paultimate14

paultimate14, 25 dni temu

That’s over 7 years old. Roughly the length of a generation. I think re-mastering console games from 2017 is reasonable in general.

Not for HZD though. It was already one of the best-looking games on the PS4, and then they added a free upgrade for the PS4 Pro to get checkerboard 4k. Like… What’s left to improve?

Maybe upgrade from checkerboard to full 4k? The FPS seemed fine for me playing on a base PS4, but perhaps there’s room for improvement there. The initial load time to open the game is pretty bad, but if you don’t switch between games often that’s not really a problem. I haven’t tried the PC version yet, but perhaps there were some UI improvements there they could apply to consoles?

My main complaints with the game that I’d like to see fixed would probably be beyond the scope of the term “remaster”. The facial animations during dialogue were pretty uncanny in the base game, but they’re good in the DLC and sequel. Also the itemization system was clunky and felt like it was trying to be similar to an online multiplayer experience for some reason.

paultimate14, 25 dni temu

Technically it was never released on PS5. It was released on PS4 and later received an upgrade patch for the PS4 Pro.

But yeah it works with backwards compatibility on the PS5. I would expect the PS4 Pro patch to work but I haven’t tried it myself.

paultimate14, 25 dni temu

Redoing animations? To me, that’s definitely more than a re-master. The musical equivalent would probably be something in the mixing phase- adding or adjusting effects, changing pan, level, EQ, automation, etc.

paultimate14, 2 miesiące temu

I bought it in the fall of 2022, when the shortages were just starting to end, expecting it would get more games. I wanted to get one before they did a mid-gen refresh that removed stuff like backwards compatibility, the disc drive, etc.

It’s been really disappointing so far. I still think I’ve put more time into PS4 games than PS5 games. Astro’s Playroom was fantastic, but unfortunately it is still probably the best game for the console.

paultimate14, 2 miesiące temu

I also have a gaming PC (and I stream to every screen in the house) and a Steam Deck, so from that perspective it’s even fewer exclusive games.

I do really prefer physical games, but even that is going away. Some games just don’t release physically, or even if they have a physical version it’s basically just a different kind of DRM. I recently bought Gran Turismo 7 physically and was incredibly disappointed that it had to install 128GB to the PS5 to even open, then it took a while downloading ever more updates and data once I opened it.

I traditionally loved Naughty Dog and Insomniac franchises, but Naughty Dog has only re-released games on the PS5 so far. Insomniac… Rift Apart is decent. I don’t really like Marvel or superhero stuff though. I tried Spiderman and it’s… Fine., but it really makes me wish I was just playing Sunset Overdrive instead. I’m in the process of playing through the older God of War games for the first time- so far they aren’t bad but they seem overrated considering how hyped they were back in the day.

There’s no killer Hideo Kojima game yet. Gran Turismo is a micro transaction, always online, multiplayer-focused shell of what used to be a great series. There isn’t any equivalent to creative games like Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, Katamari Damacy, etc. Stray was really good- my PC kind of struggled with it so I might pick up the PS5 version if I ever see a physical copy on sale.

I don’t know that it’s just PlayStation either. Looking at my Steam library by release date, the last big AAA games I have are Yakuza 6 (2021, still haven’t played it yet), Control (2020- although I think that’s because I have the complete edition. The base game was from 2019), and Horizon Zero Dawn (similarly listed as 2020, but the base game would have been 2017). It seems like more and more studios are closing, more games being released are just “meh”.

paultimate14, 2 miesiące temu

I’d say fantastically. I went back to it for a bit last month.

I played the Legendary edition on the Steam Deck. Graphically, I think it’s fine (it’s way better than how I played it on the PS3 originally). The draw distance was always a strength, I think the Legendary edition included some visual upgrades, and being a game so much older than the Deck it runs at max settings 60FPS with no problem, so it looks better than it did on the PS3/360/most PC’s in 2011. I also think games from that era really hold up well because the generational jumps weren’t quite as big- the consoles had HDMI and a lot of games aimed for at least 720p, if not 1080p. Contemporaries like Assassin’s Creed, BioShock, Uncharted, and the Last of Us are all similarly still pretty good looking. Audio quality more or less peaked too, at least for stereo.

There’s also the Anniversary edition, which I have on PS4 but not PC. It looks more modern- tons of fancy lighting effects and upgrades textures. The models and terrain are still a bit low-poly, the animations a bit stiff, but overall I think it’s good.

The combat is simple- it always was, even compared to its contemporaries in 2011. A lot of people just call it bad, but I actually like the game design of Skyrim’s combat. Success or failure largely is just a preparedness check- is your combination of character level, skill level, equipment, buffs, follower, and consumable items good enough to get you through the fight(s)? It’s about resource management and good use of downtime. It’s not about mechanical proficiency or complexity, and I think that can be a good thing. I don’t have to be sober to play Skyrim. I don’t have to dodge and block for 3-5 business days before I get a turn to attack. It’s a power fantasy- ebony great sword go ‘brrr’.

And I think that helps the roleplay too. Mechanically intensive soulslikes can be fun too, but I find they feel fun in a more arcade-y way. Using mechanical proficiency to defeat an enemy your character is underpowered for feels great as a player, but for me that also kind of ruins the immersion and reminds me that it’s a videogame. To apply the same concept to something other than combat- it’s similar to replaying a game where the player has all of the knowledge the character doesn’t - where the best items are, which direction to go, which NPC’s to kill before they betray you, etc. Speed running stuff. Which is great in its own right, just not what I’m always looking for.

Then the quests. There’s a lot of quests, some better than others, but on the whole I would say they’re pretty good. The main quests early on are basically tricking you into visitng all of the major cities and points of interest across the map, introducing you to all of the factions and mechanics. A lot of quests are just “go clear that dungeon, either to kill someone hiding there or get an item”. Which is fine because clearing dungeons is fun- there’s a good variety of enemy types and dungeon themes. There is a LOT of voice acting for it’s time, and it’s mostly pretty good. Not on par with something like Hades, but still good.

The puzzles are notoriously simple, but they function more as a way to change the pace and have downtime in dungeons. They aren’t supposed to be hard.

On the whole, Skyrim probably isn’t (and never was) the deepest game in any one area. Soulslikes have deeper combat. Plenty of games have more intriguing plots and better characters. The lore is strong in the Elder Scrolls, but Skyrim only contributed a small part to what was built by other games. The crafting system is… Okay. There are hundreds of books in-game, but most are only a couple of pages. The leveling system is less complex than Morrowind or Oblivion. Everything is just as deep as it needs to be and no deeper. And that makes everything really intuitive.

You can’t ruin a build with a bad decision. You can’t get screwed by a bad loot drop. You don’t need to min-max to feel powerful. You don’t need to find one activity that gives a lot of XP to farm to build other skills. You can’t kill 100 rats to level up your lockpicking- you just need to pick locks to get better at lockpicking.

I also don’t mess with mods. I tried it out years ago and found it just wasn’t worth the effort of dealing with a mod manager. I find most mods are trying to turn Skyrim into another game. Shit posts like adding Shrek or Thomas the Tank. Adding ridiculous anime swords and big-tiddied women with bikini armor. Re-creating other games like Ocarina of Time or Morrowind in the Skyrim engine. Adding guns. Adding a bunch of fetch quests with whole novels of text and no voice acting. I’m sure there are some decent ones out there (especially visual and UI improvements) but the process of modding is much less convenient than Steam Workshop games. I haven’t seen anything that looks good enough to merit going to a 3rd party website to download stuff and fuss with a mod manager for.

Also, I find vanilla Skyrim is pretty stable and bugs are rare. Some of that is from things being patched over time, but also I think Skyrim just received an unearned reputation upon release. The rag doll physics cause a lot of chaos, but I don’t know that I’d call that a bug. There’s the occasional clipping. Even back on the PS3 where I first played it, I’d say 80% of issues were solved by reloading the area I was in, with another 19% solved by restarting the game. There were some interesting exploits (Fortify Restoration potions used to be broken, there are still item dup’ing exploits with merchants, you can access the hidden “chests” that the game uses for storing merchant inventory in the overworld, etc) but I find most of them are things you really need to go out of your way to find, and actually can make the game more fun if that’s what you’re going for.

paultimate14, 2 miesiące temu

I have some questions there.

1. hHs that even ever been so much as rumored? There were leaks from various suppliers hinting at the Deck and Switch long before they were in develop. It’s possible I missed something, or possible they just haven’t leaked anything, but so far I don’t have a reason to think they would be trying to enter that space.
2. Microsoft seems to be abandoning that space. The Windows phone died ages ago, and the Surface seems to be languishing.
3. Operating System. Would it be windows? There are already plenty of handhelds that run windows, and usually the biggest problem people have with them is that windows sucks for that application and they replace the OS. Would they have a custom OS like the Xbox? What would it bring to the table that Steam LS doesn’t? Valve already put in a ton of work to get Steam OS as good as it is- would Xbox/Microsoft do that too? If it just uses Steam OS, what does the hardware bring that differentiates it from the Deck?
4. Software. I don’t know what the unit cost of a Deck is, but I’m guessing it’s pretty close to the sales price. The Deck does not need to be a profit center for Valve as long as it drives software sales on Steam. The Microsoft store has already failed- would an Xbox store on such a device manage to be profitable? Would it be locked down and incompatible with Steam? Maybe they could partner with Epic to compete? I’m just having a hard time seeing Xbox/Microsoft enter that business model.

What might be more likely is something like the Portal or G-Cloud. An ARM-based, lightweight product designed to be used for cloud gaming with GamePass. Maaaaaybe some local streaming from your PC or Xbox too. Even with that they would be competing against other products and pretty much every smartphone and tablet. There might be room to move some units, but similar to Sony I don’t see that being huge.

paultimate14, 2 miesiące temu

True, but I’m not sure how closely Xbox works with the rest of Microsoft. As far as I know you have never been able to put Windows on an Xbox or Xbox System Software on a PC officially. In contrast, the PS2 and PS3 had official Linux support (which Sony tried to remove from. The PS3 for security concerns and got sued for).

Microsoft has a hardware division yes, but barely. It’s basically just Xbox, which is failing, and the Surface, which is also failing. They already lost the Mobile market. They seem content to have their laptop and desktop focus just be getting Microsoft software on other hardware.

I kind of get the impression that’s the direction they are moving. They simply haven’t done well in hardware, and their more successful business areas are the ones that are putting Microsoft software onto 3rd party hardware.

I’m still not convinced GamePass is really going to work, but Xbox and Microsoft seem to be. And while I don’t like subscriptions in general, GamePass definitely surpasses any competitor. So rather than roll out new hardware, I think they are moving towards putting GamePass on the Switch 2 and PS5 or PS6. Microsoft has instructions published for getting Xbox Cloud Gaming working on the Deck. I think they want that on the handhelds from AYA, AYN, Asus, Logitech, GPD, and everything else.

They might want to make Windows a viable option for those handhelds, but… They also might not. That would be a huge amount of work for them to compete with Steam. And we’ve seen how unpopular Windows 11 has been. They’ve been downsizing the teams working on Windows for years and focusing more on Edge and AI. I get the impression they just want the Xbox division to lower costs and become profitable at this point.

paultimate14, 2 miesiące temu

Were there other uses? Yes.

Were they common? Well, just look at the GameBoy pocket. At the time it was designed (it released 7 years after the original GameBoy) there were a lot of people at Nintendo who wanted to get rid of the port entirely because it was barely ever used. They ended up compromising by using a different, smaller, cheaper port that needed an adapter to work with the regular ones.

Which was kind of a pain for some people because the GB Pocket and Pokemon both came out in Japan in 1996 lol.

paultimate14, 3 miesiące temu

For those who don’t know:

“Horse armor is not bad. I think horse armor is fine. The price point, at the time, was the issue. We felt, it’s probably worth this,” he said. “I won’t say who at Microsoft said, ‘Well, that’s less than we sell a theme for; a wallpaper is more than that. You should charge this; you can always lower it.’ We were like, ‘Okay!’”

Also it’s weird to me that Bethesda gets crap for their DLC’s. Oblivion’s horse armor was bad, but it wasn’t the worst or the first. Heck, Morrowind had expansions. MapleStory is pretty widely cited as the earliest form of micros transactions. And most of Bethesda’s DLC’s have been great- all 3 of Skyrim’s were ton of content relatively cheap.

I guess that’s the price of popularity?

paultimate14, 3 miesiące temu

Well… Yes pretty much. I don’t count Creation Club items because they weren’t made by Bethesda.

I don’t turn them on. As far as I know you can find free alternatives for most of what is in the creation club- you’re just paying for to support the independent creators, the convenience, and I suppose the service of Bethesda filtering out some of the worst chaff of the mod scene.

Similarly, I don’t count the other big fixes and upgrades in the Special Edition or Anniversary edition as DLC. Bethesda was rolling out patches for the original game before then, and visual upgrades are more in line with what I would call mods/remaster/remake than DLC.

paultimate14, 4 miesiące temu

Couch gaming.

I’m a technical person and I’ve tried a lot of different methods to do couch gaming with a PC. From having some sort of lap tray to various wireless mice and keyboard solutions. I’ve currently landed on having my gaming desktop just stream with Steam Link to my living room. As long as I’m selective about which games I want to play, I can usually get a good experience. But I still have at least 60% of my steam library that isn’t a good experience doing that.

Having a dedicated piece of hardware with a custom OS that is designed around a controller is a huge difference maker. Plus you add in how ridiculously expensive it is to get either a USB external optical drive or internal SATA drive to watch DVDs and Blu-Rays. Heck, even just watching Netflix or YouTube in the living room is easier on PS5 than a media PC for the average user.

There’s a reason Valve tried to make the Steam Machine.

paultimate14, 4 miesiące temu

For me personally, I dislike Meta strongly enough that the Quest was never an option.

I already had a PS5 and have a couple of digital VR games Sony have away a while back, plus there’s a few more I have been interested in. But until now the library was so restrictive that I could not justify the price tag for a PSVR2.

The only other option I considered was the Valve Index. I like Valve a lot and I’m sure it’s great, but at this point it’s 5 years old and would be 2x the price of the PSVR2. Not being comparable with the PS5 for those couple of free games plus exclusives in interested in like Horizon is a minor setback as well, although it’s not a huge deal and Horizon might come to Steam anyways. Also I would have to upgrade my PC a couple years earlier than I would otherwise- my RX580 is mostly fine now, but I don’t think it could handle VR.

paultimate14, 4 miesiące temu

There’s just no pleasing some people I suppose

paultimate14, 4 miesiące temu

I actually think it’s worse for Meta to take a loss on hardware. That tells me that they are expecting to make that money back and then some elsewhere. It’s possible that they are just hoping to make that money back through software sales (similar to Sony), but I just have a hard time trusting the company. The “Meta” name is such a turnoff that I don’t want a piece of their hardware in my house, let alone on my network, so I haven’t even looked at their offerings.

Also, I disagree with the notion that “for a budget rig somethings got to give”. The answers for a “budget” rig are… Nintendo Labo. The AR games with the 3DS. The various ways of strapping a smart phone to one’s face. Things that the VR community scoffs at, but the average consumer is much more likely to purchase.

I think the “budget” option is to just… Not use VR. For me, the adapter isn’t a huge deal. They just cut the price by $100 earlier this year. The Horizon bundle, plus an adapter, comes out to $560. The Valve Index can vary based on the setup, but I figure that’ll be at least $1k. The HTC Vive products seems way more focused on business than gaming, and all of their headsets are >$1k anyways.

So for me I have 3 options: wait for Valve or HTC to make more value-oriented products, get the PSVR2, or just not do VR. And I’m perfectly at peace with just abstaining from VR- I certainly don’t regret that I didn’t buy a 3DTV for example. But this PC adapter has suddenly made the PSVR2 an option where it previously was not one.

paultimate14, 4 miesiące temu

It released too late and was way too expensive.

I say this as someone who grew up in that time period and has fond nostalgia: it has one of the worst libraries of any console. Depending on how you count (the different regions, the 64DD, what counts as a “game”, etc) there were 200-300 N64 games. That may seem like a pretty big difference between 200 and 300, but in comparison the PS1 had, on a conservative count, 4,100 games. If you want to say only 10% of PS1 games we’re good that’s still more good games than the N64 had games.

There are a handful of titles that will be remembered as some of the greatest games of all time. The two Zelda games, Super Smash Bros, Mario Party, Mario Kart, Paper Mario. Personally I like the Pokemon games too. But the list falls off pretty hard after that.

I love 3D platformers and collect-a-thons, but I could never get into Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie, or Donkey Kong 64. They all feel rudimentary to me, similar to Jumping Flash on the PS1. Maybe it’s because the N64’s joystick was so uncomfortable and loose. Crash Bandicoot 1 came out in the US before Mario 64 did, and in my opinion it was more fun, looks better, sounds better, and holds up better today. And then there were two more Crash games, plus the Spyro trilogy which I consider even better.

There are “cult classics” for the N64 that I think are only remembered like that because of the lack of other options. Blast Corps for example is a unique and creative little game. It’s fun to play for a bit, but was that experience really worth the price of a whole game? It almost feels like it could have been a side mode in something like Twisted Metal.

There’s so many games it didn’t have. Metal Gear Solid, Castlevania, and Final Fantasy are perhaps the most famous. Even a lot of games it did have were much worse- Resident Evil 2 and the Tony Hawk series are big examples where the cheap storage of the PS1 was clearly better. I remember I had a mediocre PS1 game called Battletanx that was pretty fun. Later on in high school my friend had a modded Xbox that emulated N64 games and I recognized that title, so we played through the co-op. It was still fun, but the textures were mostly replaced with flat colors and it was hard to see what was going on. I thought there may have been an issue with the emulation, or maybe the ROM was for some beta build or a hacked version, but… No, that’s just how it looked on the N64.

I didn’t mind the 3-prong controller. Honestly just having handles was already an upgrade over the SNES and Genesis. But the controller itself feels so cheap. The buttons all rattle around loosely and feel mushy and unsatisfying to press. The joystick is hard plastic, too tall, and flaccid. The plastic itself is a downgrade compared to its predecessors and to the Dualshock and even Saturn controller.

I still have my N64 and the handful of games I got for it. It had some of the highest highs of any console, but little else.

paultimate14, 4 miesiące temu

It’s funny to me because tons of PC-exclusive games also require accounts on Steam and no one cares.

The requirement is dumb, but the attention is also disproportionate because of console war fandom.

paultimate14, 4 miesiące temu

Lol a good chunk of those “breaches and hacks” are either unrelated to PlayStation (Sony Pictures being the most notable) or had no impact to users.

I don’t care if they leak their source code for games or if their social media account gets socially-engineered. Even an outage from a DDOS isjust a minor inconvenience. According to the source you posted, they haven’t had any issues leaking PlayStation user data since 2011, over a decade ago.

Security concerns are valid for everything you do on the Internet of course, but are you bringing that same energy to Valve for the security issues Steam has had over the years too? The 2023 issue with dev accounts getting hacked to inject malware. The 2020 issue with the “Steam Sockets” library. They had their own data breach similar to Sony’s in 2011.

paultimate14, 4 miesiące temu

That was explaining the delayed releases for PC, not saying they would never come to PC.

In this example Ragnarok came out in 2022, so there probably isn’t much meat left on the PS5 bone with this one.

paultimate14, 4 miesiące temu

If this works and releases at a reasonable price this just may convince me to buy a PSVR2.

paultimate14, 4 miesiące temu

In this entire article, not even a single attempt to quantity the number of complaints.

This sounds to me like an extremely small minority. It appears as though Fallout 4 has sold over 25 million copies, and there’s… Maybe a couple dozen people on the Internet complaining?

paultimate14, 5 miesięcy temu

Tough call between the Dualsense and the Dualshocks 1-3.

The Dualsense has great features, but is large enough and bulbous enough that I’m forced to use a full palm grip. That’s good some of the time, but sometimes I like a lighter finger grip that the earlier Dualshocks allowed for. I think of it similarly to claw vs palm grips on mice. A full palm grip on either can get too sweaty over time. The Dualshock 4 is a bulbous mess that fatigues my hands. On all of them, the plastic feels premium and sturdy and really fits well together. Plastic molding is an art, and they are good at it.

I have a few 8BitDo’s and they are all good too. The Pro-2, SN30 Pro, and Ultimate C (their naming conventions are flour of control). A bit cheaper feeling than the Sony offerings, but still pretty good.

The Xbox Series controller is… Fine. The plastic feels cheap, the face buttons feel cheap, it’s too big and requires a palm grip, the R1/L1 buttons feel cheap, the d-pad is one of the worst in history. The analog sticks almost feel great except they’re too tall.

Shout-out to the Steam Deck for feeling phenomenal. Also shout-out to the RetroBit Genesis controllers- they feel really good, but the lack of sticks and fewer buttons than most modern controllers makes it hard to use for modern games.

The JoyCons are awful. Most 3rd party options are better but I still haven’t found one that I really like.

The GameCube and N64 both feel kind of cheap. I think the plastic is a bit thin, and the sticks and buttons rattle around slightly.

paultimate14, 5 miesięcy temu

I wonder how many promises Microsoft made to the FCC and other regulators about how their mergers and acquisitions wouldn’t result in layoffs?

paultimate14, 5 miesięcy temu

What are you talking about?

Sony’s Japan studio’s own library was always gimmicky games that were basically tech demos- Ape Escape was for the Dual Analog controller, LocoRoco for the PSP, Gravity Rush for the Vita, Knack to be a pack-in for the PS4, and games for VR, Move Eye toy, etc. In fact it’s kind of hard to find games they did on their own because they’ve always been mostly a support studio even going back to the PS1’s launch lineup, and they are continuing that. There have been several studios that make original games that started as part of Sony Japan that have been spun off into separate teams too.

I’m struggling to think of many studios Sony has closed. Sony London studios was similar to Japan- mostly just games to go with hardware gimmicks like the EyeToy, SingStar, and Wonderbook. It’s even harder to find studios that Sony has purchased and then closed or turned into a support studio- I guess you could count that Psygnosis was purchased and merged into London studios back in the 90’s, but considering they went 20 years between that merger and closing I doubt there were many Psygnosis devs left there.

A quick search pulls up PixelOpus, a tiny studio Sony formed from 9 college grads with a couple of industry veterans to lead them They released 2 small games and were closed last year.

I don’t mean to be too defensive of Sony- they did close one of their own studios and laid off ~900 people this year. But it’s not really a comparison to Microsoft who now has a long history of buying 3rd party studios, mismanaging them, and closing them.

I’m also confused about your comment about Xbox making more single player games than Sony. First of all… I would expect that to generally be true. It looks like Sony owns 21 studios while Microsoft had 40 as of the Activision-Blizzard acquisition. And while a lot hasn’t been announcedwith release dates, we know of a handful of single player games Sony has in the works- Horizon 3, TLOU3, Ghosts of Tsushima 2, and new IP’s from Bend, Housemarq, and BluePoint. Plus Wolverine, and you could argue whether Physint should count or not since that’s a partnership between Kojima and Sony-owned Columbia Pictures. If you’re trying to imply that Sony is abandoning single-player games or something that’s pretty far from the truth.

paultimate14, 5 miesięcy temu

I’ve seen several articles whining about this patch over the past several weeks. They all have the same vague complaints, but the only real tangible and provable one seems to be that some mods break, and Fallout: London was delayed.

I’ve seen claims of crashes and FPS drops, but no actual data or testing to back that up. It seems like a classic case of the Internet circling around and making something into a much bigger deal than reality.

Everyone I’ve seen commenting who has actually tried it themselves seems to have positive feedback. I installed it briefly on the Deck myself to try it out and it seems fine, although I don’t care enough to put in hours of proper testing.

paultimate14, 5 miesięcy temu

There was a C-tier PS2 game called Airblade that was basically that

paultimate14, 6 miesięcy temu

For a long time I’ve argued that there needs to be stronger language differences between physiological addiction and psychological addiction, especially in non-academic discourse. Academic papers usually define their terms pretty well, and often use terms like “habit forming” or “dependency” instead of addiction.

A lot of work has been done to remove the stigma of addiction to shift the blame from the individual to the product, and I have no objections at all to that for physiological addiction. Nicotine, alcohol, opioids, etc.

The problem is that zealots have co-opted that model to try to ban anything they don’t want other people to be able to enjoy. Comic books, television, videogames, marijuana, pornography- all of these have had the word “addiction” attached in news media without solid scientific evidence of physiological addiction. At the same time, you can find case studies of individuals with mental health disorders who get addicted to literally anything… I’m not saying there are not individuals who don’t have problems with these things, but a lot of the effort into stigmatizing and restricting these seems to have ulterior motives. It’s parents who don’t want to teach their children about responsibility and discipline. It’s religious zealots trying to push their worldviews on others. It’s large corporations trying to gain market share by attacking competing industries. In some cases like “sex addiction” it’s used to try to excuse or justify criminal behavior and portray abusers as victims. It’s notable that efforts usually go to just banning and shaming these things rather than helping the alleged “victims”. At the same time, efforts at harm reduction for physiological addiction seems to be constantly undermined.

With all of that being said, there is a separate issue that applies to this case- consumer protection. History has clearly demonstrated that without regulation and enforcement, corporations will engage in all manner of activity to screw over every stakeholder (consumers, vendors, employees, lenders, etc) in order to enrich ownership.

Looking at videogames in particular, there are definitely marketing practices and pricing structures that need to be banned. I just hate this idea that “videogames = bad” when the real issue is corporate greed, and a lot of these issues apply to other industries too.

paultimate14, 7 miesięcy temu

“Playable” is doing a lot of work.

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve played through games with it and it’s really great. But there’s a ton of glitches and games that don’t play well. In another 5 or 10 years (hopefully I’ve upgraded my hardware by then) it’ll probably be great. But today it’s reserved for enthusiasts who enjoy tinkering with settings or playing less demanding games.

paultimate14, 7 miesięcy temu

PS3 is a strong, strong contender for reliability and repairability reasons. You could replace the CMOS battery and hard drive today. You have to jump through hoops to add funds to your wallet, but once you do the store still works for the moment. The last time I looked there were even some decent deals from a couple of publishers.

No memory cards to worry about. The physical discs were expensive enough that people took care of them and are more inclined to sellt hem than toss them: it’s still really easy to find discs on eBay, and they’re new enough and most games have been remastered so they’re usually less than $20. It’s impossible to find Sixaxis or Dualshock 3’s, but fake ones from AliExpress are super cheap and almost identical except for the almost-never-used motion controls. You can also use a lot of USB controllers, or use something like a MayFlash adapter to use just about any controller you want. I think you can pair Dualsense too, though I haven’t tried. If you have original OEM’s, I don’t remember them ever having drift problems. The only real problem with the original controllers would be battery life (you can replace them if you’re handy), USB Mini-B, and how they needed a handshake and could only charge plugged into certain devices or special power supplies (another reason to just use counterfeits).

With a fat model you have full backwards compatibility with PS1 and PS2. With the online store you can get a lot of PS1, PS2, and PSP games. Not sure if this counts, but you can do remote play with a PSP too. Some of the online multiplayer probably still works, depending on the game. It has an HDMI out and the old AV out, so you can hook it up to almost any TV with cheap and a sailable cables. You can also load up video and audio files for playback, saving wear on the disc drive. I remember briefly experimenting with using mine as a media server back in the day.

The drawbacks are few. I’m assuming no hacking or modding, so no Nintendo games. No Xbox either, though I don’t think that’s anywhere near as important. A disc drive is always just a matter of time before it fails. The fat model has PS2 compatibility, but also was less reliable, so that’s a trade-off. The digital store is not long for this world. I used to use mine for Netflix, YouTube, HBO, etc and I’m guessing those apps have probably been shut down at this point. You lose out on modern games too. The PS2 and PS5 are both good options too, but I think the PS3 has the edge. If they ever add a PS3 emulator to the PS5, or if the PS5 library grows in general, it could still overtake the PS3 in the future.

If you lean more Nintendo I think the WiiU was better than the switch until they shut the e-shop down, and might still be better if we open this up to modding and hacking. It’s just easier to work with a WiiU because Nintendo stopped caring about protecting it. It’s also better for playing DS and Wii games for example. A ton of Switch games were also released on WiiU, and the Switch’s legacy content is mostly locked behind the online subscription - how long will that be available for? Still has the disc drive issue and can’t play Sony exclusives, but a strong option.

I’m not usually an Xbox guy, but they’re usually the easiest to mod, the emulate things well, and even without modding the Series X is probably the best option for pure backwards-compatibility with a good chunk of the libraries of every Xbox generation ever. The problem is you get neither the Sony nor Nintendo exclusives. And Xbox exclusives really aren’t all that enticing to me. Maybe if you’re into HALO or Gears or Forza Xbox is a more appealing option. The best IP’s Xbox owns are often released on other consoles, like MineCraft. Which is great for the industry, but hurts Xbox’s ranking here.

paultimate14, 9 miesięcy temu

I agree with most predictions, but one I disagree with is the power of the Switch 2. Especially because I agree with you that it will still be a hybrid handheld/home console. I just can’t see a handheld device as powerful as the PS5 or Series X making sense.

I think Nintendo knows they can’t compete in performance/dollar hardware. It’s always tricky to try to compare “power” between very different devices, but just from my eyes as an end-user, I think of the Switch as being a PS3/360 with more post-processing, or a weaker PS4/Xbox One S.

So I expect the Switch 2 to be roughly on par with the Steam Deck, but cheaper and with bettery battery life. I keep going back-and-forth on whether it will finally have a 1080p screen or continue 720p… Maybe they start at 720p and end up bumping it up with a refresh in a few years.

On the one hand, it seems insane to me to release another 720p console. On the other hand, an affordable 1080p standalone handheld would be the first of it’s kind. The Deck is 720p (or 800p of the game can handle 16:10). Products like the Logitech G-Cloud and PlayStation Portal are underpowered and streaming-focused, and I don’t see Nintendo going so far as to have dedicated streaming hardware like that. The actual 1080p handheld PC’s have a much higher price or worse battery life, usually both.

So I’m landing on 720p in handheld mode with better frame rates (30FPS for 3D games, 60 for 2D games, most notably fewer games like Pokemon falling well short of 30), with 1080p (probably supported by AI upscaling) in docked mode. Ray Tracing will probably be the most notable visual difference.

paultimate14, 9 miesięcy temu

I haven’t played any of theae games, but I can appreciate a simple and legible logo.

The new game names are dumb, but so we’re most of the old ones anyways.

paultimate14, 9 miesięcy temu

This is part of the reason why I haven’t bought GT7 yet.

GT2 was one of my favorite games of all time. GT1, 3, and 4 were also great. But this online and multiplayer focus… Nah.

paultimate14, 10 miesięcy temu

Unironically yes. Sonic 1 had 'tude: it was always part of the IP.

paultimate14, 10 miesięcy temu

Almost every mod out there is addressing some (real or perceived) deficiency in the base game

Emphasis on “perceived”. In my experience, the vast majority of mods are for things that I would never have asked for or expected from the developer.

Like Thomas the Tank Engine being everywhere. Or the other day I visited a friend and he was playing Civ 6 as Luigi from Mario. Or adding guns to Skyrim. Or adding tons of sexual content.

Should that content just not exist (licensing issues aside)? While I’m grateful to the noble people making and giving away mods for free, if I could start a decent side gig with it I might start making mods myself.

I can’t imagine myself ever buying a mod, but it seems like opening the platform up to allow creators to monetize is better than closing the platform entirely, or relying on the generosity of a few enthusiasts. Seems like this closes a gap on the spectrum from making your own indie game, getting a job as a developer, or using some DIY creator like Dreams.

paultimate14, 10 miesięcy temu

As long as they don’t take free mods away I’m fine with it.

paultimate14, 10 miesięcy temu

PlayStations are not sold at a loss either.

They usually start out selling for a loss, but Sony reduces costs and scales production so they’re usually profitable (or at least even) after a couple of years. As far as I can tell the PS3 took the longest, releasing in 2006 and not breaking even until 2010, still 3 years before the PS4 launched.

It seems Xbox has always sold at a loss though.

paultimate14, 10 miesięcy temu

Chill vibes. Sometimes you want to play videogames but don’t want a stressful time.

Or multitasking. I love playing Phoenix Wright on the treadmill.

paultimate14, 10 miesięcy temu

I’m looking forward to the ward between factions posting the two quotes in comments sections every time a game gets delayed for the next several decades

paultimate14, 10 miesięcy temu

I don’t mind older games getting love on new platforms. But… This is already a late PS4 game with a PS5 enhancement.

Maybe it’s something as simple as just a physical PS5-only version? I have not seen any “Greatest Hits” reprints of PS5 games yet. Usually they start doing that ~2 years after a console release, so it’s past due for the PS5. So my speculation would be that they are going to announce that at the game awards, and it’s going to include some PS5 reprints of other PS4 games with PS5 enhancement. Maybe Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War (2018), etc.

If this inolvrs putting in serious dev work to remake a 3 year old game, I’d have to question whether those resources would have been better spent elsewhere. Heck, even another, older, Naughty Dog game. The Crash N Sane and Spyro Reignited trilogies were pretty successful endeavors from Activision, and Sony has Bluepoiny just for doing that kind of stuff. Where are the Jak and Daxter remakes? Ratchet and Clank 1 was kind-of remade-ish to go along with the movie release back in 2016, but where are the rest of the R&C re-makes? They did Shadow of the Colossus: where is ICO?

paultimate14, 10 miesięcy temu

That’s why I’m thinking a Greatest Hits reprints makes sense. Those were usually priced lower.

And yeah I was only referring to Part 2 because that’s what the article is about. Part 1 just got a remake in 2022.

paultimate14, 11 miesięcy temu

If PSVR2 was PC compatible I probably would have bought it by now.

If it has a better library I’d be at least considering it. I’d like to play Horizon, but that’s not worth spending over $500 for. Gran Turismo 7 would be intriguing (both VR and regular) if it didn’t have micro-transactions.

Honestly the library issue kind of applies to the whole console. I kind of understand that the pandemic led to more cross-gen games, and multi-platform games are good for the industry as a whole. But I’m still not seeing a lot of reasons to buy a PS5 on this list. The list disregards PC versions, which I kind of get because Sony is publishing AAA games on PC and you often need to spend 3x the cost of a PS5 to get a PC powerful enough to run them. But some of these indie games like Stray and Tchia feel like a stretch.

paultimate14, 11 miesięcy temu

I’ll say that fewer console exclusives is for the better.

Maybe my issue is just how console gaming has changed, and how all 3 companies have screwed consumers.

If I buy Stray on PS5, will I still be able to play it 10 years from now? 20 years from now? Will the PS6 and 7 be able to play PS5 games? Does it matter if I have the physical or digital version? Am I going to be able to rip and emulate PS5 games on a PC at any point? Once my PS3 dies, I lose my digital games and at the mercy of the emulation community to play my physical games. Once my 3DS dies… It’s all gone, and piracy will be the only way to play the games I paid for.

I already bought Stray on Steam. It’s not a guarantee, but I like my odds better there.

I bought my PS5 expecting that there would be some great exclusives there eventually, and that even the ones with PC versions would be better on PS5 (at least at launch and while I’m still rocking an RX580). But all Naughty Dog has done is remakes so far. I love Insomniac, but I’m not a Marvel fan and I miss their more creative work.

The biggest use I’ve gotten from the PS5 has been using the DualSense in PS4 games because I don’t like the DS4.

paultimate14, 11 miesięcy temu

Gonna get automatically re-installed with every single Winfows update for all of eternity.

paultimate14, rok temu

3rd place in… What? I’m trying to search around to see what you’re referring to here, but I can’t find anything.

By total market cap, Microsoft already blows these companies out of the water. By just videogame divisions, Sony and Nintendo are way farther ahead because of hardware sales, but that doesn’t really make sense to include in the conversation about acquiring a publisher. I can’t find any solid numbers either way isolating publishing, other than that the top 5 in recent years seems to be Tencent, Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, and Activision/Blizzard (with EA hanging around too). Seems like any of those two merging is going to be bad for everyone other than shareholders.

paultimate14, rok temu

How do you figure that 2 of the top 6 merging won’t shift the market in a big way?

Also, total gaming revenue wouldn’t be a good way to compare it because that includes revenue streams that’s are unrelated to Activision/Blizzard. Microsoft is hardly even competing with Nintendo at all considering they don’t have a handheld device. And Microsoft releases way more games on PC than Nintendo or even Sony, which further reduces the relevance of hardware sales.

It’s the developing and publishing industries specifically that are going to be impacted by this, because that’s what Activision/Blizzard does.

The impact to hardware sales will be indirect: I would guess a pretty small number amount of people might switch to Xbox or buy an Xbox in addition to a PlayStation just for version exclusives, but probably not a huge amount as long as Microsoft keeps COD on PlayStation.

paultimate14, rok temu

Do you need to have played the earlier games for it?

I got this with my PS4. I already had the GOW 1&2 collection for PS3, so I figured I’d beat those and maybe get 3 first. But the first game is… rough. I’d say it hasn’t aged well, but honestly I don’t think it holds up to its contemporaries well.

I played it on-and-off for a few years now and finally beat it a couple weeks ago. I’m debating if I even want to bother with the 2nd game now.

paultimate14, rok temu

If you’re not familiar with the “gold” term, it means the game is complete and ready to be submitted to Sony’s online services and be printed to discs

Am I the only one who has never heard this term before? I always thought going Gold referenced a sales threshold, similar to the music industry. The term as the article defines it is pretty dumb and useless.

paultimate14, rok temu

Controller features, VR, non-proprietsry storage.

When you’re talking about a premium market in particular, I think most high-end consumers who care about the aesthetics of their living room would prefer the official, matching Dualsense charger/stand over Microsoft’s charging kit.

The exclusives are huge, especially factoring in backwards-compatibility. Xbox is undoubtedly a better value if you already have a library of older Xbox games or you are shopping used. But if you divide consumers up into Budget, Value, and Premium tiers, I don’t think the Premium tier consumers care about playing games that old. The PS4 had way more big-budget AAA exclusives than the Xbox One did, so I think PlayStation has the advantage there.

Weirdly, I think there’s some dissonance with this around disc drives. I would think premium consumers would care less about physical media: they aren’t buying used games and probably have concerns for the aesthetic of storing physical media. I personally prefer physical media, but I consider myself a value consumer who has no qualms buying used and can handle a little bit of clutter. So I think disc drive versions are valued less by the premium segment, but costs more to manufacture. So I think that boosts the sales of the diaclsss PS5. Premium consumers aren’t interested in the Series S at all though, so if they do go Xbox they just get the X and don’t use the drive. I kind of wonder how the market will react if the rumors of Sony selling an external drive end up true.