RROD was actually 3/4ths of a circle. A full red circle was a different and less troubling error.

Unfortunately, that’s the anti-scalper countermeasure. Crippling their crypto mining potential didn’t impact scalping very much, so they increased the price with the RTX 40 series. The RTX 40s were much easier to find than the RTX 30s were, so here we are for the RTX 50s. They’re already on the edge of what people will pay, so they’re less attractive to scalpers. We’ll probably see an initial wave of scalped 3090s for $3500-$4000, then it will drop off after a few months and the market will mostly have un-scalped ones with fancy coolers for $2200-$2500 from Zotac, MSI, Gigabyte, etc.

Micro is actually tactics since it’s on the level of a single engagement. Strategy is more about the game as a whole, like scouting and map control.

I just want an RTS I can actually play with my wrist in its current condition. I can do the earliest C&C campaigns, but that’s partially because the AI isn’t good enough to require fast and precise mouse movements. I just physically can’t do micro anymore and attempting it hurts, but most RTS games are designed in such a way that micro is required.

Personally, I started on the first part of the remake trilogy, then stopped when I realized how annoyed I would be about waiting for the sequels. So now I’m waiting for all of it to be out on Steam before I start again.

I completely stopped playing when they sunsetted the equipment that made my somewhat unusual warlock build work.

Cyberpunk 2077 used the static levels on launch, but changed to almost everything leveling with you in 2.0. I think the change actually worked better for the game, but it’s also done differently than every other game I’ve seen use that approach. Enemies gain stats much slower than V does, so a level 20 V still feels much more powerful than a level 1 V, but you also have the freedom to explore rather than having arbitrary beef gates making it nigh impossible to go to certain parts of the city before you’re supposed to.

On the other hand, I also love Morrowind’s painstakingly hand-crafted world with static enemies and hand-placed loot. In most games done that way, however, returning to lower level areas is typically a complete waste of time.

Ultimately, I think both systems can work if they’re done well, but everything leveling up is almost always done poorly, or at least worse than the average game with static levels.

A system I have thought of before is a hybrid where enemies have a target level and then their actual level is the average of your level and the target level. For instance, if an enemy’s target level is 20 and you’re level 1, they’ll be level 10. You probably won’t be able to do much to them. But when you get to level 10, they’ll be level 15, which you might be able to deal with if you’re good. You’ll eventually out-level them, but they’ll still be interesting to fight because when you’re at level 40 they’ll be at level 30. I only make the occasional mod, though, so I’ve never gotten to test if this actually is fun.

Even if you notice that your brush techniques an inventory screens don’t look complete, it really does feel like the end. Then when they do look complete and you’re sure you’ve finally finished it, there’s one more region and some upgrades.

And from 1 to 2, which was desperately needed.

In theory. In practice, software patents have pretty consistently been about the outcome and it’s held up in court. This expired patent on sanity systems, for example.

However, Reach’s tagline was, “From the beginning, you know the end,” so there was an expectation that everyone playing would know how it was going to pan out.

The Xenoblade games. Probably Xenogears and Xenosaga, too, but I haven’t played those yet.

The Halo 1 and KOTOR twists do hit pretty hard if you somehow haven’t been spoiled. KOTOR has one of my favorite reveal sequences ever with showing you how much foreshadowing you missed, and Halo’s twist turns the game on its head.

Especially Phantom Liberty. I went in blind, made decisions, lived to regret them, fucked up everything, and loved every minute of it.

Being able to release on their own schedule instead of being made to crank out massive RPGs in eighteen months helped a lot.

Just like Windows versions.

I’ve seen ones modded into a laptop form factor. Does that not count?

I could generally take or leave their clutter items, but persistent NPCs with dynamic schedules or the full stat and inventory systems of the PC are still extremely rare, never mind both. Most games simplify NPCs such that they don’t actually have equipment or just have one item (typically an unlootable weapon) and reduce their stats to just HP and defense stats. By contrast, the only difference between an NPC and the PC in a Bethesda game is that the player has controll over the PC.

For me, if they moved to a new engine it would need those persistent fully-featured NPCs to feel like a Bethesda game. Ten years ago, there wasn’t really anything else that did that. Now, there’s got to be something they can make work. Hell, BG3 has all this stuff, it’s just from a top-down perspective. And it can handle ladders, which Bethesda’s engine still can’t do.

People have argued nobody would buy AAA if it’s not an open world with XP, skills and crafting.

See, I hate crafting systems. A game advertising its crafting system makes me less interested. Too many things to remember and the game grinds to a halt for several minutes while I navigate menus. Dragon Age Inquisition was particularly bad with entire sessions lost to inventory management. The Horizon games are bearable just because I can generate pointers to the stuff I need and I’m generally swimming in components anyway.

Skyrim had their best gameplay loop, but Morrowind’s writing carried the entire series. Very excited for Skywind to give me the best of both.

I’m the opposite. I prefer the fem VA, but I like Panam just a bit more than Judy.

Devs have gotten pretty lazy with file size optimization these last couple console generations, now that they don’t need to strictly fit everything on the disc.

If there is a commercial failure of an IP, there is a good chance that its failure will be seen as the IP generally failing or falling out of poluarity instead of the failure to best utilize the IP that likely occurred.

For example, when EA released Tiberian Twilight and it was absolutely awful and didn’t sell, they said that people just didn’t want RTS games anymore and shelved the entire C&C franchise. That was fourteen years ago and we haven’t had a new C&C since then that wasn’t mobile shovelware.

I used a Steam Controller for the N64 stuff. The right pad worked great for the C buttons.

I had one of those. Loved it, but the sticks didn’t last long enough to justify buying another.

Actually introduced in Ripto’s Rage. The Reignited version backported them to the first game, though.

Might just be because I’m just starting out, but Spider-Man’s combat is much more punishing for me. Could just be the higher emphasis on using specific combos on certain enemies, which I have some difficulty keeping straight.

They also said popularized, though. System Shock never really got beyond cult classic status, so while it invented them, I’d say BioShock popularized them.

The base campaign is kind of awful. It really just existed to demonstrate what you could do with the tool set. The expansions, Shadows of Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark, are much better written with more interesting characters. None of the three campaigns hold up to modern game writing standards and all are pretty heavy on dungeon crawling. The deciding factor is probably going to be how much you like the D&D 3.0 rule set.

Obsidian’s sequel is based on D&D 3.5 and the core campaign has writing roughly on par with the first game’s expansions, with the quirk that it’s Obsidian doing high fantasy straight rather than their usual deconstructions. NWN2’s Mask of the Betrayer expansion is easily the best written thing out of either NWN game and is genuinely pretty great. NWN2 has some pretty terrible optimization, though, and runs rough on even high end modern systems.

I’m betting on parfait.

Devs tend to go with simplified or cartoony graphics for legibility on the small integrated screen, but that’s just an art style choice. Doesn’t look too far off from Xenoblade 3, especially given polygons will be saved by not having to render a mile out. Or consider that Doom 2016 runs decently on the Switch.

The Wiimote worked with a pair of IR blasters to locate your screen. Joycons have no idea where your screen is. In that light, that they work as pointing devices at all is actually rather impressive.

I’m guessing a single release, and the game being used to show off the backwards compatibility features of the next system. Probably the usual 800p-900p 30fps on Switch and something higher when slotted into a Switch 2.

I love hex grids and wish more games used them.

Honestly, 3 doesn’t really need it. The art direction is excellent and just inceasing the render resolution works great. Same with ODST and Reach.

It was also based on Gearbox’s shoddy PC port, so the classic graphics were broken on release and stayed that way for about ten years.

They did. It was based on the PC version that Gearbox fucked up and it took ten years for the classic mode graphics to be fixed. The remastered graphics were a lazy mishmash of Halo 3 and Reach models haphazardly thrown together. The remastered level geometry also didn’t match the actual geometry, which resulted in things like invisible trees blocking your bullets.

They had better call it Team Fortress 2 Episode 1.

Eternal actually made my hands hurt. Still haven’t gotten very far in it. Having to constantly cycle weapons, jump, dash, and do precision shooting, often all at the same time, was murder on my hands.

Given that it was made by a different company, doing anything with it may actually be legally complicated.