theheadofabroom

@The_Pixel_King Eh, things ebb and flow - I'll never be well enough to work again, but things are generally good enough to have hobbies. You play the hand you're dealt, and I try to use my problems to remind myself of the importance of compassion for others.

@KingPev it can't hurt if you cut through the nerve?

Yeah, it wasn't good

@The_Pixel_King eh, I have a lot of chronic health issues of my own, so I know what it can be like. Nobody deserves what out bodies can do to us.

@The_Pixel_King that sucks, I hope it passes quickly and that you're able to get back to your usual self

Currently trying to work out what I can play without a left index finger.

I took a chunk of of myself while sharpening my chisels last weekend, so currently my finger is pretty much unusable while it heals, and it could take up to a year to recover whatever function I'm going to get back, which is annoying for using a controller.

@NEStalgia I think it depends. I'll likely build something based on an AMD 7600 (unless something that's better bang for your buck releases) with a reasonable amount of RAM and a midrange GPU and the whole lot will hopefully, by then, cost around £500, but with inflation it could be up to £800 (I don't need a new case, but I might be persuaded to pick up a new PSU with the new GPU connector). By the time that's creaking in 1440p then doubling up the RAM, slotting in whatever the end of the line AM5 chip ends up being, and a newer midrange GPU should be reasonable.

I think if you're patient then things don't generally have to be overly expensive (to the point that the cheaper games might help things break even), but recently has not been a good time - between CPU socket lifecycles, new ram standards, and GPU manufacturers getting used to crypto booms, it hasn't been a good time for a really long time.

@NEStalgia yeah, I mean I still run a system I first built in 2010 for £1k and spent another £1k keeping up to date until 2018 - it has a 4670k, a 1060 6GB, 16GB RAM and is still great for indie stuff, but the only things I could bring forward in an upgrade are the GPU, PSU, case, so I'll keep using it for indie stuff until 2025 with Windows 10 is EOL and then I'll build a new rig. The PS5 is keeping me going with AAA stuff and maybe VR until then.

@NEStalgia I'd say it rather depends. You can build or buy a PC for not much more than the PlayStation, and it'll be almost as good. You're not going to be playing VR games, or installing hundreds of mods, or running at 144hz though, and also by the end of the PS5 lifespan you'll be struggling to play AAA games.

If you want something that will do VR, and still be playing games that look and feel better than on console in 5 years you're probably going to end up paying about triple the price, because each time you upgrade one thing, something else is the bottleneck so unless you upgrade another thing you've wasted your money so you end up paying at least £400 for your processor, the same for a GPU, and half the same again for each of motherboard and RAM, before you've looked at an SSD, a case, some fans, etc

I'm one of these too. I've owned the original Gameboy, the Wii, and the PS5, but all my other gaming has been on PC.

I definitely think the PS5 has benefited from the high costs of building a gaming rig, as my decision to buy the PS5 was based on that as much as getting to play all the exclusives (the ps+ collection was a real treat for folks like me, too)

@__jamiie because it has already been pointed out repeatedly and we assume everyone knows by now?

@RubyCarbuncle it means you (like me) paid to get to play them earlier

I'm inclined to think that over the past 6 years I've gotten more than my money's worth out of the trilogy, and that them choosing to give that experience to more people at a cheaper price takes nothing away from me. The third game was a little disappointing to me, but I'm hoping that Freelancer mode more than makes up for it.

@Digit2021 so technically USB-C isn't bound to a particular revision of the USB standard and can be used all the way back to USB 1.1. Furthermore the USB Consortium have made a right mess of naming on USB3.x.

• USB 3.0 = 3.1 Gen 1 = 3.2 Gen 1 = 3.2 Gen 1x1 = 5Gbps
• USB 3.1 Gen 2 = 3.2 Gen 1x2 = 3.2 Gen 2 = 10Gbps
• USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 = 4 Gen 2x2 = 4 Gen 3x1 = 20Gbps
• USB 4 Gen 3x2 = 40Gbps
• USB 4 Gen 4 can be 40/80/120Gbps

Technically x1 means it's single lane while x2 means it's split over two lanes, with x1 being implied if missing, and the Gen # referring to the speed of each lane, and USB 4 Gen 4 is split into symmetric (effectively x2) and asymmetric (effectively x1 or X3).

The whole thing is a confusing mess, but suffice to say that the presence of a USb Type C connector doesn't imply anything about the speed of the connection, with the actual speed being the lowest supported by any of the host device, the cable and the connected peripheral.

@Ravix Bahaha I can see it now

(Obviously not something I believe, but it's the sort of self-own they'd issue)

@Arnna this guide is promoting their own brand of SSD, but otherwise seems very beginner-friendly: https://youtube.com/watch?v=7ZoV8P894N4

The process is remarkably simple considering it means you can use commodity parts.

@Northern_munkey I mean as in things being drawn on the wrong part of the screen because the electron beam wasn't targeting where it was expected to be when it was given the colour information. (Remember that a CRT didn't take frame information, but a continuous sequence of colour values which has to be timed for when the electron beam was targeted to a particular point on the phosphor layer behind the screen, so the computer would hold a buffer of the 8 lines currently being scanned (because the ZX spectrum
, like many others, worked with 8x8 blocks). If you got out of sync then you'd be sending the information to the wrong lines.)

Guessing by colour clash you're referring to the same thing I know as attribute clash, where each 8px by 8px square of the screen could only contain two colours, which required some careful design to work around. The limitations provided by some of those old computers were fascinating and a big part of why retro computer development is so much fun, it's like a Zachtronics game.

@Toypop I'd be disappointed by a ZX game running at 60fps, given it was for PAL, therefore the maximum frame rate was 50fps, with game logic being synchronised with display logic, so any faithful conversion would need to run at the original frame rate else exhibit either improper behaviour or visual artifacts

@Elodin as a franchise it has been around for ages, I remember playing the first one on a 486 running Windows 95. I think this is the first entry to make it to consoles though, so assuming it's a good port, you're in for a treat.

Edit: the original was released 1998, and there have been a couple of spinoffs for Nintendo handhelds, and a couple of mobile spinoffs too, but this is the first main series game to land on consoles

When it comes to open world pirate adventure I'm still salty that Seadogs 2 was hijacked by the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. The original Seadogs (2000) was so good, and there were hints of what could have been in the Pirates of the Caribbean game, but by the time the true sequel came out in 2006 the studio had evidently lost whatever spark it once had.

This, on the other hand, looks kinda *****

If this had been an option at launch I'd probably have gone for this + digital. I hardly use the drive on my launch console, but the few times I have it has saved me a fair amount, more already than the price difference between editions.

This strikes me as a mediocre game I likely won't bother with, that is getting a load of extra crap thrown at it because of misogynoir.

The actress who plays Frey seems good enough, but the script seems like absolute crap, and the mechanics seem kinda divisive based on individual tastes. If it weren't for the fact that Sony are shining a spotlight on the game, and a load of bigots are salty about having to admit that women of colour exist, then nobody would be talking about it, and honestly it's getting boring at this point.

I played a lot less than the previous year too, I think the previous year was about 2100 hours, but this year was a lot more chaotic. I also spent a lot more of this year playing mediocre games like AC Valhalla because things were too chaotic to enjoy good games but I still needed a distraction (which is why I still haven't played the new Dad of Boy game)

https://wrapup.playstation.com/en-gb/9d5c861b1383d43b0ffdec4de34e67b8527db54433218e9f6782eb5b6dae67c8/?emcid=ot-ha-456949

@GKT how much do you like Remedy weirdness? It's very much that, so if you've enjoyed their other games you'll like this one

@NEStalgia that's fair, I was taking things entirely at face value, but it's possible I fell for trolling. I'm just used to feeling very old around folks who grew up with online multiplayer as the default.

@avatarian couch co-op is local co-op multiplayer, as in you're sitting in your sofa, aka couch, next to the other player.

You know, like when consoles had 2-4 controller sockets on the front?

Looks cute, I just fear it'll get lost in people's wishlist given the number of other great games that have released recently it or are expected over the next few months

The other meaning still works with trichomoniasis?

See this is how FromSoft intended it to be played

@Almost_Ghostly it's the jump scares that get me, and that's something FEAR did very well for its day

This sounds awesome and I hate it. I don't ever want to play anything that does this. Nope. Take it away.

I'm glad this will add new tools to developers' arsenal, but this is something I already know would be too much for me (FEAR freaked me out enough back in the day with things happening just off-camera which you only notice when you look around)

I'm happy that this is a good selection, but I'm not looking forward to any of them because I already own the ones I would want to play. I'm looking forward to seeing what I can get for my physical copy of Fallen Order though

@IOI it's a thing journalists do to avoid repetition, and then end up using the phrase "Japanese Giant" 3 every third article

@GalacticBreakdown RE Fallen Order

I was about to disagree because I got confused about dates, I miss the Kyle Katarn SW Jedi Knight games and how flexible their saber combat was (saber combat improved further in Jedi Academy, but pretty much everything else was worse in that game), but when I checked the dates, Jedi Academy came out before the first KOTOR.

It still feels like the apt comparison, and I still feel like Fallen Order feels lacking in something that was in the Jedi Knight games

@themightyant the trackpad annoys me because of how often I miss one of the little buttons either side and jab one corner of the trackpad. I wish it was just 20% smaller

@Toypop I'm curious as to how you're defining "practically DLC", which you're excluding from that, and whether you've played all the games in question.

@WCamicase @NeThZOR

PS2 emulation might be realistic, but would take time to reach the level of accuracy demanded of a paid product. The hardware of the PS3 was very exotic and unlikely to be able to be emulated in software to the required degree of accuracy on the PS5.

What they may be able to do, is create an accessory that contains an amount of the required hardware which the PS5 could hand off to, but it would likely be expensive to manufacture, and too niche a product to recoup R&D costs.

It's all stuff which can be worked around but Sony are a business, if there's no potential profit to be realised then they're not going to do it.

@OrtadragoonX eh, you do you - I always have a phone charger by the sofa so I can give my phone a quick boost before leaving the house, etc, which means that it's no problem to plug in my controller even while it's in use

@TechaNinja just so you know, you can charge your controllers with a standard phone charger (although some chargers only seem to work if you plug them in whole the controller is off)

I'd be highly shocked if the disk drive didn't connect via USB - it's an incredibly flexible set of standards (for instance keyboards and mice still use the PS/2 protocol over USB, as it's part of the spec for HID).

That said there's nothing to say that the firmware will allow it to talk to anything but a Sony device, and I'd expect all traffic between the console and the disk drive to be encrypted so it's not a vector for piracy. I'd be shocked if you could plug it into your laptop to read 4k Blu-ray discs, for instance.

Is he calling us all w******?

Edit: I know it's just the logo, but it looks like motion lines around his fist

@Flaming_Kaiser when did I say they should work for free? In what way would making more money due to more sales mean people work for free?

I said it's a misstep because they've taken it from a price point that for many would be in impulse buy territory, and placed it at a price point which is not in that realm. This means that much fewer people who own the games already on PSVR will buy the next generation version than otherwise, especially with the psychological effect of "I already own this, why buy it again?" versus "I enjoyed this, let's see what the upgrade brings", which harms the studio's reputation and decreases sales both for these two games, but also for future titles.

But sure, I'm checks notes asking people to work for free (people who have already been paid by the time the game releases, I might add)

@sanderson72 it may be running in the same engine, but evidently the main game wasn't pushing the engine to its limits. I'd guess because everything had to be optimised for asset streaming off a 5400rpm hard disk, rather than the SSD

If I were her I'd be distancing myself from this game as much as possible - she sees to do a good job of the script she's given, but the script is dire

@DiscoStuUK eh, he was pretty good in Luther where he wasn't trying to do an accent. It just feels like more and more he's trying to pretend he's from Compton rather than Brixton? It feels like when he remembered being a Brixton boy, he put more effort into his American accents.

@Dezzy70 the thing is that back then there was a much greater difference between hardware generations (to the point where backwards compatibility was often done by including previous generation silicone within the new generation hardware) and so much more effort needed to be put into porting between generations (even more than porting between PSVR and PSVR2). Meanwhile there was no digital store so you couldn't check whether someone had a license for one version and offer a paid upgrade to the new one. The benefits we see now are because the technological improvements we've made since then have followed a path chosen to enable them.

Things were worse back then, but having made such progress in terms of both developer experience and customer expectations then "things used to be worse" isn't really a valid excuse to roll back what we've gained through technological innovation.

All of this said: I'm sure there's good reason why the DLC won't be coming to previous generation hardware, but we'll have to wait until April to find out what they're bringing us which wouldn't be possible on decade old hardware.

So Payday, trying to be GTA Vice City, but they blew half their budget on big name has been actors?

Or am I missing something that makes this look interesting?

We all love Idris Elba, but what was that accent? He did so much better back in The Wire

Cool, I enjoyed the last one, can't imagine preordering it, but I'll probably pick it up when I can find it for £20 or less (all praise eBay)

@Flaming_Kaiser the marginal cost of a digital game is precisely £0, so any sales made at a discount which wouldn't have been made at the usual price are (minus the platform-holder's take and taxes) extra money the studio wouldn't have seen. Obviously you have to take into consideration the money lost from people who would have bought it anyway without the discount, but if you consider that Moss is £19 (currently £17 with the 10% discount) then if they'd sell twice as many units at £10 then they're already £1 per sale ahead. A £10 upgrade seems fair enough, right?

@Flaming_Kaiser nothing beyond what anyone who didn't own the original would pay, I don't think?

I saw the other article first with mostly the same info, so I'll copy my comment from there:

I can understand not being a free upgrade for the reasons stated, but not offering a discounted route for those with the originals seems like a misstep