I in the last 4-ish months played through yonder, biomutant, ni no kuni 1+2, ff7 remake (#1), balan wonderland, several Lego games, star ocean integrity and faithlessness, tandem, all the cat quest games, several “tales of” games, and a buttload more while I still had the ps+ subscription (which expired in like… August? I won’t count those cuz I had no life at the time. Still don’t but It was worse then.)

My big push at the moment is going through some of the ps3 era titles I’ve never played. I have so many games I buy and just sit on for years… I probably shouldn’t do that, but I buy used so it’s cheaper… But those unplayed games are mostly super long story focused games, so they take a hot minute to get through. I have a few upcoming tales of games, which I now own most of, star ocean, valkeria chronicles, and all the final fantasy games I never slogged through the overwhelming tutorial on and thus haven’t played.

Any games I finish, I enjoy enough to finish. I gave up pushing through bad media long ago because there’s so much more out there. I’ve been really into big story games with minimal or easy combat, but I also really like the short and simple games that you can get through entirely in 10 hours.

Tandem was a really cute one that stuck out. I got it purely because it was inexpensive. It’s a fairly short puzzle game where one character walks through a top-down view and the other is a side scroll view. You have to swap back and forth to use them both to solve puzzles. It’s not super difficult, but it is satisfying in difficulty.

Honestly I have to disagree with consoles being ease of use these days, especially if you like really long sessions.

I have to restart games or reboot the console way more often than I feel should be necessary at this point.

And installing from discs takes forever if you even do physical, but then you need the disc in to run it for whatever dumbfuck anti-piracy reason. I won’t pay for digital, at that point you might as well be on pc, it’s the same thing, and since this generation is probably the last with physical media, I’m out…

Semi-relatedly, but totally tangential:

I have a dream town that I visit pretty regularly (but randomly, unfortunately). I’d love to make it a VR town, but haven’t the skills. I think it would be perfect as an exploration experience, since it’s pretty fleshed out, but I’m not sure if the tech is really there yet, and if it is idk how to use it.

It has all the qualities of a real town (but a lot more… grand? In some ways), tho as far as I can tell many of my residents are homeless as there simply isn’t enough space for all of them to have their own place (it’s never been rendered by my mind, so it doesn’t exist)… It’s authentic mostly because I typically experience it the way I do the world; first person recluse (tho I do have a mini-map sort of sense for the layout, so that absolutely wouldn’t be out of place). For example, when I go to the mall, school, or a restaurant or something, most of the people are doing normal people things and have no real interest in interacting with me. They will if I bother them, but like real people, they get annoyed, or it’s a passing interaction. It’s a small town vibe sort of place (loosely based around a mesh of every town I’ve lived in), so you start to recognize people from where they hang out, and can interact with them from there. I have one older gentleman I talk to quite a lot, and a variety of very nice employees of the places I frequent. But bar patrons don’t bother me. Like I said, dream.

Unfortunately it’s really a slice of life town, nothing interesting ever happens, it’s sort of an exploration escape, and I couldn’t think of anything interesting to happen there if I tried. It would be great for collectibles, though. The house is really the fun bit for me, because while there, I understand that this is -my- house even when I’m in a new room I’ve never seen before. And then once I figure out where it belongs in the structure (often a landing room that has several stairways and doors) that room just is part of my house forevermore. Same thing happens with the round mall; some features are permanent, everything else gets added on and becomes cannon.

And I have no idea how to create it in VR… if I did, that would be awesome, especially if I could make it grow with time (dlc?), like my town does. I think a lot of people would enjoy exploring it, and maybe even identify with my weird labyrinthian house (it canonically has three floors officially but about a dozen representationally, and don’t even get me started on the weird college and dorm towers I’ve come up with…), or the circular mall with a free-use sports arena in the middle, and an arcade in the basement. Or any of dozens of local shops and eateries.

I wish AI was better so if I ever did figure out how to build a whole town and make it interesting to explore, the people could stay interesting. But I’ll never overcome the “how to build in VR” portion, so it doesn’t matter.

Hell, it’s a very different target market from the rest of the horizon franchise…

Lego games are a slog. They can be fun for a while, but the design of them forces you to speed through the story and then go back to replay the whole damned thing to collect all the shit you can’t get the first time around.

Frankly I’m not excited about it. I love horizon, but I think it’s a stupid decision to make a Lego game as the next installment in an otherwise exceptional franchise. Especially since it launched for $60 on console. No way it’s worth that; it’s a Lego game.

That edit is basically why I didn’t care for it.

I have a pair of usb Logitech controllers and they are alright, but the configuration was a pain, so like… ehh.

It’s a lot better now, I just have a huge backlog of discs so not in a rush. Probably won’t be bothering with the next generation of consoles though. No point.

I’ve been a console fangirl since NES/SNES/Genesis (had them simultaneously). I tried pc gaming a few times between 2000 and 2010 or so, and it was ok, but controllers weren’t really there yet, and I’ll be honest, I’m not a fan of wasd control. I preferred console for being plug and play. No question if it’ll run, just pop in the disc and pick up the controller. I also prefer console for the used game market. I’ve bought only a handful of games new, and have over 400 discs. Exclusives haven’t mattered to me because I get all the major consoles when they get cheap (the same game can be much cheaper depending on platform).

But now that consoles are just walled garden computers 5+ years out of spec date on launch with access authorization issues (looking at you, ps+ “you need to upgrade your account” message every time I access a downloaded/streamed game), and most games no longer hit the resale market in any meaningful way if they even launch on disc, what with half the current gen consoles being fully digital and all… There’s actually less than zero reason to keep on console. And any console maker who doesn’t realize that is going to really suffer for short sightedness. Pc gaming has come a long way since then, with control customization and everything. It blows console out of the water.

They ruined their own markets with their greed, and now they are losing relevance.

Well… yeah I mean the first remake was available on ps+ within 6 months after it released… why would you take that burn and then buy the next one?

I appreciate the reply, because you took the time, but that was the “needs Mac” option.

I don’t have a Mac, won’t get one, and emulating is frankly too much work for a ringtone. Garage band doesn’t run on windows or Linux afaik, at least not without being a pain.

That’s the problem. On android, zedge can not only download but set ringtones for you even for individual contacts if you like, because it’s amazingly basic. I used it for years.

I miss that very basic customizing.

iOS is the worst.

Absolutely worst thing I’ve ever done to myself intentionally (and that list is looooooooong).

I really liked messing around with android, it was basically why I got into Linux… spent years messing about with android so Ubuntu felt so similar. It was an easy transition for me. (Other distros, even Debian based, have not been so welcoming, and I don’t want to go back to Ubuntu, but it felt… right… so I probably will… unless someone tells me about a similar ui for anything else ;) )

I do hope Linux gains at least enough support as an OS for mobile that one can make it work… I mean windows had a phone (possibly several shitty phones run on windows…?) and that wasn’t a big deal but Linux…? clutches pearls certainly not!

While I’m super glad it works for you (honest I am, that’s literally the point of tech, to do what you need) I’d never buy a pixel. At least not without the full intent of de-googling it… and that’s exactly the problem with android right now. Android is largely a spyware platform for Google. Apple is not better, to be clear. Both options suck and we have no real 3rd party alternatives. Which we should have. Instead we have none, globally.

The hardware might be there (and frankly I’ve heard really good things about pixel hardware; lots of people buy them to flash other OS on) but the software is literally designed to spy on you so… I’m super not into it.

I’m thinking about buying a fairphone and putting idk… lineage or graphene on it… been a while since I bought a device for the sole purpose of putting different OS on, but maybe it’s time.

If Linux phones were viable daily drivers I’d be using one of those. Fuck all this proprietary bullshit. But even that is difficult because Linux is many things but “all encompassing “ is not one of them, and never will be.

I know (but man the validation feels nice!) :) I am the walking incarnation of Murphy’s law not just for this, but my whole life. I think I’m a black hole of bad so other people can have better. 🫡 (yes I know that’s not how it works, but it makes me feel slightly better about the fact that everyone around me does great).

No, it was a design flaw with the phone I bought. If you used anything other than the OEM charger you were risking breaking your charge port. And it legitimately broke, not just dirty : /

I bought before this flaw was known. Too bad too because it was usb-c, so it -should-have worked with whatever but it was designed ever so slightly out of spec…

They don’t make phones anymore, unsurprisingly…

Nothing outrageous, I baby them and try to buy at least decent quality. They just… never last.

I am, however, the walking incarnation of Murphy law, so like… it’s not surprising to me that this happens… (same as I’m the one with all the apple issues for no reason)

My last phone, the charge port failed about 2 yrs, I used it for 3 (fortunately still had wireless charging so I could have used it longer technically, but wanted to try apple before it was mandatory to give up)

Phone before that, the speakers failed so I couldn’t even take calls, about 2 years. (I don’t listen to stuff, so this wasn’t volume abuse or something causing failure)

Phone before that got bricked during an update but that was a cheap phone that didn’t have recovery because I was broke. Can’t afford to keep replacing shit even used…

Prior, mobo failure. You get the idea.

Only one phone broke because of something I actually did to it, and that was way back when slide out keyboards were still a thing, a Sony Xperia pro. I flashed a newer android version and then tried to revert to an older version (playing with custom roms) and broke the governor chip so the battery would read zero when not on the charger.

And I do fix things when the parts are available, economical, and it’s possible to fix, but that isn’t always the case.

As someone who switched from android to iPhone after using android exclusively (only because I’m sick to shit of my devices breaking themselves at about the 2 year mark - and I don’t mean software):

Apple is a fucking nightmare to swap to if you use your device for anything beyond the absolute basics. I’m honestly probably going to swap off it sooner rather than later.

It’s a miserable experience to go from being able to do basically whatever you want… to not even being able to change to a specific ringtone without paying for it or going through some ridiculous process on Mac to convert. (And before some random asshole pipes up -again- and says “there’s tons of ways” without telling me what they are, I’ve looked and found nothing so either tell me the ways or don’t bother replying because no there aren’t, that’s why everyone on iOS has the same set of ringtones.) I mean hell, it’s painful just to move photos to a pc. Like ridiculously painful. Unless you pay for iCloud.

And the whole ecosystem is supposed to “just work”, but it doesn’t. Tons of finicky little problems, like I can’t get “find my” to play sound on my phone the next room over with all the settings enabled, and even the time of day focus on my watch is usually wrong, which is like a super basic function of this crap. But you can’t really troubleshoot because of the lockdown on everything.

Venting aside, it’s simply not worth it to switch from android. It’s a downgrade in every single way except hardware being built to last, and the software getting regular security updates. That’s it. That’s all it has going for it. I thought that might be enough, but it really isn’t.

The company filed a motion to dismiss on February 2, 2024, hitting back at accusations of unlawful business practices related to virtual currencies being non-transferable or refundable once game servers are switched off. As GameFile reported, the firm argued that the virtual currency does not belong to the player in the first place.

“VC is not plaintiff’s property,” Take-Two’s lawyer said. "Instead, in-game VC are fictions created by game publishers, subject to the publishers’ terms of service and user agreements.

“Plaintiff’s claims to property ownership of VC within the games, as well as his suggestions that Defendants have an obligation to refund unredeemed VC or enable the transfer of VC from one of Defendants’ games to another, are merely conclusory (and wholly invented).”

So we are going to charge you real money for something, let’s call it “muny” to make it clear. You will then use that muny to buy things within the platform. But because we hid it behind a layer of code and changed the values arbitrarily, it’s suddenly not money it’s -FiCtIoN- even though it has a set conversion rate and value, and is used to purchase goods, and fuck you for trying to take back the unspent portion after we made it unspendable by taking the games down.

Fuck that, hope they lose. This sort of predatory bullshit needs to stop.

I’ve literally never seen it not on sale so… no wonder…

It’s a cheap (in switch terms) game for parents to get their kids.

I don’t find this surprising, personally. I think every game resaler is going to die very soon unless they go heavily into the niche vintage market.

Everyone has access to the internet and can see what their physical games are worth. And with everyone pinching their coin purse because wages aren’t there, the valuable games that are highly sought or can net near-original-value or more probably aren’t being traded in, they are being sold privately.

Besides which, modern consoles have made the resale market worthless in the long term, what with more than half of them being digital only. It’s really only a matter of time before the only resale of games is vintage markets. You can buy used disc games for nearly-new prices, and I don’t see that dropping because of the limited run of physical games.

That article is full of speculation; “if this” and “if that” and “if this other thing” than it will be great for everyone!

“If” is doing a hell of a lot of heavy lifting…

Fun fact - if you order a bunch of stuff non-prime, the ship time will be like a week and a half or whatever. If you then upgrade to prime (even the free trial), the delivery estimate suddenly recalculates and it’ll be there in 2 days.

It’s artificially slowed, by obscene amounts, to encourage paying for the subscription. Which other sites don’t do.

It depends on the game.

Typically I prefer normal, but there are some games where inverted camera just makes it easier, like games with full 3D exploration (flying/swimming). I do sometimes only invert the vertical for these, so I’m that maniac.

If you are an older gamer, you’re probably right that you picked it up in the early camera control games (ps1/2 for me), because changing camera function wasn’t an option and a -lot- of games inverted by default back then. I believe the logic was to treat your view camera like a real video camera, where you push the back to the left to point the camera lens to the right, but most people don’t have that type of experience so it’s less intuitive, which is why it’s less common now. I blame mostly Spyro flying challenges for my limited inversion use.

And like you, I struggle with games that don’t allow me to pick, which is most of the older games, even remastered 😭 it’s so hard to re-learn.

Likewise, as one ages, different components of games become more or less important.

Example - used to hate sitting through cutscenes and dialogue (it was just reading back then, but I was a big reader so that wasn’t the issue), would skip whatever I could and get frustrated when I couldn’t. But these days I actually like a good story-focused game (botw, horizon), and don’t skip through it in any game unless the story is garbage… although I love largely story-free games as well (dysmantle is the current passion - there’s very minimal story that you have to piece together, and most of it is obtained through exploration rather than quests or interaction)

I also haven’t played online in years - since my wow days (vanilla and first expansion, then gave it up, so like 2008). Other people ducking around tends to detract from the game for me, and I strongly dislike PvP because I’m terrible against humans who don’t follow specific patterns… now I get frustrated when I accidentally buy a game that doesn’t have offline/single player content. If I could host my own servers for them though……

Long time ago, but it’s entirely dependent upon carrier.

Mint for example doesn’t have an extra fee for hotspot. Mine didn’t work after setting up service and I had to chat them, but they fixed it and it works fine. Cricket didn’t charge for it for a long time, until they did, and I no longer use them as a result.

You just need to find a carrier that includes it for no fee. At least you can vote with your wallet on those things. And when they ask why you are canceling and porting your number, be honest it’s because of their hotspot policy, and other carriers don’t charge for it.

They did, but hardly anyone uses safari, so it can’t be used by itself to enforce standards like the google thing will be able to do. It’s just an extra thing they have for now.

Really? It didn’t do that to me. I clicked continue reading and went pretty far down the comments.

I’ve never even been to tumbler before so I certainly wasn’t signed in :)

The only thing I’m aware of recently is the reignited trilogy, which is just a remaster of the first 3 games. It’s good, but not new.

There was the 2006-2008 trilogy run, I assume that’s what you mean? I have new beginning for gc, didn’t even realize it wasn’t part of the original series since it was only 2 years after heroes tail… guess I’ll have to find an adapter to hook that sucker up and play it again.

I know it’s dumb, but because of the simple and engaging gameplay style, I really want them to make another Spyro now that they put out rifts apart. Rifts apart was an amazing resurrection for the ratchet clank franchise, and I really hope it’s one of many more - beautiful and incredibly smooth. And I’d love to see the same sort of grown-up retell for Spyro.

Wait, quest isn’t gaming vr? What is it for then?

I picked up a used psvr pretty cheap as an intro to see if vr will hold my attention long-term before dropping a few grand on an index and pc to run it, only for the novelty to wear off the next year… I wouldn’t be able to justify getting a nice setup without this intermediate step.

I know the psvr tracking is very imperfect, and the games are older/less refined, but I’m considering it an entry level model based on the price point ($120 for headset, controllers, camera, and cords/connectors, tho ofc that doesn’t include the console or games). For that, it’s pretty good.

I’ve actually gone hard the opposite direction… I used to just skip all the story because I didn’t care. Idk what that took out of my game experience, but considering I started gaming in the early 90s, probably not much…

Idk what changed either, but I’m finding it much easier to play story heavy games (as long as I would like them entirely without the story), and even really huge story heavy games… not always to completion, but usually as close as I can get.

But I do heavily intersperse them with fluffier games, because too much long story is still very draining. I managed to binge forbidden west to the point that when I downloaded the dlc, I abandoned the game (I know I’ll go back to it eventually, I love the mechanics, but I talk to everyone and go through every dialogue option, and that’s just a lot). But I’ve also played a number of others that I didn’t collapse in upon myself by the end, so I think it’s the burnout that keeps me from finishing them (exact same reason I used to skip all the story - it’s tiring when you just want to play).

It requires logging in because it requires you having your own media server already set up with your own library of stuff. It’s self-hosting, not a subscription type service.