I don’t have any small form factor recommendations, but I can recommend - if you’re comfortable going AliBaba/AliExpress - the Ípega brand. It’s about £10, requires an app to configure, but extremely long-life battery and switchable modes. But the best controller for the rare few mobile games that support controller input natively is an Xbox One… one, and any other made after that point

Nobody should’ve bought games published by Amazon in the first place

What a fucking surprise.

In a world of garbage and capitalist-corporate exploitation of the masses, we celebrate these.

Hell yeah that’s a success. Some legends are rebuilding server support for The Crew, but it requires a PC copy to modify the files. Back in 2014 I bought it on Xbox.

Longevity alone is a great reason to switch. The knowledge that a higher price usually means a better product; complete control over how good the game looks (which usually means higher graphics settings compared to console); a higher chance of being able to play offline to skirt mandatory updates, data farming, glitch patches and other attempts to restrict your choices of playstyle; and less chance of your purchased license to play being indefinitely revoked due to some decision the publisher made. Because, let’s face it, publishers are usually the biggest assholes in the game industry, and the consoles are just another way of enhancing their profit and control over developers and consumers.

They’re a great, convenient product, but all convenience today comes with a higher cost than money.

PC gaming is looking threatened, though. The pearly gates of Steam and Valve are getting corrupted by greed and control freaks. If Steam transforms, I’m not sure where everyone else will go. Perhaps GoG.

Wait. I blacked out and my bank is missing numbers, what happened?!

Even better! They’ve since added TF2 and DOTA 2 to the bundle

A few sales ago there was a deal for a significant Valve collection. I finally got the Half-Lifes and a dozen others for about £25

Incroyable!

Pretty much every time I played Oblivion I’d spend a week in the tutorial cave, levelling Agility by using a turbo controller and rubber band, jumping in a corner where the ceiling height is just high enough so you can spam about 5 jumps per second. Later on you can do what you said near a goblin to max Sneak, but I think it’s quicker by that guy you need to kill for the Dark Brotherhood as he’s ill and perpetually sleeping

I agree, the one I have (with aforementioned triple connect thing) is from Ipega, a solidly built controller, designed to hold a mobile. Often easier to use compared to a console controller. Flydigi is premium AF! Dayum that looks nice

I’m segueing to an off-topic article on that page…

https://insider-gaming.com/rog-asus-xbox-raikiri-controller-price-revealed/

The controller, luckily, will have a lot of premium features available like tri-mode connectivity,

Listen here you little shits, the cheapest POS controllers from AliExpress have “tri-mode connectivity”

Note that due to blackmagic fuckery and import fees for the UK, everything game related is sold at equal cost to the US. Example: Xbox Series X was UK£450/US$450. These prices are therefore convertible as 1:1

Back in the day I paid £60 for a game (£40 base) plus season pass, discount bundle. According to an inflation calculator that value = £90 today.

Ignoring the difference in time to develop and the manpower involved between these two reference games, only taking into account the reported playtime…

Overall reception for the games vary massively…

MW3 2011

MW3 2023

Let’s just say I still wouldn’t pay over £90 for the entire game. Notwithstanding that many games today are released unfinished due to crunch time culture and the ability to update, or finish development, after release.

Why? They fabricated the ecosystem so that you don’t own the game, you own the license to access the game. Of course, with the birth of PS4 and Xbox One, physical discs were fucked anyway because they mostly stopped storing all the data on it, and you had to start downloading the rest. And Microsoft made it so they could start trickle feeding the revenue through them back to the devs. You cannot convince me that devs get more revenue per sale as part of Game Pass than they did as physical media.

It hurts, but you may be right. I hate trendsetters for price hikes. Hopefully releases like Peak for $20 can help remind folk that AAAs aren’t always worth the base cost. I just really dislike how capitalism ruins everything, in this case the obsession over currency has led to the games development industry being corporatized; for all but indies it’s largely about how to appease the consumer and maximize profit, instead of how to make something people will love and get enough sales to make another game.

I came in to the franchise at Vice City Stories and San Andreas, loved them! I do know a little about the chronological releases and that there were spinoffs that for some reason weren’t numbered aha. So:

Vice City (Miami 1980s) GTA III -

• Liberty City (sort of NYC) San Andreas -
• Los Santos (Los Angeles)
• San Fierro (San Francisco?)
• Las Venturas (Las Vegas) GTA IV -
• Liberty City (New York City) GTA V ( -
• Los Santos again
• North Yankton (North Dakota)
• Surroundings are a mashup of several real-life counterparts GTA VI -
• Vice City again

I preferred San Andreas, and liked it mainly for the size and beauty of the map (post storyline appeal) and radio stations, Vice City for the collectibles, GTA IV for the brilliant and crazy storyline characters, and GTA V for the same reason as San Andreas.

A couple of my all-time favourite games were Rockstar (Need for Speed Most Wanted and Midnight Club 3, underground street racing).

Theory 1: Because it is cheaper to manufacture.
Theory 2: It is custom made for the PS5’s internal 12 data channels, allowing for faster read/write than normal.

They buymake storage with 12 channels, and 1 Toshiba NAND chip @ 512Gib per channel. This means each SSD has 768GiB of storage, or 825GB. The max read bandwidth is 9GB/s.
math: 512Gib x 12ch = 6144Gib / 8 = 768GiB

For reference the Samsung 990 Pro 1TB has 8 channels, and 2 Samsung NAND chips @ 500Gb per channel. This means each SSD has 932GiB of storage, or 1,000GB. The max read bandwidth is 7.5GB/s.
math: (converted to Gib for uniformity) 466Gib x 2 chips = 932Gib x 8ch = 7456Gib / 8 = 932GiB

Key:
Gib = gibibit, 1024⁴ bits
GiB = gibibyte, giga/binary/byte, 1024⁴ x 8 bits
GB = gigabyte, giga(decimal)byte, 1000⁴ x 8 bits

Extra: Storage-based measurements are largely measured in binary bytes but displayed with the decimal abbreviation, hence my C: drive here was sold as 500GB, equal to 465GiB but Windows shows it as 465GB

You referring to the expansion drives that slot in the back and are hotswappable? Most expensive storage medium I’ve ever bought. Problem was, there was no alternative… Internal storage ignored, ofc

Thank you! I didn’t think an ombudsman would be at all helpful against a game company, I should reconsider aha. No Twitter account but that’s good advice!

Thanks, yes that’s good advice. I’ve got an account with GOG and use their launcher

Fuck Rockstar. I changed my email accounts but forgot to change Rockstar first. Now, after buying GTA V on Xbox and Steam and sinking a lot of time into it over two accounts, they added some mandatory launcher on Steam that forces you to login to their Social Club. Mandatory launcher calls an account that I can’t unlink, triggers mandatory 2FA to an email that doesn’t exist. The cunts refuse to help despite my willingly handing over a lot of private information - their support system is as good as fake. The end result is I have sank >£100 in buying their games and they ensure that not only do I not get to continue my account on GTA V, but I have been permanently locked out and actually impossible to play any Rockstar Social - walled game on Steam.

I have the same issue with Activision, and here’s the kicker. They’re exactly the same support blueprint. Same support. Same result. Same fake-ass Western names on their signature.

Well yes, and Steam is continuing to censor and damage its reputation as the best gamer’s market, as a conduit of free expression. It’s possible they are continuously pressured and were told to remove this, but they can also say no. Valve can have moral standards, and they can prove they’re not part of the problem by being transparent and ensuring that they do not help usher in a terrible, oppressive future.

Steam’s moderation just hit oppressive levels, and its staff banning/removing submissions that don’t break guidelines while lying about the reason is Reddit-level. Please Steam, you can stop being cunts. You can return from this.

Direct link to VILE homepage

I’m right with you there - freedom of expression is fundamental, I feel, and freedom of autonomy is not only a privilege to us as conscious, self-aware beings, but also a constant. Imagine a couple billion international people being told they can’t have nice things or freedom by a thousand extremely conservative people from one country. This whole thing is a joke, but if it’s any consolation the people will always fight back. We will always find a way to reject the doctrine of some buffoons. Chances are some people are already compiling a catalogue of every game removed from Steam in order for them to be available. The most low-effort controversial titles may not be much of a loss, but everything following them will be.

Clickbait doesn’t explain properly - the reason queer games were removed from Itch.io is because (and this is another issue) they were one of many media hosters who labeled anything LGBTQ+ as NSFW. The tag itself gets improperly used but anyway. They were still banning under 18s from learning and experiencing diverse life. Romance ≠ sexuality ≠ identity but some people don’t understand that.

Guys I need to ask something. The special physical edition of SR2 is hosted by iam8bit.com, and among the bonus material is something they call an “O-sleeve” -

There are no images of this on the site. Aside from sex toys or armwear I have no clue what this could be. Searching it hasn’t clarified anything. Does anyone here know what an O-sleeve is? Is it something O shaped?

Edit: the only thing I can find related to sleeves and discs are these, but this’d be weird to include…

Alright who tf is Krafton and why are they colonising dev studios all of a sudden

(rhetorical - I’ll be researching them later)

Cool! Finally a worthy successor to Steep?

True, but that’s just the price they charge. The actual value of CPU performance, build quality and part quality indicates a midrange device.

In regards to the Pixel Fold (the $1500 devices), well, those in the market for a foldable already prefer to sacrifice device longevity and some practicality for the double screen, and usually aesthetics and gimmicks cost more than bare practicality. The foldables are in a different league, but still are outclassed by others in their price range.

1. It’s a budget variant,
2. The Pixel series are midrange, not high-end or flagship

This doesn’t seem like that big a deal, especially as it’s a software update. Easily fixable with a firmware update like GrapheneOS

They really need to make all modes available at this stage rather than cycling out

And the deluded fucks still charge more than US$250 for their half-a-console. It’s got good processing power and stellar shell construction, but charging the same price Xbox and PlayStation do for their full entertainment consoles, for a handheld main with the same defect-prone joysticks, tiny battery, stickers for the Joy-Con socket decal, plastic screen and 1080p display? In 2025?

But Skyblivion isn’t released yet? What fake ass moneygrab are you playing ;)

Try Tidal, but if Spotify (lower bitrate) didn’t work out, maybe YouTube Music?

Or, of course, flash your phone or buy a different one because there are a whole load of reasons not to buy a Pixel, least of which that it’s weaker than other phones at its price point. This may be a factor in lag.

As long as there’s no stupid pre-launcher aka ad platform. I can load CP77 with its exe directly, for now

The more people realise that currency isn’t the only possible form of payment, the better. Time, physical and mental energy are three of the most common things people trade, above money.

I tried to check the definition of ‘currency’ with Oxford English, but they require an account and subscription before being a dictionary. I would use Collins, but it’s riddled with adverts (empty squares and “We don’t like ads either. Pay us and we’ll make them go away”) and that’s above my budget. Cambridge is still useful, thank fuck.

That and adding their exaggerated hip-swinging animation that’s designed exactly because perverts are drawn to it. Jiggle physics on their chest as well. There is no excuse for purposefully adding these to adolescents, realism or no. We know why it’s there and continuing to do this can have knock-on effects to young girls IRL.

Take this clip for example. I picked this character at random. Noelle is standing still, her boobs have a life of their own from 2:45 onwards, and she is canonically 15 years old (link has an adblockblock, sorry).

Thank you

Thank you. I didn’t read that the Asian in the subject was not American but British, but some folk seem to not realise that Asians can be both right-wing and a national of a non-Asian country.

You right

No, read it, it said they’re Asian. Right wing Americans can actually include other demographics, you know