
Lots of call outs to Postal 2, but not a lot of talk about the GTA series? Weird. Postal 2 was “3 edgy 4 U” and all, there were definitely some hilarious and violent things you can do. I remember pissing in somebody’s mouth and they started throwing up, so I hit their head off with a shovel, and the vomit continued to shoot out of their neck into the sky. But once you get past the shock value the game is pretty bland. I played the hell out of the demo back in the day, and eventually got my hands on a copy and I remember thinking “oh, it’s just the same thing but with more levels”…
Anyway. The GTA series are actually good games. Like the controls, physics, story, comedy, etc etc… But also, you can go into a boutique clothing store in a affluent part of the city and murder all of the patrons and then when the cops show up - shoot rockets at their cars. Then pull somebody out of a high end vehicle and beat the shit out of them with a baseball bat and escape a high speed car chase. You can even play it in VR. Never done it myself but I remember seeing videos of beating people with blunt objects while they attempted to put their arms up in defense but succumbed to the blows and went unresponsive on the ground and though “holy fucking shit, that was really violent”.
Anyway… That also lost its shock value pretty fast, but at least the games remained fun when playing the objective.

I think it’s a post-bubble-pop boycott. These manufacturers are not ramping up production because they know the demand won’t be permanent. So when things return to normal, whenever that is, we continue to not buy their products.
The problem is this relies on two things One - people actually remembering Two - Data centers, enterprises, and OEMs, who make the large majority of HDD purchases also boycott.

I got in trouble in Middle School for printing out an entire FF6 guide from GameFAQs. It had all of the items and their stats, all of the spells, espers, maps etc. It was absolutely massive and the administration was not happy about me using all of that paper and toner. Already printed it, sucks to be them. 3 hole punched it at home and put it in a binder. It was awesome.

They have been in hot water before when they were caught scraping data without consent and sending it back to Epic. Folders/files and apparently steam user info?
The client still supposedly phones home with some encrypted data and nobody is completely sure what it is, they say it’s anti-cheat stuff, but then there’s this:
“40% of Epic Games is owned by Tencent they’re a Chinese Tech Company which the Chinese Government has a certain say in what they do. LITERALLY without Tencent Epic would go under they’re the only reason why Epic Games has gotten so many exclusives and given away so many free games. There is LITERALLY a board member in Tencent that was appointed by the Chinese Government.”
So can we trust them? Probably not.

In my teenage years and early 20s I pirated everything because I was broke. I could squirrel away enough money to build a low grade gaming computer and the benefit to me was “I don’t have to pay for games because I can pirate them”. That or I survived on Demo CDs that came with magazines I got at the book store (and later on I think it was demoplanet.com?). If it wasn’t for these resources, I probably never would have gotten into PC gaming.
Now that I have expendable income, I buy games that I want to play.
I would never have been a customer if I wasn’t originally a pirate. It’s the circle of life.
Also I just went and bought this game because I have money to support shit like this and I’m all about supporting developers who understand.
ShadowRun: Dragonfall
Its an isometric tactics style game that plays like the tabletop RPG it is designed around. It’s a lot of reading, so if you’re not into that stay away, but man… I remember when I beat it I was like “Fuck… Did I fuck up? I think I may have made some wrong decisions. I feel awful now”
I also love the setting it takes place in. For some reason fantasy always takes place in the past. Medieval elves, and dwarves, and Orcs etc. ShadowRun is a dystopian/cyberpunk future where all of these races exist. As if the fantasy world didn’t stop existing after the medieval era.
I’ve been playing the Mario RPG remake. I remember loving the game as the kid, but as I get to each part of the game I’m like “Damnit, I hate this level!”, and it happens over and over again and I’m like “wait, why do I like this game? I hate this game.”
With that said I’m still playing it because I’m almost done with it so I may as well finish it.
It’s easier than I remember, but I also played the original when I was like 10 years old, so maybe it used to be more difficult because I wasn’t as good at video games when I was 10.
I’m excited to finish it because I have an OLED Steam Deck on the way, and I’m trying to sort out what I’m going to play first. Any suggestions for controller friendly games that run well on the deck? I think Dave the Diver is near the top of that list. I’m not to keen on playing first person shooters with joysticks, that’s what my PC is for.
Seems like a pretty good deal, and it’s actually being sold by the Amazon Acer store, so it’s not a shady 3rd party retailer. Acer historically hasn’t been well known for quality, but they have gotten better over the years. It’s a lot of laptop for that price. They may be trying to offload 12th Gen devices as the 13th Gen refresh is right around the corner.
I played that game for about 30 minutes. I got to one of the first areas, picked up some “fetch quests” where I had to kill some type of creature and return their pelts for a prize and some exp or whatever and I was like “Oh… A mid 2000’s MMO with no other players. No thanks!”
I also remember feeling that all of the movement, animations, and actions were really jerky. Like nothing felt like it flowed correctly. Things were kind of “snap to grid”. Not sure how else to explain it.