Quoting: EhvisI wonder if it's just me, but I really don't like the artificial sharpening. Never have on any medium and for any game that offers the option I turn it off. It just feels harsh and unnatural.

I know what you mean and in general I agree, but in that example (and, as far as I recall, The Witcher 3 with some slight sharpening; not too much), I think it works.

Edit: Heh. It's in the AUR already. Sometimes the Arch community just amazes me.

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To be fair, the Linux version of SR2 wasn't bad considering the difficulties. VP were actually able to mitigate some of the bugs in the Windows release with their compatibility layer. It's still not great though, and the source being discovered is good news even if it only means a stable Windows version to run under Proton.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyI have Crusader Kings II but I'm afraid to start playing it. I need to keep some of my hours for other things.

That's the trouble with it. I've had it almost since it came out, and I've only played one game right through from start to finish. Okay, that accounted for about 250 hours, and the mighty Hiberno-Hellenic Empire of Britannia came to be the greatest in all Christendom, but still... one game.

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Quoting: BotonoskiI've been playing nothing, for the past few days I've just been reading a bunch of public domain e-books on my jailbroken Kindle. I've come to appreciate the fact that most fiction is terrible and for most my life my reading experience had been heavily curated by others.

I've had various Kobos for over a decade (I prefer Kobo to Kindle because they're so easy to jailbreak they practically encourage it, and epub's just a nicer format), and I don't think I've ever bought an e-book. It's not as if I haven't been tempted from time to time, but there's so much good stuff in the public domain.

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After Epic's giveaway a couple of weeks ago (yeah, I gave in; it's not as if I've given them any money or anything), I've been playing Lego Batman (still my favourite of the Lego games; it must be my third or fourth playthrough across various platforms) and Batman: Arkham City. I quite like the Arkham series, but although I understand the combat system (someone once described it as more of a rhythm-action game than a brawler), I always get to a point where I'm overwhelmed by enemies in a boss battle I can't back out of thanks to the autosave system.

Quoting: chancho_zombieDon't get me wrong it's a fine AAA open world game but not at the same level of the Just Cause series or Arkham series.

I know what you mean. It's... okay. Good enough. Nothing exactly bad about it. It's really hard to say anything about it without making it sound worse than it actually is. The most creative description I came up with when I was talking about it to a friend is that it's like Just Cause if it had been made by Ubisoft.

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That looks interesting. I like the idea of “lost“ games. :)

But the whole CGA palette thing... sure, the vivid magenta and cyan really scream “'80s” (albeit early/mid- rather than late-'80s), but it was a total joke at the time. By 1987, you could pick up a better games machine than an “IBM compatible” for a fraction of the price. Meanwhile the ST and Amiga had just broken through to the mainstream, and this [External Link] is what computer games [External Link] actually looked like [External Link] in 1987 [External Link]. (That said, Dedale is right: CGA could do much better... provided you had an NTSC monitor. Its 16-colour “mode” relied on a property of the NTSC colour signalling - really a flaw, as far as “real” TV is concerned - that doesn't exist in PAL or SECAM.)

Now get off my lawn, ye young whippersnappers.

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Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: Chronarius

Quoting: mahagrI was looking into buying Java edition, but saw that it doesn't have all the features and that they want to phase it out -- so ended up using Android version in my Linux box.

and do you have a source for the phase out?

There is no reliable source for that as this has been a community spook story since 2017 or so, fueled by one or two "Microsoft evil" articles IIRC.

Yeah, I have to be honest and say that I expected them to gradually phase it out, but so far there's been no definite sign of it. Bedrock seems to be the “default“ edition now, to be fair, but I understand it was recently announced that they want to get all versions to parity on features and version numbering.

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designed to make you lose your sense of direction

Oh, great. Like I don't do that already.

(Seriously though, it looks awesome.)

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Quoting: scaineI'm still using old Xbox360 controllers - these things were built like tanks. Honestly, at least one of them is now coming up about 8 years old and it's still in absolutely perfect condition!

The only problem I have with mine is that the cable is a bit dodgy these days. Which gives me a strangely similar issue to Liam's here: it works great in Steam, but some (not all) non-Steam games won't reconnect when it glitches out, which can be a real pain. The unit itself is almost as good as new, though.

Mind you, if sc-controller's “mouse-like stick” emulation was as good as Steam's (I don't know why, but it just doesn't work as well), I'd happily go back to only using the 360 for driving games. The Steam controller doesn't feel as substantial, but it's good enough for most things.

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... I'm all for consumer rights but I do try to think about all angles. We could end up looking at higher prices overall, no release day discounts, more micro transactions, more games updated as a constant service, games that require an online account as a service so you're not paying for an actual product and so on as developers try to keep more income when many smaller developers are already struggling.

My thoughts exactly. While I don't doubt the good intentions behind this move, publishers/stores aren't just going to throw up their hands and leave everything as it is just with re-selling allowed. They'll figure out workarounds. And those will probably end up being more harmful to consumers than non-transferable licences.

The one law that always gets passed is the law of unintended consequences.

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