Flamekebab
@Flamekebab@piefed.social
- Comment on Sony considers further price rises, as it braces for £500m tariffs impact 13 hours ago:
I wouldn't buy at the current price, raise it as much as you like.
There's just not enough USPs to justify the cost to me, regardless of how shiny the graphics might be.
I want to want it, but it's going to have to do a lot more than it currently is as a platform.
- Comment on Grand Theft Auto VI is Now Coming May 26, 2026 - Rockstar Games 1 week ago:
It'd be interesting to see a developer create a slightly prettier version of Vice City. I appreciate the visuals of the later GTA games but doing more with less seems like it'd make sense. The gap between these games is getting rather nuts.
Then again, "forever" games seem to print money, and that's more important than creative expression. As I get older I have a greater appreciation for games that don't try to outstay their welcome. GTA V seemed to struggle with this - on the one hand it was huge, on the other the story seemed to be about half the length it telegraphed itself as. What's the point in being able to level up the stats of heist crew if there's not enough for it to matter, etc..
(In my opinion, obviously) GTA IV was too long, San Andreas was a sprawling mess, but Vice City was the sweet spot.
- Comment on Grand Theft Auto 6 release date has been announced, but the game has been delayed to 2026 | VGC 1 week ago:
I wonder if the next one will take so long that the world it satirises is long gone. Facebook being parodied in GTA V no longer makes much sense, for example
- Comment on Fly-tippers’ vehicles to be crushed in bid to save England from ‘avalanche of rubbish’ 2 weeks ago:
There is something deeply wrong with people who litter.
- Comment on Does anyone else hate knowing stuff and looking "smart"? 2 weeks ago:
I don't hate it but it does occasionally feel like a burden. As in knowing that I could solve a problem that people are struggling with and whether it's ethical to not help because I don't feel like it.
Hating "knowing stuff" seems bizarre to me though. There's so many interesting things in our world - wanting to know less sounds awful. Like opting into a lobotomy.
- Comment on Caution urged as UK supermarkets check out facial recognition 3 weeks ago:
I wear a custom-fitted mask whenever I'm out in public so they can have fun with that.
- Comment on What Nextcloud document service setup would you recommend? 3 weeks ago:
What are your requirements?
- Comment on Keir Starmer does not believe trans women are women, No 10 says 3 weeks ago:
I can't decide whether they're awful or just saying awful things to pander to the awful bits of the electorate. Both are terrible but they're different flavours of evil.
- Comment on A Rare Shigeru Miyamoto Interview About The Making Of Mario 64 Has Just Surfaced Online | Time Extension 3 weeks ago:
I'm glad it's not just me that has these thoughts. Shigsy did loads of interviews back in the day.
- Comment on Unlike in movies, most smart people aren't good in chess. 3 weeks ago:
Regardless it's an insult I wouldn't throw at anyone other than a fascist.
- Comment on Unlike in movies, most smart people aren't good in chess. 3 weeks ago:
Ye gods, I'm not reading that wall. I tried to make it clear that I was not interested in continuing this interaction but let's make it a bit more explicit: this conversation is over.
- Comment on Unlike in movies, most smart people aren't good in chess. 3 weeks ago:
...it's not an actual apology, it's a rhetorical device. Was that not clear?
I don't really understand why you feel the need to second guess my own assessment of my own mind. I'm not interested in an explanation either, just to be clear. Each time you keep drawing comparisons that paint me as naïve and childlike. It's perhaps not intentional but the end result is tremendously insulting, hence why I'm not interested in further talk on the subject.
With regards to learning new things, the world of human experience is vast. I am not shutting the door on chess out of petulance. I do so knowing the journey I would need to take is incompatible with my own preferences for discovery and growth. To my mind it is a distilled competitive logic puzzle. I don't like logic puzzles of any complexity, and I particularly don't like pared down ones with no set dressing or storytelling.
I am actually quite happy to engage in puzzle solving - it's one of the things I do for a living. However there the puzzles are more cooperative and with many, many more facets to them. They can be solved in a huge number of ways and with a variety of different skills.
I'm explaining this because it seems you need it spelled out rather explicitly. Particularly as you seem to have rather strange ideas about who you're talking to. I'm nearly 40 and your comment about not recognising past versions of myself could not possibly be further from the truth. The various iterations of myself have been built atop the old ones. The eleven year old boy is still in there, as is the teenager, twenty-something, and the several versions of me from my 30s.
I don't necessarily know everything I like, but I've tried a great many things and have a firm understanding of what kinds of activities I dislike. I can also extrapolate fairly well, and it's not like chess is an obscure interest such as shin-kicking. The journey and destination both look rather dull to me, whereas many others do not. I cannot do everything in one lifetime and must choose. Chess has had its chance with me. It blew it. The same is true for gambling, as it happens. I have tried it in various forms and found it universally dull. I also don't enjoy ales, gloomy literature, tennis, or horror movies. There's much about those things I don't know and I intend to keep it that way in order to explore other potential interests. Things that I hopefully won't be bored by, or at least I enjoy some element of the journey.
Otherwise I might as well just be working - at least then the boring bits result in a paycheque.
- Comment on Unlike in movies, most smart people aren't good in chess. 3 weeks ago:
That's part of my point. If we were talking about painting then the skills might well be useful for other stuff, but everything I've read says that it's just a game. It doesn't build other useful skills.
- Comment on Unlike in movies, most smart people aren't good in chess. 3 weeks ago:
What I played was called chess, followed the rules of chess, and seemed to be chess. I didn't like it.
Building an opinion around the game I actually played rather than some hypothetical higher level game feels like an extremely reasonable approach to me. I'm sorry that you feel it's not, I guess.
- Comment on Unlike in movies, most smart people aren't good in chess. 3 weeks ago:
all I said is that we are unable to objectively judge whether chess is fun or not before we've learned the rules and memorized common openings.
At no point did I seek to judge it objectively.
I have played some chess at various points throughout my life. My subjective judgement is that it didn't grab me, unlike many, many other games. It might well have some divine beauty to it but the subjective barrier to entry is far too high. I also don't bother with TV shows that "get good in the second season" or endure multiple chapters of tedium before bailing on a book.
I'm just saying don't accuse reading of being "unfun" because you hate learning grammer and punctuation.
You're now putting words in my mouth.
At what point did I state anything other than a subjective opinion?
In fact I went out of my way to make it abundantly clear that these are my opinions and not a judgement on the game as a whole.
It's unfun at the level you're at, but the next level is a completely different game.
I'm not saying you have to go to the next level, just stop judging it based on the current level.If this thread is anything to go by, I wish I'd played even less chess than I already have. Sorry that I'm enjoying my hobbies wrong?
I have not enjoyed my limited experiences with chess. They have turned me off pursuing it further. The same is not true of many other games I've played. To me that makes chess subjectively worse than those other games.
- Comment on Unlike in movies, most smart people aren't good in chess. 3 weeks ago:
I really don't buy this comparison at all. I think a better comparison would be to JRPGs - "it gets fun after 30 hours!"
There's also the presumption that a game like chess must be fun and everyone will definitely enjoy it.
I'm really glad you enjoy it, I find it irritating that I don't. However if the basics of it don't draw me in, and I see no ancillary value in learning how to play it to a higher level, why would I continue?
The world is full of enjoyable diversions and not everything is for everyone. I enjoy playing football (as in soccer) but find watching it to be awful. If I invested enough time I could perhaps find myself engaged enough in the bigger picture, care about the minutia, but why? There's so many other things I found enjoyable from the outset. Reading included. - Comment on Unlike in movies, most smart people aren't good in chess. 3 weeks ago:
Pretty much the problem. It's very pure but I find that puts me off rather than draws me in. I kind of have the same problem with Quake 3!
- Comment on Unlike in movies, most smart people aren't good in chess. 3 weeks ago:
If you're going to throw around an insult like that I'd like to see some working. I find chess boring, I'm not a fucking fascist.
- Comment on Unlike in movies, most smart people aren't good in chess. 3 weeks ago:
The pared-down nature of chess really puts me off. I'm sure there's some elegant simplicity in it but I mostly find it dull. I like an element of randomness in my games.
Chess doesn't feel like a gateway to other, more fun games, and if it's not a fun game for me, why would I pursue it? I'm fairly sure it doesn't build skills that translate to anything else.
- Comment on Ideas for Hosting on a 2009 Netbook? 3 weeks ago:
I thought it was just the lads in my flat that called them eeeeeeeeeeeepeecees!
- Comment on Cheese rolling could be added to UK heritage list 4 weeks ago:
In all seriousness - why isn't it? It's definitely intangible cultural heritage.
- Comment on Atari 2600: The Atlantis of Game Consoles 4 weeks ago:
smothers it with a towel and stuffs it into an oven
- Comment on Atari 2600: The Atlantis of Game Consoles 4 weeks ago:
Or sitting in a cupboard off-gassing, oozing, and generally making the home a safer environment.
It does remind me of the Acts of Gord's use for an N64 - as a doorstop with a note saying "This is all I am good for."
- Comment on Atari 2600: The Atlantis of Game Consoles 4 weeks ago:
Oh! Ewaste! So kind of you...
- Comment on Atari 2600: The Atlantis of Game Consoles 4 weeks ago:
I've yet to encounter a single Atari 2600 game that was worth more than 30 seconds of my time.
- Comment on 'Oh god': There's a buried Steam help page that shows how much money you've ever spent on the platform, and you may not want to know 4 weeks ago:
Considering I have 827 games on Steam, the figure of $1620.26 doesn't seem too bad. Now I've probably bought a load more bundles bumping that up, but there's no convenient way to figure out how much that adds (let's round to $2000). I've had the account 18 years, 9 months.
So that's... $8.89 per month.
Yeah, that seems pretty reasonable.
- Comment on Steam Deck / Gaming News #10 4 weeks ago:
I've been playing (and loving) Fallout London. It turns out that the pokey little locations in their games are Bethesda's fault. The engine does still suck, but it doesn't have to suck as much as it does in their hands. London is huge!
- Comment on Am I going crazy, or has people's spelling gotten awful lately? 4 weeks ago:
I'm always perplexed when I see porn videos with titles that use the continuous present rather than the simple present. One would have thought that the simple present would be the basic stuff for English as a second language, rather than the much less useful continuous present.
- Comment on Am I going crazy, or has people's spelling gotten awful lately? 4 weeks ago:
There's a few I've noticed in the last seven years or so - lots of Americans can't seem to conjugate "run". It results in horrible sentences like "I used to ran this game" or "I have ran this event before". No idea why that's happening but squirt those people with a plant mister.
It's even worse than people who don't finish the words they're writing "suppose to" and the like. In the brine with thee!
- Comment on PS5 price to rise in Europe, Australia and New Zealand 4 weeks ago:
I guess I don't get to play either of their exclusive games.