General gaming discussion

Isn't extreme difficulty / unfairness basically the defining characteristic of GnG?

Yeah I finally got a chance (ie didn’t have the time to boot up Zelda) to try the full version of Humanity last night, after playing the demo previously. It’s a delight to just see in motion, with these glorious waves of colourful people flying through the air in beautiful patterns. Puzzles are great fun too. Quite the opposite of Zelda in that it feels like it’s best consumed in nice short sessions.

Also a rare game when cosmetic items are a joy to unlock. ‘What if the humans had goofy little hats?’ - I mean, absolutely!

Sorry, the Microsoft store and Xbox app are very poor compared to the other major launchers. They’re just about functional, but the way they handle social elements, login, updates, screenshot integration etc are really weak. The Xbox login that pops up every time you play a game, for example, is just unnecessary when you’ve already launched the game from the dedicated launcher. Even something like turning on a frame rate counter is an unnecessary faff compared to Steam. I’ve encountered endless glitches and oddness with the Xbox app over the years.

Again, not unusable by any stretch, and I still use it for GamePass. But the ease and fluidity of Steam is several steps beyond what Microsoft is offering despite the Xbox stuff seemingly being integrated at system level.

If the game sharing works well for you and your family, great - I can’t argue with that :) But for many PC users, the Xbox app is an objectively buggier, more restrictive app with more intrusive DRM, a much more limited feature set, clunky & slow user interface, and - in my experience - various baffling glitches.

For what it’s worth, I have issues with Steam too, especially its offline mode on the Steam Deck which I find rather messy. I also think it’s preposterous that someone would choose to not play a game they wanted to play just because it’s not on Steam - that’s a sentiment I’ve heard expressed before and one I find hard to comprehend. But the Xbox app has a bad rap in the PC gaming scene for pretty fair reasons, and it’s not just fanboy bias :)

Getting back into Psych-Odyssey (the epic Psychonauts 2 development documentary) after only watching the first two episodes when it was first released. It really is an exceptional documentary about the everyday reality of game development - the ups, the downs, the mundane, the spectacle. More than anything it really helps underline the teamwork nature of game development. It's easy to fall into the 'auteur' trap when talking about game development, especially when you have someone as influential as Tim Schafer involved as director. But really it's great seeing how a game comes together based on the input of a lot of different people.