TyrianMollusk

Generally the control im talking about is whether or not I can continue to play the game.

Obviously, and I'm saying that's an extremely small amount of control, for which you give up a lot of other control to have.

"Straightforward" or not, it's well-trod territory, and devs don't do their homework on a doing a good job before putting games out. I don't just mean absurdly basic niceties like rebinding (which is frankly only difficult if your game input is built wrong), but mechanics like deadzones, trigger response handling, aim reticle behavior, and so on. All these are things I frequently need to adjust from outside of games, because we simply can't rely on developers to do quality work, nor to correct things afterward. Building new input schemes is also occasionally useful, eg Curse of the Dead Gods used a dumb weapon switching mechanic on controller, but I was able to build a more reasonable swap-button mechanic on top of it, and share it so anyone else running through Steam can load that config to play that way. It'd be nicer if devs listened and did it themselves, but they couldn't be bothered, even though they already built the kbm input to work the right way.

I've had one Steam game delicensed the past ten years or so, and I got it replaced later. I couldn't easily count the number of games I've changed in one way or another, but I've got a couple thousand hours playing controller in a game with no support whatsoever, so the control I have over my how games play seems a pretty big deal ;) Off-Steam, there was Ubisoft taking The Crew away from owners. How's your physical copy of that running for you? Oh, right, it doesn't run for anyone, at least aside from PC people working on modding in replacement servers.

I'm just saying, there's a lot more to it all than "game runs".

It's funny to talk about "keeping control" because you can put a disk in a device that completely locks down every aspect of the game environment. PC offers generally way more control over games, allows more games, etc.

And there's GOG to buy from if one doesn't want Steam's potential ability to delicense a purchase, but I'd be playing games through Steam either way because of it's ability to tweak and rebuild controller handling for each game. I'm picky and a lot of game devs are sloppy about how they handle controllers, so having that extra control over the experience is a major plus to me.

Raksasi is not so much about elemental effects as it is about spacing and good core action. It's also a fantastic game with a lot of value.

Doubling down on not finding anything because you're not looking so there's nothing worth looking for isn't very compelling. 2024 wasn't as strong a showing as 2023, but Exhuma, Cuckoo, It’s What’s Inside, and Krazy House say it's not a full dud either.

Seems your eye doesn't see very far.

• Exhuma 2024 KOR
• Cuckoo 2024
• It's What's Inside 2024
• Late Night with the Devil 2024
• Oddity 2024
• Krazy House 2024
• Beezel 2024
• Abigail 2024
• Lisa Frankenstein 2024
• Succubus 2024 RUS

Note: Haven't seen Nosferatu or Smile 2 yet. Also, I've seen some call You'll Never Find Me as a 2024 movie. If one includes that, it goes very high on our list.

• Nioh 2
• Witchfire
• Devil Slayer Raksasi
• Curse of the Dead Gods
• Metal Mutation
• Cavity Busters
• Waves (free, but still)
• BlazBlue Entropy Effect
• 30XX
• Nova Drift
• Quantum Protocol
• Deep Rock Galactic
• Hellsinker
• Twin Ruin
• Devader
• Arboria
• Bloody Spell
• Aura of Worlds

Also, if he's a bit of a tinkerer, he might be interested in trying shooters using gyro+flick-stick, which he probably didn't have access to before. Witchfire, Deep Rock Galactic, and Deadlink can readily play that way once set up in Steam Input. Some games you only need to set up the gyro-to-mouse and flick-stick, whereas others (eg Vermintide 2) you have to map the entire controller manually.

Combat Complex

Twin-stick shooter against various bugs and robots with some ARPG gearing, and the action here is fantastically tight with probably three key factors:

• Enemies target you but hit each other, so you manage their attacks to help your fighting instead of just staying out of trouble.
• "Frenzy" orb pickups, which act a bit like combo meter fuel except instead of chaining hits you make frequent choices about whether an orb drop is worth chasing, keeping you close to danger.
• Instant gun switching with overheating instead of reloading, so you fight hard and switch constantly between your three guns to keep any one from overheating while getting the best out of their specific properties.

I play a lot of twin-stick and top-down shooters, and this does a great job mixing the arcade twin-stick feel of high intensity fending off a swarm with tactical top-down dungeon crawling elements, and it's just really special feeling to play. The core action feels not just well designed but like it was made just for me, and I'm genuinely glad someone made it (or is making it, since it's early access). Plus, it's extraction style instead of being a roguelite, so you're always right at the best action while still getting procedural levels, to keep runs a little different.

If this added itch.io it'd be a fantastic filler for managing all the non-DRM off-Steam stuff.

You ain’t got to buy the game on there, you can get codes at other retailers

You actually can't buy the vast majority of Steam games elsewhere. 18,800 games released new this year on Steam. Do you know any legit retailers that even sell 18,000 games total?

It's something I've been noticing with all the routine seasonal complaining about sales on Steam not being worth looking at anymore... Sure, I don't only buy from Steam, but I do buy more from Steam than elsewhere, because those games--good games--just are not other places to be bought. So on the one hand, I see a lot of value from Steam sales and people shouldn't dis them so out of hand, but on the other, yeah Steam clearly controls the market. And that's not even getting into how Steam deliberately reduces the value-to-the-devs of your off-Steam purchases, so buying elsewhere keeps your purchase and reviews from helping the dev earn much needed Steam visibility.

So it's far from as simple as "You can just buy codes elsewhere".

Combat Complex

Twin-stick shooter against various bugs and robots with some ARPG gearing, and the action here is fantastically tight with probably three key factors:

• Enemies target you but hit each other, so you manage their attacks to help your fighting instead of just staying out of trouble.
• "Frenzy" orb pickups, which act a bit like combo meter fuel except instead of chaining hits you make frequent choices about whether an orb drop is worth chasing, keeping you close to danger.
• Instant gun switching with overheating instead of reloading, so you fight hard and switch constantly between your three guns to keep any one from overheating while getting the best out of their specific properties.

I play a lot of twin-stick and top-down shooters, and this does a great job mixing the arcade twin-stick feel of high intensity fending off a swarm with tactical top-down dungeon crawling elements, and it's just really special feeling to play. The core action feels not just well designed but like it was made just for me, and I'm genuinely glad someone made it (or is making it, since it's early access). Plus, it's extraction style instead of being a roguelite, so you're always right at the best action while still getting procedural levels, so each run is a little different.

the EA is also missing a lot of content that isn’t ready yet

Sure, but there's also plenty to explore, especially for people who haven't played PoE1 and have to learn how things work from scratch. Given you don't pay extra for EA and premium stuff like stash space you buy goes to both PoE1 and 2, you get quite a bit for your early access ticket.

But probably more important that early access characters and stuff aren't available out of early access, so you are explicitly playing temp characters. Fine if one treats their early/seasonal characters as temp characters anyway, but someone else might not want to play characters with no future after early access.