Latest Comments by Philadelphus
Lefties unite! Counter-Strike 2 now lets you swap hands
26 April 2024 at 6:36 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: NathanaelKStottlemyerEverything from ice scream scoops to scissors are against us, It's nice to know that valve has our back.
I'm a little surprised it took this long honestly, TF2 has had left-handed view models for years.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyThat's nice to see. Not that I ever play shooty games, but I'm left handed so it's a good feeling.
Have you mentioned being left handed before? I had a strange premonition as I clicked on the article that you would say that.

Fantasy city-builder Songs of Syx is approaching the end-game
25 April 2024 at 6:30 pm UTC

I tried the demo out a few years ago (props for having an unlimited-duration demo!) and wasn't quite interested enough at the time to pick it up, but found it worth following and watching. I should check it out again now that it's had a few years' development – it's definitely got some interesting features for a colony-building game.

Minecraft v1.20.5 the Armored Paws drop update is live now
24 April 2024 at 6:45 pm UTC Likes: 3

Had to Google what the Viossa language is – apparently it's an artificial pidgin constructed from dozens of source languages, where the only way to learn is full immersion on a Discord server. (And which also apparently isn't big on standardization of things like spelling – one of the guiding principles is "if you're understood, you're speaking correctly" – which means formalizing a single version in stone in Minecraft could be interesting.)

Armadillos are cool. Pangolins are cooler (), but they're already the #1 mammal we're killing for their drops in real life, so we prooobably shouldn't be encouraging it in Minecraft.

Steam Deck Verified highlights for April 2024
23 April 2024 at 6:23 pm UTC Likes: 1

Huh, Sokobond Express – I got the precursor Sokobond (another good Steam Deck game) years ago because I love chemistry, but I've never finished it since the puzzles get quite challenging with a number of chemistry-related mechanics (making and breaking bonds between atoms, atoms that can form a variable number of bonds depending on their free electrons, rotating molecules, noble gas atoms that don't bond, etc.).

Stardew Valley 1.6.4 brings even more new free content
20 April 2024 at 4:02 am UTC Likes: 3

As someone who likes the fishing mechanics, fish frenzies sound interesting.

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
QuoteAdded a special cutscene after you’ve helped your new neighbors grow their family to the max.
Wait, are you a midwife in this game?!
I'm confused as well. Not sure if this is something added in 1.6 (which I haven't had much time to play yet) or something I'm just forgetting already exists.

The first handheld to use PlaytronOS is some Web3 thing - the SuiPlay0x1
19 April 2024 at 8:05 am UTC

Quoting: tarmo888
Quoting: Philadelphus
Quoting: tarmo888NFTs enable securely buy/sell your items on secondary markets without an intermediate, the blockchain is just a permissionless distributed database. Steam is against this because they don't want the items traded on secondary markets, they want you be vendor-locked to their platform.
This is where I tend to get lost when I try to connect theory to practice. In theory, it sounds great. In practice…what secondary markets exist between games? If I buy some ultra-deluxe Pokéball in Pokémon: Crypto & Currency edition, I can't exactly use it in Call of Duty, nor can I take a sniper rifle into Stardew Valley. I can certainly imagine horrible cash-grab cross-overs where you buy like a skin in one game and another game allows you to use it there, but that's quite superficial, and merely requires coordination and cooperation between the games involved, not a blockchain per se.

Secondary market doesn't mean "same item implemented in multiple games. Secondary market means the same item sold it multiple markets.
I see! Thanks for the clarification.

Athenian Rhapsody is one of the wackiest games I've seen for a while
17 April 2024 at 6:24 pm UTC Likes: 2

Props for an inventive trailer, I guess…? What did I just watch?

Paradox announce Stellaris: Season 08, with Stellaris: The Machine Age launching May 7th
17 April 2024 at 3:58 am UTC Likes: 3

Quote$40 base game
$372 dlc
---
$412 total

WHAT. THE. HELL.
I don't understand this mentality in PC gaming as-a-hobby that there's some magic upper limit to what's acceptable to spend on a single game. If I have $400 dollars of disposable income that I want to spend on gaming, it's totally fine for me to buy 15 $20-$60 games; we'll all share nervous laughs about the state of our unplayed backlogs, and several of them will sit unplayed in my library forever or I'll play them for an hour or two and discover I don't enjoy them. But spend that same $400 on a single game that I really enjoy and have gotten over 675 hours of entertainment from? Expressions of incredulity and disbelief!

And it's so strange, because it's not like this happens in other hobbies. Those people who make model train sets that fill their basements, they don't start making a model, get to spending a hundred dollars on it, and go, "Oh, guess I couldn't possibly keep on expanding and improving this one! Gotta start over with a brand new model now!" In lots of hobbies people barely bat an eye at spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a single piece of equipment, but a game with optional extras that adds up to more than $150 dollars? Burn those greedy money-grubbing devs!

I could understand this better if Stellaris was only ever sold as a full bundle for full price and you couldn't even get into the game otherwise, and if this were the norm for all games with no cheaper games available, but neither are the case here: Stellaris goes for $40, and regularly discounts to $20, which will still give you dozens or hundreds of hours of fun. I also don't see $10, $20, etc. games going anywhere, there'll always be plenty of cheaper options around if you fancy them instead. If the combined cost of Stellaris + DLC is not worth it, in your personal estimation, that's fine – Paradox is hardly immune from criticism, and have made their share of blunders, and people have different tastes – but articles on their games inevitably seem to devolve into this sort of "Because I, personally, don't find it a worthwhile deal, it can't possibly be a good deal for anyone" nay-saying. I don't play any sort of subscription-based MMO (for various reasons), but I also don't go around loudly scoffing at how World of Warcraft costs $156 per year (at the best rate) because I assume the people who are playing it are getting their money's worth of entertainment from it.

People who are serious about their hobbies are prepared to pay serious money. (As even a cursory glance at hobbies outside gaming will attest.) Everyone has a different limit on what they're prepared (or able) to spend, and that's fine, as long as we respect those differences, and I think it's time we stop artificially limiting individual games to how much we think they should be allowed to cost – that's what the free market's about, after all, a game can only be sold for what people will pay for it.

Paradox announce Stellaris: Season 08, with Stellaris: The Machine Age launching May 7th
15 April 2024 at 6:45 pm UTC Likes: 2

Bought the Season Pass for the discount since I'll end up buying it all anyway, and the additional information on The Grand Archive story packs sounds like it's exactly what I've been wanting in the game for literal years now: an expansion of lifeforms that aren't sapient species, and the ability to go around cataloging them and creating a galactic zoo.

Plus the new crisis in The Machine Age sounds pretty interesting, now I've finally experienced all three original crises after >600 hours in-game.

OpenTTD 14.0 brings a scalable font, a new ship pathfinder, social platform integration
15 April 2024 at 6:32 pm UTC

Some good changes here, especially for ships. I like building diversified transport networks with everything the game has to offer, but ships have historically been just too fiddly to be fun. Not having to put down buoys everywhere should make using them much more viable!