2020
Hmm… yep (checks watch), it’s 2020 already.
Okay, then.
How’s everyone?
I made a new year post last year covering my general gaming backlog progress, but have been so busy with a new job (and career…?) that I haven’t even thought about doing that here until now.
My gaming progress this year is good though, I think. I bought into Stadia early, and I’m honestly enjoying it. Although it’s increasing my backlog further, it’s nice to play games my PC can’t run, and it’s been smooth… mmm… 98% of the time – 99.9% if you discount the times my internet connection has been the point of failure. On Stadia, I’ve re-beaten Tomb Raider, and newly beaten Mortal Kombat 11 (on Very Easy…).
Also in streaming gaming, I’ve been using Shadow occasionally, and beat Emerald City Confidential with that service (playing that Steam game on the phone for much of the time!) And although I’m nowhere near beating it, HITMAN has been fun to play on there as well (again, wouldn’t be able to play it on my actual PC).
Speaking of Android gaming, I’ve been playing the mobile version of Skullgirls for well over a year now, and still loving it. It makes me think I can actually play real fighting games (it does help for learning strategies, but PC Skullgirls still kicks my butt). Also, a great escape game series by some random dev on Android… “Mole House” is one of the collections, and the other collections are linked as “ads” in the main menu. The few actual ads in the game are unobtrusive enough that I can definitely recommend the games if you like something simple in the genre. It’s mostly just remembering patterns and figuring out codes, but it’s simple and cute. Great for just before bed.
I don’t know if I’ll do another “The 26” this year… just been too busy to even make a list of selections for it. Definitely still gaming though. Still tackling the ever-growing backlog…
Anyway, hope everyone’s 2020 is going good so far, and if not, I hope that it will only get better!
My gaming progress this year is good though, I think. I bought into Stadia early, and I’m honestly enjoying it. Although it’s increasing my backlog further, it’s nice to play games my PC can’t run, and it’s been smooth… mmm… 98% of the time – 99.9% if you discount the times my internet connection has been the point of failure. On Stadia, I’ve re-beaten Tomb Raider, and newly beaten Mortal Kombat 11 (on Very Easy…).
Interesting. So would you say talks about performance problems and such online have been exaggerated? Stadia apparently isn’t doing that hot at the moment. It’s good to hear from someone who actually streams and plays on Android seeing as I personally don’t do either.
“Exaggerated” – probably. But also, possibly not. Everyone’s connection is different. Mine isn’t great though, and it’s fine (stability in jitter, not just ping, is important though). Also, I don’t care at all about gaming in 4K. There’s a lot of unjustified hate for Stadia out there, and I think it’s mostly just to get clicks and views. The justifiable hate toward Stadia, imho, would mostly be for Google’s very poor communication at launch (it’s gotten much better in recent weeks), the lack of titles available, features that were shown in the lead-up to launch being rolled out very slowly, and a relatively small player-base causing multiplayer lobbies for some games to have longer wait times. I’m definitely getting the impression that Google is in this for the long haul though, and I think Stadia will be in a much more interesting place when it no longer requires anyone to really buy into it to try it. Will GeForce Now / XCloud / Shadow / Playstation(?) / Amazon(?) have more compelling options in the meantime? Time will tell. I do like Shadow though. It’s clunkier, but more versatile.
Mostly, I just think it’s neat that game streaming is now very very real. (As opposed to when I tried OnLive years and years ago, and it… was interesting… but not good.)
The justifiable hate toward Stadia, imho, would mostly be for Google’s very poor communication at launch (it’s gotten much better in recent weeks), the lack of titles available, features that were shown in the lead-up to launch being rolled out very slowly, and a relatively small player-base causing multiplayer lobbies for some games to have longer wait times.
Add to this fact there is no incentive for indie developers to port their games. If google wants to throw cash on AAA publishers to have few games, and don’t care about all “smaller fishes” like Dead Cells, Shovel Knight etc, then I don’t think it will ever have strong enough playerbase to succeed. Esp that Microsoft streaming service is way more polished now, and it’s business model of “netflix of games” is way more tempting.
And you should not ever advertise service like “4K, play on any device etc”, when “4K depends on developer good will”, “if title supports 4K you need to have chromecast ultra to play it”, “not any device but few google pixel phones” etc. That’s false marketing.
For me stadia will land on “projects killed by google” website. They have tendency to drop fast anything that did not bring profit immediately. But time will tell.
interesting, i’ve assumed since i have all these games in my backlog that stadia isn’t for me. i haven’t wanted to play any games that my machine can’t handle though, so maybe that’s the critical difference?
i’ve also been playing around with streaming from steam on my desktop to my android phone and the biggest problem i’ve had is that i like direct cursor mode for adventure games but sometimes i need to click one of the upper corners but the steam link controls are there. i’m also having problems with no sound when attempting to stream from that same computer to the one i have connected to my living room tv that i haven’t really figured out. that computer just uses the on-cpu intel graphics and was spec’d as a media machine so there are couch co-op games it can’t run itself.
how did you like emerald city confidential? i’ve really enjoyed most games wadjet eye was involved with and i’m pretty sure that’s an older one that is published by someone else and never goes on sale. i think the oldest one i played from him is the shivah which was definitely worth my time, and definitely would have bought emerald city confidential by now if it had ever gone 75% off, so i could be persuaded to get it at full price.
Regarding Stadia, I’d probably suggest waiting until it’s had its public release with the “free” tier (the platform is free, the games are purchases, the hardware is mostly optional). Buying in early as a “Founder” has felt very beta test-ish. Still, for me, it made sense as a platform since my computer is literally a decade old (might be 11 or 12 years now). I’ve upgraded the RAM once (doubled, to 8 GB…), and swapped out the aging GTX 260 for a still-not-top-of-the-line 750 Ti a couple years ago since that’s what I could (barely) afford. ARMA 3 was the first game that really gave me problems – and I was surprised that Bioshock Infinite ran perfectly, and happy that DOOM also ran rather well (though id really is a company of excellent programmers). But as time goes on, I’m trusting this computer less, and the hard drives are jam-packed and feeling small. It was either buy a new computer… … …whenever… but I didn’t know if I’d be able to afford one anytime soon, or possibly buy a Chromebook or some other less expensive computer and subscribe to a game streaming service. So, unemployed at the time, and having tried the AC Odyssey beta, I bought into Stadia. It had a very rocky poor-communication launch, but the actual game streaming has been great, with one caveat. My PC being so old, it can’t decode the video fast enough. So, I have the Chromecast Ultra that came with my purchase (and which would usually be plugged into a TV – I don’t own a TV) plugged into my monitor’s second HDMI port, and I have the Stadia Controller, and it runs great off of that. Buy game, play. (No download, no install, good load times, and no hackers… so far… for online gaming that I tended to avoid on PC.) It’s pretty neat, and works wonderfully for my needs. But everyone’s different, and that’s cool, too. Also, the game library so far isn’t very large – that’s the biggest down-side for me so far, but with Steam backlogs… that’s not really a big complaint.
Anyway…
Emerald City Confidential!
I had it wishlisted more than five years, and as you’ve observed, it never went on sale in that time. I finally got fed up with that and bought it with my first paycheck after getting re-employed. I’d only played a couple of the Blackwell games from Wadjet Eye so far, but definitely still love their contributions to adventure gaming and their general ethos and consistent commitment to quality. I expected Emerald City Confidential to be a kind of rough early Wadjet Eye experience that would need a bit of polish. But… I was actually pretty impressed by it. It could have been a bit longer (and was planned to be), but it wasn’t particularly short either. The art for each character is a little inconsistent, but it doesn’t really matter. The voice acting is, I think, a hallmark of Wadjet Eye – I loved how much credit Dave Gilbert gave to his voice cast when I did the dev commentary playthrough of the first Blackwell game – and ECC is no exception there. The story’s pretty good as well. Highlights some minor characters of the land of Oz that (not having read the books), I only vaguely remember from watching Return to Oz at some point when I was very little. And it tracks your progress and quests very well, too. The cursor has some glitches though – minor annoyance cursor trails and transparency issues. I can’t remember for certain if that happened on my Win 7 machine, or just the Win 10 machine I streamed from. But that’s the only bug I encountered. Also… there are buttons (like sewn-on style buttons) to collect, and… I missed one. I have no idea where it was… but that ruined an otherwise perfect game in-game achievement-wise, and there was no going back to get it after a certain point, and no warning that I’d be unable to return. So, heads-up if you start to get a completionist urge while playing. I don’t think it’s one I’ll re-play just to get the perfect game. But did I enjoy it? Definitely. Should you buy it full price? …up to you. I’ve read that Wadjet Eye has tried to get publishing rights back from the current publisher before and they simply refuse to let it go. So… take that into account if you’re thinking about spending money on it, especially since it’s been completely ignored on Steam sales-wise for years.