Iirc a lot of people also taped their device to ceiling fans and stuff to get steps (to hatch eggs maybe? Idk I never played it)

So we’ll have it directing people into circles for hours!

That’s like one of the super grindy JRPG titles I have (100 hours or so to get through the story). To get all the achievements, you’d have to play through an absolute minimum of 9 times, because you need to kill the end boss without taking damage on each difficulty level, and they unlock as you go. But you’d actually be grinding bosses for ages trying to get them without taking damage…

The game was ok, but I honestly can’t see wanting to play it twice let alone 9 times… there’s definitely a reason almost nobody has those achievements…

I have something like this, but it’s for game boy.

Also utterly worthless; it distorts the picture in uncomfortable ways, and honestly was a much worse experience than just using the screen.

It’s also only a couple inches bigger, so dumb.

8 was so bad with randoms. You can go like 2 inches at a time between over world encounters. And they were so time consuming even when it only took 2 hits to kill everything - intro transition, battle animations, victory splash… so long!

I have no idea how I managed to sit through those back in the day. Sooooo tedious.

I like the tales series for how they did, mostly dodgeable, but combat could also be fully automated if you were bored. And there’s a lot of combat, so it gets boring. Needless to say I used auto combat a lot (not for bosses or unique enemies tho). I’d prefer if it didn’t do the battle transition, but I understand the function of it.

On console you still have to wait an absurdly long time for the ubishit to load, even if you never use any of it. Pretty sure they threw their launcher in there, too, and just hid it a bit.

Fenyx, a game I love from 2020, takes several extra minutes to boot (and the launch screen completely freezes for the duration, so you don’t know if it’s going to launch successfully or hang) because it has to query the server every single damned time to see if there’s new dlc or news nobody cares about or whatever. Like guys, I didn’t care the first dozen times you tried to get me to check out ways to give you money…

The worst part is I actually did buy one of the dlc for it on switch. I was intensely disappointed. It was not just not worth the money, it wasn’t worth the time to download it; I didn’t even bother finishing it. And still every time it boots up it tells me all about this marvelous new dlc I could buy (there’s another dlc I didn’t buy, but that’s not the one it showcases)! So it takes forever to query the server and then does fuckall with that information. Cool.

I feel like the point of that in it takes two is communication. It’s pretty heavy-handed in the whole “sort out your shit amongst yourselves” theme, and it’s sort of meant as a way for a gamer to get a non-gamer into gaming, so you’d have one person with the skillz leading the other through challenges.

Or at least that’s how it played out with me. The person I was playing with is also a gamer but not really environmental/puzzle games (and easily frustrated) so it was sort of playing around with what to do and walking each other through - calling out timing and stuff, etc.

It’s a very interesting take on co-op, imho.

If you like small people in huge environments, exploring, and not being super hand-held, tinykin is a cute game, not super long, it does sort of a bit guide you through some major things but not in a particularly obnoxious way. Mostly just exploring on your own. :)

I think this shift will be the end of me buying newer games, period.

I am that person who doesn’t ever buy digital. I have not bought a single digital game thus far (I haven’t pirated a game since like 2006, either). I have certainly played some, like with the PS+ subscription I got for a year when it was pretty cheap, but I wouldn’t buy them because I can’t be sure I own them, and there’s really no way to transfer the license to resell them.

If I can’t buy physical media, I simply won’t buy the games. Maybe I’ll use subscription services now and then, but more likely I’ll either find a way to play free or won’t play them at all and find other stuff. I want the physical media because I’m poor, and having the option to sell them in a pinch is important to me if I’m going to shell out a significant amount for something I’ll probably only play once, particularly since there won’t be a used game market to reduce my spend. I haven’t had to sell my games in a very long time, so I have some 400 discs, but it’s something of a savings option that inflates alongside currency, and sometimes much more.

I used to have an Xperia pro, the one with the physical keyboard. It was my last keyboard phone. I absolutely loved it.

Flashed a different OS, cyanogenmod I believe, which broke the governor chip (irreparable; known issue but super buried, would have done the same with any OS of that version number, including stock) so it would read as a dead battery if not on the charger.

Never touched Sony phones again. Don’t trust them at all.

You aren’t wrong. I freakin love mobile games, very addictive. I don’t play them anymore… bad habits form for me…

Roguelike games can have a similar appeal tho; turn it on, do a dive or two for 20-40 min, then come back next time.

I found so many adorable little short games that are nonetheless amazing fun. Tinykin, cat quest, troll hunters, stray… none of those are over 10 hours, even if you achievement hunt. Maybe stray, since you have to beat it more than once.

Like they don’t have to be super long to be super good. And sometimes you only have the energy to play my little pony (actually fun and super quick because it’s made for small kids, and sometimes you just want something that takes 2 hours to get 100% on because that’s the mood…)

I normally prefer super long exploration games, but those get old. Especially when they are all filler content like run here run there kill 5 things then go back to the same place 6 more times for dumb little quests you could have done all at once if they just gave them to you… I like 100%, but man they often make that so very tedious.

I just say the following every time:

“Your mother would be so disappointed in you if she really understood what you were doing, wouldn’t she?

Ruining the lives of little old ladies, just like mama. She’s probably not well off either, right Mr scammer? I feel for you. Really I do. I’ve lived in poverty my whole life too, and it’s been a huge struggle just to get by. But me? I wouldn’t shame my family by scamming people just like us out of what little they have. My mamma raised me better than that. I’m sure yours did, too.”

I always get a reply meaning it definitely strikes a nerve, usually get some sort of bravado about how mama is proud because they bring home the money, and I just respond “if you tell yourself that enough maybe you’ll believe it someday, too!”.

But I don’t want to be totally heartless because a lot of them don’t have meaningful options, and I get that, and I’m not the ragey sort generally. Or at least I try not to be.

Here’s the thing though…

I’ve bought now three single-player (with online features) games on console not realizing the servers had already been shut down for whatever reason within a year or two of launch. I can’t play them, and I really wanted to.

Sure they might not have made money off me this time around, but if they put out a game in the future and I’d been able to play these, I’d be more likely to try those and give them my money. Instead, because I wasted money on these year-old games that were already trashed, I just won’t touch anything from those studios ever again, since they clearly don’t believe in their games at all. It makes me look real long and hard into how “online” they are… if I need an internet connection to solo play? Immediately not interested, which is becoming much more limiting as that gets more common.

Meanwhile, if I ever bother setting up my ps2 with an Ethernet cable, I can play with other people who have the same setup with 20+ year old games (like champions of norrath, last I played that “online” was about 10 years ago, but it seems to spin up an on-demand server for whomever is available).

There’s tons of games that still have all of their DLC listed for ridiculous amounts 15 years after the game comes out, I guess I just don’t understand why they would scrap all that work when there’s other viable options that could potentially have future returns… instead they just close the door entirely.

I’m not into dating sims but… this looks entertaining all the same.

I probably wouldn’t buy it, but I’d love to play a demo or excerpt. Because maybe I would buy it.