I’d say good riddance, but with Jared Kushner involved, I can’t imagine any good will become of it.
With Trump suggesting he’ll be able to control TikTok’s algorithm, crackdown on political opponents (starting with Comey and Willis), along with getting television networks to bend the knee about what gets aired… this could be just another avenue of controlling the media
Man I friggin loved Descent II. Game was so fun and immersive. I watched that opening cinematic over and over. The soundtrack was fantastic as well.
I later went and played Descent 1 as well but 2 was the one I played the most.
2 also has the thief bot which while infuriating also lead to some of the most memorable gameplay for me. Just chasing that little piece of shit to the ends of the earth and then feeling so triumphant when I finally nabbed it and got my stuff back.
I was in a computer club in High School. So we were able to play a few games in the computer lab after school. The teacher that headed it absolutely loved playing Descent, but she was also so bad at it that it was pure blind luck if she ever actually hit anyone.
It really was incredible. Especially back then when I hadn’t had much exposure yet to that style of music. The fact that it was CD quality instead of midi really helped.
I vividly remember discovering how you could just put the game disk in a regular CD player and it’d work. Kinda blew my mind lol.
I finally started playing the original release on Steam since I don’t have a powerful computer.
It is fun, but it’s much smaller than I imagined. People always complain about the drauger ruins in Skyrim as being repetitive, but damn those oblivion gates are just the same thing again and again. Hardly any variety between them.
I’m pretty close to just dropping this game and starting up Skyrim again.
Yeah, but you really don’t have to engage with every oblivion gate you see. There’s a lot of really great quest lines to engage with, but the main story is one of the least interesting the game has to offer.
100% agree. The thieves guild, dark brotherhood, overall mages guild (minus the recommendations and lackluster manimarco) are all better than the Skyrim faction questlines. Even some of the standalone quests are just a master craft of storytelling
The Oblivion gates are super boring. Before dropping the game, try the Shivering Isles expansion - it’s a really different experience from the base game and I personally like it much better. It starts here:
If you limit yourself to only going into dungeons that quests send you to, you’ll have a better time. Legend tells it all the dungeons in this whole game were made by one person, so blundering into random ones tends to be really underwhelming compared to Skyrim. While that is charming for me in its own right to wander into a random dungeon and not know whether there will be anything interesting about it at all, all my best memories of this game are of the quests and the dialogue.
It’s a product of its time. Oblivion’s game size was right at the 4.7G limit of what would fit on single layer DVD-5.
Oblivion Gates
Ugh, arguably the most boring and repetitive part of the game. Such a wasted opportunity too as they could have made each Oblivion gate be a hellscape mirror of the area that it spawned in (including towns). That would have been a fairly small amount of additional data for a huge gain in game play.
They suck, don’t do any more of them then you have too.
Yeah I definitely remember oblivion gates being a drag, but I only ever did the main campaign on one character so I never bothered with them on subsequent plays. Anyone know if the new version modifies the gates at all?
As far as I know, the new version didn’t change a single thing other than graphics and maybe some bugs. Right now, I am doing an oblivion gate and I am just running through without fighting anyone. I actually just turned my steamdeck on and was in the last room. It was too easy and much better that way.
Yeah, Bethesda loves to ruin their game worlds with weirdly repetitive additions. Morrowind constantly spawns assassins on you, Oblivion does the Oblivion gates, Skyrim has the dragons. In the latter two, I think, it’s best to just not start the main quest, which prevents the Oblivion gates and dragons from appearing, at least if you replay the game.
I love having my decision not to buy a Nintendo Switch and stick to PC games validated.
Feel bad for all the Nintendo fans though, I get how you can fall in love with a franchise they make and want their stuff only to have “except it costs a ton” stuck on, so you’ll have to skip for financial reasons and feel unhappy. It’s a lot harder to abstain from something you actually care about and want, than something you are maybe mildly interested in.
It’s most difficult for me since I want to play metroid prime 4, especially after hearing the music. But I don’t want to pay 90 euro for base game. That’s incredibly ridiculous
There’s a hundred different versions of amazing Mario and Zelda games that you can play already with emulators and on an old switch/computer/steamdeck. Wait till the new one is emulated, don’t enable Nintendo to do this shit.
Yes, and I’ve played them all multiple times. I was referring to NEW Marios and Zeldas. Metroid, too, but Prime 4 will at least be on Switch 1 and who knows when or if the next one will happen.
There are also plenty of decent Zelda-likes out there from small indie studios all the way to triple-a studios. Sony should really make one of their own looking at how well the managed to but pretty much everything Nintendo all at once to Astro bot.
This isn’t just a violent game. It’s an immersive sim. The fun comes from the many different ways you can handle a level. Even in ways unintended to the developer. Not every game is Gears of War.
I mean, it really isn’t though. You can totally play it that way, yeah, but that’s only one option. The story reacts to how you play and the decisions you make. I find the low chaos (less or non-lethal) ending to be my favorite. Also canonically Corvo isn’t a raving lunatic murderer, so if you’re looking for the “True” story experience that’s the way to go. He still kills some people, notably the Lord Regent, but spares others.
That game is insane. Like, I played the game with a non-lethal route because of the good ending and stuff. But after I finished the game, I wondered how other people played this game, and holy shit, we are playing different games lol. This game is very gorey I don’t even know it’s part of the core gameplay lol
Dude it’s a blast. When they came out I played through each Dishonored once slowly, methodically, and non-lethal. Then immediately started over and hauled ass just slaughtering anything that got in my way. Both ways are valid and so much fun!
I remember playing this on my Voodoo graphics card back in the day.
I always wanted to check it out again, but there are no proper discounts of this game anymore, and the price even increased to 20€ a couple of months back. Who thinks that anybody will buy Descent with DOSBox for 20€ in 2025? Might as well just use my old pirated copy on a burned CD I have somewhere.
Playing on a Pentium with 3D accelerator was a blessing and a curse. Multiplayer Descent 2 with someone who used one was wild. The game used client-side calculations that would break if your computer was fast.
Enemy homing missile trajectory was calculated per frame, so they were extremely difficult to avoid. At the same time, weapons like the gauss or plasma beam would shoot per frame, so you could kill an opponent so fast that it seemed instantanous on their end.
"Specifically, the named Plaintiffs won binding decisions from arbitrators rendering Valve's arbitration provision unenforceable for both lack of notice and because it impermissibly seeks to bar public injunctive relief."
So none of these stupid clauses are valid? FOO FYEAH!
I loved CS1 and have had CS2 since launch. I just can't get into CS2 - it's just not fun.
A large part of that is Paradox Mods in CS2. When CS1 launched from day one you could go onto the steam workshop and download player made models - houses, offices, train stations, roads etc. It grew rapidly and continuously, and it meant every city you made you could customise and change. The game was constantly refreshing and fun, and you could make whatever you wanted.
For CS2, 2 years on and you still can't add custom assets to the game. Paradox/CO have released themed region based asset packs that they have made and the mods are there, but the player made assets remain largely missing. And I suspect the reason is Paradox Mods and the upcoming console version - the PC version seems to have been held back from being good so Paradox can get it's console launch. There seems to be a fundamental lack of understanding that the player made content was what made CS1 so great. I suspect CO get that, while Paradox only cares about DLC.
It’s weird, there is a long history of these kinds of games getting a console release going all the way back to SimCity for Super Nintendo. IIRC it could optionally use the Mario Paint mouse.
This is standard in most platforms with social features, companies record chats in case someone gets reported for negative behavior. It's also temporarily stored so they're not just listening in and hoarding your chats.
The terms also lay out that "these recordings are available only if the report is submitted within 24 hours," suggesting that recordings are deleted from local storage after a full day.
Thing is, I don’t think NASA and SpaceX compete. NASA is not a for-profit company and was happy to see successful private companies in the sector. They’ll happily be a SpaceX client so that they can focus on actual research and do things that are not profitable (yet)
But in terms of “I wanna cut waste, and make the government lean! So I am gonna delete the space part of the government and replace it with my own!”
Just sounds bad, like really bad. Even worse than the armored Teslas. I can’t imagine NASA is the top of people’s lists of “utter wastes of time” It’s not a regulator, it’s not in the “known enemies” list unless you’re a flat earther. I dunno how you spin it to be palatable.
I think that is probably the actual reason. Musk probably fired most of NASA, and then realized that the absolute carnage would in this case impact him personally, and it suddenly became an important issue and he needs to have them all rehired so that they can keep paying him his contracts. He still doesn’t give a shit about other people’s contracts / medications / intelligence operations / statutorily enforced payments / whatever.
arstechnica.com
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