ShreddieMercury

What's your favorite Jeff Minter game? I was made aware of him when Space Giraffe came out, and since have played Tempest 4000 and Akka Arrh. But I'm curious what people who really like his stuff gravitate toward the most.

It's curious indeed. I don't really have much else to say! Yuzu only seems useful for people wanting to play commercially available Nintendo games at higher resolutions on different platforms, or pirates. It's beyond me that there is somehow surprise or consternation that Nintendo is going after Yuzu's highly profitable operation, which at this stage doesn't seem to have any kind of virtuous aim like digital preservation, consumer protection, etc. People are free to disagree.

How can big bad Nintendo keep getting away with all of the bullying?

The first episode of this was stunning and disturbing. Amazing show.

Games have always been able to run better and look better on PC. Again, just because you don't like Nintendo's hardware, or think it should be more powerful, does not entitle you to play their games on different hardware. People are talking about this issue as if we have some sort of right to access and play any and all games however we choose, which is wild. While the legality of emulating a video game that you own is already settled, something much more gray like Yuzu, which makes money emulating commercially available software and is directly enabling piracy for the vast majority of users, is not nearly as clear cut.

Video game graphics in particular are at the point of diminishing marginal returns. More and more resources will need to be poured into them to achieve at best minimal improvement. Hopefully this tipping point leads to shorter games that utilize unique art styles and favor replayability and engaging mechanics. AA basically.

A company decides where to price their product, and you get to decide whether that cost is worth it to you. Nobody forces you to buy anything. Nintendo doesn't have any sort of "responsibility" just because you don't like it.

Yeah, I don't really understand emulating games that are still commercially available. I'm so thankful to be able to emulate games that are no longer playable or purchasable on any service, but having an emulator for a current generation system where surely the majority of all uses are purely for piracy seems strange. Nobody is entitled to Nintendo games on PC, it's such a weird discussion.

Bumping this because New Star GP hits 1.0 and comes to consoles next week. I've been playing it in early access, and it's a phenomenal game top to bottom. It has, no exaggeration, the most fun and well designed campaign in any racing game I think I've played. The racing itself is fantastic, reminiscent of Virtua Racing but with dynamic and aggressive AI, boosting, and slipstreaming opponents. On top of that are very light management mechanics that add a ton of complexity to the game without making it overbearing. You have to change tires and fuel, and adjust your strategy depending on the length/complexity of the track and weather. The campaign is split into decades spanning the 1980's to 2020's, and each decade has a separate set of opponents and races. Off the track you have to manage your relationships with your team, upgrade your car, and select different perks that affect how you play the game. Again, these elements are extremely well thought-out and do not bog the player down at any point from my experience. The design is air-tight, and everything is in service of making the game fun. Easily the best early access game I've supported, and one of this generation's best arcade racers. New Star GP on Steam STORE.STEAMPOWERED.COM New Star GP is a fast and exciting arcade motorsport game with crisp retro visuals. Play career mode and work your way through decades of racing while upgrading your car and your support team... or chase high scores in championship mode on your own or in split-screen with up to three friends!

It's incredible to be getting this. Jeff Minter is a legend.

It has the best shooting mechanics and is the best feeling of the three games, but it's stripped down in terms of the immersive-sim-lite elements that Bioshock and Bioshock 2 favored. It's a much more linear shooter. This is not a bad thing, it's just a different approach that was adopted based on the game's arduous and overambitious development. The game's politics are definitely flawed but I really didn't think it was nearly as egregious as more modern criticism would have you believe.

To be fair, the list of things that are for me is extremely slim at this point. Mostly these are me problems

Returnal had the same problem, where excellent gameplay runs up against needlessly long "cycles" or "runs" that become repetitive because the game cannot sustain itself for the amount of time it asks from the player. It's a bummer to hear that about this game too since it seems like such a promising concept.

It felt to me like most hits were on the shoulder or upper body, regardless of where I positioned myself or swung the weapons from. Maybe I was playing it wrong.

I tried this for an hour last night via game pass and it's... barely a game? Maybe it gets more interesting. I was surprised by how janky the combat and physics feel given the lack of anything else happening.

I received a code for this. The demo wasn't too smooth on my aging PC, hopefully the full version runs a bit better. Anybody else playing this?

I agree with this. I also think the dedication to shooting on location and using (to my eye) very minimal effects really elevates this above lots of other modern television for me. This is my only appointment viewing.

I don't understand how a complete federal takeover and dismantling of democracy would quite work in this country. I know that they are trying, and fascism is on the rise, but the distribution of state power works both ways, and even conservatives will at some point not lie down and accept such an extreme attempt to strip away rights. Not that the ensuing conflict would be much better, and I'm fairly cynical overall, but I also do believe that once you start interacting with real people outside of the internet, most have more in common than they realize, and that the cycle of hatred and oppression that we are continually exposed to online hasn't quite metastasized the way our media would have you believe. The internet and social media are a grave existential threat and have been weaponized against us to nefarious ends, but they're also not reflective of reality in very key ways. This election is indeed the most important in history, with extremely grave consequences should republicans again take control, but I think there are significant barriers to a plan like this.

People are going to be feeling the marginal returns like never before with this one.

This was a rare case where a movie completely exceeded my expectations. Nolan is very, very hit-or-miss for me, but I found Oppenheimer pretty mind-blowing. Along with Dunkirk, I think it's the best use of Nolan's cross-cutting visual storytelling and his obsession with time.

But the games are better than ever!

Finally! Others can play all of those PS5 exclusives.

It's crazy to me how much more money is continually being poured into mainstream games when they are generally so homogeneous and unimaginative. If you look at the industry between say 2000-2010, it's like a completely different universe of diverse, interesting, and purely fun video games in the AAA space, delivered at a fraction of today's costs. I guess it's just the demand for better and better visuals at the cost of everything else? Surely that's unsustainable and will need to break at some point... right?

Do we need a Chuds of D1P sub-board?

I love Resident Evil, and have played all of the remakes. I could never really get into the style of the first several RE games, as the puzzles and backtracking became a bit too obtuse and unfun for me. But I love the way all of these games are designed. There seem to have been quite a few recent releases that try to deliver the same thing. Signalis is one that I know was well received. What else is there, and what do you all recommend? Amnesia: The Bunker also looks pretty solid.