V Rising. I just started playing and am already hopelessly addicted. Please send help.

For those not familiar, it’s a Diablo-esque (with direct controls) open world hack and slasher with light RPG elements, but a comparatively much stronger crafting, building and upgrade component, so much so in fact that there are barely any character upgrades beyond some unlockable spells. The core gameplay loop revolves around finding resources (by killing enemies - ranging from humans and animals to all sorts of supernatural creatures and beings - opening chests and farming resources in the environment), then refining them and thereby unlocking new items and things to build in your castles. The latter can be built pretty early on, but in the beginning, it’s little more than a few palisade walls (and no roof) protecting a handful of crafting stations and storage chests.

The no roof thing is relevant, because as the V in the game’s title implies, the protagonist is a vampire, which means they can suck blood and assume some of the capabilities of their foes. This also means that they need extra strong sun cream, but since it hasn’t been invented yet and the substitute magic potion isn’t very effective, longer boss fights (which are plentiful and can happen everywhere) that stretch into the day turn into an interesting game of dashing from shadow to shadow while at the same time dodging enemy attacks in order to not get roasted by the fiery ball in the sky. Before I managed to find the necessary resources and crafting stations required for building stone flooring and walls, which automatically create a roof (must be vampire magic), I had to help myself by using braziers that turn bones (a rather plentiful resource, thankfully, given the enormous kill count you rack up in this title) into a mist that blocks out sunlight over a fairly generous area.

Just like other resource-consuming stations, it keeps running even when the game isn’t playing. This has advantages and disadvantages: On one hand, you can just do something else for a couple of hours and return to piles of resources having been crafted, but on the other hand, your castle also consumes another resource in order to even remain standing - although this can be turned off, at least in games you host yourself for singleplayer or co-op. V Rising is very generous in this regard anyway, allowing the player to customize virtually every balancing aspect in excruciating detail.

I’m still not very far in the game, having only just unlocked the ability to turn humans into slaves. Depending on their class (from lowly worker to skilled fighter, at least that’s what I’ve encountered so far) and the quality of their blood, the ability of the servants you create can vary quite widely. Capturing slaves is neatly done: You have to bring their health down to at least 30%, then use a special spell to control them. You cannot cast any other spells as you are doing this. The player then needs to carefully bring the extremely vulnerable human back to their castle and place them in a coffin, which starts the conversion process to a servant. The way back home becomes a tricky obstacle course as you try to avoid any bigger fights in order to keep your almost dead human alive until you reach your destination. It’s also advisable to kill all other enemies the human is with first, being careful not to use any area of effect spells that might inadvertently kill that rogue with 96% blood purity you so desperately want as your loyal servant.

If there’s one thing about this game that is below average, it’s the presentation. The intro is the usual cheap motion graphics with voiceover style doing the absolute bare minimum to establish the scenario (vampires once ruled the world, humans fought them, won, you slept for centuries waiting to take over again - that’s it), sound effects and music as generic as the fantasy scenario, voice lines repeat themselves all the time, objects are low-poly and textures muddy even from the far away default camera perspective. It’s serviceable, but clearly extremely outdated. Nobody would have been impressed by this even 12+ years ago. Effects like magic and explosions are solid though, the day night cycle is well done, the forest is dense and environments have a large number of destructible objects, so at least there’s that.

Overall, I’m impressed. V Rising is addictive, challenging and motivating, with tight controls, frantic combat and excellent crafting. This is a clever, well-made game with what appears to be plenty of staying power, exposing new systems and mechanics to the player at a nice, even pace.

My worry is that after a few days of playing around with it, it becomes a $200 paperweight. It’s a bit (and by that I mean at least 2x) too expensive for what it is.

A majority appears to be:

62.7% of the Fortnite players are from the age group of 18 to 24.

https://www.demandsage.com/fortnite-statistics/

It’s not just a kids game, has been around for long enough (seven years) and has enough staying power that even many of those who started playing it as kids are now adults. Personally, I never cared about it, but that’s because I stopped playing multiplayer shooters a long time ago, not because I feel like I’m too old for this.

These are talented developers, but the things Paradox management have said and done (in general and in regards to this game) are hardly confidence-inspiring. They’ve already said that there won’t be a part three (at least not with their help), at least heavily implied that they have no confidence in this game’s success and stated that people should tamper their expectations.

I get where you are coming from, but as someone who has been interested in ray tracing since the early 2000s, ever since I saw the amazing ray tracing demo heaven seven rendered in real-time (although not at a particularly high frame rate) by my trusty 1.3 GHz Athlon T-Bird, there has been no denying that this is the future of 3D graphics, just as much as the more recent invention of upscaling technology. It enables not just the biggest generational leap in visuals seen in decades, but also makes it far easier for developers to light their games, removing many of the clunky and labor-intensive workflows that are required to make conventional rasterized graphics look good.

If the above paragraph didn’t bore you to death, try Quake II RTX. It’s fully path-traced, but because it’s essentially a shiny coat of paint on a game from the 1990s, hardware requirements are surprisingly modest (it even ran on my old GTX 1080, albeit it at a very low upscaled resolution). Despite the simple geometric detail and ancient animations, it looks absolutely stunning thanks to realistic lighting and new surfaces. Screenshots are not doing it justice - it almost feels real when you play it, particularly outside sections in direct sunlight.

It’s free on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1089130/Quake_II_RTX/

If you don’t own Quake II on Steam, you get the three levels from the old shareware version, which are more than enough to get an idea of the true potential of this technology. If you do, you can play the entire game with ray tracing. Note that this is not the same as the recent extensive remaster of the game by Nightdive Studios, which uses a conventional renderer, but makes far more substantial modifications to assets and level design (and includes lots of bonus features). Both remasters are awesome in their own different ways.

Your card can also handle some newer games with ray tracing. Control is an obvious candidate. It’s old enough to have reasonable hardware requirements even with RT on, but it was also designed from the ground up as a showcase for this technology. Medium RT at 1080p should get you close to 60 fps in this game. The other game you might want to try is Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, which is both visually stunning and incredibly well-optimized. You should get a locked 60fps at 1080p in this game - and even 1440p is possible. It’s night and day compared to the regular version of the game.

Quick, we need to bring up a few more old and leaking nuclear reactors to handle the energy demand of this nonsense!

Is there a similar site for AI?

That app is a special kind of inhuman torture.

I know this might sound a little condescending, but why are you torturing yourself by not using an adblocker?

Or not being able to play a board game, because it says “ages 9 - 99” on the box.

I’m not sure about this. Ever heard the phrase “the past is a foreign country”? Living through time would be like immersing yourself into a new country every couple of decades. You could even lessen the blow (and would probably have to in order to remain anonymous) by frequently moving around the world. People tend to give newcomers a certain amount of slack and with the enormous amount of knowledge and experience you would gain over time, you can easily and quickly immerse yourself in any new environment and adapt to whatever is “it” now.

I would only accept this kind of deal with the Devil if I had the power to turn people I care about into fellow immortals, which comes with its own pitfalls I’m well aware of (imagine holding a grudge for thousands of years), but still.

Probably, but it depends on the person. I stopped caring about some relationships that ended after a year, but I’m still thinking about others decades later.

Then again, you have billions of years to come up with a solution to this problem.

That’s an idealistic point of view and certainly an admirable one, but it might not be realistic. Perhaps Sony execs simply don’t want people to be reminded of this flop they signed off on.

I wonder if there is still going to be a Concord episode in the upcoming animated videogame-themed TV show “Secret Level”. A month ago, this was confirmed, but at that point, it wasn’t decided yet whether Firewalk Studios would be closed.

The Boys comes to mind, even though this show is hardly subtle. One has to wonder if at least some far-right demagogues are fully aware of this and are actually doing it as a form of cultural appropriation.

Which mirrors exactly how the game’s inspiration, the movie-adapation of Starship Troopers, has been misinterpreted by less observant viewers.

I’ve spent about an hour with “Drova - Forsaken Kin”. The best way to describe it (and I’m not the first person to do this) would be “2D Gothic”. It’s quite neat. Exploration is a bit labyrinthian, but it’s appropriately punishing and bleak, has meaty combat that becomes satisfying once it finally clicks with you. Just like in Gothic, you start out as someone who can barely swing a club and just like in Gothic again, you need trainers to level up your skills. Controls can take a bit of getting used to and I have no idea where the story will take me, but so far, I’m enjoying my time with it. Really the worst thing I can say about it so far is that the music is rather monotonous.

Drova is available on gog without DRM, supporting Linux and MacOS in addition to Windows (also on Steam and every current and last-gen console):

https://www.gog.com/en/game/drova_forsaken_kin

Happy to help. I can’t stand content that is timed and gets locked away after that.