PhobosAnomaly

Jesus, the gamesradar site is absolute ass

The data: https://weloveit.io/developers/steam-revenue-report/

You’ve hit the nail on the head there.

I had a Flip3 as a way of trying to kick my QWERTY habit, and it was cool as fuck. It’s a great conversation starter (if you like starting conversations!), it’s a lovely form factor to carry in it’s folded state, and no matter what anyone says, it’s satisfying as fuck to end a particularly heated call by slamming the phone shut.

Other than that though… it’s just a decent phone. No better or worse than anything else aside from the irritating bloatware.

The hinge was weak as fuck and two of my devices suffered screen bleed from the hinge, but then that was nearly five generations of Flip ago.

Daikatana.

The first map was absolute mince, the colour tones were boring, the opening cinematics were long and tiresome, and even the whole first episode was a bit shit. The sidekicks were poorly coded and the last map was just a challenge map, especially with the game breaking bug at the end.

However…

The rest of the game was actually pretty good. The Greek episode was absolutely beautiful and excellently designed, the Norwegian episode was great fun and the soundtrack was wonderful, and the last episode was… decent, nothing great but nothing poor.

The patch fixed the bullshit sidekick pathfinding, the titular Daikatana made you feel like a fucking badass if you took the time to level it up, and the story was actually okay for the last three quarters of the game.

Moreover, if you like twitch multiplayer games - the multiplayer component is the closest to pure QuakeWorld I have ever experienced. Fast, unforgiving, great movement mechanics. It’s got a very high skill ceiling.

Unfortunately, the opening hour or four is massively substandard and sunk the entire game - John Romero’s name and the ill fated marketing campaign just made it easy fodder for people to shit on it.

Like Duke Nukem Forever, TimeShift, FEAR 2, or the Half Life expansions… it isn’t amazing… but it’s a competent FPS and does the job.

I remember when Quake Live introduced it, but it never really gained any traction.

A popular server-side mod for Counter-Strike (the 1.6 era) introduced in-map texture substitution for advertising as well… but I think it was pissed on by the community so much that it never saw widespread use.

Sounds like the time is right to try again.

Fancy new Wet Ass Filter

FH1 was absolutely brilliant. Compared with a racing wheel, it genuinely felt like the Forza Motorsport series had been let loose, literally.

Each subsequent FH release has just been… cool, I guess? The next four iterations weren’t really groundbreaking and it felt like map packs than new games.

The soundtrack has consistently been absolutely banging though

Yeah nah. Fuck you.

For context, this is worth a watch for some post Unreal and pre-GoW Epic MegaGames, and CliffyB’s autobiography is worth a read too.

I used to like Tim Sweeney. A guy who rewarded hard work and loyalty, and when a big paycheque guaranteed the company’s future.

Now, it’s just a content stripping studio that fucks over any notion of creativity or loyalty. Fortnite - a really decent shooter at it’s core - is just awash with lazy crossover MTX now, and I’m still fucking salty about how Save The World was left to die even when Battle Royale was bringing in megabucks.

To add insult to injury, there’s a trove of early MegaGames titles begging for a 3D entry, or even just another decent Unreal game that could make the world forget about HL3 for five minutes.

Fuck you Epic. There’s enough money and ideas to go around. They’re just not staying in the company and going into greedy bastard’s pockets.

Hey this looks brilliant actually. Like Dear Esther in hell. Nice.

Speaking of graffiti, some of the bantz scrawled on the walls of Thank Goodness You’re Here made me laugh. Great waste of a few hours.

Russian Roulette.

Test for nat20’s by using a semiautomatic handgun.

I can’t say there’s anything that really jumps out at me aside from maybe the presumably mirrored Super Mario World…

…but Argick running a non-Sonic game? Sure I’m up for that!

Sorry friend.

If your data was occupationally-sensitive or renders you vulnerable to financial ruination, it’s time to move to a recovery phase and see if modern data recovery specialists can work their voodoo.

Remember: never run experimental commands (you or a GenAI) in a live environment. See how it breaks things in a test environment first - if it shits itself, you may even get to learn how to fix it before running the instruction on live data.

Anecdote time! A good friend of mine drove his car to a mutual colleague’s place once because the wipers were about as much use as two chicken breasts on metal poles. He says to our colleague “Hey Foxy, I hear you’re good with cars, can you fix these wipers for me? The rubber seems to be in good nick but it’s not clearing anything”.

“Sure thing,” Foxy proudly announces, “I’ll get to work”.

Foxy strips the wipers down, one component at a time, before dusting his hands off and walking away.

“What’s going on, Foxy? The thing’s still in bits!” my pal says.

“No idea,” says Foxy, “not a fucking Scooby mate” and goes back inside, leaving his wipers and actuating motor in about fourteen pieces on the roadside.

So much for being good with cars.

git log --no-merge

Slightly off topic but:

Check this performance out and jump to 1:55 for a real treat for Q2 fans.

edit: mega flashy lights warning

I know it’s a cult classic, but I couldn’t get my head around the film, it didnt enjoy it at all. Perhaps it’s because I went in with the desire to see another J-horror in the vein of Ring or Ju-On or Dark Water etc.

I’m going to treat myself to an Ito box set after Christmas and read the visual novels instead I think, give it another bash.

Perhaps it’s because I grew up with adventure puzzle games and point’n’click games, but GameFAQs was always the nuclear option for me.

I much preferred the Universal Hint System - an approach more suited to nudging you towards figuring out the answer for yourself.

There’s no denying that it was (and is) a fantastic resource though. Hell, I’ve even written a guide myself. One of the last bastions of the 90s and 2000s WWW experience.

I got into Poets of the Fall in a big way after Late Goodbye. Their work is fantastic and they’re brilliant live.

I’m glad Remedy have stuck with them over the years, the Herald of Darkness song from Alan Wake II was a banger.

Looks like Petersen has been biding his time and has decided to go on the offensive. Why, I’m not sure - but good on him.

A few weeks ago he popped up a video on his YouTube Short feed which covers it well.

For those of a particular vintage, Petersen isn’t particularly popular because of his… experimental approach to Doom mapping. His YouTube is great through - he sets the record straight on Doom; speaks openly about the gaming industry; and also delves deep into tabletop gaming if that’s your thing.

I do quite like the self-awareness of Bubsy 3D being absolute donkey tonk. The redrawn sprites in 3D looks cool, let’s see if they learn the lessons from thirty-ish years ago.

Brilliant game.

Worth playing with the PS1 Descent soundtrack too for a different experience (or Descent Maximum as it was across the pond), it got me in to Type O-Negative too.