skulblaka

I don’t have a whole network setup like the rest of you guys, but I’ve been naming my desktop pc’s SHODAN ever since I built my first one. Secondary/partner’s pc is named XERXES. I’ll probably never change them.

I’ve never once had to wait more than 5 seconds to start loading in to a match no matter what time of day or night it is. Literally no other game has ever done this. They’re prioritizing their time-to-game over having actual players in your match, and this definitely means filling slots with bots. How egregious it is will depend on the time and day and current online player count. But when I’m instantly loading a full game of 10 people at 3am on a Tuesday I know something’s fucky.

Other people have done actual research into the matter but I had my suspicions, just from playing the game, by the third day or so after release.

Nice cherry picking of the densest area of detail in World vs an empty open field in Rise.

Rise looks great when you aren’t looking for ways to dunk on it.

Besides which, World was such a sluggish beast that I was running the game on minimum settings anyway just to play the damn thing. So uh, I never got to see how beautiful it looks in your photo. Sure, it’s detailed, it looks good, it also runs like shit so maybe 10% of players got to actually see that. My point here was that Rise was a very impressive gain in performance for a relatively small loss in graphical fidelity. Good job Capcom, well done.

I have no idea how they pull this off though, because Rise looks damn near about as good as World does IMO, with faster and crazier gameplay, and runs at 80 higher FPS. Either their “fancy PC game” team is trash or their mobile team is legendary, because I don’t see how a minor change of art style and small drop in the number of individual grasses per map made such a huge change.

Now, Wilds does look a little crazy and I can understand how exactly the Deck might struggle on that one. But the playability difference between World and Rise without losing much graphical fidelity genuinely blew my mind. World limps along at 14 FPS on the Deck and Rise plays smooth as butter on the Switch as well as the Deck.

All the best games of the last 10 years have been built and published by teams smaller than 20 people.

Fusion has always been my favorite. I “want” to not like how linear it is compared to the rest of the series, but when I get started playing it again that never seems to matter to me anymore. And because of that game structure, the game is very well broken up into chunks of 20-30 minutes of gameplay at a time which makes it excellent for playing on a portable console. I played it on a borrowed GBA-SP for the first time back in the day, a few more times after that emulated, and most recently I’ve been playing it again on my Steam Deck within the past week, I’m like 2/3 of the way back through it again, just took down Yakuza for the Space Jump last night before bed.

Fusion is also a huge story point for the series as a whole. It introduces the X and by doing so gives context to the existence of the metroids. And seeing that referenced again later in Dread was maybe one of the coolest moments I’ve experienced in the Metroid series.

Speaking of Dread, that one is a very close follow up though. I was super hype for Dread when it released and it is one of few games in recent memory that completely lived up to that hype. I was a big fan.

Nearly an entire generation lacks the wisdom that comes with struggle and now we’re reaping the effects of that.

You’ve got more faith in the purchasing public than I do, then. I’ve been watching them buy a new copy of the same COD slop every year for a fresh $60 basically since I’ve been old enough to buy my own video games.

Because Rockstar is going to do it and sell a gorillion copies, so it’s basically a guarantee that everyone else will jump on the opportunity. And once every game is $100, what are people going to do, stop buying video games? I find that unlikely anymore. They’ll bitch and complain about it and sales might drop a little on average but studios will survive. And now we have a new price floor set forever.

This also may explain why Nintendo can’t implement competent networking features to save their lives.

Thanks!

How does one get into that?

People have been telling me that I have “a voice for radio” ever since I was a teenager, but I’ve never really been into show biz, I’ve been fixing computers and cars my whole life. I’ve been considering just recording a long portfolio of a bunch of different voices and start sending it off to random companies but I can’t help feeling like that’s not my best move.

Hulshult is an Old God of the gaming industry at this point and I expect he will never perform work that is unsatisfactory.

But the whole situation with Mick Gordon still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I’d have liked if they reconciled and brought him back, but that may not be possible for any number of reasons, not least of which is Mick himself telling them he’s lost trust.

But lacking Gordon, Hulshult is still an excellent choice.

It definitely still caught me by surprise. Not like it might have in 1996 - I just played Baldur’s Gate 3 within the past year, after all - but the first time I played I definitely managed to get almost every single piece of bad evidence against me that I could rack up without even meaning to.

Hollow Knight gives a pretty fucking solid try, to be fair. But yeah, I do agree.

Third for Chrono Trigger. I didn’t get to play that one when I was a kid so I played it for the first time in 2020. Holy shit what a game. The original definitely still holds up today.

1v1 where you’re expecting Oddjob is a lot different than 4P deathmatch where one guy is Oddjob. That’s where it’s a real dick move cause he’ll catch you by surprise.

Still, though. Respect.

Yeah, guilty as charged

Debit card is tied directly to your bank account with no rollbacks. If somebody gets that info and decides to clean out your bank account, that money is gone, period, and you’ll never see it again.

With a credit card, you have a degree of separation and the ability to contest or roll back charges. Debit cards don’t do that.

They do