The Mr. Freeze fight certainly turns the tables. Shame I don’t play the Arkham games to be prey!

I believe it showed the map screen. The functionality worked over a network so it didn’t even have to be dual monitors on the same machine!

Oddly enough, Uplink.

The last full-price AAA game I bought cost £34.99 in 2001. That’s about £64 adjusted for inflation and that’s about $85 (US) at current exchange rates.

Interesting.

smothers it with a towel and stuffs it into an oven

Or sitting in a cupboard off-gassing, oozing, and generally making the home a safer environment.

It does remind me of the Acts of Gord’s use for an N64 - as a doorstop with a note saying “This is all I am good for.”

Oh! Ewaste! So kind of you…

I’ve yet to encounter a single Atari 2600 game that was worth more than 30 seconds of my time.

Considering I have 827 games on Steam, the figure of $1620.26 doesn’t seem too bad. Now I’ve probably bought a load more bundles bumping that up, but there’s no convenient way to figure out how much that adds (let’s round to $2000). I’ve had the account 18 years, 9 months.

So that’s… $8.89 per month.

Yeah, that seems pretty reasonable.

I’ve been playing (and loving) Fallout London. It turns out that the pokey little locations in their games are Bethesda’s fault. The engine does still suck, but it doesn’t have to suck as much as it does in their hands. London is huge!

I guess I don’t get to play either of their exclusive games.

I’ve been meaning to create a suitable control scheme to play on my Steam Deck as it’s the apex of the series for me.

When I was really getting into PC gaming in 2003 a game from 14 years before would have been released in 1989. Yes, I’d say that was old!

I’ve bought a copy but the interface isn’t very Steam Deck friendly so I’ve barely played it.

Looks like your optimizer link didn’t make it into the post. Good shout on Cemu, btw, as I’m wondering if I’d like BotW.

I gave the build a go and it was great fun!

Yeah, the previews I saw massively put me off. It looked uninspired if we’re being generous.

I’m rather a fan of Apogee’s Secret Agent. I loved it back in the day and then enjoyed the HD remaster of it a few years back.

I’m still waiting on the killer titles for the current generation of consoles. I’m frankly amazed that games have become so difficult to make, given how the graphical improvements aren’t leaps. Build a stylish lighting system, make sure your textures and geometry aren’t too ropey, and then make something creative.

I know it’s not that simple, obviously, but I was playing through a fifteen year old FPS yesterday and the difference between now and then is just not that big. It’s not nothing but the Gameboy philosophy of doing more with less would go a long way.

But… but… the line has to go up! Don’t you understand? It’s not going up! Panic!

I agree that the original is tighter, but I love the free-form adventure of 2.

Did you ever play it modded? The Restoration Project, Updated has two amazing addons that add more talking heads and more voice acting and they’re both of phenomenal, basically seamless quality. It’s really like putting on a fresh coat of paint on the old thing.

Played it? I voiced a talking dog in it!

Fallout 2 is probably one of my favourite games of all time. Absolutely amazing game, if a bit sprawly. I’ve played through it many times and expect I will do again.

Red Alert 2 - the pinnacle of the isometric RTS genre. Bordering on too silly but without tipping into absolute farce. Mechanically very strong, the art is lovely, and even has nostalgia for me.

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. Massive game but a run can be completed relatively quickly. I always disable the music because I don’t like games that try to scare and intimidate me. I’m pretty good at the game so it tends to be pretty relaxing for me, if a bit fugue-state-y.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2: the apex of the Battlefield multiplayer games for me. The others have plenty going for them, but BFBC2 was the best compromise between destructibility, player counts, etc. for my tastes. Sniping took significant skill and one couldn’t go prone - it meant that open areas didn’t feel like a death sentence (looking at you, later BF games!).

Assassin’s Creed: Origins/Odyssey two open world games with beautiful maps and locations to explore. I think I preferred the setting of Origins but the story of Odyssey. A bit of escapist fantasy, I suppose. I loved the Ezio trilogy too, mind you.

As long as you’re enjoying your gaming time, you’re doing it right!

Optimising the fun out of it is an own-goal.

That only holds true if the price doesn’t vary over time.

I have something in the region of a thousand games collected over about twenty years. If the price is good and it looks like I might like it (and I can afford to fritter the money away) then I buy it.

That’s a thousand (ish) opportunities for entertainment, not a thousand (ish) obligations.

I buy games to have a library to pull from when the mood takes me. If I finished them all then I would no longer have that, which seems bad.

The reward for finishing a “backlog” of games is having nothing more to play. That’s like trying to finish a meal in a restaurant quickly to get to the after dinner mint.

I despise treating gaming as an obligation like this. I have a collection of games, not a “backlog”.

Sounds like I’m never going to have a reason to buy a current generation console.

I watched the video they released the other day and stopped half way through. It looked rather dull and also ugly, unfortunately.

How is there no middleware available for NPC movement? It looked tremendously stilted. Similarly the lighting and environments looked worse than things I was playing fifteen years ago. I don’t need cutting edge but it looks distractingly ugly to me.

Mechanically I like 64. I’d like a few more tracks, particularly for the battle mode. The later versions add far too much cruft for my tastes.

Unfortunate for fans of THPS4 but fortunate for me!

I absolutely adore THPS3 but bounced off THPS4 pretty hard. I might actually properly play THPS4’s content in this remake.

I really hoped I’d like Superliminal but ultimately I found it lacking in charisma and was tired of it by the time I reached the end. 6/10 is about what I’d rate it. Serviceable but mediocre.

Isn’t that what the Skate series is for?

Do your best.

I played it when it was new and I’m afraid some people just don’t get the magic of the gameplay. I’m one of those people. The setting is gorgeous but the action side of things bored me. It felt like homework I had to do before the game would let me see the next bit of the setting.

I wouldn’t really call it a “trap”. If you’re buying a console when it’s new at full price, sure, you’re being taken for a ride, but give it a couple of years for stuff to be cheaper and it can work out reasonably well.

I used to be a major PC gamer but eventually the cost/benefit calculation went completely off the rails.

That said, I’ve not upgraded to the current console generation because I’m still waiting on something to justify it.

What would I even play on it?

I don’t think any of these nutters have experienced the things they rail against. I’m not in the US, but from where I’m standing you guys haven’t had any of that stuff since before Reagan.

I’m still waiting for enough titles to come out on either platform to make the jump from my Xbox One X.

: This Time it’s Poosonal.

I wish there was an option for “I’m in the UK - we don’t use SMS/RCS anymore”. Every time I open the text app it acts as if it’s Signal/WhatsApp and I’m suddenly going to start texting people like it’s 2003. I just want the 2FA pass code that was sent, you weirdos.