Steam/PC Mega Thread 2024

[TheWho87]

Drawful 2 is free to keep on Steam till August 28th.

[Lint]

If you like Balatro you should check out Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers.  There is a free demo now while the full game comes out later this month.  Its basically "Balatro, but with a story and blackjack".  I played through the first "room"?  level?  I dunno...but it seems pretty fun

[King Ellis]

[Bobfoc]

Speaking of Balatro, it's sold over two million copies now. As part of the announcement, the developers have teased a free content update for 2025.

[TheWho87]

Distant Space is free to keep on Steam till August 24th.

Weapon of Choice DX is free to keep on Steam till September 22th.

[Lint]

 

Balatro: Friends of Jimbo update.  While this is from the Nintendo Switch channel, its an update for all platforms, and its strictly a visual update, it offers no game play advantages

[Your Mom]

Anyone have either of these? Just wondering if you think they are worth it

[Bobfoc]

If you have plenty of Steam games, the consensus is that the Steam Deck is absolutely superb. It's also known to be fantastic for emulators, which can be used without any hardware tinkering.

[FLiam]

100% worth it, especially for that price.

You can always upgrade internal storage and/or buy an SD card.

I use mine fairly often as it’s so easy to pick up and play when I have a few minutes - plus the sleep mode is perfect on it for that very reason.

[Baddar]

Unfortunately those models aren't available in the UK, all sold out. Been like that for a while too. Would've got one for our 15 year old for Christmas.

[Mick]

They are doing a release of Dragon Quest III HD Remake on Steam. I'm happy about this, means I don't have to buy a Switch to play it  . The first four games of the franchise, particularly in their NES forms, have a degree of special meaning to me. Growing up, one of my past times was to watch my dad play video games, either on PC or console. 

 

For Dragon Warrior, I remember the big deal they made about it on the commercials (these were pretty cool as a kid I guess, I'm sure I'll be like 'lol wut' if I looked it up on YouTube). The game confused me at first because of the Arthurian English everywhere. I remember waking up to get ready for school, and SOME fucking how my brother had made it to the Dragonlord before he went to school (and in Dragon Warrior I, that is a feat in that time frame, although I suppose it's possible he may have kept the game on overnight; it's a risk I'd have taken  ). Anyway, he died and had to go to school. Then either that night or weekend my Dad won it proper. 

 

Dragon Warrior II -- hooo boy. Long/short, Dragon Quest was such a hit in Japan, Enix scrambled to release the already in development sequel, and what the result was was an unbalanced bitch of a game. How unbalanced? There's a spelled called Sacrifice. Sacrifice has a good chance to wipe out your enemies, or at least one of them, at the cost of the caster's life. Last resort type deal. But there is a trio of a monster group called Gold Batboons that LOVE this spell, and this group appears right before the final dungeon (which is a pain of a trek). And that's just one example. So, very hard, unforgiving game. But again, I would watch my dad and brother play it endlessly and I would contribute too, it was a quest the three of us were on. One day I made it to the fight against Hargon, the big bad for the first time. AAAAND he wiped his ass but I was so excited I called up my best friend, left a message on the answering machine, pissing his mom off because I ran out the tape. Now, the deal is, that getting to Hargon, you fight three sub bosses of increasingly difficulty, fight Hargon, win that fight, and you think you're home free. Well, if this was supposed to be a surprise, they did a shitty job, because Hargon has summoned Malroth, a god of destruction, who's probably going to whoop your ass because YOU. ARE NOT. PREPARED. The surprise is ruined by not only an item with Malroth's name (Hmm, wonder who that is...?) and if you owned the game, the monster chart. I was either in HS or right out of it when I finally did beat this fucking game. Yeah, I cheated, but the game cheats too. To quote Robert Shaw in The Sting, "What was I supposed to do, call him for cheating better than me in front of the others?" 

Dragon Warrior III - - This was to Dragon Quest what Empire Strikes Back was to Star Wars. I knew from the box art that apparently my part size went from 3 to 4 this time. What I didn't know is that you recruit them at a tavern in the first town, now find them. So I got my ass kicked my first run. But, thankfully, what an upgrade. They used modern English, and the game world was huge, you could customize your party, they gave you a vault to store crap, a plot twist, Toriyama bringing his A-Game on the artwork. This one my dad mainly played, I found it to be touch with kind of a boring, slogging middle game. 

The general story is there's a baddy named Baramos who, like Putin, constantly threatens horribly, fiery death but doesn't actually follow through; your father, Ortega, sets off to fight him and fails miserably as the opening scene shows. On your sixteenth birthday, the local king informs you of your duty to civilization as we know it, gives you a crips fifty dollar bill in case you decided to be Chevy Chase and rip off the line from Caddyshack andn you have a plan B if they say 'yes', . And for bonus points, the eventual ability to change class. Very streamlined. Good plot. 

 

Dragon Warrior IV was originally an effort my Dad started by seemingly gave up on (this was the first RPG I finished for him, it wouldn't be the last). This is probably my favorite, since it's the first one I actually did beat by myself. DQIV improved on what DQIII laid out. Gone were the character classes, an in it's spot eight unique characters and a few temporary NPC's. The game was separated into five chapters; the first four introducing seven of the characters in their own adventure, each heading off to find the Chosen One. Which brings us to Chapter Five, YOU are the Chosen One, and the bad guys have slaughtered your town and killed your friend who took your form. So, your adventure begins and you gradually encounter the other seven, and it's off to save the world. This was also the first game to have Party AI; you're first introduced to it with some NPC's you get shoehorned into taking, and come Chapter Five, you only issue orders to your character, everyone else follows "tactics" you set for battle. On top of that, you have a wagon where the rest of the party chills while the front four fight. At certain points you lose the wagon at the entrance; small caves, towers, etc, but at times you can take the wagon with you in a cave. In those events, you can swap party members out between turns, and in the event of a wipe, the rest will jump out. I loved this game, and the DS remake was fantastic. 

 

So yeah. Don't have to buy a Switch. 

[King Ellis]

I will echo the love for the steam deck. I can't speak to the differences with the OLED so there's potentially an argument to spec up if you're happy to spend extra but I'm perfectly happy with my base model LCD. Looking to upgrade to an install SSD at some point, I'm always tempted by those cheap 2TB ones you can get on AliExpress...

There's so much versatility with the thing as well considering you could plumb it in and use it as a desktop if you wanted to. Plus it's easy to setup if you want to play older consoles though...other means. Though, I guess getting all the files transferred over can be a bit of a faff.

[Captain Kirk]

On 13/09/2024 at 18:36, King Ellis said:

I will echo the love for the steam deck. I can't speak to the differences with the OLED so there's potentially an argument to spec up if you're happy to spend extra but I'm perfectly happy with my base model LCD. Looking to upgrade to an install SSD at some point, I'm always tempted by those cheap 2TB ones you can get on AliExpress...

There's so much versatility with the thing as well considering you could plumb it in and use it as a desktop if you wanted to. Plus it's easy to setup if you want to play older consoles though...other means. Though, I guess getting all the files transferred over can be a bit of a faff.

There's loads of YouTubers who seem to shill buying of AliExpress but I always just assume they're getting paid to do it.

[King Ellis]

The worry is that they might be dodgy, especially when you consider the flood of 2TB SD cards and thumb drives that get sold on there for like 50p but I do see a lot of posts online where people swear by the SSD's and say they've held up overtime. 

Plus, I can't imagine it's on their interest to sell something dodgy at a more high ticket price considering people are going to complain if their £80 item is faulty where they're not going to bother for something that's a couple of quid. 

And it's apple and oranges but I did get a portable monitor from AE that I was a little sceptical about given it was like £50 but it's great and arrived no problems within a week or two which makes me more assured about buying something else.

[Mick]

Apparently next year Square/Enix is also releasing Dragon Quest I+II HD-2D Remake. 

From what I just saw on the DQ3 trailer with what they've done, I'm impressed with it. Dragon Quest I was never problematic in terms of balance; you were either strong enough or you weren't. II was a mess, even with the re-releases over the years, so I'm hoping that, combined with these new bells and whistles, we get something that really does these games justice. Hell, the Japanese had to pass a law prohibiting the release of video games on school days because it caused such attendance issues. 

[Skummy]

Reading reviews of UFO 50, it sounds incredible. Definitely tempted, though I will lose all of my free time to it.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1147860/UFO_50/

 

[Captain Kirk]

6 hours ago, Skummy said:

Reading reviews of UFO 50, it sounds incredible. Definitely tempted, though I will lose all of my free time to it.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1147860/UFO_50/

 

The fact they've ordered the 50 games by their own chronology is incredible.

[TheWho87]

So they decided to do Action 52 but make it work?

[Lint]

On 13/09/2024 at 05:50, Mick said:

They are doing a release of Dragon Quest III HD Remake on Steam. I'm happy about this, means I don't have to buy a Switch to play it  . The first four games of the franchise, particularly in their NES forms, have a degree of special meaning to me. Growing up, one of my past times was to watch my dad play video games, either on PC or console.

Not quoting the rest but yea, the first four Dragon Quest/Warrior games have always had a meaning to me.  Its the series that got me into RPGs originally.

I'll never forget watching my older friend Chad playing Dragon Warrior and Dragon Warrior 2 (and him doing the glitch to repeatedly get and sell the lightning staff)

 

Then Dragon Quest/Warrior 3...god...yea, I still download NES emulators to replay that.  Just a perfect game all around

[Mick]

51 minutes ago, Lint said:

I'll never forget watching my older friend Chad playing Dragon Warrior and Dragon Warrior 2 (and him doing the glitch to repeatedly get and sell the lightning staff)

 

Then Dragon Quest/Warrior 3...god...yea, I still download NES emulators to replay that.  Just a perfect game all around

I think I discovered the glitch accidentally, but I didn't think enough about it to exploit it. Ooh, II was frustrating. I think what really killed me beating the game was the fact that my dad (Okay look, this was somehow a group effort between three people) fucked up in Rhone and didn't get the Thunder Sword, in spite of it being RIGHT THERE ON THE MAP THAT CAME WITH THE GAME. So we had to settle for the Sword of Destruction, with that lovely paralysis curse  . 

I would say try the SNES version with an English patch applied, but with the remake coming out so soon. I suppose the one nice thing about the SNES III is that in addition to being an updated version of the game, it also comes with a debug code accessible via Game Genie. It's pretty involved for it's day, but it does have features such as filling your bag (yeah, you get an honest to God haul all your shit bag. THAT is nifty  ) with so many of an/every item, walk through walls, turn off encounters, encounter setup so you can fight any fight you want in the game, including against dummy enemies that give a shit ton of gold an experience, change personalities, etc etc. As I've said in previous posts, I'm not above cheating if it's a game I've played and beaten legit before and I'm just doing it for enjoyment. 

 

I just wonder if Enix will go ahead with a DQIV remake like these. Give me those four on Steam, and with every game I have now, I am pretty much set.