sauron wrote on Sep 28, 2022, 18:35:

blockchain metaverse game

Does anyone here (all of us geeks) know what that actually means? I do not, and will be sending a squad of inquisitors to the relevant sites to discern the truth.

Well, "metaverse" implies a massive-multiplayer online 'experience' (not necessarily a game), possibly with VR. The blockchain bit implies you can buy and sell digital items, which may or may not be created by other users. So it could be anything from Diablo 2 with RealAuctionHouse to Roblox to, yes, Second Life.

None of which require the added overhead and general scumminess of a blockchain, but you know how it is: grifters gotta grift.

I suspect that - except for a tiny population of extremely dedicated fans (who will desperately try to convince everyone about how this game is the greatest thing since sliced bread so they can get new sucker^h^h^h^h^h players to buy their useless digital wares) - the game will be largely ignored by gamers at large and sink like a stone.

While I learned cursive, I almost never use it. I never saw the advantage; I always wrote faster using block-text than I did cursive (the latter not having all those superfluous loops and links probably has something to do with that) and I always found block text to be more legible. I think it looks nicer too; I always thought cursive text to be rather unsightly (but, again, maybe that's just because I hate the waste of all those needless loops).

Q: How we can protect our privacy in the metaverse.
A: Not logging onto anything associated with Facebook would be a start.

Well, I'm sure SquareEnix will make the server-side code and content freely available to its customers so that people who paid for the product can continue to play it. Because otherwise it would be unfairly penalizing its customers, and no video-game publisher would ever do anything like that. Gamers just wouldn't stand for that sort of thing!

Right? Right?!?

Anyway, just you wait; it will turn out that the only reason EA is doing this is because they don't want to pay for a license to a third-party (like Easy Anti-Cheat) for the functionality. I'd wager this move might even have been inspired by one or more of those third-parties trying to renegotiate their deal with EA.

It certainly won't result in more robust software since it will just be a side-operation for EA, whereas companies like Punkbuster or EasyCheat do nothing but work on the thing (and even they have problems getting it right). It's a penny-pinching move by EA's C-level execs, nothing more.

I enjoyed "Call of the Wild: The Hunter" but its water-physics are one of the weakest parts of the game. So when I heard they were making "The Angler", I expected that would be the one area the developers focused on more than anything else; after all, the motion and appearance of the water are an important part of the experience. Unfortunately, it seems as if they did little more than port the six-year old engine of "TheHunter" over to the new game with some unimpressive fishing mechanics wedged in, resulting in a thoroughly unimpressive game that looks dated even on release. It has disappointing gameplay and disappointing graphics, and seems nothing more than an attempt to leverage CotW:TheHunter's popularity to create a new franchise where they can milk the fans with an endless stream of lackluster expansions. If you want an enjoyable fishing experience, there are better games available... or just buy a rod-n-reel and go outside. Either way will be more fun and a better value than this game.

Dunno where Blue lives, but 1 September is a Thursday, not a Wednesday (the tweet specifies the offer is between 1 Sept to 5 September).

Still, excellent news. Sadly, the version on offer is the re-release that doesn't include the original soundtrack, but beggars can't be choosers (and anyway, I have the original on CD-ROM)

I dunno if this game will be good or not. I hope it will. But I'm wary about any game that boasts about the size of its game-world these days because too often all that extra space is empty filler; it's a game with much biggness, but little to do in it all. Sometimes a more focused approach with smaller maps is better.

Will that be the case with Homeworld 3? No idea, but RTS game with huge maps haven't done too well. It's no fun having to wait ages while your units traverse the map...

How can this be the 'best' forklift operator game when there are no chainsaws or decapitations involved?

I'm enjoying it so far. With a lot of the expansions for ATS, it was hard for me to tell them apart; just another state with a lot of dun-coloured terrain. But driving into Wyoming and it was immediately evident that I was in a new area. The mountains are gorgeous! This is the first expansion to use the game's "hidden roads" feature from the start, and it shows; I've played only a few hours and already discovered a half-dozen unmarked trails (one of them quite long).

I've only explored a tiny corner of the state so far, so I don't know if my happiness with the expansion will continue throughout, but so far I'm one satisfied customer.

I think I'll stick with "Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure"

Bayonetta 3: where you can use black magic to slice demons into chunky gibbets but don't show any boobies.

I mean, I'm all in favor of offering players more choice but the priorities seem a bit... off.

Good. I wasn't going to buy the DLC anyway - it seemed sort of tasteless to buy a map-pack glamorizing Russia in the middle of its invasion - but I'm glad SCS is making the statement anyway.

Cutter wrote on Apr 14, 2022, 13:34:
Uh they made a great game - W3 - then a not so great game?

Obviously you don't get paid by the word. ;-)

Finally an opportunity to put the lessons I learned from the Klaus the Forklift Driver video to good use!

That NewEgg story is something else. I knew they'd gone downhill over the years - worsening prices, awful customer service, products of dubious quality, counterfeit CPUs - but this is a new low even for them.

I'll grant the company this much: their website offers a lot more information about their products than any other marketplace. It's actually a useful source of reference information and - at least in my experience - it seems to be fairly accurate. But although I've sometimes I've been tempted, I have stopped buying from them because they just aren't a trustworthy reseller. After this, I won't even be tempted anymore.

10 gigabit internet coming soon! Download at 1.25 gigabytes per second! Coming soon to an Internet service provider near you!*

The Inevitable Fine Print
* Comcast data usage caps remain stuck at 1200GB/mo.**
** At 10Gb/s, you'd reach that cap in 16 minutes.***
*** There would be an additional surcharge of $50 for every 40 seconds (50GB) thereafter that you download at full speed.****
**** Assuming a daily internet usage of 4 hours per day, you can expect a monthly bill of $540,000 if you make use of all that bandwidth.*****
****** If you can't afford that rate, AT&T is happy to provide you with a speedy DSL line which - on a good day - might provide you with .5Mb/s. Its DSL so it still counts as broadband!******
****** Anyway, we're not gonna upgrade your service to those speeds anyway.*******
******* Because fuck you, we're Comcast and we don't have any competition, so whaddaya gonna do about it?

I was going to make a snarky comment about how it was a shame that they were shuttering the servers, but of course they'd release the code so people could keep playing online privately, because, ha-ha-ha, that never happens. Publishers for for decades assured us that it's too much work and nobody wants it and, anyway, it would lead to all sorts of hacks and security problems so it's just impossible.

And then I noticed that, no, in fact private servers for "America's Army" would be available to to keep the game alive and now I am all confused. Is it possible - and bear with me here, because I know it sounds like an absolutely mad idea at first - that those publishers who've been telling us they can't do it haven't been... entirely honest?

NFTs and cryptocoins only work if you can find somebody else to pay you more than you paid when you bought them. So you always need an influx of new people coming into the market that you can convince your wares are actually worth something. That's why NFTs and cryptocoins are always being pushed as 'the next big thing' by people who already have a stake in them. If there aren't any new people enter the market, they're the ones left holding the tokens that, by themselves, have no value. NFTs only have value as something you can sell.

It's also why you cannot trust their assurances about how good NFTs and cryptocoins are; these people will gain financially if you buy into their scheme. That is not to imply that all proponents of the technology are dishonestly shilling for it, but you need to take their words with a very large grain of salt because they have huge incentive to convincing others to enter the market.

I would be very interested in learning how many Ethereum or related cryptocoins Nicolas Pouard owns...

Most likely this hasn't anything to do with the game's theme; odds are it's a licensing issue.

Asmodee Games (the publishers of the computer game) probably had a license with Z-Man games (the publishers of the board game on which the computer incarnation is based) and the license ran out. Possibly Z-Man Games wanted more money than Asmodee Games was willing to pay, or perhaps Z-Man Games has entered into another deal with some other video-game publisher, or worried that the computer game sales were cannibalizing their board game sales, or whatever. But it's much more likely a business decision, and not because of anybody trying to 'cancel' games about a pandemic because of Covid-19.