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From Bloober, the people that made Layers of Fear (which I'd been playing lately and got a plug for this on the game's library page)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2101 ... _New_Dawn/

It's a sci-fi survival horror game, using Unreal 5. I was only mildly interested, not really liking "survival" type games where you have to scrounge for every bullet etc. but when I saw there was a Linux native port, I was in.

So far it's going through dark, creepy houses and buildings searching for my predecessor and so far I haven't encountered much I wanted to screenshot, but at least one is obligatory. It's just some dark, creepy bio corruption. There's more screenshots at the Steam link.

These people make a pretty good game (and I like it so far) but we'll have to see how frustrating fighting monsters gets, having to scrounge and craft ammo and stuff.

I watched some of the video on the game's Steam page, looks good. I like those dark gloomy environments. Hopefully the survival aspect isn't endless waves of ever tougher enemies until you walk away

That is my concern, it's how most of these kinds of games end up for me. Ammo does seem scarce. If you find an ammo station on the wall, it will have like 2 ammo in it. At a "Workbench" terminal, you can buy pistol ammo but it costs $100 each! At first I thought it was for 6, but no, that was only what the terminal had in stock... it's sold by the each. (well, "Energy" is what the currency is called, that you pick up, and that's a lot of it for one shot )

I think there's more of a traversal aspect, I don't think they'll turn it into endless fighting. Then again, The Last of Us was too frustrating for me. I can fight, but any game where ammo is scarce usually puts me off.

I hope I can continue, as I too love the dark, creepy, trippy environments. This is the first time I've ever seen combat in one of their games. Well, "combat" by focusing a flashlight (hand held gaslight) on ghosts, but not guns.

... and Linux native Vulkan. That makes me want to like it. I don't think I've ever had a Linux port of an Unreal 5 game.

I was getting poor performance with the Linux port, so I switched to the Windows version with Proton. I had to install the vcrun2022 runtimes with winetricks though, for this one (actually I was too lazy to figure out all the variables so I did a quick and dirty "pipx install protontricks" for the --gui front end. It's good to have anyway... at least until Arch breaks it with a Python upgrade and I'll forget and have to fix it before using it again )

The game was also not returning some memory after quitting either, around 2 Gb gone from the pool. The kernel could probably swap that out, but it can't free it (because it doesn't know what it is). I've noticed that happening a lot more often with (crap) Linux ports of games, than wine gaming.

I had a pretty awful boss fight in an upper floor apartment in the building where I had to get to the time rift anomaly. It was this tall black creature with glowing boils to shoot, that kept coming out of the floor from a mass of slithering tentacles. I had found a note from my predecessor that said this new creature was vulnerable to fire, but you can only carry one flamethrower (torch) charge then you have to craft another one (unless there is a dispenser nearby... not). There were some flammable barrels and containers around the room to shoot, but it was easier said than done, luring it near them, without taking massive damage. So it was get the thing on fire, shoot the boils. Lather, rinse, repeat. Limited ammo, no automatic reload... it's click click click if you forget, and by that time I've been hurt too much.

Not only was the creature's attacks slowing me down and making it hard to stop getting pummeled (and hard to use a health injector), I had bad performance that wasn't helping. I finally got it, after several deaths, but after that I switched to the Windows DX12 version and performance is much better, completely smooth with the same (full) graphics settings.

I have time jumped, but now I'm stuck, having no idea where to find this key to open this Shelter, to find this Edward Wiezniewski

So like some of the Borderlands Linux ports?

Sounds similar to boss fights we've seen in the Borderlands games

Another reason I switched to the Windows version is that I'm considering a mod. The problem is that it's implemented with reshade which is a Windows exe overlay and doesn't work for Linux games, but can be installed in a wine prefix. It's called "Cronos The New Dawn fixes and cheats" at nexusmods. It has a god mode cheat, among many other things.

Alternatively, I could just install a simple mod that increases inventory slots. That's really the single, biggest problem in this game, not being able to carry enough resources. It starts you out with 6 slots, including guns and tools. So pistol, shotgun, bolt cutters (necessary for chain locked loot rooms and traversal), and you're fucked. Your suit can be upgraded, one extra slot at a time, but it costs "core" which is very scarce (and takes up a slot until you get to a workbench or stash box). One for the first, two for the second and then I'm all out of upgrades until more are unlocked, the workbenches are limited until later in the game. I've upgraded it twice but I can't carry enough stuff. One slot for ammo for each gun, a health injector, a torch charge, bolt cutters and I'm maxed. However, I'm leery of that mod because it hasn't been updated in 5 months. Still, it's just a drop-in of .pak archives and if they haven't changed anything that affects it, maybe it doesn't need an update.

It didn't feel like a Borderlands boss fight, it was more clumsy and awkward. I was trapped in an apartment suite (door locked behind me)

Well, I'm all set. Performance fixed by switching to the Windows version AND I dropped in two mods. That's another thing windows versions are better for, because wine will work around or ignore filesystem fuckery like mixed case, or messed up filenames (e.g. for one mod I had to create a directory named "~mods")

One mod for my pistol, it adds burn damage to the shots and x100 charge shot damage. It also reduces the charge shot time, seems less than a second. The author describes it as "can kill any enemies that not have plot armor". So it wouldn't one-shot an enemy like that boss I described because it's scripted to rise again 3 times, but it would probably down it instantly each shot. It's taking out the enemies I'm encountering in one shot, and burning their corpses at the same time. I just got ambushed in a basement in close quarters (a bunch of storage locker doors opened with infected enemies) and hardly took a scratch with that pistol, it was even igniting multiple enemies with each shot

Another mod that gives me 50 inventory slots (base number... upgrades add to that) so now I can carry all the ammo and keys and selling items ("valuable electronics") that I find.

That's what you get for making my game miserable, you cunts

The game is much more enjoyable now. I'm enjoying creeping around looking for shit, in places where creatures appear out of the floor, or the biomasses on the walls.

One implication I didn't realize for that pistol mod is that charged shots don't consume ammo. Now that I don't have to spend money on ammo or anything, I have enough to upgrade my gun at the workbench. Suit and torch need "cores" which are a rare find, but the guns take lots of money ("energy"). I got my gun's Firepower upgraded once, and charge shot speed upgraded twice (on top of the mod) and now it's almost instant. You can't hold it as long as you want, as soon as it's charged it fires.

The inventory slot mod also lets me carry as many Torch (flamethrower) shots as I want, I can craft them. The dispensers still won't open if you have one though. I have 3 of them now, but I don't need them anymore because my pistol does the burning. There is a certain type of biomatter blockage that the Torch shots burn for traversal, I haven't encountered one again yet (they are earlier in game in that timeline that I'm in) but I'd expect the pistol would burn those too.

I don't know why they had to make this game so miserable. Something I didn't know, until an update this past February, the game didn't even have an "easy" mode. Public outcry made them grudgingly add one, but it's just for the combat difficulty (which wasn't really that bad, it's the scarcity of and ridiculously limited inventory carrying)

Oh well, nexusmods to the rescue.

One lovely part of the game was this infested old hospital, where I had to find this Dr. Zybert (to extract his essence). I had to go through every room looking for keys, chemical agents and stuff and in one of the labs, I found a lovely pair of hands growing out of a puddle of biomass liquishit in a dissection tray

It's like that Michael Caine movie - "The Hand"

I remember that silly movie

Michael Caine was about the only good thing about it. He's still alive at 93.

This could come in handy

It's got like an arsehole at chest level that spews toxic bile. ("You will know bile and pain" she said lol!) This is Mother Eliza at the Abbey, all sanctimonious and shit. She's got some sort of telepathic voice, a horrible, witch-like voice that enunciates irritatingly, that messes with head and vision and stuff.

The second screenshot is after I killed her, it's a clearer image without the telesthetic effects (It was one of those boss fights where I had to keep destroying the pustules as they become active around the room while she spews toxic bile and spawns monsters from the biomatter etc.)

No, it wasn't the end of the game. Twice more after that, I thought it was nearing the end but there's more. Still not finished.


Now, I was thinking... this would make a handy dandy spokesperson for Donald Trump. It could supply applause, and spew toxic bile out its cakehole at the same time. He could fire his Nazi Barbie doll.

I actually was nearing the end this time, I finished it tonight. I'm glad to finish it at least once, because I kept thinking some update would come along and break my mods (without them, I'd not have played this for long... probably just long enough to miss the refund window lol). All that work, to make a game miserable. I'm glad I got to enjoy it my way. Traversal was the real challenge of the game. I can't imagine, say, having to pick up 4 statuette pieces, in hard to find areas, and not being able to carry them... having to make a trip back after each one etc.

Weird temporal mechanics with different timelines. The motivation was this woman, Weronika. See, I'm not really sent by "The Collective" to save humanity (they are long gone in this timeline), I'm just programmed that way to gather essences to stabilize Weronika. I was awoken unexpectedly, and used like this.

Anyway, I have a choice at the end, to spare The Warden/Pathfinder after I take him down (a one-shot boss fight with that pistol lol) or finish him and end the cycle. Sparing him and letting him disappear into a rift with Weronika (from a timeline where she's still herself) was the wrong choice. In the after-credits cinematics, the cycle just repeats again, with her getting infected and starting to turn, and The Pathfinder starting to do what he did before to try to save her. I'll probably go back to my last save and try the second ending.

I am actually "Weronika", one of his previous attempts from a different timeline lol

She looks very well armed