theheadofabroom

@Snake_V5 my phone has a 21:9 aspect ratio, so in landscape mode it shows with the full screen height, but black bars to either side, rather than stretching the image (which is 16:9, so it fills about ¾ of the screen, i.e. ~⅛ of the screen is blank to either side). To me that's preferable to the alternatives (either cutting off the top and bottom, or stretching things 30% horizontally), especially on an AMOLED screen where the borders are true black rather than glowing grey a la LCD displays

I was about to reply to Snake_V5 but it looks like everything has already been said. I just wish the quality would go up to 1440p or 4k HDR if your phone and network hardware are up to it. The 1080p encoding/decoding performance is impressive (at least using an Xperia 5 II with a decent network setup, my PS5 connects to the same switch as my wireless access point and I had a reliable 300Mbps with single digit ping)

@C25CLOUD didn't you know that every third person 3d action platformer is a Tomb Raider remake? And every FPS is a Wolfenstein 3D remake? There's nothing new under the sun, apparently

@WCB I would expect that it counts, and just excludes things like DLC, demos, and getting access via PS+

@AstraeaV Huh? I've had a PS5 since launch day?

I don't get why you think I hate Sony, I have an Xperia phone, a Bravia TV, and Sony noise cancelling headphones, and I subscribe to PS+ Extra. I encourage people to be realistic and make considered purchasing decisions rather than being loyal to brands, but that pragmatic approach keeps having me buy Sony products.

They're all loyalty schemes. This is a UK site so I'm not sure why folks are surprised that it's written in British English?

@Royalblues I can't see things having been affected much. The PS5 is basically a PC built around a Ryzen 4700S with a 6700M GPU sharing RAM. The recent Ryzen 7##0X chips show a fair uptick in performance per Watt and include graphics hardware (although not as powerful) so I could easily see a Ryzen 8300S being about right next year or the year after (likely comes to consoles before it's available to buy on shelves). The issue could be cost, but who really knows?

@Royalblues it's about power density: as hardware gets faster then even if things don't use any more power, (which often they do) the components consuming that power get smaller, and the main way that power is released its in terms of heat. Transistors get less efficient as they get hotter, and if they get hot enough, degrade, so you need to efficiently get all that heat away from the chips, which is generally done with huge heatsinks and fans. I think something like ⅔ to ¾ of the volume of the launch PS5 is made up by the heatsinks and the fan assembly.

The good news is that technology marches on, and with that, performance per Watt improves, meaning soon enough there will be a processor that can do the same work as the one in the launch PS5 using a lot less energy, at which point it'll need less cooling, and they can make a PS5 slim out of it. If this rumour is accurate then that could be as soon as next year.

The new, more power efficient, chips are likely to require a new fab line though, which means that to maximise capacity Sony are likely to keep producing the full size version for a while until they can meet demand without it, when they'll retire the current versions and only produce the new ones. At that point they might look into a Pro model if it's not yet time for a ps6

@NeoTokyo404 fee…ling's?

I mean, is this her taking off her heels?

Similar accessories made the experience playing shooters on the Wii much better, so if I get the PSVR2 I could easily see myself picking one up

@nomither6 African American Vernacular English

@nomither6 if it's too much then I'm sure mouse and controller would work, through the magic of the Steam Controller Overlay?

I can believe that it'll release in December, partly because Firaxis have form for releasing things in a very rough and unoptimised state. Waiting until Q2 next year might be a good idea either way

I'm making my way through Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, and honestly I currently feel like the alternate game where you're a Viking who isn't being controlled and connected to the Assassins would have been better.

@Grimwood the reason is that it's a lowest common denominator for MFA, with all the issues I mentioned in my post. Not to mention the fact that they're abusing MFA for a purpose it wasn't designed for.

@nomither6 to be fair it's the mouse that's a serious advantage for aiming, the keyboard is just its natural pairing. I'd recommend using something like Portal or Superhead to get your eye in before playing more time critical competitive stuff. You'll likely end up slowly increasing mouse sensitivity as you build the instinct for "when my arm/wrist/fingers move like this, it moves my viewport like that" until it becomes something you no longer have to think about.

@nomither6 for me as a keyboard and mouse player since the 90s the difference isn't even funny, although gyro aiming in Deathloop helped me get about halfway there

Seeing as people (including a lot of product managers and developers who implement them, including at institutions that should know better like banks) don't seem to get the point of multifactor authentication, and I've spent time working on security focused systems, here's the deal:

A factor can be:

• Something you know (like a username or password)
• Something you are (think biometrics like face recognition, fingerprints, iris scans)
• Something you have (your phone, a ubikey, a smart card)
• Somewhere you are (this could be from GPS or a combination of nearby access points, or a whitelisted IP address range associated with a known site)

2-factor authentication requires that you use information from two of these categories (multifactor authentication requires at least two, but up to all 4, depending on configuration).

An email address only be verifies that you know the credentials to access that email address, so doesn't provide any additional factors on top of a user name or password.

SMS verification is intended to verify that you have possession of the SIM card associated with that phone number, however due to numerous issues that allow a SIM to be cloned or for your SMS inbox to otherwise be accessed (I can get into mine by logging into my provider's website) it is also not any better than a username and password.

An obvious second factor from my point of view would be the primary console or PC that you use to access your account (probably more specifically the MAC Address of your primary network interface, or a motherboard serial number, something like that). You nominate hardware for your account, and that hardware needs to be used to generate an access code to add other hardware to your account. You can move which is your primary device, but only if your account is in good standing, and you can only have any one device associated with any one account at a time. It gets inconvenient if you share a console, although you could maybe have sub accounts where any one account cheating bans the whole group, but it means cheaters rapidly run out of devices to cheat on unless they keep buying new hardware.

Has anyone got wood?

And yet PS5 is still the simplest and most cost effective way to play all of Sony's output for the next 5+ years. Which is why I bought their console and skipped a twice per decade PC upgrade.

For some reason I've struggled to get into the third reboot game as much as the others, despite being technically excellent. I'm hoping that this is what pulls me back in.

@stvevan and you did read the part where I was explicitly including side content? It was right there in parentheses. The target demographic I was referring to are unlikely to skip half of the game.

@Max_the_German then consider each main mission a story, and you've got loads of short little games. Meanwhile those of us who don't have more money than time get to enjoy a satisfyingly complete experience for our money. As @TheArt says, not everyone can justify spending £70 on a 10 hour game when that's a few week's food budget, and they can fill their time in less satisfying games from a subscription service.

Meanwhile, there's so much lore they never touched on in the first game, and which is hinted at in the teasers, and you probably need that 3+ hours of cutscenes to do it justice. If the cutscenes were much more than 10% of the game's playtime (including side content) then it probably wouldn't feel much like a game.

This all makes me feel a lot better about VtM: Bloodlines 2

@Max_the_German then imagine that it's two games bundled together as a combo deal. I'm not sure what splitting it in two achieves other than extending development times and letting them charge twice as much?

I honestly don't see this needing a huge effort. They would probably get 90% of the way there just moving the existing maps and missions to the version of the engine they used for Forbidden West, and using some of the highest resolution textures etc from the PC port. Then it's a QA pass and fixing anything that didn't quite carry over, and for the effort you get the original game with all the new accessibility features, plus updated visuals.

The only thing which might make it a lot of effort is if they revamp all the cinematics and dialogue, which are much more dynamic in the sequel - that would either mean hand animating dozens of hours of animation, or bringing the actors back into the studio

I honestly don't see this needing a huge effort. They would probably get 90% of the way there just moving the existing maps and missions to the version of the engine they used for Forbidden West, and using some of the highest resolution textures etc from the PC port. Then it's a QA pass and fixing anything that didn't quite carry over, and for the effort you get the original game with all the new accessibility features, plus updated visuals.

The only thing which might make it a lot of effort is if they revamp all the cinematics and dialogue, which are much more dynamic in the sequel - that would either mean hand animating dozens of hours of animation, or bringing the actors back into the studio

While it's never great to see folks getting s***canned, it feels important to note that we know almost nothing about what went on, and we also don't know for sure how much the leads contributed to how great their last game was.

I'd like to hope that they both find something great to work on, whether it's their own thing, or joining an existing project.

@UltimateOtaku91 assuming you have the relevant subscriptions, I'd advise the PS5 over the Series S for Deathloop: the gyro aiming controls make things a lot more fluid/precise than you'd usually expect on a controller, and I was able to consistently best players on PC using a keyboard and mouse, which having only played on console with the PS5, isn't usual for me.

I finished getting the Plat on Deathloop earlier this week, and have downloaded AC: Valhalla to start at some point, but for now it's likely the same mix of Scott Pilgrim and Stellaris as yesterday, switching based on what attention/energy I have to give things.

Honestly can't wait, straight in my veins please

Much better than NFTs:

1/ you can get cold hard cash off your next game or subscription, and

2/ it doesn't require boiling the ocean to run it (a simple centralised database is very cheap and efficient to run, compared to a Blockchain which has to be deliberately inefficient to prevent people from easily being able to make edited versions while still allowing anyone to add new legitimate ledger entries)

Glad for an excuse to replay SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot SuperHot

Errm, got carried away there

@bpomber I get where you're coming from, and the devs definitely deserve to be compensated for their work, but on the other hand it ends up being another CripTax - if you're perfectly able then you can play the PS4 version incredibly cheaply via the PS5 Collection, but if you need the new accessibility options then you need to hand over £70. There's so many things in life where the accessible version costs more because it's sold as the luxury version, and we just have to accept it

I don't know what the solution is, but it's frustrating, especially given that demographically disabled people are likely to earn much less, or like myself, be unable to hold employment, having to rely on our partners and/or meager state aid.

@Broosh that and the gunplay was in no way controller optimised - compared to TimeSplitters it felt very clunky (back when consoles got bad PC ports just as often as PC for terrible console ports)

@mrraditch unlucky for some

I'd love to see them make something in the vein of the old Jedi Knight games, 2 and 3 were exceptional for the time. I'd guess their stories are now Legend status, but if like to see something that takes that style of 1st/3rd person dynamic lightsaber fighting with the force powers that kinda interplay. Fallen Order scratched that itch at a very surface level, but it kinda felt more like the Tomb Raider reboot trilogy than it did the classic Star Wars games.

@Broosh to be fair the average-at-best original looked pretty unique at release (cell shading wasn't a common artstyle in 3d yet) which gave it novelty value. I enjoyed it on PC, but remember playing splitscreen on a mate's GameCube and it was not great, at least on Nintendo's console at the time. I don't know how it was on PS2 but given the level of parity in the TimeSplitters series I'd guess it was similar?

@LiamCroft Phew, I'm just so used to seeing only negative comments on articles about it. My only regret is that it's not XCom 3 (yet), although I'm thinking this is that Chimera Squad was based on a tech demo for (really enjoyed it, but much less replay value than the mainline games)

I seem to be one of the only people on this site looking forward to this game, there have to be others, right?

@themightyant for me it's the voice acting; the timing of just slightly off, and I guess we're not used to hearing regional accents on games outside of medieval themed fantasy, which in have a history of being super hammy?

For what it's worth, I liked the second season, even if it was lacking in Yennifer's boobs when compared with the first. It was slow, but IMHO really paid it off towards the end.

In other matters, surely Minnie Driver is best known for her cameo in GoldenEye (https://youtu.be/aTxZeHy4kOI)? That terrible singing seared itself into my youthful mind.

Edit: I can never figure out what this site expects as the formatting for YouTube links as the guide says they're supposed to just work

@LN78 I already did before I posted it (not seeing any edits). Odd that it didn't show immediately for you though, and makes me consider editing the spoiler out completely

Started Deathloop when it was added to Extra on the 20th, and having a great time with it. I had a flu jab yesterday, so I'm feeling rather under the weather, but once I get up, I'll be diving into that again.

Discovering everything is great, and the gunplay is awesome, a lot better than Prey, with the same first person platforming that the Dishonoured series inexplicably made work, but without feeling like stealth is the only valid approach.

Really loving it, sad that it's likely to be the last Arcane game on PS5. Never saw it coming that there was the twist you discover about Juliana (while solving the RAK puzzle), real WTF moment!

I often turn off gyro aiming after giving it a go, because it rarely lives up to the promise. In this game in loving it though. I just wish the flick sticks could be only active after a threshold, do you can have 90% of the travel be normal, with a 90° turn if you dip into the last 10%.

I'm still spoiled by the Steam Controller Overlay and its many configuration options.

The obvious joke would be to suggest that it's Abandoned.

@zupertramp I can see why you'd want it, but you'd at least need elbow pads for tracking, and I'm not sure how well it would work with inside out tracking.

You only need to draw the hands when the controllers are in front of the headset, but if the controller is in front but the elbow pad is behind then you likely lose tracking and have to guess the location, which again is likely to be inaccurate.

Folks I know who work in VR gaming say that inaccurate representation of your body is much more immersion-breaking than the lack thereof, and can often seem to increase motion sickness. Showing the hands is necessary feedback for the player (because they show what you can interact with, increase player accuracy significantly) while the arms would be entirely cosmetic

@tofuman86 often because they might reference something that happens in the story and they could be considered to be spoilers

14 baby! Although a handful of those were educated guesses. Still it's the first time over 10. If only I'd played Hotline Miami.