bin.pol.social

morganth, do gaming w How to let my kids find quality games on Android? Right now they only find the pay to win / ad riddled games.

This is probably not a terribly helpful answer, but on the iOS side, there is Apple Arcade, which is a huge library of “free” (aka included with the subscription) games that don’t have any ads or microtransactions. If there’s an Android equivalent, just give her that as her app store. You’d spend a set amount per month and keep her away from the predatory business models.

korewa,

Exactly where I landed after giving them a fire tablet.

sylverstream,

Fire tablet is Android, right? Or am I mistaken.

korewa,

Yes I have that Amazon subscription think for kids apps it’s mostly junk games

SmoochyPit,

It is, but by default it’s locked to Amazon’s App Store. With this tool, a computer and a few minutes, you can sideload Google play and Google services. It also has lots of other customization options, like installing different launchers. I’d imagine that “Google Play Pass” would work then.

sylverstream,

I guess Play Pass for Android is similar. Thanks.

ranandtoldthat,

Play pass is surprisingly not terrible.

sylverstream,

Yeah just subscribed, so far pretty good. It’s annoying you can’t see easily what non games are included (like Tasker)

almost1337, do games w Browser games you have burned a lot of time on?

Kingdom of Loathing; nothing else comes close

kiwifoxtrot,
@kiwifoxtrot@lemmy.world avatar

Such a great game.

caut_R, (edited ) do games w Assassin's Creed Mirage Review Thread | (76/100 OpenCritic)

I always thought Assassin‘s Creed should be more like Hitman where you really wanna avoid conflict, find an opening, and, well, assassinate your target. The farther the series went, the more it felt like Brawler‘s Creed where you just butt heads with half a dozen guards all too frequently.

More focus on assassination, planning, conflict avoidance, gadget usage, stealth, and no run-off-the-mill guards that follow you up buildings like olympic athletes, all of this in a historical setting with some illuminati BS spice and I‘d be super happy. But it‘s a lot to ask. Just some random, tired thoughts on my experience with the series.

Honestly, even with the meh scores, this entry interests me the most since Unity from what I’ve been hearing this far.

SuperSteef, do gaming w Please help me select parts for a "competent" gaming PC

This is what I use when creating baselines for different price-points:

www.logicalincrements.com

If you feel like you’ll need more RAM or a bigger SSD then that’s a simple thing to do but this will give you all of the components you need for a solid system at whatever your price point is.

That said, the “Great” range and up will play pretty much anything. You can even play pretty much any game on the “Good” range and up. So if you are looking to save money, I’d say the “Great” range will last you a good 5 years right now at least.

kadu, do games w Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty Review Thread (90/100 OpenCritic)
@kadu@lemmy.world avatar

Very excited for this.

I really enjoyed the base game, I just waited a little after launch (like always) to play with some bug fixes updates.

I was just coming back from a gigantic period in my life where I didn’t game much, and never on PC - Cyberpunk was the first AAA I played right after coming back. This meant I wasn’t following the game for years and building a lot of expectations, and it didn’t disappoint me because “mechanic X was missing!” because I never knew I could expect X anyways.

I also wanted something a bit more linear, but still an open world, which is something this game balances pretty well.

The end result is that I really liked it. In fact, I prefer it to GTA V, which is a game that, in my opinion, struggles with balancing it’s mission structure with the actual game world.

Voroxpete, (edited ) do games w Seeking Constructive Dialogue on Mod Removals: Stereotyping Doesn't Help

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nr, nr, nr.” By 1968 you can’t say “nr”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nr, nr.”

  • Republican strategist Lee Atwater.

Atwater’s point here is that dogwhistles work, and they’ve been a core strategy of regressive bigots for decades.

Today’s hateful bigots understand that they can’t openly say “I want to legislate trans people out of existence, even if that means they all die.” So they engage in layers of abstraction, and wrap their abstractions up in leftist talking points. They claim to be defenders of “free speech” even as they support laws that empty out libraries of books, remove shows from television or make discussion of anything LGBTQ related impossible online.

So to you, the innocent rube, removing a pronoun selection from a game might not sound like an attack on trans people, but it very much is. The mod was a rallying cry, a call to fellow bigots to express themselves while pointedly saying to every trans person watching “You are not safe. We are here, we hate you, and we want to erase your existence.”

The existence of the pronoun selector impacted them in absolutely no way, shape, or form. There was nothing to be gained from its removal other than the statement it made, the proud declaration of their hatred encoded in a language of abstraction that made it visible only to their allies and their targets.

And the fact that they can get away with this; the fact that they can openly torment their chosen victims while the average idiot pats them on the head and calls them a “victim of censorship”… That’s their favourite part.

librechad,

I understand the concept of dog whistles and the historical usage of coded language to advance certain agendas. My primary concern here is not the mod itself, but rather how moderation decisions are made and the criteria used. If we can’t openly discuss these topics, it’s hard to determine what is or isn’t acceptable. I’m not advocating for intolerance; I’m advocating for clarity in community guidelines.

Matt, do games w What are some great open source games?
Nayviler, do gaming w What runs better? Native GTA IV pc port? Or emulating GTA IV PS3 version?

Unless they’re poorly written, native games will always run better. The GTA IV PC port is fine.

cyanarchy,

The reason this is being asked is because the PC port for GTA IV was notoriously broken. There is a popular set of patches and mods that will improve that and I know they come bundled in the fit girl repack but it’s one of the ones that won’t play nice with WINE during installation.

circuitfarmer,
@circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

It runs fine on the Deck. I suspect Proton is the difference, as it’s much better tuned for gaming vs. stock Wine.

cyanarchy,

It’s not an FPS problem, it’s a visual fidelity problem stemming from a bad port.

redhorsejacket, do games w Recommendations for good YT channels exploring lore and stories

Jorphdan (the ph is silent) has dozens of videos exploring the lore of the Dungeons and Dragons multiverse. Those worlds have been the setting for enough videogames that I think it applies.

You might also check out Eckhart’s Ladder. He focuses primarily on Star Wars but with some digressions into Halo and other science fiction universes.

One of my personal favorite gaming essayists is Grim Beard, though his particular style may or may not gel with you. His videos are generally about a single game and often encompass a game’s conception, development, gameplay, reception, and legacy. It’s not exactly a lore channel, per se, but I feel like it might be in the ballpark of what you’re looking for.

Arcanum,

+1 for Grimbeard. Their video essays are as well-done as they are hilarious

riley0, do piracy w Is It Farewell To The Internet Archive?
@riley0@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

And it was IA’s increased activity during the pandemic that spurred the current trouble. Brewster Kahle is a saint.

Pearlescence, (edited )

That’s what I read as well. You would think they would’ve gotten some leeway since it was done during an event comparable to war and they were following the footsteps of other digital libraries. They had a pretty stellar reputation and system in place for nearly a decade already, so I can only assume that they were simply waiting for an opportunity to target them.

JaxiiRuff, do piracy w Which cracks and repacs works best on linux?
@JaxiiRuff@pawb.social avatar

I remember on the linuxcracks subreddit a couple people mentioned LinuxRulez or something. Basically games that were installable by being made into a single bash file.

Didnt know it was possible to install an entire game from an .sh file with a gui, but some talented mf did it. Thats how I pirated the sims 4 with all dlcs and it was so easy.

theshatterstone54,

Yeah, and in terms of LinuxRulez, you can find their stuff on zamunda.net (use a Bulgarian proxy like nqma.net but keep in mind nqma can be finicky. And you need an account for zamunda. Don’t use a password you’ve used anywhere else, I wouldn’t trust them with it).

empireOfLove, (edited ) do piracy w Direct Downloads always lead to "check internet connection"
@empireOfLove@lemmy.one avatar

This is why internet download manager (and other, similar download manager softwares) were originally created. Download managers track the amount of a file you’ve downloaded and will repeatedly retry when interrupted without restarting from zero.

Getting Warez in the pre-P2P era meant grabbing bits and pieces over a glacial ISDN or 33.6k modem line (if you were lucky- some of us bastards got 28.8k, or even 14.4k…) Everything was “direct download”. You had to use a download manager for anything larger than 30 megabytes because the chances of your line being interrupted were very very high, either by other phone users or by your ISP booting you off because you looked like a zombie modem being connected for 24 hours straight.

They still have their place. Try something open source like JDownloader. Or just pirate the pro version of IDM.

TheEntity, do gaming w What are some games that "spin" failure states?

Outward! A relatively low budget but very enjoyable action RPG with surprisingly non-annoying and actually fun survival elements.
Whenever you die in Outward, a random "defeat scenario" occurs. Sometimes you wake up rescued by a stranger, sometimes someone brought you to the nearby town. And sometimes you wake up as a prisoner in a local thug camp and need to figure out how to escape.

off_brand_,

+1 Outward is actually my favorite game. It’s so so fun!

ConstableJelly,

Is there any scaled/linear progress in it? For example, I loved Subnautica because I loved the gameplay loop of finding a new resource, which let me craft a new item, which let me explore a new area and find new resources to craft more powerful items.

I wanted to like No Man’s Sky for similar reasons, but it’s too sandboxy, and there’s no sense of purposeful progress and growth.

TheEntity,

Not exactly linear, but the progress is apparent. There are no character levels. Instead you improve your equipment, learn new food recipes (powerful and very important buffs) and learn new skills. The various types of magic are particularly interesting. One of my favorite magic systems in games ever.

ConstableJelly,

Nice, I was looking at this a while back but got turned off by references in reviews to poor combat and general lack of polish. Sounds like the definitive edition may have smoothed the edges enough to push it across the line. I’ll add it to my list!

TheEntity,

The combat is... unusual. Yes, "unusual" would be the best word. Not exactly great but it has its nice quirks. Things like traps and magic really shine. Melee is workable, but nothing amazing. It can be played in coop making traps and magic even more interesting, but it's perfectly viable as a solo experience (that's how I played it 90% of the time).

In terms of the polish I'd compare it to how the Gothic games felt back in the day. Low budget but with lots of heart. In addition to that, at first it felt weirdly empty, especially compared to the behemoths like The Elder Scrolls, but in the end I don't mind having only these 8-10 dungeons per map (there are 4 maps in the base game with 2 more in the DLC) with each one being memorable. Doubly so considering the limited resources of this developer.

MossyFeathers, do gaming w What are some games that "spin" failure states?
@MossyFeathers@pawb.social avatar

Hylics and Cruelty Squad both spin death.

In Hylics 1 & 2, dying causes you to wake up in the afterlife where you can take the chunks of meat you get from enemies and put it into a meat grinder to increase your max HP.

In Cruelty Squad dying is just a consequence of living. It happens sometimes. Dying severs your divine light, making the game easier but closing some paths to you. Additionally, if you die too often, you’ll find power in misery, making the game easier again and allowing you to consume bodies to restore 1hp each. This is particularly advantageous because eating bodies dismembers the corpse, allowing you to harvest its organs without having to chase them around (most other ways of gibbing corpses tends to send organs flying). Additionally, you can get death surgery, allowing you to pass through some areas and use a few weapons that were previously too dangerous for you to access. Death surgery also allows you to wall jump.

bermuda,

This cruelty squad game sounds more and more my style the more I hear about it.

Deestan,

I love that game. I think it’s the only game that presents dissociation and “functional depression” if that is even a phrase. There is a feeling of an unreliable narrator, but not to the extent of outright lies or hallucinations. Just everything looks out of place, disgusting, ugly and stupid.

Playing the game I feel like I am pretending to be functional in a world I despise, among people I find disgusting or irrelevant.

It’s something.

MossyFeathers,
@MossyFeathers@pawb.social avatar

It’s amazing. It’s horrifying. It’s one of the best games I’ve ever played. It’s one of the most visually and aurally offensive games I’ve ever seen. It’s an immersive sim with stellar gameplay and a nihilistic narrative wrapped in a shitpost and drizzled with a bad acid trip.

It’s set in an anarcho-captialist future that’s become overrun with hedgefund managers, cryptobros and techbros. Morals don’t exist, biotech is out of control, death is a novelty, and there are no good people. You’re a hitman in a gig economy and there’s no penalty for collateral damage, so feel free to fill a cruise ship with acid gas to get your target because somehow they have the ability to put everyone’s jellied remains back together so it doesn’t really matter if they die. Besides, they have all probably done things that’d make Hitler or Stalin queasy, so don’t feel guilty about the medical bill you effectively forced on them. The only reason why they’re not targets is because you’re not being paid to murder them.

If you get into it, make sure you read the mission briefings, try to talk to NPCs before killing or scaring them. Most of the weapons are real-world cancelled experimental weapon prototypes (like the H&K G11), weapons that’d be considered a war crime (like the acid gas grenade launcher or bolt acr that shits out enough radiation to liquify people in real time) or weapons so horrifically bad that they’re borderline useless (the zipgun). Additionally, both the Unibomber’s shack and bin Laden’s compound exist in game.

LoamImprovement,

It looks like a shitpost with how often it uses colors and textures that seem to want to hurt the player with how godawful they look, but if you can get past that, the core gameplay is really good.

Ashtear, do gaming w Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of September 10th

I’m on Starfield this week. About 12 hours in.

Have to admit, I’m struggling to have fun, which I really didn’t see coming. I have hundreds of hours in Fallout 4, probably over a thousand each in Fallout 3 and Skyrim, and I adore space settings, so this was my most anticipated game for years. Seemed like it would be a slam dunk.

Another huge surprise is that it might be the main story that’s keeping me going. I’ve never come close to being this invested in one of Beth’s stories.

all-knight-party,
@all-knight-party@kbin.cafe avatar

I feel you. I just hit 20 hours and I probably didn't start to fully realize how to find different kinds of content deliberately until about hour 15 after I'd got some of the faction stuff started and explored enough planets to understand how to find certain side quests.

For the first while my natural instinct just had me exploring all of the cities and stations, just talking with people and picking up masses of side quests, then I hit a point where I started actually doing them, because I was burning myself out on walking and talking.

The non-scaling level of systems is interesting, figuring that out helped me to be able to do quests that I was leveled for and weren't super spongey, I figured out the structure of the random quest board quests so I could partake in FPS shooting, ship shooting, cargo running, or more narrative driven side quests depending on my mood.

Figuring out that the trade authority (only the manned shops, not the kiosks) is your stolen goods fence meant I could really start stealing in earnest, and the decrease in environmental items that are lootable, along with the decrease in lootable homes and apartments means stealing opportunities are harder to come by.

Even still, after being pretty cheap at level 20 I'm at about 120,000 credits, which seems close to enough to fully build my own ship, which I'm about to eagerly do in my next session. Once I've got a ship built I'll want to start and get into landing on less colonized planets and figure out the outposts and such, where I can pivot to hiring people from the taverns and getting into that whole side of the game.

I think because of the amount of things you could do, the amount of them that are basically impossible to do from the outset due to money (ship and outpost building), and the way the game doesn't guide or explain things well, it was really easy for me to create my own boring rut where I just walked and talked and ran away from tough enemies because I didn't realize I picked up a quest that was in or lead to a high level system.

For instance, I knew you could board ships, I had no idea that I needed the systems targeting skill to target engines to even do that at all, the skill description didn't mention it, and the early game mission that forces you to board doesn't require you to have the skill, you just board when the ship is supposed to "die". I was also initially upset random items couldn't be broken down into materials, but then I realized some materials can just be found as lootables, same for some craftable components.

All told, as I play more I'm coming around to it all more, but it'll probably take another ten or 20 hours before I fully understand all the systems and can make a judgment on if I like it more, less, or the same as Fallout 4, which I also loved.

Ashtear,

Yeah, the hope is that once I become familiar with what systems are available, what I should avoid, and what needs modding, I’ll be able to settle into the same cozy game loop as I have with the previous games.

What concerns me is I’m struggling with some of the core systems like bad companion AI (can’t reposition them in combat anymore for some reason), the main quests being so unpolished that I’m not exactly looking to jump into the side content, and especially the nested prereqs in the crafting system.

t3rmit3,

Make sure to also give the Freestar Rangers and UC Vanguard mission lines a try; they are both long and excellent: FSC Rangers is a love-letter to Spaghetti Westerns, and Vanguards line is a mini-Starship Troopers.

Erk,

I found it took a long time to really get rolling. On the other hand I’m 70 hours in now and keep finding more depth and things to do and mechanics I haven’t even explored, it sometimes is a bit daunting how much there is to do in it.

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