SCmSTR
@SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- Comment on Majority of CEOs report zero payoff from AI splurge 4 days ago:
So what has effectively happened? Just… Ruined a bunch of stuff and destabilized a bunch of society and lined the pockets of a few companies?
- Comment on Such a dreamy guy 1 week ago:
Jate
- Comment on Digg launches its new Reddit rival to the public 1 week ago:
I was interested for like 15-20 seconds until I realized I have this place now and I actually don’t give an exploding flying fuck
- Comment on 1 week ago:
Information has generally always been power
- Comment on Day 539 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I've been playing 2 weeks ago:
Alan Wake universe wat
Is 3 bad or something?
- Comment on Rockstar still hasn't offered a convincing reason for firing over 30 GTA 6 developers 2 weeks ago:
I’m not sure even that would fix it. It’s clearly a capitalism-needs-to-learn-what-actually-makes-games-good problem. Unionization might be the real-world fix, but I’m worried that, even with that, getting a company to create unique games that are fun and high value to gamers could be out of purview.
It’s a money-people in charge problem, the same way that money-people are in charge of things like healthcare. I’m really not sure that unionizing a publicly traded company will have more effect than just changing who is being told what medical procedures are authorized, or in gaming’s case: what decisions to implement to make the investors more money.
And now that this structure has been in place long enough and has gotten so ingrained in the surrounding structures, like education and standard business practices and expectations, and also in culture, it’s going to take more than unionization. Maybe if the whole industry suddenly unionized and had a very clear goal of telling the bean counters to collectively fuck off, but good luck with that happening. We’d all like to see that happen.
- Comment on Day 539 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I've been playing 2 weeks ago:
Just checked my steam library, I have all three games. 2001, 2003, and 2012.
I still remember seeing the demo on a pcgamer demo disc, back when coconut monkey was still a thing. I remember thinking that the game seemed fun, but probably relied on the matrix mechanic too much. And have wanted to play it, but haven’t been strongly driven to for many years now.
Maybe it’s time.
- Comment on Day 539 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I've been playing 2 weeks ago:
Max Payne is still on my list of to-play games
- Comment on Rockstar still hasn't offered a convincing reason for firing over 30 GTA 6 developers 2 weeks ago:
Don’t stand for it. Be more aware and stop paying for bad behavior.
And stop kids that don’t know any better from getting sucked into it, too.
- Comment on Rockstar still hasn't offered a convincing reason for firing over 30 GTA 6 developers 2 weeks ago:
It would have been good if not for horrible load times, hostile balancing, and a live service slow grind model built to sell in game currency. The soullessness of it is why it was bad.
- Comment on Nothing to see here. 3 weeks ago:
Just read a little about it.
Dozens of accusations and lawsuits, ranging from 15 years old and up, were filed against him around 2020. He was arrested, but then a judge found Jeremy mentally unfit and now he’s receiving mental care or something in a private residence. Some of the women sued the bar he was meeting people in and they settled out of court.
Sounds like bs to me.
- Comment on The 10 most anticipated video games of 2026 3 weeks ago:
Gta6 hl3 es6 LET’S GOOOOOO
- Comment on The Best-Selling Video Games Since 2020 3 weeks ago:
My gpu that I bought in 2021 came with a copy of cod cold war. And EVGA or Nvidia probably paid for that, I just didn’t.
- Comment on We'll probably never see a Grand Theft Auto set in a futuristic city like GTA 2 because the team "hated it": "People didn’t connect with the game or its city" 3 weeks ago:
No. What the heck? You can/could have used sticky keys to elevate account access??? What?
- Comment on We'll probably never see a Grand Theft Auto set in a futuristic city like GTA 2 because the team "hated it": "People didn’t connect with the game or its city" 3 weeks ago:
I remember figuring out how to make my account an admin account in like Windows 2k through some obscure setting that was still available. We stared with weird flash games in the library, and eventually played unreal tournament.
- Comment on Why Are Cars Getting Rid Of Android Auto? 3 weeks ago:
Fucking clickbait titles jfc
- Comment on Dying Light 4 weeks ago:
Recently discovered The Division 2.
Apparently this game came out before the pandemic and also predicted it. So-so gunplay, great rpg progression so far (I’m level 23/40), and the world is insanely beautiful. I like dungeon crawlers, I like exploring, I like shooting stuff, so this game fits pretty well.
Unfortunately, it has this weird, mouse sensitivity jitter issue that seems pretty tied into framerate for some reason. I dropped my mouse polling rate way down and that helped a ton, but it’s still there for whatever reason.
- Comment on Looks legit. What do you all think? 4 weeks ago:
They’re evolving
- Comment on Spotify Music Library Scraped by Pirate Activist Group 4 weeks ago:
Lol?
- Comment on Devastated PC builder orders DDR5 RAM from Amazon, receives DDR2 and some weights — counterfeit 32GB kit a worrying sign of rising return and sales fraud 4 weeks ago:
Will*
- Comment on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 loses Game of the Year from the Indie Game Awards 4 weeks ago:
I 100% disagree with you and people saying it has too many awards. If it deserves an award, it deserves an award.
But holy shit ai is hot condensed bad. I don’t care if your argument is “but it’s only the fine details of the textures”, maybe pay somebody to do that for you, because there’s enough fine details in nature. Also, ai is vastly based on stolen work, and I don’t give a rat fuck bullshit ounce if 0.00000000000000000000001% of ai is completely ethically designed, trained, powered, sourced, ran, operated, invested, and gives proceeds to the starving children’s fund… that shit doesn’t exist, and if it actually does by some mental gymnastics loophole, it is, by far, an exception to the rule.
Fuck ai and fuck all you people with weakass moral compasses encouraging this irresponsible destructive bane upon society right now. It doesn’t have to be at all like this.
- Comment on Steam winter sale is live. What patient games are you picking up? 5 weeks ago:
I feel the need to clarify that I was half sarcastic teasing
- Comment on Steam winter sale is live. What patient games are you picking up? 5 weeks ago:
Lmao, no, it’s exactly what it sounds like. And it’s actually GOOD too.
- Comment on Steam winter sale is live. What patient games are you picking up? 5 weeks ago:
Hey, sometimes people are drawn to new games rather than tried and true games.
- Comment on Steam winter sale is live. What patient games are you picking up? 5 weeks ago:
Highly depends on your vr experience and what type of games you’ve played.
Horror on VR is on a completely different level.
But some games that I put in a good pile are:
Arken age, Fujii, Zero Caliber, Contractors, Hotdogs Horseshoes and Hand Grenades, Vermillion, Kayak VR mirage, Until You Fall, After The Fall, Half-Life Alyx, Down the Rabbit Hole, Vanishing Realms, Anthro Heat, and Google Earth VR.
It’s hard to find well rounded games that are also fleshed out. You generally get one or the other. H3 (hotdogs horseshoes and hand grenades) is one example, where the guns are top tier (and oh god the mods are so extensive) and the dev is STILL releasing updates weekly, even though the game came out in like 2016 or something, which is basically the first rush of VR. H3 basically has no story or continuity, and is very much a sandbox game. The dev adds in this and that and maybe a new gamemode or map or feature, but that game is really what you make of it. And I’ve dropped a few hours in, heh.
Arken Age, on the other hand, is kind of the opposite. That’s a somewhat linear explorer adventure game with a story (it’s also a much newer game… with more Meta money), and while it has SOME depth, it’s very much NOT a sandbox game. It’s closer to a Zelda game with guns and swords. Not my personal favorite, but still fun.
The Kayak one is cool, but feels like a big dev trying to make a money grab, until you realize it’s a very small indie studio of only a few people trying to pay bills and just charge too much for dlc because they’re probably too young or overvalue their work… i personally like their dlc, even if they’re really overpriced. Like very overpriced. I think they’re charging like $20 for each map that should be 10$ for all of the existing maps. And the progression feels live-service paced (slow). But it really is nice to just sit down in VR and kayak around in a beautiful, and sometimes exciting world.
I could talk about this for a long, long time. I’ll try to wrap it up.
Half life alyx is great, but VR has conventions that are developing and coming into popularity over time. An example of what I mean is this:
On a modern pistol, you have several controls. You have the gun itself, the magazine, the magazine release, you have the slide, the slide release, and the trigger. Which buttons do you map to what? The trigger and magazine release are pretty easy, but what about grabbing the slide vs grabbing the pistol itself? What about adding on a sight? What about a scope? What if you want to zero in or adjust the scope? Can you two-hand hold the pistol? Can you partial out the magazine to check how many rounds are in it? Can you add in individual rounds to a partial magazine? Are magazines unique or can you just drop a mag and release and not waste rounds? How far in do you have to load a magazine before it pulls itself the rest of the way in? Can you manually cock a hammer?
Now, what if you have a double barrel, side by side shotgun? Or fire modes?
You get the point. It’s a lot different in VR. If you play enough games, you definitely see the trends come and go.
Back to half life alyx, that game is really good, but it’s a game from 2019, and technology and conventions can move FAST. Some stuff catches on, other stuff gets forgotten, innovation usually keeps pushing.
I think a large part of VR right now is watching and being part of this insanely young medium figure itself out in ALL of the ways. What a time to be alive.
Oh! Another thing I’ve noticed, is that older VR games, especially ones funded by meta/oculus, liked to show trailers of players superimposed over in-game footage. It’s fucking awful and cringe, but I do understand where they’re coming from, trying to show off a very new technology to the masses that HEY, THIS IS VR AND YOU HAVE ACTUAL PRESENCE. Or currently, where trailers try to show off the game by recording players ACT out stuff in game by flailing or physically reacting to stuff in game. Like shielding your face from an explosion or flailing your arms when flying through the air. Unfortunately, it looks just pre-rendered motion and once the potential buyer figures that out, it’s like realizing you’re being lied to and instantly erodes trust. But at the same time, you have to advertise to NEW vr players, who honestly DO react like that a lot of the time. Even I sometimes still flinch or fight aggressively in games that have you use swords. Like Until You Fall.
Oh, I also forgot to add Into the Radius. Those two games (1&2) are deeply flawed, but really fun stalker-type games. Best in class 100%. They’re both somehow still being developed. The mod scene in the first game is much better, but the second one is coming along nicely, and recently just had an update that added in gun PARTS. Like uppers, lowers, trigger assemblies, barrels. Real h3 mods type stuff. But all in a world of horror and supernatural anomalies and death and shooting guns. I’m holding off playing more for the devs to finish the games, which may take a year or two. They’re fun now, but they keep adding in big patches that change the game a lot and it messes with the challenge continuity for me.
Ugh. I need to cut off my spiel.
Uh, tldr: buy hl:alyx and anthro heat, and don’t sleep on Google Earth vr because it’s free. Oh, arizona sunshine is a finished product and worth actually playing through. Sorry for my adhd.
- Comment on Steam winter sale is live. What patient games are you picking up? 5 weeks ago:
Valid question.
Honestly like not-Anal said, it usually doesn’t make a ton of sense. However, I’ve found that not all sales are created equal, and sometimes some sales are much better priced, even compared to later sales. You really have to pay attention, though.
For example, if a dev is active or WILL be active (this is where the guesswork/gambling comes in), the price of the game could go UP. I see it all the time with early access games or games that get popular. Or even with real goods, like cars or other collectables where they become more popular and either resale goes up or the manufacturer realizes they can sell it for more, or outright increases the value of the product.
Another example is when devs play fuck-fuck games with sales, trying to draw in more attention, and it works. This happens often with undiscovered games, which, in the VR space, does happen pretty often. A good place to pay attention to is the Humble Bundles, but I know this isn’t exactly relevant to the steam sales, themselves.
And also just like in real life, and similar with devs playing fuck-fuck games with sales and not all sales being created equal, sometimes certain dates are meaningful to the game or the devs. Like if the dev has a case of brainrot and on June 7th they offer a particularly good sale, or the VR sale happens once a year, or Black Friday or something.
Additionally, shopping for games can actually be a bit time consuming, so even if the prices don’t go down further, finding games ahead of time can actually be rewarding. Buying your first VR headset or a headset with new features and having no games and having to shop can be a real bummer. Imagine buying a brand new car and having no gas/power until later in the year, and then also having to get it one gallon/liter/watthour at a time. With VR games, some of them do just crash in price. But usually, almost all VR games find their equilibrium in price eventually, since the community is generally all enthusiasts who want to see the community and technology grow healthy, myself included.
And that very last point sort of applies to the previous ones, and also applies across VR in general (minus a handful of devs and won’t last if the platform gets popular since it attracts money-ghouls).
- Comment on Steam winter sale is live. What patient games are you picking up? 5 weeks ago:
You and your good advice.
- Comment on Steam winter sale is live. What patient games are you picking up? 5 weeks ago:
If anybody is into vr, a lot of vr stuff is on sale right now
- Comment on Steam winter sale is live. What patient games are you picking up? 5 weeks ago:
If you wait too long, larian’s new game will be out
- Comment on Typical monopoly people 5 weeks ago:
Don’t worry, we could get there again 😬