPG aka Action Role Playing Game.

tl;dr - Diablo or Dark Souls?

Both Diablo-likes and Souls-likes are called Action RPGs. In one, you create a "build" using gear and skills, and generally grind for hours on end looking for the perfect drop to make your build a teeny bit better. In the other, your success is based off of twitch reflexes and learning move-sets of the enemies. Gear and loot is pretty downplayed and the enjoyment comes from the elusive "git gud".

I'm not here to argue that one or the other isn't an ARPG. I'm just curious why a new designation hasn't sprouted up for one or the other to make things less confusing. It's getting even worse now that Diablo-like games aren't limited to isometric POV (they haven't been for a while but...) and now people are making souls-iike games in isometric POV. It's only natural that this would happen. But again, why is there still the confusing naming convention?

IMHO, worthless though it is, I don't get why Diablo-likes are called ARPG's. They have lots of A and no RP. (They are Gs tho.) Souls-like feel a lot more like what I would consider an ARPG. But again, my opinion is completely worthless so it's pointless to even attempt to argue about it.

My point is we should riot with pitchforks and torches at the headquarters of... the people who name genres of games... and demand they split ARPG from ARPG so we all know what we're getting into.

Like, someone went ahead and invented "bullet heaven" as a genre name since "bullet hell" didn't quite fit when you were the one with the bullets. I love that! Maybe we can do something similar like call Diablo-likes Action Grinding Games (AGG) or Loot and Build Games (LBG). I'm sure someone can think of something better while we are marching.

Hey all!

So I switched to linux this summer and have been really enjoying it! Pretty much everything I want to play on Steam works with no issue. Everything else seems to get solved with protondb.com.

But I do miss the PC side of my Gamepass Ultimate sub. Is there any way to take advantage of that on linux? I know on Windows you need to use the Xbox app to install things and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to add them to Steam after that as a non Steam game (couldn't find the executables or whatever).

Anyways, is there some lutris workaround or something for installing and playing Gamepass Ultimate games on linux? Or am I SOL?

Thanks!

Cyberpunk 2077 didn't have the best launch (lol). But some of us enjoyed the game despite its flaws. In the time since then, they've had nearly two years to patch the issues and add QoL.

Recently, I decided to give it another go and see how far it's come since then and MAN did I enjoy the hell out of it! Like, way more than I expected. It's really a much better game now than it was at launch.

I went right from finishing Cyberpunk to Starfield and boy did it make Starfield look bad. Like, not just visually (how can a two year old game look THAT much better than Starfield??) but I mean things like the combat and the role playing are just miles better in CP2077.

And in two days (Sep 21), version 2.0 will release. This is going to be a huge patch that's free for everyone who already owns the game that adds and changes a bunch of stuff even if you don't buy the expansion (which comes out a few days after that).

Given how good v1.6 (the current version) of CP2077 is, I'd say there's no better time to dip into this game if it's something you've been thinking about.

I'm really excited to play through again. With a different build, the gameplay will feel fresh regardless of the updates. And the role playing is deep enough that I can make different choices to see different results in most of the quests I'll have to repeat. Neither of those things are true about Starfield.

Am I missing something? There's no arbitrage trading opportunities as far as I can tell so what cargo are you supposed to be hauling? Piles of looted succulents and notepads?

(Serious question! I like space trading games but I don't see that as a thing and I really am curious if I'm missing something.)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a hater. I actually was really excited for the game. But so far I am just not having fun.

For a little bit of reference, I just finished playing thru Cyberpunk 2077 and then jumped right into Starfield. Maybe that was a mistake because I kinda just want to go back to Cyberpunk (and I will in a few weeks when the DLC comes out).

But I'm noticing two really big issues with Starfield: first, the gunplay/combat is... let's call it underwhelming. I realize it's quite probably a skill issue and I need to just git gud, but holy crap, everything is a bullet sponge and I don't have that many bullets! Stealth seems to be pretty worthless at early levels as I don't have any high-alpha guns that can take advantage of it and, most of the time, I'm detected before I even see the bad guys. I'm just not enjoying this aspect of the game at all.

The second big issue for me is that there's a loading screen every five seconds! Again, probably a me thing, but OMG, it's driving me nuts. Get into ship, loading screen. Launch from planet, loading screen. Fly to next planet, loading screen. Land on planet, loading screen. Leave ship, loading screen. I just want to go shoot things! Let me shoot things!

Okay, found some spacers, time to... oh shit, out of ammo. Let me swap to a worse gun that still has ammo. Sigh. Okay, they're dead. Let me just heal up... oh shit, out of med packs. Sigh.

Oh and wrestling with the UI is exhausting.

Anyways, I realize that this probably isn't the place to find a lot of like-minded people. But I really do want to like this game. Any tips on maybe at least ways to make the combat less of a chore?

Hi all. I'm in the market for a new Android phone and I was hoping you could help with recommendations.

Thanks to my awesome friend cancer (and its awesome friends at Phillip Morris), I had my larynx removed and can no longer speak. Because of that, I use my phone as my main form of communication, typing out things and showing my phone to people. It's in my hand all the time and it's VERY important to me.

Thanks to some of the side effects of the drugs that are keeping me alive, I am very sensitive to heat. My phone (Oneplus 7T) gets hot when I'm gaming, most phones do, and it can occasionally get too uncomfortable for me to use. It doesn't happen often though. My wife's Pixel Fold, on the other hand, gets too hot just from normal use. I've read this is a thing with the newer Pixel phones.

So the most important criterion right now is that it can't get too hot. Even when charging.

Second most important criterion is weight, since I'm constantly holding it and showing it to people... Or just sitting in bed texting. The Pixel Fold is cool and all, but too damn heavy to be lugging around everywhere.

Third would be size. With the amount I type, a bigger screen means bigger buttons and fewer typos. I know that bigger tends to mean heavier so there's a balance to be struck between this priority and the previous one. One of the reasons I'm looking for help.

Last, I tend to prefer a close-to-stock Android experience. But given the importance of my other priorities, this is lower on the list.

Some other info: I live in the US, I'm on T-Mo currently but I only buy unlocked phones, price is obviously a consideration but not a constraint, don't care about camera, nice screen and high refresh would be nice to have.

Thanks in advance for any help. It's such a pain to try to sift through all the phones every few years. I used to just pick the newest Nexus. Then the newest Oneplus. But Google and Oneplus aren't what they used to be and so I'm open to suggestions now. Thanks!

Yeah, we know. That's how updates to games work. If it didn't change forever, it means they had to roll back the update and someone's getting fired.

Games journalists: stop it with this line. It's the verbal equivalent of putting your "shocked" face in the Youtube thumbnail.

So I'm very new to linux gaming. I swapped like last month and I've really been enjoying how well everything I've tried on Steam just works these days.

But I was looking to try something a little more advanced next. I saw that there's a HD "remaster" mod for Freelancer (which is abandonware now, so easy to find for free online). As it's one of my all time favorite games, and I haven't played it in like 20 years, I thought it might be fun to check it out again.

I saw that it is on lutris and tried installing it that way. The installation goes fine but after it's done, the lutris installer just hangs with "return code 256". Googling it didn't provide me any useful info other than one guy saying just to install it directly with an empty WINE prefix. I have no idea how to do that and it sounds like it might be more of a pain in the ass than I want to deal with.

But I thought I'd just post here and see if anyone else has tried this and gotten it to work. I can always dual boot back into Windows but I'd rather not do that ever again if I can avoid it. For the record, I'm on Pop!_OS.

The game comes out today, but if you were a sucker like me and paid for the deluxe version, it's been playable for a few days now. I have to say, I really love this game!

The elevator pitch is "dark souls with guns" but after playing it for a few days, I feel like that undersells the game a bit.

Now my experience with souls games has been generally that I really don't like them, up until Elden Ring. That game was great and made me realize that my biggest problem with souls games isn't the challenge, but rather the punishing death penalty. Remnant 2 has no death penalty (other than the enemies all respawning) so it's best-case scenario for me.

Beyond that, Remnant 2 is a perfect mix of procedural and hand-crafted content. You can freely "reroll" levels because they're procedurally generated but they somehow still manage to pack those levels with puzzles to solve and secrets to discover. There are even secret classes you can unlock! You can watch Youtube videos about where to find some great weapon or whatever and realize you never got that zone in your playthrough. The story in each zone can be different in different playthroughs! Even character upgrades ("traits") are locked behind this RNG.

This aspect of it is fun to me because it limits my ability to hit up wikis and min/max my play. It makes it so I can organically just play through and see what I get and make the most of it. Yes, I do check out videos so I know to recognize key ares when I see them, but otherwise, I feel free to just experience the game more organically. I know this is a me thing and not everyone feels the need to compulsively min/max but I'm sure others will appreciate this aspect design.

There's more I'm sure I'm forgetting, but yeah I really like this game a lot. It's a AA title with no jank and almost no bugs in my play on the XSX. For only $50, it's an easy recommendation.

Anyone else playing? Thoughts on the game?

It's time once again to bang my head against the wall of Linux gaming to see if I can make the switch from Windows. What's the flavor of the month for gaming distros for a Windows native that's not a moron but also wants something that just works once its set up?

Bonus points if you can point me at resources for how to put Linux on my Windows box as a dual boot without breaking my Windows installation.

EDIT - Tried Mint and Nobara and neither could figure out how to dual boot with Windows on a machine with two physical drives. I'm sure if I had a CS degree I could figure it out in short order but a little googling and messing around trying different things didn't work so I think I'm done. Maybe next time, Linux.

Okay so I have never been into the Souls games. The whole "brutally difficult" thing never appealed to me, and watching my friends play was enough to turn me off.

However I decided to take the plunge and try Elden Ring recently because of all the amazing hype. Tons of "I'm not a Souls gamer but I loved it!" kind of hype.

And it's pretty fun! I get why it got so much love.

But I also, after a week or two of play, have identified exactly what I don't like about Souls games. It turns out it's not the difficulty. I grew up playing in arcades and on the NES so I'm no stranger to trying things over and over until I get it right.

It's the damn death penalty. I cannot express the depth of my hatred of losing progress. Games with save points that are too far apart or games where you can lose items when you die, etc, are just the worst for me. And in Elden Ring, the stress that goes along with trying to get back to my corpse to get my money/XP back is stress I don't want or need.

So I ask you all this: can you recommend a Souls style game with the fun gameplay loop but without the punishing death penalty? Does that even exist or is it just not a Souls game without that? I'd love the carrot of [learn fight, get better, epic win] without the stick of [now go grind low level mobs for XP, loser].