Free to Play Gaming: Why Now is the Best Time to Dive In!

Welcome to a new episode of Digital Coffee Gaming Brew, and I'm your host, Brett er. If you please subscribe to this podcast and all your favorite podcasting episode. Episode, we have a five star view where just help with the rankings. Let me know how I am doing. But this week we got a whole slew of things to talk about. We gotta talk about six days Ofia, because apparently it's it's got single player missions, and it's controversial because it talks about the. Battle in flu show when we were actually in Iraq in a war. We also got new no man skies. No, no man sky, excuse me, mass effect. Normandy is back again. So if you want to actually get it since you missed it last time, you have a chance. They also have a new feature for cross save as well. So if you're playing on PlayStation five, Xbox or pc, you can cross save all that and not, that'd be fine. Nvidia. It's going to be limiting you to a hundred hours per month on their Geo Force Cloud gaming service. So have fun with that. I don't know if you can actually game more than a hundred hours a month, but I guess you can if you play every single day for quite a long time. But be prepared for that. There is a rumor that the Warcraft two remastered is coming, which is great 'cause I love Warcraft two. That was one of the best. RTS games. Back when Westwood and Blizzard were finding each other out for who was the most popular real-time strategy game with Red Alert or Command Conquer and also Red Alert as well. And Warcraft. And Warcraft two. Warcraft One was not that great 'cause you could only actually spoiler, you could only click one unit per time. And Warcraft two, you could do a whole bunch of units. That was a game changer right there. We're gonna talk about Warner Brothers games and where they're, what games they're actually doubling down on, and why they're missing one that I do not understand why they keep on just ignoring, especially with a patent they have on it as well. And I. Why Take two actually sold off private division and the reports on that as well. And the new Banner Lords update and the release of Steam in game recording and if it's gonna be great or terrible, or if you actually should care about it. And then my main thing's gonna be talking about why it's great to be at cheapskate. Let's get on with it. Mm, that's good. All right, so six days of Felicia actually has the first single player missions up and ready to go, which enables AI teammates, it kinda helps bring into focus just. What went on in Fallujah with the battle, because the battle was pretty intense at that time, and it's been controversial because people wanna make it controversial. It's not that really controversial that you wanna make a game about an historical battle that actually happened, but apparently now it is because it's more recent and people want to make it controversial. I guess it is, but. It happened 2004. It was to recapture the city from Al-Qaeda and the Bath party occupiers in November to December of 2004. And you've gotten these co-op missions that you can do. 'cause six success, OFIA is still an early access, but you had these like. Co-op missions that you should play with other people. I tried to play by myself and I kept on dying in like the first two minutes, which is fair. It's a very realistic type of game. So it's fair, but I just don't understand why it's controversial, only because it's talking about the Iraqi war. But it's a battle. It actually happened. Yes. They may have actually killed some citizens because you couldn't tell the difference between Al-Qaeda and regular citizens because they were dressed in regular citizens, but. This is just one of those things where it actually happened. It should be something that you can actually play. But the first two single player campaign missions for six a soia that will be released. Actually it's already been released, but you also can, you can play it solo with AI controlled fire team. Also, you can try to start a co-op match with three other players. Are struggling to populate, so the lobby suit can now fill the gap with NPC soldiers. So if you're having issues with finding people, you can just play it by yourself. And the games visuals have been improved with additional detail to. Character models, environments, effects, textures with new option to enable ray tracing, lighting and shadow effects. So there you go. That's where you have it. I'm actually excited for it. May actually reboot it up and see what it's all about, but there you go. Now no man's sky. Way back when in 2021, they actually had, for the N seven holiday, for mass effect, they, you could actually get the Normandy for playing the. The community type thing. Now they brought it back so you can actually do that plus with cross play. So if you're actually playing on the other consoles and pc, you can cross play between all those two, which is a good thing. And I like that. So if you missed it like I did, you can come back and actually get the Normandy, which. It is actually pretty cool. I actually do that you can actually come back and actually get it, and this is a good partnership with N seven Day with the mass effect celebrations for the next two weeks. So you got two weeks to figure out how to actually get it, and if you don't, there you go. But it's great that it also support cross saves. It's a limit. It's a limited Beta F. Form to begin with, but at least you can be able to transfer all your console saves to PC where they belong. And the blurb is in addition to the ability to transfer saves between platforms via the server. It's essential, especially difficult for no Man's Sky as the work involved increases with each platform support, and how long folks have already been playing for it. Both those numbers are large for our Tony's team. It's very common for players to rack up thousands of hours in saves, exploring across space, building elaborate bases, and cataloging their discoveries with incredibly detailed saves. Adding cross saves for us is a little bit like moving houses. The longer people have live there, the more complicated it is to move them. We also have players who have played once at launch eight years ago. Suddenly loading up the save on a platform that didn't even exist back then. For those reasons, we have secretly been introducing technology for this update for over six months. We now are ready to start rolling across these out for to a small number of players from today at all. No Man's Sky players can connect their different platform accounts together through the cloud dot. No manky.com/cloud save A subset of players will then be admitted to the beta participants in the beta will be able to upload and download saves for any connected platform in game save screen in the coming weeks, all players will be invited to do so you can get, try to get into it. If you can't just wait for it, it'll eventually roll out. But. It's in a bay of so far, but I'm just really excited for the Normandy to come back to my sky. So if you actually missed it like I did, you can have another shot at actually doing it. Alright, so Nvidia Geo Force, their cloud gaming platform is limiting you instead of it just being unlimited, they're limiting you to a hundred dollars hour cap with the 2 9, 9 tier being 15 hour cap per month. So an additional to that, it's going to be interesting to see how players manage this if anybody's actually doing it. I was on the cloud gaming wave or tested it out for a little bit. It just, I just didn't really care about it. It just, it. It's not that big of a deal to me, and it's, you have to have a good internet connection. And so all those factors just make it not that great anyways. So it's cool that you can pay as monthly service to get games and play these games anywhere you want, even with not very great hardware. That's cool. But he, it just never moved me to actually wanna do it. I tried both of 'em. I got like a six, six months for free for NV at GForce, and. It didn't really matter to me, so have at it if you want to, but I just don't really think it matters very much, and I just don't think the technology's there quite yet to actually really matter either. So either way, I just think I just wait it out. Just wait it out for a little while to let each other go after it and then see which one actually stands out. I don't think I. Nvidia is as popular as Xbox, but Xbox is a lot more expensive as well. So like I said, you can figure out if you want to, but all these monthly services are just getting annoying and a lot, and I'm just kinda over it. All right, so looks like the, there's a leak of Warcraft two remastered and. It could be happening in November with the Warcraft 30th anniversary as well. So I'm wondering what it's gonna be like. Is it gonna be more like the Diablo two remastered? Is it gonna be more like the Warcraft three Reforge remaster or remake, or whatever they said it was going to be? I never really knew what it was. If it's the latter, the Diablo two, I'm all for it because that was a good remastered. If it's the Warcraft three reforged. Yeah. Not so good. I they were, everybody was confused about what it is now. What I like to see. Warcraft four, of course. Will it happen? No, probably won't. The reason why is RTS to a lot of publishers don't sell well, even though. If you did it right, it could actually be a really good revenue source. It's just you have to figure out the right way of doing it, and no one's really figured it out quite yet. And there have been some tests for it in the StarCraft too, with different announcers, like different skins, different like ways of customizing your layout for a fee. I think those are ways you could do it. The problem is that. In the long run, people just play it to play it and then eventually they move on to something else. It's not like first person shooters where it's easy to figure out the monetization scheme. So I do appreciate the remastered getting out for Warcraft two 'cause I feel like it does need it. I feel like what really needs is just a remake of work craft. The original, I know it wasn't as popular as the. S number two, but it still was a groundbreaking thing back then when it was released. Now, I did say that you could only actually click on one unit at a time to move them, which is very annoying to do because if you have a bunch of units just clicking on one at a time. Yeah, I just, it just doesn't work. You're moving like a few inches each time just to get the enemy base because. You couldn't drag click and then drag clicking became part of Warcraft two, which was amazing, and there we're at it. Now I'm interested to see once it's finally been announced, what new features will be getting, how the graphics will be on this one, if it's gonna be a huge change or if it's just gonna be a regular change. Like what is it going to be about? Should be the interesting part. We're gonna see. And I do know that StarCraft we master in StarCraft two are now on Game Pass because Microsoft does own Blizzard though that's not a big surprise. But I want to see what it's going to be like for Warcraft too and what they're going to offer because we still don't really know what it's gonna be like. And we still have Warcraft two technically. On Battle net, it's the battle net edition version, but that's not really a remaster. It's just the old games. You can just play the old games, and that's really about it. So I'm excited to see it. I'm excited to see where they're gonna go and they, they just remaster the original Diablo and Warcraft while you're at it as well. It's relatively low on the budget. You need to actually remaster them as opposed to making a whole new game. And us old school gamers really appreciate it 'cause that's what we grew up on. All right. Moving on to Warner Brothers games and they're doubling down on Hogwarts legacy, mortal Kombat Game of Thrones in dc particularly Batman, because Batman, the AUM series did very well because it was revolutionary for the time. It actually was a good superhero game. It was. The only good superhero game it was before Spider-Man, and they proved that you could actually make a really good superhero game and then in saw make did Spider-Man. And then that proved that you really can do a great job of it. The one thing that they're missing, which I don't understand why they keep on not even mentioning is the Lord of the Ring Series by monolith, the Shalls of war. That one. That was a really good series. People love that series. I don't understand why it's missing. Like they keep on like calling their own games. Like why? Please work on a new one. I'm waiting for the third one of the Shadows of War Series, shadows of Mordor, or that series, the Shadows of Series. From over the rings. It was a great series. Shadows of Mordor, shadows of war were great. They were fun. They had the nemesis system, which you patented, so why aren't you actually making a third one of this one? Come on, monolith Productions. I know you have it in you. Please make the third one. We're missing the trilogy ending. He left us hanging on the second one. Shall of War. Why are you, why? Why is this just completely just not even discussed? I get that they're making the Wonder Woman game, but eh, I want the lower the Rings game that you came out with. It's a good series. I just don't understand why you still haven't made it yet. But here we are. It's just. Hogwarts legacy. Yeah. It was a fun game. It was gonna be a sequel and then it has a Wonder Woman game in the works on monolith productions. Which fine, you're making the wrong game to me because you still have the Shadows of War. Shadows of Mordor trilogy that I'm waiting for. Still waiting for it. It's been a while. It's been a long while. It was a fun, it was a fun series. I still go back and play it every once in a while 'cause it was that good. I just don't understand why you haven't made a new one. Get on it. Stop. Stop. Which leads me into Warner Brothers saying that games lost enormous amount of money. This see your CEO blames lack of consistency. It was a lack of consistency. It was just, you made really bad games. The only one that was actually good was Hogwarts legacy. And even that had controversy for some odd reason. But the Justice League was just terrible writing, not very fun. Which is weird because Rock City usually is pretty good at what they do. It just that one was terrible. And then you just made terrible decisions. Like Mr. Freeze was Mrs. Freeze, and I just didn't understand that one whatsoever. Like that just didn't make any sense to me whatsoever. And. The only view that stayed true was Mortal Kombat and Hogwarts legacy. And even then I was like, it's all right game. It's not the best, but it wasn't terrible. And then you're going back to Batman because guess what? The Batman games were fun. But then you wrapped on Batman on Justice League. It just didn't make any sense. And I played Justice League. I finished it and I was like I'm done with that one, because it just wasn't that good. There was no reason to go back to it. And all the new stuff that you said, look, we got new stuff. I'm like, yeah, I still don't wanna go back to it. Still don't want to go back to it. Anyways, moving on to, private division. So Take two has decided that it is closing roll seven intercept games and selling private division, which is Unfor, which is very unfortunate 'cause private division was part of just making small in games, really successful. It also had one of obsidian games that they came out with Outer, outer worlds. That was a fun game that was kinda like. The fallout of our space before Starfield came out, and it's still better than Starfield in my opinion. We also had that our worlds, like I said, we also had Panche ancestors. The Humankind Odyssey also had after us. Evening Star Penny's Big Breakaway. What does Workshop Tales of the Shire lower the Rings game and a bunch of others, but. They decided to like, Nope, we're done. We don't wanna do this anymore. We're, they're just focusing more on their core catalog. That means bore lands, it means GTA, really any rockstar games. We got Radio Redemption finally on pc, and we got Radio Redemption two, which it's there now. It's still a great game. I'd go back and play it every once in a while, but. That's where we're at on this one. It's just, it's unfortunate because it did really good, but the problem was, is that Grand Theft Auto, the trilogy, the definitive edition was just not very good. That was a big issue. Had a lot of issues on that. Sorry for reading the microphone and it had a few good hits, but that's really about it. And if you aren't making money, you're probably gonna be closed, so it's unfortunate. All right. New banner Manner Lords, banner Lords Manner Lords update targets, one of the strategy games, biggest problems. The vital update is a way is on the way for man Lords answer the community to with fix for water and ale production apparently just. It doesn't create enough. It's a great game. I played it. It's fun if you like, Lords of the realm. I'm dating myself again, made in the nineties. It was a very good tragedy game, but it was made in the nineties. You I don't think you can play it right now. I don't think it works very well, but it's very similar with a lot of good updates for man manners of the Lords banner manner lords the realm of the Lords. Now I'm mixing up my games realm of the Lords is. Was in the past, and this is the spiritual successor of that manner Lords, it's actually a really good game. It's fun and you figure out how to create this medieval city with all the nuances and everything, and they keep on like adding more things to it. And it's a very fun strategy game. You haven't played it I, you love strategy games and you love. What they do it, it is really good, like hands down, one of the better strategy games to come out with, and one that's been sorely missing for a while because Lord of the realms, like after the nineties, there was no more of it can find anyone doing it anymore. Stronghold was like, like the closest we came to it, but it really wasn't like a, it was more of a defense game over a. Actual like strategy game. So I'm happy that they came out with this and someone decided to take a risk and actually make something pretty good. And they keep on adding more things. They've added fishing crossbows and a bunch of different things, and they keep on adding more to it. So I'm loving where they're going with this. Newest update to Steam is their built in gaming. Recording is now live to everybody, so now you can actually do it. I've tried it out. There's still some issues with it, so I can't actually save it to my external hard drive. It will always air out every time I do it, but if I save it to an in internal drive on my computer, it works. It's very weird 'cause shadow play, I can actually save it to my external hard drive and not worry about it. But this one I cannot. But you can say you can also do steam deck recording as well, which is great. It also has a way of either doing it manually or doing it for 120 seconds gives you like the quality you wanted for it as well. It also seems to have some like AI tools to like show, I'm not really sure what games actually do this, but it shows like kills desks, like good highlights to it, like what a lot of AI would do. I think this is more specifically to like their own games that are doing it. I try to do it with the finals didn't really work very well. I tried it with a single player game Horizon zero dawn. That actually worked pretty well. It was a little sluggish. It seems like shadow play does work a lot better still, but I am hopeful for this because I think this is a really good thing, which goes to the naysayers that are like, oh, valve charges too much for their cut on steam. I'm like, but they make really great things like this, so I can't really fault them for the 30% cut. I get that it sucks for developers, but I ain't hurting. Not at all. So moving on to cheap skates and why right now is the best time to play free to play games and specifically first person shooter games, but also third person, I'll put it in there. You've got deadlocked that is still being developed. You've got. Marvel Rivals, which is the third person you've got? Overwatch two. I'll put in there 'cause they're trying to bring back six V six, so I'll put it back in there 'cause I haven't played in months. You've also got Delta Force, which is really fun game. Kinda does better what Battlefield should have done. It doesn't have the great destruction yet, but it has that, and also you also have the finals. You also have the Counter Strike two. It's a really good. Time right now to play these free to play games because seriously, you have a whole bunch coming out. Marvel rivals and Delta Force coming out in December, but you also have stuff already out. You have Counterstrike two, you have the finals out as well. You also have deadlock, which is eventually will come out. We'll see when it actually comes out, but you see a lot of influencers playing it. I watch it occasionally just to kinda figure out how to play this game because that's the only way I know how to try to figure out how to play this game since I can't do it. But it's a great time to be a cheap scape because you have all these companies making all these free to play games that you don't really have to spend any money if you don't want to. You get really good value. The finals is still a really great game and they've done a really great job of adding more things I still think they need to fix and adjust some things. I don't know if they'll fix and adjust. I do think that the lights and I'm, I play the light class, I guess is the best way of saying it quite a bit, and I think that the stealth should just be the vanishing grenades and that's it. But that's my opinion on that one. They've added a lot of new weapons. It was like. Another shotgun for the heavies. There's the chain pole thing, like kinda like road hogs chain that you can do. The mediums have a dematerialize for one of their abilities. They have a bunch of new weapons. The mediums now have two swords that you can block bullets with. You also have lights having a bow and arrow, which is actually pretty difficult, but pretty satisfying when you actually get a kill with it. You also have heavies having. Basically a spear that they can use shotguns, there's a bunch of different things. They have a anti-gravity gadget where you can lift the banquet off the ground. And just the destruction itself. It just makes it interesting every time you play because you never really know what's going to happen. You also have different types of timed events within the game, like mega damage. If you stand in one spot for too long, you'll have orbital lasers hitting you, which I think is a genius thing to get campers moving. You just have a lot of good things happening with this game that a lot of people have overlooked. You do have ex defiant, which I forgot about, but ex defiant. But unfortunately that's only on o Ubisoft. I do think, and I still think you need to bring it over to steam and you'll see the numbers go up. Because there's this hesitation to do it, but I'm like, you should just do it 'cause it's free to play anyways and you'll still get a cut of the money may not be as the full cut, but it's some cut. And Ubisoft right now needs every good will. It needs because it keeps on just crapping on itself all the time. But. If you're just looking for new games to play and have fun, you don't wanna spend 60, 70, 80, 90, a hundred dollars to play the game. This is a really good time to go back and play those games because I. Once December hits, I don't know when deadlocks coming out, but once December hits, you've got the Marvel rivals, which is basically competitor to Overwatch. You've got Delta Force, which is a competitor to battlefield and escape from Tark off 'cause it's got two games in one basically, and a single player one, which may cost money. Not really sure about that. Then you have the battlefield style of conquest or attack and defend. Which is breakpoint, I think. But you have those and you have specialists, which I don't really care about. And then you have the finals, which is a very traditional, almost like Call of Duty with, in some ways Call of Duty, mashed with Overwatch, meshed with battlefield's, destruction and better destruction than Battlefield has done in a while. You have all that. A kind of game show flare to it. And so you have like your itches resolved within these free to play market. I would say it's. Doing okay. Not all the games are doing really well. You can't all be the Fortnite of the gaming industry, which I don't play at all, but apparently you have that. I also forgot to mention Apex Legend, which is coming back to the original. You have Fortnite, which is coming back to the original, so you have a whole bunch even more now of free to play options to play without really breaking the bank. I forgot to mention first Descendants as well, if you like that type of a thing. Just a myriad of different things to play with, very little to no money to actually play these games. And if you want to and if you want to support 'em, you can if you want to, but if you don't, you can just keep on playing the game to help their numbers go up. But I do think a lot of these free to play games are being slept on because of the call of duties, the battlefields and everything else that comes out. Don't get me wrong, I love like the also premium games like Stalker two I'm very excited about. That's coming out this month as well. I'm very excited about that one. So I would say it should be interesting to see what the that's gonna be about. But we're in a really great time where everything is going well and if Overwatch two comes out with 60 V six again. That's another one. 'cause five, E five is not working, hasn't worked since launched and I want it six v six back because I missed playing tank with another tank. 'cause I actually installed it months ago 'cause I was tired of it and I was tired of playing tank or by other characters that decide to nerve for rework my poor sombra rip Sombra. But anyways, it's always good to see that. You have options now to which games you wanna play and you have a ton of options and they always want your business either playing the game or spending things because they need that. So to my cheapskates out there, to my people that are looking to save money to my people that have been hit economically through inflation, it's a great time to be playing free to play games. And thank you for joining this podcast on Digital Coffee Gaming Brew. Really do appreciate it. And guys, please subscribe to this podcast on my favorite podcasting apps. We a five star view. We'll just help with the rankings. Let me know how I'm doing and join me next week as a talk. What's going on in the gaming industry specifically? The PC gaming is free. Alright guys, stay safe and get to play your games, even if it's free to play. Go play your heart's content and see you next week later.