paultimate14

@paultimate14@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nostalgia and remake culture⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Scarlet and Violet may only run at 10FPS and there are plenty of other flaws, but it’s still a ton of fun. And those are sequels, not remakes. The gameplay is a dramatic shift from everything the mainline series has done before.

  Legends Arceus has performance issues too, but was was critically acclaimed.

  As for the remakes, they’re generally pretty good upgrades. Gen 1 has really aged poorly, but FRLG are fantastic. I never liked Diamond or Pearl, but BDSP were really solid and fixed almost everything they could without making fundamental changes to the game. I’m really hoping they re-make Gen 5 because those are my favorite and they are stuck on the DS- my adult hands can’t handle holding something that small for hours on end.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nostalgia and remake culture⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Or… Maybe for most of human history we re-told the same stories over and over again for thousands of years until the relatively recent concept of “intellectual property” has forbidden us individuals from doing what comes naturally, forming this sort of weird resentment for when corporations do it?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Major outage: Verizon confirms it’s working to restore service after widespread complaints⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I kept on checking throughout the day yesterday- Verizon’s website said no outages, but istheservicedown showed most of the east coast of the US was down.

  I also heard from friends with business class Internet that they were fine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's coming! :(⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Ah I just searched for Firefox news and the PPA thing was the only one that came up.

  As for firing the executive, I can’t find anything about him being specifically relayed to being open-source anything. Steve Teixeira was their Chief Product Office briefly- he only was hired in 2022 and left the company a few months ago, and prior to that he worked for Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter. So I don’t think this can really be framed as some attack on open-source or privacy. If the allegations are true that they discriminated against him for having cancer that’s shitty of course, but Mozilla has of course claimed that they did not and it’s going to court. They didn’t fire him either- they asked him to take a demotion to Senior VP of Technology Strategy and he chose to leave instead.

  Yes Mozilla bought an ad company. They’re called Anonym and their stated goal is to provide an advertising service that can exist profitably without violating privacy. I hate ads- I block as many as I can and I use a pi-hole. I avoid ad-supported services as much as possible. I’m also privileged enough that I can afford to pay for a subscription to a lot of stuff or just buy physical media to rip and store on my own server. But there was a time when I was a broke college student stuck using campus Internet and playing by their rules, so the safest option I could afford was just to watch ads. Ads can be an ethical business model that helps improve the lives of low-income households. For people with legal or ethical concerns about piracy, or additional restrictions on their Internet, or who just lack the technical skill.

  It’s certainly fair to keep an eye on Anonym and Mozilla in this regard, but I haven’t seen anything objectionable there yet.

  Similar for the Mozilla AI. It seems it’s still in it’s infancy and I’m not a fan of companies jumping on the air bandwagon in general, but at the very least Mozilla has identified the problems with other AI’s and is looking to create a better alternative. If they get caught stealing training data, releasing tools to allow high schoolers to make deep fake revenge porn, tell people to start putting glue in their pizza cheese, or some other crap like that then they should absolutely be criticized for it. But none of that has happened yet that I’m aware of.

  I also can’t find exactly what you’re referring to with Russia. The closest thing is that it looks like there were some extensions that were made to work around Russian state censorship. The Russian government passed a law in March banning such workarounds. In response, Mozilla took down 5 extensions, reviewed them, and then decided to reinstate them in June. Not quite ideal, but still seems like reasonable action to me.

  It’s fair and a good thing to criticize Mozilla and Firefox. But it seems like you’re trying to spin every single move they make as a sign the sky is falling.

  And I also know that there are both states and corporations paying people to go on the Internet and push propaganda. Firrfox has a lot of enemies. You cant just blindly believe every article saying they are succumbing to enshittification.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's coming! :(⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve seen predictions of Firefox’s downfall for decades. Still waiting for it to happen.

  It’s really easy to see the headlines saying things like “Firefox is tracking it’s users and violating their privacy!!!” And panic. But digging into the latest “scandal” (the PPA), it seems like Firefox is behaving pretty reasonably.

  One of the main criticisms is that it’s opt-out instead of opt-in. Which… I kind of agree with Mozilla on. 99% of users aren’t going to know or care about this, and the 1% that do are the kind of people who probably would have extensions to disable it or just use some obscure ultra-private browser instead.

  I don’t fault NOYB for bringing it up either. It’s good to have organizations like that keeping an eye out for everyone.

  But I also get worried that sometimes communies attack their closest allies for being imperfect harder than enemies actively working against their interests.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered confirmed by ESRB rating⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  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.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered confirmed by ESRB rating⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  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.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered confirmed by ESRB rating⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  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.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Six people missing, including British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, after tornado sinks luxury yacht off Sicily⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Over 75,000 people have died today. Almost 40,000,000 so far this year. Are you mourning every one?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sonos considers relaunching its old app⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Should have done this within a few days of the terrible app release. It’s months too late now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Day 21 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I’ve been playing until I forget to post Screenshots⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  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.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Purrs like a kitten⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Is that the Smilodon?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Loyalty⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  What are you talking about? It’s not fake maple syrup at all, but 100% real SYRUP, a completely and separate product no one would ever accidentally confuse for maple syrup when they’re in a hurry at the grocery store.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How long does it take for neurotypical (or just typical) people to get over a minor fight?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Neutorypical here (possibly a touch of undiagnosed autism but not a lot)- I don’t get into them.

  My wife and I take a very proactive approach to communication. We talk through decisions before either of us gets emotionally attached to an answer. We trust each other to have good decision making processes when that isn’t an option. We have thoroughly established that both of us are putting the interests of the household first. We know both of us are acting in good faith, we both apologize, and we accept each other’s apologies.

  In previous, less healthy relationships, I realized what made a “fight” was that her or I wanted it to be. Maybe one of us wanted attention or affirmation or had some inner problems was taking out on the other. Perhaps we just didn’t feel like we were properly heard unless we were angry. Whatever the actual fight about was usually something that could’ve been resolved without emotional energy.

  As for how long to recover after… When it happened it always depends on the specific fight. Sometimes hours, sometimes days, eventually the big one was that we broke up permanently. If the issue has been resolved and someone is harboring resentment because the other party disagreed with them, there’s more underlying emotional issues that need to be resolved.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PlayStation has no games!⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  All PS3’s could play PS1 games too

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fck it, we ball⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t have much to say other than I like these a lot

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Favourite controllers⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  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.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft Closes Redfall Developer Arkane Austin, Hi-Fi Rush Developer Tango Gameworks, and More in Devastating Cuts at Bethesda⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  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.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft Closes Redfall Developer Arkane Austin, Hi-Fi Rush Developer Tango Gameworks, and More in Devastating Cuts at Bethesda⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

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

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Day one and done⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Local pizza places are usually both cheaper and better than chains, at least in every neighborhood I’ve lived in. I think they are better than frozen pizzas, but also about 2x the cost. Both vary from place to place though.

  Aldi’s pizzas are my go-to for value. Usually around $6 a pop now (they were $3.29 pre-pandemic). I add extra cheese and toppings to remind myself I’ve made it in life.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨All three remastered Mass Effect games and their DLC are 90% off on Steam⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Incorporates 3rd-party DRM: EA on-line activation and Origin client software installation and background use required.

  I’m good thanks

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

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

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Goatse, like Michelangelo's David, should be an exception to normal rules of censorship, due to its status as part of our shared cultural heritage.⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Counterpoint: what if older societies already put in place censorship laws that were so successful, they effectively scrubbed any cultural memory of similar “works”?

  Perhaps we should write our rules based on what we want in the future rather than what our ancestors did?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If people from the US love the imperial system so much, why are their musicians using metronomes instead of footonomes?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Do Europeans use metrinomes now?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How does Assassin's Creed 2 hold today?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For what it’s worth, I got into the series a bit late myself and didn’t play AC1 until probably 2012 or 2013. I asked people at the time whether it was worth it to play AC1 or if I should just skip ahead, and everyone told me to skip ahead for a lot of the same reasons you said.

  I’m not sure why I bothered asking because I decided to just play AC1 first anyways and still managed to enjoy it.

  If you’re new to the series, it’s still fun just to run around and climb things and kill people. The story was actually interesting and the Animus was a really cool concept. The occasional shift to present day gameplay helped keep the historical stuff fresh. It doesn’t have the overwhelming volume of useless collectibles strewn about everywhere like later games have.

  I haven’t played it since so maybe it’s aged worse than I remember. It doesn’t have dozens to hundreds of hours of gameplay and side quests in a huge open world. But for a dozen hours in a game focused on a linear main story it was pretty good. Like if you took down the walls of the hallways in Uncharted.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do Americans measure everything in cups?⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Most baking doesn’t require the precision of weighing. They are rough proportions, not an exact science.

  An experienced baker, or really any kind of chef, will learn over time to make minor adjustments based on a lot of stuff. Maybe a bit less sugar, to taste. Maybe a difference in the brand or exact type of ingredient compared to what you’re used to. Maybe it’s a particularly dry day and you need to add more moisture to the dough.

  If it’s something I have a lot of experience with I don’t even bother with measuring at all, just eyeball it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dollar stores are shutting down across America. They did this to themselves⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The dollar stores themselves are part of the problem. They are huge national chains that helped to push out the smaller grocery stores that originally served those communities.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The United States of America, but for Trans People⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That would have been from the channel Half as Interesting for anyone… Interested. As

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨buying coffee⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You don’t see the ultra rich getting fancy coffee from your local barista.

  They pay assistants to do that for them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dark universe King Of The Hill⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Good points: I forgot that most people (at least in the US) are probably thinking of charcoal brickets, using some sort of chemical fire starting product or accelerant.

  Those brickets are wood (and hopefully just wood?) that has been burned in a low-oxygen environment, ground down, combined with a bunch of chemicals and fillers and binder, then pressed into bricks.

  I use natural chunk charcoal. Just pieces of wood burned in a low-oxygen environment with none of the extra junk, although I get the occasional rock or piece of masonry.

  Also the chimney is great. Since I have a gas stovetop, I usually take my chimney inside and put it directly over the biggest burner on high for maybe 30-60 seconds, and that’s all it takes to get it going. There’s of course the risks of fire, carbon monoxide, or getting soot inside which is why you don’t want to use charcoal indoors, so I try to be quick about it.

  Alton Brown is a great resource for anyone looking for more about any sort of cooking. Both the clips from Good Eats and the various YouTube videos and other stuff he’s done since.