It’s easily the worst book I’ve read, and I only finished because of the unintentional hilarity of it all. In a story ostensibly about how evil media mega corporations are, the author wrote a hail corporateove love letter to top selling franchises without realizing the irony.
There was potential in it being a self parody, although in a way the whe situation is funnier because he was so earnest.
I spent my first audible credit on that book. I hadn’t seen the movie…still haven’t. But it was narrated by Wil Wheaton, and I knew him from reddit. He did a good job. That’s all I have to say about it.
Ironically I found the megacorp produced movie version much more palatable both because it wasn’t stuck on making that which the author liked the only media worth obssessing about, it showed that fans of all eras enjoyed themselves equally in that world. And because it gave more of a human core to Halliday’s quests and the plot, rather than it just being about who’s more of a fanboy gets rich and gets the girl.
Seeing the book describe how Wade is so great at reciting every line of War Games just took me out of it. Am I supposed to be impressed by this second hand fawning over a different story? Is there even a point to that beyond Halliday/Ernest Cline thinking it’s cool?
“372 Pages We’ll Never Get Back” is a podcast where Mike Nelson (MST3K, Rifftrax) and Conor Lastoka (Rifftrax) read and review books they’re “pretty sure they’re going to hate”. RP1 is the first book & source of the podcast title, since it’s 372 pages. It’s like Mystery Science Theater 3000 for books and it is hilarious, I highly recommend.
surprised how successful this was since it barely got a mention all the time it was in early access so thought it would have a relatively mild release but no the g*mers heard bear sex and everyone flooded in to buy it.
I think it’s more so that “bear sex” was just joke-worthy enough that people talked about the game that otherwise wouldn’t talk about it and news of the game spread beyond its usual corners of the internet. So more people heard of the game and I guess the openness that “bear sex” entails is pretty appealing for a CRPG.
Could it be that the hard core Baldur’s Gate fans are OG/serious Gamers and have learned to not pre-order? BG 1 & 2 were released way before gaming was mainstream. Most of the casual gamers probably only care about BG3 due to hype from other gamers who would also be “Never Pre-order” folk.
My wife found out BG was out. Saw it was a full release price and was kind of like, "meh I can wait". I joked about everyone playing just wanted to edit their character's genitals and she immediately put it on top of her Wishlist.
Lol this is an article about how shit optimization has been for the last several AAA game releases. Even quite capable desktops often have performance issues with the mentioned games, because the PC ports weren’t optimized enough and/or tested on a wide enough range of hardware. It’s a real shame, many of them don’t even look significantly better than the last generation or two. It’s just graphical bloat as devs get lazier and lazier the beefier the GPUs get.
I agree, however I think the main cause is studios/publishers just deciding where to allocate the time. Devs are just the ones implementing these shitty decisions.
It is baffling why Sony thinks studios who are known for their single player story driven games will all the sudden be rock stars at GAAS model games. No matter how it turns out, you’ve already got a dedicated fan base for these companies expecting a single player story driven game. These types of gamers have no interest whatsoever in micro transaction riddled online experiences. And by diverting developers away from single player content towards GAAS content, they’ll make worse single player games and half hearted multiplayer online games.
They're just bad at UI in general. Every one of their RPGs end up with a UI mod that makes their terrible menus not only useable, but infinitely better than the crap they made.
I was mainly after a mod that would show how much of an item I have in my inventory when buying. This mod does that and more. The achievement mod just keeps achievement enabled with mods installed.
Skyrim needed UI mods, and to wit, still needs UI mods, despite being re-released like 15 times with limitless opportunities to improve basically anything - instead they focused on high resolution textures, which is something that the fanbase basically already makes on launch week.
Weren’t the anniversary texture packs (or special edition, forge when they got introduced) so poorly optimized most guides reccomend against using them over moder developed ones? Been awhile since I’ve modded akyrim, could be thinking of Fallout 4.
Not yet. The 3DS and Wii U sold out at launch, too, but after the diehards all got them, nobody else wanted them. The 3DS recovered after they dropped the price by $80 6 months after launch, but the Wii U never did. Maybe that won’t happen this time and we truly are fucked, but time will tell. Historically, Nintendo fucks up after they have a successful console and get cocky with the next one.
Don’t forget that the Wii U had one of the most incompetent console marketing campaigns of all time. Just two years ago I met someone who still didn’t know it was a console and not an accessory.
That’s true, but that alone doesn’t account for how just how bad it did. The idea that Nintendo consoles are always bought up by lots of people no matter what is completely untrue. One big advantage they’ve always had that they no longer do is affordability compared to the competition. What will determine whether it’s a success will ultimately be how many good exclusive games they can pump out, and their track record has been awful since the launch of the Switch. A very large chunk were Wii U ports, which worked because nobody had one, but they’re already heavily shilling Switch 1 upsells. Diehards will of course snatch them up, but with 150 million Switches out there I question how interested the masses will be in them. If Nintendo seriously ups their game and consistently puts out new good games, I imagine people will stomach the prices. But are they even capable of that any more?
Counterpoint, people love Overwatch, they hate what Blizzard did to it. There’s an audience out there hungry for this exact product if someone can do it right (or, at least, about 20% less wrong than Blizzard).
And yet they won’t do it right because everyone wants to make a game as a service these days and sell loot boxes and collectibles with season passes, special editions, early adopter bonuses, login bonuses and in-game currency. If it lacks even two the things I mentioned, I’d be surprised.
Oh, sure, there’s basically zero chance that this will actually be good. But that wasn’t my point. All I’m saying is that the idea of releasing an Overwatch style hero shooter right now isn’t inherently stupid.
I’ve seen a bunch of good games being ruined by microtransactions and battlepasses. At least I believe that they could have had so much better sales and reputation if they didn’t include it.
For example: Shadow of War. Deus Ex Mankind Divided. Good games. These had microtransactions hooked on as an after-thought. It didn’t affect gameplay at all and could be completely ignored. Still they received so much hate for it. And then there are games adding microtransactions and nobody care. Most Ubisoft games for example. I think it has with who their target audience is. Though I can’t see what DX and SoW audiences has in common. Do they have less casual players than Ubisofts games? Idk.
Having played the shit out of Assassin's Creed Odyssey I can say that the game has tons of equipment skin variety without MTX, the game is balanced to not need them, even from a visual variety standpoint, there are tons and tons of equipment skins to collect and permanently unlock in that game
The original switch was a bargain too relatively speaking. My one switch outlasted about five or six phones I owned over the same time span.
It does kinda suck that it’s gone up in price in the new generation, but like… PlayStation 5 was also around the same price a couple of years ago, when money was worth more.
This article perfectly sums up the issues with this way of writing. Unfortunately people often don’t acknowledge the nuance there, and will jump down this reviewer’s throat for the take I imagine.
It’s icing on the cake that apparently there was even an in-lore term for something like a trans character of this species that they didn’t use. That makes it seem like they didn’t even study their own lore well enough. Never what you want to be thinking about a writing team. 🫤
Still the only handheld PC that doesn’t come with a dogshit OS and an abysmal battery life. The deck doesn’t do well despite its low specs and alternative OS, it does well because of them.
The fact that the OS is replaceable sealed the deal for me. Then the marketing page is claiming they will make parts available for DIY repairs? Incredible.
If I am being honest, I prefer the Switch form factor with the dumb little controllers. I like it so much that I could maybe accept its lesser performance. But it is locked down, centralized store, some subscription bullshit…
I’ve found a Steam Deck fits really comfortably in the hands. I can settle for having an additional wireless controller to play it from afar.
Yeah, but idk if phones can use joycons in the double joycon mode. My understanding is that it requires either root or a physical adapter of some kind.
The fact that the OS is replaceable sealed the deal for me.
And the default OS isn’t locked down and doesn’t try to prevent you from doing other stuff with it. What you want to do isn’t in the Steam interface? Switch over to desktop mode and you have full access to the underlying OS.
My only complaint with the Steamdeck is that I find using the touchpad on the right side for long gaming sessions hurts my hands. I 3d printed some grips which help; but, I think my hands just don’t like the orientation. Still love my deck though.
“Aqun-athlok” means one who was born one gender and is now living as another. So yeah that means trans. But there’s also a conversation in the trans community about if Non-Binary is technically trans. I would argue it is but some disagree and others say that while Non-binary is trans it is not a “normal” type of trans. That Non-Binary is not either gender. Sometimes Non-Binary is literally no gender. Non-Binary is it’s own umbrella term. So it’s not necessarily living as “another” gender, it can be living in between genders, without gender, or as both genders.
So i would say that “Aqun-athlok” is probably more applicable as binary trans as it was used to refer to krem who was a trans man. Now they could have just thought up a new word for Non-binary trans but Non-Binary is just kinda the perfect word for it. I’m Non-Binary and I actually think saying this is immersion breaking is just kinda bs. Plenty of words in our world also exist in Dragon Age. Not everything has to have a different word. For instance, Dwarves are a thing in our world. Sure they’re not the same, it’s a medical term, but they still exist. But the Dwarves in Dragon Age are still called Dwarves. Why are they not a different name? It’s a fantasy world, shouldn’t they have made up a new word instead of using a word from our world to describe these people? No, because Dwarves is just the word that fits best. Non-Binary here is the same.
Now whether or not it is written well is a better approach to this discussion but also, every trans person has experienced the exact thing that this writer describes, except it’s not always pushups. I’ve had people feel incredibly guilty over misgendering me and done some stupid stuff. When I hear this being described I don’t think it’s awkwardly written, I think it’s an accurate representation of what it can be like being trans and how some people will just be like that when they misgender you.
I also think calling it “preachy” is 100% playing into the narrative it’s Woke because people don’t call CoD preachy even though it’s filled with pro military propaganda. Why is this preachy just because it accurately shows an experience that trans people have all experienced in our own lives?
I haven’t gotten to this place yet in the game and I might end up finding it awkward, but I more likely expect to actually relate to Taash more because of it.
Anyway, just my thoughts from a trans dragon age fan.
interesting points, especially about the evolution in language / perceptions re: dwarves. I’ve heard dragon age being described as ‘fantasy, but more mature’; I played the first game and it didn’t click.
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