I was under the impression that WoW classic came about because nu-WoW was hemorrhaging players to other, better MMO’s, such as FFXIV and Guild Wars 2.

Not much need for a GW Classic if GW2 is still going strong.

Personally I’ve been cooking through the System Shock games. The SS1 remake was my first proper introduction to the series and I loved it. I was pretty excited for the impending System Shock 2 Enhanced Edition but it, uh… doesn’t really seem like it’s going to be very enhanced. Especially compared to what you can do with just modding the base game. So rather than keep waiting for that I spent ten bucks on SS2 Classic and have been enjoying myself greatly.

I’ve always liked SHODAN just via cultural osmosis, but now having actually played the games she stars in, that’s cranked up to 12. I fucking love SHODAN. She might be one of the best examples of an evil rogue AI in any media, and also has an actual reason for going rogue besides just “mankind builds a machine too smart for them and suffers the consequences”. The entire story setup is so believable.

Anyway, tl;dr, the System Shock games are hella good and the remake is especially very good. Particularly because controlling classic SS1 is more like playing an operating system than playing a video game. Also SHODAN. step on me again metal mommy

Wrangling my Nvidia drivers into Mint also took a couple hours for me but I haven’t had problems afterward

BRC is an incredible replacement though. It’s not quite the same as OG Jet Set Radio, and I think that’s okay, but it is very clearly walking around with JSR’s bones inside. Besides which it has probably my favorite video game soundtrack from the past decade.

I stay defending the weird genius of Yoko Taro’s art to my brother and I stay being vindicated about this

Yeah. Their proper remake of SS1 was excellent and I was looking forward to something similar for SS2. Especially a balancing pass on the skills to make some of them not completely useless.

Even remaking SS2 on the engine they used for 1 would have been welcome news, but it’s not clear that they’re doing that either.

In case you weren’t aware (it sounds like you’re not) :

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Cataclysm

This isn’t going to teach you how to play but it’s an excellent reference wiki

The steam deck can run RPCS3 I played a good amount of Demon’s Souls that way

Personally, I don’t really go out socially. Like ever.

So once a week or so when my friends go out to the bars and spend $50 on food and beers, I might spend a $20 on a game that’s on sale and get the same or better return on my time and money for it. If I buy a game for $20 and spend five hours on it and never touch it again, that’s about equivalent to a night out with the boys, both in dollars spent and in hours enjoyed.

I’ve built up a collection of indie games on this mindset and I don’t see any of it as wasted. If I get a lower return than $5 per hour enjoyed then I’ll refund the game or not recommend it for others. But I have a ton of games that have kept me well entertained for 3-6 days for the price of a beer and a kebab. I consider that good value.

In a better timeline this is one of the many things a Neuralink could be good for

I’ve never once had to wait more than 5 seconds to start loading in to a match no matter what time of day or night it is. Literally no other game has ever done this. They’re prioritizing their time-to-game over having actual players in your match, and this definitely means filling slots with bots. How egregious it is will depend on the time and day and current online player count. But when I’m instantly loading a full game of 10 people at 3am on a Tuesday I know something’s fucky.

Other people have done actual research into the matter but I had my suspicions, just from playing the game, by the third day or so after release.

All the best games of the last 10 years have been built and published by teams smaller than 20 people.

Some VR games are really great. Skyrim VR is definitively NOT one of those.

Fusion has always been my favorite. I “want” to not like how linear it is compared to the rest of the series, but when I get started playing it again that never seems to matter to me anymore. And because of that game structure, the game is very well broken up into chunks of 20-30 minutes of gameplay at a time which makes it excellent for playing on a portable console. I played it on a borrowed GBA-SP for the first time back in the day, a few more times after that emulated, and most recently I’ve been playing it again on my Steam Deck within the past week, I’m like 2/3 of the way back through it again, just took down Yakuza for the Space Jump last night before bed.

Fusion is also a huge story point for the series as a whole. It introduces the X and by doing so gives context to the existence of the metroids. And seeing that referenced again later in Dread was maybe one of the coolest moments I’ve experienced in the Metroid series.

Speaking of Dread, that one is a very close follow up though. I was super hype for Dread when it released and it is one of few games in recent memory that completely lived up to that hype. I was a big fan.

Nearly an entire generation lacks the wisdom that comes with struggle and now we’re reaping the effects of that.

You’ve got more faith in the purchasing public than I do, then. I’ve been watching them buy a new copy of the same COD slop every year for a fresh $60 basically since I’ve been old enough to buy my own video games.

Because Rockstar is going to do it and sell a gorillion copies, so it’s basically a guarantee that everyone else will jump on the opportunity. And once every game is $100, what are people going to do, stop buying video games? I find that unlikely anymore. They’ll bitch and complain about it and sales might drop a little on average but studios will survive. And now we have a new price floor set forever.

This also may explain why Nintendo can’t implement competent networking features to save their lives.

Thanks!

How does one get into that?

People have been telling me that I have “a voice for radio” ever since I was a teenager, but I’ve never really been into show biz, I’ve been fixing computers and cars my whole life. I’ve been considering just recording a long portfolio of a bunch of different voices and start sending it off to random companies but I can’t help feeling like that’s not my best move.

Hulshult is an Old God of the gaming industry at this point and I expect he will never perform work that is unsatisfactory.

But the whole situation with Mick Gordon still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I’d have liked if they reconciled and brought him back, but that may not be possible for any number of reasons, not least of which is Mick himself telling them he’s lost trust.

But lacking Gordon, Hulshult is still an excellent choice.

It definitely still caught me by surprise. Not like it might have in 1996 - I just played Baldur’s Gate 3 within the past year, after all - but the first time I played I definitely managed to get almost every single piece of bad evidence against me that I could rack up without even meaning to.

Hollow Knight gives a pretty fucking solid try, to be fair. But yeah, I do agree.

Third for Chrono Trigger. I didn’t get to play that one when I was a kid so I played it for the first time in 2020. Holy shit what a game. The original definitely still holds up today.

1v1 where you’re expecting Oddjob is a lot different than 4P deathmatch where one guy is Oddjob. That’s where it’s a real dick move cause he’ll catch you by surprise.

Still, though. Respect.

Yeah, guilty as charged

Debit card is tied directly to your bank account with no rollbacks. If somebody gets that info and decides to clean out your bank account, that money is gone, period, and you’ll never see it again.

With a credit card, you have a degree of separation and the ability to contest or roll back charges. Debit cards don’t do that.

They do

Unless your console has a file browser with an Extra Content folder in it, I’m gonna guess no.

However, the same rulebook is also available for free on Roll20.

Ah, I misunderstood what you meant. I took that to mean they had previously announced an update and then rolled it back, which would be news to me.

When had this ever been an issue?

In fact, there are particular reasons behind this that are influenced by Japanese culture and history.

Warning: this video is an hour and a half long

I’ve just checked and there are indeed UI scaling options in the menu. Up to 2x normal! So I think you’ll most likely be fine.

I primarily play on PC and don’t have a problem with screen size. When I’ve played on the Deck I’ve found myself peering a bit at the smaller text, toolbars and item descriptions and so on, but it was all readable and my vision isn’t exactly stellar. If the Retroid has a smaller screen than the Deck though, it’s possible you could run into trouble there. I think the dev team has accounted for that with some UI size multipliers in the settings menu but I might be misremembering that. I’ll check that tonight when I’m off work and I’ll update here if I remember to.

I will start this off by saying, I don’t know jack all about the Retroids, looking it up when you asked me about it here is the first I’ve ever heard of them. But looking at the specs I think it would probably run fine. I’ve played Qud on some absolute potatoes of desktop PCs before. I feel confident it would run on the processing power of an Android phone and the Retroid 5 has a snapdragon 865 in it. It’s a good bet. Late game might lag a bit but it’s turn based so who cares.

I fucking love this game with a burning fervor that is not matched anywhere else. Qud could have been made for me personally and it wouldn’t be any more perfect than it is. I’ve been playing this game damn near ten years and I still come back to it for every single major update. I’m stoked to see the 1.0 finally release and I hope it gets the attention it deserves.

Works great on the deck and one of the primary goals for 1.0 was polishing up the controller support. I still think M+K is the superior method (I’ve been playing it like that for probably 10 years now) but Deck is totally supported.

Well lucky you, there is! Wander mode makes all factions neutral and changes XP from being granted by kills to being granted by exploration and water rituals.

Exanima does this.

Its a little bit half baked right now but it’s been under construction for the better part of a decade. I think the plan now is to use Exanima as a proof of concept and then pivot that technology into a “real” game. But I find it very fun in its current state and does exactly what you’re asking for.

The slow burn lowering prices over time also maintains a bit of long term income for a maintenance team to patch and improve the game. This game is 2 years old and is getting slammed down to $5, that says to me they’re just trying to cash out on whoever is left that wants to buy it but hasn’t, and then I’d bet this game never sees an update ever again afterward.