Go and look at my post history on Lemmy. I’m more than established on here, as I am on Mastodon. I’m not a ad, this wasn’t a paid review. They sent me the device and had no idea what I’d write about it. If it was terrible, I’d have said so. That’s…how this works. In the case of the AYN Thor, it’s just genuinely a VERY good handheld. I stand by what I’ve written. You would too, if you got one.
I loathe that you don’t know me, didn’t check my history with Lemmy, and just called me a paid shill. Fucking shitty.
As to reviewing this handheld and liking it. Its like if you got sent a Steam Deck, and gave it a good review…would you consider that an ad? A product which holds up to scrutiny? My findings seem to be pretty in-line with others who have reviewed the device.
tbf, I kinda can’t blame anyone for being critical of a review of a niche product. We live in a capitalistic influencer hellscape. We are post authenticity. Everything is a grift, everything is a hustle, everyone is a paid sponsor. Modern subversive advertising has made everyone suspicious of anyone who boasts a company or product.
I feel like in the 2000s before the monetization of the internet became the norm, people were more able to share their art and writing in forums. There were entire sites dedicated to grassroots art-sharing without any profit motive.
Yes, grifters exist, but we’re all so cynical these days, not just at the corporations, but everyone. I miss people just sharing things with each other without any suspicion that dark money is involved.
I looked at the blog and it looks like a mere $182 changed hands for the month, and I assume most or all of it goes to Gardiner Bryant and not the OP. Is that comparable Instagram “influencers” hawking Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop in a paid sponsorship deal? Maybe this is just a person who was excited enough about a new console that they decided to write about it, and honestly, good for them.
I assume most or all of it goes to Gardiner Bryant and not the OP.
I make no money from Gardiner’s site, or any other way I’ve done these articles. They’re just because I love to write and because I love the gaming scene. Thanks for realizing that!
I don’t think that’ll be possible. I wouldn’t even buy BF6 because of Javelicrap (EA’s botnet akin to Activision’s Ricocrap), and why I’d want a rootkit on my system is beyond me (plus, Linux users are excluded from playing BF6 in the first place).
The custom interiors and crew based stuff is really interesting and I want to see it as a light no fire testbed if nothing else after they said it was the same core tech as their ocean faring ships.
Unless they did a proper rework of space combat, it’ll get old fast, just like ground combat. I also remember you could pile up dozens of “Kill space pirate Whoever” from several systems, travel super far away so that you could reset the quests, reset said quests, then manage to complete ALL of them by killing only one target
I strongly recommend Dark Cloud and Dark Cloud 2. DC2, to my memory, could have aged well, but DC1 might be a rough play if you’re not in the headspace for a game of that era. I haven’t played them in an age, though.
Otherwise, I find that Kingdom Hearts (and KH2 in particular) aged very well. KH2 just feels really good to play.
As for Final Fantasy, if you have a wild hair to play just one, you’ll get a dozen different opinions. However, since essentially every game plays with new universes and new gameplay mechanics, you really do get a fresh start with each one.
DC2 is absolutely a must play. Its a ridiculously big game though, be warned. You’ll be deep into the latter chapters with the game still throwing new mechanics at you like “omg, I have to play golf in dungeons now too, and fishing, and base building, and photography, and and and and”
I kind of do reccomend a guide for it as there’s some permanent misables.
From my memory, the misable stuff isn’t the important, but it is frustrating to not be able to get. I would say if you aren’t worried about missing a few unlocks, just accept that you’ll miss stuff and don’t stress about it.
If you’re the type of person (like me) who finds out they missed something and feel compelled to restart, even if you were never planning on 100% the game, then yeah, use a guide. I wouldn’t use a guide for everything, but I’m certain there are guides that say when misable stuff is coming and how to get them.
I’m not too surprised; it’s been a long time since I’ve played it, and I suspected my fond memories might not reflect reality. Did you give the sequel a shot?
I remember it being a great game! Moreso than DC1; I think the former appealed to me so much because it was the first game I played with a base-building gameplay loop like that. If you’re looking for a game to play, consider giving it a shot. I remember being reeled in pretty quickly, so you ought to be able to make up your mind early on (although more and more interesting systems get introduced the longer you play, of course).
DC2 is still fairly similar with the dungeons (though much less grindy, and far less annoying with running out of water or whatever, from my memory). 2 adds a ton of other things to do though. If you’re tired of grinding dungeons, go fishing, breed your fish for races and events, go golfing, find things to take pictures of for inventing, progress your town for more unlocks, advance NPC quests to add them to your group, etc. 1 is fairly linear with one way to progress. 2 has probably a dozen different activities to progress in, so you can do whatever you want in the moment.
I am not going to discuss the ethics of piracy because I genuinely don’t give a fuck (also the vast majority of people don’t know the difference between ethics and morality and insist whatever they do is Good so it is even less productive than slamming my hand in a cabinet).
But if your goal is to actually not support those companies? Don’t play the games. Because “Wow, Spider-Man is fucking awesome” is still going to encourage others to buy it. Even if you say “Wow, I am so glad I pirated it because Spider-Man is fucking awesome” is going to encourage people who don’t know how/don’t care to pirate things to buy it (and people are going to think you are an obnoxious edgelord).
And yeah, I’ll parrot others: If you think games are in a bad place (from a monetization and content perspective… not from a funding and censorship one) then that just tells me that you don’t actually care enough to follow indie devs.
Skyrim’s followers have a maximum carry weight and won’t let you trade them any items after they exceed it. That is, if you TRADE them the items! You can just Hold E/talk to them and go into interaction mode and order them to pick up things from the ground. They will happily do so without complains regardless of their carry weight status, extremely helpful for collecting a bunch of dwemer junk to smelt down into ingots for smithing - those things are heavy!
Undertale. That was the game that really changed my life. I never did complete the bad ending route because that game is my comfort game, and it made me want to be friends with the world. I was kind of a jerk in middle school and highschool, but Undertale, which I played in my Junior year made me feel so guilty about who I was being. I think it also saved me from going down the rightwing extremist pipeline because of how much it touched me. I thank Undertale for making my life better.
I mean I have no actual respect for any of these companies. Their goal is money before anything else. Them “taking shots” at one another is meaningless to me.
I feel like if the boss also healed continuously it would be less annoying, like you can plan around it. What grinds my gears is when I think I’ve won, and the game just goes NOPE!
She only did that on second phase with Father Ariandel, but yes, guessing whether there’s another phase while your estus is empty is certainly more bullshit than healing 🤣
I’m definitely not proud that I let my autotomatic annual renewal go through in April. At least it was before the price increase, and now that I’m determined to not renew, I’m being a lot more stingy with my months.
It was recently increased to $15 USD. Though the Plucky Squire actually looks like a solid game published by Deveolver Digital. Looks like it has gone on sale for $15 before, so it’d basically be like buying that game. And you get Grapple Dog thrown in
Split Fiction is a master class in game design. The split screen is so integrated into the experience that even online multiplayer is in split screen. The screens are a part of the story.
The gameplay is constantly changing to the point that discovering new mechanics becomes the gameplay loop.
The level designs are so clever that you’ll have several moments that feel scripted but were actually just inevitable because of how we play games.
To give a snapshot of the experience: there was one scene where my character was driving a motorcycle along the sides of skyscrapers, doing the craziest stunts imaginable, and my wife’s character was sitting on the back frantically trying to solve a series of CAPTCHAs on her phone. She was so focused on keeping a steady hand that she barely noticed the death-defying stunts happening literally out of the corner of her eye.
By the end of it I was like, “Did you see that??” and it turns out she did not. It was absurd and hilarious, and it’s the kind of storytelling that only works in a video game.
My current obsession is UFO 50, which is a collection of 50 “retro” games. In real life they’re all new, but the story of the game is that they’re from a company from the 80s called UFOsoft, and then there’s a dark meta narrative hidden in the background.
Which is all just a framing device for 50 games, most of which are good, some of which are amazing, and half of which are couch co-op multiplayer. It’s like exploring the Switch’s retro NES collection for hidden gems, except there’s a lot more gems.
There are beat 'em ups, obscure sports games, some platformers, tactics games, a little bit of everything.
I’ve enlisted my wife to help me, because a lot of these games are just begging to be grinded out in co-op.
I got the game when I saw someone describe it as “a master class in game design”, and I thought, “that’s the phrase I’ve just been using to describe Split Fiction.”
And finally, I recommend Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, because that’s the multiplayer game I’ve been recommending for almost ten years.
You each play as adorable creatures in an adorable space ship that you customize as you go. The ship has several stations that need to be manned, including the captain’s seat, navigation, a directional shield, and multiple weapons.
But you each can only man one station at a time. So if you need to stay on the shield but a new enemy is approaching from the other side, then that means the captain is going to have to jump on a weapon and leave the ship adrift.
You may have arguments over which type of weapons to add to your ship or over who’s better at piloting which kind of engine. Or maybe you’ll work together in perfect harmony, relying on each other’s strengths and covering each other’s weaknesses as you adapt to every new challenge. Both ways are fun.
Big second for Lovers In a Dangerous Spacetime. Purely co-op, very simple controls so even people who aren’t super into games can play, and a super cute aesthetic make it a great ‘We wanna play a game, but don’t want to sweat’ kinda game.
It’s insanely good. At some point I want to make a post just about UFO 50, just to spread the word, but I don’t even know where to start.
Fifty is just an insane number of games, and so many of them are so god damn good.
Even now I want to be like, Porgy would be worth the cost on its own! But then I’m like, should I say Porgy or Avianos? Or Mini and Max? Or Grimstone? No, Rail Heist! Fuck it, I’m just going to go back to playing the damn thing.
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