mox
@mox@lemmy.sdf.org
- Comment on For me, Cyberpunk 2077 was uninteractive and has low replayablility value. 2 days ago:
I love a well-crafted puzzle, but that’s not what most people mean when talking about game depth. You’re talking about different things.
- Comment on For me, Cyberpunk 2077 was uninteractive and has low replayablility value. 3 days ago:
Meta-comment:
To the people who come into point-of-view threads like this one and downvote other people’s comments, how about writing about your own experiences instead? It would make Lemmy a nicer place to be, and might even add something of value to the discussion.
- Comment on What are your favorite 1000+ hour games? 3 days ago:
Seems like a lot of people step away for a while only to return to it. I had hundreds of hours before taking a break, came back with new hardware, and have been playing hundreds of hours more. At this rate, it might end up overtaking Civilization as my most played game.
- Comment on For me, Cyberpunk 2077 was uninteractive and has low replayablility value. 3 days ago:
I mostly had fun, and felt the work they did to make Night City feel like a proper city, as opposed to the tiny village-sized “city” typical of open world games, really showed. (For example, the fact that people walking down the street had different ages, body types, and walking styles made it easy for me to forgive the occasional pair of NPC clones spawning next to each other.)
But yes, many of the activities/events offered by the game ended up seeming a bit pointless because their outcome was more or less predetermined.
Moreover, the RPG aspect of the game lacked depth, which seemed like a lot of wasted potential given that there were plenty of characters that could have been really interesting to get to know. Instead, the character development was nearly all Silverhand, nearly all the time, and I didn’t even have much influence over how that relationship developed.
Spoilers ahead:
What about Jackie? He was supposed to be my best friend, but I never had experiences with him to make me feel that way, and then he was gone in just a few scenes. What about Panam? She was so determined to make a difference in the lives of the people who mattered to her, yet she all but vanished once we bonded, after just a couple of missions. What about Judy?? Her personal mission-like-encounter was really promising. We supposedly fell in love and were planning to leave the city together, yet for the rest of the game, we had no interaction but “dates” consisting of the same half-dozen lines of dialogue and two or three brief animations repeated over and over again. I’m sure there are more examples, but I think I’ve made my point.
I think the biggest disappointment for me was the ending, though. And the other ending that I got by reloading and picking different options, and then the third ending, and the fourth. They all felt like such empty let-downs that I went online to read about the rest. Surely there must be some good ones, right? Right?
The only vaguely satisfying ending that I found was a secret one that (IIRC) requires very specific choices early in the game, and a very strong bond with Silverhand, and letting the game sit at a particular dialogue screen without making a choice for an extended period of time. The endings that players are actually meant to experience left me feeling empty, like all the time I had sunk into the game was for nothing after all. I guess that could be considered appropriate for a cyberpunk dystopia, but as an experience, it left me feeling cheated. I wished I had my time back.
So, as I said, I mostly had fun playing it, and it had its share of highlights, but I don’t expect to ever play it again. I hope CD Projekt Red keep much of the technical progress they made with this game (I was so happy that my character’s movement was responsive for a change!) and work more on character development in the next one.
- Comment on What are your favorite 1000+ hour games? 4 days ago:
Elite Dangerous is my go-to lately.
It’s different to most other games by not being goal-oriented, except for the goals you set for yourself. No main quest line dictating progress. No mandatory tasks. No win condition. Instead, it drops you into a simulation of our entire galaxy roughly 1300 years in the future, where humanity has mastered hyperspace travel and spread through hundreds of star systems.
I like that it offers a variety of activities to fit whatever mood I might be in on a given day. I can hunt pirates, mine asteroids, engage in a bit of piracy myself, find and collect bio samples, infiltrate hostile settlements, venture into vast unexplored areas of space, discover Earth-like worlds that nobody has ever encountered before, defend humanity against hostile forces, photograph beautiful stellar phenomena, rescue stranded survivors, customize and finely tune my ship to perform beyond its original specs, team up with friends, pledge to a political power and expand their influence, or chill out as a space trucker and haul cargo to earn enough money for my next upgrade. It can occupy all my attention, or just be relaxing entertainment while I listen to music or an audiobook.
It’s an MMO in the sense of having a large game world (galaxy) shared by all players in real time, but PvP is optional. One play mode exposes you to other players, while another limits you to NPC encounters. You can switch between them at will.
One warning: A space ship has more than a few controls to learn, and they’re better suited to a game controller or HOTAS than a keyboard and mouse.
- Comment on Citron is yet one more Switch emulator appearing online 4 days ago:
tl;dr: It’s a Yuzu fork.
- The Open Source Project DeFlock Is Mapping License Plate Surveillance Cameras All Over the Worldwww.404media.co ↗Submitted 1 week ago to technology@beehaw.org | 5 comments
- Comment on Dystopika is a beautiful cyberpunk city builder without the ugly details 2 weeks ago:
“Welcome to the dark side of cozy.”
- Comment on iPod fans evade Apple’s DRM to preserve 54 lost clickwheel-era games 2 weeks ago:
There was a Ms. Pac-Man port for these devices for a a while, and it was surprisingly good.
- Comment on The 'bias machine': Undecided voters in the US who turn to Google may see dramatically different views of the world – even when they're asking the exact same question 2 weeks ago:
It’s important to post these things every so often. There will never be a day when everyone already knows. :)
- Comment on Github: GreemDev/Ryujinx - The emulator changed its owner? Previously gdkchan 2 weeks ago:
It’s a bit of a leap to say the “owner” changed. Ryujinx is MIT licensed, allowing anyone to clone the original code locally, build upon it, and publish it to a public host. Looks like that’s what happened here. I don’t think the original repo was renamed or moved to another user’s account.
The top contributor is gdkchan presumably because gdkchan’s commit history is still there.
- Comment on The 'bias machine': Undecided voters in the US who turn to Google may see dramatically different views of the world – even when they're asking the exact same question 2 weeks ago:
Beware online “filter bubbles” (2011)
- Comment on Publishers are absolutely terrified "preserved video games would be used for recreational purposes," so the US copyright office has struck down a major effort for game preservation 3 weeks ago:
The argument against it is founded on copyright.
The justification for copyright funding is enrichment of our culture, by incentivizing creative works.
Blocking creative works preservation (or access to it) strips away the cultural enrichment.
What’s left? People being compelled through taxes to fund profit police for copyright holders who aren’t holding up their end of the bargain.
- Comment on Day 100 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I’ve been playing until I forget to post Screenshots 4 weeks ago:
Nice timing. This arrived during my Bubble Nebula stop while exploring in Elite Dangerous. (I put a screen shot in that community, in case you’re curious.) Space sure can be pretty.
- Comment on Dragon Age: The Veilguard | Official Launch Trailer 4 weeks ago:
Or Google’s “sign in to confirm your age” nonsense by watching it somewhere else, like here:
- Comment on The Tech Coup: A New Book Shows How the Unchecked Power of Companies Is Destabilizing Governance 4 weeks ago:
Technologies accelerate all sorts of agendas, but to blame this long-standing problem specifically on tech companies is to misunderstand the problem. Corporations shouldn’t have been allowed much influence on governance in the first place, no matter what their tools or line of business might be. Instead of pointing fingers, how about we stop allowing corporate political donations and lobbyists in democracies, and put some real enforcement behind anti-corruption and bribery laws?
- Comment on Naughty Dog’s next game will reportedly offer ‘a lot of player freedom’ | VGC 4 weeks ago:
Naughty Dog did some solid storytelling in TLoU. It would be great if they could figure out how to apply that well to a game that isn’t on rails.
“I think some of the best storytelling in The Last of Us – yes, a lot of it is in the cinematics – but a lot of it is in the gameplay, and moving around a space, and understanding a history of a space by just looking at it and examining it.
I do appreciate this in game worlds, although this alone is not enough to make an open world fun. The world has to be interesting and diverse, full of unique things, places, and situations to discover, so players will want to spend their time exploring it. Here’s hoping Naughty Dog doesn’t repeat the mistake other studios have made by churning out another open world of monotony.
- Comment on Is there a video-game .ics/calendar that I can subscribe to keep up with recent releases? 4 weeks ago:
If you don’t find one, you might consider looking for RSS (or Atom) feeds that list new game announcements or reviews. Maybe one of these, for example.
- Comment on Subnautica 2 - Official Teaser Trailer 5 weeks ago:
That’s reassuring. Thank you.
- Comment on Subnautica 2 - Official Teaser Trailer 5 weeks ago:
I don’t think I like that this trailer shows characters’ faces. Did the original game do that? It has been years since I played, but my memory of it is entirely first-person perspective, which was an important part of it being so very immersive.
- Comment on 5 weeks ago:
This is one of the two that jump to mind. Red Dead Redemption 2 had beautiful, atmospheric storms that were a sight to behold at a distance. Breath of the Wild brought the lightning up close and personal.
There’s nothing quite like deciding to take a fight in a thunderstorm while the only gear you have left is metal, or carefully sneaking up on an enemy only to have a bolt of nature’s electric fury crash down behind you and shake the ground you’re standing on. Especially in surround sound.
- Comment on Subnautica 2 - Official Teaser Trailer 5 weeks ago:
Yeah, that was a pity. I agree that guy did great sound design for the first game, but great art doesn’t make up for the harmful societal views he supported. I don’t think I would want to work with him, either.
- Comment on Subnautica 2 - Official Teaser Trailer 5 weeks ago:
I think Below Zero was made by a (mostly) different team, which could explain at least some of the differences. I wonder who will be working on this new one.
- Comment on 180° usb c Adapter That Fits Steam Deck with Case On 5 weeks ago:
!steamdeck@sopuli.xyz
- Comment on A New Law Just Forced Valve To Change Steam. 5 weeks ago:
- Comment on Recommend me your favorite linear games! 5 weeks ago:
The Last of Us Part I.
I generally dislike games on rails, but I loved this one.
- Comment on Steam's new disclaimer reminds everyone that you don't actually own your games, GOG moves in for the killshot: Its offline installers 'cannot be taken away from you' 5 weeks ago:
All online storefronts doing business in California will soon be required by law to stop lying to customers with words like “buy” when they really mean “license”. GOG is no exception.
- Comment on Currently downloading The Witcher 3 for the first time. Got any advice for me? 1 month ago:
A little death can be good.
- Comment on Proton is the Future of PC gaming. But how does it work? [Gardiner Bryant, YouTube] 1 month ago:
as said in computer science it has accepted by most people (for the sake of having categories) that CPU emulation is emulation, and otherwise its not.
It’s important to keep in mind that things said in computer science for the sake of having categories are usually said within the very narrow implicit context of a particular field of study, like microprocessor design. It makes sense there for the sake of brevity, just as arcane acronyms make sense when everyone in the room understands what they stand for in that context. But the context no longer applies when we’re out in the rest of the world using a word that is not so narrowly defined, as we are now.
I think we mostly agree, because you pointed this out yourself:
It’s a “domain specific” language; which means, you have to specify it before in order to make use.
However, I want to clarify my position in response to this:
nobody has the right to act like having a clear definition and saying anyone else is wrong.
I often encounter people on social media chiding or mocking others for referring to Wine as an emulator, which is disheartening for a number of reasons. Importantly, the people reading such comments are being taught that it’s wrong to call Wine an emulator, when in fact it is not wrong at all. Wine’s very purpose is to emulate. This is plainly visible not just in how it is used, but also in how it is developed (many of its behaviors are reverse engineered Windows behaviors, departing from the API docs) and how it functions (it does a heck of a lot more than translating system calls).
The Wine project’s FAQ acknowledges the misunderstanding, a bit indirectly, by pointing out that it is “more than just an emulator”.
Unfortunately, most people in the discussions I mentioned have no visibility into Wine’s internals, so they don’t know any better than to accept what they were told by multiple people on the internet. They are misled by a smug few who love to tell others they’re wrong by repeating that officially abandoned slogan that was never really true (at least not in the context that framed it) in the first place. And then some of the misled people adopt it themselves, so we end up with more of the “you’re wrong” attitude, perpetuation of a ridiculously narrow understanding of the word, and people who publish about the topic performing awkward linguistic gymnastics to avoid simply saying “emulator” for fear of rebuke.
I think all three of those results make the world a little worse, so I’m here to let everyone reading know that it’s perfectly appropriate to call Wine (or Proton) an emulator. Anyone who claims it’s wrong to do so is either a hardware field specialist who has lost sight of the importance of context in language, or (more likely) either honestly mistaken or an internet troll.
- Comment on Proton is the Future of PC gaming. But how does it work? [Gardiner Bryant, YouTube] 1 month ago:
Hardware is not the only thing that can be emulated. Here’s an example. To claim that things emulating software components are not emulators is simply incorrect, like claiming that squares are not rectangles. It’s always disappointing to see someone spreading that falsehood.
It’s true that Wine is not a hardware emulator, nor is Proton. But make no mistake: they are both emulators.
That unfortunate backronym made a kind of sense 20 years ago. At the time, lawsuits were flying hard and fast at projects offering APIs and tools modeled after commercial operating systems (mainly Unix), and there was no established case law protecting them. The prospect of Wine contributors getting sued into oblivion by Microsoft was a very plausible threat. Rebranding it as “Wine Is Not an Emulator” helped frame it as something different as it grew and gained attention, and although the phrase is inaccurate, “Wine Is Not a Hardware Emulator” wouldn’t have fit the existing name or distanced it from being seen as a Windows work-alike.
That time is gone, though. The legal standing for software based on reverse engineering is more clear than it was then, Microsoft has not sent its lawyers after our favorite runtime emulator. The backronym was thankfully abandoned by the project some years ago. Weirdly, there are still some people on social media spreading false statements about what the word does and doesn’t mean.