• 0 Posts
  • 31 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 18th, 2023

help-circle


  • That’s over 7 years old. Roughly the length of a generation. I think re-mastering console games from 2017 is reasonable in general.

    Not for HZD though. It was already one of the best-looking games on the PS4, and then they added a free upgrade for the PS4 Pro to get checkerboard 4k. Like… What’s left to improve?

    Maybe upgrade from checkerboard to full 4k? The FPS seemed fine for me playing on a base PS4, but perhaps there’s room for improvement there. The initial load time to open the game is pretty bad, but if you don’t switch between games often that’s not really a problem. I haven’t tried the PC version yet, but perhaps there were some UI improvements there they could apply to consoles?

    My main complaints with the game that I’d like to see fixed would probably be beyond the scope of the term “remaster”. The facial animations during dialogue were pretty uncanny in the base game, but they’re good in the DLC and sequel. Also the itemization system was clunky and felt like it was trying to be similar to an online multiplayer experience for some reason.












  • You cannot own love. You cannot own wonder. You cannot own joy. You cannot own the beauty of the universe.

    Desire is suffering. Why would you want to own a train? To seek to prevent others from admiring it? Nay, I posture, better let them run wild, for all to enjoy. To live free and reproduce in their natural habitats. To live along side is, not contained within a tiny rail network in your backyard or basement.


  • That’s assuming she gets them as kittens.

    Old cats are often considered less desirable. Parents want to get their kid a cute little kitten, not a 13 year old cat that’s going to trigger a conversation about mortality with their 5 year old human child soon.

    Kittens are also a pain in the ass. Bundles of energy with no manners.

    So my first thought is that she either fosters older cats or just adopts them to give them a good golden year or two on the way out.

    Or if she rescues strays there’s a greater risk of having health problems already.

    Or maybe she is evil as the comments suggest. I have no clue lol.


    1. I’m so fucking tired of pixel art games. And I’ve noticed recently that going back and playing actual 16 bit games with real pixels feels so much better. It’s hard to say for sure what it is, but I have a few theories.

    First, in old games that actually use pixels, everything has to snap to the grid. For these pixel art games running at 1080p or maybe higher, what is supposed to look like a pixel is actually a square made up of multiple pixels. In 16-bit games, a sprite can only move distances the same size as a pixel, but in these modern ones the “pixels” can move by fractions of their own size. It loses all the neat, discreet, visual appeal and becomes messy looking in my opinion.

    Second, the color pallet is too large. Old games had a limited selection of colors, and often in order to make the most of them the colors used would be significantly different from each other, while still all being part of a cohesive pallet. We are used to millions of colors, but consoles like the GameBoy Color and SNES only had ~32,000 to pick from total. The GameBoy Color also has a software limitation to only have 56 colors on-screen at once. Using a full, modern color pallet without those limitations allows for colors that are close to each other to be used. That’s great for 3D models where we are thing to mimic reality, but for pixel art it just makes everything look messy and sloppy. There needs to be a sharp, distinct contrast for pixels to be satisfying.

    Third, there’s just too much stuff happening. This I could probably adapt to, but I just have this expectation that pixel games should just be a few moving sprites and maybe a couple of background layers.

    1. The name “Arco” tells me absolutely nothing. It’s not memorable. It’s a complete blank slate that gets washed away. I’m not even certain if that’s just a proper noun from the game or if that’s just a different language word.

    2. A hybrid turn-based/real time strategy game? My instinct is that sounds like the worst of both worlds. It has been successful before- Transistor and Paper Mario come to mind. But in general, if in playing a turn-based game it’s because I want the chill, low-pressure experience. I probably want to be less than sober. And introducing real-time elements means that those games get pushed into the real-time category when I choose what I want to play and when. And if in playing a tacts game, 99% of the time in going to choose a turn-based one and get lit.

    3. As many others here have said, I’ve never heard of this game. I think this is a legitimate problem facing a lot industries, especially digital products. Doing some quick searching I found someone estimating that Spotify sees about 55 days worth of new audio uploaded every day. Everyone is creating and we don’t have enough to line to consume.

    Personally, I suspect that if I went through the exercise of looking at my Steam library and trying to project when I would be able to play through all of the games I currently own, it would probably exceed my life expectancy. Definitely if you add in all of my console game collection.

    There’s not a great solution. Corporations try to punch through the noise with marketing. One of the most important pieces of Steam as a platform is their ability to promote games. There are whole networks of influencers- streamers, video creators, podcasters, bloggers, magazine writers, etc all trying to help sort out the games worth playing.

    But the problem persists - there are too many games being made. And I don’t want to just say to put up more barriers to entry, because indie development is important for getting fresh new talent and ideas into the industry. Some of the best experiences I’ve had have been indie games, and some of the worst offenders for cranking out banal, mediocre time sucks have been huge corporations with giant marketing budgets.

    The only solution I can think of is more “platforms” rather than games. Minecraft, GTA V, Skyrim. Especially with mods, you can get a unique and interesting experience without having to invest into learning and understanding a whole new game.


  • Amazing. One of the best purchases I’ve ever made.

    It’s rare for me to see games in my library that are not supported, although there are a few. But there is a difference between running and running well. Demanding games will get maybe an hour of battery life and the fans will be pretty loud the whole time. Some games (especially strategy games) really work better with a full keyboard and a higher resolution screen. Some games I just would not want to play on a handheld. But most of the time the games that I want to play work well.

    One trick I use to get better battery life and performance is streaming. I use Chiaki to stream from my PS4, and Steam Link (as a non-steam app lol) to stream from my desktop. It’s often worth it for the fan noise reduction alone.

    It’s even better at emulation. It’s a great machine for PS2 and GameCube games- I have the back buttons and track pads mapped to speed up, pause, slow, and rewind gameplay and to control save states. I have not dialed it in yet, but I think with some tweaking you could probably use the gyro and/or track pads to do some good Wii emulation. 3DS and DS are great too, mostly because of the track pads. Anything older emulates fine, but isn’t as impressive.

    I have gotten PS3 and Switch emulation to work, but the fans go on and the battery life goes down, so I don’t really use it for that. Plus storage is a bit tight and PS3 games are huge.

    It does feel like Valve was just a little too early. I wish the screen was 1080p.

    The 2230 SSD’s that it uses were kind of uncommon when it released. The weird size made them more expensive and they had lower capacities. I managed to get a 512GB one, but I wish I could have gotten like 2TB. It seems like that’s changing now though. Similarly, I wish microSD cards came in larger capacities. Storage just seems to get used up so fast these days.