@fatalbanana:I don't like how the "narrative" of Arkham Knight PC is that it was a disaster. It's performance was poor, but it was otherwise stable and playable as long as you were cool with 30fps. There have been far more disastrously broken PC games in recent memory, and I'm still surprised WB pulled it. Every other big publisher would have left it on sale for what were primarily complaints about framerate. The fact that WB pulled it seems to suggest they do actually care about the PC version more than most companies -- though obviously it would have been better for them to evaluate it pre-release and decide to delay it.
In any case what was actually wrong about that game has been blown way out of proportion; not helped by scummy press sites that have an MO of generating hits primarily for negative reporting (you can guess which ones...Giant Bomb not among them).
@penguindust: Definitely not. I think @austin_walker chose that wording for impact, but has reported an inaccuracy in doing so. Steam will not automatically uninstall games. However, deactivating it from your Steam account would effectively render it unplayable such that all you can do is uninstall it anyway (well that, or find a crack that removes the Steam authentication check).
I got the PC version a week back and I'm kind of hating the game. Banging my head against a wall merely trying to get out of season two. I just can't come to grips with the thrust based controls. I've tried to use some of Austin's tactics, but I can't execute.
I think I'm done with it, and I actually wish I could return it, but I already spent more than 2 hours with it (2 hours which I enjoyed before the game quickly became unmanageable for me). Not sure why they made it so damn hard. I think people who are old enough to have true nostalgia for the shows it's paying homage to don't have the time for uber hard video games anymore (at least, I find that I don't).
@brad: Triple buffering is only good for avoiding the "framerate divider" effect that occurs when vsync is being used with double buffering at framerates below your monitor's refresh rate.
If you use vysnc with double buffering and your PC can't render the game at the same speed (or faster) than your monitor's refresh rate, your GPU has to wait for every other refresh before it can empty a frame buffer and start rendering the next frame. Basically it will make the game run at half your monitor's refresh rate even if your PC is capable of more. I.e. say your monitor's refresh rate is 60hz, but your PC is only powerful enough to run the game at 45fps. If you use vsync with double buffering, the game will be rendering at 30fps, even though your system is actually capable of 45fps - because it has to wait for every other refresh before it can empty a frame buffer.
Triple buffering, by adding another back buffer that your system can render into while waiting for the next refresh, eliminates that issue and allows the game to render at the actual fps that your system is capable of.
So triple buffering only does anything meaningful if both of these are true:
1) You have vsync turned on.
2) Your system isn't capable of running the game at an fps that is equal to or greater than your monitor's refresh rate at all times. (I.e. if your refresh is 60hz and your PC can always run the game at 60fps, you don't need it).
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PS the vsync + double buffer "framerate divider" effect is also the reason for "adaptive vsync" in newer video card drivers, which selectively turns off vsync when your PC can't render the game at same speed as the refresh.
While triple buffering is preferable from an end result standpoint (avoids tearing while keeping framerate true; adaptive vsync keeps framerate true by allowing tearing), support for it in games is very spotty and it's much easier and less trouble to manage frame syncing from the driver than it is to force triple buffering externally - at least in DirectX games (OpenGL allows driver to control it without issue).
Regarding Night Dive studios, Kotaku just ran a sad, but interesting article about Night Dive's experience trying to acquire the rights to No One Lives Forever.
To summarize, there are 3 companies that could potentially lay claim to the NOLF IP rights (Warner Bros, Activision, or 20th Century Fox), none of them know who actually owns it or cares enough to figure it out, yet all of them have stated they reserve the right to legal action if Night Dive tried to release the game on their own. Basically, "we don't care about this thing, but we'll sue you if we can anyway!"
What's depressing is that Night Dive is in possession of the source files for both games (presumably given to them by friendly Monolith developers that still had copies stored away somewhere) and have even already put in some work toward making both NOLF 1 & 2 more suited for modern PCs, but they can't do anything with it.
I just played the game on PC for the first time this year.
I thought it was an interesting take on turn-based strategy and I loved the presentation of it, but the actual in-mission gameplay was flawed in some pretty severe ways. It was hard not to compare it to X-Com, and that's a much better playing game.
Regarding the discussions of review scores and expectations, I'm glad Jeff at least mentioned new people entering the market. I'm sure it's tough to balance how much a game should be considered for its merits and individual title vs how much it should be considered in regards to it's predecessors.
To a certain extent, I think the amount of innovation and improvement they expect from game to game over time is perhaps a little unfair and may be a product of both their age and job.
I'm right around the age of Jeff and the other guys, yet I'm finding their reviews align less and less with my own opinions - at least with regard to wanting a game to "do more" than it's predecessor. I'll be happy to play more of the same high quality game. However, importantly, I play far fewer games than they do.
I've never found a control layout for a flight stick that makes sense in Descent-style games.
Flight sticks make sense in games where you have constant forward motion and you're primarily controlling the pitch and yaw (i.e. aim) of your craft. Here you need to control both your aim while making very quick changes in movement in 6 directions.
I've tried mapping forward and back to throttle and sliding/strafing (both vertical and horizontal) to hat switch, but it just never feels natural or usable at the speed these games demand.
Twin stick gamepads are a slightly better fit, but I don't even find them to be ideal, because there's never any good way to map vertical strafing on them as Jeff and Drew discussed. I always end up using WASD + mouse, and then putting vertical strafing on space and control (i.e. typical controls for jump and crouch [vertical movement] in first person shooters).
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Sublevel Zero seems way better than the last Descent-alike I tried: Retrovirus. Retrovirus was too hard for its own good. It was the Descent equivalent of a cover shooter. It had recharging ammo and shields that drained very quickly and enemies with hitscan or extremely fast projectile speed. All of this conspired to severely limit the time you could be flying around and blasting things. I spent the bulk of that game peeking around corners or poking in and out of hallways/tubes, killing one or two enemies and then ducking back into cover. It was laborious to play, which is a shame because it had nice style to it. With some re-balancing it could have been a fun game. This one seems to be much more like Descent, slow projectiles that can be dodged pretty easily, but hit hard.
I was really hoping for a Wii U price drop, it's kind of crazy that's not happening, but Nintendo be Nintendo I guess.
I want one just for Bayonetta, Wind Waker, and a legal means to play some old SNES games. I can't justify spending $350 (including price for requisite pro controller) for that.
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