T w e n t y S i d e d

I complained about this game when it was first showcased at E3 last year. At the time I didn’t like it because it looked like a lazy copy of the cinematic Avengers with all of the charisma and wit drained out of it. The action looked stilted and scripted. It had a bad case of too many quicktime events, not enough player expression.

But hey, this was just a first impression, right? This is an E3 showcase, so of course they’re going to lean into the more cinematic sections of the game. Star Wars™ Jedi: Fallen Order™ EA™ looked pretty uninspired at E3, and that game turned out great.

But then as the previews began I saw that my initial concerns were just small potatoes compared to the real problems:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Marvel’s Avengers: Ew, No Thanks”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Last week I expressed appreciation for the turnaround that No Man’s Sky has experienced. I talked about how I was able to add a few mods to the game and have a really good time. A few people wanted to know what mods I was using. So let’s talk about that.

Modding NMS isn’t hard by the standards of PC modding, but it is a little more involved than finding something on the Steam Workshop and hitting “subscribe”.

How to Mod

If you’re a frequent modder then you probably already use the mod Nexus and already have the Vortex Mod Manager installed. That program downloads, installs, and manages mods for over 1,000 games. If you’re seriously into the modding scene, then Vortex is the way to go. If you’re already a Vortex user then you don’t need my help and you can skip to the numbered list below.

I recommend using Vortex, but I’ll be the first to admit there’s a non-trivial setup overhead and a bit of a learning curve. If you’re just looking to install a couple of mods for one particular game, then you probably don’t want to mess around with all of that. To sum up,:

Option 1: Use Vortex, which has a long setup time but afterward offers one-click installs for all mods.

OR:

Option 2: Install stuff manually, which is easy to get started but can get a little technical. You need to be comfortable manually shuffling files around and editing the occasional settings file.

So here’s how to install NMS mods the manual way…

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “No Mod’s Sky”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

You might remember that last week I enjoyed another round of mockery at the expense of No Man’s Sky. It’s become something of an annual-ish tradition around here. In this case, the application exhibited baffling windows behaviors that forced me to track down and edit settings files to get the thing to start.

Then in the comments of that same post, Mephane listed some mods that really improved the game.

Wait, modding NMS is a thing? I never even looked. This game is obviously using an extremely idiosyncratic custom engine and I sort of assumed that modding would be impossible. 

But as it turns out, there are lots of mods for No Man’s Sky. Sadly, this is an unfortunate time for me to revisit the game.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “A Whole New Sky”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.