You ever look at how much a basic, non-powered, used wheelchair costs?
These high prices come with the fact that by definition, the equipment can be incredibly specialized. Unfortunately this is something most people with any sort of disability are probably completely used to.
This is true. However, even as a young person I remember the times where a game being released meant it was done, and if it was butchered, that was that. There was no second chance for the studio because the community absolutely wouldn’t trust them.
Now, that’s standard. Every AAA game is just assumed to basically be barely functional until 6+ months post launch. People have to say “why would you buy a game day one?” as if it’s a ridiculous notion to want to purchase a product that has been released onto a market. That sucks. It sucks that something that used to be a fun hobby is now a seedy grey market full of vitriole.
Man I’ve got really conflicted feelings about this game. I do think it’s great, and will probably be picking up Phantom Liberty next sale, but I never know whether to appreciate the devs for sticking with it and making sure their work lived up to expectations, or to be frustrated that I basically had to wait a year for a full product after buying for $80 CAD on day one (my own mistake, I foolishly thought CD Project was immune to such blunders). I guess it’s a bit of both. I do really appreciate all the hard work, I just wish that wasn’t on top of a bunch of frustration and disappointment.
I personally really like it. It’s rough around the edges, but IMO it does a good job of bringing back the feel of those old R6 games. Enemy AI is really good and you can customize their skill in a pretty granular manor (cones of vision, reaction times, full auto burst lengths, and much more, rather than just Easy, Medium and Hard). There’s a handful of nice levels each with a few types of missions, really nice weapon and gear customization, very snappy and authentic gunplay.
My biggest gripe is a lack of friendly AI. However, I believe this is planned, so it’s just a matter of time. It’s still a lot of fun lone wolf or co-op
Ground Branch on PC has some of the best I’ve ever seen. NPCs will, for example, if shot in the neck, clutch their throat and dynamically transition into a ragdoll as their animations become more sloppy until they go completely limp. It’s actually kind of unsettling how brutal it is.
What’s sad is that this game is a low budget passion project made by former Rainbow Six devs (the OG R6 games), not a AAA game backed by a massive corperation.
They’ve actually stated within the last year that they are in fact considering moving away from the games industry if certain things dont happen for them. This game out during the whole court proceedings surrounding their attempted Activision buyout.
I can’t remember the details and I’m too lazy to look into it again lol. There are some interesting articles out there tho
Never liked XBox controllers. They feel fat and clunky, especially trying to use the bumpers, I feel like I have to strain my fingers. I also hate the way the sticks feel in general, theres something about the friction curves that’s just… off. Idk how to describe it. Also, no gyroscope. I will praise the triggers on the XBox one controllers though. I like the shape and the amount of travel they have, I think they rock for racing games.
My favourite controller is the Dualshock 4. Haven’t had a chance to try the Dualsense but even that looks a little bloated. The DS4 is lean, has all the features I want, and those thumbsticks are the best I’ve used on a stock controller. You can practically use them like a trackpoint on a laptop, they’re very precise and great for use with a linear response curve in shooters with zero deadzone.
Wouldn’t it be nice to not have your info spread across thosands of accounts that you yourself even implied you don’t keep track of?
What sony pulled, and coporate moves like it, are at least in part a result of people saying “meh, what’s one more account, I’ve already got thousands.”
We as a community aren’t an immaculate entity. Companies don’t just make these moves out of nowhere, they analyze what we’re willing to do so they can take advantage of those things to make money. That’s not some sleazy secret scheme, thats basic market research. If we collectively show we do actually care about this stuff and won’t supoort their business when they do it, it might not happen so often.
Remember when telemetry/data collection across the internet was often optional and pretty minor?
The more shit we absentmindedly agree to because it’s not really a big deal in the short term, the worse it gets in the long term.
If I play a game on Steam, then Playstation, EA, Ubisoft, etc should all fuck off. I already gave those companies my money, it’s insulting that that isn’t enough anymore.
Edit: great point I just saw someone else mention, the fact that Sony has allowed over 100 million users’ data to be exposed due to various breaches by bad actors over the past 15 years. At least one of those times, the data was revealed to be nowhere near as secure as it should have been.
Why is that too high of a bar to clear? I’m not saying every game should be open source from day one (and tbh I think the people who say all software should be free have their head up their ass. People worked on it, some people want to get paid for that work).
However, how does it hurt Ubisoft to wait 5 or so years after shutting down the crew, then releasing the source code? By then, anything relevant to a competitor looking to ape off them, or a bad actor looking to cheat or carry out an attack would be irrelevant, and it would at least give the community a chance at creating something from the leftovers (even a dummy server that doesn’t allow multiplayer, but just lets the game pass any “can I connect to the master server” checks, kind of like what the Single Player Tarkov mod does).
I mean, Doom is the prime example. Would people care anywhere near as much about Doom if it never went open source? It would be a great game, but it would probably no longer be relevant. I can’t see that as being a bad thing for most companies (although I’m perfectly aware that the suits of major game studios will never see it that way).
The reason no one is making HL3 is because no one wants to, at least not long term.
Idk if you know much about how Valve is structured as a game studio, but it’s a bit atypical. It’s not like Gabe Newell comes in and says “today everybody starts working on HL3”, projects get greenlit and then whichever employees want to work on them are free to do so, and if they decide they’re uninterested, for whatever reason, they can leave the project.
What this means, is that if a project starts to pick up steam (no pun intended) within the company, more and more people join in, and this creates a passionate team. Various Half-Life projects since Ep2 have been started, none were finished (until Alyx), not because they were decisively axed for more corporate reasons like many other games, but because for one reason or another, the devs became uninterested or burned out, and went to work on other things they actually wanted to work on.
I think at this point, the only way we’ll ever see HL3 is if a team comes up with something completely groundbreaking and is absolutely dedicated to getting it done. Apparently, there just hasn’t been that winning combo yet. I can’t blame them, because if they half assed any aspect of it, they’d never hear the end of it.