scops

When I drive my girlfriend’s SUV, I have to stand outside of it and work the controls until I’ve got enough room to get in. It’s not awful, but does kind of suck on hot summer days when I just want to be in the air conditioning.

You, like the author, are just falling for console war nonsense

You are sprinting to the defense of a multi-billion dollar company to call me a console war partisan. That is some American-politics level projection right there. I was a Sega kid. We lost the console war at the turn of the century. Now I go where the games are.

If the Xbox is a console for people to play games, it’s not the only console on the market, so it needs to compete. If it gains feature parity with its direct competition…except that said competition has a quality stable of exclusive titles, then the console is going to struggle. Like say, moving 20% of the volume that their competitor does. Microsoft’s answer to this seems to be to forego adding the value of console exclusives to their own platform and instead releasing more of their first-party titles on Playstation and PC.

That’s good for gamers, yes. It also flies in the face of any attempt to develop the Xbox as a platform choice. If I can afford one console per generation, why would I choose the Xbox over a Playstation? If I can afford multiple consoles, what does the Xbox offer that I don’t get already with the Playstation?

You’re calling Jason Schrier, a dumb author. He is one of, if not the most respected games journalists in the industry. You might want to take a moment and consider his words.

For my part, I do well enough that I could easily afford a good PC and 2-3 consoles per generation, and I’ve bought an Xbox and PlayStation since the start of both product lines. My Xbox One S was by far my least utilized console, to the point where I just couldn’t justify buying one in the current generation.

I just don’t know who the Xbox is even FOR anymore. If they put out a good exclusive, I’ll think about getting it… on PC, but even then, that’s probably money going to Steam or even EGS, because fuck the Windows Store, and most of the time I don’t even bother buying it there because something else on PC or PS5/PS Plus has caught my eye and I don’t feel enough FOMO to go back looking for it.

I should be one of Xbox’s core customers. But they stopped giving me the time of day when they spent an entire E3 blathering on about being a media console back in 2013. They’ve done precious little to try to win me back in the decade since.

1, given to me in a Secret Santa exchange. I’m not following the connection you’re trying to make between a goofy action movie and a toy line.

Out of curiosity, how old are you? I hold up Scott Pilgrim as the Fast Times at Ridgemont High of my generation (older millennials). I could see it not hitting the same for older and newer gens.

Of course it’s a perfectly valid opinion even if we are in the same gen. I’m sure Fast Times had its detractors, too

It was hugely freeing for me to realize this. I didn’t really care for Death Proof and I absolutely hated Inglorious Bastards. My friends thought I was crazy. After loving Kill Bill and everything I had seen before it, I thought Tarantino had just gotten too far up his own ass. Then Django came out and was just fun and cathartic and I realized I just needed to take each project as it came

I highly recommend one with a heated seat if you’ve got a reasonably accessible power outlet nearby. Just be aware that it will totally spoil you and make pooping away from home even less fun than it already is.

I have an ex with the same name as one of my sisters. You do that once, and it gets confusing and awkward. Twice? People start coming to really odd conclusions.

Porn… Until enough adult accounts move over to Mastodon or Blue Sky.

…Irish car bombs have Bailey’s Irish Cream and possibly coffee liqueur in them. Many people would say that’s a pretty sweet drink.

You sure you’re not thinking of an Irish Boilermaker? That’s just a beer with Irish whiskey.

Yeah, I haven’t been clean shaven since I could first pull off a beard. Last time I saw my naked face was 15 years ago.

That said, I have started to put more effort into my beard to try to keep up with trends. Growing it out, oiling it, shaping the edges. It’s fun, but I still find myself trimming it down after too long just to make it easier to manage.

All computers were beige… unless you were a smoker, then it was an ugly yellow-brown color after a few months

I’m going to claim the family PC as my first computer. It was a 486 running DOS and Windows 3.1. I got my first taste of Windows 95 when my dad bought my sister a new PC to take to college. I remember installing Jedi Knight on there then having to wait years for an upgrade to the family PC where I could load Windows XP and play newer games.

First phone was an old blue Nokia, possibly a 3310, looking at old pics. I called it a Blueberry to make fun of the flagships of the day. I got it at 16 when I got my license and was told in no uncertain terms that I was not to use it unless I was hopelessly lost or wrapped around a tree.

Yeah, I just set it up because I don’t want Meta’s shit on my phone and my friend group insists on using WhatsApp. I still had to install the native WhatsApp client but I was able to remove it as soon as I had confirmed the account creation. It also means I can stop giving out my cell number when I want to meet someone from Facebook Marketplace to buy something.

They advise against removing the apps on your phone, but at the least, you can turn off notifications for everything other than Beeper and use it as a single interface. On the desktop app, it makes a bit more sense. I’ve stopped running the Telegram, Signal, and Google Chat apps. I just wish Google Voice played nice with integrations and could be added to the platform.

There’s also the Wasteland 2/3 engine which would be a good fit. A lot of the assets from 2 would probably drop right into Fallout, given the similarity in tone and setting.

… Well, I say that, but now that I look it up, the Wasteland games used the Unity engine so… Yeah, a BG3 total conversion would be fun

This is the mouse that 30 year old boomer gamers refer to when they say, ‘They don’t make them like they used to’.

Fuck. When she mentioned the MX518, I started typing a comment about how great a mouse it was when I heard her say the above. 30 year old boomer? I’m a 37-year old millennial, dammit. Get off my virtual lawn, child.

For real though, the MX518 and G15 were an iconic pair for me. I got the G15 back when I worked IT for a game developer. I pulled it out of a tech recycling bin with the WASD keys completely worn off and probably over a million keypresses logged since it was unboxed. I used that keyboard for another million, easy.

Nowadays, I still use a G910 keyboard because I map PS scripts and Windows hotkeys to the macro buttons, but I gave up on Logitech mice because the buttons kept failing after a couple years. I’m currently using a Razer Basilisk.

3DRealms ran out of money and Gearbox bought the rights in 2010 ahead of the 2011 release, but according to Wikipedia, several of the 3DRealms developers were brought on board as a part of that process.

Duke Nukem Forever devs over in the corner hoping everyone continues to think BL3 was the worst game Gearbox ever made.

My god. I just switched to a pihole cluster last night and I feel like I’ve been transported back 20 years to a time when news sites were designed with readability as a top concern and not monetization.

Not all blankets are difficult to wash. Mine just goes in the washer with the rest of the linens.