this is the attitude I like. Don’t release something unless it massively better than what came before.
That’s valve’s philosophy though. It’s the reason we never got a half life 3.
Half Life Alyx basically is HL3
I never understood why folks are so obsessed over sequels. if a games good or a movie or whatever. it can just stand as being good. same if its the second one or whatever. Why does there even need to be another unless the artists have something to bring.
There, specifically, they ended on a cliffhanger and never delivered an awaited Episode Three, not a game, but an addon like Ep 1 and Ep 2, to put a satisfying end to HL2’s plot. I’m not sure if they promised it, but to know how blue balled the public was, you can only visit the end of Ep 2 yourself. Half Life 2 is one of my all-time favs, but I hate that non-ending.
You’ve probably heard this before, but you need to play Alyx. And that’s all I can say about plot lines.
Because the end of hl2 and the ‘episodes’ hurt us. I didn’t get over it until code Geass hurt me more with the I am zero scene, and then I suffered for 8 months or so only to be subjected to that damned reboot fake out. I haven’t played hl alyx in fear of it not bringing any closure and judging by how I haven’t seen any headlines suggesting that and people still wanting hl3, it’s probably safe to assume it doesn’t. I have largely moved on but if they ever do make hl3 and I’m not on my death bed I will probably marathon the series like I did with dark souls, including the duplicate ds1 and ds2, my job be damned.
It does tho, go play it.
I mostly agree with you.
I think there are a crowd of people who think that devs and writers can easily recapture the magic of the series and expand upon it in meaningful ways at will.
Then I think there are people who just love a game so much they want more of the same style content with few or no changes.
As an example, I really love The Outer Wilds, but you can only play it once since it hinges on you solving a bunch of interconnected puzzles which lead to an answer that was there all along. In other words, once you know, you can beat the game in about 7 minutes or so.
I would pretty much do anything for more of the same game. In fact, they could just keep making DLC for outer wilds with new planets and I’d play every release immediately.
Anyway, no complaints from me. The base game and the one DLC they released are literally flawless. I have the memories and warm feelings.
Also it’s Valve. People choose the projects they work on and are free to start their own projects.
I’d be a little surprised if there weren’t several earnest attempts to make 3.
Especially since their angle is a good midpoint of the trifecta of performance, price, and size.
When there is a 2. Just know it will be the last Deck ever. We all know Valve can’t count to 3.
“Is this what you’ve been waiting for? Say one, two…and four”
They will just use labels instead of numbers.
Steam deck Alyx.
Would be hilarious if that was the release name of Deckard.
Ngl that is a nice name.
something something “Steam Deck 2: Episode 2”
Yeah, but on the other hand, you also know it will be a massive evolution that will last several generations nevertheless.
Dota players: dunno what you are saying about. We literally have patch 7.34d now
The release date just got one week later.
But we can get 2.1, 2.2, 2.2.1, 2.2.2
Just please let us update/download with the screen turned off or in hibernate. That’s a big annoyance for me.
I could see turning off the screen, but I don’t see how you could download with a system hibernated.
Next we will have people complain about how putting the device to sleep still drains the battery.
It would be pretty easy to add a trigger when it plugs in to check if you’re above some battery threshold, and, if you have pending downloads, complete them with the screen off, with a “download then sleep” button on the download page that turns off the screen.
I’m fine with other priorities instead, because the actual pace of development is perfectly fine, but it could be done without a lot of downside.
I think psvita did it right. If you turn off the screen with download in progress, it’ll continue the download, but will pause if it’s not completed within about an hour so you won’t get surprised with drained battery next time you turn it on. Windows “modern standby” however is notorious for draining laptop battery when you put your laptop to “sleep”. Maybe valve can get it right unlike microsoft, and if they do, would be great if it could be ported to other linux laptop considering steam deck uses a laptop SoC.
Supposedly a big part of the issue is around specific low power states of the CPU either not existing or not being supported correctly. I don’t really follow any of that that closely.
But you don’t need any of that for a solution that would satisfy the vast majority of customers. Just doing the heavy lifting during “sleep” (to the user; the actual processor sleep state isn’t important) only when plugged in would solve close to everything and kick the inconvenience from “most users” to “edge cases” with minimal side effects.
You can set the brightness to 0… it’s just Linux
Still feels a bit dumb doesn’t it?
I mean, even the 3DS and the Vita were capable of performing this with the screen totally off (the 3DS lid closed).
And we are all used to doing this as a background task after all, I can even imagine myself having to have the screen on all the times to download the endless updates of my PS4 🫥
Yeah it is pretty dumb tbf. It should not only turn the screen off but pull the power back a bit for efficiency
Yes like wtf
Hold up, they’re releasing an OLED version???
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Yup, and it even has better battery life and is a bit lighter!
That title made me think valve was going philosophical
Isn’t that the excuse they used for half life 3 as well?
Maybe that stands true yet.
Heck, I feel like I’m missing out because I never played Half Life games.
Then make a steam deck 1.5
They have!
They literally just did
I hope they make it smaller, it’s too big to be appealing to me right now. But if they made it more PSP-size, then maybe…
There are plenty of handhelds to fill that niche, the issue is they’re too underpowered to handle most games released in the last 15 years
I just want them to bring the weight down a little bit. I’m ok with the size, but it’s a little too heavy.
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…I might be able to get it now! 🎉
true, I hadn’t thought about the density
More like it’s too expensive or can’t be manufactured at scale, but sure I guess it’s kind of the same thing.
“Doesn’t exist” is more accurate than that is.
It’s mobile. You can’t just shove power at it to get the results you want. The alternatives have marginally higher power (mostly at higher power draw), but the performance difference is nowhere near enough to justify calling it a 2. There are not x86 chips capable of doing meaningfully better within the power envelope the Deck has to have to function.
Yeah, the more powerful handhelds do it by dumping 75% more power into the APU for like a 30% power increase.
It works for handling some more demanding games, but when you’re draining the battery that quickly it doesn’t feel like a portable game system anymore.
No shit? You want to pay 800€ for a videogame console?
At current currency conversion rates, that’d be $854.
I’m sure the Neo Geo was up there, at least in inflation-adjusted terms.
googles
https://www.ign.com/articles/comparing-the-price-of-every-game-console-with-inflation
Yeah, and apparently the 3DO actually slightly edged it out. $1,238.52 for the Neo Geo in 2020 dollars, and $1,246.96 for the 3DO.
It looks like the Intellivision made it there, too, at $916.46.
Now, granted, none of those dominated the market (though I remember a lot of kids who wished that they had a Neo Geo).
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You’re not wrong, the Steam Deck was sold at a loss and there was that CPU shortage going on. I’m not sure if it’s still an issue.
