Whilst it’s an oversimplification, if the old price only got Y sales then a higher new price was always only going to get a subset of Y.

Console sales go up over time in part because the price goes down, broadening the customer base. Sure, the library gets bigger over time too, but that’s barely happening either.

I guess I’ll just have to buy even fewer consoles than I already am.

I should really get replacement batteries for my two PSPs.

I wouldn’t say “the worst” but the phrase “squandered potential” looms large.

Little Big Adventure 2.

It’s a massive game with both a 3D open world and isometric gorgeousness. Some character progression (not experience points), full voice acting, and a lot of character.

In many ways it set the bar for me in terms of how much a game should contain and the level of quality I expected.

I’ve heard this said many, many times, but I’ve yet to see an actual source on it.

I collected Orks in 3rd edition. I have the big black book, I have the codex, I was subscribed to White Dwarf. I don’t recall seeing anything like that at the time. I could be wrong, of course, but you’d have thought I’d have seen the source by now.

No idea, I was responding to their first paragraph.

That Ork stuff is a meme. Their tech works, it’s not powered by imagination. They’re an artificial species with vast amounts of knowledge embedded in their DNA. How to build their tech is literally in their blood.

Edit: I see a lot of upvotes for an unsourced meme text. In recent codices they’ve explicitly added the “psychic WD-40” to the lore. It didn’t exist before but the internet memed it into canon.

So far GW have not added “gun works through happy thoughts”, either now or historically. I’m being definite about this in the hope that someone will prove me wrong out of spite.

As the parent of a tiny child this is great to see. I couldn’t give less of a shit about violent contents in games and ratings based on that sort of unproven rubbish. However games that deliberately implement dark patterns are literally designed to be dangerously manipulative and that I want to be able to make informed decisions about.

I’m sure if you just AI harder things will improve.

That’s the thing though - I find that what it saves me in time writing it costs me in reviewing. I hate reviewing.

If so, is it any good?

I imagine if one writes janky spaghetti then it’s easy to think that LLMs will result in redundancy. My experience is that they’re like having an over-enthusiastic junior who doesn’t learn. Useful when one can’t be bothered to write something with very limited scope but is quickly out of their depth on anything involved.

So you think that 90-100% of programming jobs WON’T be replaced by AI within a decade?

Stop, stop, I can’t breathe!

This really hammers home how naff the rats in Dishonored were. They’re slightly prettier than these but with eleven years of additional technological progress my expectations were a smidge higher.

Game development as a service.

I should get some new batteries for mine.

For me the PSP is a story of squandered potential. There were some great games but so few seemed to really embrace the potential of the format.

How are we defining “nowadays”?

Could have done with a bit less of a focus on space marines.

At least in the UK modern tellies don’t support analogue TV signals!

I guess you’ll need to play on something that plays PS1 games with video ports from this millennium.

Correct. The copyright owner controls the rights related to copying.

Unless the copyright holder specifically grants free distribution rights (e.g. releasing as a public domain work such as with a CC0 licence) then they can decide to do what they want. That includes choosing not to distribute the work in any way.

So no, Championship Manager 01/02 is not available legally for free. It’s no more legal than downloading ROMs. No one will stop you but that’s not the same as legal.

I’m not defending this approach. I think IP law is a fucking shambles and needs massive reform for a number of reasons. The duration is ludicrous and it’s horrendously restrictive in a way that chokes the life out of human culture. I see someone downvoted me, which is pretty funny in and of itself. Sorry for pointing out how IP law works…?

Reading the instructions, no, it’s not. It was given away for free by Eidos and no longer is. Unless they granted distribution rights to someone back in the day then whoever is distributing the files is doing so illegally.

I don’t really care, I just find it funny that it’s touted as legally when that’s absolutely not how copyright law works at all.

For me this is more about open world games losing cool features than wanting to play a game with that feature. In GTA 4 it affected the choices I’d make whilst driving as it was entirely possible to make a vehicle nearly impossible to drive without coming close to blowing it up.

I couldn’t be bothered to come up with a neat way to say “GTA-like games” and decided to hope that the reader could intuit that context.

The vehicle damage modelling from GTA 4. The fact that it hasn’t been surpassed is tremendously disappointing to me.

Because hardware, software, culture, incomes, demand, supply, and many, many other factors have all changed since the 1980s. It’s not a straight comparison. Inflation is a factor but it is not the only factor.

I think it’s a little more complex than that.

They can set the asking price to whatever they like but a lot of us cannot justify those amounts for what amounts to a toy. By this stage in a console generation I would expect a lot more games and a lot cheaper hardware. The reasons that haven’t happened aren’t of interest to me as a consumer (they’re of interest to me as a nerd!).

No, but the price points of the current consoles are hilariously optimistic.

Eventually I plan on playing Spaghetti Kart - partly for that reason!

I would agree that the sprawling roster and tracklist are a bit much.

That’s the thing I find amusing in this thread. Consoles are a known quantity and it needs to either compete or undercut them. I have a Steam Deck that I paid £320 for (brought up to £400 by the SSD I added). I would most definitely not pay more than £450 for a Steam Box. It may well cost more than that but it is a luxury and I would seriously struggle to justify more than that.

s/backlog/library/g

…and those are just flying off the shelves!

Whilst I didn’t enjoy the mechanics of Control, I was very impressed at the settings it offered. I could essentially turn off combat if I wanted. Yes, it won’t be the same game experience, but if I choose to play that way - let me!

In the old days we had cheat codes for this stuff. I cheated my way through a lot of games and then revisited later without cheats. Some of those became my favourite games of all time (Theme Hospital and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 both spring to mind).

I’ve not played a newer or older Mario Kart game with better fundamentals. I’d like more tracks for it but other than that it’s perfect. The newer ones are pretty but there’s too much going on in many of the tracks (and I’m really not fond of the flying/water thing they do either).

I never encountered a single Windows 9x game that wouldn’t run on Windows 2000 Pro. It was my primary OS in 2003 or so, having moved from Windows 98 SE.

Is this a case of confidently incorrect?

XP? The bloated offspring of Windows 2000?

I ran loads of normal (Windows 9x) games on Windows 2000 Pro.

To be fair, Red Alert came out in 1996 and was available for DOS.

Red Alert 2, not so much. DOS ports fell off hard by about '98, so this headline is weird.

I’m sorry that I don’t remember many story specifics from thirteen years ago. I remember the group I was working on behalf of seemed utterly awful so I very much didn’t feel like I was on the side of “the good guys”. The whole system seemed rotten on all sides and I didn’t feel like I was doing anything positive regardless. I recall the boatman just being an arse towards me throughout and having the opportunity to off him at the end was at least satisfying. He does straight up betray the player in high chaos, so traitorous is an apt description.

As I said, my complaint was more with framing that the specific consequences.

I’m reminded of an episode of American Dad in which someone needs to kill someone (…anyone) for plot reasons. “…and you’ll be doing your killing with this.”

When I played Dishonored it felt like I was given tools like that and then reprimanded for my lack of subtlety. If I’d been told “Use these only as a last resort as subtletly is the priority” and I’d used them then I’d have felt like I’d just barely scraped through a mission. Instead I did a thorough job, from my perspective, eliminating threats to the group I was working for, avoiding raising any alarms, and then being told I did a shitty job. You gave me a toolset geared towards extreme violence, why the shocked Pikachu face?

I think it’s really cool that the game is setup so that it can be traversed non-violently (I can’t recall whether there are any targets that absolutely must be killed, but I remember most, if not all, had non lethal options). Given the tools I had though, I didn’t feel like going that route, and I really didn’t appreciate the mission givers acting like I was doing a bad job when I used the tools I was given. It felt very much like “Well the proper way to play this is the sneaky sneaky way - but I suppose deep begrudging sigh we’ll allow you to do things this way” was the message the game communicated to me.

I wasn’t cheesing the systems presented, messing with pathfinding bugs, that kind of thing. I used the tools given in a canonically acceptable way. Don’t give me a loaded gun and then complain about a loud bang!

“This person is a problem. We’ve left some tools for you.” (events transpire) “Oh my gods, what did you do?! They’re dead!”

Sorry, was I supposed to have a little chat with them, convince them to mend their ways? Was the collapsible sword for cutting cake? The gun for firing into the air in celebration of an understanding? Those exploding knife mine things for… uhhh.

These are my perceptions and recollections, over a decade later. They may not be entirely accurate, but it’s what I remember. The game left me with a lasting impression that it disapproved of my approach and I found its mixed messages deeply irritating. I didn’t feel I was being mechanically punished and I was aware that being more violent would increase “chaos”, but I felt that should be my choice for tackling the problems and the mission givers should treat it Corvo making decisions in the field that he felt were appropriate. He wasn’t there to just be a triggerman, as far as he was concerned, but to make decisions in his area of expertise.

If you disagree with my experiences I can’t stop you, but that was what I took away from the game. If it failed to communicate things to me it’s certainly not because I lack media savvy or gaming experience. I’m annoyed that I didn’t have more fun with it - I played to the end because throughout I hoped that I would enjoy the next bit more. Then it was the end of the game and a bunch of people were telling me that my opinion was wrong.

I’m really not interested in dragging this out further.

…because I knew that if you continued to engage I would feel compelled to do so, rather than going to bed or whatever. Dishonored annoys me to this day. I do not get the love for it. I’m glad the rest of you had such a good time with it and annoyed that I didn’t get that enjoyment. I put the effort in, where’s my fun?!