Such a choom.

Same. It’s frustrating that my legitimate prescription has to jump through so many hurdles and face skepticism because of its usefulness as a recreational drug (or occupational, I guess?).

The video also calls out that one of the challenges in moving off of fandom is SEO. The fandom sites often are above the new sites even when the fandom site becomes a pile of unmaintained, vandalized garbage. This suggests that vandalism actually helps fandom.

The best thing we can do is not visit the sites and don’t link to them, instead using and linking to their new sites.

But if the gamer girl can’t perfectly pass a True Gamer’s exam of 125 extremely specific questions, then they are a fake gamer and the PC will burst into flames. /s

I’m doing an evil playthrough now and finding various things I missed from the first playthrough. But oof, I feel really awful about the horrible things the game lets you do. 😅

I’m sorry, but 99.99% is a laughable hyperbole. A huuuuge number of people have disabilities and disabilities are extremely diverse. A simple example is colour blindness. Google says 8% of men and 0.5% of women are colour blind. Video games frequently do use colour in a way that makes colour blindness a problem and colour blind modes are an accessibility option.

Google also says 15% of the world has some degree of hearing impairment. That’s admittedly biased towards seniors, but I can find numbers that say 9% of 20-39 year old Canadians have detectable hearing losses. Captions are an accessibility option.

And those are just two examples. There’s tons of disabilities out there. Even when an individual disability might only be 0.1% of the population, add them all together and there’s a substantial number of people who are left out by lack of one accessibility option or another. Aside from obvious disabilities, there’s also just general worsening of reaction times as people age.

Yeah, I’m hearing impaired and need captions. I’ve never seen a major game without them for many years now, and recent games have gone above and beyond with things like captioning sounds (not just dialogue) and directional indicators.

I kinda hope someday they’ll remaster the original Assassin’s Creed. It’s the only non-spin off in the series that I haven’t played. I own a copy, but gave up on it because it has no captions and I couldn’t understand what anyone was saying.

I also love how difficulty settings are much more common now. I’m never gonna buy a Dark Souls game. Fuck those. I tried the first game and learned my lesson. Thankfully, most games these days don’t take such an elitist stance with difficulty. It’s really common that games these days will let you change difficulty on the fly. Some games have split puzzle vs combat difficulty. I’ve seen some games have specific settings just for reaction timing. And also love those settings that highlight interactive objects so I don’t waste so much time looking for subtle hints that something is interactive.

I find this very unconvincing. Ads don’t offer a service. They’re not like a search engine or the likes. So why should ads have to target all groups equally?

Monopolies aren’t based on the mere existence of competition. It’s based on power and market share. Eg, Chrome has a monopoly. Firefox, Safari, and a few niche browsers exist. But Chrome is the utter vast majority of the market and has pretty much all the power on dictating web standards as a result.

Microsoft had competitors when they got sued for their IE + Windows monopoly. But they had an utterly massive amount of the market share and used that to push their own browser.

All of the following? Why would you need to be better in every way? There’s a perfectly valid use case for trade offs. Eg, let’s say some competitor had exclusives, no VR, the store interface was a little worse, and it was only roughly comparable on many other points. If it’s simply faster and more lightweight, that’s its competitive advantage. Or if it focuses on being open source and DRM free like GoG, that’s a competitive advantage.

Expecting something to be better in every way (than something with a massive head start) or else it might as well not exist? That’s just unreasonable. I don’t require a clothing store to be better than Walmart to shop there. I mean, the clothing store doesn’t even sell fruit! Why would anyone shop there when you can go to the Walmart and buy some grapes with your jeans?

It’s definitely not merely a matter of not bothering to make a decent store though. I mean, do you think Epic is held back by not being bothered? The way they pour money into their store, I’d it were easy, they’d have it. And having a decent store isn’t enough. It’s kinda like social media in that you need the crowd effect. People want all their games in one place with integrations like friends, mods, achievements, etc. AFAIK, there’s no open standard for most of these things, so you need a big market share to convince devs to make the change.

Yes! Can confirm it’s fixed. It’s great and revitalized my interest in using certain characters. I had almost sworn off some characters because of the bug and now they’re back on the menu.

Druids are insane. Owlbear does utter bonkers damage. Far beyond what I could do with any other character (I can’t tell if that means I built my other classes wrong). Only downside is that druids feel super limited. Usually to just melee attacks with no items and most equipment doesn’t even do anything (there’s little reason to ever purposefully revert to your original form, since you’d just eat a wild shape charge).

Amazon undercut like crazy and is utterly massive today. They’re basically the online shopping company.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is great at story and choices, which I think is where a lot of praise comes from. But it has a lot of really questionable issues with smaller mechanics.

The one I’m hating the most is how NPCs react to many summons and wild shape. Having a wild shaped party member makes most NPCs run away screaming, which is very painful in the NPC heavy areas of act 3 and basically discouraged you from even using wild shape or summon elemental, even though those are both incredibly powerful. You can dismiss the summon/wild shape, but it uses resources, so it sucks to do so. People have reported the bug for months but it doesn’t seem on the devs radar (they purposefully made NPCs run away – it’s a “feature”).

And just the other day, I discovered weirdness with warlock spell slots. Something about having used an elixer that gives me an extra spell slot (and then having consumed the spell slot) was preventing me from casting certain warlock spells (I think those of the spell slot’s level) because it claimed it needed that spell slot, even though I had higher level warlock spell slots. So a bunch of my spells couldn’t be used! When I searched, I found many reports about similar issues when people multi classed.

Do people even use that? I’ve literally never. Even if I want to search something, I’d rather just use my browser where I have tabs. Relatedly, why don’t more apps have tabs? Like apps for Reddit or Lemmy. Literally none that I ever tried have tabs. I know they don’t perform that great, but not even an option?

Yeah, what the fuck is that number? Are we just straight up lying in court now?

I decided to see how long it would take me to find out how to change it with no help. Took about 30 seconds. In mobile Chrome, it’s basically the first setting on the settings page. So the steps are (1) open chrome, (2) hamburger menu, (3) settings, (4) search engine. Even if I have to count turning my phone on and opening Chrome if it wasn’t on my home page, it still wouldn’t even add up to 10 steps.

I checked Firefox and it has one extra step. There’s still a search option literally at the top of the settings, just it goes to a page with multiple search related options (default search engine is still at the top). The fact that it worded it as “default” also made me immediately realize you can tap the Google icon in the address bar to choose another option, which must be what you used. 2 steps in that case.

At least with 0-10, I know to ignore any review that gives a zero. And usually I’d view 10s as just a binary recommend.

I hate Steam’s review system, though. Binary yes or no is not useful to me. I want to know if a game is good (maybe a play eventually) vs absolutely amazing (where I might prioritize playing it right away). Such granularity is also useful because a 10/10 might be worth it even if it’s not my favourite type of game, but a 7/10 can be very worthwhile if it is the type of game I adore.

It’s a shame that user reviews on sites like Metacritic are just consistent trash. Too many users only know 0 or 10 and the user reviews are often review bombed. I wish regular users could at least give numbers like critics. No professional critic is gonna give a game a 0 because of a handful of problems, for example, but average people will totally give a game a zero for that. Only problem with critics is that they often have a perspective that makes them detached from the average person, since they spend all their time reviewing. Ideally user reviews would fill that gap, but users are incredibly fickle.

I don’t agree at all. SR3 and 4 were peak for me. I don’t want a game that feels like it lives in the shadow of GTA. SR4 really had it’s own personality and it was a ton of fun for me.

Honestly, with how long it’s been in development, I can totally believe it. And sure hope so. I mean, it’s been so long and I’ve also been constantly thinking about how long it’s been since Skyrim came out (since it’s been publicly stated that TES6 was blocked behind Starfield). All that time has gotta mean something. And it’s not like Bethesda doesn’t have great talent. I’ve always got the impression it was all a matter of lack of time for the size of the game.

I also love space RPGs. SWTOR was pretty great. It’s an MMO, but it has good single player. The Knights of the Fallen Empire/Eternal Throne DLCs are basically single player games and they’re really good quality. The KOTOR games are also really great, if a bit older and KOTOR2 was basically unfinished and requires mods to make it even feel 80% finished.

Outer Worlds was okay. It certainly does in some ways feel similar to Fallout in space. But not quite as good and I don’t recall being aware of any serious modding scene.

But huh, I thought there’d be more, but I’m struggling to think of space RPGs with a feel like Mass Effect or Elder Scrolls. I’m really looking forward to this, too, cause despite being a buggy mess, I love Bethesda games and I also love sci fi (especially in space).

Not an RPG, but I also love Stellaris. It’s a strategy game, but really scratched that hyper advanced sci fi and space exploration itch.

You know, I realize I dunno who uploads their details to these kinda sites, but I’m glad people do. I consult HLTB a lot and it’s always been really useful for judging the time investment a game will take, how worthwhile DLCs will be, and for understanding what kind of game something is (longer is often better in my book, but not always, since games like AC Valhalla have actually gone too long, since I can’t help myself but to play mostly completionist).

Story is really what I care about the most from RPGs, though I’m also a sucker for old school RPG battle systems. I’ve never heard of this or the studio, but reviews liken it to Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy, which is a very good look in my book.

It seems like an especially great year for gaming. I can’t remember the last time there was so many highly rated games coming out (and there’s still more to come – I’m most excited for Starfield).

Yeah. GitHub makes sense because most users are writing code that can be executed by others. That makes GitHub accounts security critical.

But a Lemmy account? Naw, you lose almost nothing if that gets compromised. A little bit of history and subscriptions, mostly.

I’m in a discord that for some reason “requires” 2FA. Based on searching, I think they give everyone some kinda admin role or something? It doesn’t actually require 2FA, but it shows a very annoying warning that covers up a bunch of the channel selection screen. But despite that, I don’t really wanna deal with the hassle of 2FA on a chat app that’s basically consequence free for me if it gets exploited.

FFX is amazing. In the past, I’ve considered 9 to be my favourite , but I’ve come to view 10 as the best. The uniqueness of its battle system and the fact that more of the characters are so strong makes it great.

There’s a modern PC port with better graphics, which I haven’t yet played. Admittedly, one advantage of emulators is dealing with the bullshit lightning strikes minigame for one of the ultimate weapon. You had to dodge something like 200 lightning bolts in a row, which I’d never be able to do without save states.

Personally, I don’t recommend this one (which is FF1). It’s a very old, fairly simple game. The characters and story aren’t much at all. It’s not like it’s bad in a vacuum, but there’s simply better games you can play, especially to start with.

FF10 is perhaps my favourite and a very popular fan favourite. If you want something a bit older (which can be useful for mobile support), FF6 is hands down the most popular of the 2D Final Fantasy games (and some would call it the best FF game).

Pretty much all the older main series games have been remastered in some form or another, some multiple times, and are available at a fair price. Most are available on PC and several have mobile versions (plus the older games emulate very well).

Personally, I sometimes like when a game feels like just a new storyline (and map) for the same game. Sometimes I just want more of a good thing and don’t want to have to learn new mechanics or risk the game making things worse.

And since dev time is limited, I think in theory, this could mean more time could be spent on making the story missions perfect. But in practice, I don’t think that usually happens. Publishers would rather cheap out.

It’s a shame that most game companies can’t manage to treat both their fans and staff well. It’s rare to treat even one of those well, let alone both. I wonder what the developer of BG3 is like for employees? Crunch time is usually so ubiquitous in game dev that I assume everyone does it until proven otherwise.

LiS is exactly what I came to suggest. I cried from every one of the LiS games and so recommend them all, but the original is hands down the best in pretty much every way.

Just finished that! It was fun, but also really stressful, especially earlier on. The map was also super confusing at times.

Me too! I’ve already had to search for some very specific things so far. I’ve been trying to avoid a guide, but I’m not sure how much longer I can put it off. It’s just very boring to have to head back to places if I get something time sensitive wrong. I’ll probably stick with it, but it hasn’t been keeping my interest as well as I hoped. It just feels like I’m repeating myself a lot and that’s really boring.

Yeah. I love Google Maps and don’t have any plans to stop using it, but it’s always good for consumers to have competition. Monopolies lead to stagnation.

There’s some games where audio can be utterly amazing and completely make the game for me. Persona 4 and 5 are both like this. The music is so iconic that it’s the extremely rare case of me actually remembering video game music. I almost never do that. I’m not saying I don’t enjoy game music, but most of it just isn’t memorable to me and I will never be able to recognize it if you played it to me and asked me where it’s from.

Beyond music, voice acting is the other big one for me. But I don’t usually have concerns with the voices themselves. It’s the animations that I constantly dislike. I swear, 95% of games suck at matching lips to audio. It constantly just feels wrong.

As for sound effects, I don’t notice them much. But on the topic of audio, I really hate when games depend on audio or even worse, positional audio. I’m hearing impaired and have a cochlear implant. I basically only hear in one ear. I don’t have directional audio. And I’m not good at detecting small changes in sound, so I can’t easily do stuff like locate the source of a sound. If a sound is loud and distinctive, I’m fine with sound indicators, but if it’s a quiet or subtle sound, I can miss such indicators. Of course, there’s also other people who have it worse, so game devs should avoid making sound a dependency to do things.

I’m not sure about many of these and wasn’t aware of most of them being on phones. But you’re the first comment I’ve seen that mentions Stardew Valley. It’s by far the best mobile game I’ve ever played.

That said, I preferred it on PC for better controls, easier modding, multiplayer, and quicker updates. Though you actually can mod Stardew on Android. I still started with it on Android and it’s a very high quality mobile game.

GBA emulation is the best. All the games are meant for small screens and modern hardware has absolutely no issues with emulating the GBA. It has soooo many games. You can also get ROM hacks (most common for Pokemon games), which are fan edits to games. Some of which are such massive edits that they’re basically entirely new games only using the existing framework for the style of gameplay.

Only downside is controls. Touch screens are simply not as good as physical controls. I don’t recommend trying any games that require fast paced and precise controls, as you will hit wrong buttons plenty. You can get Bluetooth controllers to help with this I think, though I’ve never personally tried them. I’ve also seen “case controllers”, which go around your phone and make it sorta like a Switch form factor.

Orna’s dev is great! Played that for several months myself. Eventually I burnt out, but it was still a good GPS game. It is however the type of game meant to just be played during your commute or the likes. Basically a Pokemon Go alternative. So it is long and grindy by intent. So it won’t satisfy anyone that wants to play a “normal” game where you just play for 10-100 action packed hours and you’re done.

But for anyone who enjoyed Pokemon Go, you’ll enjoy Orna. It’s much more in depth, with traditional RPG classes, equipment to collect, dungeons to find, and raids to do with a guild. The combat is mostly fairly simple, but that’s exactly what you need for GPS games, since it’s meant to be played on the go. It certainly encouraged me to take more walks and that’s the big reason I love GPS games.

The dev is like the anti Niantic. I actually gave him money cause I wanted to. There’s no need to pay for anything at all and the game doesn’t have nearly as much FOMO as Pokemon Go.

Did War of the Lions fix the game’s balance? I loved the original Tactics, but wow that game was whack where balance is concerned. You could go from utter broken characters being unbeatably strong to being soft locked if you only had one save because some battle was so hard.

I didn’t really feel the story was much. I’m struggling to remember it at all! But damn the gameplay was really something.

That’s true, but I don’t think that makes it worth playing these days unless you’re curious to see how things have evolved. You’ll find better written stories and more interesting features in pretty much any modern RPG.

They’re not always feature complete. Plenty of games are crunching to finish things last minute and sometimes do last minute cuts because they can’t finish things.

But I agree that they’ll usually release at the announced date regardless of the game’s final state. To be fair to them, advertising is insanely expensive and ad campaigns are often planned with a specific release date in mind. Some software is never gonna be 100%, too, and does need some pressure to just accept some issues or cut some things.

But usually it’s just a plain old disconnect between devs and higher ups/project managers. Estimating software dev is insanely difficult and higher ups in charge of the final calls are often either not devs, too insulated from the devs, or sometimes just egoistic to listen to anyone but themselves.

It’s definitely not the worst. But I consider it overrated (considering how it’s perhaps the most popular). Hands down I’d put 9, 10, and 12 above it. I’d maybe even put 8 above it depending on my mood.

The first game is probably the worst. It’s very basic. Arguably it’s unfair to compare it to later games, given it’s age (as an aside, I’ve only played the GBA remake of it – I probably wouldn’t be able to stand the true original). I’d say 1 < 3 < 2 < 5 < 4 < 6 < 15 < 13 < 14 < 7 < 8 < 12 < 9 < 10. And honestly I could drop 15 a lot further down depending on my mood. I’m clearly biased against the 2D games.

I don’t really get why 6 is so popular (there’s even another person replying to you mentioning it). It’s the best of the 2D games hands down, but I didn’t find it as good as really any of the later games. I think I put a lot of weight in the ability for graphics to be able to show emotion and make settings more interesting. I utterly adored the cutscenes that began with the 3D games.