I was just getting this set up, this and the music one, because I want to leave Spotify. Hopefully an alternative solution shows up.

Genuinely funny comment, thank you.

The technical alpha slapped and I’m fuckin dying to get back in. I was really hoping for them to open up a beta but now I’m just sad I have to wait till October to play this.

I understand the delay to get things right, but there’s almost half a year where no game is satisfying this itch which is a shame. Marathon hasn’t been delayed yet and I know Hell Let Loose guys are making an extraction shooter that looks sick as hell that’s due to release this year as well.

All I’m saying is I would have paid €40 for that alpha it was so good, October will be a slam dunk, but the genre will be more crowded by that time.

I’m not familiar with Poland’s political or train situation, but these problems are fixable. Vote for progressives, make it a priority, we need to start taking power back from the inept and corrupt and start fixing problems again.

I’m sorry your trains aren’t good. Everyone deserves good trains.

I’ve been in Germany two years and gone to France three times by train.

I honestly don’t think people appreciate public transit enough. Trains are the fucking bomb and if people could make trains and trams and buses a priority I think the world would be a remarkably more fun and enjoyable experience.

Vote for the political parties, even at and especially the local level, that want to put more money into public infrastructure focused around public transit. Cars and planes have their places, but they should never be the priority when city planning and a strong country is one connected by high speed rail and convenient, reliable public transit.

I mean, I guess you’re right as far as I’m willing to debate the point. Does that change anything? I don’t feel like the franchise has done the Lost thing where every episode (in this case game) only asks more questions and never answers them. I also don’t feel like I’m dying to learn more about the world or that the small scope of their answers takes me out of the experience. Like, it’s perfectly encapsulated to what I need to enjoy the “movie” that is this game.

I completely agree that this has costs, and that it probably can’t go on for forever. Like one of the costs is I don’t super care about this world, it’s not a world I want to run a TTRPG in, or could envision a hundred spin-offs. I want the end of this story and I’d be okay if it stopped. Idk, that’s a fine thing to make imo. And again, it’s been top of it’s class in execution since it’s inception (never played the smaller games like Blue something or other) so idk - hard for me to nitpick the world or the game.

Now Valve please release your new VR set so I can buy it or the Big Picture 2 and get back into VR.

I appreciate difficulty options for other people and I think everyone should agree it’s a good thing to make games more accessible or more challenging depending on what a player is seeking.

My only caution is maintaining the vision for the expected experience. I imagine we’ve all played games where the normal difficulty or the default experience feels bad or improperly tuned. Multiple difficulty options can, I imagine, lead to less tuning on the default experience. I have no doubt I disliked games I would have liked if they’d encouraged me to play at a different difficulty or spent more time tuning their preferred difficulty. I have no doubt I liked games that if they’d provided difficulty options I may have changed the default experience to my detriment without realizing it.

Speaking entirely personally, I thought at least Half Life Alyx’s story worked on two levels. It was about freeing the gman as Alyx but gman sorta represented… Oh man, now I’m worried I can’t remember the game well enough to communicate my original thoughts. I remember playing it and feeling like the gman represented the writers or creativity, a bigger picture concept or something that went meta. And if that was the case it felt like Valve creating a piece of art that said Alyx and VR have revitalized our desire to tell stories and GMAN is free again.

The moment they drop their new headset I’ll buy it and play again just to relive the experience but I’d say I’m excited about Half Life because Valve makes A) good games B) they make solid diegetic games which I find to be kinda rare C) their games often feel like they came from a team of artists than just a team of coders. Maybe that’s the polish or maybe that’s the massive amount of testing I’m led to believe they do but when valve makes a new game it often feels like the guy who made Stanley Parable just made a new game - easy to recognize art because it’s so good.