Detroit: Become Human

Detroit: Become Human is one of the more emotional games that I've ever played. As a story-based adventure game, it's superb.

Connor the Deviant Runner, Kara the mother, Markus the revolutionary. Each character's story twists and turns and entwines until by the end they veer off again but continue to be influenced by the choices that lead them, your choices.

I found the story very emotion provoking. Kara's story especially resonated, and I think perhaps she is the most human. Connor's story splits down the middle. Whether you choose to role play or be yourself eventually his paths will make you decide who he really is. Faced with Android slavery, Markus can follow a path that would make MLK proud or paint the streets in blood, or somewhere in between. It's left up to you and many a quick time event.

As a human, I find the games choices remarkable. Kara may represent the best in us in a grey, grey world. The crisis of conscious an identity Connor experiences aren't that far off from what most people will eventually face. Markus's story stabs us right in the belief, perhaps even more so if you're familiar with America's history. It's even neat how the main menu Android fits into the picture, and Kamski's test is an awesome test of humanity.

I'd give it 5/5 except for technical issues. To play via Steam Link: you need to set the game to regular Windowed mode, not Fullscreen or Boardless Window. Probably related to the company's fondess of rolling their own tech rather than using a common game engine. Periodically the screen will go black except for overlay based UI (like interaction prompts) or go to a fuzzy outline, as if certain shaders crashed and broke the rendering until quitting to desktop and restarting the game. That may be because I have an old GTX 780, or because I don't have the kind of AMD GPU you'd find in a PlayStation 4. But those issues were relatively minor, and most often occurring right after a check point save or major scene change.

 Signs that I really liked a game: when I’ll buy it on another platform.

Resident Evil 0 was probably on sale when I bought it on Steam. Mostly, I got it because it would be the most like what I grew up with: the original Resident Evil, dual shock, and director’s cut editions. While I had very mixed feelings about Resident Evil HD, since it invalidates everything I remember: I really enjoyed zero. Haven’t cared too much for most of the series since the original trilogy, and had never played zero.

Thus, seeing it on Xbox sale for $5...no brainer. The only real negative from my time with it on Steam was how hard it is to actually hit the giant ass bat monster....lol

Thumbing through my Steam library, my brain eventually floats off in various directions.

One is the reminder that Love In Space recently released their follow up to Shinning Song Starnova, and remember that last time I had checked their Patreon, and active projects post, the next installment of Sunrider was next on their road map. Much to my joy, it seems like Sunrider 4: Captain's Return is elevated to current project. Just as previously scheduled.

I remember playing Mask of Arcadius, and enjoying how they combined turn based fleet + mech tactics with a visual novel setting. Because who doesn't want to laugh your ass off between being out numbered like 80:1 in a space battle? I think MoA is still free, and it's worth playing both for the intro to Sunrider's story, and for the campaign.

When Liberation Day came out it was a rather shuddup, and take my money response. Excellent improvement on the mechanics, and enjoyable for the same reasons. But of course the damned thing ends with a cliff hanger end on par with Old Ben Kenobi, so it's been a long wait to see what happens next.

The purely VN based expansion with a side story / alternate endings for the crew was also pretty amazing. Give or take how many jokes you can make about the story twists that Claude aka miss boob rockets presented in the campaign. Won't spoil the details, but let's just say between her attempts on Captain Shields, and what she turns out to be, you can probably enjoy that lark a lot more than the other plot twists. Because it totally fits her personality, and should make you revisit some of your beliefs in religion and science :P.


Ahh, in a few years perhaps we will have Sunrider 4....hehehe.

Gabe Newell Opens Up About Valve's Past, Present, and (Unexpected) Future – IGN First

Watcher later list += 1.

Thoughts on Xbox Game Pass and SteamLink

One of the perks of Steam, is the ease of continuing from anywhere.

Most games on Steam with more than ten cents worth of effort, support cloud saves. Most that don't tend to be very old, or games that shouldn't. Which makes it pretty easy to continue from another machine, or even the same machine from some future reinstall of the game. Many games on Xbox also support cloud saves, and it's usually less famous titles that lack them, like indie titles.

At least when you've got a solid graphics card, and aren't struggling to run the game to begin with, Steam's in home streaming actually works great. So transitioning from /dev/desk to /dev/couch is more to do with input devices.

Microsoft's Game Pass is pretty sweet, and ultimate makes sense if you were already paying for Live. But the trade off I think is the portability.

When I play a game on Steam: principally, I give little mind to whether I'm playing from my couch or in front of my computer. The decision is typically driven by how much precision mouse/keyboard work is required. The only game that's been otherwise is Final Fantasy 15, as my CPU struggles to run it locally, unlike 99% of my other Steam games.

When I play a game on Game Pass, principally my thought is "Do I want to play at my xbox?".

As much as I applaud Microsoft's record and stream tech, I really love that they made it available, the truth is that I find the stream quality from my Xbox to my desktop to be inferior to my 780 GTX to my SteamLink over the same network and locations. There's more visual glitches and even set for quality, the encoder can't best the encoder on my nVidia card.

What would really make the PC side of that coin mean something, is if it were possible to share the same saves between my desktop and my Xbox. I.e. the decision would be like open Outer Worlds on my desktop, and continue from the same save I made on my Xbox. I'd call that a win.

By contrast the decision works out that I started playing on my Xbox, and need to stream to my PC if I want to play at my desk. Which means a loss of image quality, and the occasional wtf/freeze/lag; on the flipside Outer Worlds seems to do that less often than Halo 5 when I stream.

Likewise, I don't think Microsoft offers the inverse. I.e. that I could stream my desktop to my Xbox, if I had started with the PC, I'd not be able to stream to my Xbox. Although it might be possible to horse wrangle something with my SteamLink. By contrast, Steam's streamy goodness is basically from anything to anything, especially when you account for needing a Direct3D PC for most games anyhow.

Thus, I am finding that Game Pass is very worth it for the Xbox side of the catalog. On PC, it's more like a "Meh", because the only benefit I'm really seeing there is good odds of playing on desktop with a mouse, a game I wouldn't want to play on console with a controller. To be fair though, my decision was based on the cost comparison of Game Pass + Live versus Game Pass Ultimate; that is to say on the dollars required.

Beyond the lack of PC <-> Xbox crossover, I'm finding Game Pass to be very worth it. For a while, I've actually considered dropping my Live subscription because Games with Gold doesn't bring that many games of interest down the pike, versus how little multiplayer I tend to do on Xbox. Where as Game Pass delivers the content, and probably curtails much of the need to buy games outright.

I'm also pretty sure that if Valve offered something like Game Pass on Steam, I'd probably hand Gabe Newell my checkbook and be done with it, lol.

On one hand: I try to respect how much care seems to have gone into Steam’s controller. Whether it was an internal Valve team or an external, some real TLC was put into its design.

On the other hand: trying to use it makes me feel like I’ve had a frontal lobotomy, and don’t really feel like my brain cells can ever adjust to it versus a normal controller. Where normal is probably anything in the vein of a PlayStation or Xbox (modern) or Super Nintendo or Genesis (classic) controller.

Yeah, I think it’s going to end up in /dev/closet. Unless someday they’re worth something on eBay.

While I will admit, my main plans for Christmas involved video games, looking at my Steam wishlist sorted by price, the feeling is more like "Fuck me with a snowman, fuck me harder".

Over the years, I generally made it a rule to only participate, much, in one of the major steam sales per year. In the past few years, I've mostly tried to avoid them all. But even an ostrich with his head buried in the sand can't avoid them indefinitely...

A snowman makes a good frosty dildo, right?

Pour one out for the Steam Controller, now on closeout sale for just $5 plus shipping

I’ll admit that my thoughts for another controller run towards an XBox controller new enough to support Bluetooth, but for $5 I don’t think I can resist this.

FML: noun; words uttered when sorting your Steam wishlist by price during a sale.

Not going to share the words for when 30 - 80 % makes half one's list under $10, lol.

Zombie Night Terror is probably what happens when a bunch of hungry developers get ravenous together, and decide to feast upon the living.

Also way to freaking fun to be on 90% off sale for under $2.

About a year ago, I came across an interesting hybrid game called Omni Link; combining space combat, exploration, and far more importantly a good story. Much to my surprise it also had a couple of great songs to go with the journey across space.

My review on Steam was quite positive:

At first I thought, "Huh, this feels just like asteroids!" when I got to the helm. But it's so much more than that.

Omni Link is more of an RPG / VN hybrid with action in a vein similar to Asteroids for the space combat. You can explore and travel the star systems, but interactions are mostly combative or story driven. It's fun but the story is where it is really at.

I greatly enjoyed the story. Good times between Keb, Arcadia, and Dawn. Malthus livens things up quite a bit. Suzumi's rescue was especially good for the soul. All in all, I probably enjoyed the story more than I would have going to see a movie for the same price tag.

Music is freaking great. Honestly my favourite part is the sound track--I wish there was an add-on with the vocal tracks and some concept art.

Art is very well done. I love the intermixing of comicbook/manga style panels here and there, and the CGs that are scattered across the game are wonderful. Some of the moments are especially great such as the hug and the cowlick scene.

Action as previously said reminds me of Asteroids. Augmenting that however is your fleet. As you pilot the main ship, Dawn takes care of your support ships and they are quite effective. Meanwhile you can morph into whichever one you like for direct control agains the enemy: allowing you to be the quick scout, the gunboat, etc and delegate the other roles to the A.I. backing you up.

Towards the more typical VN parts things are a bit more sparse. Saving only can happen outside of the VN portions. No gallary, screenshots don't seem to work, etc. But it gets the job done. More focused on the space combat parts of the UI than providing an interface like renpy. No real complaints because the story is excellent.

/* Also Steam client needs to add a spell checker :'( */

I use vndb to track and remember the visual novels that I play, and there are not very many that I rate towards the top of the voting scale—Omni Link is one of the few I voted 9/10. Which pretty much means great victory on the story front.

One of the perks of using Steam is the ability to follow a game, and hope that someday a news post is made if updates or new projects occur. When I heard the developer was working on a new project called Crypterion: it didn't take long to add it to my wishlist.

Later on, when the Kickstarter project was announced, I was very tempted. Never been a fan of backing crowd funded projects, but given how much I enjoyed Omni Link: the odds are in my favour that fun shall be had. Hearing that there were still some CDs in existence from Omni Link's own crowdfunding, I rather went from "Remember to do that" to "Where's the sign up button", lol.

Suffice it to say, I really enjoyed the game's main themes, particularly the song "Love is Pretend". Pretty sure that a transcription of the lyrics is going to end up in one of my notebooks somewhere.

Today, happily this arrived in the post box:

This CD shall be going in a nice safe space :).


Actually, this kinda makes me glad that I still have plenty of hardware that can play CDs, and don't have to power on an old PlayStation, lol.

Looks like Prey is on sale for $6 over on Steam, or about $8 with both expansion packs.

Can't say that the game especially tempted me on release but the reviews I've read over the years made me consider, might be worth playing. I suppose atg this price and when you make it the PC version, it's a bit hard to pass up.

Despite my times with the PlayStation 2 and Xbox One, I can't say that I have ever cared much for using a controller for shooters. For many games, yeah a controller is both fine and kinda nice. But the more precise speed and accuracy becomes necessary: the more I want a mouse ^_^.

Steam Hardware & Software Survey: June 2019

Not much here is surprising. Only two things really show up as particularly interesting data points: the lack of 4K monitors and how spread around the amount of VRAM is.

Beyond that the data looks about what you should expect for Steam users and PC gamers at this point.

Steam Summer Sale - VN Titles and Markdowns

More than a few entries on this sale list warrant a gander for anyone interested in Visual Novels, or you may already own half of them :P.

A few lesser known ones worth mentioning:

• One Small Fire At A Time
• Short but well worth it.
• This is currently the only entry on my VN list that ranked a 10/10.
• The Letter
• If you ever read a Choose Your Own Adventure book than this is for you.
• The post credits scene may disturb you far more than the horror story :P.
• An Octave Higher
• Set in the same world as One Small Fire At A Time.
• Players of the former will appreciate a certain side character ;).
• Ladykiller In A Bind
• Highly abnormal and twisted sense.
• Come for the story not the adult content 8-).
• ACE Academy
• A personal favourite among the first VNs that I played.
• Crystalline and Kaori_After_Story from the same developer also on sale.