At least they can use that money they saved for checks notes powering CoPilot no one is asking for.

I just feel bad for a lot of kids because maybe their phone or tablet has the game they want but often they are playing using just the touchscreen and that interface sucks for anything that requires joystick or button controls (where the touchscreen just has vague areas with pretend joysticks and buttons).

It just does.

I get that kids get used to it, but it’s like getting used to being kicked in the nuts when you have the option of not being kicked in the nuts.

Man, the Steam Deck bros are really insufferable, aren’t they?

Kinda the best of both worlds if you have both games, really. MK8 had a ton of “traditional” tracks and MKW has a ton of new tracks.

That’s a lotta tracks, baby!

Yeah, this is still the GOAT 🐐.

Wild the Switch 2 has nearly caught up to the Deck in less than a week.

F in the chat

I appreciate that they didn’t kill the game. If people are still paying for it, and presumably making even a little profit, it’s probably not that hard to keep it running.

Too, I don’t really know how I’ll feel if/when FFXIV ever shuts down. I have had a character now since 2.0, and I would be very sad to see them go. I imagine it’s the same for some folks who have been playing 11 for 20 years.

Yeah, I played it for the first time in the last couple of years, too.

And I enjoyed the game more than I expected to. It’s a lot slower, like you said, than FFXIV for example, but that’s OK.

I agree that I’d love a bit of a remake that just made a few things more streamlined like linking up attacks with my trust party - which I found to be often nearly impossible to do, even with mods.

So I was on a personal mission to beat every mainline FF game a couple years ago. For 14 I considered “beat” to mean be up to date with the story (which I was doing anyway), and for 11 I wanted to at least complete the story that the game shipped with simply because I didn’t want to sink TOO much time into it.

Anyway, you are able to get from 1-50 and kill the Shadowlord on your own now. I can attest to that. And after doing that I have now successfully finished FF1-16!

On my server there were still plenty of people. I don’t know how many are gold bot farmers. But there was still lots of characters running around.

My Windows 10 PC’s only function at this point is to play FFXIV in my living room, so I’m not super worried about viruses or anything.

But maybe eventually I’ll switch to Linux on that box and do that weird set-up to get FFXIV running there.

I think last night I hit HR38 or so, so I have played it about 40 hours.

And I will start by saying this my first Monster Hunter. I have zero old baggage or knowledge coming in (other than trying Rise for maybe an hour because it was free on PSN+ and that not clicking at all).

Performance: I fortunately have a 120hz VRR OLED, so the 40fps mode on my PS5 is pretty solid. It feels good. No, I will not be taking questions from PC zealots at this time - though I do feel bad for you guys that it sounds like there are some issues there they need to resolve. On console it’s pretty solid.

The game: I’m really enjoying it. Like I said, I don’t have any prior experience really coming in, so it’s all new to me. And after what felt like climbing a sheer cliffside of learning curve to understand how to just play the game, I’m vibing with most all of it now. It was really hard to adjust my brain to think that Square is NOT the attack button, but rather Circle and Triangle. But once that clicked finally, I’m Charge Blading and Bug Lancing all over the place. It’s fun.

I’ve read some complaints here and there about the wound system, but I like it. I like doing cool moves in the middle of a fight for big damage.

The worst part of the game is playing with others. Once you get it working it’s fun to play with friends. But just getting to that point is awful. I’m reminded of that meme of the three dragon heads where the two, serious ones on the left are the graphics and gameplay, and the derpy one on the right is multiplayer. I shouldn’t have to look up online how to do what I’d assume is a simple thing: play with my friends. No one knows what a lobby is versus a link party versus an environment link party versus a squad…It’s all too much shit up front to learn and untangle. It took my brothers and I about an hour to set up a game the first time we tried. It’s madness.

But overall, I’m still enjoying this game. I don’t care that it’s “easier” like I hear from some people. It’s fun. My sword and shield turns into a chainsaw. I’m having a good time.

Now that it has been three years, while I’d like to have one, I feel like I’ll just wait until whatever the next version is - even if that means waiting another year or so.

I don’t need one, particularly, and I don’t want to be caught at the tail end of this hardware.

Unless the game has its own subscription, like Final Fantasy XIV.

Unless that has changed over the years. I’m not sure.

Yeah, I now have six hours in the game between last night and today. I actually finally just stopped after a few hour stretch.

I’m having fun! But I also have seen some bugs. I can get behind waiting if some smaller bugs are annoying, but I’m enjoying the game quite a bit.

I’m pretty happy that it runs alright on my Mac Mini M4. Starts up quick and gets going. It defaults to High settings but I turned the shadows down a bit just to keep things a little smoother.

Yeah, that’s a fair point, actually.

At least someone at Sony saw some reason.

I can’t think of any human being who wanted a live service Horizon and God of War.

Correct.

I would like to think you could pair old joycons to it in a pinch since outside of that new button on the right joycon they look exactly the same.

But, yeah, when it runs out of juice you’d have to stick them back on the old switch or use a third party charger.

But we’ll see, for sure.

Mouse mode has been rumored, and some leaks have shown what could be an optical sensor on the joy con.

Also, if you take your current joy cons and place them on their side like that, they surprisingly feel pretty great as a mouse. Shoulder button for min click, and your thumb hits the four face buttons. I could see it working pretty well.

In theory the old joy cons could still connect to the system via bluetooth, just not attach to the console itself. So maybe that keeps Ring Fit in play for the system.

A few years ago I think I’d agree, but I feel like at this point it’s a super lazy naming scheme, to be honest.

Don’t have a good name? Just slap “-fall” on the end of some noun.

Another entry in the long running “-fall” series of games.

(For real, it’s weird how so many game have “fall” in their name if you start paying attention to it. Everything be fallin’.)

One of the presenters said:

“It’s clear AI is the new electricity.”

Hard pass.

Do you recall the platform(s)?

We already have Dragon Quest Builders.

Animal Well is also my game of the year.

No other game was more interesting and exciting when you found something new. Or solved a puzzle.

While on the surface it’s a simple Metroid style game, once you start noticing things it becomes so intriguing. I have a document on my iPad full of handwritten notes and maps. It felt so novel to return to a feeling of the late 80s where paper maps and notes were king.

While there were a lot of great games last year, I put so much more brainpower into Animal Well, and it felt so good to do so.

Tears of the Kingdom and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 at 60fps. That’s all I ask.

It’ll be perfect on that!

You’re welcome!

When you die in this game there’s no real penalty other than going back to the last checkpoint. So even if you leveled up or something you keep that, you just might go back a few screens. It’s great!

I don’t use steam too much, but I did get Minishoot Adventures, and it’s excellent.

It’s like if Zelda was a bullet hell. The base difficulty isn’t too hard, but it’s challenging enough. And you get to explore and do dungeons. It’s really fun.

Don’t tell Nintendo I played Star Fox today at 120fps.

Animal Well.

Troy Baker sure is Troy Bakering in this one.

The moment you stop having a sub for something like FF14 (which has no in your face upsell garbage in-game), you turn in to something like LotR: Online (which when I played that briefly was FILLED with windows trying to get you to buy gold or other nonsense).

You pay a sub so the servers stay online. So the writers/coders/management get paid. In the case of FF14, so the game can continue being great.

You can’t say anything bad or joke about him. He’s god around these parts.

A lot of these people will probably also say “billionaires shouldn’t exist” but for Gabe he’s “our” billionaire so it’s fine.

“I was just stumped,” Newell said, sipping a drink on one of his many yachts. “Maybe I’ll get unstumped with my next yacht purchase.”

Overhearing the conversation, George RR Martin, sitting on a pile of money, quipped, “Yes, and I am thiiiis close to finishing the next book.”

For FFXIV, specifically, if you are looking to add some friends I’d say start by hanging out one of the three starting cities (Gridania, Limsa, Ul’Dah) near the Aetherytes. Often people are just hanging and chatting some there. Limsa, on my server at least, seems to just be filled with people all the time hanging out. And you may even see some open calls for people to join Free Companies (Guilds). Those people are actively looking for new blood, so you could start up a discussion with them and see if their group is something you’d like to join. By doing so you may be able to get several friends pretty quick that way. Just remember that you owe nothing to those folks, and if the free company vibe doesn’t feel right once you get in, then bounce.

But commenting on someone’s look is fine, too! People work hard to collect or craft certain pieces of gear and dye them to make their character the way they want so if you notice something cool chances are they will be happy to talk about it.

There was one time last year during a Live Letter (this is a live streamed event the producers of the game do a few times a year) I went to Limsa and said to anyone who could hear it that I’d be “over by [a specific bench] to discuss the Live Letter” and lots of people I didn’t know gathered around and we all had a fun chat about the event as it streamed.

Or even if you have questions, say them out loud in a crowded space and chances are someone will help. FF14 is notorious for people NOT being trash, so most often you’ll find helpers before finding jerks.

And I promise that you can’t out-weirdo the weirdos that run around pretty much any game, so try to not worry about that.

This continues my streak of buying zero (0) games from Epic but still having a sizeable library there.

It seems like to me some of their games simply just need another two months in the oven.

There were lots of little bugs in Star Wars Outlaws, but I found that game to be really fun, and largely pretty solid. But then they dropped updates a month out or so that fixed a lot of those little bugs. I wonder if they had just had that extra month to polish it up if it’d have gotten slammed as hard. People may still have wanted different things storywise or whatever, but on a technical level just one extra month could have helped.

I happen to have a friend who works at Firaxis and worked on Midnight Suns. I am really happy for him/the team that game came out as well as it did.

The overworld running could certainly be better, but overall that game is super good. I really like the turn from Xcom of a somewhat fake 97% to hit (where your character right next to an alien will still miss) to simply having everything hit but it’s restricted by the skills you have at hand in that moment. I’d be more excited about a Midnight Suns 2 than Civ VII, honestly.