CerebralHawks
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When I’m sick I often get nauseated, almost like vertigo. So my answer is none of them.
If I’m not nauseated, any of them. I play a lot of low-impact, easy games. Animal Crossing on the Switch is both of those, until you see a knee-high tarantula! (They are in the game and are big because they’re not to scale, like most of the bugs. They run away from you though… unless you have a net out, in which case they will attack! You can’t die in AC though, they just knock you out and you wake up in front of your house, no harm no foul.)
I play Blue Prince on Mac and on Xbox (it’s also on PlayStation and PC). It’s a puzzle game, kind of a deck-building (but not really) building game (also not really). It’s pretty unique. I absolutely suck at it, but I like taking a run every other day or so. It’s fun to fail at. You have to get to the 46th room of a house, but its 9x5 grid resets every day, and as you come to a door, you choose the room to “build” (or blueprint, the name is a pun) and when you run out of moves, you call it a day and try again the next (in-game) day. It’s weird but it’s pretty chill. There’s one scene where you think there will be a jump scare, but it never happens (entering the Security Room).
Razer Kishi. That’s what I have — but mine only supports Android (I have one of each). It’s USB-C, but doesn’t support my iPhone 16 Pro Max. That being said, if your controller is recognised by iOS, it should work. I use the 8bitdo controller that looks like a Super NES controller, only it has analogue sticks and a second set of triggers (like a PlayStation controller). Works great.
But yes, since Apple revamped the Files app, every app that exposes its files to iTunes/macOS should have its files accessible right in Files, and you can move from the app folder to the download folder and vice-versa. It still isn’t as open as Android, but functionally, it’s just as good. I have no problem moving files between my iPhone and either my Android phone, or my wife’s. What you really need for this is an app that will set up a file host, and that app also needs to expose its files to the Files app. Have one host, have the other connect to it, two-way communication over WiFi. No AirDrop needed, they just have to both be on the same WiFi network (could be one’s hotspot).
Literally no iOS restrictions on Delta.
Okay, say we’re standing face to face and I’m showing you my iPhone. I swipe between library pages showing you my games. I go into Final Fantasy III and show you a 50 hour save. Then, to your astonishment, I swipe up to Home, then uninstall the app. “But your save!” you say, but I’m just smiling. I go into the App Store, re-download Delta. I show you my empty library. Then I go to sign into Google Drive, turning my back for privacy. I turn back and show you I’m hitting Enter/Submit/Log In/whatever. We watch as my games repopulate the library. I open Final Fantasy III. My save is intact.
You’re excited. You want Delta too. So you download it on yours. You have the games at home and you’ll load them up later, but you wanna get some time in on Super Metroid right now. So I scroll down to it, long press it, and tap AirDrop. You swipe down, long-press your connections widget, tap AirDrop, and change it to “Everyone for 10 minutes.” Your iPhone shows up, and I AirDrop you the game. Your iPhone receives it, and it opens in Files. You tap on it, it gives you the option to open it in Delta. It’s now in your library. And backed up to your Google Drive account, if you set that up.
Android guys have some better options than Delta, for sure, but they also kinda wish they had Delta.
Delta emulates only Nintendo and only up to the NDS. That said, as a Super NES gamer, you should be aware of better ports on later systems. Most notably IMO, Zelda 3 on Super NES vs Four Swords on GBA. Four Swords is a multiplayer thing, but it also includes Zelda 3 but with better translation, widescreen support, a better inventory, updated translations, and some other fixes. Of course, if you’re running a JP Zelda 3 1.0 for exploits and speed runs, well, that’s different. (You can do that, too.)
Ironically, the best parts of the Animal Crossing 3.0 update are free. The hotel, which is based on the Happy Home Paradise DLC (which is $25), is free. The bonus features are mostly free. The ones locked behind the $5 Switch 2 Edition upgrade mostly require Switch 2 hardware, like mouse control, higher resolution, and the party/multiplayer bonuses. And being able to call villagers by name. I though the Switch 1 had a mic, too, but I’m not sure. Maybe it does and that feature will be available on both Switches, but the video made it seem like it would just be for the Switch 2.
Right, I just don’t think the Switch.2 will be where they launch it. While I’m not one of those guys who says the Switch is a minor iteration, I do say it’s a necessary iteration but still just a Switch. It’s just the 2025 Switch. Bigger, more powerful, mouse mode, higher resolution, some nice stuff to have… but it’s still a Switch.
Thinking about Animal Crossing releases, did the 3DS XL or New 3DS get a new Animal Crossing? Pretty sure it was just New Leaf, and Welcome Amiibo was sold on the eShop. Did the DS Lite or DSi get a new Animal Crossing, or was it just always Wild World (or City Folk, the other being NGC or Wii)?
I don’t doubt they’re working on a new Animal Crossing, but I don’t think it will be on the Switch.
It might also matter if you could get something closer to Animal Crossing on computers or rival consoles. Similar games exist but they aren’t that similar. I think Stardew Valley is the main one, but the recent Disney game would be a contender, too. And the Hello Kitty one. But Nintendo knows they don’t have any competition in the space.
I have the Razer one. It said it was for Android, and I do have an Android phone, and it basically works, but back then, iPhones were using Lightning. For whatever reason, it does not support iPhones. My iPhone has a bigger screen (6.9" vs 5.8") and is more powerful. The Android phone is good enough for retro emulation, of course, but iOS wins Nintendo emulation with Delta, due to the Google Drive backup feature. I have a Flygrip on my iPhone, and I have an 8bitdo Bluetooth controller that can pair to the iPhone. I think Xbox controllers can, too. My old Xbox One controller pairs to my Macs just fine. Maybe it’ll pair to iPhone.
Fortunately RetroArch is on iOS as well. I don’t think it can use all the cores, but it can use the ones that count (like PS1 and prior). I know on Android you get all of them, including PS2, PSP, Wii, NGC, and so on. But my Android phone is a Galaxy S10 (2019), so I wouldn’t expect it to run the newer games. My iPhone 16 Pro Max is capable, but won’t run the actual cores due to iOS restrictions.
I wonder how hard it would be to homebrew a Raspberry Pi, a custom screen, and a custom controller. Though for what you’d spend doing it (and the value of your time!) there are existing devices (mostly from China, I think) that are meant to do exactly that. But I wouldn’t know where to start with those.
I can even play games on my Apple Watch, but you gotta think, with only one hand controlling it (assuming you’re wearing the watch), you can’t play too many games. I have Zelda, as a proof of concept, but Pokemon is far more likely.
These days, just about anything can emulate. Not too many of them can do it well. A good example is, the original Super Mario Bros… The latency is way too high to play it like you can on original hardware, and it sucks that as advanced as our tech is, the game is virtually unplayable in any emulator. It feels like you’re playing on an ice level (like in Mario 2) almost with how slow the game is to react. We didn’t have this problem in the 80s playing on an actual NES. Even the newer Nintendo consoles are just emulating, and they are subject to the same latency issue. Even first-party Nintendo games on modern consoles can’t beat the latency. For example, on Animal Crossing — fucking Animal Crossing — fishing is impossible to do if a fish has 3 (of 5) stars of rarity or higher. The fucking second it bites, you press the button, latency got ya — you were too late. But undock the Switch and I can catch 5 star sharks, whale sharks, the fucking Coelacanth — every time. It’s a game for grade school kids. It’s not hard. But latency makes it go from “tricky” to “what the fuck why is this game so hard?” real quick.
I prefer GOG because of the DRM-free option, and I like what they stand for. But, you’re right, there are a few cases where you’d want the Steam version instead. I’d say ask the community around the game and see what they think. There are no cases I’m aware of where not having the Steam version would be a problem, but I don’t play games like that.
GOG does a few things better than Steam, though. They fix stuff. Steam just pushes what the publisher gives them. Two cases, same franchise… same shitty developer. Fallout 3 shipped with DRM called GfWL (Games for Windows Live), basically Xbox Live for Windows. GfWL failed, but Bethesda didn’t take it out of Fallout 3, meaning to play Fallout 3 on PC, even if you bought it legally, you had to crack the DRM, which is illegal in the US. No one got in trouble for doing so, but that’s what you had to do. GOG just took the DRM out. Problem solved. Something like a decade after Bethesda created the problem by not taking it out themselves, they did just that — VERY recently, and thus, it became “legal” to play Fallout 3 on PC again. Second case, Fallout 4. Same developer/publisher. Different case. They put out a patch about a year, year and a half ago, and it broke the random NPC generator. There was a cursed combination of variables that could make up an NPC, that if it generated that set of variables, you could never get close to that NPC, or your game would crash. Modders quickly found the problem and told Bethesda how to fix it. They refused. More to the point, they ignored the issue. I don’t think GOG carried that update for months. They refused it. You could only get the older, last working version for a while. I think they eventually allowed it, but with a note on it saying it was broken with no fix in the works. Couple weeks ago, they said they fixed it… after like 16 months. But introduced more problems. (Disclaimer of bias: I own Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 and all the official DLC on Xbox, Steam, and GOG. I used to be a big fan of Bethesda, but after Starfield… I am discovering way too late that it’s not a tenth the game the Mass Effect trilogy was. Better late than never, I suppose?)
Yeah, but Apple has a history of doing that. They dropped support for Motorola chips in the PowerPC era. They dropped support for PowerPC chips in the Intel era. And they’ve started dropping Intel chips in the Apple Silicon era. They keep reinventing the Mac to stay current. Meanwhile, Windows supports stuff going way back regardless of it being updated to support the newest stuff. Except Microsoft decided to try a similar thing, but also kinda not really? I mean, you can run Windows 11 on 7th gen Intel (I was running it on a 4th gen Xeon), they just don’t want you to.
At least with Apple you know what you’re getting, and it’s a lot more secure and stable for it.
Besides, I wouldn’t expect someone with a perfectly good PC to throw it out and get a Mac. I’d suggest they run Linux instead. It’ll run better than Windows, too. But if your computer is dead, dying, or on its way there, I do suggest Mac as a perfectly good alternative.
No one’s really running computers for 20+ years, except the government. For whatever dumb ass reason.
There have been exclusives for a long time, even before Halo. Mostly console, because Windows hasn’t really faced competition. Macs could never decide on a chipset. First it was Motorola, then PowerPC, then Intel, and now Apple Silicon. It’s a moving target. Apple Silicon may not be forever either. If Apple wants to get into gaming, I can see them working with AMD, but not soon.
I’m curious about this. I have an iPhone, an Apple Watch, and AirPods. I plan on keeping my iPhone when I upgrade my Android phone next (which is five years older; it’s a Galaxy S10) so continuity with Android stuff is something I’m curious about. I know the watches are better on the Android side. Maybe not so much for fitness? I feel like Apple Health is a winner, and unfortunately most of Apple’s focus on the Watch. Whereas with Android watches there’s more focus on media. That’s what I’m curious about. I’m not gonna replace my iPhone, but I will replace my S10. I’m not planning on replacing my AirPods, but the Watch is a possibility. Definitely sticking with MacBook but I could go either way — Mac, or a PC running Linux — on the desktop.
No, he wasn’t making a free version of Crossover, but it did the same thing as Crossover. They both use free software made by WINE. The Whisky dev was not stealing from Crossover. However, Crossover gives some of its proceeds to the WINE community, so the Whisky developer felt that users using Whisky were indirectly cheating the WINE community by getting a free ride. Note that Proton and WINE are free. Crossover is the outlier being paid, but Crossover also gives back.
There are no assholes in this situation whatsoever. Not the Whisky dev for giving us a free alternative and not the Whisky users not paying for Crossover. Not even Crossover since they contribute to WINE. If there are any assholes, it’s developers who make games for Switch but not Mac (since they’re both ARM64 platforms; obviously not counting first-party Nintendo developers), people who pirated Crossover, and developers not developing at all for ARM64. But that’s a stretch and I’m not after any of those people, I’m just saying, if someone has to be an asshole, that’s where I’d look, not at Whisky/its dev/its users, and not at Crossover/its dev/its users.
As an iPhone guy (for the last 9 years; I used Android for 6 years before that, and I’ve done root, custom firmware, all that good stuff), this is the Android phone I’m looking at, like, if I had to get a new phone right now. For iPhone, I’m looking at the base 17 because the Air is dumb and, with ProMotion (1-120Hz variable) in the base, I think it’s the best value/performance ratio iPhone, and they all start at 256GB, which is awesome. I’d prefer 512GB (what I’ve got) but I could live with 256GB. For Android, I looked at Pixel 10, but the iPhone 11 level of performance and the AI hallucinating camera put me off what looks to be an otherwise solid phone. Otherwise, I’d just default to Galaxy S25, seems like an easy winner. But if I’m already going to Galaxy for cameras (IMO, iPhone/Pixel depending on what you need > Galaxy > others), I might as well accept the lower performing cameras on 1+15 and take the winning battery life and scratch-proof chassis. And I’ll never push the thermals that far as I don’t care about mobile gaming (except maybe some RetroArch).
Apple announced a game without securing distribution rights first? Seems a bit shady on Bungie’s part for letting them, and negligent on Apple’s.
Also, if we want to paint the narrative that a potential future of Apple in gaming was stolen by Microsoft, wouldn’t that put Apple in the perfect position now to hit back? They’ve been toying with the idea of bringing gaming to macOS, but they seem to want someone else to do the heavy lifting. On Linux you have Proton, and on macOS we had Whisky, but the guy threw in the towel when he realised another company was making a commercial product out of it, he didn’t want to take away from the work they were doing. (To be fair, they had been at it longer.) But it seems like if Apple wants to be serious about gaming, they need to build something like Proton. Maybe they should buy Crossover and make it part of macOS. Let just any Mac user run games made for Windows. But I’m also not saying non-gamer Mac users should bear any part of the cost of gaming, but something gotta give somewhere.
Microsoft is screwing up by running people off of Windows when PC building costs are at record highs and the economy is so low, and running up the price of the Xbox due to a situation they had a hand in creating (the AI bubble). While Linux will be a better target for people with perfectly good computers who don’t want to build a whole new one to satisfy Windows 11’s requirements, anyone looking at the end of the life of their gaming PC should be looking at the M4 Mac mini at $500 and at least considering it. And Apple can help them make that decision by appealing to gamers and actually being serious about it. Because if fucking Apple of all companies starts taking gaming seriously, maybe Microsoft will again, too.
Easy block.
On Reddit you can treat people like that, there are millions more, but by going around projecting your perversions onto others, you’ll quickly find yourself blocked by the more helpful people here. If this is you during the holidays, imagine how you are the rest of the year, but I’ll leave that to others.
Oh, so you have to buy new ones? Yeah, no. I have Xbox 360 and Xbox One (RB3 and RB4 era) instruments and neither generation work. I’m not buying a new guitar for Fortnite. That’s crazy.
I heard there’s a new guitar controller out (Gibson?), some like 20th anniversary thing? And I’m wondering who this is for. These games are dead.
Some people don’t like to hear it, but Fortnite is basically the new Unreal Tournament… in the same way it’s the new Rockband. For the latter, it’s easy: Epic acquired Rockband and Guitar Hero creator Harmonix, and Fortnite Festival is just the latest version of that code, only you can’t use instrument controllers with it, only gamepads (or, I suppose, keyboards or touch screens). So what Fortnite really is, it’s a free-to-play showcase of the Unreal Engine. It’s meant to show off what it can do and anyone can pick it up and play for free. Of course, it doesn’t have all the features of Unreal Tournament. It’s pretty much just battle royale with base building. But it’s the newest version of the same engine and it’s a shooter. Not the same thing… but your skills with older UT definitely translate. My nephew got me to play it. I’d never played it before, and he had spent money on the skins and the extra stuff, so he would go around making big purple explosions and he’d attract attention. Me, I was blown away by the detail, but I found the movement just as fluid as I remembered. Once I got the hang of weapons and their grades, I was scouting out the best pistols and SMGs I could find, and shadowing his character, and when he got into fights, I’d circle around, flank his enemies, and we’d win every fight. We won our first match and I don’t think we’ve lost a match. If we did, we finished in the top 5-10%. We have an unconventional playstyle, and it’s really all me. He plays like most Fortnite players, and they engage him as such. I play like a UT player… or, more accurately, I play it like a Deus Ex player (which was based on the same UE1 that UT99 was). I pick my shots and I shoot to kill. My nephew doesn’t think I’m playing the game right, but he’s having fun and he likes winning.
That said, I don’t love the game. I keep it on my Xbox, but I only play with him (or, I suppose, I’d be open to playing with anyone who asked). Even solo (I did that once on my iPhone when Fortnite came back to iOS this year or last) I still do alright for myself. Rarely take the top spot though. I need a decoy. But if there are 100 players, there’s no shame in being in the last 5 of them.
Tell me you skip through the dialogue without reading it without telling me you skip through the dialogue.
Eulogy is the name of the slaver leader, IIRC. It’s been ages since I’ve played it. So the guard out front gives you the four targets, tells you to get one and you can come in. I think the first four targets, even after the first one and you’ve gained access, are through this guard. I think Eulogy or whatever his name is just talks to you in his penthouse, which is where the aforementioned Bobblehead is. Once you’re in, you can do a couple other quests. But once you’ve done the four slave acquisitions, the leader tells you about a discerning client who wants young females. He doesn’t spell it out for you but you can pretty much guess.
Why would you think some rich bastard would hire slavers to acquire small girls? They aren’t old enough to breed, and older children of either gender would be better suited to manual labor (or, you know, adults). Children require emotional and financial support. Why would he want a bunch of random small girls around? Do you actually have a theory or are you just defending pedophiles with FUD?
Has a lot to do with the size of the developer and popularity of the game.
Ironic how OP’s avatar is taken from Deus Ex. One of the few games that lets you kill children. Most people don’t try, but I’m pretty sure everyone still finds a creative way to kill Louis Pan (he’s a boy in the Hong Kong map who goes around extorting businesses, and releasing rats when they won’t pay. He works for one of the triads, and though you do quests for them, they do not care if you kill him, though I think they remark on it).
Worse, in Deus Ex all the children are male (due to resource limitation). In the sequel, all the children are female and you can still kill them. There’s a whole school of them and you can basically do a school shooting. The game isn’t meant for that, but you can totally do it. Sold on Steam. Both of them are. Frequently on sale.
One of my favourite game series. I’m not knocking it. But it does show that Valve is willing to relax the rules for some.
Oh yeah. In Fallout 3, you can straight up sell a 5 or 6 year old girl into sex slavery. And there’s a reward for doing so (an item you can only obtain in this way). You have to follow a few unlikely steps to get it, but it’s also not hard. There’s a slaver faction, and they won’t shoot you on sight. You want to get in there for a Bobblehead (permanent skill increase, in this case Barter, which helps your buy/sell prices and speech checks), so you enslave one person, or kill them. Another quest has one slaver target sniping you, and experienced players circle round and kill him first, so that gets you into Paradise Falls (the slaver settlement). If you complete all the slaver contracts (enslave three other people by making them put a bomb collar on their neck and give them marching orders), the slaver leader tells you he has a client with certain tastes, and he wants you to go find the youngest girl you can. There’s a settlement (cave) full of children, and you must pass through to complete the game. There’s one girl, Bumble, who is explicitly declared as the youngest, little more than a baby, barely able to fend for herself. And you can speech-check her to follow you outside to hand her over to the slavers. Slaver, it’s actually just one. And, fun fact, a lot of veteran players do this, because there’s a bug where you can “reverse pickpocket” weapons and armour onto NPCs to equip them better. Including kids. So what we do is, we take Bumble out, then we reverse pickpocket good armour and a flame thrower on her. These increase her internal/hidden confidence stat, so when the slaver threatens her, instead of running and getting caught, she attacks. And she wins. And then proudly walks back in her armour. It’s funny.
A lot of older games had stuff like that in it, either references or outright stated. I’ve never heard of Valve going after them.
Just skimming their website, they sound awesome. But then I saw they focus on online gaming. That explains the rigid recruitment. I play single-player games. They don’t have anything for me. But it looks neat for those who play those games.
(I’m not the guy you’ve been talking to, I just happened in here, in case you see me in the message centre, wouldn’t want it to be confusing.)
He used to make games. He stopped making games to sell other people’s games.
I get why people like Steam, but when people say you shouldn’t play games that require other launchers, especially when all-in-one launchers like Playnite exist… I think people should get off his dick a bit.
The problem I have is that Valve used to make GREAT games. And there’s so much trash and shovelware out there, it would be nice to see a good developer come back. The hope is that they will at least make good gaming hardware.
Some of us have been on the web since 1994. It’s not much older than that. The World-Wide Web, I mean. HTTP. Of course you had Usenet and such before the WWW.
2008 would be 14 years later. Sure, it was 17 years ago, but in 2008, people were on MySpace. Pretty sure 4chan was around then, wanna-be hackers and pedophiles posting anonymously. So yeah, I think people were aware the Internet could be a dark place by then.
I don’t think it will — AI is just getting started, and I think it’s going to get a lot better in terms of what it can do and fooling more of us into thinking it’s real. I think it’s also going to pull more on the AI fence toward it than push them away, though those of us already firmly against it probably won’t budge much.
We’ve been talking about PlayStation, but specific to Xbox, Microsoft wants to bring Copilot to gaming, tapping into guides online (IGN and such) to get Copilot to be able to help you through a game, while you’re playing it. Like Clippy in Word… Copilot in Halo (or whatever). And it’s not going to be free. But we’ll also pay more for the Xbox that can do it, even if we aren’t paying for AI help. But I think Microsoft will try to justify the higher price of the next Xbox (hell, the Xbox handheld is $1000 to start) by getting out of software (game) exclusives, opening it up to Steam, and basically making branded gaming PCs. Yes it’s hopium when Xbox fanboys try to sell it as a sure thing, but, it makes sense. Xbox is porting its remaining exclusives over to PlayStation. But they show no signs of getting out of hardware, and opening up to Steam, especially if PlayStation doesn’t, makes an Xbox a sure sell with gamers, especially if it’s cheaper than building a gaming PC and they don’t want to mod. I don’t see a future for Xbox with neither exclusives nor third-party stores. And I don’t think anyone wants Sony to be the only “game” in town.
Sprog, that was it. Yeah. What’s a sprog, anyway? It’s not flagged as misspelled. Yeah, I don’t like AIs that steal content, but funny jokes are fine. Novelty accounts are fine. There were a few people who claimed to be famous people. Maybe they were those people. I never cared. They weren’t anything special to me. I just treated them like novelty accounts, same as anyone else really.
Also to be fair, we’ve kind of plateaued in gaming performance and demand. Cyberpunk set the benchmark 5 years ago and nothing’s really topped it yet. And now the Switch 2 can run it, and so can Macs built like iPhones with the GPU, RAM, and CPU all on the same chip. My MacBook Air can run it. I run around and there’s no traffic and almost no pedestrians, but it works! (I previously owned the game on Steam. I did not buy it for my Mac.)
That makes more sense — and I bet they will, too. If they aren’t still supporting the PS4, they did for a while. PS2, also. PS3, I’m not so sure about, but that sounds like something Sony has done. A game will come out on Xbox, PlayStation, and the previous PlayStation.
PS5 and XSX are both still great for 1080p gaming, despite one claiming 8K (since removed) and the other (still) claiming 4K. I’ve heard the next generation will support 4K native, and this leap in performance will come with a leap in price. I’ve heard the Xbox will basically be a branded PC and run Steam titles (I think this is mostly hopium); if so, I wonder what PlayStation will do to compete. Besides continue to support the previous generation longer. Either way, they’re too expensive now; I can only imagine what the next ones will cost.
There’s a way to look at the top Karma users on Reddit. Most of them are either bots, or corporate account. There’s a Marvel one that posts movie stuff, and some Turbo something or other for gaming. They don’t comment, they just post what their corporate overlords want you to see, and they probably have bots that push their content to the top. They just aggregate popular sites, though, driving people into the ads.
When I was on Reddit, going to that leaderboard to block people was my first stop. Though, I do think there are a few that are interesting, even bots — like the haiku one is amusing. It doesn’t always get it right, but it’s fun to see it try. Then there’s a guy — pretty sure it’s a person, at least — who turns posts into poems. Not quite the same. Got a weird name. Regular Redditors know who they are. “Something for your something”, I think. I don’t block the fun ones. Just the corporate trash.
Mass appeal and quality are not necessarily the same thing, though with Mario Kart and Red Dead, people will say both qualify.
If my favourite games ever wind up on a top 10 list by sales, I’ve done something wrong. It’s fine to like what everyone else likes. Most things “everyone” likes were manufactured to be liked by the greatest number of people. You’re not wrong for liking a popular game, it was marketed to you. The new Taylor Swift album was fire, and I’m not even a Swiftie. No shame there, it’s a mass marketed product. It would be weirder if a mass market product didn’t connect with you.
But if you don’t have favourites that not everyone likes… well, that makes for a very boring person. Again, there’s nothing wrong with liking popular things. It’s only weird if you don’t venture out into the darker corners of, in this case gaming, and find something you like that not many other people do, or at least not a majority. A lot of people like the first Deus Ex game, it has kind of a cult following, and it was Game of the Year in 2000, but, it’s still not a best seller. Unreal Tournament (the first one from 1999, also a GOTY) was an amazing multiplayer shooter that does not get enough love today. It’s currently called “Fortnite” and it’s very popular, and it gets a lot of shit for being overly commercialised… but I also like that my UT’99 skills translate directly to it. I’m way better at Fortnite than I have any right being, and better than I’m proud to admit. I don’t build, I don’t buy skins, but I will circle strafe around your walls and double tap you with a pistol or SMG just like I did 26 years ago in the OG. (Notably, before most Fortnite players were born.) (And no, I don’t play Zero Build, I just play the regular mode, let people waste time building, if they’re building they’re not shooting, and if there’s an opponent on my screen, that’s all I’m doing.)
Mario Kart isn’t even the best kart racer. That would be Sonic All-Stars Transformed, not least of which because it’s playable on non-Nintendo platforms. The OG Mario Kart was the best Mario Kart that I’ve played. It’s quite dated, but I think, still good.
I agree with you, but I think we all know Bethesda’s best game is Fallout 3 Morrowind, and if you know these games, it’s really obvious in the picture. Even without the picture, we know what the gaming press believes is Bethesda’s best game. It’s either Skyrim (based on sales numbers) or Morrowind (based on wide opinion). However, Skyrim shipped with controller support; therefore, it can safely be ruled out. So did Fallout 3, for that matter.
I didn’t much care for Morrowind when it was new, but I respect the hell out of some of the decisions it made, especially after seeing those decisions reversed and spat upon by later TES games. Like how you have to cast all of like two spells to become Archmage in Skyrim. Whereas in Morrowind, if you did not have certain skills, you could not advance in guilds. You could JOIN all of them. But you needed to actually train in those areas to advance. New players would typically go Legion (army) and Fighter’s Guild because that’s easy and relatively straightforward; building out a pure mage build takes more work (and makes you way more squishy).
I’m happy to see OpenMW is on Mac and Linux as well as Windows. I have Macs, and I also have an Xbox Series X. I own Morrowind on GOG, I might own it on Steam, I’m not sure… and I’m pretty sure I own as many Bethesda games on Xbox as are available (except Starfield, played that trash on GamePass but never bought it… I did play that trash though).
The “Plenty of Fish in the Sea” achievement.
In Shadow Complex, a shameless ripoff of Super Metroid in its game mechanics, you play a guy who drives a girl out to a remote location in the Pacific Northwest and she gets kidnapped by a military organisation. You’re cut off from your vehicle, but fairly early on in the game you are able to return to the start point. You are able to get in the car and drive away and an achievement pops saying “Plenty of Fish in the Sea.” So you win but your guy gives up on his girl, leaving her to her fate.
Hack/NetHack had a similar thing where you could just leave without completing the main objective (retrieve the Amulet of Yendor, which has a random chance of appearing at the 35th level and below, and make it back out with the Amulet). I remember it saying something snarky on the Amiga version, but I don’t recall exactly what. Like it said you went on to live a boring life or something like that. Any time you felt like you were locked out of the objective or outnumbered by enemies without the means to fight through them, you could backtrack and leave (though, things like disease, hunger, and thirst could take you before you got out) and you’d “win” (as in, you get to keep living).
Good for this community being called “PC Gaming” and that usually means you trade your privacy for access to more games.
Would be even cooler if that “now-found source code” meant people on Linux and Mac could play as well. Even if I could install Windows for ARM on my Mac… Yeah, I think the Xbox is the better route there.
Anyway, meat of the problem is, SR1 and SR2 are kinda a dated type of game. They appeal to a certain sort, but their issues are too big for, as you say, one who wasn’t already a SR fan. Those who were, that’s something they like about the game, and I wouldn’t take it from them. They were there (in the fandom) first and have a right to enjoy the game mostly as they remember it. Like the idea of taking Fallout 1 and 2 and porting them into the 3/New Vegas engine. Noble idea, but the turn-based guys don’t want it and I respect that.
Saints Row 3 was awesome, but Saints Row 4 reused the same city and added super powers. Also awesome, actually — I suspect the problem is, the ending erased the possibility of a proper sequel, so you have the “new one” feeling like some bad AI slop.
The first one was Xbox only IIRC, and kinda trash by today’s standards. It had some weird quirks like you couldn’t just get ammo, you had to get more guns or something. And it was harder than it needed to be. The second one improves things a bit, but it still hasn’t aged very well. You can get them cheap on sale on Xbox, if you have that. The second one is on PC but doesn’t work well, so I imagine in this post-Windows world, for those of us who have moved on, it’s even more inaccessible without an Xbox.
Xbox lost that fight.
I like PlayStation/Sony a bit less… and, in some ways, a bit more. Both companies have pulled a lot of bullshit over the last decade plus and honestly I’m a bit tired of both of them. Not that Nintendo is any better. And I’m not a PCMR guy either, I use Macs. I have Cyberpunk, I have Blue Prince… might just be ageing out of gaming. Never cared for live service games, most DLC, or the super casual, or, on the other end of the spectrum, anything “Soulslike”. I guess I just miss when games were simple, fun, and rewarding. And they still can be, but with consoles going up to $700 and games going up to $100, they have to work a lot harder to get there, and I feel like too many of them are falling short.
Exclusives are some bullshit, but I had the right idea years ago and I think it’s still true. PlayStation needs their own version of GamePass. Both services get limited to 1080p and no DLC. PlayStation has to allow GamePass and Xbox has to allow the PlayStation version. So one console gets you all the games, but owning a console means you can play games at 4K and have DLC options. Then exclusives are kinda fine because it then boils down to just extras and some flash. Oh, and of course you could buy neither console and subscribe to both streaming platforms and play all the games without the extras. (This was also when GPU was $15 a month. Now it’s double that, so the idea is not as good anymore.)
Ah, Halo… the main image that showed up in my feed looked almost like part of Mass Effect 1, but the vehicle wasn’t right.
Same generation, but Mass Effect has a remaster, Legendary Edition. It’s been on sale on Xbox for $6 USD a couple times (what I paid for it)… and that’s for all three.
While I suppose they are technically three games, the intended use of the product is for you to import your clear save from the previous one to start 2 and 3. Your decisions from previous ones carry forward, even minor choices in the first one playing out in the third one.
For straight shooting, Halo wins, particularly against Mass Effect 1 and 3, but I think Mass Effect 2’s shooting was competitive to shooters contemporary to it. Though, it and 3 are a bit more like Deus Ex or Star Wars where you have tech/magic stuff you can do in addition to the guns. I tend to stick to pistols and assault rifles, but I’m known to throw a bit of magic here and there, especially the ones that eat shields.
As far as Halo, I only completed the first one (and did it on PC with keyboard/mouse). Played the first couple maps of the third one on Xbox, never could get the hang of it though. Only single player, never multi.