The Best Survival Game I’ve Ever Played
INDIE-GAME-538 TAKES GAMING WORLD BY STORM! SURVIVAL-GAME-87 IS THE NEW GAME YOUR FRIENDS WON’T STOP TELLING YOU TO PLAY! We’ve seen this happen before, at least a million times. But this time feels different. There are numerous examples of survival games that blow up, some of which are still thriving today, but most of them fall by the wayside. But Valheim feels special. It does something that so many of these games fail to do-It lets you play alone.
It’s not that you can’t play 7 days to Die or ARK solo. You can, but you’ll have to turn the difficulty settings down because otherwise you’re going to have a very bad time. Others such as Rust, Hurtworld, DayZ and the now-dead but much-hyped DayZ killer H1Z1 (which later became just the name of their BR mode as they rebranded the original game to Just Survive and killed it, but that’s a whole different tangent) all but require you to play with other people. They are PVP driven, while Valheim has optional PVP and pier to pier servers. It’s scaled in such a way that, while difficult, playing the game by yourself is enjoyable. It presents a challenge, but not one that is so insurmountable that you need other people to surpass obstacles. It hits a sweet spot that encourages and allows jolly cooperation without alienating those who seek the challenge of facing this Viking purgatory all alone. The feeling of taking down a Dark Souls style boss solo (while also getting attacked by random enemies that just happened to spawn in that zone) is a satisfying rush. The idea of summonable bosses in these games isn’t new- ARK and Conan both do wonderful jobs of this. But in those titles you will need a group of people to bring down the big bad. In Valheim more people certainly would make your life easier, but it’s not necessary. Don’t mistake this as me telling you the game is easy- if you are underprepared for a new biome even low-level groups of enemies will absolutely wreck you! But if your preparations are on point you should be fine even without nine fellow Vikings at your side (though admittedly raiding with friends is plenty of fun).
The sailing in Valheim is not the best sailing we’ve seen in a game (Sea of Thieves, Atlas and Assassin’s creed all do sailing very well), but it is extremely satisfying here. Needing to navigate the wind, the way ship momentum works, the feeling of sailing across an open sea, riding the rolling waves with rain pouring down and thunder tearing the skies apart making you think you’ve angered Thor himself, sailing through the mists only to spot the silhouette of trees through the fog, navigating the rocks below the waves or risk damaging your vessel- it all feels so good. Particularly when bringing a haul of goods back to your base after you raid a new biome. There is something about the way it’s executed here that’s not only fitting and appropriate but also just feels right.
Then there is Valheim’s most controversial trait the one thing that people keep citing as an excuse to avoid this game-its graphics. This is not a next-gen title- it’s not going to wow you like Cyberpunk 2077 (though it does run with 2077 times fewer bugs and crashes) Valheim is beautiful, but not in the same way as many AAA games in this new generation will be- and that’s by design. It has very distinctly low poly budget textures, but it makes up for it with fantastically executed lighting, fog, and water effects. While playing the other day I summed it up as, “PS2-era textures with next gen water.” Everything looks great, as long as you don’t look too closely. From an optimization standpoint the game seems to run beautifully on just about every system people are playing it on. This is one of the benefits of simple textures and approximately 1 gig file size. The game’s 1GB size is even more amazing when you scroll out on the map and see just how huge the game world is. Every map seed is randomly generated, but if you want to play on the same map as someone else, even when in different worlds, people have been sharing map seeds all over with helpful information on them.
Ultimately Valheim is unique among survival games. It’s not the first Viking themed game, it’s not the first with boss fights, it’s not the first with random maps, or that can be played alone, or with sailing. It’s not even necessarily the best at any one of those particular aspects. But unlike many of the other titles out there it seems to do them all well while running better than others and not requiring any sort of high powered machine to run. Weirdly enough this game doesn’t fill the “survival game” void that’s been there for me, it’s filling a void that been there for me since Skyrim. It’s not an RPG, but this is arguably the most fun I’ve had exploring a game world for the sake of exploring in almost a decade. And the best part is, it came out in early access in a functional state with few major issues, though there is the world killer bug still on the loose so make sure if you do jump in to back up your saves. Valheim is available for $20 on steam, and is well worth the asking price. I highly recommend it.
-Tim
-Tim
Cyberpunk 2077 : As Glitchy As It Is Glorious
For what feels like the millionth time we are talking about Cyberpunk 2077, the most hyped game in history. For what feels like the millionth time we are talking about a game that has incredible hype behind it only to fall flat on release, this time do to how incredibly broken an experience many are having with this title due to it feeling unpolished, unfinished, and incredibly buggy.
To be clear there is a great game underneath all of these problems. I have not yet finished the main campaign, and this is not our first official OLIP review, but I am about 35 hours into my first playthrough and playing on my midrange pc I have not had many issues or experienced many of the reported bugs. That said, from nightmare fuel texture glitches as seen above, T-posing characters all over the place, bugged out AI not reacting to being shot, fixers appearing in front of players instead of on the phone, floating guns, floating corpses, the game is infested with bugs (I work in pest control so I should know lol).
Maybe I’m just incredibly accustomed to extremely buggy experiences, and I definitely have the benefit of playing on PC rather than on console so I am having an easier time running the game, but I haven’t found it all game ruining as yet. (Take that with a grain of salt, I still play Fallout 76.) While Cyberpunk isn’t alone in having a buggy release, few games do recover from such poor releases. When discussing it on Friday’s podcast I couldn’t name any single player games that have made dramatic improvements in terms of reception. Fallout 4 recovered, but was never really beloved. Mortal Kombat X for pc sort of recovered, but fighting games generally sell much better of console and that’s not really a single player focused game. Mass Effect Andromeda did eventually get to a much better state, and since releasing on steam has garnered very positive reviews. But none of these have made the full comeback. None of them have clawed from unplayable to wide acclaim even if the people who did stick with, or came back to those games were ultimately rewarded.
Then it hit me. One of the worst releases of all time in terms of bugs and brokeness belongs to the Dark Knight himself. Batman Arkham night originally launched in June of 2015, and was so broken on console that people couldn’t run it. Arkham Knight was the fastest selling game of 2015, beating out the Witcher 3 and had plenty of hype and build up around it. Yet when it released on June 23rd the PC version would crash, glitch out, freeze up entire systems, the game for pc was utterly unplayable, so much so that it was taken down within days. Yes, despite us not remembering this when discussing Amazon’s recent experience un-launching a game, Arkham Knight was taken down in 2015 for four months before returning to the store front in October of 2015. Since it’s return the most recent (final?) chapter of the Arkham series has garnered 37,000 reviews with an overall score of 84% (very positive) with over 1,000 of those reviews coming in the last 30 days with a score of 94%. It’s initial release on Metacritic had a Metascore of 70 and a user score of 3.5/5, so over time it’s reception has jumped significantly. No Man’s Sky is another example of a game that has vastly improved in it’s reception over time and really for a very long time was more single player focused, though I’m not sure it really draws enough parallels to be a good comparison as it is a fairly unique game.
While these overall numbers pale in comparison to Cyberpunks 160,000+ reviews with an overall steam rating of 79% it’s not an unreasonable assumption to think that as the game improves over time. But will this game ever live up to the hype? No. That’s not the games fault either. The story is great. The graphics (when working properly) are great. The guns feel good, the rpg elements feel pretty good, gameplay overall, when it’s working correctly, is extremely satisfying. As a huge Fallout fan I wish this was similar to the game I got instead of Fallout 76 on it’s release, yet another game that has improved a ton since it’s release but due to how poorly that release was handled will never recover and 76 will forever be memed and mean something is bad or broken. This game is good, arguably great, underneath all of the bugs. But if/when will it ever be the game so many built it up to be?
The short answer is, never. No game can ever live up to that level of hype. The expectations were so high, many people were taking weeks off of work for this game months in advance. The game sold 8 million copies through pre-orders alone. 8,000,000 copies. That doesn’t include day one sales. The game made it’s development costs back before day one was over, in spite of people realizing quickly many of the issues it had. To be clear, I’m not calling for Cyberpunk to un-release until it’s fixed. Cat’s out of the bag. The question is how quickly can they get it fixed. Those calling this a reason to not do cross-gen releases are mistaken in my opinion because this game has been in development for YEARS after being first announced in 2013. What feels like 2077 years later it released, in this broken state, after not allowing reviewers to test it on console as the broken mess it is. We know why they did that now, and it leads me to believe that while this game could still wind up great, it also tells me two things : I think CDPR got that “Bioware magic” level of “we can make this great game and crunch it out at the end” while focusing almost half of it’s budget on marketing and clearly didn’t come all the way through on that, and they couldn’t justify another delay. CDPR has made many consumer friendly moves including free next gen upgrades, DRM free games via their own storefront GOG, stating that they are keeping their pricing at $60, the list goes on and on. But releasing this game in this state, after delaying it 3 times, and not telling people in advance “hey just so you know we have lots of problems that will be fixed” does hurt a lot of that good will they have. Is this their Andromeda moment? Is Cyberpunk Multiplayer (releasing next year) their Anthem? Their 76 to this Fallout 4? Who knows. Only time will tell if they can get the train back on the tracks, but no game was ever going to save anyone’s shit 2020 by being a perfect magical escape. I easily will put over 100 hours into this game, I love the world, the story, the characters … if they could just get it to function properly I think many of you will love it too, or maybe it’s just the next Fallout 4. Maybe it has the bones of a game that should be really good, but is buggy, broken, and once it’s fixed only people who come to it late or could love it for the broken mess it is will get the pay off. Time will tell.
-Tim
Buying in 2020 Is Like Friday The 13th All The Time
2020 Has been awful (generally speaking), but it’s also seen the releases and planned releases of some of the most powerful gaming hardware EVER. From the NVIDIA 3000 series graphics cards, to the new PS5 and Xbox Series consoles, to AMD’s Ryzen 5000 series CPUs, and eventually AMD’s RDNA 2 GPU architecture, it’s an exciting time to be a gamer.
Problem is, no one can buy any of it. These products, despite months of hype and in many cases promises of “plenty of availability”, sell out within seconds every time they release. Some of this is out of anyone’s control. COVID has limited our ability to rush to stores and line up, and has reduced the production capabilities of both Samsung and TSMC. Samsung is the company physically making NVIDIA’s GPUs, while TSMC does the fabricating for AMD. For those wondering how this might impact XBOX and PS5, both use a customized version of AMD’s Ryzen processors and RDNA 2 graphics, so any impact on AMD directly affects the availability of XBOX and PS5. In combination with a trade war between the U.S. and China, this ultimate storm does lead to limited availability overall. That part is understandable.
But then we have the issue of scalpers. Scalping is not a new thing. The concept is pretty simple, buy a valued commodity, preferably one that is hard to get, and sell it at a higher value than what you paid for it. It’s something that is commonly done with tickets, limited edition items such as shoes or designer wear, that type of thing. It’s not “new” in the gaming space, but previously it was normally seen with collectors edition items, not what feels like the majority of available stock for console or components. That is however what we’re seeing. If you look at the time of this writing, 8:43 a.m. on Friday November 11th 2020, there are listings for each device at these prices in U.S. dollars on eBay, followed by the actual retail price:
Xbox Series X- $8900, retail $499
Playstation 5- $32,000, retail $499
NVIDIA RTX 3080 -$3,999, retail $699
AMD Ryzen R5 5600x - $699, retail $299.
If we were playing the price is right these people lose. Badly.
Given the ever straining relationship between streamers/gamers and the music industry involving DMCA for music (even in game music) and streaming some readers may find it ironic that part of the solution to this issue may come from legislation past on behest of the music industry. In 2016 the United States government signed into law the Better Online Ticket Sales Act. The BOTS Act. This act made the act of buying up tickets for concerts and in person events via bots illegal, effectively eliminating digital scalping on a wide scale. While it’s still possible to manually purchase and resell tickets, the process takes much longer than a bot making it a far less frequent occurrence. It may be time to expand that law to online retail sales in general.
Another possibility would be that retailers such as Newegg, Walmart, Amazon, Target, Best Buy etc. put more “I’m not a robot” captcha verifications in place for high demand and potentially low supply items. Although given how the gaming industry in general seems to want to pat itself on the back for all of these “successful” launches I get the general impression that they don’t care who buys these consoles or why, as long as they buy them. From the top down perspective of retailers that makes perfect sense, but these scalpers are taking what should be one of the most exciting times in gaming and making it one of the most frustrating for end users. Ultimately, it may fall on us to make enough noise, to annoy enough people in the government in order to force them into action, because as long as these items remain in high demand, and as long as securing them for scalpers is as simple as DDOSing sites like Walmart in order to make it nearly impossible to purchase them every time new stock comes in, there are large profits to be made for “resellers”.
-Tim
Ryzen 5000 Series Selling Out In Minutes
If you were hoping that AMD would be able to meet the crazy demand for tech parts that NVIDIA, Sony, and Microsoft have all gone through lately with their newest processor release you were sorely mistaken. It’s not a huge surprise given the previous 3000 series launch similarly sold through extremely quickly, but the extremely high demand caused by more and more people in the custom PC space, along with potential scalpers, and compounded by supply issues caused by both the coronavirus and the United States government’s tariffs on Chinese imported goods adds up to zero stock in within minutes on many popular online retailers, and some brick and mortar stores being “sold out” before even opening.
I personally hoped to order a 5800x to upgrade my personal rig. By the time I got to Newegg however at 8:10 am CDT, (the CPUs officially went on sale 6:00am pacific or 8:00 my time I was met by the following images.
All sold out within minutes, with the top of the line 5950x being out within a matter of seconds. You’re best bet, if you want to pick up a new Ryzen processor on launch day is a brick and mortar location, but if you’re hoping to do that you had better already be in line as according to the reddit post people have already been in line for days at various Microcenter locations. And even if you are lucky enough to already be in line, if you’re hoping for a 5950x, AMD’s overkill top of the line processor that is just below their rumored next-gen Threadripper chip the stock is extremely limited and not all locations have one. At the time of writing (8:30 am CDT) the local Microcenter which opens at 10:00 am is already listing the 5950 x as sold out.
Again, this location doesn’t open for another hour and half, which means either they were somehow doing sneaky pre-orders (which I haven’t been able to find an option to pre-order the 5800x but maybe I’m just an idiot), or they had no stock to begin with at this location. As with NVIDIA’s Ampere GPUs, supply for all the above listed reasons is just not able to keep up with demand right now. I would urge everyone to avoid paying scummy Scalpers the over double costs for these parts that I’m sure we’ll see on Ebay by the end of the day and remain patient. Availability should get better over time, and the amount of time that takes could theoretically shift depending on political pressures which I guess makes the U.S. Presidential Election relevant even here, but ultimately if you want, or need an upgrade you’ll get one, just not on day one. Also, if this is any indication on what we can expect from AMD’s upcoming Big Navi gpus, if you’re hoping to get one on launch day you had best get in line soon as the 6800 and 6800xt release on November 18th, less than two weeks away.
-Tim
Activision Blizzard Brings In 1.2 Billion Dollars From Microtransactions
It’s no secret that Activision Blizzard is a powerhouse in the gaming world. Financially and otherwise. Their implementation of loot boxes and other microtransactions across many of it’s titles is no secret either. What has become public knowledge via a third quarter earnings report published on October 29th 2020 is just how much money those endeavors bring in. 1.29 BILLION dollars.
Yes from loot boxes, to Hearthstone card packs to various other forms of microtransactions across the stack Activision Blizzard is rolling in dough. In 2019 the company brought in roughly $700 million in revenue, meaning they are up 69% year over year profits, and that the 1.29 billion dollars consists of over half of the company’s 1.9 billion dollar revenue.
A large part of the driving force behind these skyrocketing numbers is the ever popular, and quickly growing Call of Duty user base, in particular Warzone. Warzone sees 111 million active users per month in quarter 3 of 2020. That’s a player base that is roughly 1/3 the population size of the United States of America. This leads to very optimistic expectations internally for the upcoming Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War set to release on November 13th. Cold War’s 250gb file size will include a War Zone as well, and given the money that’s bringing in that should be no surprise.
-Tim