Honestly, this is exactly what I expected. This is why I can’t trust review sites anymore. They only ever score a game from 7 to 10. I mean, IGN previously scored Concord a 7/10.
From what I know of Concord, it kind of was a 7/10 game - It was functional, but just not impressive or interesting. The thing is, when it’s released with a fervent anticipation of being a “Live service HIT”, it was critically important to have a flood of players. At least indie singleplayer games can hit success late (Among Us being a perfect example, its first release didn’t really strike big)
A game that is technically functional but neither good or bad should be a 5/10, not a 7. Which is my whole point. Access reviewers/ bias reviewers do not use the whole grading scale, they only use a scale of 7-10 which is wholly unhelpful when determining game review scores.
You’re totally right. That’s why I usually just assume, that the scale starts at 5, that gives a good idea about the quality of the game. A 7/10 would be a 2/5 on that revised scale, telling you what you want to know
It makes me wish i had explored them when i was younger. I got like halfway through and had to return my copy to the library and never got to check it out again because one of the other Library Borrowers left it out and it got ruined
I would look for a mouse where the screws aren’t covered by the stick on feet. Less can be more, less buttons, less things to break = more stable. Its also good to look at the faulty market: buy a working mouse, and when it eventually breaks source replacement parts from faulty mice from eBay, if the market is stupidly priced or non existent you many need to do some research for which switches are used, this can be difficult to ID.
So stick with mainstream brands like Logitech, Corsair, Razor (not my first choice but there will be no end of faulty mice 😅) but if your up for IDing PCB components then any mouse can be fixable.
Thanks for the reply! I was thinking more along the lines of “open hardware” — either a mouse manufactured by a larger company so that it can be easily repaired, with the manufacturer happy to sell you spare parts (something like Framework laptops), or a mouse designed by an internet enthusiast that you can assemble yourself from off-the-shelf components and 3D-printed parts.
I once saw a build-it-yourself kit for an ultra-light mouse somewhere. I naively assume that such a mouse would be easy to repair. Alas, that kit would cost me my kidney.
Pretty much no manufacturer is going to sell you parts besides maybe replacement feet. But the only things that fail on mice are all jellybean components.
Left mouse button fails? Buy another from mouser. Middle button fails? Digikey. Side button? Some other components selling company.
Outside of those super light mice there’s nothing special about any of them other than the exact layout, and the case. And the cheaper the mouse usually the simpler they are on the inside, and the easier it is to solder. Most PCBs will be single sided with through hole components.
Find a mouse you like the shape of and look at comparable mice that have replaceable switches. Then do a quick check on aliexpress at the prices of those switches/wheels. Things have gotten better with mice.
If you can solder I’d say most mice are easily fixable. The most common defect for mice are the switches, which are usually quite simple to desolder, as there aren’t any components near them.
E.g. I don’t have much experience soldering and it took me under an hour replacing both switches on the G Pro Wireless as well as the battery. I’ve bought this mouse used about 5 years ago and I wouldn’t be surprised if it lasted another 5 years.
Edit: The annoying part is the screws being below the feet, so you have to replace them after opening the mouse. But it’s all screwed in.
In addition to that, for popular, “name brand” mice, there are often also tons of replacement parts available from China. You can basically re-build the complete mouse from parts.
Otherwise, as you’ve said, switches, wheel, the battery and maybe the cable, should always be replaceable (as long as you can solder).
Reddragon, and just pull parts from goodwill mice, they send you extra Teflon pads with the mouse so you can open it and keep the pads nice. Switches are just switches, they are standard sizes, and the cords usually use standard plugs, worst case you swap some pins around to match. Insanely easy to take apart, and cheap enough to not worry about breaking.
They are cheap as hell, but they have good tracking sensors and are really comfortable to use.
RN It’s Starwdew Valley. I keep staying up all night being like “Just… One more day and I’m done.” 🤣
Every time I look up something I can’t figure out, I am presented with a bunch of tangenital items that I haven’t even seen yet and I’ve been grinding the game for two weeks now. And CA just announced it was getting more! This unassuming retro farming game is fucking massive. 😵💫
It’s been a bit difficult with The Last of Us because I feel self obligated to mix things up regularly, but it has been fun, especially showing off my favorite sights and parts in the story. I feel a bit like a tourist seeing a city for the first time lol
Do you just want to saturate your upload bandwidth for poops and giggles? Then consider just being That Guy who is constantly in one of the live channels on a community discord streaming everything to like 0.1 people per day.
Do you want to make a hustle out of this? Then your only real options are youtube or twitch and… discoverability is near zero for both of those. Even if you are one of the biggest streamers on the planet, convincing people to try a new platform is nigh impossible. Let alone for someone just starting out.
As a hustle, you should stream on Kick(10x the payout of Twitch) and then edit the vods into algorithm clips for YouTube and tiktok that would funnel to the Kick. You could multistream everywhere for maximum exposure, but that can get troublesome depending on how active chat is because you need to keep up and Twitch doesn’t allow you to display other chats on screen.
These days it is really hard to get going in streaming and youtube, so you really just need to cast a wide net and really work on refining your content. It takes years to get a decent second income, unless a big streamer reacts to you and then you have to try and keep the new subs without turning away the OGs.
Twitch doesn’t allow you to display other chats on screen
I’ve always wondered, couldn’t you work around this by having a feed with only the twitch chat for Twitch, and a feed with all the chats for every other platform?
I think you can comfortably encode 2 streams on basically any modern-ish card no?
I’m no expert on the higher capabilities of multistream plugins and whatnot. I don’t think you could include twitch chat with the others if you are doing that sort of thing unless filtering chats to a given platform is an option with one instance. All the same, if you are handling the multistream locally you would want to do a dual PC setup if you are a game streamer. A lot of multistreamers use a relay service to reduce processing power while gaming.
You can multistream everything to everywhere with combined chat, but you have to sanitize the chat so it isn’t apparent that other platforms are combined or which chat is which if they are displayed separately.
This isn’t unique to Rockstar. If the email you created an account with is dead, you’re screwed no matter who it is. I had this problem with Dropbox once. Luckily the email in question still existed, I just didn’t know it. However since it was on a friend’s server he was able to hook me back up.
While their process is often lengthy, EA reps will go really far to help you prove you own an account to recover it and change the login info, over the phone at least. I’ve had to work with them recovering accounts several times because I never learn from a mistake the first time.
If nothing else you’re putting them on blast with the government, and that contributes to the paper trail for eventual action. In the meantime it might get your complaint resolved. Did you try tweeting at their official account too? Sometimes that can help get things moving.
Thank you! I didn’t think an ombudsman would be at all helpful against a game company, I should reconsider aha. No Twitter account but that’s good advice!
But they are also required to make sure noone else gets access to the account, and so it's OPs job to prove ownership of the account - which he can't, or else the situation would have been resolved after Rockstar supports questions.
You’re right, this is more of an issue with your purchase not being complete. I think your legal remedies would either be through your card provider (probably too late) or civil action directly to Rockstar.
How much are you willing to dig for it? I’m playing through hollow knight atm and have been shocked at the emotional depth that hides in the margins of the world. If you plow through the game and only touch the required content then all you get is the overall somber vibe. But if you turn every stone, talk to every npc, complete every side quest, you might be surprised at how much love and loss and joy and pain there is in the story.
Overall it is about picking through the ruins of a dead kingdom. You can engage with that as much or as little as you want. IMO they do an outstanding job of rewarding you for the effort.
Japanese developers tend to excel at this because Eastern culture/media is much more willing to acknowledge emotion and moral ambiguity. The West likes misty eyed men whereas East Asians are all about that former boyband member sobbing. And The West only allows a Bruce Willies level character to beat on an abuser. It’s why Hank Hill humorously kicking Jimmy in the ass after… almost getting Bobby run over by a dozen Nascar Cars sticks with us. Or Dan Conner making sure his sister-in-law is okay before wordlessly grabbing his jacket to beat her abuser half to death.
A couple days back Aftermath posted an excellent blog on Kamen Rider that kind of exemplifies it aftermath.site/kamen-rider-kuuga-tokusatsu. But the quick summary: There is a meme clip going around of a sentai character beating the ever loving hell out of a monster. And the context is that the hero of that series is a super happy man who loves children who was faced with a villain who murders children in a way that maximizes suffering for everyone around them. So he just completely snaps and crosses every imaginable line while unleashing all of his powers with no wind up or ceremony. And, most importantly, there is no moral hand wringing about how “Yes, he deserved it but what is this doing to you?”. Mother fucker was unquestionably evil and got what was coming to him. And while it does tie into the overall themes of Yusuke being worn down and broken by the weight of the suit, it also acknowledges that… somebody needs to be. Which is a theme common in the Gundams and so forth.
Contrast that with The West where The Hero is contractually required (formerly legally required…) to stop short and insist that killing the man who slaughtered dozens of children would make him no better… before being given an out when said monster grabs a gun out of nowhere.
As for games that pull this off? I’ll contribute Dust: An Elysian Tale. Most of it is happy go lucky as the amnesiac protagonist and his cute and cuddly and obnoxious companion fight against the evil military with some good laughs. But it also touches on the theme of “you can do everything right and still people get hurt” which works REALLY well in the video game space where you are conditioned to believe the golden ending will always be happy and perfect.
I will never understand people that are against obliterating the absolute most vile people… Against the death penalty? Sure, that’s about not empowering an imperfect (and sometimes outright corrupt) system. Though not blowing away unquestionably evil shitstains?!
Contrast that with The West where The Hero is contractually required (formerly legally required…) to stop short and insist that killing the man who slaughtered dozens of children would make him no better… before being given an out when said monster grabs a gun out of nowhere.
As opposed to eastern culture/media, where the average shonen protagonist will punch the villain enough to convince them to join the good team? Like, you are oversimplifying so much, I don’t even know where to begin. I’m also a bit confused by your point because you lament western characters only beating evil guys to a pulp, then contrast them to an eastern character doing the same.
If your point is that characters in western media don’t display emotions, there are tons of western movies that do exactly that. You won’t find them in generic action movies, but that’s true for pretty much any media around the globe, including eastern ones.
Rambo (the first one, the only good one) has Stallone crying his heart out at the end of the movie. Stand by me has the characters face their insecurities and inner demons throughout the entire movie. Lord of the Rings, Interstellar, Lawrence of Arabia, Saving Private Ryan, Silence (western movie based on Japanese book, maybe this is cheating?). Automata’s entire point is to challenge toxic masculinity.
I could also mention animated films such as How to train your dragon, Tarzan, Puss in Boots Last Wish, Wall-E, Treasure Planet, Finding Nemo, Wild Robot or Emperor’s new Groove, which all have either human male individuals, or male-coded characters that happen to be animals/robots/aliens (IF your point was that male characters are often too macho and emotionless; if you were complaining about characters of any gender doing it, then the list expands).
If your point is that there’s no moral ambiguity in western media, half the above examples still stand. Rambo beat countless (evil) cops, but he’s not seen as a hero for doing so, and he’s a broken man by the end of the movie. Lord of the Rings is choke full of morally ambiguous or conflicted characters, although the most prominent and a fan favourite is Boromir of Gondor. Interstellar has the main character abandon his family to save humanity, and the movie doesn’t explicitly condemn nor praise him for his actions. Saving Private Ryan has the characters conflicted on what to do with a captured german soldier within enemy territory, and the consequences of their choice. There’s the entirety of the Goodfather series following an explicitly evil, but charismatic set of characters.
As for videogames, moral ambiguity was the entire point of TLOU2, although many people disliked that one for various reasons. Styx 1 (haven’t played the second one yet) has you play a character which does good for the wrong reasons, and bad for the good ones. Life is Strange 1 and 2 (haven’t played the rest of the series yet) has lots of morally ambiguous characters, often including the main cast. A Plague Tale, especially the second one, weights on how violence can ruin a person, even if they are forced to commit it for their loved ones.
I’m just mentioning titles off the top of my head, and I’m probably forgetting a lot which could further my point. Point is, I wholeheartedly refuse this idea of eastern media being the only ones capable of displaying emotions or moral ambiguity.
I felt it went without saying that this was referring to mainstream media because… video games. With an emphasis on action because… video games.
Which, to use one of your examples, let’s look at (ugh) Rambo. The first one IS a pretty interesting character study into a man with extreme PTSD who can’t stop fighting his war (which is plenty of tropes). Which is why it is so telling that once they shifted fully into the action side, almost all of that went away outside of cheap drama over the naive pseudo-daughter… getting sold into slavery and raped to death.
But you’ll also note that the example I brought to the table was Dust: An Elysian Tale. Which is an American (I thought Canadian but wikipedia suggests no) studio. And OP mentions The Walking Dead and Borderlands which are similarly Western. Nobody was implying exclusivity outside of you.
But let’s look at two of the more interesting examples you brought up.
The Last Of Us 2… kind of is emblematic of video games’ (West and East) problem with masculinity. TLOU1 has two particularly strong emotional beats and both involve a Man losing his daughter. TLOU2 is MUCH better in that it actually allowed people to be characters other than “Sad Dad” but it is incredibly telling how much of the game revolves around the second of the strong emotional beats from 1. Ellie is driven by her conflicted feelings over Joel taking away her agency to protect her and Abby is driven by… Joel taking away her entire family. And… I think it speaks a lot to Druckmann and Naughty Dog that the character who has the strongest parental narrative is the very masculine woman who angered the internet for obvious reasons. And that is kind of supported by the mess that is the Uncharted series as well.
As for your critique of (generally shonen) anime? Let’s look at the ur example of Dragon Ball Z (also DB but it is less fun). Vegeta. Homie destroyed at least one entire planet (its cool, it was filler and he obviously never did that when he was rolling with Nappa), allowed Nappa to destroy an entire city, murdered Nappa, probably murdered a bunch of Namekians (too lazy to check), definitely murdered a lot more people when he went Majin, and is Goku’s best friend because Krillin is too busy tapping dat ass. Except… not really. Because if you actually go back to DB, the vast majority of The Z Fighters are kind of just rivals that Goku respected and occasionally teamed up with. Outside of Krillin and MAYBE Yamcha, they weren’t his friends. And that is where Vegeta was too up until he went Majin. It was only after that when he acknowledged that he cared about something more than power (Bulma and Trunks) and that, even after his eyes were opened by Frieza, he was a monster. And while Super brushes over a lot of that because it is meant to be a direct sequel to DB, that characterization is still there.
Which is similarly something that a lot of people clown on Yakuza/LAD for. Yeah, Kiryu and Ichiban and even Yagami end up teaming up with a lot of people they beat on a few dozen times. But, by and large, it is not a 'you are my best friend" and more “I respect you and now understand why you did those evil things… but things aren’t over between us”. And then you have the inverse with Ryuji who is pretty unrepentantly “evil” to the end… but it is also impossible to view him and Kiryu as anything other than friends as they fight to the death because that is the only way they know how to communicate.
Slip of the tongue. I likewise reject the idea of eastern writers being “usually” better at writing emotions and/or moral ambiguity, or doing it more frequently. There are countless good and bad stories on both sides.
I felt it went without saying that this was referring to mainstream media because… video games. With an emphasis on action because… video games.
Most of the examples I mentioned were mainstream movies and videogames that sold millions of tickets/copies. Or at least as much mainstream as Kamen Rider and Yakuza. There are tons of examples of well-written human drama.
I also fail to understand why action = video games. There are tons of successful games where action is not the main focus, or sometimes it’s not even present at all. I enjoyed the cozy vibes of Life is Strange, for example.
Which, to use one of your examples, let’s look at (ugh) Rambo. The first one IS a pretty interesting character study into a man with extreme PTSD who can’t stop fighting his war (which is plenty of tropes). Which is why it is so telling that once they shifted fully into the action side, almost all of that went away outside of cheap drama over the naive pseudo-daughter… getting sold into slavery and raped to death.
As for your critique of (generally shonen) anime? Let’s look at the ur example of Dragon Ball Z (also DB but it is less fun). Vegeta.
Brushing off the first Rambo movie because of subpar sequels, and then using Dragonball (a series that had nowhere to go after Frieza and yet still gets milked with subpar sequels to this day) as a talking point is just nonsensical.
Mentioning Vegeta as a good example of moral ambiguity is hilarious because he is probably one of the worst written characters of all time, who single-handedly ruins the characterization of the entirety of the main cast.
The dude committed genocide or attempted one at least once per narrative arc and everybody was okay with spending their time with him for literally no reason. If I had two bullets and was standing in a room with Vegeta and Hitler, the safest option for Earth as a whole would be to shoot Vegeta twice. There is “respecting” another person, and there is “brushing off crimes against humanity because that character is cool”.
By the way, I don’t want to imply that eastern (Japanese? I don’t think you mentioned other media outside of Japan) writers are worse than western ones. I loved the first Yakuza game (the second one was very dumb and killed my interest in the series; maybe I’m missing out). Metal Gear Solid and Xenogears are, to this day, two of my favourite games ever. I went to the cinema twice in a row to watch Godzilla Minus One. I could also mention Oldboy for something outside of Japan, or Red Cliff, and those are both very much mainstream as well, and action too.
The only real lesson here might be that both Western media as a whole, and the Eastern anime industry, have regressed a lot. Rambo in particular is marked by tragedy with the way sequels warped him into a false image of raw masculinity. Many anime authors have even said as much. But the Eastern gaming scene appears to still have some very dedicated auteurs.
It’s even sort of harmed the feminist movement for Western media to be so simple - often showing women as unemotional, infallible badasses to try to “equal the score”, ultimately just causing people to hate them and even misconstrue women as being the issue with those movies.
But I’m also glad to get more examples of poignant Western media; I felt upset that I could only think of Eastern examples, when I know there are some great ones made more locally.
I think you're just having a blind spot for western shows. Breaking Bad, The Expanse, Game of Thrones, Barry, Mad Men and probably a bunch of others that I can't remember off the top of my head where characters act like people with their own personal motivations and moral compasses. Without spoiling anything in one of the before/mentioned shows one of the main characters literally kills their close friend to protect the fact that they're a shitty human being.
There are also western games that nail the moral gray area. For example New Vegas and Baldurs Gate 3.
… I would genuinely love to know what the Barry of video games is. Maybe Spec Ops The Line but that never actually is anything BUT melodramatic and dark which wasn’t the prompt. The Expanse might be a better fit but that was generally a book/show about plot progression over character studies outside of (minimizing spoilers) Everything Around Rescuing Peaches. Which, again, was almost entirely melodrama.
That said, I do think Barry is a spectacular example of the kind of story that can make you laugh… maybe not cry but something approaching that. But if we are going into the kinds of stories that games will never touch then… I give you “literature”.
I’ll disagree with those CRPGs because there are so many gameplay mechanics tied to alignment that it largely undermines things. I would MAYBE suggest Tyranny as a better fit although that has many of the same problems. But I will fully agree that CRPGs are much more willing to explore nuance but, similarly, tend to focus much more on a single emotion. You tend to have an Eder style character who will crack a joke to ease the tension before giving a haunting line like “It’s a good thing you weren’t braver”, but there is a pretty hard shoeing out the clowns moment when it is time to get real.
That’s honestly exactly what’s kept me away from CRPGs. The premise often seems to be based around something like ruined worlds or corrupt empires (both, in Wasteland’s case), with little hope for massive change. The old poster child, Fallout, runs its whole train off of treating endless grim fighting as an absurd thing to not even care about, with its tagline “War never changes”. Fun sometimes, but never meaningful.
bin.pol.social
Ważne