I like the idea of open worlds much more than I like the reality. With a full time job, kids, and a completionist mindset I just don’t have the time or mental stamina to spend 100+ hours doing side quests and revealing every inch of the map. Not to mention reading all of that dialog and lore.

Give me a corridor with a tight, focused story over a sprawling open world any day of the week. Coincidentally Bioshock was awesome.

The game itself was never that good but they did an absolutely stellar job with the world building. That intro for one, and I’ll never forget Raziel(?) explaining the story of the giant cathedral, how it was humanity’s last refuge and it ultimately did nothing.

Kinda excited to replay it.

This shit winds me up so much. It used to be that a game would be full price for 6-12 months before moving onto a budget label at a vastly rexuced price.

Nowadays games are full price forever, except for the few days a year when they go on “sale” and get reduced to what they should’ve been all along. During which time the publishers get to act like they’re being altruistic and doing us a massive favour.

I can’t use these things together.

Oh no.

Two.

Is down.

First one, on the 3DO. Small selection of exotics and sports cars, realistic (for the time) point-to-point road races with no music to obscure the engine noise, and an annoyingly/amusingly sarcastic rival racer that was obviously just one of the devs.

Each car had its own showcase video followed by a detailed specs sheet with a very enthusiastic voiceover explaining why you should be excited to drive this car. Even the courses had the voiceover treatment.

It truly was a love letter to cars and driving that has never been equalled, and is very telling that it’s the only one to have had Road & Track branding. Every subsequent NFS game has been so in name only.

Check out Grip: Combat Racing for a modern take on Rollcage. I haven’t played it since early access, though, so I’ve no idea if it’s any good.

Yeah honestly Eternal should’ve been a Quake reboot using the new engine rather than a Doom sequel. Everything about it felt like Quake.

Meh. I was really hoping they’d go back to the sci-fi aesthetic of 2016 but instead they’ve doubled down on the weird high fantasy with guns thing.

It’s like they actually wanted to reboot Heretic/Hexen but they couldn’t get the license for it so they’ve just shoehorned it into Doom instead.

Gotta hold my hands up and admit that in my initial haste to confirm the price I fell victim to the Play Store putting sponsored results ahead of what you actually searched for and I installed some crap called minimalist launcher, which charges £70 for a lifetime license. That’s what my “insane” comment was based on.

In comparison it’s nowhere near that bad for Niagara, but it is still pricey compared to most apps, and I balk at paying a subscription for software in general so that still stands.

Might give it another go after all…

Reading the article and justification given I do actually get the idea of it. They want to levarage the parent company’s clout and connections in order to convince other app makers into implementing a way for Sesame, the universal search app/plugin, to pull results directly from those apps. For the parent company it would give them a USP in the analytics market.

In short: Think of searching for a product from the launcher and rather than it opening Google, it returns results directly from the Amazon app, or eBay, or any other app that supports the functionality. Obviously there’ll be an affiliate kickback for any click-through and you’ve got a decent revenue source.

It’s a good idea, I get it. Would I feel comfortable using it? I don’t know. On the one hand it just cuts out the middle-man of searching for and clicking through to products via Google etc. On the other hand, all of the concerns already raised in this thread!

I like Niagara but it’s insanely expensive, especially as a subscription. I don’t know how people justify it.

Edit: The above was based on me getting duped by a Play Store sponsored search result and installing some crap that charges £70 for a lifetime licence. In comparison Niagara feels like much better value, but it’s still expensive compared to most apps and I still don’t like subscribing to software in general.

Turns out the site is still up, but they officially closed in 2011.

“Blue skies in games”. There’s a blast from the past! Is UK:R still going?

Yeah really. Somebody phoned this in with a quick AI prompt.

So many Google products are either crippled or completely unavailable outside the US, it’s honestly quite ridiculous. I’m still waiting for call recording to be made available in the UK.

Take a drink every time somebody says “teams”.

Also same. Sometimes it decides typos are things that I want in my custom dictionary and will start replacing real words with gibberish, and then I have the same dilemma as OP, trying out a ton of different keyboards before eventually reverting to a clean install of SwiftKey.

Weird typo corrections and MS ownership aside, I really like how SwiftKey works and struggle to use anything else.