https://apps.apple.com/us/story/id1437377989
This makes me remember when the game originally came out, that it was filled under “Really should play that someday“. Hmm.
Games
While from a distance, I think Nintendo has done pretty well to modernize themselves: the fact remains that they’ve still got a long way to go.
Sony has evolved considerably since the PlayStation arrived in the ‘90s. I don’t think anyone ever envisioned how successful that would go. But personally, part of my choice of the Xbox One over the PlayStation 4, comes to being a third party that looked upon PS3’s account and service bits as reasons why I never want to give Sony my billing information.
Microsoft by contrast has been in computer and network crap for virtually ever, as far as PCs go. For what they sometimes lack in the gaming scene, they make up for in being competent at running consumer services where you give them money for it.
Nintendo on the other hand, don’t have a long record of fancy smancy consumer services or backend infrastructure for all of that. It’s increasingly part of modern gaming, but it’s just not their bread and butter. The Switch seems to represent a major leap forward in their thinking, but it’s still a Nintendo.
Hasbro is relaunching classic Tiger Electronics gaming handhelds
https://flip.it/Aizft2
When I was a kid, mobile gaming on typically meant one of Tiger‘a handheld games, or a deck of cards. The advantage of the handheld was not needing space, and not having to clean up.
Much as I was greatly attracted to the idea of a Game Boy, as a consequence of those games, I would expect few people would retroactively switch from their phone to whatever modern incarnations look like.
On one hand, I find it a little perturbing when a game doesn’t work with Steam Link, and it used to work fine.
On the other, I also figure that not only is it a non Steam game: it was developed for Windows 9x, and targets 640×480 VGA, so I probably can’t complain when the rendering and the mouse wrapping disagrees on where the cursor and the window are.
lol
https://apple.news/AC4plCt9URGKT3kiyM3yN0Q
I think that aiming for the $400 range would be more logical for Sony. Microsoft m really doesn’t need the Series X to be the Xbox everyone buys. Because they’ll still be able to sell you a One S, or whatever the Series S becomes, for those who don’t need the horsepower as much as they want the catalog of games.
Or at least, my expectations based on the Xbox One’s evolution, is that even the original model will likely continue to run many games for the foreseeable future. They just won’t look so sexy. Likewise the One X in the middle isn’t toothless, nor would I expect sold out.
Personally, my interest in the Series X is mostly based on graphics fidelity. I have little concern for what resolutions games on my Xbox offer, for two principal reasons. Firstly, they look fine on my 2160p TV, which is to say a freaking lot better than older consoles targeting 480i; and Secondly, if I really wanted better graphics I’d throw a big assed GTX at the problem instead of a console.
For the price tag, I didn’t really see much point in the One X. 4K resolution is appreciated, but not that big a deal to me. The data posted so far on the Series X on the other hand, suggests there is going to be a big enough leap in raw power that games can take advantage of this for better graphics, not just tone it back to 720p ~ 1080p. What would be worth the upgrade to me, is headroom for eye candy rather than focusing on the pixel counts.
Myst is a classic game that I missed. Also one that I should probably dig up someday and play.
The technical challenges faced aside, I kind of wonder how many computer users had CD-ROM drives by then. Another wonder of an era that I missed, since my family’s computer was still a single 5 1/4” diskette machine at that time. Actually discounting the CD-ROM, it was kind of amazing when we finally got a hard drive equipped Pentium computer in the very late ‘90s, and it wasn’t good enough for playing games much more complex than Battle Zone and Asteroids, because Windows 98 took up most of the drive, lol.
Amazon Game Deals: Xbox digital titles, PC cases, and more
Life is Strange and the Tomb Raiders are particularly good value for the sale.
Thoughts on Xbox Game Pass and SteamLink
One of the perks of Steam, is the ease of continuing from anywhere.
Most games on Steam with more than ten cents worth of effort, support cloud saves. Most that don’t tend to be very old, or games that shouldn’t. Which makes it pretty easy to continue from another machine, or even the same machine from some future reinstall of the game. Many games on Xbox also support cloud saves, and it’s usually less famous titles that lack them, like indie titles.
At least when you’ve got a solid graphics card, and aren’t struggling to run the game to begin with, Steam’s in home streaming actually works great. So transitioning from /dev/desk to /dev/couch is more to do with input devices.
Microsoft’s Game Pass is pretty sweet, and ultimate makes sense if you were already paying for Live. But the trade off I think is the portability.
When I play a game on Steam: principally, I give little mind to whether I’m playing from my couch or in front of my computer. The decision is typically driven by how much precision mouse/keyboard work is required. The only game that’s been otherwise is Final Fantasy 15, as my CPU struggles to run it locally, unlike 99% of my other Steam games.
When I play a game on Game Pass, principally my thought is “Do I want to play at my xbox?”.
As much as I applaud Microsoft’s record and stream tech, I really love that they made it available, the truth is that I find the stream quality from my Xbox to my desktop to be inferior to my 780 GTX to my SteamLink over the same network and locations. There’s more visual glitches and even set for quality, the encoder can’t best the encoder on my nVidia card.
What would really make the PC side of that coin mean something, is if it were possible to share the same saves between my desktop and my Xbox. I.e. the decision would be like open Outer Worlds on my desktop, and continue from the same save I made on my Xbox. I’d call that a win.
By contrast the decision works out that I started playing on my Xbox, and need to stream to my PC if I want to play at my desk. Which means a loss of image quality, and the occasional wtf/freeze/lag; on the flipside Outer Worlds seems to do that less often than Halo 5 when I stream.
Likewise, I don’t think Microsoft offers the inverse. I.e. that I could stream my desktop to my Xbox, if I had started with the PC, I’d not be able to stream to my Xbox. Although it might be possible to horse wrangle something with my SteamLink. By contrast, Steam’s streamy goodness is basically from anything to anything, especially when you account for needing a Direct3D PC for most games anyhow.
Thus, I am finding that Game Pass is very worth it for the Xbox side of the catalog. On PC, it’s more like a “Meh”, because the only benefit I’m really seeing there is good odds of playing on desktop with a mouse, a game I wouldn’t want to play on console with a controller. To be fair though, my decision was based on the cost comparison of Game Pass + Live versus Game Pass Ultimate; that is to say on the dollars required.
Beyond the lack of PC <-> Xbox crossover, I’m finding Game Pass to be very worth it. For a while, I’ve actually considered dropping my Live subscription because Games with Gold doesn’t bring that many games of interest down the pike, versus how little multiplayer I tend to do on Xbox. Where as Game Pass delivers the content, and probably curtails much of the need to buy games outright.
I’m also pretty sure that if Valve offered something like Game Pass on Steam, I’d probably hand Gabe Newell my checkbook and be done with it, lol.
On one hand: I try to respect how much care seems to have gone into Steam’s controller. Whether it was an internal Valve team or an external, some real TLC was put into its design.
On the other hand: trying to use it makes me feel like I’ve had a frontal lobotomy, and don’t really feel like my brain cells can ever adjust to it versus a normal controller. Where normal is probably anything in the vein of a PlayStation or Xbox (modern) or Super Nintendo or Genesis (classic) controller.
Yeah, I think it’s going to end up in /dev/closet. Unless someday they’re worth something on eBay.
The point at which even I stop playing: crashes of no continue.
When I originally tried playing Deadly Premonition, I stopped because it was impossible to get out of the hospital without crashing.
Revisiting the game with the current brew of fixes posted in Steam Guides, I found that less of a pickle. So much as it seems the game fires off an exit after x time, almost as if it keeps leaking resources or something. Faster while driving and mapping than wondering around the shadow world.
And then, I save at the community center, go walk the dog, come back, and find the game silently crashes to desktop the moment it is done loading my save file :'(.
This reminds me that the ‘360 version is like $15 in the used game bin. I’d like to hope the backwards compatibility and old release, suck less than the PC port that was pushed to Steam and GOG.