Ashtear

Final Fantasy XV was also lousy about this, with the overworld theme. One of my favorite map themes from the whole series, but it doesn't get good until 80 seconds in when the guitars kick in. I think the music only got to that point two or three times in my whole playthrough.

Forever ago, out of morbid curiosity. I do vaguely remember it being quite bizarre.

I think as long as the target community isn't just cross-posts, it's fine. There should be some quantity of original content (probably the higher the percentage, the better). Obvious exceptions for communities specializing in link aggregation.

If you're concerned about annoying the community you're cross-posting from, I'd say don't be. I view the cross-post line as a "communities you may be interested in" feature, and it's easily ignored.

Sure. There's just degrees of it. Your average Steam community discussion board is far, far worse than the community you're in right now.

RPGs come immediately to mind. Your partner in Disco Elysium is more competent than the main character for reasons that will be immediately obvious. Bethesda's RPGs are also open world, and while you'll start out alone in them, you get permanent companions pretty quick (especially if you know where to look). They also get more chatty in the world and more character development in the later games. Fallout 4 more so than Skyrim more so than Fallout 3, for example. Starfield makes you swap them out if you do the main story, which I don't know if you'll like or not.

For a dedicated shooter, I think Titanfall 2 has the most protective companion I've seen in the genre. Get this one on sale, since it has its robust multiplayer priced in, but it has an excellent--if a bit short--single-player campaign.

Probably the same reason it's happening all over the corporate web: fewer eyeballs moderating content. I was never enough of a regular on Steam communities to be sure, unlike GameFAQs (which I can tell you has always been that way).

Dropping a random tip here that might help a couple people that are running Metaphor on PC with an RTX card: turn on DLDSR and FXAA from your Nvidia Control Panel, and set 100% rendering scale in-game. The game doesn't have anti-aliasing for whatever reason and the shimmer is real bad compared to Atlus's earlier games. The best you can do in-game is crank up the scale, and I think some pretty beefy hardware is still required for good framerate with that.

Some stuff is probably going to be bad no matter what you do (like Strohl's vest), but this way I can reduce a lot of the aliasing and still get a rock-solid 60 FPS on my modest 3060Ti. There are likely better third-party solutions being developed by the community right now, maybe even some good presets in Reshade.

Meanwhile I'm over here thinking about how I greatly prefer to put my saves in my own cloud storage (too many games these days not giving me as many slots as I'd like), the community forums are some of the most toxic places on the Internet right now, it's a coin flip whether Steam's going to give me a problem with my DualShock4, I hate how the Workshop is a walled garden, and I'm so much happier with my streaming now that I've dropped Steam Link and moved to Moonlight.

I guess the guides and Big Picture Mode can be nice?

Steam's still the #2 best option for me on PC storefronts; the battle.net launcher has some aggressive advertising, as an example of hellscape we're avoiding here. But Steam continues to not offer me much added value. I go there only because some of my games aren't available on GOG.

I will say I appreciate what Valve is doing with the Steam Deck, and I'm really hoping it continues to grow an ecosystem that directly competes with Nintendo. They are actively burning up banked goodwill right now, and that segment of the market is getting unhealthy without someone keeping them in check.

It's already surpassed their player count peak from P3R on Steam, and people aren't home from work yet in the US. Could still go higher.

Yep, was trying to cross-post from a third party mobile app and it looks like it didn't do it right. Thanks.

Loved these movies as a kid. Still one of the worst games I've ever played.

It should also be noted that playing on authentic hardware is an inherently destructive action. Parts wear out--especially on hardware with disc drives or fans--discs get scratched, cartridge contacts corrode, etc. On top of all this, goods get destroyed or lost in transit all the time even in the collector market. All of this is driving prices up.

If one wants to have an authentic experience, they still can, but they had better be prepared to pay a premium for it. People are already compromising on displays since CRTs are rare and/or cumbersome, and there are other compromise options like MiSTers and repro carts that aren't just emulating on your home PC.