Gamestonk. Gamestop. GME. My thoughts are on Reddit, under my u/martinshkreli & subreddit martinshkreli. Those are authentic and discuss why GME is one of the most unprecedented events in market history. Here, I'm going to discuss the populist attitude that is creeping into this odd situation and add some thoughts on short-selling in general.
Let's cover my own unique angle on the concept of a 'short squeeze'. Most would define it as an erratic upward change in price driven by short-covering. I believe short-squeezes defined this way are usually a fictitious idee fixe that aggregates a number of discrete market behaviors and dynamics into a convenient and pithy moniker. The image of python-like buyer constricting some hapless speculator into a higher stock price is evocative but misleading. Many knew me as a short-selling specialist on Wall Street, focused on 'binary events' of biotech stocks. I think I've seen it all: I was once short more than 75% of a company's shares outstanding (I do not recommend this). I bought 75% of a company on the open market, etc.
Short-sellers are governed by the same market dynamics as longs. They get nervous when positions go against them and consider exiting. Like longs, they can double down if they wish. The only difference is that, of course, short positions grow when stocks rise. And they can rise infinitely, while long positions fall asymptotically to zero. But both get, theoretically and assuming no fundamental changes have occurred, more attractive as they move against the trader.
Short sellers have to pay borrow fees to longs (typically tiny, but sometimes massive). They have to locate stock to short, again usually easy, but sometimes difficult. Both are perilous when those rare adverse times arise. Why? Despite the possibility of a growing cost of renting stock, the ultimate fear of a short-seller is a "buy-in". It is nightmarish and has only happened to me once or twice, excluding options-related activity. A buy-in occurs when a broker decides to forcibly exit the short position on behalf of the trader because the broker and trader cannot secure the 'locate' which is supposed to underlie the short sale. The buy-in order is typically violently disruptive: a market order for the whole position near the closing hours of the market! The SEC published a list of stocks at risk of buy-in: the fail to deliver list.
My point is that a 'short squeeze' can only practically affect the trader for two reasons. The first is that the trader digs in, doubles down and doesn't exit as his position grows. That's bad trading, and will eventually blow the trader up. But, if the stock is a 'good short', that short will be replaced by more traders with stronger hands/a better entry price/smaller position. What's more is the average investor can't tell if this is happening! The second is the buy-in. I haven't heard GME shorts being bought in, but again, how would you know, other than the grapevine? My point is most of the disruptive, exciting trading here is simply long speculators banging away at the stock.
New longs are sometimes attracted to rising prices, speculating they'll increase further: that's called momentum. Those buyers are typically offset by the existing longs who are excited to exit at higher prices. But, if there is a large short position in the stock, a speculator may feel that those covering (buying to get out) short-sellers will provide additional fuel to the momentum. That's sometimes the case, but higher prices should lead to more supply from both long and short sellers. My feeling is the actions of large long holders probably have more influence on the stock price than shorts who dart in and out, and typically in smaller size. Remember that shorts who capitulate are often just replaced by new shorts who are attracted at the new lunar prices.
In essence, 'short squeezes' become a self-fulfilling prophecy as new long investors pile in trying to 'squeeze' this sometimes phantom of a short seller, and existing long investors may hold off selling for the same reason. With some Popperian skepticism you will easily see that the same dynamic can exist without the short boogeyman, or with a short boogeyman of any size. Speaking of which, where is Chanos and his slavish groupie, Carson Block?
Speculative momentum can occur for any reason. Let's not forget that the 'trapping shorty' strategy is an awkward idea for a few reasons. Short sellers are often sophisticated market participants who are betting on the decline of a stock. You usually don't want these type of traders sniffing around your favorite longs: I recall writing a 'short report' on a stock to watch it fall 50% that day. If you do a study of stock returns of highly shorted stocks, they are pretty awful. The reason there is 'no arbitrage' is the borrow rate.
But even if you got this poor short to capitulate and squeeze, the amount of buyers who are now holding stock at absurdly high prices put way more energy (and money) into the stock than the short seller's white towel ever could. A sledgehammer killed the fly: now what? Alternatively, are you the host or the parasite?
On populism. I don't really think most investors or speculators should go into any investment thinking that there is 'an enemy'. Concentrated (big) investments (bets) give rise to emotional behavior, typically the enemy in trading and investing as it clouds rational thinking. It's a lot better to be Socratic with your 'opponent' and understand what they're thinking. If your position were to be half the size it currently is, would you be as emotionally interested? Try it! You'll lower your risk and feel better.
Some of the behavior going on at WSB sounds more jihadist than speculative. The idea that there are some investors who are 'good' and others who are 'bad', or that there is an 'establishment' is BS. Everyone has the same goal: I have a pile of money, I'm trying to make it bigger, fuck your pile--I don't care about it. Anything other goal is contrived, foolish and won't help you win. You can't 'fight the rich' by trying to become one of them. Don't you see the irony? A related thought experiment: what if this trade continued to work really well? And another, and another? Then some WSBers are billionaires. Aren't they the new 'enemy/establishment?'
Who do you think hedge fund managers are? They're typically the anti-establishment. Things have changed a bit, but the most successful HFMs are actually the WSBers of the past. These are guys who didn't fit in well at i-banks, often got kicked out for having big mouths or not wearing the right ties, or just wanting to wear jeans at work and not fill out TPS reports. When they started their firms, people like Soros, Icahn, Steinhardt, Robertson, Cohen, Griffin, Loeb (who has posted anonymously on boards), Samberg, even Cramer were fish out of water and had very tiny amounts of capital, often begging for investors.
The need for an enemy. To sustain increasingly insane behavior, it isn't uncommon to use a straw man or a scapegoat. Oppressive regimes used this technique in the past, and the media uses it today. Retail investors don't have much power individually. With your $5k RH account, you can't day trade or even qualify for margin. It's pitiful. So, it's understandably quite exciting to finally feel like a 'player' that you read about. To be a part of 'something'. The problem is the media is goading you to be somewhere between a lemming and a life-agnostic but impotent jihadist. Blowing yourself up won't impress anyone, and there is no afterlife here, other than a minimum wage career and mom's sofa. GME and shorting in general is small potatos in the scheme of the Wall St. machine. Don't worry about getting 'even' with the rich. That's jousting at a windmill that will waste your energy.
No one here, hopefully, wants to be a lemming. Those willing to 'die on this hill' have to realize something: Wall Street doesn't care about its speculators. The new traders who vanquish the old simply replace them. Nothing changes. When LTCM blew up, or Amaranth, Visium, Galleon, or anyone else, it is 'out with the old and in with the new'. So, perhaps WSB can blow up 1 hedge fund or maybe 5, but so what? Eventually, the tables will turn and it will blow up. The leveraged, fast-money trading markets are a violent place and the only people who care one whit are the brokers charging fees (directly or indirectly). They only care to make sure the sorry carcasses can pay their bills. They know there will always be another speculator lined up, ready to shove his money into the lotto machine. There is no pride here. There is no credit for being a good solider. You either survive or you don't. Your job is to survive and thrive. Becoming a lemming will guarantee failure as per the statistical truism of gambler's ruin (enjoy the proof in measure theory). With enough time, anyone playing a game with <50% success rate (equal payouts), will lose all their money. Get that number above 50%. Add the Kelly Criterion to your trading strategy.
You might ask, "(that's all well and good OR we'll agree to disagree) but, Mr. Shrek, isn't this a good trading strategy? (ganging up on shorted stocks)?" As long as you're not a lemming/jihadist (willing to walk over the cliff, whether or not you have a "cause"), and you ignore a somewhat slimy ethical/market manipulation question, I don't see anything wrong with it. There are better ways to make money, since you're asking. Stoking (or worse, participating in) a buying frenzy that is akin to a forced musical chairs game is a little crazy. Once a stock is absurdly valued, you're just hoping the sell-off doesn't happen while you're holding it. If you have enough lemmings or jihadists 'helping you', that's a good thing. They will hold your bag--someone needs to.
Of course, if you've found the "next" Microsoft or Apple, no one needs to hold any bags. But, no company can increase its objective (aka fair) value quickly enough for this... phenomenon? situation? absurdity?... to make it reasonable. Those things take years, go slow and steady, and this frenzied buying/"short squeeze" phenomenon won't let value play a factor. That's why WSB GME longs have shifted theses from "well, Gamestop was/is cheap" to "the gaming cycle" to "Ryan Cohen will save us" to "...jihad?!"
Each member of the herd has its own financial parameters, too. Some may have $500, some $50,000,000 or more. Some may be willing to lose their entire stake (and even more) on an out-of-the-money or levered trade. Some are not. Some were in the latter and somehow end up in the former. Some are in one column at one price and another column at another--some are switched from column to column by force. Today's lemmings/jihadists are tomorrow's sellers. When you're hanging off the mountain, pay attention to the guy holding the rope.
Loosely 'coordinated' buying can certainly affect stocks. Heavily shorted stocks and small cap stocks are the kind that require less capital than typical to 'move' a stock. The irony here is when putting on a position, the trader's goal is typically NOT to move the stock with his actions!
I still think GME is wildly overvalued, but that doesn't exactly mean I'm 'bearish'. One funny idea here is reflexivity: GME stockholders may become serious GME customers and the company's fundamentals improve that way! Excluding some such miracle, eventually GME stock will trade at <50 again. I still think it will trade at 1,000 or more BEFORE that happens, and that the decline process will take a long, long time (several years). Keep in mind, anything can change. GME can do serial secondaries that destroy its stock. Management's job is to create value for their shareholders--but perhaps they will avoid pissing them off. There's a strange loop! Finally, the stock could be halted by the SEC or completely banned by brokers. Don't overdo it. Watch the borrow rate. Keep your positions at less than 25% of your capital--live to play another day.
Disclosure: I've never traded GME stock and do not intend to.
(From martin, posted by mo)

Gamestonk. Gamestop. GME. My thoughts are on Reddit, under my u/martinshkreli & subreddit martinshkreli. Those are authentic and discuss why GME is one of the most unprecedented events in market history. Here, I'm going to discuss the populist attitude that is creeping into this odd situation and add some thoughts on short-selling in general.
Let's cover my own unique angle on the concept of a 'short squeeze'. Most would define it as an erratic upward change in price driven by short-covering. I believe short-squeezes defined this way are usually a fictitious idee fixe that aggregates a number of discrete market behaviors and dynamics into a convenient and pithy moniker. The image of python-like buyer constricting some hapless speculator into a higher stock price is evocative but misleading. Many knew me as a short-selling specialist on Wall Street, focused on 'binary events' of biotech stocks. I think I've seen it all: I was once short more than 75% of a company's shares outstanding (I do not recommend this). I bought 75% of a company on the open market, etc.
Short-sellers are governed by the same market dynamics as longs. They get nervous when positions go against them and consider exiting. Like longs, they can double down if they wish. The only difference is that, of course, short positions grow when stocks rise. And they can rise infinitely, while long positions fall asymptotically to zero. But both get, theoretically and assuming no fundamental changes have occurred, more attractive as they move against the trader.
Short sellers have to pay borrow fees to longs (typically tiny, but sometimes massive). They have to locate stock to short, again usually easy, but sometimes difficult. Both are perilous when those rare adverse times arise. Why? Despite the possibility of a growing cost of renting stock, the ultimate fear of a short-seller is a "buy-in". It is nightmarish and has only happened to me once or twice, excluding options-related activity. A buy-in occurs when a broker decides to forcibly exit the short position on behalf of the trader because the broker and trader cannot secure the 'locate' which is supposed to underlie the short sale. The buy-in order is typically violently disruptive: a market order for the whole position near the closing hours of the market! The SEC published a list of stocks at risk of buy-in: the fail to deliver list.
My point is that a 'short squeeze' can only practically affect the trader for two reasons. The first is that the trader digs in, doubles down and doesn't exit as his position grows. That's bad trading, and will eventually blow the trader up. But, if the stock is a 'good short', that short will be replaced by more traders with stronger hands/a better entry price/smaller position. What's more is the average investor can't tell if this is happening! The second is the buy-in. I haven't heard GME shorts being bought in, but again, how would you know, other than the grapevine? My point is most of the disruptive, exciting trading here is simply long speculators banging away at the stock.
New longs are sometimes attracted to rising prices, speculating they'll increase further: that's called momentum. Those buyers are typically offset by the existing longs who are excited to exit at higher prices. But, if there is a large short position in the stock, a speculator may feel that those covering (buying to get out) short-sellers will provide additional fuel to the momentum. That's sometimes the case, but higher prices should lead to more supply from both long and short sellers. My feeling is the actions of large long holders probably have more influence on the stock price than shorts who dart in and out, and typically in smaller size. Remember that shorts who capitulate are often just replaced by new shorts who are attracted at the new lunar prices.
In essence, 'short squeezes' become a self-fulfilling prophecy as new long investors pile in trying to 'squeeze' this sometimes phantom of a short seller, and existing long investors may hold off selling for the same reason. With some Popperian skepticism you will easily see that the same dynamic can exist without the short boogeyman, or with a short boogeyman of any size. Speaking of which, where is Chanos and his slavish groupie, Carson Block?
Speculative momentum can occur for any reason. Let's not forget that the 'trapping shorty' strategy is an awkward idea for a few reasons. Short sellers are often sophisticated market participants who are betting on the decline of a stock. You usually don't want these type of traders sniffing around your favorite longs: I recall writing a 'short report' on a stock to watch it fall 50% that day. If you do a study of stock returns of highly shorted stocks, they are pretty awful. The reason there is 'no arbitrage' is the borrow rate.
But even if you got this poor short to capitulate and squeeze, the amount of buyers who are now holding stock at absurdly high prices put way more energy (and money) into the stock than the short seller's white towel ever could. A sledgehammer killed the fly: now what? Alternatively, are you the host or the parasite?
On populism. I don't really think most investors or speculators should go into any investment thinking that there is 'an enemy'. Concentrated (big) investments (bets) give rise to emotional behavior, typically the enemy in trading and investing as it clouds rational thinking. It's a lot better to be Socratic with your 'opponent' and understand what they're thinking. If your position were to be half the size it currently is, would you be as emotionally interested? Try it! You'll lower your risk and feel better.
Some of the behavior going on at WSB sounds more jihadist than speculative. The idea that there are some investors who are 'good' and others who are 'bad', or that there is an 'establishment' is BS. Everyone has the same goal: I have a pile of money, I'm trying to make it bigger, fuck your pile--I don't care about it. Anything other goal is contrived, foolish and won't help you win. You can't 'fight the rich' by trying to become one of them. Don't you see the irony? A related thought experiment: what if this trade continued to work really well? And another, and another? Then some WSBers are billionaires. Aren't they the new 'enemy/establishment?'
Who do you think hedge fund managers are? They're typically the anti-establishment. Things have changed a bit, but the most successful HFMs are actually the WSBers of the past. These are guys who didn't fit in well at i-banks, often got kicked out for having big mouths or not wearing the right ties, or just wanting to wear jeans at work and not fill out TPS reports. When they started their firms, people like Soros, Icahn, Steinhardt, Robertson, Cohen, Griffin, Loeb (who has posted anonymously on boards), Samberg, even Cramer were fish out of water and had very tiny amounts of capital, often begging for investors.
The need for an enemy. To sustain increasingly insane behavior, it isn't uncommon to use a straw man or a scapegoat. Oppressive regimes used this technique in the past, and the media uses it today. Retail investors don't have much power individually. With your $5k RH account, you can't day trade or even qualify for margin. It's pitiful. So, it's understandably quite exciting to finally feel like a 'player' that you read about. To be a part of 'something'. The problem is the media is goading you to be somewhere between a lemming and a life-agnostic but impotent jihadist. Blowing yourself up won't impress anyone, and there is no afterlife here, other than a minimum wage career and mom's sofa. GME and shorting in general is small potatos in the scheme of the Wall St. machine. Don't worry about getting 'even' with the rich. That's jousting at a windmill that will waste your energy.
No one here, hopefully, wants to be a lemming. Those willing to 'die on this hill' have to realize something: Wall Street doesn't care about its speculators. The new traders who vanquish the old simply replace them. Nothing changes. When LTCM blew up, or Amaranth, Visium, Galleon, or anyone else, it is 'out with the old and in with the new'. So, perhaps WSB can blow up 1 hedge fund or maybe 5, but so what? Eventually, the tables will turn and it will blow up. The leveraged, fast-money trading markets are a violent place and the only people who care one whit are the brokers charging fees (directly or indirectly). They only care to make sure the sorry carcasses can pay their bills. They know there will always be another speculator lined up, ready to shove his money into the lotto machine. There is no pride here. There is no credit for being a good solider. You either survive or you don't. Your job is to survive and thrive. Becoming a lemming will guarantee failure as per the statistical truism of gambler's ruin (enjoy the proof in measure theory). With enough time, anyone playing a game with <50% success rate (equal payouts), will lose all their money. Get that number above 50%. Add the Kelly Criterion to your trading strategy.
You might ask, "(that's all well and good OR we'll agree to disagree) but, Mr. Shrek, isn't this a good trading strategy? (ganging up on shorted stocks)?" As long as you're not a lemming/jihadist (willing to walk over the cliff, whether or not you have a "cause"), and you ignore a somewhat slimy ethical/market manipulation question, I don't see anything wrong with it. There are better ways to make money, since you're asking. Stoking (or worse, participating in) a buying frenzy that is akin to a forced musical chairs game is a little crazy. Once a stock is absurdly valued, you're just hoping the sell-off doesn't happen while you're holding it. If you have enough lemmings or jihadists 'helping you', that's a good thing. They will hold your bag--someone needs to.
Of course, if you've found the "next" Microsoft or Apple, no one needs to hold any bags. But, no company can increase its objective (aka fair) value quickly enough for this... phenomenon? situation? absurdity?... to make it reasonable. Those things take years, go slow and steady, and this frenzied buying/"short squeeze" phenomenon won't let value play a factor. That's why WSB GME longs have shifted theses from "well, Gamestop was/is cheap" to "the gaming cycle" to "Ryan Cohen will save us" to "...jihad?!"
Each member of the herd has its own financial parameters, too. Some may have $500, some $50,000,000 or more. Some may be willing to lose their entire stake (and even more) on an out-of-the-money or levered trade. Some are not. Some were in the latter and somehow end up in the former. Some are in one column at one price and another column at another--some are switched from column to column by force. Today's lemmings/jihadists are tomorrow's sellers. When you're hanging off the mountain, pay attention to the guy holding the rope.
Loosely 'coordinated' buying can certainly affect stocks. Heavily shorted stocks and small cap stocks are the kind that require less capital than typical to 'move' a stock. The irony here is when putting on a position, the trader's goal is typically NOT to move the stock with his actions!
I still think GME is wildly overvalued, but that doesn't exactly mean I'm 'bearish'. One funny idea here is reflexivity: GME stockholders may become serious GME customers and the company's fundamentals improve that way! Excluding some such miracle, eventually GME stock will trade at <50 again. I still think it will trade at 1,000 or more BEFORE that happens, and that the decline process will take a long, long time (several years). Keep in mind, anything can change. GME can do serial secondaries that destroy its stock. Management's job is to create value for their shareholders--but perhaps they will avoid pissing them off. There's a strange loop! Finally, the stock could be halted by the SEC or completely banned by brokers. Don't overdo it. Watch the borrow rate. Keep your positions at less than 25% of your capital--live to play another day.
Disclosure: I've never traded GME stock and do not intend to.
(From martin, posted by mo)

Hey all...I've been pretty exhaustively trying all the current streaming services. I know this is a Stadia group but I thought if anyone out there is curious about what the experience is like on other services, perhaps you could benefit from a layman's experience using each service and trying to make it my "main" service. Like I said, I'm a layman, not a professional reviewer, so there's a lot of things I'm still learning, but having tried all three of the major services, here's my thoughts.
Edit: Please bear in mind this is not an exhaustive list, just some thoughts based on a couple of months of on and off testing. I'm certainly not trying to sway or influence anyone's purchasing decisions, just giving some general thoughts that might help when trying to decide which service to look into. I know not everyone can get ahold of / rush out and buy all of the devices I have listed here - I happen to work for a tech company so I have a lot more devices floating around than most other people. Your mileage, of course, may vary!
I know there's also Steam Link, but since that requires you to have a PC capable of playing the game in the house somewhere, I'm not considering that a streaming service.
Testing Devices:

• ChromeCast Ultra (Stadia Only)
• iPad Pro 2020
• Asus G14
• Pixel 2 XL (xCloud only)
• iPhone 12 Pro Max (Stadia only)
• nVidia Shield (GeForce Now only)
• Samsung Galaxy Chromebook (Stadia only)

Amazon Luna

Notable Games: Control, lots of highly rated indie titles (Blasphemous, Bloodstained, Iconoclasts)
To be fair, I only have about 6 hours on Amazon Luna, but they've been pretty excruciating. My wifi averages about 75-90 MBps, and about half of the games I tried suffered from lag and graphical smear, mostly the Ubisoft+ games. The indie games played fabulously well. Luna is probably the service I have the least to say about. It's $6 a month for Luna on it's own, so it's kindof like the "also-ran" effort - it's cheap, but might be the most forgettable of the bunch. The user interface is better than GeForce Now, worse than Stadia, and unlike Stadia it doesn't seem like Luna can be enhanced with browser extensions.
I have Ubisoft+, so I tried to play Immortal: Fenyx Rising on Luna and it was absolutely horrible. Smeared graphics, dropped frames, input lag, the works. It was the only experience across all of the big three services that was literally unplayable. This seemed to be a problem only with the Ubisoft games, however, I have to stress.
Pros

• Netflix-style game selection, with lots of indie titles you don't see many other places. Control is the only standout AAA title, and it looks and plays fantastically. Indie games were great too.
• Integration with Ubisoft+ is seamless and the games just become part of your library.
• Twitch integration is pretty cool - nice to see streamers who are playing the game live when you jump into the game page.
• Runs in the browser but also has dedicated apps - a plus for me.
• Luna is probably the best service for Twitch streamers - it's integrated right into the UI. I don't stream so I wasn't able to test it, but it seems pretty easy.

Cons

• Seems to be in Early Access, so I literally don't know anyone else who has gotten an invite.
• The pro of having niche indie games is offset by the con of not having a wide game selection. Of all the services, seems like Luna has the least, but broadest, selection.
• Seeing an ad for Luna, WHILE PLAYING LUNA, was irrationally annoying. Amazon just can't freaking help themselves I guess.
• I signed up for Luna fully expecting to play all of my games claimed through Prime Gaming...literally none of those games are available.
• If there's a way to find Luna from the main Amazon home page, they've hid it pretty well. I'm sure it's buried in one of their dozens of menus but I could not for the life of me find a quick and easy way to get to Luna from Amazon dotcom.
• This is a very minor point, but Amazon Luna ONLY works on Chrome, while Google Stadia works in either Chrome or Edge Browser (since it's built on Chromium). Probably doesn't make a difference for most people, but to me Edge seems to run better, so I'm docking a point.

GeForce Now

Notable Games: Cyberpunk 2077, Control, Immortals: Fenix Rising, Metro series, Destiny 2 (all paid)
I picked up an nVidia Shield specifically for GeForce now, but my wife and I have ended up using it primarily for Kodi and to watch Netflix more than playing any games on it. I'll just say it straight out - GeForce Now sucks ass. It's a broken, shoddy, inconsistent mess. It's actually WORSE on the Shield than it is on PC, because there are so many times when I needed a keyboard to do anything. I tried playing Immortals: Fenyx Rising on GFN on my Shield which required me to log into Ubisoft+. I'm fine with that, since you only have to do it once...but using the Shield remote that came with my Shield, the on-screen keyboard never popped up, forcing me to track down a second keyboard from in my garage and plug in. After I plugged in the physical keyboard....THEN the onscreen keyboard popped up and just mirrored what I pressed on the physical keyboard. What? Why?
Games are all over the place as well. Witcher 3 was a nightmare - every time you try to play the game, it wants to install the DLC packs onto whatever virtual machine you've been assigned. Then when you can play, it dips so far under 30 fps it's literally better to just play it on a budget PC with Hairworks off.
Plus the Shield ain't cheap - it was like $200 at Best Buy, and didn't include a controller. $100 more gets you a Series S, and $100 LESS gets you a Stadia-enabled Chromecast WITH a solid as hell controller, just for comparison's sake.
Pros

• Raytracing, I guess. Control looks great?
• Links with Steam, GOG, and Epic, so you keep your games if the service goes down at some point in the future. Also technically "cheaper" overall than Stadia cos you can find cheap keys online or Steam sales (which seem to be more frequent than Stadia sales) and still get the game in your GeForce Now.
• GFN seems to have the widest selection of enabled games. Not all that impressive since you have to own the game already, but this does give it somewhat of an advantage.
• Links to Epic library, which is cool. 80% of my games on Epic were not GFN enabled, which is not as cool.

Cons

• Literally the hardest of the big three services to use. Not a "pick up and play" experience. Requires a lot of effort to get working, and even then, inconsistent across platforms.
• Even on nVidias own hardware, it can be tricky to figure out what games actually are on GeForce Now and which aren't and get them running right.
• Some games just don't play well. Witcher 3 is a buggy, low framerate mess...while Control is smooth as butter. No rhyme or reason as to why. I couldn't get Mankind Divided to play full-screen - it always wanted to play in a window.
• Since you're just running a virtual machine, you still have to fiddle with graphical settings. Some games don't look right when first started, and you have to remember to go into the settings and change things to match whatever screen you're on.
• Twice I still had to wait in a queue to play even though I paid for the Founder's subscription. Insanely frustrating.
• One hour limit to gameplay if you don't pay for the Founder's subscription, and you're stuck waiting in a queue. There were times where I was in a queue of over 300, which translated to upwards of 18 minutes one session, waiting to play. I would go as far as to say, if you don't pay for Founder's, don't bother with GFN at all.
• Also, just because I don't have anywhere else to put this, Ubisoft's Cloud Save system is atrocious. This isn't nVidia's fault, I just want to complain about it.

Google Stadia

Notable Games: Cyberpunk 2077 (paid), Hitman: World of Assassination (Pro), Destiny 2 (Pro), Red Dead Redemption II (Paid)
Stadia is easily the best overall, but it still has its cons. I came to Stadia thanks to Cyberpunk 2077 so I have the most hours played on Stadia of the big three services. Stadia on the Chromecast Ultra seems to me to be the hands down best way to play streamed games currently.
Of all the services, Stadia was the one that felt the least like a "me-too" service and more like a dedicated platform. Almost all of the other services felt like a way for corporations to dip their toe in the water and figure out if there's money to be made, while Stadia feels like someone who really grasps and cares about gaming is at the helm.
Pros

• Least barrier to entry. Download Chrome or Edge Browser, grab any bluetooth controller, and you're off the races.
• No subscription required. You can play any game purchased on Stadia without a subscription with no queue system, no picking a virtual machine, no Steam big picture mode...it's just, hit the Play button and go.
• This is a big one for me - seems to have the best "capture" integration. Though, the iOS / Android app could use work (just let me download the image and share it? Why do I need to share a link?) overall, sharing your snaps and vids is pretty easy on Stadia.
• Playing with the Stadia controller on my TV after picking up a Chromecast Ultra felt like magic.
• Similarly, being able to "pick up and play" games like Cyberpunk 2077 on a Chromebook felt similarly magical. The game looked its best, believe it or not, on a Samsung Chromebook that I tested at Best Buy. Random side note but the Google guy at Best Buy was SO EXCITED that I wanted to check out Stadia on a Chromebook. He was over the moon.
• The game selection for Pro does have some interesting titles that I wouldn't have picked up otherwise. But see Con 1 below.

Cons

• The game selection for Stadia Pro is a tad lackluster at the moment. Definitely enough to keep me playing, but there wasn't really a "must have" title that jumped out at me. Bunch of average, quite playable titles
• The game selection for purchases is a little thin as well, seeing as how the service is over a year old at this point. I know it’s on literally every other platform but I would have loved to do a second play through of Control on Stadia, and stuff like Horizon: Zero Dawn, Hades, even some older indie titles like Transistor or Pyre, some of the Lego games...
• UI seems like an complete afterthought, which is a little weird since this is a Google product. This is solved a little bit by extensions like Stadia Enhanced, but that's a third party fix so I'm still listing it as a con. No search? Captures seem deprecated?
• Probably the highest "cost" to play, since you have to buy the games outright, and sales seem few and far between. If Stadia just vanishes at some point (which, let's be fair, Google has a track record of doing with their services) they haven't really outlined what happens to your library.
• No raytracing yet. Not really a con for me personally, but other services offer it.
• This may just be a bug but I'm listing it as a con - a number of times the Stadia homepage just wouldn't load. I was left staring at the Stadia logo wondering what was going on for minutes at a time. I'd have to close out of the browser and restart. Not sure if that's an issue with Chrome, but it seemed to happen on Edge browser as well.
• Stadia-specific versions of games. Now, hear me out - usually this is a PRO not a con, but in Stadia’s case it seems to be a con as making a wholly new build of a game for a specific platform probably just isn’t in the cards for a lot of developers. That could be what’s slowing down a lot of games coming to Stadia - the time and money required to build a new version of the game. Hopefully we see some “Stadia first” games that will convince other developers to jump on board.

Xbox Game Pass / Game Pass Unlimited / Gold / Live / Play Anywhere / xCloud / Whatever it's being called these days

Notable Games: Nier: Automata BAG Edition, Dragon Quest XI S, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect Andromeda
Xbox Game Pass gets added to this list on a pure technicality.
So, technically Xbox Game Pass isn't a streaming service, but I include it because on Android, there actually is a "cloud" option for playing your console Game Pass library. The Cloud streaming works surprisingly well, but you're limited to either an Android tablet or phone because it doesn't seem to work properly on Android TV. I've heard you can sideload onto the nVidia Shield, but that was beyond the scope of what I was trying to accomplish with these reviews...I just want something I can pick up and play. So, yeah if you don't mind playing on your phone, Game Pass Cloud is actually probably the best of the bunch in terms of ease of use and game selection. There are so many things I want to play on Game Pass it's actually a little overwhelming. However, I don't want to stare at a 5" screen for hours to do so.
Pros

• Wide game selection with lots of games being added every month (almost every week, seems like)
• Broad game selection - seems to be some standouts from just about every game genre. I know this seems like a repeat of point one, but they're very different things - it's one thing to just throw a ton of games on your service, its another to make sure you're representing every genre out there, which Game Pass seems to do more admirably than any other service.
• Streaming seems to work just fine. I was able to play Dragon Quest: Inquisition on my Android phone with very little issue. Couple of times the connection dropped, but it was no better or worse than Stadia.
• It seems like services are stumbling all over themselves to get included in Game Pass.

Cons

• Again, inconsistent experience. Offerings are different on console than on PC...why is Torchlight III a console exclusive? Why are all the good games pushed to console and cloud, with PC being an afterthought?
• Games seem to come and go randomly - some popular games pop up for a few months and are gone, other seemingly niche titles have been on the service since launch
• Probably the biggest con - no streaming on PC, iOS, or Android TV. Baffling choice. Maybe there's business reasons I'm not aware of, but as a user, it's maddening.
• Minor point, but good lord Microsoft needs to simplify EVERYTHING related to Xbox. No one can figure out what the hell service we have when I try to talk to people about it - there's Game Pass, but there's also Games with Gold, then there's Live, then there's Game Pass Ultimate, but there's also Play Anywhere, which isn't really a service, just some sort of cross-play, And the number of times people thought I have a Series X when I actually have a One X was insanely frustrating as well. I know this doesn't have anything to do with the service, but jeez man why is everything Microsoft does so haphazard?

Whew! I actually had way more to say on this topic than I thought, I guess. I've probably spent more time and energy on this than I should have, but working from home has given me a lot of time on my hands, so hopefully my experiences can help save someone else some time and effort. Would love some counterpoints as well!

In the late 1980s and early 1990s when I was a young teen growing up in far North Austin, it was a popular custom for many boys in the neighborhood to assemble at the local Stop-N-Go after school on a regular basis for some Grand Champion level tournaments in Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. The collective insistence of our mothers and fathers to get out of the house, get some exercise, and refrain from playing NES or Sega on the television only led us to seek out more video games at the convenience store down the road. Much allowance and lunch money was spent as well as hours that should have been devoted to homework among the 8 or 9 regular boys in attendance, often challenging each other to 'Best of 5' matches. I myself played Dhalsim and SubZero, and not very well, so I rarely ever made it to the 5th match. The store workers frequently kicked us out for the day only to have us return when they weren't working the counter anymore if not the next day.
There is something about that which has been lost in the present day. While people can today download the latest games on Steam or PSN or in the app store on your smartphone, you can't just find arcade games in stores and restaurants like you used to be able to. And so the fun of a spontaneous 8 or 10 person multiplayer video game tournament has been confined to places like bars, pool halls, Pinballz or Dave&Busters.
But in truth it was that ubiquity of arcade video games, how you could find them in any old 7-11 or Laundromat, which is what killed the original arcades of the early 1980s before the Great Crash of 1983 when home video game consoles started to catch up to what you saw in the arcade.
I was born in the mid 1970s so I missed out on Pong. I was kindergarten age when the Golden Age of Arcade Games took place in the early 1980s. There used to be a place called Skateworld on Anderson Mill Road that was primarily for roller skating but had a respectable arcade in its own right. It was there that I honed my skills on the original Tron, Pac Man, Galaga, Pole Position, Defender, and so many others. In the 1980s I remember visiting all the same mall arcades as others in my age group. There was Aladdin's Castle in Barton Creek Mall, The Gold Mine in Highland, and another Gold Mine in Northcross which was eventually renamed Tilt. Westgate Mall also had an arcade but being a north austin kid I never went there until later in the mid 1990s. There were also places like Malibu Grand Prix and Showbiz Pizza and Chuck-E-Cheeze, all of which had fairly large arcades for kids which were the secondary attraction.
If you're of a certain age you will remember Einsteins and LeFun on the Drag. They were there for a few decades going back way before the Slacker era. Lesser known is that the UT Student Union basement used to have an arcade that was comparable to either or both of those places. Back in the pre-9/11 days it was much easier to sneak in if you even vaguely looked like you could be a UT student.
But there was another place I was too young to have experienced called Smitty's up further north on 183 at Lake Creek in the early 1980s. I never got to go there but I always heard about it from older kids at the time. It was supposed to have been two stories of wall to wall games with a small snack bar. I guess at the time it served a mostly older teen crowd from Westwood High School and for that reason younger kids my age weren't having birthday parties there. It wasn't around very long, just a few years during the Golden Age of Arcades.
It is with almost-forgotten early arcades like that in mind that I wanted to share with y'all some examples of places from The Golden Age of the Video Arcade in Austin using some old Statesman articles I've found. Maybe someone of a certain age on here will remember them. I was curious what they were like, having missed out by being slightly too young to have experienced most of them first hand. I also wanted to see the original reaction to them in the press. I had a feeling there was some pushback from school/parent/civic groups on these facilities showing up in neighborhood strip malls or next to schools, and I was right to suspect. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First let's list off some places of interest. Be sure to speak up if you remember going to any of these, even if it was just for some other kid's birthday party. Unfortunately some of the only mentions about a place are reports of a crime being committed there, such as our first few examples.
Forgotten Arcade #1
Fun House/Play Time Arcade - 2820 Guadalupe
June 15, 1975

ARCADE ENTHUSIASM
A gang fight involving 20 30 people erupted early Saturday morning in front of an arcade on Guadalupe Street. The owner of the Fun House Arcade at 282J Guadalupe told police pool cues, lug wrenches, fists and a shotgun were displayed during the flurry. Police are unsure what started the fisticuffs, but one witness at the scene said it pitted Chicanos against Anglos. During the fight the owner of the arcade said a green car stopped at the side of the arcade and witnesses reported the barrel of a shotgun sticking out. The crowd wisely scattered and only a 23-year-old man was left lying on the ground. He told police he doesn't know what happened.

March 3, 1976

ARCADE ROBBED
A former employee of Play Time Arcade, 2820 Guadalupe, was charged Tuesday in connection with the Tuesday afternoon robbery of his former business. Police have issued a warrant for the arrest of Ronnie Magee, 22, of 1009 Aggie Lane, Apt. 306. Arcade attendant Sam Garner said he had played pool with the suspect an hour before the robbery. He told police the man had been fired from the business two weeks earlier. Police said a man walked in the arcade about 2:45 p m. with a blue steel pistol and took $180. Magee is charged with first degree aggravated robbery. Bond was set on the charge at $15,000.

First it was called Fun House and then renamed Play Time a year later. I'm not sure what kind of arcade games beyond Pong and maybe Asteroids they could have had at this place. The peak of the Pinball craze was supposed to be around 1979, so they might have had a few pinball machines as well. A quick search of youtube will show you a few examples of 1976 video games like Death Race. The location is next to Ken's Donuts where PokeBowl is today where the old Baskin Robbins location was for many years.
Forgotten Arcade #2
Green Goth - 1121 Springdale Road
May 15, 1984

A 23-year-old man pleaded guilty Monday to a January 1983 murder in East Austin and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Jim Crowell Jr. of Austin admitted shooting 17-year-old Anthony Rodriguez in the chest with a shotgun after the two argued outside the Green Goth, a games arcade at 1121 Springdale Road, on Jan. 23, 1983. Crowell had argued with Rodriguez and a friend of Rodriguez at the arcade, police said. Crowell then went to his house, got a shotgun and returned to the arcade, witnesses said. When the two friends left the arcade, Rodriguez was shot Several weeks ago Crowell had reached a plea bargain with prosecutors for an eight-year prison term, but District Judge Bob Perkins would not accept the sentence, saying it was shorter than sentences in similar cases. After further plea bargaining, Crowell accepted the 15-year prison sentence.

I can't find anything else on Green Goth except reports about this incident with a murder there. There is at least one other report from 1983 around the time of Crowell's arrest that also refer to it as an arcade but reports the manager said the argument started over a game of pool. It's possible this place might have been more known for pool.
Forgotten Arcades #3 & #4
Games, Etc. - 1302 S. First St
Muther's Arcade - 2532 Guadalupe St
August 23, 1983

Losing the magic touch - Video Arcades have trouble winning the money game
It was going to be so easy for Lawrence Villegas, a video game junkie who thought he could make a fast buck by opening up an arcade where kids could plunk down an endless supply of quarters to play Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Asteroids. Villegas got together with a few friends, purchased about 30 video games and opened Games, Etc. at 1302 S. First St in 1980. .,--.... For a while, things, went great Kids waited in line to spend their money to drive race cars, slay dragons and save the universe.
AT THE BEGINNING of 1982, however, the bottom fell out, and Villegas' revenues fell from $400 a week to $25. Today, Games, Etc. is vacant Villegas, 30, who is now working for his parents at Tony's Tortilla Factory, hasn't decided what he'll do with the building. "I was hooked on Asteroids, and I opened the business to get other people hooked, too," Villegas said. "But people started getting bored, and it wasn't worth keeping the place open. In the end, I sold some machines for so little it made me sick."
VILLEGAS ISNT the only video game operator to experience hard times, video game manufacturers and distributors 'It used to be fairly common to get $300 a week from a machine. Now we rarely get more than $100 .
Pac-Man's a lost cause. Six months ago, you could resell a Pac-Man machine for $1,600. Now, you're lucky to get $950 if you can find a buyer." Ronnie Roark says. In the past year, business has dropped 25 percent to 65 percent throughout the country, they say. Most predict business will get even worse before the market stabilizes. Video game manufacturers and operators say there are several reasons for the sharp and rapid decline: Many video games can now be played at home on television, so there's no reason to go to an arcade. The novelty of video games has worn off. It has been more than a decade since the first ones hit the market The decline can be traced directly to oversaturation or the market arcade owners say. The number of games in Austin has quadrupled since 1981, and it's not uncommon to see them in coin-operated laundries, convenience stores and restaurants.
WITH SO MANY games to choose from, local operators say, Austinites be came bored. Arcades still take in thousands of dollars each week, but managers and owners say most of the money is going to a select group of newer games, while dozens of others sit idle.
"After awhile, they all seem the same," said Dan Moyed, 22, as he relaxed at Muther's Arcade at 2532 Guadalupe St "You get to know what the game is going to do before it does. You can play without even thinking about it" Arcade owners say that that, in a nutshell, is why the market is stagnating.
IN THE PAST 18 months, Ronnie Roark, owner of the Back Room at 2015 E. Riverside Drive, said his video business has dropped 65 to 75 percent Roark, . who supplied about 160 video games to several Austin bars and arcades, said the instant success of the games is what led to their demise. "The technology is not keeping up with people's demand for change," said Roark, who bought his first video game in 1972. "The average game is popular for two or three months. We're sending back games that are less than five months old."
Roark said the market began dropping in March 1982 and has been declining steadily ever since. "The drop started before University of Texas students left for the summer in 1982," Roark said. "We expected a 25 percent drop in business, and we got that, and more. It's never really picked up since then. - "It used to be fairly common to get $300 a week from a machine. Now we rarely get more than $100. 1 was shocked when I looked over my books and saw how much things had dropped."
TO COMBAT THE slump, Roark said, he and some arcade owners last year cut the price of playing. Even that didn't help, he said. Old favorites, such as Pac-Man, which once took in hundreds of dollars each week, he said, now make less than $3 each. "Pac-Man's a lost cause," he said. "Six months ago, you could resell a Pac-Man machine for $1,600. Now, you're lucky to get $950 if you can find a buyer." Hardest hit by the slump are the owners of the machines, who pay $3,500 to $5,000 for new products and split the proceeds with the businesses that house them.
SALEM JOSEPH, owner of Austin Amusement and Vending Co., said his business is off 40 percent in the past year. Worse yet, some of his customers began returning their machines, and he's having a hard time putting them back in service. "Two years ago, a machine would generate enough money to pay for itself in six months,' said Joseph, who supplies about 250 games to arcades. "Now that same machine takes 18 months to pay for itself." As a result, Joseph said, he'll buy fewer than 15 new machines this year, down from the 30 to 50 he used to buy. And about 50 machines are sitting idle in his warehouse.
"I get calls every day from people who want to sell me their machines," Joseph said. "But I can't buy them. The manufacturers won't buy them from me." ARCADE OWNERS and game manufacturers hope the advent of laser disc video games will buoy the market Don Osborne, vice president of marketing for Atari, one of the largest manufacturers of video games, said he expects laser disc games to bring a 25 percent increase in revenues next year. The new games are programmed to give players choices that may affect the outcome of the game, Os borne said. "Like the record and movie industries, the video game industry is dependent on products that stimulate the imagination," Osborne said "One of the reasons we're in a valley is that we weren't coming up with those kinds of products."
THE FIRST of the laser dis games, Dragonslayer and Star Wan hit the market about two months ago. Noel Kerns, assistant manager of The Gold Mine Arcade in Northcross Mall, says the new games are responsible for a $l,000-a-week increase in revenues. Still, Kerns said, the Gold Mine' total sales are down 20 percent iron last summer. However, he remain optimistic about the future of the video game industry. "Where else can you come out of the rain and drive a Formula One race car or save the universe?" hi asked.
Others aren't so optimistic. Roark predicted the slump will force half of all operators out of business and will last two more years. "Right now, we've got a great sup ply and almost no demand," Roark said. "That's going to have to change before things get- significantly better."

Well there is a lot to take from that long article, among other things, that the author confused "Dragonslayer" with "Dragon's Lair". I lol'd.
Anyone who has been to Emo's East, formerly known as The Back Room, knows they have arcade games and pool, but it's mostly closed when there isn't a show. That shouldn't count as an arcade, even though the former owner Ronnie Roark was apparently one of the top suppliers of cabinet games to the area during the Golden Era. Any pool hall probably had a few arcade games at the time, too, but that's not the same as being an arcade.
We also learn from the same article of two forgotten arcades: Muthers at 2522 Guadalupe where today there is a Mediterranean food restaurant, and another called Games, Etc. at 1302 S.First that today is the site of an El Mercado restaurant. But the article is mostly about showing us how bad the effects were from the crash at the end of the Golden Era. It was very hard for the early arcades to survive with increasing competition from home game consoles and personal computers, and the proliferation of the games into stores and restaurants.
Forgotten Arcades #5 #6 & #7
Computer Madness - 2414 S. Lamar Blvd.
Electronic Encounters - 1701 W Ben White Blvd (Southwood Mall)
The Outer Limits Amusements Center - 1409 W. Oltorf
March 4, 1982

'Quartermania' stalks South Austin
School officials, parents worried about effects of video games
A fear Is haunting the video game business. "We call it 'quartermania.' That's fear of running out of quarters," said Steve Stackable, co-owner of Computer Madness, a video game and foosball arcade at 2414 S. Lamar Blvd. The "quartermania" fear extends to South Austin households and schools, as well. There it's a fear of students running out of lunch money and classes to play the games. Local school officials and Austin police are monitoring the craze. They're concerned that computer hotspots could become undesirable "hangouts" for students, or that truancy could increase because students (high-school age and younger) will skip school to defend their galaxies against The Tempest.
So far police fears have not been substantiated. Department spokesmen say that although more than half the burglaries in the city are committed by juveniles during the daytime, they know of no connection between the break-ins and kids trying to feed their video habit But school and parental worries about misspent time and money continue. The public outcry in September 1980 against proposals to put electronic game arcades near two South Austin schools helped persuade city officials to reject the applications. One proposed location was near Barton Hills Elementary School. The other was South Ridge Plaza at William Cannon Drive and South First Street across from Bedlchek Junior High School.
Bedichek principal B.G. Henry said he spoke against the arcade because "of the potential attraction it had for our kids. I personally feel kids are so drawn to these things, that It might encourage them to leave the school building and play hookey. Those things have so much compulsion, kids are drawn to them like a magnet Kids can get addicted to them and throw away money, maybe their lunch money. I'm not against the video games. They may be beneficial with eye-hand coordination or even with mathematics, but when you mix the video games during school hours and near school buildings, you might be asking for problems you don't need."
A contingent from nearby Pleasant Hill Elementary School joined Bedichek in the fight back in 1980, although principal Kay Beyer said she received her first formal call about the games last Week from a mother complaining that her child was spending lunch money on them. Beyer added that no truancy problems have been related to video game-playing at a nearby 7-11 store. Allen Poehl, amusement game coordinator for Austin's 7-11 stores, said company policy rules out any game-playing by school-age youth during school hours. Fulmore Junior High principal Bill Armentrout said he is working closely with operators of a nearby 7-1 1 store to make sure their policy is enforced.
The convenience store itself, and not necessarily the video games, is a drawing card for older students and drop-outs, Armentrout said. Porter Junior High principal Marjorie Ball said that while video games aren't a big cause of truancy, "the money (spent on the games) is a big factor." Ball said she has made arrangements with nearby businesses to call the school it students are playing the games during school hours. "My concern is that kids are basically unsupervised, especially at the 24-hour grocery stores. That's a late hour for kids to be out. I would like to see them (games) unplugged at 10 p.m.," adds Joslin Elementary principal Wayne Rider.
Several proprietors of video game hot-spots say they sympathize with the concerns of parents and school officials. No one under 18 is admitted without a parent to Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre at 4211 S. Lamar. That rule, says night manager David Dunagan, "keeps it from being a high school hangout. This is a family place." Jerry Zollar, owner of J.J. Subs in West Wood Shopping Center on Bee Cave Road, rewards the A's on the report cards of Eanes school district students with free video games. "It's kind of a community thing we do in a different way. I've heard from both teachers and parents . . . they thought this was a good idea," said Zollar.
Electronic Encounters in Southwood Mall last year was renovated into a brightly lit arcade. "We're trying to get away from the dark, barroom-type place. We want this to be a place for family entertainment We won't let kids stay here during school hours without a written note from their parents, and we're pretty strict about that," said manager Kelly Roberts. Joyce Houston, who manages The Outer Limits amusements center at 1409 W. Oltorf St. along with her husband, said, "I wouldn't let my children go into some of the arcades I've visited. I'm a concerned parent, too. We wanted a place where the whole family could come and enjoy themselves."

Well you can see which way the tone of all these articles is going. There were some crimes committed at some arcades but all of them tended to have a negative reputation for various reasons. Parents and teachers were very skeptical of the arcades being in the neighborhoods to the point of petitioning the City Government to restrict them. Three arcades are mentioned besides Chuck-E-Cheese. Electronic Encounters in Southwood Mall, The Outer Limits amusements center at 1409 W. Oltorf, and Computer Madness, a "video game and foosball arcade" at 2414 S. Lamar Blvd.
Forgotten Arcade #8
Smitty's Galaxy of Games - Lake Creek Parkway
February 25, 1982

Arcades fighting negative image
Video games have swept across America, and Williamson and Travis counties have not been immune. In a two-part series, Neighbor examines the effects the coin-operated machines have had on suburban and small-town life.
Cities have outlawed them, religious leaders have denounced them and distraught mothers have lost countless children to their voracious appetites. And still they march on, stronger and more numerous than before. A new disease? Maybe. A wave of invading aliens from outer space? On occasion. A new type of addiction? Certainly. The culprit? Video games. Although the electronic game explosion has been mushrooming throughout the nation's urban areas for the past few years, its rippling effects have just recently been felt in the suburban fringes of North Austin and Williamson County.
In the past year, at least seven arcades armed with dozens of neon quarter-snatchers have sprung up to lure teens with thundering noises and thousands of flashing seek-and-destroy commands. Critics say arcades are dens of iniquity where children fall prey to the evils of gambling. But arcade owners say something entirely different. "Everybody fights them (arcades), they think they are a haven for drug addicts. It's just not true," said Larry Grant of Austin, who opened Eagle's Nest Fun and Games on North Austin Avenue in Georgetown last September. "These kids are great" Grant said the gameroom "gives teenagers a place to come. Some only play the games and some only talk.
In Georgetown, if you're from the high school, this is it." He said he's had very few disturbances, and asks "undesirables" to leave. "We've had a couple of rowdies. That's why I don't have any pool tables they tend to attract that type of crowd," Grant said.
Providing a place for teens to congregate was also the reason behind Ron and Carol Smith's decision to open Smitty's Galaxy of Games on Lake Creek Parkway at the entrance to Anderson Mill. "We have three teenage sons, and as soon as the oldest could drive, it became immediately apparent that there was no place to go around here," said Ron, an IBM employee who lives in Spicewood at Balcones. "This prompted us to want to open something." The business, which opened in August, has been a huge success with both parents and youngsters. "Hundreds of parents have come to check out our establishment before allowing their children to come, and what they see is a clean, safe environment managed by adults and parents," Ron said. "We've developed an outstanding rapport with the community." Video arcades "have a reputation that we have to fight," said Carol.
Kathy McCoy of Georgetown, who last October opened Krazy Korner on Willis Street in Leander, agrees. "We've got a real good group of kids," she said. "There's no violence, no nothing. Parents can always find their kids at Krazy Korner."
While all the arcade owners contacted reported that business is healthy, if not necessarily lucrative, it's not as easy for video entrepreneurs to turn a profit as one might imagine. A sizeable investment is required. Ron Smith paid between $2,800 and $5,000 for each of the 30 electronic diversions at his gameroom.
Grant said his average video game grosses about $50 a week, and his "absolute worst" game, Armor Attack, only $20 a week. The top machines (Defender and Pac-Man) can suck in an easy $125 a week. That's a lot of quarters, 500 to be exact but the Eagle's Nest and Krazy Korner pass half of them on to Neelley Vending Company of Austin which rents them their machines. "At 25 cents a shot, it takes an awful lot of people to pay the bills," said Tom Hatfield, district manager for Neelley.
He added that an owner's personality and the arcade's location can make or break the venture. The game parlor must be run "by an understanding person, someone with patience," Hatfield said. "They cannot be too demanding on the kids, yet they can't let them run all over them." And they must be located in a spot "with lots of foot traffic," such as a shopping center or near a good restaurant, he said. "And being close to a school really helps." "Video games are going to be here permanently, but we're going to see some operations not going because of the competition," which includes machines in virtually every convenience store and supermarket, Hatfield said.

This article talks about three arcades. One in Georgetown called Eagles Nest, another in Leander called Krazy Korner, and a third called Smitty's Galaxy of Games on Lake Creek Parkway "on the fringes of North Austin". This is the one I remember the older kids talking about when I was a little kid. There was once a movie theater across the street from the Westwood High School football stadium and behind that was Smitty's. Today I think the building was bulldozed long ago and the space is part of the expanded onramp to 183 today. Eventually another unrelated arcade was built next to the theater that became Alamo Lakeline. It was another site of some unrecorded epic Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat tournaments in the 90s.
But the article written before the end of the Golden Era tell us much about the pushback I was talking about earlier. Early arcades were seen as "dirty" places in some circles, and the owners of the arcades in Williamson County had to stress how "clean" their establishments were. This other article from a couple of weeks later tells of how area school officials weren't worried about video games and tells us more arcades in Round Rock and Cedar Park. Apparently the end of the golden age lasted a bit longer than usual in this area.
At some point in the next few years the bubble burst, and places like Smitty's were gone by the late 80s. But the distributors quoted earlier were right that arcade games weren't going completely away. In the mid 1980s LeFun opened up next in the Scientology building at 2200 Guadalupe on the drag. Down a few doors past what used be a coffee shop and a CVS was Einsteins Arcade. Both of those survived into the 21st century. I remember the last time I was at Einsteins I got my ass beat in Tekken by a kid half my age. heheh
That's all for today. There were no Bonus Pics in the UT archive of arcades (other than the classical architectural definition). I wanted to pass on some Bonus newspaper articles (remember to click and zoom in with the buttons on the right to read) about Austin arcades anyway but first a small story.
I mentioned earlier the secret of the UT Student Union. I have no idea what it looks like now but in the 90s there was a sizable arcade in with the bowling alley in the basement. Back in 1994 when I used to sneak in, they featured this bizarre early attempt at virtual reality games. I found an old Michael Barnes Statesman article about it dated February 11, 1994. Some highlights:

Hundreds of students and curiosity-seekers lined up at the University of Texas Union to play three to five minutes of Dactyl Nightmare, Flying Aces or V-Tol, three-dimensional games from Kramer Entertainment. Nasty weather delayed the unloading of four huge trunks containing the machines, which resemble low pulpits. Still, players waited intently for a chance to shoot down a fighter jet, operate a tilt-wing Harrier or tangle with a pterodactyl. Today, tickets will go on sale in the Texas Union lobby at 11:30 a.m. for playing slots between noon and 6 p.m.
Players, fitted with full helmets, throttles and power packs, stood on shiny gray and yellow platforms surrounded by a circular guard rail. Seen behind the helmet's goggles were computer simulated landscapes, not unlike the most sophisticated video games, with controls and enemies viewed in deep space. "You're on a platform waiting to fight a human figure," said Jeff Vaughn, 19, of Dactyl Nightmare. "A pterodactyl swoops down and tries to pick you up. You have to fight it off. You are in the space and can see your own body and all around you. But if you try to walk, you have to use that joy stick to get around."
"I let the pterodactyl carry me away so I could look down and scan the board," said Tom Bowen of the same game. "That was the way I found out where the other player was." "Yeah, it's cool just to stand there and not do anything," Vaughn said. The mostly young, mostly male crowd included the usual gaming fanatics, looking haggard and tense behind glasses and beards. A smattering of women and children also pressed forward in a line that snaked past the lobby and into the Union's retail shops.
"I don't know why more women don't play. Maybe because the games are so violent," said Jennifer Webb, 24, a psychology major whose poor eyesight kept her from becoming a fighter pilot in real life. "If the Air Force won't take me, virtual reality will." "They use stereo optics moving at something like 60 frames a second," said computer science major Alex Aquila, 19. "The images are still pretty blocky. But once you play it, you'll want to play it again and again." With such demand for virtual reality, some gamesters wondered why an Austin video arcade has not invested in at least one machine.

The gameplay looked like this.
Bonus Article #1 - "Video fans play for own reasons" (Malibu Grand Prix) - March 11, 1982
Bonus Article #2 - "Pac-Man Cartridge Piques Interest" - April 13, 1982
Bonus Article #3 - "Video Games Fail Consumer" - January 29, 1984
Bonus Article #4 - "Nintendoholics/Modems Unite" - January 25, 1989
Bonus Article #5 and pt 2 "Two girls missing for a night found at arcade" (truly dedicated young gamers) - August 7, 2003

Game Information

Game Title: Watch Dogs: Legion
Platforms:

• PlayStation 4 (Oct 29, 2020)
• Xbox One (Oct 29, 2020)
• PC (Oct 29, 2020)
• Google Stadia (Oct 29, 2020)

Trailers:

• Watch Dogs: Legion: Opening Hours Gameplay | Ubisoft [NA]
• Watch Dogs: Legion: First Gameplay Details and Play As Anyone Explained | Ubisoft [NA]
• Watch Dogs: Legion: E3 2019 Gameplay Walkthrough | Ubisoft [NA]
• Watch Dogs: Legion: E3 2019 Official World Premiere Trailer | Ubisoft [NA]

Publisher: Ubisoft
Review Aggregator:
OpenCritic - 75 average - 62% recommended - 91 reviews

Critic Reviews

3DNews - Алексей Лихачев - Russian - 9 / 10

Watch Dogs: Legion doesn't have the main protagonist, instead we have a city full of oppressed and tired people with their own stories. Other than that this is the usual Watch Dogs game and fans of the first two should be pleased with what it can offer.

ACG - Jeremy Penter - Wait for Sale

Video Review - Quote not available

Ars Technica - Kyle Orland - Unscored

In the end, the London of Watch Dogs: Legion feels a mile wide but only a few feet deep. What promises to be endless variety in character choice and hack-driven gameplay options quickly boils down to the repetition of the same old gameplay and plot tropes.

Attack of the Fanboy - Diego Perez - 3.5 / 5 stars

Watch Dogs: Legion is incredibly ambitious, but the play as anyone system needs a little more work. The story suffers from the lack of a central protagonist, and it's hard to get attached to any of your characters when the character models and animations are stiff and robotic. Still, there's a lot of fun to be had in futuristic London.

BaziCenter - Bahram Bigharaz - Persian - 6.5 / 10

After so much anticipation, Watch Dogs: Legion is finally here, failing to impress. Almost every single problem that prevented the 2 previous version to reach their full potential is still there, and the ability to play as all NPCs added even more issues to the game. Yes, the world is beautiful and you have all the freedom that you want, but as a game, Watch Dogs Legion is shallow and suffers from poor level and character design. A strong contender for the most disappointing game of the year.

Bazimag - Vahid Zohrabi Nejad - Persian - 5.6 / 10

Watch Dogs Legion is yet another open-world game like other Ubisoft's games, full of great ideas, but in action, they don't have enough depth and don't perform well in general. A soulless world with poor level designs and exhausting missions make a graveyard for the series's real potential.

COGconnected - Michael Chow - 75 / 100

Overall, Watch Dogs: Legion is a fun game with a nifty new mechanic that can be utilized in different ways in the future.

Cerealkillerz - Manuel Barthes - German - 8 / 10

Until now the story of Watch Dogs was an up and down, which doesn't change that much in Watch Dogs: Legion. The energy that went into the unique recruiting mechanic leaves a lot missing in the actual game world and the story, which makes the trip to london a bit cloudy, classic british.

Cheat Code Central - Jon Gronli - 5 / 5

Even though Watch Dogs Legion already gives you an impressive amount to do as well as a lot of options on how to do it, it’s still going to be growing. I can’t wait to see what’s coming next and how It is going to affect what’s already in place. I’m also looking forward to the multiplayer component, which I’m more than willing to write about when it comes out. So, come on. Join the resistance.

Console Creatures - Luke Williams - Recommended

Watch Dogs: Legion's Play as Anyone is an exciting mechanic and post-Brexit Britain is easily the best setting yet. However, Watch Dog: Legion's brilliance is hidden behind a fair amount of smog.

Critical Hit - Darryn Bonthuys - 7.5 / 10

Watch Dogs: Legion is a fascinating game, massively ambitious and crawling with technology that isn't just on the bleeding edge of what's possible, it's pure magic to see unfold. All of that may sound impressive but slick software and a bustling metropolis of people power can't hide the dull gameplay and shallow approach to the sandbox shenanigans of Watch Dogs: Legion. It's still a fascinating game to experience in short bursts, and it's going to be fascinating to see how Ubisoft evolves London to make it vox pop as a next-gen headliner.

Daily Star - 4 / 5 stars

One that is very English, packed full of wild and interesting characters, each with their own story to tell.
It’s a huge step forward in that regard and one that should be celebrated as it shows a way forward for video game development.

Digital Trends - Tom Caswell - 2.5 / 5 stars

While Ubisoft presents its best open world to date, the main gameplay hook falls flat.

Digitally Downloaded - Trent P - 4 / 5 stars

What players will find when picking up Watch Dogs: Legion is a game that is prepared for a long post-launch game-as-a-service experience. The additional DLC announced so far leans into the strengths of the game and established ideas that the series does well. The beekeepers, paintball guns and magician tricks all bring a sense of playful humour to the series, but it is worth noting that anyone who is (rightfully) tired of Ubisoft's content approach to games is going to find this one a very content-driven game.

DualShockers - Ben Bayliss - 7.5 / 10

Watch Dogs: Legion offers an incredibly vast recruitment system that wonderfully complements its hacking mechanics while boasting the darkest story in the series.

EGM - Michael Goroff - 8 / 10

Watch Dogs: Legion pushes through Ubisoft's generally noncommittal attitude towards storytelling and exploiting current events to create something that feels like a genuine shift, or at least the prototype of that shift. It might be a sloppy game in many regards, but Legion offers a novel way to experience an open world, with its interconnected NPCs and the introduction of permadeath to the genre.

Enternity.gr - Panagiotis Petropoulos - Greek - 8 / 10

Watch Dogs: Legion is much better in terms of depth and hacking and also comes with a huge living world. It's by far the best game of the series.

Everyeye.it - Alessandro Bruni - Italian - 7.6 / 10

Ultimately, while perfectly able to offer players a good number of hours of fun, Watch Dogs Legion fails to fully realize the potential of its basic concept, yielding to the flattery of an open world model that, at the end of the console generation, loudly requires more innovation.

GAMES.CH - Benjamin Braun - German - 89 / 100

Watch Dogs Legion mostly benefits from its rich game world in futuristic London. It's also fun to build a whole army of DedSec agents, using their special abilities within fight and stealth sequences or utilizing them on solving puzzles. It's not all roses concerning story or performance on current-gen consoles. Nonetheless it's the best part of Ubisoft's open-world hacker series so far.

GRYOnline.pl - Michał Grygorcewicz - Polish - 7.5 / 10

I had really low expectations and Watch Dogs: Legion turned out to be a pleasant surprise. It’s a decent action game with some cool ideas and mechanics that yield several dozens of hours of fun, prvided you like wandering around virtual cities doing the same thing over and over again.

Gadgets 360 - Akhil Arora - 8 / 10

Watch Dogs: Legion lacks a soul. It's also a passive game, since there's no active push-and-pull. Albion took over London, and now you push them out one borough at a time.

Game Informer - Marcus Stewart - 9 / 10

Legion offers a refreshing and fun change-up to the Watch Dogs formula that succeeds in letting players forge their own path like never before

Game Revolution - Paul Tamburro - 4 / 5 stars

Watch Dogs: Legion‘s beautiful London and its array of recruitable denizens make it one of the most enjoyable games of the year.

GameMAG - Александр Логинов - Russian - 7 / 10

On the one hand Watch Dogs: Legion is a revolutionary game with ambitious open world and thousands upon thousands of characters, probably created by some kind of neural network. The gameplay is fine, and if you love original Watch Dogs, you will feel right at home with this new title. But on the other hand Legion clearly lacks a strong narrative lead.

GameOnAUS - Royce Wilson - Recommended

There are some fantastic ideas in the game which mostly work, but also require an element of metaphorically ignoring the stagehands and the suspension of disbelief may simply be too much for many players.

GamePro - Hannes Rossow, Markus Schwerdtel - German - 79 / 100

Watch Dogs: Legion relies on a unique concept that offers many possibilities, but for which many compromises are also made.

GameSkinny - Mark Delaney - 8 / 10 stars

Watch Dogs: Legion throws out a decade of Ubisoft's cluttered-map open worlds in favor of exciting systems that deliver unique emergent moments consistently.

GameSpot - Alessandro Fillari - 8 / 10

Watch Dogs: Legion struggles with tone at times, but its empowering message about unity and justice still shines in a game that is as absurd as it is impactful.

GameZone - Cade Onder - 6 / 10

While it has its moments, Watch Dogs Legion doesn't have enough to feel like a fun place to escape to. The gameplay is too repetitive and too restrictive to allow for anything tremendously exciting over a long period of time. It's a game that shows all of its tricks within the first few hours and leaves you with nothing but jank for the remainder of your playthrough.

Gameblog - Rami Bououd - French - 7 / 10

Watch Dogs Legion is a fun title with interesting and clever gameplay.

Gamerheadquarters - Jason Stettner - 7.8 / 10

Watch Dogs: Legion is great, it features an intricately detailed open world London to explore where you can recruit basically anyone though the story could have been more intriguing and the performance while driving could have been better.

Gamersky - 不倒翁蜀黍 - Chinese - 8.5 / 10

Watch Dogs: Legion is the most ambitious and innovative one in the franchise. You can play as anyone and finish your job in any way. The open-world of future London is so beautiful and so well-crafted that I always can find something interesting to do.

GamesRadar+ - Alex Avard - 3.5 / 5 stars

Legion royally shakes up Watch Dogs' open-world template with a Play as Anyone mechanic that just about outweighs any headaches left by its rough edges.

GamingBolt - Shubhankar Parijat - 9 / 10

Watch Dogs: Legion is definitely the best game in the series so far- and dare I say, one of the most engaging and inventive open world games I have played in years.

GideonsGaming - Joseph Pugh - Unscored

Overall I'm having enough fun that I want to stop writing and go back to playing it, which is always a good sign. The recruit anyone system is working incredibly well, and it's super addictive. The simulation is impressive, even if I haven't determined how much of that simulation affects the gameplay yet. And the few design flaws haven't been enough to hinder my enjoyment after 16 hours. Here's hoping it remains that way as I continue working on my full review.

Glitched Africa - Marco Cocomello - 75 / 100

Watch Dogs Legion is not a bad game I just believe it was too ambitious for its time. The recruiting system could have been something great but instead its shallow and delivered cliche characters with no real purpose. Unfortunately, this does not help the gameplay and story much. There’s a lot of fun to be had here but if you start expecting more from it, you are going to be let down.

God is a Geek - Mick Fraser - 8.5 / 10

Watch Dogs: Legion suffers from a little jank in the tank, but the recruitment system is fantastic and there's just so much to see and do. The open world is full of detail, and the whole experience is full of heart.

GotGame - Dragos Dobre - 8 / 10

The post-Brexit dystopian London is exactly the right amount of craziness and fun I was expecting from a Watch Dogs game. Even though the original recipe hasn't changed a lot in the past few years, you can see the progress they made with Watch Dogs: Legion, polishing the game with every iteration.

IGN - Dan Stapleton - 8 / 10

Watch Dogs: Legion's bold use of roguelike mechanics in an open-world action game pay off in interesting ways, making this visit to near-future London feel more varied than the previous two games.

Impulsegamer - John Werner - 4.8 / 5

Without a doubt, “Watch Dogs: Legion” ticks all the boxes required to be a true Watch Dogs game, embracing elements from both previous games while brining its own flavour to the table.

Inverse - Tomas Franzese - 7 / 10

Watch Dogs: Legion pushes current-gen hardware to the limit, and suffers for it.

Life is Xbox - Dae Jim - 89 / 100

Watch Dogs Legion ‘play as everyone’ mechanic works brilliantly, this is a genre-defying feature and something that sets the game apart from its competition.

Marooners' Rock - Andrew Peggs - 8.4 / 10

Overall, I feel as if Ubisoft has dug back into what made Watch Dogs enjoyable to play. With some improvements to the overall gameplay and tweaks as time goes by, I can see others enjoying the game.

Metro GameCentral - 6 / 10

A disappointingly tame vision of a near future dystopia, that represents a perfectly competent use of the Ubisoft formula but falters in its attempts to add anything new to it.

MondoXbox - Andrea Giuliani - Italian - 8 / 10

Watch Dogs Legion keeps the series' base mechanics while enhancing the whole formula thanks to the higher gameplay and tactical variety provided by the huge choice of agents available. This has the downside of making every character pretty forgettable though, keeping us from establishing an emotional bond with any of them.

New Game Network - Alex Varankou - 65 / 100

Being able to Play As Anyone in Watch Dogs: Legion is impressive at first, but it becomes a detriment to the core experience that's in need of revitalization. The hacking and stealth infiltrations haven't changed a bit, and with repetitive mission design and numerous technical issues, this latest chapter finds DedSec in an identity crisis.

Nexus Hub - Sahil Lala - 8 / 10

Watch Dogs: Legion is more of the same Watch Dogs formula fans of the franchise have come to expect. There are additional gimmicks and features that round off the product and it’s a great game to spend time in. The mystery plot and the intrigue around finding out just who exactly Zero Day is and putting a stop to him is great and will easily keep you entertained for 50 hours or more as you explore London.

PC Gamer - Christopher Livingston - 80 / 100

Playing as anyone works great in Legion—once you've finally found the right group of anyones.

PC Invasion - Tim McDonald - 7.5 / 10

The connected, living world here is a genuine revelation, and it's well worth exploring if you're willing to mess around and make your own fun. It's just a shame that some of the vibrancy and depth of Watch Dogs 2 has been lost in the process.

PCGamesN - Dustin Bailey - 7 / 10

Richly realised systems and empowering abilities create a tremendously fun sandbox to dig into, but another toothless story ensures these flashes of brilliance never cohere, leaving Legion feeling less than the sum of its parts.

Pixel Arts - Arman Akbari - Persian - 7.5 / 10

Watch Dogs: Legion is a game that has been able to maintain diversity and difference among thousands of playable characters. However, along with the dynamic and detailed world, the game suffers from weakness in the design of the stages and unfortunately becomes repetitive and boring over time.

PlayStation Universe - Neil Bolt - 6 / 10

While Watch Dogs: Legion does the basics well and has a refreshing change of scenery, it moves backwards from Watch Dogs 2 in terms of characters and storytelling. It's still quite enjoyable to get up to tech-based naughtiness in London despite that, but the underlying open-world template Ubisoft keeps using ends up feeling overexposed here.

Polygon - Owen Good - Unscored

Watch Dogs: Legion’s cast of randos makes a surprisingly winning team

PowerUp! - Paul Verhoeven - 6.3 / 10

And that’s the real issue here: the previous game was a story and a damned good one. Watch Dogs Legion is a playground and a damned good one. All it took was a shift in priorities to make the open-world feel less like a world, and more like… well, a game.

Press Start - James Mitchell - 8 / 10

Watch Dogs Legion builds upon the solid foundation established by Watch Dogs 2 while adding its own ambitious twist with mixed results. Having literally every character playable is a gargantuan task, and from a gameplay perspective it works to cement Legion as the best Watch Dogs game thus far. Narratively speaking, however, it collapses under its own aspiration to offer an intriguing concept with spotty execution. Regardless, Legion is a triumph for making good on most of its lofty promise and a triumph for the series.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun - Nate Crowley - Unscored

While I may not identify with any of my guerrillas and their grab-bag backstories, nor feel any sense of real investment in the fate of DedSec as a whole, I’m still attached to this strange band of possessed berserkers. We’ve had a good time together, in this nonsense dystopian playground.

Rocket Chainsaw - David Latham - 4 / 5 stars

Watch Dogs: Legion brings new ideas to the franchise while keeping within the world of Blume Corp’s ctOS.

Screen Rant - Leo Faierman - 3 / 5 stars

The takeaway is this: Watch Dogs: Legion is an ambitious simulation which reliably fails whenever players push against its boundaries. Like the cargo drones which grant them the ability to freely fly, it hits an invisible ceiling that prevents players from soaring above London’s skyscrapers.

Shacknews - Donovan Erskine - 8 / 10

Watch Dogs: Legion is a hacking good time and a great addition to Ubisoft’s technology-based saga.

Sirus Gaming - Lexuzze Tablante - 7 / 10

Watch Dogs Legion tries so hard to innovate the franchise, but in doing so, it feels like a product that was either rushed or there was no love for it. Ubisoft Toronto did their best to give us a whole new Watch Dogs experience, but when the second installment of the franchise is the benchmark, it’s hard for me not to nitpick on these issues I find in the game. I love the franchise, but this isn’t the kind of innovation I’ve expected Watch Dogs to have.

Skill Up - Ralph Panebianco - Unscored

Watch Dogs: Legion is an ambitious title. Perhaps a little too ambitious. As much as certain parts of the game shine, you can't help but feel that the game is too clever by half.

Slant Magazine - Steven Scaife - 2.5 / 5 stars

It's difficult to escape a sense that the game's ambition far outstrips the number of unique people it can plausibly render.

Star News - Rod Oracheski - 4 / 5 stars

Watch Dogs: Legion sticks you in the shoes of characters you’d never have chosen otherwise, and it works more often than it doesn’t.

Stevivor - Luke Lawrie - 6 / 10

There’s some fun to be had in Watch Dogs Legion, but it becomes so repetitive that by the end of the game everything feels like a chore — one I was desperately wanting to be over hours before its credits rolled.

The Digital Fix - Andrew Shaw - 8 / 10

The best Watch Dogs game yet. While it's dragged down by long load times and some repetition, Legion is a hugely enjoyable game that offers players a level of freedom that is rarely seen in this genre.

The Game Fanatics - Trevor Paul - 8.5 / 10

Overall, Watch Dogs Legion is a ton of fun. There is so much to do and experience in this game and so many different ways to do it. The hacking puzzles are familiar but still fun and sometimes challenging. The real star of this game is the variety of characters you can recruit and the backstories that come with them.

The Games Machine - Simone Rampazzi - Italian - 8 / 10

Watch Dogs: Legion starts with some really intriguing background ideas, ideas that try to dig deep and to leave us with many more questions about the near future. The overwhelming control of a state willing to know everything about its citizens, however, does not prevent a few uncertainties about the gameplay, a sore note that prevents the game from shining as hoped. However, it remains an enjoyable offer, ready to satisfy the taste of lovers of the genre.

TheSixthAxis - Miguel Moran - 8 / 10

Watch Dogs Legion is a different type of sequel to Watch Dogs 2, contrasting in its approach to creating a hackable open world playground, but with no less impressive results. Playing as any citizen in London leads to some less-than-engaging story moments, but the web of relationships and activities that crop up as a result of the systemic design is mind-blowing. I rarely did the same thing twice in Watch Dogs Legion, and if I did, I wasn't doing it the same way twice. Watch Dogs Legion truly feels like a living, breathing world, and it's a world that I plan to revisit often, even though I've seen the credits on the main story roll.

ThisGenGaming - Robby Bisschop - 90 / 100

Watch Dogs: Legion is a massive game with perhaps the biggest recruitable main cast of characters we’ve ever seen. With its varied gameplay and its tried-and-true Ubisoft open-world experience, it offers dozens of hours of entertainment and isn’t to be missed.

TrueGaming - محمد جابر الصهيبي - Arabic - 8.5 / 10

Watch dogs legion gives you freedom and it's accentuated in the new recruiting system which makes this title worth playing even before the release of next gen version.

USgamer - Mike Williams - 3.5 / 5 stars

The new "Play As Anyone" system is as impressive as it sounds on paper, creating a host of intriguing characters if you choose to dive into their backgrounds. Crafting your own version of DedSec is a ton of fun, especially early on. The problem is the gameplay of Watch Dogs Legion is mostly the same as its predecessors and the missions are quite repetitive overall. It's not a step back for the series, but the hacking and stealth core of the series does need an overhaul.

VG247 - Lauren Aitken - 3 / 5 stars

Watch Dogs fans and more die-hard anarchists among you might enjoy it more, but between the short storylines, underwhelming tech and mission types and the general “everything is on fire” vibe, it just doesn’t rate highly for me.

[VICE] - Austin Walker - UNSCORED

'Watch Dogs: Legion' Promises Revolution, But Mostly Delivers Distraction You can play as anyone you want, but the game remains the same.

Video Game Sophistry - Andy Borkowski - 6 / 10

The ‘Play as Anyone’ feature is the game's biggest fault. There’s no way to really work as a team. Instead each individual is one part of a fully fleshed out protagonist that has now been cut into 20 different pieces and called upon to work without the other. A severed hand doesn’t make a hero.

VideoGamer - Josh Wise - 5 / 10

Where the action comes alive is in the leaving behind of bodies altogether. Most missions involve breaking and entering, and the thrill lies in the absence of any breaking.

Wccftech - Rosh Kelly - 7.9 / 10

Watch Dogs Legion is a great step forward for the series, with enough experimental new gameplay features to complement the familiar mechanics. London is incredible, and exploring it is an almost visceral experience. It's just a shame that the story doesn't hold the same familiarity that the map does.

We Got This Covered - Todd Rigney - 3 / 5 stars

Although the recruitment system provides a few hours of entertainment, Watch Dogs: Legion feels like a series of systems masquerading as an open-world adventure game. Compared to the first two entries, Legion is a massive step backward, both in terms of story and execution. This is paint-by-numbers Ubisoft on autopilot.

WellPlayed - Zach Jackson - 8 / 10

With a surprisingly good narrative that excels thanks to the unique ability to turn anyone into a DedSec hacker, Watch Dogs: Legion is a damn good time

Windows Central - Carli Velocci - 4.5 / 5 stars

Watch Dogs: Legion is a departure from the typical Ubisoft brand, and it's better for it. The play as anybody system just works, there's a lot to do, and it's unabashedly political in a way that feels important in 2020.

This has been an absolutely miserable year but finally it’s coming to an end, and even looking up now that Facebook and Google are being sued by Federal and State governments. If you played Cyberpunk I’m sure you’ll also have your fingers crossed that both companies get the sledgehammer into little pieces, with Amazon and the App Store soon to follow. Next year is up in the air right now; it could be the year XR is completely strangled by those soulless corpo’s at Facebook, or it could be the year that OpenXR, anti trust action, and consumer apathy towards VR cut their legs out from under them. Things look completely up in the air at this point. So take the holidays and enjoy VR while you still can, next year we might just be playing Valve’s Citadel while the ship goes down.
Well Steam’s Winter Sale is here and it’s a great time to pick up a lot of great games, hidden gems, and so on. This is my list of games to pick up. Some of them are the best prices these games have ever had. I categorized them by price tier, and I put a few standouts in bold either because they’re a great game or a great deal, or both.
Merry Christmas
[I also made a hardware guide for headsets and PC components, a guide to using steamVR, a guide about how to use the Index for AR, and a master acab list of great VR games, demos, and software]
The Sale ends on January 5th at 10AM PT
​

• PAYDAY 2 (-90%, $0.99) Has a full VR mode that makes the whole game VR and lets you play with flatscreen players. It’s a lot more impressive than you would expect, especially at this price (free with the base game). It has two handed guns, full access to all the content and crossplay with non VR players, a UI on your tablet watch, etc
• Half-Life 2 (-80%, $1.99) You need to use Garry's Mod to run this in VR but the whole game works.
• Naked Sun (-90%, $0.59) Two hand wave shooter style game where you’re being moved through a robot city and fighting ogg enemies with guns and a shield.
• Scanner Sombre (-75%, $1.49) Spelunking through echolocation and a great art style. At this price and with this concept I’d say it’s definitely something to experience in VR.
• Steady (-50%, $2.49) Like the lockpicking puzzle from Alyx or those boardwalk games were you move a ring over wire without touching them together. 50 levels.
• fpsVR (-20%, $3.19) This is a must have utility for SteamVR. My guide to using SteamVR explains why and how to use it.
• Windlands (-90%, $1.99) the first windlands game, it’s a grappling hook style adventure exploration game.
• Evolution VR (-51%, $0.49) This is like that first phase of Spore, where you’re an amoeba eating larger ones and evolving with new limbs. I consider it a steal at this price, although it’s going to become free soon according to the devs.
• PROZE: Enlightenment (-85%, $2.99) Puzzle adventure game set in the tundra
• Evil Robot Traffic Jam HD (-80%, $0.99) Tower defense
• Interkosmos (-33%, $3.34) A space survival game where you’re sitting in a tiny broken space capsule and have to make it back to earth.
• Neonwall (-90%, $0.99) Guide a ball through neon obstacle puzzles
• Spuds Unearthed (-75%, $2.99) RTS TD type thing. I found its balance super frustrating when I tried it but it has a lot of polish and this price is great.
• Squishies (-75%, $2.49) Puzzle game with nice art that looks polished
• Zooma VR (-66%, $2.03) Look at the steam page, it’s basically an adaptation of that arcade game where you shoot colored balls at other colored balls to match them up and pop them.
• Obstruction : VR (-68%, $3.19)
• Fingers: Mini Games (-35%, $1.94) Screw around with finger physics mini games with your index controllers.
• Chroma Lab (-40%, $2.99) Particle simulator that’s kind of trippy
• Drone Hero (-90%, $0.99) Drone obstacle course game
• Defendion (-80%, $$2.19) Laned fantasy strategy game
• Bonfire (-50% $2.49) A little story where you’re crash landed on an alien planet with Ali Wong and meet cartoon aliens
• Cliffstone Manor (-75%, $1.99) Difficult escape room style game
• Moonshot Galaxy (-65%, $1.74) space mini golf game
• Protogon VR (-80% $1.99) Combination minigolf pinball game with neon crazy graphics
• Power Tools VR (-50%, $0.99) Chip away at a stone block with power tools
• Race The Sun (-80%, $1.99) Endless forward obstacle racer with options VR support
• SpellPunk VR (-73%, $2.96) Competitive spell casting game
• Strings (-90%, $0.99) It’s a smaller, more basic game, basically a shooter with different items you use to fight enemies as you teleport around stages.
• SweeperVR (-50%, $1.99) Minesweeper in 3 Dimensions
• PolyCube (-50%, $2.49) complex 3D tetris
• UNTITLED (-50%, $2.49) 3D surreal puzzle game
• Intruders: Hide and Seek (-90%, $1.99) Gamepad horror game
• WRG games bundle (-96%, $0.65) Escape room and a non VR game

​

• Apex Construct (-75%, $4.99) This is where the energy battery puzzles come from. It's early VR but really strong on story, progression, and interactions, the combat is mostly archery
• FORM (-70%, $4.44) “A surreal adventure where puzzles are built from dreams and memories”
• NIGHTSTAR: Alliance (-60%, $3.99) Bullet Hell in space, but with a story and customization
• Blasters of the Universe (-75%, $3.74) Bullet Hell with a lot of polish and progression and you unlike new weapon parts
• FREEDIVER: Triton Down (-50%, $4.49) Drowning simulator, shorter but high quality
• Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (-70%, $4.49) This is one of the best VR party games, easy to play remotely or in the same room with other plays holding a printed out or mobile browser manual helping the VR player disarm a bomb.
• Out of Ammo Fun Bundle (-78%, $4.48) A bit rough but still getting updates and still low poly fun. First one has multiplayer. They’re both FPS/RTS but the first one is war themed, while the second one is a zombie game.
• Orb Labs (-50% $4.49) A stealth puzzle game where you use different orbs to complete puzzles around lasers, turrets, and other hazards.
• Thumper (-80%, $3.99) Best selling surreal rhythm game, best with a gamepad. I definitely recommend it if you are fine with the gamepad controls.
• Vetrix (-20% $4.79) Tetris inspired. It has a two layer deep grid allowing for lots of 3D shapes that you can stick into place by hand in a twist on the usual formula. It has its own 8bit tunes, special blocks, multiple modes, and a bunch of color profiles based on the gameboy’s aesthetic.
• Transpose (-75%, $4.99) A game where you solve puzzles with a recording of yourself. It’s one of the best and more creative puzzle games in VR.
• Operation Warcade VR (-75%, $4.99) Old but the concepts work really well. It’s like a 3D light gun game that pulls you in for some moments
• Echo Grotto (-50%, $3.99) Echo Grotto is a spelunking game with stylized graphics. You pick your gear and then use a throwing based teleportation system that leaves a trail behind you.
• HATCHICK (-75%, $3.74) Like Xortex from the lab, a bullet hell inside a dome
• Journey For Elysium (-50%, $4.99) Greek mythology adventure game, a black and white art style
• Just In Time Incorporated (-75% $3.74) You appear in slow motion to save people who have Just In Time Insurance. Super basic graphics but the gameplay is fun and for this price it’s a good buy.
• Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin (-75%, $4.99)
• Shooty Skies Overdrive (-50%, $4.99) It’s a bullet Hell with polish and a voxel style.
• Portable Farm (-20%, $3.99) It’s a light farming game, but the hook is that this runs on top of other games like an overlay.
• Balloonatics (-65%, $3.49) Single and multiplayer hot air balloon combat. A big update is coming.
• Axegend VR (-50%, $4.99) Tower Defense mixed with some fantasy combat
• Buzludzha VR (-60%, $4.79) If you like VR tourism then this is pretty good.
• Carnival Games VR (-75%, $4.99) Party game style game. It crashes unless you turn off the game’s haptics in input bindings
• Bandit Point (-50%, $4.99) Renaissance robot shooter where you possess different robots in combat
• Downward Spiral: Horus Station (-70%, $5.99) Zero G space thriller
• Flotilla 2 (-50%, $4.99) Turn based RTS in 3D between space battleships
• VR Furballs - Demolition (-60%, $4.79) Angry birds style game
• Townsmen VR (-50%, $4.99) This was barebone and felt like a demo, but it’s going to get a big update that scales it up into a game and should be free for anyone who owns this version.
• Starblazer (-75%, $4.99) A 3D space RTS with multiplayer
• Skyworld: Kingdom Brawl (-50%, $4.99) This is a classic VR RTS scaled down to a quick 1v1 RTS battle.
• RuneSage (-60%, $3.99) Open world puzzle fantasy game
• 2945VR (-45%, $3.29) Space shoot em up

​

• Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son (-33%, $10.04) Sequel to the movie with a similar idea where you relive the same day over and over and progress
• HORIZON VANGUARD (-33%, $10.04) Sega Saturn Style arcade shooter on a hoverbike. Don’t let the graphics fool you, this is a really well made puzzle game in a Sega Saturn style
• Fujii (-35%, $9.74) Gardening with a weird forest spirit
• Garden of the Sea (-50%, $5.99) Animal Crossing looking zen farming game by the devs behind Budget Cuts 2, early access but steady updates are coming adding features and more mechanics..
• GORN (-50%, $9.99) Cartoon melee colosseum game, VR classic that has killed a thousand controllers
• Contractors (-50% $9.99) smallest player base of the big shooters but full of good ideas and strong gunplay. Now has mod support, including custom maps, weapons, and modes like world war II, ninja warrior, Halo, etc
• 1976 - Back to midway (-50%, $7.49) Just came out, it’s a good game, already on sale. This is a good deal. This is a 2.5D shoot em up that has “immersion zones” where you take direct control in first person. It really captures the idea of stepping inside an old arcade machine really well.
• Creed (-75%, $7.49) This is a pretty good multiplayer boxing game that goes for a more arcade style, Graphics are good, it’s polished, and obviously it’s licensed from the movie
• Bizarre Barber (-50%, $5.99) Arcade game about cutting aliens’ hair as they come by in passing subway cars. It goes for a more surrealist vibe.
• Garry's Mod (-33%, $6.69) This needs a community hack to be VR, but it works and even lets you play HL2 in VR
• Cubism (-20%, $7.99) A tetronomo style puzzle where you need to figure out how to make the finished shape out of the pieces you’re given, in 3D. Feels like it’s made by Apple.
• Gravity Lab (-40%, $8.99) Rube goldberg puzzler where you build machines to get the ball from the start to the finish, sci fi settings.
• Pierhead Arcade Bundle (-63%, $7.48) The first one is stronger and a great little VR boardwalk with multiplayer to show off to people with high quality minigames,and with an update this week they made it so if you own both, then the games carry over into 2, which has index support and a ton of its own games too.
• Prison Boss (-60%, $7.99) The best crafting game in VR, you play a prisoner who makes and sells contraband, so it’s business sim as well since you buy equipment and supplies to make various products.
• Tabletop Simulator (-50%, $9.99) (4-Pack for $29.99) (Most DLC -50%,) Look, the VR support here has issues but since it’s a board game simulation all you need to do is make sure you can sit down, move around, and grab things (just make your own bindings from the desktop SteamVR settings). Since it uses the Steam workshop it’s an insane value with endless excellent quality content. The matchmaking system means you can play all kinds of games at all hours with thousands of people.
• Westworld Awakening (-80%, $5.99) If you love the show this is a must have, pretty well received as just a good game overall.
• Superfly (-34%, $9.89) This is a super hero sim game in VR. You can have six different types of powers with their own movement and combat mechanics around a cartoon city
• Ultrawings (-50%, $7.49) Super user friendly flight sim with VR controls. I definitely recommend it. You complete missions to get money to spend on new planes across several cartoonish islands that you fly between.
• Shooty Fruity (-55%, $8.99) One of the best wave shooters in my opinion, but the controls are a little broken for the Index since it doesn’t use SteamVR input.
• RUSH (-60%, $7.99) Wing suit skydiving game
• Climbey (-31% $6.89) A classic VR climbing game with multiplayer and steam workshop support for courses
• Space Pirate Trainer (-40%, $8.99) Everyone’s favorite wave shooter, one of the first wave of room scale VR games that came out with the Vive. There’s no progression but it handles the mechanics of dodging bullets and dealing with growing waves of enemies really well with a lot of modes for your weapons.
• Spectro (-50%, $7.49) Ghost hunting game that feels a bit like it’s made for kids but it’s still a good roguelike.
• The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets (-50% $7.49) Cutesy puzzler abou finding a bunch of stolen pets on little floating islands you interact with.
• ViSP - Virtual Space Port (-50%, $7.49) You build these blocky space stations in third person trying to hold off attacks by aliens.
• A Fishermans Tale (-35%, $9.74) A recursive puzzle game where you’re a fisherman in a box messing with a fisherman in a box who has a fisherman in a box…
• I Expect You To Die (-60% $9.99) A james bond style escape room game with a ton of polish and a lot of content, one of the best of the genre.
• Ultimate Fishing Simulator VR (-66%, $10.09) It’s realistic fishing, in VR.
• The Forest (-50%, $9.99) Port, has good co op, suniverseurvival with crafting and base building in a forest full of mutants.
• The Mage's Tale (-70%, $8.99) I haven’t been able to try this one, but it’s well reviewed and has a nice art style.
• 2MD: VR Football (-30% $9.09) This is basically quarterbacking in VR. You throw the ball but you don’t run around with it. Also you throw with the trigger by default, for safety reasons. It’s still fun, but it’s definitely not a full football experience.
• Deism (-30%, $5.59) This a god game with a low poly art style, it’s in early access with a lot of updates.
• Cave Digger (-50%, $9.99) Steampunk mining game with multiple endings
• The Thrill of the Fight (-20% $7.99) This is the more realistic boxing game more like a simulation, and it's good as a workout.
• Carly and the Reaperman (-50%, $9.99) Escape from the Underworld (-50%, $9.99) One of the best asymmetric games, this is a co op platformer adventure where the VR player helps the gamepad player. Works with Parsec/Remote Play Together
• Grapple Tournament (-34%, $9.89) Grappling hook PvP arena
• Gun Club VR (-60% $7.99) For a gun sim, get H3. The value in this game are the missions where you have to hit cardboard targets across different themes and weapon types like WWII, modern day, zombies, or carnival style targets.
• Swords of Gurrah (-30%, $6.99) Multiplayer sword fighting with a little community.
• Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (-75%, $7.49) Port of third person game, really high quality but gamepad controls.
• IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad (-85%, $7.49) A HOTAS based WWII combat flight sim
• Marble Land (-60%, $5.99) A physics base puzzle game about getting the marble to the goal
• Combat Tested (-69%, $6.19) This is a mixed game, but it’s really creative with the gritty super powers you have while you try to escape from a lab full of people trying to stop you.
• Blind (-75%, $6.24) You can only see by making noise (canes, throwing things, etc)
• Adapt or Perish (-40%, $5.99) Evolutionary strategy game with a VR mode
• Pinball FX2 VR (-60%, $5.99) Made for VR realistic pinball
• Assetto Corsa (-90%, $7.93) Racing sim with optional VR
• Seeking Dawn (-80%, $5.99) Not great, but super ambitious with story and alien enemies and crafting and base building and just generally more than I expected, and it actually kind of works.

​

• Pavlov VR (-40%, $14.99) Pavlov is basically a game that set out to be Counter Strike VR and became the Garry's Mod of VR and the most creative community outside VRChat. I’ve seen and played everything from roller skate racing, a remake of the entirety of Super Mario 64, TF2 Payload, over a hundred TTT maps, some of the best Battle Royale I’ve seen in VR, Slow-mo zero G modes, SCP, LifeMod and DarkRP, five completely different kinds of zombie modes, and a lot more. It’s been a fixture of SteamVR and pretty soon they’re releasing a World War II update with character models and new guns for the USSR, USA, Germany, and UK, new maps, and multi user tanks that you use in first person. It’s as much a must have as there can be, as long as you like multiplayer shooters.
• Vertigo Remastered (-40%, $14.99) A 19 year old genius kid who worked at Valve and Cloudhead games made this on his own. It feels like a scaled down Alyx with nice physics, creative weapons and tools, and great personality across a campaign.
• Paper Beast (-30%, $13.99) One of the standout PSVR games. You’re in a surreal papercraft desert with dynamic and lifelike paper animals. It has a story and then a smaller sandbox mode. It’s a surreal style experience that works well in VR.
• Jet Island (-35%, $12.99) take on a huge open world with an island of enemies on your hoverboard
• Falcon Age (-35%, $12.99) You play a young falconer who uses her whip and bird to fight off colonizing robots that are strip mining her planet. It’s a pretty high quality game and semi open world.
• Budget Cuts 2: Mission Insolvency (-50%, $14.99) VR stealth with a portal style teleport gun and a bow. It’s well written and has a lot of polish. Sequel to one of the standout classics of early VR.
• Superhot VR (-40% $14.99) This is the game that sold me on VR. It’s basically the Matrix, where time moves when you move. It’s actually not a port of the original superhot, which is why the sequel isn’t coming to VR. I think it’s slightly overrated, there isn’t a ton of content, it just seems more concise than the marketing conveys
• Gadgeteer (-20% $11.99) Even more rube goldberg puzzler, but more of a dominos style of gameplay.
• Ironwolf VR (-30%, $13.99) Submarine simulator, has destroyer mode now too with coop and some competitive multiplayer. I definitely recommend this as a co op experience.
• Hotel RnR (-40% $11.99) You’re a dead rocker who makes a deal with the devil to destroy hotel rooms
• Duck Season (-35%, $12.99) Make someone else play this without explaining it to them. Tell them it’s just Duck Hunt.
• Down the Rabbit Hole (-40%, $11.99) Third person Alyx in Wonderland game with player choice
• 3dSen VR (-40%, $11.99) 3D NES emulator that makes them feel like a totally new experience.
• The Wizards Bundle (-68%, $15.92) The first one is an okay wave shooter, the second is more of an adventure game with great graphics and more variety.
• Thief Simulator VR (-27%, $14.59) A semi open world game where you go around stealing people’s phones, jewelry, and cars.
• Vox Machinae (-45%, $13.74) If you like Mech games this is basically a must buy, you control it by hand with all the bits and bobs of the cockpit and the graphics look really good. VR and flatscreen with crossplay multiplayer.
• Yupitergrad (-15% $12.74) A grappling hook adventure game set aboard a collapsing soviet space station
• Windlands 2 (-60%, $11.99) This is a grappling hook style game with somewhat basic graphics but large worlds and big enemies. Some people have called it the best spiderman game in VR.
• Hello Puppets (-30%, $13.99) Cartoon horror with weird humor, your hand is an evil puppet
• Moss (-50% $14.99) A third person platformer adventure game about a little mouse
• Skytropolis (-55%, $11.24) A vertical citybuilder, which is a rare genre in VR. It’s from 2017 and doesn’t get updates any more but it does work and it’s not a bad game in the genre.
• Pixel Ripped 1995 (-30%, $13.99) A love letter to 16 bit gaming. You play video games inside the game and have to avoid getting caught playing in the middle of the night, etc.
• ModBox (-25% $11.24) This is a sandbox game creator with steam workshop support. IT has a lot of potential and supports asymmetric play, VR multiplayer, and creation inside and outside of VR.
• New Retro Arcade: Neon (-35%, $12.99) This is kind of buggy, and you need to use the unofficial arcade builder, but as a social VR experience for friends it can be pretty cool. Roms aren’t shared online unless the other people are on parsec or something, but a few activities like movies, the built in games, and bowling are actually multiplayer. The arcade is persistent for you and your friends even if you’re doing different things in different rooms.
• Phasmophobia (-10%, $12.59) The big new co op horror multiplayer game, but this one also supports VR
• Synth Rider (-40% $14.99) This is the closest Beat Saber style game to the original, with a smoother style of gameplay. But the maps feel unbalanced, like every difficulty or gameplay setting is the exact same map just being automatically tweaked. This can make it feel unfair or constricting.
• Into the Radius (-30%, $20.99) Basically Stalker VR, kill enemies and complete missions for cash as you progress
• Mini Motor Racing X (-50%, $19.99) Racing game that you control with your actual hands which is great but the tracks can be pretty small and with lots of tight turns since it’s a micro car game. Also has a rocket league mode which is fun.
• Stride (-25%, $14.99) Basically mirror’s edge in VR. You run and jump and wall run across different environments, with some combat and stealth too. There are two modes out now and another one coming soon with a story.
• BattleGroupVR (-30% $17.49) This is probably the most polished RTS in VR, made by one dev but it’s right up there with final assault and works better in singleplayer. Multiplayer is being tested right now. It’s a space real time RTS where you’re on the bridge of one of your ships and you can command the others in holograms, see the battle in third person, and the graphics are great. There’s a story and campaign too
• Until You Fall (-20%, $19.99) This is basically Infinity Blade in VR. It does melee by having lines appear in the air and you need to line up your sword with them to block enemy attacks, with some later enemies requiring you to duck off to the side to dodge attacks. It’s a roguelike so you fight through as many enemies you can, small stage by stage, until you die and spend the money you earned on new weapons and abilities.
• STAR WARS™: Squadrons (-40%, $23.99) As an experience, Squadrons is exactly what you expect. It’s really immersive and really feels like being in a star wars dogfight
• The Talos Principle VR (-60%, $15.99) Croteam are the devs of the classic Serious Sam series, and when the Vive came out they went all in and converted all their games over to VR, including their puzzle game Talos Principle. It was one of the higher quality experiences back then and it still holds up.
• Tales Of Glory (-40%, $17.99) First person medieval war RTS. It’s been in early access for a long time but the dev has put in a ton of work and made it a pretty unique experience with some of the best medieval combat outside Blade and Sorcery combined with strategy and base capture.
• Universe Sandbox (-33%, $19.99) Just got an update redoing the entire VR UI side of the game.
• Automata Break (-15%, $16.99) An asymmetric tower defense game you can play with a friend or alone.
• Skyrim VR (-67%, $19.79) Good port, works better than Fallout4VR with a big modding scene. This price is a bit higher than it has been in the past.
• Ragnarock (-15%, $16.99) Rhythm game where you beat the drums on a viking ship to metal and celtic rock. This seems like the best beat saber style game I’ve seen alongside Synth Riders, and the music is distinct.
• Industrial Petting (-15% $16.99) You farm alien pets to sell them back on earth. It’s an industrial production kind of game, with multiplayer support and VFlatscreen modes
• In Death (-50%, $14.99) Roguelike archery game set in Purgatory. Price feels a little steep when it stopped getting updates on PC in early 2019.
• Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs (-30%, $10.49) Basically Angry Birds in 3D. You can shoot in room scale and teleport to different spots to get a better angle. There's a fair amount of content too.
• Arizona Sunshine (-63%, $14.79) The first big co op zombie game. It shows it's age but it's still popular and has some DLC. I would recommend this one only on sale and mostly if you're planning on playing co op.
• L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files (-50%, $14.99) I think the cases are taken from the original game, but it's LA Noire in VR. There's driving, shooting, interrogations, looking for clues, everything from the original game. Seven cases.

​

• Half-Life: Alyx (-25%, $44.99) The best looking VR game and one of the best games of this generation.
• Boneworks (20%, $23.99) This game is a must buy, but do not get it if you’re new. This is a game where pushing on a wall with your hand pushes the camera back. It will make you sick if you don’t have VR legs. The combat, melee, physics puzzles, are all extremely strong and it has an 11 hour campaign, along with arena, zombies, and sandbox modes. Another content update is also coming soon.
• The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners (-20%, $31.99) This is a great game. It’s less Left for Dead and more realistic in the sense that tension is very high and both humans and zombies are threats. There’s light crafting, upgrades, and collecting supplies, complete with physics and a faction systems and multiple paths to go down.
• Vacation Simulator (-20% $23.99) The best minigame collection game with the games integrated into three worlds with a lot to do, across multiple settings with progression and a basic story. Super immersive.
• No Man's Sky (-50%, $29.99) All new updates apply to VR too. Performance is spotty but the entire massive experience is carried over into VR, and there’s multiplayer too.
• Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, and Hand Grenades ($19.99) This game isn’t on sale but it’s getting an advent calender with daily updates until christmas. This is basically the ultimate “labor of love” game in VR. Detailed physics simulation of lots of guns, big recommendation for those with any interest in sandbox, has game modes like Take and Hold and Team Fortress, single player only.
• Pistol Whip (-20%, $19.99) This doesn’t go on sale as often. I would say it’s the first rhythm game that can actually go toe to toe with Beat Saber. It doesn’t have custom maps, but it gets regular content updates and just got a set of five campaign levels.
• Ultimate VR Stealth Bundle (-68%, $35.72) Budget Cuts 1, Budget Cuts 2, Unknightly, and Espire
• VTOL VR (-15% $25.49) This is the most advanced made for VR flight sim with full VR controls, tons of customization, and a bunch of modern fighter planes. It’s a community favorite and it’s even getting multiplayer soon.
• AGOS - A Game Of Space (-33%, $20.09) This got a super mixed reaction. It’s basically a third person satellite simulator. If you like the movement method you’ll like the game, otherwise you probably won’t. Watch some gameplay on youtube.
• Sairento (-35%, $19.79) This is like a ninja version of Superhot. I didn't enjoy it too much but many people like it. It has a lot of different weapons and you can do things like bounce off walls up to an enemy and cutting their head off with a katana.
• Gnomes & Goblins (-35%, $19.49) This got a mixed reaction. Basically it’s a game where you visit a community of gnomes and has two parts. In the first part you go on a little adventure meeting the gnomes and hanging out with them. But the rest of the game is doing activities and collecting artifacts around their town to fill your house.
• Disassembly VR (-30%, $20.99) Destruction and deconstruction physics sandbox simulator, just added melee combat.

​
Also worth taking a look at, over at Fanatical they’re doing a “make your own bundle.” 2 games for $6.99, 3 games for $9.99, 5 games for $14.99

• Cosmic Trip - A very polished VR base capture RTS in first person where you build and manage drones and mine for crystals on an alien planet.
• Sprint Vector - Basically a footrace game you play by swinging your arms, set on an alien gameshow.
• Polybius - A trippy tunnel shooter with surreal pixel graphics, based on the haunted arcade game.
• Rainbow Reactor- Kind of like a sac toss arcade puzzle game.
• Conductor - An escape room style adventure game with a physics gun.
• Battlewake - This was a really hyped game that kind of flopped. Basically it looks really great graphically but the gameplay loop feels really repetitive and kind of shallow. For co op at this price it's a good buy.
• Raw Data - Early polished VR wave shooter, but it shows its age. It has multiplayer but the index support is pretty bad.
• Dungeons & Treasure VR - A small voxel fantasy roguelike with multiplayer support.

General / QoL

• Dark Mode is now available as a setting and on by default. We also tied down the guy (who wrote the flashingly bright note about seizures) in a opthalmic speculum, in a dark room while opening and closing the said bright note for 3 hours.
• Light Mode uses grayish / genshin-impact-blue color scheme.
• Users can now map keys in settings.
• New user center setting : Allow Teyvat Times to publish my in-game alias (not username) and last 4 digits of my UID (When you set a world record of hunting fowl and etc.)
• Added setting for persistent aiming mode. If turned on, your character will try to get back to aiming mode even when you dash or you are knocked back.
• Going in and out of aiming mode is now much smoother. You can still dash, cast skills and still keep the cursor on. Inspired by Tombraider? Idk why I wrote this.
• When crafting an item and you run out of materials for it, the item selected stays in place and will not scroll all the way down.
• When choosing characters for the abyss, the preview button to see which enemies you will face is also there.
• When finishing an abyss floor, you can return to the abyss menu without ending the "run" to collect rewards or browse around.
• Fixed a bug with sucrose/xinqiu bonus materials when crafting.
• Fixed a bug with razor's c1 constellation not increasing his damage and not displaying a buff indicator.
• All buffs are now grouped/stacked by icon category, attack/defense/regen etc. Hovering the cursor in the grouped icon will display verbose info. (e.g. thrilling dragon tales, character talent, gouba pepper etc).
• Daily Login Bonus is permanent.
• Claim All and Repeat Buttons are now available in Blacksmith, Battlepass, Expeditions and the Like.
• VA/CV list is displayed instead of current selected voice language in character details. (e.g. if you go to a character screen, and have english voice language, you will only see english voice actor and you have to change language just to find out who the cn and jp voice actor is)
• Hide ui/hud setting and dedicated hotkey is added for creating fan-made cinematics.
• Unless it is an artifact or a weapon, an item previously recorded and consumed will no longer display as "new"
• Added shield bar on top of health bar
• Added party icon on the top right ui and a dedicated hotkey to switch parties
• Added hotkey to switch to your saved Comps 1 to 4
• Resin is now always visible at the top of UI (without needing to open up the map)
• Moved UID a bit further down by 2px so it doesn't overlap with the buttons
• Changed UID Opacity by 75% and has grayish text color, inspired by "windows is not activated"
• Added a space character on the launcher download text (e.g. "Downloading75%" into "Downloading 75%")
• Bonus damage from element-affected status (e.g. "deal 15% increased damage against cryo affected enemies" are enclosed in parentheses
• Expedition Slot Remembers Last Character Used
• Expedition Slot Remembers Last Hour Used
• All map objects are navigatable for consistent experience. and are not overridden by quests. You will always be directed towards the one you choose.
• Navigated Map Object Always Display Their Distance and Light Beacon (e.g. Leylines not having those)
• Added enemy weakspot zones with varying degrees (green,orange,red) in the adventurer's handbook, if you kill 150 of a certain enemy type. Humanoid types generally have the head as a weakspot.
• Fraction of Fraction of a bullet time effect and a red particle glows when you hit the weakest spot of an enemy.
• Reading and Clearing Story/Voice Lines syncs across all devices you own.
• Statues' Remaning Healing Energy now Visible on the Tower Itself. Dat Glowy thingies deplete when you use them.
• Statue's First Healing Tick Revives Fallen Characters by 10hp%. Second Healing Tick is Full Restoration or until Remaining Healing Energy Allows it.
• Critical strike Indicator
• Enemies in the handbook are dynamically arranged by type , then alphabetically. All hypostasis are lined up.
• All enemies are displayed in the handbook regardless of what region you currently are.
• Journal (J) is now binded to (F1), since this is where you look commissions for rather than the Adventurer Handbook (F1)
• Journal , Handbook and Archive are compressed and combined.
• We bought a time machine and went back to the time when we did the hypostasis event. The last challenge in the event is now a new hypostasis after the three old hypostasis.
• Andrius's Boss Fight is now properly a Trounce Domain, For consistency with other weekly boss.
• Changing a Team Member in your active roster won't override that slot in your saved team comp
• Active Roster and Saved Team Comps are now a seperate thing
• Selecting a Saved Team Comp will replace the Active Roster (so you can replace one member before "deploying")
• Clicking Deploy in a Saved Team Comps will immediately send you back to the game
• Switching Party Members is smoother than an oiled tits smooth, regardless of network latency. Especially in Single Player Mode.
• Resource and Player Position in the map has better visual clarity. (Imagine klee collecting wolf berries or philly mushrooms)
• Option to adjust map size , and resource/player icons.
• PC , map pin size collision reduced. If I clicked Taishan Mansion, I meant Taishan Mansion.
• Mora , Artifact Limits and etc always visible in inventory screen regardless of which tab you are on
• Blacksmith remembers the quantity of ores you refine
• Adventurer's Handbook remembers the last filter you used when browsing enemies (all, elite ,boss)
• Adventurer's Handbook points you the next enemy you are hunting (when you kill 1 ruin guard, you dont have to open handbook again to see the next one in the map)
• Adventure's Handbook knows ALL of the elite enemy locations. The list seem to be manually added instead of dynamic, possibly due to chest concealment similar mechanic. If you hunt ruin guards, I think the book only lists 4 of them in the whole map.

Gameplay

• Training dummy added near favonius hq. You have to do a story quest and spend resource to have it constructed.
• Enemies now have a difficulty rating. The higher the difficulty rating is, the higher character xp/gold they will provide. XP scales off your adventure rank level. Extra Large enemies have a guaranteed chance to drop 1-4* artifacts. They will respawn longer as a consequence. It doesn't make sense that a huge lawachurl and smol hilichurl both give 20xp.
• First and Second Dash now have different color indicators.
• If you used 2 dashes consecutively, a subtle glow/indicator pops around your character for when you are able to dash again. Inspired by Deadcells.
• Added Treasure Compass for Dragonspire.
• All excess anemoculus/geoculus/dendroculus and crimson agate can now be traded in the antiques shop.
• Treasure Compass will automatically change depending on what region you are on. If you don't have a treasure compass for that region, it will remain unchanged from what is the last equipped.
• Treasure Compass search radius is increased region wide. It will point the "nearest" treasure chest's direction. The color of the direction changes the farther you are.
• Treasure Compass will now consider puzzles as treasure, and display a different indicator. It won't tell you what steps to take to open it, though.
• Added a domain for gladiator and wanderer's troupe artifact sets. Artifact drop rate from world bosses are FURTHER reduced. Weekly boss artifact drops are unaffected.
• Prototypes will now drop at least once in the last weekly boss you face, if you are unlucky. The chance to acquire multiple prototypes within a week is unchanged. Drop rate is reduced consequently.
• World Boss Artifact Drop Rates are now visible in the adventurer's handbook.
• Prototype Drop Rates are now visible.
• Domain Artifact Drop Rates are now visible.
• 1-3* Weapons are now craftable. They will require a shit ton of ores and materials. Cold Steel for instance will require 200 pieces of mint.
• Added 6 new craftable weapons. Of course it will require prototypes you f2p piece of shit.
• Craftables, Shops and Loot have higher priority versus signboards and npc.
• Monsters and Enemies have higher priority (when attacking or casting skills) versus ores and flaming/freezing flowers and other resource objects.
• You can now equip up to 3 gadgets.
• New Action : long pressing a gadget opens up Gadget Wheel to switch gadgets without opening the inventory. Gadget goes into long cooldown.
• Domains now consider your condensed resin before saying you are out of resin.
• After completing a domain challenge, The start challenge object will respawn in the center of the arena. Game will no longer go into a loading screen. This is for the console peasants.
• When claiming domain challenge rewards, it also displays how much condensed resin you have (so you know you can still do 1 more, or gtfo) when it asks if you want to continue or leave
• Anemo Hypostasis will die if you manage to collect all the orbs, for a more consistent experience with other hypostasis.
• Weekly boss timers are now consistent. (Some have none , some at top, some at bottom)
• Dvalin's Mini Cutscene will hold your altitude (if you are gliding) when it triggers
• Childe's Mini Cutscene is now automatically skippable (named "skip when already viewed once" found in settings).
• Food is now sortable by type.
• When choosing a revival food, the icon sizes are reduced and displayed in a grid rather than a long line. When in single player mode it slows down time. Like witcher 3 or tomb raider.
• MRE can now hold all types of food, up to 3 slots.
• You can long click/hold the MRE button and switch the food it holds. Goes into long cooldown.
• Charged Longsword and Bow Attacks (for claymoreless comps) will now allow you to mine ores more effectively. This affects rock shield wall hilichurls as well.
• No one uses claymore charged attacks, even with stunned enemies. Claymore charged attacks now deal increasing damage the longer it was charged uninterrupted. You will get staggered and take more damage as a consequence. The last attack of a charged attack deals more damage and wipes half of the planet's population.
• Constellation can now be toggled on/off

Gacha / Shop

• The first cheapest crystal top up (60+60) has been buffed to (80+80) crystals. We realized it wasn't even enough for a single pull and we laughed until our sides hurt. As a tiny token of goodwill this will retroactively affect everyone who purchased this item for n amount of times the person has purchased this item.
• All in-game currencies (primo/fate/genesis/future except mora) are always displayed in the topright corner when wishing and shopping.
• Pity Counter. When it reaches 75 it glows like christmas.
• Gifting of purchase is now possible. In the case of chargebacks , the gifter gets banned. Gifts can only be sent after 60 days of purchase, and usable by the recipient after a week. Maximum of 1 gift per month.
• Gifter must have a track record of >= $20 of purchase within the last 3 months.
• Gifting is a sensitive topic. Chargeback scams fucks up game companies, banks and third party payment platforms.
• Purchase history and total is added to track expenses.
• Gambling addicition reminders when you rage spend. Also alerts a mhy employee when huge purchases are being made in error. It displays a huge red alert on the employees screen.

In Consideration

• Reworked Elemantal Mastery to also increase Elemental Skill Damage by 25% (base, some current/future characters might interact with less or more) of your total Elem Mastery. Consequently, Skill Damage from Attack Ratios are lowered. Think of ad/ap ratios in League of Legends.
• Character skills to deal compound damage of physical+element when using a weapon (e.g. diluc smash bouncing off pyro slimes, despite his big sword being sharp and shiny)

Items

• Wind Catcher Gadget now refills with anemo energy particles.
• Prototype Aminus/Archaic's proc cooldown refinement is restored. (Used to be 15/14/13/12/10)
• Boar Traps are now craftable and equippable as a gadget. You can leave it up to 48 hours to check if you caught something.
• Cast net are now craftable and equippable as a gadget. Can be used to catch multiple fish and crystal flies.
• Crab Traps , can be left in the wild for 48 hours and catches 3 crabs per trap.
• Inflatable balloon for safe swimming. Requires anemo slime materials.
• Portable towers no longer expire.
• Portable towers max deployed count is increased up to 5.
• Condensed Resin can now be used on World Boss
• Condensed Resin cap increased to 5.
• Artifact Inventory Limit increased to 5000.
• Weapon Cooldown Indicator displayed as status icon (sacrificial sword, archaic, etc)
• Seelie Companions give 1% passive bonus CharXP(Blue), CompanionXP(Purple), Mora(Gold)
• Crafting Table no longer consumable
• Portable Cooker no longer consumable (requires fuel , 1 fire stamen = 3 uses)
• Portable Warmer no longer consumable (requires fuel , 1 fire stamen = 3 uses)
• Items mined are ores
• Refined ores are ingots
• Option to refine Magical Crystal Chunk without resin, but with immensely increased cost and time

Coop

• You can see the general direction and how far an ally is like in pubg.
• In-game voice chat for random players in matchmaking

Battlepass / 12 Episode Anime

• Battlepass can now have excess points up to 3000xp , for the times when you do your reputation bounty and missions earlier before the next battlepass comes out.
• When a new Battlepass starts, it starts on mondays , so no mission gets left out. All excess days until the next new-battlepass-monday are dynamic and flexible.
• When using a condensed resin in a domain, it counts as 2 domains cleared in the Battlepass
• Cooking ingredients (sugar, bacon, cheese, etc) counts as cooking in the Battlepass
• You don't need to switch tabs in the battlepass when using claim all. Clicking claim all, claims all.
• New battlepass campaign for 12 episode anime. Milestones are displayed on website and forum. Sales earned are transparent in game and website. Inspired by dota 2 international.
• Percentage of battlepass campaign sales will go to anime funding.
• Having at least 1 season of anime puts mihoyo in the "mainstream" status in the leagues of Fate, Princess Connect, Grand Blue etc. It solidifies the IP.

Quests

• Option to abandon story quests (restart from scratch) to prevent blocking of coop
• Repeatable Quests Ideas below. Coop and matchmaking is enabled. 15~30 minutes long, walking pace. Not mandatory for daily activity/event/battlepass for people with little time to play. Gives worthwile rewards (3 pieces of adventurer's wit, 5k mora etc)
• Long escort caravan mission, from Mondstadt all the way to Liyue. From Springvale to Liyue. People and Caravan must survive. Enjoy the beautiful world of Teyvat, optional pit stops, coop chat/discord, region guard checkpoints and enemy ambush. Multiple client routes available. Go through dragonspire for a shorter, but more dangerous path. Get harassed by Fatui at borders. Board a ship and load the caravan. Get checked by Border Patrol for smuggled goods and diseases.
• Repeatable Town defense without towers. Defend the Town from hordes of invaders. Something fun with coop.
• Fatui and Friends Battle Royale. All npcs and doors disabled. You and the fatui bots duke it out. Healing only comes from special food that you pick up. Matchmaking enabled.
• Beach Defense. Prevent the Fatui from invading the coastline. Your friends rain arrows from starsnatch cliff.
• Beach to Mondstadt/Springvale goods escort services.

Elemental Reactions

• Vaporize's Steam deals aoe damage
• Overloads damage (electro->pyro) now deals x1.5 (pyro) damage
• Overloads damage (pyro->electro) now deals x2 (pyro) damage.
• Overload's knockback decreased significantly
• Superconduct's damage (electro->cryo) now deals 2x (cryo) damage
• Superconduct's damage (cryo->electro) now deals 1.5x (cryo) damage
• Superconduct's negative armor debuff is moved to Melt
• Melt gains the negative armor debuff due to the sudden temperature change, making surfaces brittle.
• Melt damage consequently reduced. (pyro->hydro) at x1.4% , (hydro->pyro) at x1.8%
• Geo New Reaction : Smoldering Rock or something (pyro->geo)(reverse not applicable) deals x0.3 (pyro damage) on top of crystallize
• Geo New Reaction : Mud or something (hydro->geo)(geo->hydro) deals x0.1 (geo damage) on top of crystallize, slows enemy movement
• Geo New Reaction : Snow or something (hydro->geo)(reverse not applicable) deals x0.2 (cryo damage) on top of crystallize, slows enemy attack speed
• Geo New Reaction : Seeds or something (dendro->geo) deals x0.1 (dendro damage) on top of crystallize, restores 3% of your hp. Or entangle. Prevents enemy movement (can still attacc and cast spells)

Enemies

• Enemies inside domains and abyss have their return-to-spawn-point-then-regenerate-to-full-health disabled.
• Enemy AI a bit smarter. Those with mobility skills (whopper, smol geovishap, cycin mages) won't follow you to drown in the water. The game will not check if you are wet , but if you are in a swimming state.
• Enemies attack cycle improve. Fixed bug when enemies stop attacking. Baedou Problems.
• Hydro Abyss Mage's and Hydro Fatui Gunner's Hydro Barrier now takes the same damage rate/ratio from opposing elements (cryo,electro) for consistency.
• Hydro barrier new opposing element : Geo. It makes it harder to maintain the water shield due to the mud soaking up the water and adding weight.
• Boss Childe's Spirit Whale Attack generates water in the sides of the arena, pushing you towards the center. You must have enough stamina to keep dashing to the sides before he does this, or you will have to perfectly dodge the spirit whale attack.
• Hydro SamaChurl now heals at a rate of +300/HoT per AR Milestone instead of percentage. This is for when you are hunting a LawaChurl Bounty that is near dead and healed to full health in 3 seconds. Having a fixed amount of healing ensures that it is big enough for the intended smaller enemies and portionally good enough for large enemies. The other option is to use different healing ratios for small and large enemies.
• Queen of Pain , I mean Cycin Mages have a stagger window when they are about to cast their almost-undispellable shield
• Zed , I mean Shadow Fatui Agent makes use of his shadows to dodge your attack sometimes.
• Smol Geo Vishap now drops less geo shields
• Smol Geo Vishap now uses his rolling attack near you, not 150m away from you.
• Smol Geo Vishap now burrows a bit less frequently
• Ruin Hunter doesn't stay in the air up and raining artillery forever , in consideration of bowless comps
• Fatui Cryo and Hydro Gunner Turn Rate Reduced by 10% when on Spray Mode.
• Primo GeoVishap now has a tired/exhausted animation, instead of standing still and looking at you and what life could have been for 10 seconds.
• Primo GeoVishap spin attack now has a 0.2 dodge window (previously none) and Spin Radius Decreased by 100m.

Characters

• Dvalin's Cutscene when you dispel his barrier is removed and much smoother. He just falls in place and no clipping.
• Character's "Main Stat" is now visible in attributes. Previously you can only know it when ascending or when using google, or if you really have a big brain.
• All characters passive talents are now combat related.
• All characters now have their own cooking/exploration/crafting/smithing talents. It is possible not to have OR have multiple talents in each category. We get it , everyone can taste what a good gravy is, but not everyone can make a good gravy.

Ayaka

• Alternate sprint binded to a different hotkey.
• Yes I came from the future.

Albedo

• Elevator can be activated to go up and down by using the F key.
• C2 stack counter / indicator via particles (think of razor geo sigils)
• C4 plunged attack covers albedo's sword in geo energy (like noelle, but smol)
• C6 crystallize shield has a different shape (leaf)

Amber

• Increased ultimate radius by a tiny bit.
• Allow targeting of ulimate by holding the ultimate button.
• If baron bunny is present in the ultimate radius, it will absorb all pyro damage and deal it as bonus damage when it blows up.
• If baron bunny was "charged" with pyro rain and hit with a C2 charged shot, it will trigger a micheal bay explosion animation.

Barbara

• Restored Barbara's Energetic Voice Lines
• New Lines sold seperately as Dark Barbara™ , comes with a Dark Dress
• C6 Revive indicator is now visible as a buff.
• C4 now generates flying energy particles instead of instantly regaining energy. Mind you that this is a fucking nerf to this piece of shit healer that freezes you. It's just that there's no flying particles when you use this hero.

Beidou

• Casting the elemental skill applies a strong taunt and re-initializes enemies attack loop.
• Bullet Time effect added when triggering a perfect counter, when playing in single player mode.
• The ultimate's chain lightning deals tiny spark damage if it didn't jump.
• C2 chain lightning has a different color.
• C4 buff is triggered when you do a perfect counter (Taking damage to activate a skill promotes bad gameplay)
• C4 perfect counter grants the maximum damage bonus
• C4 shield has a different color.
• C6 has aura on the ground (inspired by Dota 2's Necrophos , but purple)

Bennet

• C6 Ultimate pyro infusion just adds pyro damage to your attacks, and won't convert them fully into pyro.
• C6 Ultimate restores up to 100% hp.

Childe

• Improved manly posture when in aiming mode
• C4 Riptide slash and flash uses different coloparticles/animation
• C6 has an indicator when it works and when it is available

Chongyun

• Cryo Field's Cryo infusion just adds cryo damage to your attacks, and won't convert them fully into cryo.

Diluc

• What seriously? You really want more?
• Fuck this guy in particular
• Elemental Sword Duration Indicator added
• C6 his flames has some bluish tint

Diona

• Fixed shield duration bug and increased by additional 1.1 seconds per claw.
• Shield ratio based off max hp increased by 10%
• C2 reduces skill cooldown by -2 seonds (press) and -4 (hold). The coop shield is added by default out of the box. Anything coop should not be locked behind a paywall because it will hurt the game and fanbase.
• C4 has been reworked to grant normal and aimed uncharged shots 25% chance to deal charged attack shots.
• C6 radius is increased and uses a different color.

Fischl

• Ultimate now deals tiny bit of damage per 0.2 seconds tick when making contact with enemies (aside from getting hit by lightning once)
• Ultimate can fly/pass through thorn walls. I'm looking at you Dendro Samachurl.
• Shadow Raven Let Night F---!!!
• C4 Ultimate hp restored now scales off damage dealt by the ult.

Ganyu

• holding the elemental skill allows you to aim and won't make you backdash
• C4 Freezing Field changes color intensity per damage increase
• C6 free frost charged arrow now works with normal unaimed attacks.
• C6 uses a different particle color. Sometime it turns into a bazooka.

Jean

• Reduced Increased swaying of boobs by a tiny amount while holding the skill. You can kinda feel them slapping against your face. You can almost describe their softness and warmth in a minimum of 10 pages apart from you going sommelier describing how deep her sweat tastes like.
• Jean's Charged Attack Launch Height is too damn high that you cant even hit the enemy, so - Reworked Jean's Charged Attack : Holding the attack button launches the enemy in the air. If you keep holding it down you will perform 3 slashes in the air. If you let go early you will stay on the ground.
• Base Attack Increased by +5
• Jean can now pick up the slimes dropped by enemies and use it against them for a bighead move
• Ultimate radius is increased
• Ultimate Wall Mechanic Reversed. Enemies are now trapped inside. When you use your skill (usually to regain energy) you can air-wall slam them. Block Projectiles from outside.
• If any of you actually played jean support, a normal person would use ult to heal, cast skill to regain energy, then switch back to other characters. It doesn't make fucking sense to push them outside your wind arena because you want to fight inside the swirl/healing zone.
• Ultimate swirls every 0.2 seconds , depending on what elements are inside. Field Changes Color Each Time Like a Disco Ball
• Ultimate now slowly succs enemies to the center(without lifting them up)
• Ultimate Damage is consequently reduced.
• C1 Uses a different colored windblast
• C2 Buff Indicator
• C4 uses a different color wind field
• C6 Ultimate is now an aura and moves with you. To break away from "buffed area" convention.
• C6 Ultimate will get you to keep the windsaber for the ult's duration
• C6 Shield Buff Indicator via Particle and Status Icon

Kaeya

• Base attack incresed by 5
• Elemental Skill (Hold) Sprays Ice , think of Igni but Ice in Witcher 3 or DND's Burning Hands
• C2 Icicles light up when you defeat an enemy indicating that it really works
• C4 Barrier is of different shape
• C6 uses a different icicle particle for bling purposes

Keqing

• Aiming mode feels a lot smoother. You can aim while moving and cursor immediately shows and the kungfu pose is only done when throwing the stilleto.
• When in single player mode, casting your ultimate produces a bullet time effect.
• C4 Buff Indicator
• C6 Description is confusing as fuck.
• C6 Buff indicator
• C6 Makes your sword light up like a lightsaber.

Klee

• Imroved Torch/Bonfire/Campfire and the likes Lockon (if there's any to begin with)
• Throwing Jumpty Dumpty provides 0.1s iframe during her spin
• Ult is now no longer greedy. Pyro satellites remain when you switch characters, making our lovable klee open up for support options. Child support.
• C4 is now manually triggered, Pressing q again will make her explode, bigger damage based off remaining duration. less duration left, less damage.
• C6 klee uses different bombs

Lisa

• A lingerie shop is opened in Mondstadt to change her pantsu, socks and garter belt style and colors. Black Leather Tight Suit™ Sold Seperately.
• Option to wear glasses as a Librarian added.
• Climbing voice volume is re-mastered in asmr microphone, in all languages.
• Requires "i am of legal age" consent in the user center
• Elemental skill (press) aoe slightly increased.
• Base attack increased by 15.

Mona

• Alternate dash is now binded to alt key.
• Hydro Puppet now deals half damage upon cast and half damage upon explosion.
• C6 normal attacks use a different attack animation.

MC (Anemo)

• Palm vortex can be casted in midair to break your fall (but not propel you up)

MC (Geo)

• When you overlap geo boulders (aimed mode) it will trigger the geo explosion of the older rock, then replace it with a new one

Ningguang

• Holding the skill button surrounds her in mini jade screens , unable to perform any action until it is released or ends. Useful for cinematic stuff. Imagine tanking childe's whale attack. Or someone wants to recreate triple rashomon scene.
• C6 has a chance to use different attack animation.
• C6 star jade now resembles a primo gem.

Noelle

• Elemental Sword Duration Indicator added
• C1 heals have a special effect and voice line when conditions are met.
• C2 upgrade uses a different charged attack animation.
• C4 uses a different barrier color
• C6 upgrade uses different ult (possibly red with the same hue as her skirt) color.

Qiqi

• C2 reworked as -15% attack debuff
• C4 reworked as -20% elemental resistance debuff
• C6 cooldown/availability indicator.
• C6 has a different bling/color

Razor

• Transformation Duration Indicator added
• C1 increased damage now really works
• C1 now has a buff indicator that it really works
• C2 now has a special crit indicator
• C4 armor shred now has a (claw mark) armor shred indicator that it really works
• C4 (hold) has increased damage so it doesn't feel left out. It also has electro explosions similar to when you mine an electric ore as a special effect to indicate that you are C4 and have a big PP.
• C6 covers your sword with electricity (like diluc) when it is charged and ready
• Yes I play razor a lot.

Sucrose

• Fixed crafting bug not producing any bonus when using large quantities (say 100+)
• Improved lock on when blowing off dandelion flowers. Idk how she keeps missing them even at point blank range, Hell , at any given range.
• C1 if you overlap the wind nukes the second one will be a 0.1s delay then it will go off with a slightly bigger radius
• C2 ult has a different color
• C4 has an indicator that it works
• C6 buff indicator

Venti

• Wind current generated by skill (hold) allows him to fall slower without gliding, and allows him to shoot wind lasers. Ehe
• C2 Charged Shot produces a bullet time effect when shot at point blank or if all 3 arrows hit a single enemy. Sometimes he draws the holy lyre and it transforms into a primitive shotgun.
• C4 buff indicator.
• C6 uses different vacuum color

Xiangling

• Ultimate deals additional damage when cast at point blank because you get stab and bonk while she is twirling her spear.
• C2 last attack leaves a flaming trail special effect (inspired by kyo or iori from king of fighters)
• C6 upon cast, Xianling automatically does a speed-up full normal attack combo and then releases the pyronado normally (while covered in flames or some shit). If you are in single player mode and there are no other enemies within 150 radius the ult will cause the screen to black out, like in legend of legaia.
• C6 during the ultimate if it contacts with gouba's flames it produces micheal bay effects while raining carpet bombs and shit.
• Yes flat is justice.

Xingqiu

• Floating Swords Duration added
• Fixed crafting bug not producing any bonus when using large quantities (say 100+)
• C4 Allows you to hold the elemental skill for double backflips (inspired by law from tekken) cooldown is 1 month.
• C4 Elem Skill leaves a faint rainbow (when ulted)
• C6 Swords emit faint rainbow color. Rainbow power motherf-

Xinyan

• Hitting large enemies counts as 2 enemies.
• C1 buff indicator
• C2's level 3 shield has some bluish flames
• C6 charged attack uses a diffent attack animation or has an indicator that it works

Xiao

• Transformation Duration Indicator added
• C2 now leaves a trail of anemo energy that deals tiny bit of damage , trail lasts for 1 second and deals at 0.2s intervals.
• C6 plunge attack counts large enemies as 2.
• C6 plunge-attack-no-cooldown-empowered-dashes uses a different particle color and produces a bullet time effect when used for the 3rd time onwards. useful for cinematic purposes
• C6 during the bullet time you can sneak in a normal attack once per dash
• Bullet time is always disabled in multiplayer

Zhongli

• Increased pillar aoe by a tiny bit
• Generates energy particles per pulse, maximum of 1 enemy per pillar
• Base attack increased by 5
• Travelers can redeem promo code "WHOSYOURDADDY" for additional +5 damage, regardless if they have the hero or not.
• Attack ratios increased by 3% per attack category.
• C1 has a slightly bigger dong eherm statue
• C4 Chaos Meteor errrr I mean Order Meteor has a different rock color
• C6 shield uses a different color , come on you get the drift already.
• C6 Meteor is affected by the element of the barrier you are wearing. The element is dealt as secondary damage, primary damage is still geo. (flaming space rock?)

Why different coloparticles/animation when you have C1-C6 upgrade?

It makes whales feels special, and it gives F2P players something to aspire for. It makes you want to spend with all the bling. Particle recolor is easy peasy and can be deployed within minutes. Attack animations on the other hand are time consuming. It almost always put smile in people's faces when a whale shows up in a ferrari. "Dude check this out a C6 GeoDaddy joined my domain run. Look at the size of his statue. Oh my what a BIG meteor."

Why are you doing this?

It's just for my amusement. I'm still adding random thoughts now that 1.3 has launched. I don't care if nothing gets implemented. I would nut hard in my shorts with QoL and alleged bug/bugfixes mentioned in this post more than anything.

Afterword

Leave your thoughts below. Sorry and not sorry for the broken engrish , feel free to copy and paste whatever, use it wherever idc as long as it doesn't annoy or harm someone. Translate it in your language etc. No credits needed etc. Let your mind flow

After-Afterword

• Thanks for the awards and all kinds of reception
• You guys are awesome and insane that's a shit load of awards thank you.