gaming

Grim Dawn is a huge epic action RPG with a very large linear maps. As if that wasn't big enough... the expansion Ashes of Malmouth and Forgotten Gods has more locations with more monsters to slay and more quests to complete.



Ashes of Malmouth
Forgotten Gods

Continue slaying minions, mini-bosses and epic boss battles and level up your additional skill trees and masteries to equip your character with new weapons and magical skills. The developers have added more factions to side with or eliminate and all kinds of epic environments to slay them in.

• Burning sands
• Lush oases
• Volcanic wastes
• Forest of Gloomwald
• Murky Ugdenbog
• Fallen city of Malmouth

I've recently started replaying through Grim Dawn in co-op with my wife and picked up both expansions during a GOG sale. You won't regret adding...

Estranged: The Departure is a final act of the series. Continue the journey of the mysterious island and uncover conspiracies of Arque Corporation. But this is not going to be easy... There are forces who will stop you in your tracks and puzzles to solve, but you are not alone...



https://store.steampowered.com/app/582890/Estranged_The_Departure/

You will be thoroughly immersed into the beautifully detailed island environments. Some actually almost look real. Discover cliff-sides and corporate offices with zombies and soldiers in your way. I haven't seen graphics this epic in a long time. I found myself admiring the natural stone walls in a cave, the small puddles on the ground and edges of walls reflecting light. Its pretty amazing!

This is a native Linux port and it ran beautifully on my GeForce GTX 1060

Specs:
Mint 19.3 64-bit
GeForce GTX 1060
Nvidia 440.100

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Medal Of Honor is a military frontal assault first person shooter based on the battles in World War II. Play as U.S. Army Sergeant John Baker in the front lines of Operation Overlord, Battle of the Bulge and DDay. Warchest includes the original Allied Assault and both expansions:

• Spearhead
• Breakthrough

https://www.gog.com/game/medal_of_honor_allied_assault_war_chest



I never did a guide for Allied Assault because I was never able to run it in Wine until now. This game was developed in 2002 and though the graphics are hard on the eyes, its a pretty fun war game with a lot of action. It displays features and scenarios before its time. The Call of Duty series was inspired by Allied Assault.

The key to playing Allied Assault in Wine is adding the following command for Nvidia video cards:
export __GL_ExtensionStringVersion=17700

In PlayOnLinux you have to paste this in the Miscellanous Tab area at the bottom...

Estranged Act 1 marks the beginning of an epic tale of a stranded fisherman on a mysterious island. Slay zombies, pick off violent locals and solve clever puzzles. The question is... what really happened here?



https://store.steampowered.com/app/261820/Estranged_Act_I/

Made in Valve's source engine, Estranged is a free to play game that runs natively in Linux. I didn't have any issues playing Estranged on my GeForce GTX 1060. The graphics were beautiful and the environments were stunning... not to mention it was fun to play and the puzzles were clever. I loved the scripted events and physics-based puzzles which reminded me of Half-Life 2.

Specs:
Mint 19.3 64-bit
GeForce GTX 1060
Nvidia 440.100

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Madhouse is a psychological first person horror game with a clever story and puzzle elements. Play as two characters in an aslyum in the same place at different times. Begin as P.I. Darren Hall investigating a missing person case in a creepy abandoned asylum. But you will suddenly be a nurse in a functioning hospital. Follow the clues in both time periods...



https://tgorder.itch.io/madhouse

This game wasn't actually very scary, but it had some amazing visuals and interesting puzzles. Everything played fine in ProtonGE as it was developed in Unreal Engine. My GeForce GTX 1060 handled performance and I was able to play through the entire game.

Specs:
Mint 19.3 64-bit
GeForce GTX 1060
Nvidia 440.100
ProtonGE5.0-9

Superliminal is a first person puzzle game with some fancy depth perception special effects. I can't really explain how it works, but its amazing... you have to try it yourself. You awaken in what appears to be a test chamber and a bunch of random objects. Move to the next room by completing the puzzle. The thing is... why? What are you doing here and how do you escape?



https://store.steampowered.com/app/1049410/Superliminal/

Play the demo for free in Proton, but the full version will be full Linux support. Proton didn't have any problems playing this game with my GeForce GTX 1060.

Specs:
Mint 19.3 64-bit
GeForce GTX 1060
Nvidia 440.100
Proton 5.0-9

9 Monkeys of Shaolin is a story-driven side-scrolling kung fu beat-em up game with beautiful low poly graphics. The story begins as Wei Cheng is the only survivor of his village after a brutal slaughter. The Shaolin monks save and revive him almost from death its-self. Begin training to take revenge on the ruthless evil who slayed his family! Wield melee weapons and upgrade them as you progress.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1425880/9_Monkeys_of_Shaolin_Prologue/


The Prologue is currently available for free on Steam and runs perfectly in Proton on my GeForce GTX 1060. Made in Unreal Engine, there didn't need to be any workaround or overrides necessary. I did install Media Foundation just to be safe as its very common for Unreal game to utilize it for videos and cut-scenes. There is even a co-op feature over local network or split-screen available.

Specs:
Mint 19.3 64-bit
GeForce GTX 1060
Nvidia 440.100
Proton 5.0-9...

Who would have though a small team like CrossOver (Developers of Wine) would be able to restore 32-bit gaming on MacOS? Specially Catalina which recently removed 32-bit support.

https://www.codeweavers.com/support/forums/announce/?t=24;mhl=231110;msg=231110#msg231110

This is a great sign for gaming! Specially when the day comes where Linux kernel stops supporting 64-bit applications. It may not be for some time, but eventually it will happen. But with Wine we can hopefully still play our old legacy games FOREVER!

What can be more interesting than a typical day as a teenage boy? How about a teenagers brother with creepy telekinetic powers.... Play as Sean and his little brother Daniel in an epic adventure. This is no typical day goofing off... a fight with a bully turns into a tragic beginning.



https://store.steampowered.com/app/532210/Life_is_Strange_2/

The demo runs perfectly in Steam with Proton. My GeForce GTX 1060 handled the graphics all set on high and I was able to save and reload the game without any problems. This is an action adventure game with inventory and lists of objectives.

Specs:
Mint 19.3 64-bit
Geforce GTX 1060
Nvidia 440.100
Proton 5.0-9


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In The Surge you awaken in the ruins of a huge corporation with an exoskeleton suite as your advantage. Fight rogue robots and augmented zombies as you learn what happened to the CREO corporation. This is a Dark Souls-ish combat game with the ability to target specific areas of the enemies unarmored body parts. Use combos and dodges to slay clever minions who have similar attacks as yourself.

https://www.gog.com/game/the_surge


PlayOnLinux was able to handle The Surge with Wine 5.0 64-bit and DXVK on my GeForce GTX 1060. Loading, saving and keyboard/mouse controls worked without issues as you can see in the video. I warn you, this game is pretty unforgiving as all the enemies re-spawn even when you return to a previous area. There are only checkpoints which save your progress, so you may find yourself dying an clearing out the same areas over and over.

Specs:
Mint 19.3 64-bit
GeForce GTX 1060
Nvidia 440.100
PlayOnLinux 4.3.4...

Hypercharged: Unboxed is an arena wave-based tower-defense multi-player game. The theme? Toys!
Battle all kinds of house toys from robots to bouncing balls and defend your hyper cores. The demo is single-player but the full game has multi-player where you can defend your bases against and with your friends. Upgrade your characters weapons and abilities, then go out there and slay those TOYS!



https://store.steampowered.com/app/523660/HYPERCHARGE_Unboxed/

Proton was able to handle the demo perfectly on my GeForce GTX 1060. This is an Unreal Engine game and hopefully there will be a Linux port planned in the future... until then, play in Steam with Proton.

Specs:
Mint 19.3 64-bit
GeForce GTX 1060
Nvidia 440.100
Proton 5.0-9

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Layers Of Fear is a horror adventure with almost unending rooms of jump scares. Play the role of a drunken artist who is trying to finish the masterpiece of his life... a portrait of his wife. But there was an accident and she was scarred from a fire. Live his drunken nightmare as he tries to find out what happened to his child, his wife and his house.



Playing Layers of Fear is a crazy psychedelic horror experience where you explore a massive house full of room with terror. Anything can happen and anything does! Search through cabinets riddled with wine bottles and hear the artists memories of items you find. Every room is different, but seems familiar... turn around and its different again. Are you afraid of dolls?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/391720/Layers_of_Fear/

Layers of Fear provides us with a native Linux port as it was developed in Unity 3D engine. So the game ran quite well on my GeForce GTX 1060. There are a few...

Blastronaut is a space procedurally generated resource gathering sci-fi game. Use your blue goo gun and jetpack to break apart blocks on the planet and find precious resources. Upgrade your machines in order to buy fuel and other abilities and tools.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1392650/BLASTRONAUT/

I played the beta demo in Steam and never saw a SteamPlay warning... so I'm not sure if it was a native version or not? But either way, the game played beautifully! I was able to maneuver with my jetpack and dig down into the planet to find the best resources. Be careful not to waste your fuel... otherwise you might not make it back to the surface.


Specs:
Mint 19.3 64-bit
GeForce GTX 1060
Nvidia 440.100

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Path of Titans is a MMO dinosaur survival simulator. The demo includes a few dinosaurs with male and female options, skins and colors. Enter the massive island to explore beautifully lush biomes. Every tree, plant, rock and cliff-side is modeled with super realism and day/night cycle shows off all varied elements in the environment. The demo didn't include gathering or eating plants, but there were hints of interactive vegetation.



Join your friends in a group and scour the landscape hunting down prey. Each dinosaur is cleverly and carefully modeled and each one has its own dino-calls. The developers "spared no expense" when designing these realistic Jurassic creatures.

https://pathoftitans.com/

I'm happy to present Path of Titans demo comes with a native Linux version which is cross-platform compatible. Meaning we can join servers from smartphones, PC, Windows alike. Unfortunately the island is so large you may find yourself...

Years ago my wife and I played through Grim Dawn (GOG version) several times. It was a lot of work setting it up to play "bug free" in DirectX 9 only. There were a bunch of workarounds to prevent missing textures, but it worked! Today Wine 5.0 handles everything perfectly with DXVK compatibility. We are playing smoothly and no more graphical artifacts. It may slow down a bit when a lot of monsters are in the screen at the same time, but that is typical of games with a lot of animation.



https://www.gog.com/game/grim_dawn

I recently purchased the Expansions (DLC) and we are starting over from the beginning. The game runs over LAN easily in Linux and plays smoothly with co-op.

• Ashes of Malmouth
• Forgotten Gods

Specs:
Mint 19.3 64-bit
GeForce GTX 1060 & GTX 950
Nvidia 440.100
PlayOnLinux 4.3.4

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I first play Deiland on mobile a few years back and though it was interesting. Play as a boy on a small planet harvesting corn, crafting a camp and defending against aliens. Then I picked it up on Steam during a sale and found it to be even more fun! Not only are the graphics better but the interaction and controls seem more immersive on my large monitor.



https://store.steampowered.com/app/760620/Deiland/

Proton was able to handle Deiland without any issues on my GeForce GTX 1060. I was able to complete quests, load and save. If you like casual survival games with quests and action, this is a good one.

Specs:
Mint 19.3 64-bit
GeForce GTX 1060
Nvidia 440.59
Proton5.9

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Firewatch is a story of a lonely forest ranger in Wyoming trying to escape the harsh realities of life. His wife is sick with dimentia and they are separated while he "finds himself". But even in the forest you are not alone. There are fires to investigate and a large forest to protect.


https://www.gog.com/game/firewatch

The Developer, Campo Santo provides us with a native Linux version and it runs beautifully on my GeForce GTX 1060. I was able to crank all the video settings to high and enjoy the natural beauty of the toonshaded forest. Even if there wasn't a story, I would enjoy exploring the forest and taking screenshots.

Specs:
Mint 19.3 64-bit
GeForce GTX 1060
Nvidia 440.100

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Ash Asylum demo is a creepy introduction into a haunted asylum with puzzles and jump-scares. Search through the remains of a derelict madhouse with your lighter. Not everything is as it seems... Interact with objects and find a way through this hellish prison before you are locked in it for eternity.



I was unable to run the Linux version, but the Windows demo ran perfectly on my GeForce GTX 1060 in Proton. I was able to play without any bugs or artifacts. The graphics and lighting are stunning and creepy. Some of the puzzles are easy and other are very hard. You will acquire plenty of items which are not utilized in the demo, but hopefully are needed in the full game.

https://taintedgames.itch.io/ash-asylum

Specs:
Mint 19.3 64-bit
GeForce GTX 1060
Nvidia 440.59
ProtonGE5.0 64-bit
DXVK: 1.7 64-bit

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Dark Fracture is a first person psychological horror/puzzle game. You work at a morgue and have to stay late one night, but are you alone? Strange sounds come from dark rooms and bloodstains suddenly appear on the floor... the electricity goes out... find your lighter and get out!



https://twisted2studio.itch.io/dark-fracture

ProtonGE 5.0 was able to handle this demo just fine in PlayOnLinux as it was developed in Unreal Engine. I didn't have any performance issues or graphical issues... the demo ran perfectly on my GeForce GTX 1060 with DXVK 1.7

Specs:
Mint 19.3 64-bit
GeForce GTX 1060
Nvidia 440.100
ProtonGE 5.0 64-bit
DXVK 1.7 64-bit

Note: Also requires vcrun2019 and Media Foundation installation


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Back in 2013 I posted a step-by-step guide on how to install Steam in PlayOnLinux and run Mirror's Edge. It was a lot of worked to get it setup. But today you can seriously just run it in Proton through Linux Steam.



Game Play

Mirror's Edge runs great in Proton as it is a DirectX 9 game. I was able to crank all the settings to high and play without any bugs or crashes. The game saved and continued without issues either. This is great for us gamers because Proton handles everything from DirectX & Visual C+ installation to Physx setup.

Specs:
Mint 19.3 64-bit
GeForce GTX 1060
Nvidia 440.100
Proton 5.0-9

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