cerebralhawks
@cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Comment on What is a game that you know is bad but really enjoy(ed)? 19 hours ago:
Yeah, but at least on PC you can block the updates until all your mods update. And IIRC it just breaks scripting stuff like F4SE… for the most part… but a lot of stuff relies on that.
I like how GOG just flat out refused to push the “next gen update” until they fixed their shit or something. Thing is, they never did. Modders told them how to fix it, but apparently it had to be fixed on their end. They never do. Because they don’t care.
- Comment on What is a game that you know is bad but really enjoy(ed)? 1 day ago:
Fallout 4 is good until it just stops working. It’s fine on PC but they never got it fully working on Xbox. They still sell it though.
- Comment on 2 days ago:
I started Remember Me and Tell Me Why. Got bored real quick with them both. Remember Me, I spent less time with. I should really try it again, see where it goes.
- Comment on Microsoft CEO says "YouTube monetizes Xbox better than we do", ahead of expected layoffs | Satya Nadella bemoans performance of Xbox 2 days ago:
Because unless you’re dropping $1500+ for a gaming rig, you can’t play them. If you have a gaming PC, it wouldn’t be a good deal for you. If you don’t have a gaming rig, but you have an Xbox, you could, with my idea, take advantage of Steam’s deeper sales and giveaways, and be able to play them on the Xbox.
If you buy a lot of games, you save a lot of money by buying from Steam/GOG, so it would be worth it. Especially for those of us who don’t have gaming rigs.
- Comment on Microsoft CEO says "YouTube monetizes Xbox better than we do", ahead of expected layoffs | Satya Nadella bemoans performance of Xbox 3 days ago:
This belongs in a “Leopards Ate My Face” comm. They jacked up the price of the Xbox. They doubled the price of GamePass Ultimate, and most games added to it are just shovelware trash.
Here’s a solution: Add Steam to GamePass Ultimate. What I’m saying is, for $23 a month or whatever it’s down to now, you can use Steam and play all your Steam games that will run on XSX (which should be most of them since it’s an x86-64 platform running a bastardised version of Windows). So you can get a game dirt cheap and play it on Xbox, but you have to pay Xbox monthly. You will still save money! Especially if you have a large Steam library. And not just Steam — add GOG and maybe Epic as well. So basically the platforms that have free games all the time. That would massively boost the value of GamePass, and since an XSX is still cheaper than a gaming PC, would offset the rising price of the console.
But who knows, maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. Let the Steam Machine come out and eat their lunch.
- Comment on 3 days ago:
I truly hope you’re doing better. I love Max and Chloe too, but maaan, they went through some shit. I didn’t get the secret outcome from one of the chapters… I later found out there’s a guide to pulling it off, but while I did do some of the things, I didn’t do all of them, so… one chapter turned out worse than it could have.
I also couldn’t save both the Geth and the Quarians in Mass Effect 3. I mostly played paragon, but I missed a couple little things. That choice is based on choices set up in the first and second games. So long story short, in the third game you’re trying to build an army to defend Earth. The Quarians wear biosuits because they have basically no immune system. The Geth are robots they made that were repurposed to kill people, so they were initially thought of as evil. If you make a bunch of right choices and do a bunch of random stuff, it is actually possible to save both races in the third game; however, most players, for not following a guide carefully across three whole games, must choose between one race or the other. Kind of similar to Life is Strange but on a much grander scale, and over a longer period of time.
- Comment on 3 days ago:
I truly hope you’re doing better. I love Max and Chloe too, but maaan, they went through some shit. I didn’t get the secret outcome from one of the chapters… I later found out there’s a guide to pulling it off, but while I did do some of the things, I didn’t do all of them, so… one chapter turned out worse than it could have.
I also couldn’t save both the Geth and the Quarians in Mass Effect 3. I mostly played paragon, but I missed a couple little things. That choice is based on choices set up in the first and second games. So long story short, in the third game you’re trying to build an army to defend Earth. The Quarians wear biosuits because they have basically no immune system. The Geth are robots they made that were repurposed to kill people, so they were initially thought of as evil. If you make a bunch of right choices and do a bunch of random stuff, it is actually possible to save both races in the third game; however, most players, for not following a guide carefully across three whole games, must choose between one race or the other. Kind of similar to Life is Strange but on a much grander scale, and over a longer period of time.
- Comment on 3 days ago:
Unfortunately outside of Life is Strange, they didn’t really do anything interesting.
While Life is Strange (the original) is probably the best story, the second game was technologically the best. While the first, and many other “choices matter” adventure games let you make choices that steer the story in meaningful ways (and show you how your choices stacked up against your friends and other gamers), Life is Strange 2 didn’t. The choices you made contributed to choices made by an NPC (your character’s brother), and you could not always predict how he would react. Your choices manipulated a couple of hidden scores. How much he respected you and how much he liked you. But there was a random element as well. There was never a sure fire way to control the little brother. You still make choices that affect the story, but it’s really his story, and some of his choices mattered more. Pricefield is still one of my favourite ships, and that’s from the first game (and, I guess, the new one, but I haven’t played the last two, just the first three).
- Comment on Looking for recommendations — Pride playlist 2 weeks ago:
Yep, I have the Cher song, and a few songs by each of Madonna and George Michael.
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to music@lemmy.sdf.org | 4 comments
- Comment on Is there any free game like net hack ? 3 weeks ago:
I use macOS, so I was curious. The official build is up to 5.0.0 but nobody’s managed to get it running on Mac past 3.6.0 or 3.6.6. Which is kinda weird. But I’m not in that big of a hurry to play it.
- Comment on Is there any free game like net hack ? 3 weeks ago:
You got some decent answers, but let me give you a more direct one.
NetHack is a derivative of Hack, and together they are the most successful “Roguelike.” A Roguelike is a game that is literally like Rogue. Rogue was the basis for Hack in the same way that Wasteland was the basis for Fallout. Everyone knows Fallout, not many people know Wasteland. Rogue came first and set the standard, then Hack came along and made it way better. Then NetHack and that’s what we have now. Anything like that is called a Roguelike. One of the most popular examples is the Diablo series, or the Torchlight series — neither of which is free. Their dungeons/maps are randomly generated and they have somewhat complex rules.
Another thing about Roguelikes (that Diablo and Torchlight don’t really follow) is that they have a ton of rules that aren’t presented to the player. Within the community these are considered “spoilers”. A very common example would be that if you caved “Elbereth” (I think that’s it) in the floor, monsters can’t cross that tile. But every time you walk across it yourself, the carving weakens, and it gives monsters a small chance (compounded every time you cross it) of being able to pass. The game never tells you this. I’ve just given you a spoiler on a 40+ year old game. A great example of a game (also not free) that follows this rule is Noita. A spoiler for Noita that a lot of players learn early on is that pouring water onto lava turns the top layer of lava into rock, and you can safely traverse it. But Noita, like Hack, has a ton of secrets to learn, and once you learn them, as the player, you are better equipped to handle future runs.
Then there are Rogue Lites. Roguelites aren’t really like Rogue in any real sense, but they have some element, like the spoilers thing or the random generation thing. Tunic (also not free) is a great example as you find the game manual through the course of the game, and it reveals things you either figured out on your own or you just didn’t know. It’s like playing an old NES game you borrowed, so you don’t have the manual, but you asked online and over the course of several hours, while you’re playing, people reveal to you different parts of the manual. And some parts are in another language and you can’t translate it. So that’s fun.
There are a lot of free games out there, but I’ve tried to give you a better idea of what you’re asking and what to look for.
- Comment on Why have we as a society just accepted the increasingly blinding bright lights of cars? 3 weeks ago:
So that’s what I’m saying. People are talking past each other, no one is accomplishing anything.
And yes, the lives of my partner and kids is worth more than your inconvenience. I’m sure your partner and kids are worth more than my inconvenience. That’s just how people are. Maybe you don’t have kids, maybe you have elderly parents you care for. Maybe you’re a lone wolf and you don’t have anybody, but surely you recognise that there are other people with people they love and value over the convenience of others, so the point stands.
I don’t like bright lights either. But I’m also not donating to some stranger’s GoFundMe because he hit a deer being a nice guy who put your convenience over his safety, and now he’s got a broken leg, smashed fender, thousands in hospital bills, and hundreds in auto repair bills. I’m a nice guy, but I got needs and I also got wants. Does that make me an arsehole? If so, then so be it. The question is, are you donating? You said “why is that everybody else’s problem” implying it isn’t yours. So you aren’t, either. You put the blame on the guy for not driving slower. You’re saying his safety is his problem. Okay, fine. Now you don’t get to judge how he fixes that problem.
But don’t get me wrong. It’s the Internet, you can say what you want. But talk is cheap. Or as we said in the 1980s, “money talks and bullshit walks.” All we’re doing is walking in circles. I’m not going to convince you and you’re not going to convince me. Therefore, the problem will not get solved, at least not between us. The silver lining there is that it is statistically unlikely that we will ever meet face to face, or on the road.
It is interesting, however, that you take the opposite position with ad blocking. True, they are not exactly the same thing, but it is a similar situation. And, like headlights, or slowing down, there are multiple solutions. But you passionately defend both sides of a similar argument when the subject changes. That should at least inform you that you are capable of reason, and that you can see that there are valid arguments on both sides. So, if nothing else, maybe you can at least appreciate that we will solve nothing by talking past each other. We’re tilting at windmills.
There was one moderately useful comment when I made mine: someone mentioned adaptive headlights. What they failed to mention, likely because it would undermine their point, is the cost of adaptive headlights. Ars Technica recently (week or two ago, I’m not gonna go dig for it) had an article about adaptive headlights. They sound great. They sound like they are the solution. In short, you get extremely bright light when you need it. When you have oncoming traffic, you still get stupidly bright light, but a smart array of LEDs makes sure none are pointing at the oncoming driver. Everything around them is lit up like high noon, but the other driver isn’t inconvenienced. That sounds awesome, but it’s also prohibitively expensive. The good thing is, cars will have this standard in a decade or so. Just like things like power windows and locks, power steering, and automatic transmissions became standard, so too will this. Then people will look back and call us savages.
- Comment on Why have we as a society just accepted the increasingly blinding bright lights of cars? 3 weeks ago:
Because it’s the sole responsibility of the owner to repair the car (and sometimes passengers) when it hits a wild animal, and brighter bulbs are an inexpensive preventative measure. And you really can’t replace people.
Other people complain about the bright lights, but they get real quiet when you say you hit a deer and now you have to pay hundreds you can’t afford to fix your car.
It’s the same with ad blockers. People say they cost websites money, but as soon as you get ransomware they say that’s on you, you should have used an ad blocker.
It’s a catch 22. Those who are proactive are painted as the problem by those who won’t help those who aren’t and wind up owing or paying more.
That’s what we gotta figure out. Otherwise we’ll all just keep talking past each other.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
People invest in AI because they think they will make money on it someday. And some of them will, and some have.
I’ve used AI and I’ve had good and bad results. I do feel like AI is a net negative to humanity. It could be a net positive, but it’s doing so much bad stuff it’s hard to see the good.
The question is… do you just like AI as a concept? Or maybe you use ChatGPT or something like it? Or are you one of the ones actually paying for it? I think that’s an important distinction. I use it sometimes, but I’ve never paid for AI. I can say I’m anti-AI because I don’t like what it’s done to computer and game console prices. Or that I support artists. I can say I’m not anti-AI because I have ChatGPT on my phone and have used it to make things occasionally. I don’t hate it, I hate what people do with it. I don’t pay for it, but I can see the utility sometimes.
A good example of how I feel about it is the phone OpenAI is planning on making. I feel like on top of charging you for the phone, and on top of your cell bill, they will charge you to use the phone itself because it’s AI. And I think that’s horseshit. Even if they don’t charge at first, they’ll hook you and ask you to pay later. But they won’t give you a refund if you don’t. You just paid for a paperweight. Because what’s so bad about using an iPhone (or Android) for ChatGPT? Why do they need a whole phone? Because they want locked-in customers.
- Comment on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Songs of the Past Announced - CD PROJEKT 3 weeks ago:
My guess is, they just didn’t want to keep the servers up. I got Mass Effect 4 (Andromeda) at deep discount, but it came with multiplayer bonuses. I didn’t realise I could have saved $1 ($4 vs $3) to skip those bonuses. And the servers are offline. So, oops. Shame on Xbox for selling multiplayer packs for a game with multiplayer shut down, but $4 for Andromeda isn’t bad.
- Comment on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Songs of the Past Announced - CD PROJEKT 3 weeks ago:
I don’t doubt it. Mass Effect 1 was short — anyone who says otherwise spent time exploring planets and doing stuff they were told was important but wasn’t. You don’t even get achievements for collecting all the ores, relics, and whatever else we were collecting in surveys and in those downed satellites we wasted skills to unlock. I think, at most, it was XP. Mass Effect was the original Eden Prime mission, the time on the Citadel, the three planets the council sends you to, that beach one where spoilery stuff happens, the last world, and then the final fight. 2 and 3 made you do a bunch of stuff to have the resources to complete the game with everyone surviving (more or less — you had to really set up Spoiler and Spoiler both surviving in Mass Effect 3, from the first one).
- Comment on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Songs of the Past Announced - CD PROJEKT 3 weeks ago:
Witcher ain’t Cyberpunk, but I feel the same adage applies. “Wrong town, wrong people.” With the “town” being witchers in general.
- Comment on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Songs of the Past Announced - CD PROJEKT 3 weeks ago:
Wild. So all these complete editions won’t be complete for long. Ars Technica said it’s $7.99 on GOG right now, so that’s a heck of a cheap way to get into the game if one were so inclined.
Not quite as good as paying $6 for the Mass Effect trilogy, remastered, with all the DLC, and the loot box shit from ME3 stripped out… but not bad either.
- Comment on Do you remember every single scene and dialogue of a show or movie you just watched? 3 weeks ago:
No, and this is not common. It’s something like a photographic memory. I think there’s a more accurate term for it.
Five years ago I beat someone like that in a test. We weren’t tested against each other, per se, but this young woman (she was less than half my age) could visualise the text we were taught from. However, she relied upon this her whole life and lacked the critical thinking the rest of us developed to compensate for the gap in what we forgot and what we’d learned. So for each test question, in her mind she’s reading the source material and taking answers from it, but anything that required you to think outside the box — that is, if the answer isn’t plainly given in the source — she’d get it wrong every single time. She did get a high score, don’t get me wrong, but I was the top scorer in the class. And I didn’t study. We all have our own ways. She passed which is all that counts, I didn’t get any prize for obtaining the top score, and nobody else remembers or cares about it now. I don’t even care about it, I just wanted to make the point that the photographic memory is not the most useful mind in the room (though it can be handy).
- Comment on If the next president said screw the norms, and rented or put Camp David up for sale to create a program to increase SNAP benefits could he? 4 weeks ago:
Technically, yes, but look what happened to Kennedy for merely trying to pump the brakes on Vietnam. They shot him in front of his family and the public.
Way oversimplified, but the rich and powerful people you’re suggesting going after have deep pockets and a lot of resources. Trump didn’t just get elected because people hate brown people and the gays. He’s not the Klan’s man (he is but not exclusively or primarily), he’s the rich man’s man.
- Comment on Jury discharged at trial of men accused of murdering child abuser Ian Watkins 4 weeks ago:
Ah, well in that case it’s fine, but they still did the country a service.
I’ve been watching a Japanese series called Rainbow about seven guys who bonded in a juvenile detention centre in the 1950s and their lives after, and in a recent episode I watched, one suffers a loss and cries out, asking a higher power or fate if one mistake should condemn them for eternity. Rapist? Oh, absolutely, especially if the victim is a child. But someone who killed someone? Maybe they can be redeemed. I’m not sure. It would depend. And it’s not my place to say. But I think if the government is not willing to condemn them to death, if the government decides they should live, then should they not have a chance at redemption? Otherwise, what is the point of them?
- Comment on Would it be wrong for a lawyer to defend the killer of their family member? 4 weeks ago:
Yes, it would be wrong, it would be a betrayal of the family. Why would she do that?
That being said, there are good reasons lawyers who consider themselves to be good people defend criminals they consider to be bad people (such as paedophiles). The reason is that by giving them an ironclad defence, they make it harder for the criminal to appeal if found guilty. And if they are found not guilty, it isn’t the fault of the lawyer, it’s the fault of the system for not making a better case. It is a pillar of criminal justice that it is preferable to let ten guilty men go free than it is to convict one innocent man. Of course, we all know the system is not infallible and that the innocent do get convicted anyway, but that is not the intent of the founding of the system; it’s more a product of modern corruption (which isn’t even that recent, it’s actually been going on for decades).
- Comment on Jury discharged at trial of men accused of murdering child abuser Ian Watkins 4 weeks ago:
Can’t His Majesty just knight them into the OBE? I feel like their service to King and Country is deserving of title of some kind.
- Comment on Should people report AI music channels on Youtube? 4 weeks ago:
I just long press/three dots, Don’t recommend channel.
- Comment on PlayStation boss says single-player games won’t come to PC going forward | VGC 4 weeks ago:
Love it or hate it, this is why we don’t want Xbox to fail.
- Comment on Would you want to be Michael Jackson-level famous? Why or why not? 4 weeks ago:
Oof. Yeah. :(
- Comment on Would you want to be Michael Jackson-level famous? Why or why not? 4 weeks ago:
Sure… as a writer. Think like Stephen King. Probably the most famous living writer. Maybe James Patterson or Brandon Sanderson. They do cool shit and people recognize them for it. Doesn’t seem too bad. Has a famous author ever really had it too bad as far as fame goes? Look at Brandon Sanderson, he teaches other people about writing. Goes around talking about what he loves.
- Comment on After the Kendrick Lamar beef, can Drake come back with 'Iceman'? 5 weeks ago:
I mean, Drake is a trader… he just dropped three albums. So what’s wrong with that?
And Drake literally is an ephebophile, which most Internet commentators say is functionally the same as a paedophile, without understanding the differences. The former being attracted to adolescents who lack adult maturity and the latter being attracted to preadolescent children. The fact is, Drake groomed Milly Bobbie Brown (aka Eleven, from Stranger Things) when she was like, 15-17. So, Kendrick was right to say “Say, Drake, I hear you like ‘em young. You better not ever go to cell block one. To any bitch that talk to him and they in love, just make sure you hide yo’ lil’ sister from him.” He probably wasn’t wrong to say “Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A minor” (that’s an old joke), but “Certified Lover Boy? Certified pedophiles” isn’t technically correct, but we allow it because “paedophile” (or Kendrick’s American spelling, same thing) is way more inflammatory than “ephebophile”, and, hey, both are illegal!
And all Drake has to say for himself is something about how Kendrick raps about being from the hood but goes home to his house in the hills? Does Drake still live in the hood? Do any rich and famous rappers? Fucking doubt it. It just seems like such a stretch. Kendrick owned him fair and square.
That said, Drake is still one hell of a singer. It just remains to be seen if his fans will forgive him after he diddled (or at least groomed) a teenager. But I mean, Chris Brown still sells records after beating his girlfriend within an inch of her life. (He is also one hell of a singer. I enjoy his music but I cannot in good conscience support him. It’s fine if it comes on the radio, but if it’s on my paid streaming service, I’ll skip him every time. I wouldn’t pirate his music because I feel then I’d have to put effort into listening to his music, and I don’t want to do that either.)
- Comment on When traffic comes to a standstill, drivers instantly shift left and right to create a Rettungsgasse, an emergency corridor right down the middle, so ambulances 5 weeks ago:
Okay but what if I have to take a major shit, is it cool if I skip ahead to the next exit? I get that the idea is everyone is making it safer on the off chance an emergency vehicle needs to go by, but we got this wide open strip, so if someone has a (minor) emergency, are they a jerk for taking advantage of it to get off the road, or…?
