If you are new to my blog please follow it for more awesome content

CD Projekt RED Is Looking Into Fixing The Witcher 3's Tiny Text Problem

Good news, squinters: CD Projekt RED is looking into fixing The Witcher 3‘s tiny text problem, which I complained about yesterday. A patch just went live on the PC (and coming soon to consoles), but this particular issue won’t get addressed until at least the next one.

Here are the patch notes for the most recent update, aka version 1.03:

• Improves stability in gameplay and the UI
• Improves performance especially in cutscenes and gameplay
• Fixes grass and foliage popping that could occur after density parameters were changed
• Improves Nvidia Hairworks performance
• Boosted texture anisotropy sampling to 16x on Ultra preset
• Sharpen Post-process settings extended from Off/On to Off/Low/High
• Blood particles will now properly appear after killing enemies on the water
• Corrects a bug where player was able to shoot bolts at friendly NPCs
• Improves menu handling
• Corrects an issue with Stamina regeneration while sprinting
• Fixes a cursor lock issue that sometimes occcured when scrolling the map
• Generally improves world map focus
• Improves input responsiveness when using keyboard
• Corrects some missing translations in the UI
• Corrects an issue in dialogue selections
• Rostan Muggs is back
• Minor SFX improvements

If Players Were In Charge Of World Of Warcraft

With the recent three million drop in subscription numbers, World of Warcraft forums are full of people thinking what could save the game from further decline. TheLazyPeon is one of them, and he compiled a list full of interesting ideas that would fill the game with life again.

Some of these idea always come up in forum discussions (just think about the idea of balancing PvP and PvE separately) and some of them are completely unexpected (naked PvP based on DayZ? What the hell?). Also, not sure about the casino or the theatre, but the video’s point that there is a call for a more social environment is clear enough.

Scaling up the large battlegrounds Tol Barad and Wintergrasp for level 100? Hell yeah! More server events? Yes, sir! I loved things like the constant invasions of enemy faction cities back in Wrath of the Lich King. People were motivated to do it, because of the Black Bear mount reward.

It’s not a video intended to fix the game. Blizzard’s good at that (and they actually listen to feedback). Just a few wild ideas that could make the social aspect of it much better.

GTA Short Turns Assassination Gone Wrong Into Awesome Chase Scene

Listen: contract killings can go wrong sometimes, okay? It’s just something that happens. But, in Los Santos, chasing down the guy you’re supposed to kill isn’t always that easy.

Crafted by YouTuber Boris the Blade using the Editor in the PC version of GTA V, The Hit is a stylish action sequence that keeps you guessing just how the two hunters will catch their prey. With a bunch of players performing every action you see, it’s also a great illustration of how games like GTA V can turn their users into virtual stuntmen.

Invisible, Inc: The Kotaku Review

Let’s get straight to it: for some of you, Invisible, Inc. will be close to the perfect video game.

There’s an easy way to determine if you’re one of those people. Ask yourself this question: “Would I enjoy a game that takes (most of) the best parts of XCOM, Splinter Cell and roguelikes and combines them?”

Say “no” and you might still find this to be a very good video game. Say “yes”, though, and holy shit, you’re in for a good time.

Invisible, Inc. puts you in control of a team of secret agents, who are on the run after having their HQ raided and who have 72 hours to cobble together enough resources and intel to mount a counter-attack against some corporate bad dudes. You’re given a variety of missions to pick from, each offering various perks upon completion (like cash, or new gear), but each one eats up a certain amount of time on the clock. Once 72 hours is up, you assault the enemy base, and you better hope you’ve scrounged up enough gear to get the job done.

Missions are turn-based as you move your agents around an enemy office, dodging cameras and sneaking past guards. Or hacking cameras and beating guards unconscious, it’s up to you. While you’re encouraged to avoid enemy contact, you do have a variety of weapons at your disposal, as well as gear that can disable and disrupt both human guards and robotic defences.

Everything’s laid out on a grid, nice and clean, so anyone who enjoys XCOM, or even stuff like Fire Emblem, will be right at home.

I’m not normally that into stealth games. I find them a bit too stressful, and I play games to avoid stress, not endure more of it. I find my fun in stealth games — and this is something games like Dishonored absolutely nail — when they don’t make the player feel nervous and vulnerable and isolated, and instead make the player feel powerful. You shouldn’t feel like a deer that’s one step away from the headlights; you should feel like Batman, a master of death and pain who lurks in the shadows, using darkness and secrecy as a weapon. It should be the AI that’s afraid of you.

When I played the game in early access last year, I got a taste of what’s so special about Invisible, Inc, but was also worried about the way stress still seemed to creep into the game through things like escalating alarms. I understood why they were there (the game would be too easy otherwise), but their implementation left a lot to be desired, as while they played to the stealth side of things, they also undermined the sense of strategy a turn-based game should provide.

Changing just one or two of these can give you a completely different game.

Thankfully, the full game ships with one of the best difficulty sliders I’ve seen outside a sports title. You can adjust almost everything about a campaign before you start, from the ability to rewind turns and replay levels to how alarms are sounded, how quickly they escalate and even stuff like how long guards remain unconscious for after you smack ‘em in the head.

By ticking just a couple of boxes outside the defaults, I was able to transform the entire experience. It’s less a matter of custom settings, more of becoming an armchair game designer. Many challenges remained, but by lessening one (alarm escalation) and removing another (guards basically stayed down after being knocked out) I was able to take my time, plan things out and feel like a complete badass while doing it. Instead of freaking out over alarms, I could enjoy everything else about the game, like sliding around behind cover, stalking guards and outwitting security drones.

Which was awesome! I found a way I wanted to play the game, played it and loved it. But what’s so great about the depth and variety of options available to you is that the next time I played, I made different changes had an entirely different experience, one geared towards speed and the avoidance of combat. The next time through was different again. Each re-roll wasn’t a new game plus, it was almost like an entirely new game.

It’s not just these modifiers that make Invisible Inc. such a strong stealth game, though. The real beauty comes in the design itself, how it often feels more like a board/card game than a video game (there’s astrong Netrunner influence here). Invisible Inc. retains the underlying systems of the stealth game, while stripping away so many of the things that plague fancier, real-time examples of the genre. You’re never fighting the controls, or the camera, or wondering if a guard’s cone of vision is bullshit; everything is laid out precisely for you on a grid, leaving no room for argument. It’s just you and your brain, no twitch or trigger-finger required.

The game’s intro and the first mission of a campaign.

Invisible, Inc. has a “story”, so much as you’re given a reason to go from the main menu to a hectic final mission, but this isn’t a narrative game. The idea isn’t to play it, finish it then leave it behind. Invisible Inc. is basically a roguelike, encouraging you to play the same game over and over and over until you’ve either perfected it or bled it dry.

As I’ve said, messing with the campaign options is part of this, but so are unlocks — you get new characters, gear and perks each time you play — and the fact that every map is randomly-generated, meaning you never, ever face the same challenge twice. This is pretty important for a game like this; if it repeated maps you’d be able to learn shortcuts and memorise guard patrols, but with a new map every time you start a mission, you’ll forever be on your toes.

This randomness and emphasis on replayability has a downside, though, in that it makes the game feel a little thin. With so many cool and interesting agents at your disposal (rarely has just design and animation been able to express so much character), it would have been awesome to be able to manage them better and spend more time with them, really build up a strong crew (ala XCOM), but campaigns are short, your stat increases don’t carry between campaigns and at the end of the last mission everything — even your save itself — is wiped clean. The only things you get to keep are the stuff you unlock, which is accessible from a campaign setup screen for the next time you play.

This isn’t a big deal initially, but after a while it all starts to feel a bit like a restaurant that only serves appetisers. They might be delicious, but after a few tastes of the good stuff what you really want to do is sink your teeth into something a bit more substantial.

Ah, nuts.

OK, so maybe it’s not quite perfect, but I still love this game. It’s strategic, it’s flexible, it’s empowering. It even has a really cool sense of style, with great characters and some gorgeous flourishes in the animation. This is a game anyone who cares for tactics, espionage or just good times on a PC really needs to check out.

The Witcher 3 is stunningly gorgeous in most places, but you can’t please everybody. That’s what mods are for.

Despite only bewitching (and therefore, de-wizarding) players for a few days, The Witcher 3 already has some pretty sweet mods. You can’t, like, play as white-haired version of The Incredible Hulk yet, but I’m sure it will happen with time (unless The Witcher 3‘s mod scene sparks and fizzles like The Witcher 2‘s did).

For now, the centrepiece of the mod selection is the CineFX graphics mod, which — among other things — lets you crank the game’s resolution until astronauts can see Geralt’s beard stubble from space. If you want it to look like the infamous video from a couple years back, this is probably your best bet — at least, from a sheer detail perspective.

Here’s a video of it in action from FeuerTin:

The other early Witcher 3 mods emphasise quality of life over sexy good looks. First up, there’s the Over 9000 weight limit mod, which allows Geralt to carry up to 9999 Witchy Weight Units of stuff. Given how much stuff I’ve looted from kind, unsuspecting villagers’ houses in the game’s first few hours, I can see the mod being super handy.

There’s also the Wealthy Vendors mod, which does exactly what it says: makes vendors obscenely rich. Instead of retiring to islands that aren’t crawling with monsters and apocalypse zeppelins, however, they give you more gold for your goods before running out. Pretty fucking saintly of them, if you ask me.

Lastly, there’s the Lower XP Thresholds mod, which makes Geralt level up a teensy bit quicker. It’s not meant to turn the game into a cakewalk, but for those who balk at the idea of only being level five after six hours, this one might not be such a bad idea.

Now, a couple disclaimers: 1) These are pretty simple mods, largely created by changing values in the game’s files. Given time, modders may well change The Witcher 3 to the point that it’s unrecognizable. This is a trickle. Fingers crossed for a flood. 2) A new patch dropped a few hours ago that might render old versions of these mods useless. If that’s the case, you may need to wait a little bit for new versions to be released.

Now then, question time: what do you want to see from future Witcher 3 mods? What sorts of utility features? Anything crazy or outlandish or Literally The Hulk?

Valve Finally Addresses Counter-Strike's Biggest Problem

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is one of the best multiplayer shooters in existence — by all accounts an incredible game. Well, except for this one thing.

The hitbox, aka the part of a video game character where your bullets will actually harm them. Counter-Strike‘s are considered to be maddeningly janky, giving rise to occasional moments where it sure seems like you blasted someone right in the eye socket, but they act like their shoulder got grazed by a kitten’s eyelash. The community’s been grumbling about this issue pretty much since CSGO came out back in 2012. Finally, Valve’s seen fit to give it some attention.

Most recently, the hitbox problem caused public outcry when this video (as seen in the above GIF) made the rounds. Point blank fire into an easy target and… nothing. The guy lived to fight another day, but he decided to be efficient about it and murdered his confused foe the same day, approximately 0.5 seconds later. Infuriating.

The video rocketed to the top of the Counter-Strike subreddit, and pissed off fans — fed up with this absurdly longstanding issue — sent it to every Valve email and Reddit handle they could find. The result? Valve actually acknowledged the issue for the first time in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive‘s nearly three-year lifespan.

They spoke with the terseness of a bullet to the brain, as is their way (for better or worse):

“It’s being worked on. We don’t have an eta.”

So that’s… something. It’s the barest sliver of something, crossing the finish line to something-dom with one millisecond left on the clock, but it is definitely more than nothing. Fans were stunned after being fed a steady diet of nothing for years:

Valve Time being what it is, it’s impossible to say when a fix will defuse this shitty situation once and for all. Here’s hoping it comes sooner rather than later, or sooner rather than later-er given the whole, you know, three years thing.

Granted, this might be a problem embedded in CSGO‘s version of Valve’s Source engine, meaning that it requires full-blown surgery rather than a quick fix patch. That could be what’s taking so long, but I’m only speculating. Still, three years is enough time to make an entire new game. Whatever’s going on, it’s time for things to change.

You’re reading Steamed, Kotaku’s page dedicated to all things in and around Valve’s stupidly popular PC gaming service. Games, culture, community creations, criticism, guides, videos — everything. If you’ve found anything cool/awful on Steam, send us an email to let us know.