cerebralhawks
@cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Comment on Android will become a locked-down platform in 194 day 4 hours ago:
I haven’t even used a custom keyboard [since the Pixel]
Why would you? Gboard is already the best.
or launcher
That’s a weird choice. I get it, before 2016 a lot of Android forks were ad-ridden trash. But, Nova Prime was a thing long before the Pixel, and it makes it easy to export/import settings across devices.
- Comment on Android will become a locked-down platform in 194 day 1 day ago:
“You can’t install whatever software you want” is a good argument, but I haven’t found anything I want to install on my iPhone that I can’t. At one point it was emulators, but Apple overturned that a few years ago. I have an emulator on my iPhone, and it’s one of the best (Delta; if you say RetroArch is better, I don’t disagree, but I could get that, too). But I almost never play it. That’s entirely my choice. My use case scenario doesn’t need me installing any apps that aren’t in the App Store.
Not that I don’t have a problem with the App Store. It’s mostly trash. They don’t highlight good apps, they highlight profitable apps, which means subscriptions. App Store is virtually 100% trash, and its recommendations are 100% trash.
- Comment on Did anyone really think the Final Fantasy 7 remake was better than the original PS1 version? 1 day ago:
I think the bias is because it was originally one game, and everything added to pad it out to 3 is mostly filler. The people the game is made for know where the story ends. Ending the first one right after Midgar feels like we played a demo, even if it only took 2-3 hours to do in the original. It’s even kind of the same in the remake. Bomb the first reactor. Get back to Seventh Heaven. Bomb the second reactor. Meet Aerith. Head back to Seventh Heaven. See Tifa being taken to Don Corneo’s place. Follow. Get dolled up and picked. Go through the sewers. Back to Seventh Heaven. [redacted] happens. Go topside and kick some Shinra ass. That all happens in both games, but Remake pads it out, and with almost nothing worth doing. You jump through a lot more hoops. There’s a mission where everyone but you gets to meet Jessie’s parents and you do something else. You meet a new SOLDIER, and you get practice for the bike scene at the end. They expand the trip to the second reactor, they expand the stuff around meeting Aerith (meeting all the other kids), and they expand the climb up. Somehow 2-3 hours becomes 25-30 hours. So yes, especially if you never played the original, it’s a whole game. For $40 (and I get Remake + Intergrade, plus I get the OG FF7) I’m not complaining. If Rebirth is also $40, it’s an insta-buy. More than that, and I’ll consider it. Much more than that, I’ll just wait for a sale but it’s still going on the wishlist. But, for someone who hasn’t played it before? Yeah, it’s absolutely valid as its own game.
- Comment on Android will become a locked-down platform in 194 day 1 day ago:
Was there ever? If you’re gonna pay iPhone prices but get weaker hardware and they sell your personal data, why not just get an iPhone? Custom launcher? Better keyboard? Certainly valid reasons, but I just don’t see the value.
Way I see it, my iPhone is a pocket version of my Mac. A computer sold as an actual computer, not a vector to sweep up my personal data and sell it to the highest bidder.
Never got down with Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, or any of that shit. Yes, I know, I’m the weird one. And I’m okay with that.
- Comment on Did anyone really think the Final Fantasy 7 remake was better than the original PS1 version? 2 days ago:
So whereabouts does Rebirth leave off?
And yes, Remake is the length of a full game, but it also leaves the story incomplete. It might be better to think of them as parts of a trilogy.
- Comment on Did anyone really think the Final Fantasy 7 remake was better than the original PS1 version? 2 days ago:
Yeah, making Barret look like a real guy was certainly a choice. I don’t mind it, but yeah, he was always supposed to be larger than life.
I had more beef with the way Cloud looked. He just looks silly. He did look kinda silly in the original, though. Cait Sith probably got it the best, still looking like an animated toy, but at least looking cooler. And Red XIII looked great in the remake. Aerith was on point, but there was something a bit off with Tifa.
The rest, I didn’t know most of that. I knew about the hardware and Nintendo/Sony stuff, but not the back story with the developers and writers.
- Comment on Did anyone really think the Final Fantasy 7 remake was better than the original PS1 version? 2 days ago:
I feel like Square has been done with turn-based for a while. I think Secret of Mana had the “best of both worlds” in that you could freely move, but you had to wait for your attack gauge to rise before you could hit at full force (and you could charge it for stronger attacks). FF7R kind of does that as well where you can only do your special moves (or even use items) if your ATB has filled at least one space (and some actions require 2). So in a sense it was turn-based, you just didn’t have to sit there and take damage (unless it was an unblockable AOE attack, of course).
I always felt like, with turn-based, if you had the right strategy and stats, you could win any fight. It wasn’t about player skill, it was about player knowledge. Knowing what attacks are more effective, learning the enemies, but if you suck at gaming, you have all the time in the world to enter the commands, the enemy will wait their turn (and then you have to wait your turn, like chess or something). I just don’t like having to take the hits (regardless of Materia like “Cover”). Still, I do agree, it’s another way it feels like Remake has taken the soul out of the original.
- Comment on Europe is ready to ditch US tech for private alternatives 2 days ago:
Good. Start by introducing a viable smartphone OS, because right now it’s down to Apple and Google, both from the US.
Linux is a great place to start. Android is based on Linux. Even a fork of Android that doesn’t give Google any data would be a good place to start, but relying on AOSP — Google’s open source repository — isn’t ideal.
- Comment on Did you like Star Trek: Nemesis? 2 days ago:
The worst TNG movie by far. It had a couple good lines, and it could have been almost as good as Insurrection if it didn’t magically hand wave Data’s sacrifice away.
I remember leaving the theater annoyed. I saw them all in theaters from Undiscovered Country onward and it was the only one I wasn’t happy with.
- Comment on Did anyone really think the Final Fantasy 7 remake was better than the original PS1 version? 2 days ago:
I’m not a fan of JRPGs. FF7 was kind of the exception. I tried 8 and 9, but couldn’t get into them.
We have Persona 5 on PS3 and Persona 5 Royal on Switch. It’s a cool game, but I can only hear you’ll never see it coming but so many times before I go mad. I’ve met some of the voice actors though, so that’s cool.
I wish I got to play more of Expedition 33. The first part was a blast. Then I got to this fight I thought I had to lose because it was scripted. When it ended and said I died, I’m like “when did this become Dark Souls?”. Took me right out of the immersion. I’ve heard the difficulty has been balanced since then? I ended up reading a summary of what happens in the story, and I am so lost… I imagine if I experienced it in-game as opposed to reading a couple paragraphs on Wikipedia, it would make more sense.
- Comment on Did anyone really think the Final Fantasy 7 remake was better than the original PS1 version? 2 days ago:
I mean, no one’s saying the original FF7 looks good. The characters were blocky messes. It’s just, I’ve been gaming since the early 80s, and I still think FF7 looks good. But yes, the random battles were problematic, especially when you were lost. Fortunately the new version (of the OG) lets you turn them off, so if I’m lost, I turn off the random battles and I just get my bearings, then turn them right back on again.
One thing about Remake, it wasn’t just that the quests were filler (they were), but the way it would waste your time. Go here, go there, squeeze through this gap, do the animation every time you wanna talk to the moogle cosplayer… it was not great as far as the pacing. And some parts were just too long, like the part leading up to Sector 7, or the climb up to HQ.
- Comment on Did anyone really think the Final Fantasy 7 remake was better than the original PS1 version? 2 days ago:
It’s funny because I liked the combat just fine in Final Fantasy XV. I like the real-time stuff. It’s not what I expect for 7, but it beats when you’re on the open world and you’re trying to figure out where to go and every 3-4 steps it’s a fight. It’s disorienting, and frankly poor game design — one of the few faults I have for a game I love. The turn-based is okay, not my cup of tea, but I don’t mind how FF7 does it.
Another thing I didn’t like about Remake was the music discs. The music’s already not great, why do I have to buy it? Then, I scour every inch of the game and still I miss a few? I didn’t even wanna go back with the chapter select to get the achievement, though I may later.
- Comment on stalagTite and stalagMite: The "t" in stalactite looks like a stalactite, hanging from the ceiling. Similarly, the "m" in stalagmite looks like a stalagmite, rising from the floor. 3 days ago:
Yeah, I know…
Sadly that’s the point of a tl;dr, it misses the nuance for people who can’t be arsed to read a whole paragraph.
I will also add that he died because of positional asphyxia. It’s not just that his heart couldn’t handle it. The way we breathe really only works if we’re right side up or laying down. If you’re upside down for a long period of time, your lungs are pushing against your guts and other organs that are pressing down on your lungs. It’s trivial to do for an hour or two, but beyond that, you’re breathing against physics and it just gets harder and harder. He also didn’t have much energy since he worked so hard to get in there. Even if they were able to pipe him sustenance, he couldn’t beat the physics and it was just a matter of time.
They also tried a few things to get him out, but because of the angle he was at, I think they broke one of his legs trying to pull him back out and he told them to stop trying. They were able to lower a phone to him and he was able to speak to his wife and children and tell them he wasn’t coming home, so that had to weigh on him as well.
It’s tempting to think about digging him out. He was underground, so you think “okay so dig.” But it’s rocks, so you can only use demolition (explosive). Explosives push things away, so if you used demolitions to get at him, you’d be crushing him. There’s no magical black hole bomb that just vaporises the rock. You break rocks with explosives by blowing them apart (pushing them away from you). The only way you could use demolition to get where he was would be to drop the explosives in with him, to make a bigger hole. Unfortunately he would be killed in the process and his body destroyed.
So yeah, fuck caves.
- Submitted 3 days ago to games@lemmy.world | 33 comments
- Comment on stalagTite and stalagMite: The "t" in stalactite looks like a stalactite, hanging from the ceiling. Similarly, the "m" in stalagmite looks like a stalagmite, rising from the floor. 3 days ago:
I’m 46. I can’t tell you hour long it’s been since I heard these terms. They’re completely unimportant outside of a very niche science (but, not entirely useless knowledge).
The stuff about Nutty Putty Cave plummeted my interest in caves to absolute zero (tl;dr caver ends up trapped upside down and his remains are still there and the cave has since closed, real nightmare fuel and not even the only cave it’s happened in).
- Comment on The 20 Darkest Anime Series of All Time, Ranked 3 days ago:
It doesn’t get darker than NGE? Really?
And they didn’t even mention Inuyashiki or Redo of Healer…
- Comment on YouTube adds new hurdles for ad blockers, and there's currently no way around it 4 days ago:
68% of people who responded to the poll at the link say that they are not affected. Only 10% of responders are.
Probably A/B testing.
I’m not lowering my security for Google.
- Comment on Why all Animes are made in Japan? 4 days ago:
Look up Link Click. Anime made in China. China has a few anime series, but Link Click may be the best one. It’s about a couple guys who use their strange super powers to help others. One can see 12 hours before and after a photo is taken, and the other can possess the picture takes for 12 hours from when the picture was taken (basically time travel with extra steps). They do this to help people and eventually attract the attention of villains with weirder powers. The second season has this wild opening with reversed Chinese rap verses (with matching, mirrored subtitles!). Goes way harder than most anime. And completely original. Dubbed in Chinese, Japanese, and English (that I know of).
- Comment on Kate Mulgrew Defends ‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ And Captain Ake From “Disrespectful” Online Attacks 4 days ago:
I haven’t seen STA yet, but it seems like, with a few exceptions, the most recent Star Trek has always been controversial, since The Next Generation. I feel like Enterprise deserved it the most, and SNW escaped most of it. Discovery probably got it the worst? Though TNG was by far the least deserving of it.
- Comment on Sony-led program offers PS5 rentals starting at $13.50 a month in the UK across 12, 24, or 36-month leases — console has to be returned at the end of the contract 4 days ago:
I paid $30-something a month for an Xbox Series X and GamePass for 2 years. And I got to keep the Xbox!
(Xbox All Access. It’s no longer offered. And you saved $20 if you did it, at the original price of GamePass Ultimate, $15/month, it’s since doubled in price since they told Congress buying Activision would lower prices for consumers.)
- Comment on 'Terminator Zero' Won't Return for Season 2 As Creator Details Cancellation 4 days ago:
Expected but disappointing.
- Comment on Ars Technica makes up quotes from Matplotlib maintainer("An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me"); pulls story 5 days ago:
Ah, okay. You just see Aurich in every other article. He’s like the head man. No idea what his real name is. The name Ken Fisher isn’t unknown to me, but neither is it familiar.
I guess I could have looked at Wikipedia. I guess I never really cared that much to read up on it. I’ve just been reading them off and on for, I don’t even remember how long. Even had an account once.
- Comment on Ars Technica makes up quotes from Matplotlib maintainer("An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me"); pulls story 5 days ago:
You know what’s cool about Lemmy? You can take away the voting aspect. Not from others, but from what you see. I see the arrows, for example, so I could up- or down-vote you, but I don’t see how many other people have done the same. I literally just see arrows. And I sort by new, both in threads and on the timeline. So someone downvoted to oblivion still appears to me right in the timeline with no affect. It’s a shame this isn’t the default. That way, for it to be apparent that someone’s opinion is disliked, people would have to do more than click on arrows, they’d have to reply and go back and forth, put themselves out there.
I upvote helpfulness and kindness, downvote rudeness, and actually don’t vote on like 99% of what I see. I think voting made the social Internet worse. JMO
- Comment on Ars Technica makes up quotes from Matplotlib maintainer("An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me"); pulls story 6 days ago:
Ars is owned by Condé Nast which also owns Reddit, so “AI slop” is part of their business.
I still trust Ars Technica (I don’t like them much but I do trust them… it’s complicated) and I trust Aurich (their founder/editor-in-chief) to act fairly. They don’t work on the weekends or holidays though, so he’s not touching it until Tuesday, though.
- Comment on Ars Technica makes up quotes from Matplotlib maintainer("An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me"); pulls story 6 days ago:
Guy named Scott runs a GitHub (code base). AI agent (bot acting on behalf of a person, who has yet to come forward) submitted code. Scott rejects it. AI agent writes a “hit piece” (defaming article) on Scott.
Ars Technica, a trusted tech/science blog for nearly 25 years, writes a story about it, but the two authors who worked on it used AI to write the blog entry. Scott calls them out in the comments. At first he’s accused of lying or being a bot, but people dig into it and realise Ars Technica made up their quotes.
An Ars Technica user calls them out in their forums for posting AI slop as journalism, and the site’s founder and/or owner (“Aurich”) promises an investigation, and deletes the article, removing all the comments, and shutting down discussion over what happened until his team can investigate internally.
(Worth noting that Ars Technica is owned by a conglomerate called Condé Nast which also owns Reddit; therefore, Condé Nast is involved with AI, and also other unsavoury stuff, but relevant to this, AI.)
- Comment on Microsoft's Notepad Got Pwned (They Added AI To It, So...) 6 days ago:
You think? Assuming we’re just talking about the Microsoft product, I only use it at work, and I’m not signed into my Xbox (Microsoft) account there. I am signed into the corporate Intranet, which I use to log on, and I can use it to access Office Online, so maybe they’re synced through that? OneDrive is installed as it is part of Windows (then again, so is the Xbox app) but I can’t do anything with it. It says my account isn’t provisioned for it and I just get a blank screen. Same with Copilot — I’ve tried it. The hardware is capable, I suppose it is technically a “Copilot PC” though it isn’t branded as such… but it won’t run without a Windows account. And I’m not using my personal one.
I guess I can test it by logging onto another workstation and opening Sticky Notes.
Unless you’re implying Microsoft just stores all kinds of data Windows can find in the cloud… that would not surprise me. You’d be saying every company that uses Windows has their trade secrets and whatnot in Microsoft’s cloud. I would not doubt that either, fuck Microsoft and all that, but I kinda doubt a lot of companies would just let that go. I think by using our own intranet for a lot of stuff, we sidestep most of that. I’m not really sure though. I also don’t care that much. I don’t have a stake in the company, after all. And I’m going to try to be a responsible steward of the information I do have. If I had Copilot access, for example, I wouldn’t tell it anything personal, private, or confidential. But as far as what Microsoft actually does? I figure I have very little power over that.
- Comment on An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me 6 days ago:
And then Ars Technica used an AI to write an article about it, and then this Scott guy came in and corrected them, people called them out… and they deleted the article. I saw the comments before they deleted it. It wasn’t pretty. So this is where we are now on the timeline. AI writing hit pieces and articles about doing so.
- Comment on Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse - Announcement Trailer 1 week ago:
There were Metroidvanias outside Castlevania as well. And that’s my point. You take the person who made the games what they are for most people, it’s just another one of the clones, but with official branding.
It’s like when Call of Duty started adding multiple developers so they could churn out the series. People were paying for the name, they didn’t really care about who actually worked on it. But, those games were super formulaic.
A better example would be Rockband and Guitar Hero. Harmonix made Guitar Hero, but they wanted to add drums and vocals, and publisher Activision said nah, just stick to the one controller. But Harmonix were all musicians (mostly indie bands around Boston) so for that and other reasons, they left. Activision kept remaking Guitar Hero 2 with different songs via the Tony Hawk developer, Neversoft, and it was mostly okay, until Rockband started getting big, and Activision realised they needed drums and vocals as well. Long story short, they did very poorly. They kept churning out games, mostly to flood the market with crap. Guitar Hero is now dead, and Rockband is now called Fortnite Festival (I’m not kidding).
So yeah, Castlevania without the guy who made Castlevania what it is and into something people want to play? It might be successful, but it’ll be a soulless husk at best. Maybe it’ll even be fun, but it just sounds to me like a game dreamed up by suits in a board room who hate gaming except for the profits, not a game made by gamers for gamers and for the love of the game. Like most shit churned out by Activision, Bethesda, Ubisoft, EA, etc. (And yes, many of those publishers have storied histories.)
- Comment on Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse - Announcement Trailer 1 week ago:
So, the good ones, minus Simon’s Quest.
- Comment on Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse - Announcement Trailer 1 week ago:
Looks interesting…
…but you should know the guy who made the Castlevania games left Konami a while ago. He makes the Bloodstained games with a different publisher. So it’s a new IP but it’s basically the same thing. And they have a new one coming out. The first one, Ritual of the Night, was a spiritual successor to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. They also made a handful of 8-bit games in the IP to satisfy the old-school crowd.
So there are basically no “real” Castlevania games. If it uses the Castlevania name, the creator isn’t involved. If he is, it’s called Bloodstained and not Castlevania.