Stillhart

ARPG aka Action Role Playing Game.

tl;dr - Diablo or Dark Souls?

Both Diablo-likes and Souls-likes are called Action RPGs. In one, you create a "build" using gear and skills, and generally grind for hours on end looking for the perfect drop to make your build a teeny bit better. In the other, your success is based off of twitch reflexes and learning move-sets of the enemies. Gear and loot is pretty downplayed and the enjoyment comes from the elusive "git gud".

I'm not here to argue that one or the other isn't an ARPG. I'm just curious why a new designation hasn't sprouted up for one or the other to make things less confusing. It's getting even worse now that Diablo-like games aren't limited to isometric POV (they haven't been for a while but...) and now people are making souls-iike games in isometric POV. It's only natural that this would happen. But again, why is there still the confusing naming convention?

IMHO, worthless though it is, I don't get why Diablo-likes are called ARPG's. They have lots of A and no RP. (They are Gs tho.) Souls-like feel a lot more like what I would consider an ARPG. But again, my opinion is completely worthless so it's pointless to even attempt to argue about it.

My point is we should riot with pitchforks and torches at the headquarters of... the people who name genres of games... and demand they split ARPG from ARPG so we all know what we're getting into.

Like, someone went ahead and invented "bullet heaven" as a genre name since "bullet hell" didn't quite fit when you were the one with the bullets. I love that! Maybe we can do something similar like call Diablo-likes Action Grinding Games (AGG) or Loot and Build Games (LBG). I'm sure someone can think of something better while we are marching.

Hey all!

So I switched to linux this summer and have been really enjoying it! Pretty much everything I want to play on Steam works with no issue. Everything else seems to get solved with protondb.com.

But I do miss the PC side of my Gamepass Ultimate sub. Is there any way to take advantage of that on linux? I know on Windows you need to use the Xbox app to install things and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to add them to Steam after that as a non Steam game (couldn't find the executables or whatever).

Anyways, is there some lutris workaround or something for installing and playing Gamepass Ultimate games on linux? Or am I SOL?

Thanks!

Cyberpunk 2077 didn't have the best launch (lol). But some of us enjoyed the game despite its flaws. In the time since then, they've had nearly two years to patch the issues and add QoL.

Recently, I decided to give it another go and see how far it's come since then and MAN did I enjoy the hell out of it! Like, way more than I expected. It's really a much better game now than it was at launch.

I went right from finishing Cyberpunk to Starfield and boy did it make Starfield look bad. Like, not just visually (how can a two year old game look THAT much better than Starfield??) but I mean things like the combat and the role playing are just miles better in CP2077.

And in two days (Sep 21), version 2.0 will release. This is going to be a huge patch that's free for everyone who already owns the game that adds and changes a bunch of stuff even if you don't buy the expansion (which comes out a few days after that).

Given how good v1.6 (the current version) of CP2077 is, I'd say there's no better time to dip into this game if it's something you've been thinking about.

I'm really excited to play through again. With a different build, the gameplay will feel fresh regardless of the updates. And the role playing is deep enough that I can make different choices to see different results in most of the quests I'll have to repeat. Neither of those things are true about Starfield.

So I'm very new to linux gaming. I swapped like last month and I've really been enjoying how well everything I've tried on Steam just works these days.

But I was looking to try something a little more advanced next. I saw that there's a HD "remaster" mod for Freelancer (which is abandonware now, so easy to find for free online). As it's one of my all time favorite games, and I haven't played it in like 20 years, I thought it might be fun to check it out again.

I saw that it is on lutris and tried installing it that way. The installation goes fine but after it's done, the lutris installer just hangs with "return code 256". Googling it didn't provide me any useful info other than one guy saying just to install it directly with an empty WINE prefix. I have no idea how to do that and it sounds like it might be more of a pain in the ass than I want to deal with.

But I thought I'd just post here and see if anyone else has tried this and gotten it to work. I can always dual boot back into Windows but I'd rather not do that ever again if I can avoid it. For the record, I'm on Pop!_OS.

It's time once again to bang my head against the wall of Linux gaming to see if I can make the switch from Windows. What's the flavor of the month for gaming distros for a Windows native that's not a moron but also wants something that just works once its set up?

Bonus points if you can point me at resources for how to put Linux on my Windows box as a dual boot without breaking my Windows installation.

EDIT - Tried Mint and Nobara and neither could figure out how to dual boot with Windows on a machine with two physical drives. I'm sure if I had a CS degree I could figure it out in short order but a little googling and messing around trying different things didn't work so I think I'm done. Maybe next time, Linux.