To celebrate the return of classic games Ultima and Syndicate, GoG.com through Sep 3 is giving away: Ultima Underworld 1 and 2, Syndicate Wars, and Syndicate Plus

Iratus, Lord of the Dead, a tactical turn-based roguelike where an necromancer leads an army of undead trying to get to the surface world is at perhaps the cheapest price I've seen it-$9 on Steam.

Humankind will be available via Xbox Game Pass on PC at release.

This pleases me greatly. It shall be yoinked day 1 (to go with CK3 and all the Yakuza games I already have via it)

For those looking to scratch the ARPG itch in the Titan Quest, POE, Diablo mold you should keep an eye on Last Epoch. It's in early access, but does have quite a bit of content now and sits between Diablo and POE in terms of complexity. It has some interesting systems and a decent story in a genre that isn't exactly known for its stories.

Just in case you don't have them all already-Fanatical has a Yakusa Remastered collection as their star deal right now-3,4,5 for just over $21

Quill18 out with an early look at Humankind (comes out on the 17th), Very interested in this one:

HUMANKIND - Full Press Build! - Part 1 - YouTube

Frostpunk is free to play through the weekend on Steam in anticipation of Frostpunk2, coming out some time soon.

DAy 1 buy for me, actually already bought on steam

yeah, this is a must buy for me, except I'll already be getting it through Xbox game pass for PC.

Ditto

Me too.. Quill18 has a good playthrough going and here is a good review.

Humankind: The Review – eXplorminate

PotatoMcWhiskey, who plays a lot of Civ with the Yogscast gang, has a Humankind tutorial up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8SukGtHjao

Guessing there will be other lets plays up from the usual suspects soon too

I wonder how much they get paid for this and how can I get in on the action.

HUMANKIND IS DOWNLOADING, PEOPLE!!!! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!!!!!


(off of Gamepass btw)

They get free early-releases of the game as well as flights and hotels at confrences sometimes, and they make money off their You-tube or Twitch channels based on viewers/subscribers numbers. You have start doing it and build up a solid base of followers to get free-bies. It is a bunch of grind, and you have be very creative to get the numbers needed.

I'll alert the authorities! :) Let us know what you think when you've had a chance to play a bit

Start up a YouTube Channel and Twitch livestream, play a game from start to finish several times a week and find out :)

Be talented, put years of effort into it while willing to accept that nothing may ever come of it, and get lucky to a degree as well. It takes all three to be a big-time creator.

As far as pay, Potato McWhiskey is big enough that he's not getting rich most likely, but probably makes a comfortable living at it. I also can tell you he's good people, and not above being a genuinely positive contributer to the YT community, which is always good to see.

Well that's a pleasant surprise. I knew there was a reason I was paying for Game Pass. Didnt notice it on the "coming soon" list.

86% already, not long til my empty evening is less empty.

So I can’t say I’m blown away by Humankind after a few hours playing. It may be that I don’t understand the mechanics yet, or that there are settings I need to play with, but the early game feels distinctly dull and constrained compared to Civ.

First impressions: liking it so far. Put a good 4 hours in today (thanks Tropical Storm Fred), and got to the early modern area. It feels a good bit like Endless Legend, with a bit of Civilization. I have mix feelings about how culture works. It is pretty cool that you have choices each Era, and you get to keep special units, buildings or districts that you receive from them. The only thing is that the combos don't feel realistic. There also isn't a natural progression. Basically if you pick say English in Medevial times, you can become Spanish in Eary modern. That just seems weird. Just think of it as a game mechanic and move on I guess.
There are no playable tutorials but there is a huge group of videos. For the most part it doesn't require much explanation if you have played a lot of this style game. Combat is very much Endless Legend.

Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

I just learned of this game from this thread and did a bit of reading up on it and that's the first thing that I got stuck on - the idea that you essentially switch civs multiple times during the game. Makes no sense to me and feels like it would totally ruin the immersiveness. I don't know why you don't just pick a civ and can switch tactics each era. Does it matter whose they are if they have certain pros and cons? Either switch or don't based on what you think makes most sense at that point in the game. Why the need to change who you are?

Kysrup, you don't. You can stay the same culture, or get to culture you want and keep it. The bonus are roughly the same, you just get certain special units by picking different cultures. If you stay the same culture you keep the initial bonuses and get an influence bonus.

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My laptop gets hiccuppy/pausy/glitchy every 10 seconds or so in the game Humankind (windows) Any ideas?

You guys mentioned streamers. There is a former FOFC member that I watch stream almost every day. He is a variety streamer that focuses a lot on strategy games.

Cringer63 here is Cringer on Twitch

I recall you mentioned racing games. One thing I read is disconnect any other accessiories except mouse and keyboard. Someone had a similar type issue with the flight stick connected for Flight Sim.

Wow, I didn't put together they were the same person. I occasionally watch Cringer on twitch and usually throw him or Splattercat my free amazon twitch prime sub every month.

I have never figured out how to do that or what it actually means.

Elder Scrolls Online is free to play for anyone through the 30th on your console/Steam/Stadia of choice.

Music to my ears thank you for the heads up

Enjoy!

I've given up on Humankind the game... My computer can't run it without stuttering and it just doesn't seem good enough (say v Civ) to fight with it trying to be able to.

Sorry to hear that. I am really enjoying it so far. I think it is going to end up not quite as deep as Civ, at least as this point (couple of DLC's later who knows), but I will probably put more hours into this one than I did in Civ VI.

I don't have the game to check, but you might try GeForce Now to see if your computer handles it better

Pathfinder: Kingmaker: Enhanced Edition at maybe an all-time low price of $9 at Humble Store

The Original Torchlight is the $1 Star Deal at Fanatical

If you get this, A) Send me a PM so I can send you the guide that helps you find everything (from gamerguides), makes life SO much easier, and B) Download the Bag of Tricks mod, which helps you when you've got your self into a potential game-ending spiral.

How is it possible that this runs better online via this than the computer itself. Makes no sense to me but it seems to work. Now, do I actually want to pay $10/mo for this?

So I just learned that a new Pathfinder game releases in 2 weeks.

Yeah I can't play No Man's Sky without it on my computer either

Picked up FM Touch in last weekend’s sale for what i guess would be $10. Haven’t played any of the FM series for 4-5 years, and the last time sink was longer than that. Have to say loving it so far, seems to be back to the old simple feel

Basically, you link your amazon prime account with twitch and that gives you a free "subscription" every month to give out to a streamer. You also get some freebies from twitch every month that you can download (mostly crap games and little cosmetic addons to games I don't play).

I see Madden 22 is out on Steam Aug 20. 66 Mostly negative reviews so far.

My first impressions of the console version are pretty good, have never thought the game translated to PC well

Ok, but then what do the streamers get out of it?

Everything on Reddit looks bad. I found a copy of Madden 05 yesterday (along with Champ Man 4 and FOFC:The College Years). I wonder if I can get it to play? Wonder what that looks like now?

Each subscription (or it's amazon prime equivalent) is $5 monthly, with a good percentage of that going to the streamer

Oh, nice. I probably ought to do that for someone even if I generally only watch replays on Youtube.
On another note, I don't know how many historical war-gamers there are on here, but I just picked up Grand Tactician: Civil War. I really enjoyed Ultimate General, and this has that same feel, but on the Grand Campaign scale. It is early release, but it is supposed to go full release next month. I have only played one quick battle (Bull Run) and it was interesting. The Youtuber Historical Gamer had some videos playing around with it that got me interested.

Maybe Amazon can fix the whole OnlyFans debacle.

From what I've read, when you sign up for it you essentially get a "virtual PC" that you can connect to Steam or whatever and install your games on. This virtual PC is presumably on a server totally loaded with high-end gear that's running the game as fast as it probably can be run. So the question comes down to is your internet connection + their server faster than your computer's hardware. If your on a PC that's kinda old and you have a really good internet connection, then the answer is probably yes.