HarkMahlberg
@HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth
People keep asking me, and I haven't really had an answer, but now yeah, I'm thinking I'm back.
- Comment on This generation of gamers are spoiled(?) 21 hours ago:
There was a window of time in the mid 2010's, around the peak of Unreal 4's ubiquity, where you could crank games to Ultra settings and not even have to think about it. No time spent experimenting, tweaking individual sliders or toggles, nothing.
PC hardware was relatively cheap, the consoles were powerful, and games still looked amazing, for a good 5-8 years. A generation of players came of age during this time without ever having to learn the vital skills of 1) tempering expectations and 2) tweaking settings. So they now see ANY friction, ANY dropped frames, ANY need to mess with settings, as a personal sleight. The PS5's "Performance vs Quality" toggles are the ONLY thing they'll tolerate now.
- Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of October 11th 5 days ago:
If you want to dip your toes in, you could pick up AC7 on sale on Steam. It goes down to like, $10 from time to time. And it's much more easy-going game as far as system requirements go.
- Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of October 11th 5 days ago:
Good! You may spot some interesting things in 8 that tie 7 and 3 together.
- Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of October 11th 6 days ago:
Ace Combat 8
This thing is a behemoth. It outclasses all of its predecessors in every category. Mission variety, level design, character development, plot, themes and messages. It's heavy in more ways than one: the emotional weight of the narrative feels as heavy as the planes themselves. It's a test of your ability to identify and fight to your objective, even if it changes mid mission, and still be able to pick up the radio chatter between your wingmen.
And it's not always idle banter, they are not merely smiley faces duct taped to the canopy of an F-18. No, their emotional states impact your mission. They have heart and drive, but that means they feel pain and grief. They are interconnected through mission and cutscenes alike, hell even through the music.
The soundtrack is easily one of the best in the series, and that's quite a feat considering it's well known history of bangers. There's no dud tracks, not even the briefing or hangar tracks. And the music is, on multiple occasions, diagetic in way we haven't seen since Journey Home (AC5). The dynamic music system creates moments so hype I was smashing my fist on my desk like a goddamn caveman.
I shed tears several times, I haven't felt a game on an emotional level like this since Nier Automata. I'm halfway through a second campaign playthrough on Hard difficulty, S ranked every mission so far. My only worry is that the game is hitting the mainstream. This will be some people's first Ace Combat, and they'll go through the previous games -- each stellar in their own rights -- and be disappointed by how primitive they are by comparison.
GOTY contender, OST OTY for certain.
- Comment on As it lays off developers and closes studios, Xbox gets into the movie business 1 week ago:
PC gaming might be standing but it's costing an arm and a leg to do so.
- Comment on Discord gives more advertisers more tools to target its users 2 weeks ago:
Would a pihole have any effect on ads served in this manner?
- Comment on Engineer says Claude Code has made his job "soul-sucking" as workers spend 12-hour days pressing enter 3 weeks ago:
It removes any creativity I have in the process. Complex decision making is no longer mine, the only say I have is Accept or Reject (and Roll Again). It's soul crushing because entire process now has no soul.
And my coworkers who have bought in completely are now so lazy they don't even call in to meetings anymore, they don't answer questions, they let AI run the entire SDLC. When they get replaced by some MBA who knows how to hit the same buttons, they will be completely blindsided. And they will have nobody to blame but themselves.
- Comment on WTF?! Players in AU have to use a CC for age verification via steam just to view "violent" games! 5 weeks ago:
You know who actually makes out like a bandit in this situation? The credit card companies. All the sudden a bunch of people are applying for credit cards that didn't have one or need one before. And because some existing CC's are getting rejected, people are actually thinking about applying for a second card!
And listen, this is Valve we're talking about, it's not like they don't have the money and engineering talent and lawyers to figure out a way to make a system that works for consumers. They just have beef with Australia and are going with malicious compliance. For all the instances I've seen of people with accounts older than 18 years that are getting rejected, that's a system rife with bugs. Valve could have absolutely rolled out a better system, they just chose to be lazy.
- Comment on Upcoming Changes to XBOX Cloud Gaming [time limits] 1 month ago:
I can't help but think it's only a matter of time before they manage to make that limit work locally, even if you're not internet connected.
- Comment on Upcoming Changes to XBOX Cloud Gaming [time limits] 1 month ago:
This is "just" for cloud gaming right? Like if you install a game locally through game pass, these limits don't apply... Right?
- Comment on DLSS 5 comes with a massive 50-60% performance hit, so I hope you like lower frame rates with your dose of AI image enhancement 1 month ago:
Man you're basically not even playing the game at that point.
- Comment on DLSS 5 comes with a massive 50-60% performance hit, so I hope you like lower frame rates with your dose of AI image enhancement 1 month ago:
I want to make sure I understand this right. The 6X here means that for every one real frame generated by the GPU, the next six frames that follow will be AI generated?
- Comment on Gamer complained that he turned on his old PS3 for MGS 4 and found out that Sony had disabled his account - he lost his games due to prolonged inactivity 1 month ago:
Any opportunity to get a repeat purchase out of them.
- Comment on Xbox's Disc-to-Digital Programme Is Official, and It Starts Next Week - Digital Foundry | Latest Updates 1 month ago:
The more likely scenario is: What happens if Microsoft also has no discs next generation?
- Comment on The German army is trying to attract recruits at Gamescom, the world’s biggest video game convention 1 month ago:
- Comment on Metal Gear Solid 4 can finally be played without emulator or PS3 1 month ago:
MGS4 was the most important war game ever made. No game before or since has tackled the subject of the war economy quite like it.
- Comment on Ads and tracking infiltrated TVs. Now they're coming for monitors. 1 month ago:
Stage 5: We pipe money directly out of your savings account for nothing. Thanks for doing business with us!
- Comment on Ads and tracking infiltrated TVs. Now they're coming for monitors. 1 month ago:
Check this video from Gamer's Nexus. They don't even need an ethernet cable, they can just install ads/malware directly through Windows Update.
- Comment on [Jacob Geller, Ace Combat] I Am Turning Myself Into a Video Game Plane 1 month ago:
There's a really fantastic YouTube comment that I don't know if I'll ever find again but NewPipe made it easy to copy it's content, so here it is.
When I left high school 27 years ago, all I wanted to do was be a pilot. I went to flight school and got a commercial pilot's licence just in time for 9/11 to happen and end that career before it started. In the years since, one of the things that I've studied is the cultural phenomenon of cybernetics (which is a relatively new term for a positively ancient human behaviour).
Humans have an exceptional ability to concieve of our self extending past the physical matter that makes up human biology; it's probably the most critical tool we have as a species to develop and use complex technology. The whole idea that "the sword is an extension of the swordsman's arm" isn't a bit of fiction or flowery metaphor; it's exactly how humans psychologically and neurologically process how we use technology. The glasses that I wear aren't a piece of plastic and glass external to my self, they are as much a part of my system of vision as my eyeballs or my visual cortex. Remove them, and I feel their absence like a lost limb.
It isn't computerized implants under the skin that makes a human into a cyborg, it's the psychological process that incorporates human-created ideas and objects into one's identity. I sit behind the wheel of my car, and I don't percieve of myself as a lump of flesh within an external machine. The machine becomes an extension of my will, my mobility, and my interactions with the world. I don't percieve the vibrations of the seat against my skin and bones, I feel the friction of the tires against the road. I don't think about turning the steering wheel to change directions the same way I don't think about the microflexing of my abdominal muscles to maintain ballance as I turn my head while walking. The line between the biochemical mass and the mechanical machine blurs in my consciousness untill I literally feel the pain of a tree branch scraping against the paint on the door.
The human consciousness is incredibly plastic and can (and regularly does) embody things beyond it's biological self, usually without our awareness or explicit intent to do so. Loosing your phone feels like you're loosing the fingers on a hand. Getting disconected from the internet can make you feel like you've lost a physical sense, like suddenly being blind or deaf. It would be an absolute "boomerism" to say that this generation is weak without their technology, but approach someone from an older generation and take away all their writing utensils and say they can never make a mark on paper ever again and watch them panic. It's not a weakness, it's how human psychology has evolved to maximize and optimize our use of tools: to make those tools the extension of the self.
And Ace Combat and video games are not the first time we have made these tool-extended selves for purely entertainment. This is the same psychological mechanism behind all sport. The plane is an extension of yourself in Ace Combat, the same way the bat is an extension of the baseball player's arms, the same way the football player's pads become a second skin, the same way a thrown ball or stick becomes an extension of the ancient olympian's self. It's the same way we feel the thrill of victory or the sting of defeat when your favourite professional sports team does or doesn't get a higher number on your TV screen. Selfhood and identity are complicated things, and they don't end where your skin meets the air.
- Submitted 1 month ago to gaming@beehaw.org | 1 comment
- Comment on Supermassive Games announces layoffs, up to 75 positions to be affected 2 months ago:
I'm surprised these two never got into a trademark dispute...
- Comment on 2 months ago:
I completed Drakengard for PS2 a couple days ago.
I'm sorry for your loss. XD
- Comment on Payday 2 is getting updates again from the looks of it 2 months ago:
It's also incredibly scripted. If you down a guard, use fly cheats, and drop his body bag out of bounds, you will see a new guard spawn in the map and attempt to B-line it to the body bag's position. Even if you and your team play perfectly, the game goes out of its way to force a fight. The harder missions are not stealth-able despite seeming that way at the outset.
- Comment on Payday 2 is getting updates again from the looks of it 2 months ago:
As someone who played this game, did not buy any DLC, and eventually pirated all the DLC, I can tell you the game is not balanced if you
A) don't have a group of 3 friends to play with,
B) don't buy at least some of the DLC,
and C) don't get some of the good DLC weapon mods as random drops.That's right, you buy the DLC and then get a CHANCE to get the content you paid for by succeeding at a mission. You only get 1 drop per mission, and it could be armor, clothing, masks, mask paint, and weapon mods. Grinding out the few solo-able/stealth-able missions for more drops becomes an enormous chore.
I don't miss this game. Interesting to see it getting resurrected, but they'd have to really fix the loot system.
- Comment on Nvidia finally reveals what controls devs actually have for DLSS 5, and don't worry folks, there are TWO main sliders to control the AI filter 2 months ago:
Speech to text took "doubt they're ever" and gave you "doubt the river*?
- Comment on Former Valve writer says PlayStation killing physical discs is no conspiracy: "You, the consumer, have made your choice, and the choice is for digital" 2 months ago:
In this sense, Chet is right, the 'democracy' of consumers has prevailed, and the people have spoken. They said 'digital.' I myself have been a PC gamer for over a decade now and I can't remember the last time I bought physical media.
"You as the consumer have forced the large corporations hand, and you've told them 'Stop with retail.'"
But then Chet shows his entire rancid asshole by actively ignoring the power dynamics between corporation and customer. The corporation always has the upper hand because the customer CAN ONLY buy what the corporation is OFFERING to sell. The corporation is always, at all times, presenting the customer with a false choice. A customer who has shitty internet and has to purchase all physical media, they may be in the democratic minority but that doesn't mean we feed them to the wolves. But an ex-Valve writer wouldn't know shit about that, they haven't shipped a physical game since Portal 2. What choice did you give consumers for Counterstrike, 2023? Half Life Alyx, 2020? **Dota, 2013? **
Once you, apparently, regretted your decision to invest almost entirely in digital, you didn't start buying Crimson Desert discs while you could, nor did you abstain from making digital purchases altogether. Now it's too late, says Faliszek.
Suck my dick, clown.
- Comment on There Is No Reason To Buy Another PlayStation Or Xbox 3 months ago:
It's funny, the Steam Machine has a weird identity problem.
We talk about it like it's a PC, and what a detriment it is to not be able to upgrade the GPU, like why else do you have a PC. But you can't upgrade console GPU's either. And it's still a plug-in-and-play box, no building required.
We also talk about it like it's a console, and what a detriment it is that a console costs over a thousand dollars and is digital-only. But the next generation consoles are almost certainly going to be as expensive if not more, with no disc drive either.
The SM is a glass half full and a glass half empty. It's the best of both consoles and PC's, or the worst of both worlds.
- Submitted 3 months ago to gaming@beehaw.org | 17 comments
- Comment on PlayStation’s Physical Media-Free Future Isn’t Just Concerning, It’s Offensive 3 months ago:
They basically put all their eggs in the Gamepass basket, and Gamepass sure as hell wasn't physical discs. If it was, it would just be Blockbuster... which is actually kinda funny to think about.
- Comment on Android Developer Verification: Threat masquerading as Protection 3 months ago:
Check his profile, as a tankie he has supreme authority on what goes on in other fediverse instances.