Ugh...

another live service game bites the dust

Today's game is Mario Kart 64. It's been a while since I played this, and today I had a killer sinus headache from whatever fucked me up the other day. I couldn't sleep, but I didn't want to just sit around doing nothing, so I booted this up and played some time trials.

Why time trials? I like just driving around and taking a look at different aspects of the game, and when you're having shells hurled at you every so often, it's a little harder. Like one thing I noticed here were the lights were flat 2D textures on the ceiling. I'm sure some people are going "Well duh", but I'm always driving so fast I never notice that kind of stuff, so it's kind of a fun detail for me to notice.

There's also this river in Frappe Snowland, which I just stopped to look at. It made me wonder where it went when we don't see it. I know at some point it wraps around and we jump over it at the start, but I feel like there's a whole bunch there we don't see, and it got me wondering. There's a free cam in the decomp I was playing, but I didn't want to ruin the “illusion," so I left it be. At least for now.

I also wanted to talk about this track's music. I feel like "snow" music falls into two categories: cheery and slow, almost sad tracks. Almost always, I feel like it's the latter. This one falls into cheery, though, which is a plus from me.

Then finally, I wanted to talk about Rainbow Road. I ended up sitting idle for a second while helping someone with something, and I ended up realizing that the Chain Chomps move. It's a little detail, and I'm sure others have seen it. But I never noticed they moved along the course. I always assumed they stayed in the same general area. I suppose it makes sense though.

Also wanted to talk about this track's music. In the past, I've talked about the length, but I think the music deserves a mention too. With the length, it feels like a long, winding victory lap. And the music reflects that. You've got your metaphorical "hands" in the air, and you're driving down the road celebrating. Once you get so far ahead of the other bots, I feel like they stop mattering, rubber banding or not. I think that's kind of what makes this my favorite Rainbow Road. All the others feel like they're trying to be hard and a challenge, but this one just kind of decided to be a celebration of all you've done. And I think that's kind of cool in a way that it accomplishes this.

Anbernic sent over their latest handheld, the RG Vita Pro. And yes, it’s clearly inspired (or “inspired”) by Sony’s beloved, if not massively successful, PS Vita.

The hardware definitely takes cues from the original design, but it’s important to address the obvious caveat upfront: this will not emulate the full PS Vita library. That isn’t a fault of the device itself, no hardware can. The limitation lies with the emulator, which is still far from a finished state. Right now, nothing is capable of running the entire Vita library reliably.

Over the past few weeks of testing, I’ve seen plenty of criticism online (especially across places like Reddit and Discord) accusing the device of being misleading or even falsely advertised. Personally, I think that’s missing the bigger picture. Expectations around Vita emulation are often unrealistic, and this handheld is simply working within the same limitations as everything else on the market.

The other major talking point is the price. At $149.99 USD, it’s sparked a fair bit of backlash. What’s interesting, though, is that this isn’t an isolated case, it just reflects a broader shift happening across the industry. Prices are rising, and many comparisons are still being made against pre–RAM crisis devices and prices, which isn’t really a fair benchmark anymore. At least, this is what I think and feel.

From my own chats with the reps and teams behind the retro handheld manufacturers, this trend is only going one way. Prices are going up, and in most cases, specs are being scaled back to compensate. It’s the reality the entire space is dealing with right now, and the RG Vita Pro feels like one of the first devices to really reflect this crappiness.

Anyway, on to the device. I love how it is dual boot (Android and Linux), on a new chip to the scene. I love how it plays and upscales PSP games, they upscale cleanly and look SO good on there.

Some Vita games play beautifully, Gravity Rush has been my obsession lately. I never played it before now and I just love how it performs. They created such a nice atmosphere in that game!

PS2/Game Cube and Switch are a stretch. Some games run okay, some won't run well, and some won't play at all.

If you're curious about my review, I also interviewed some developers. Gamma who makes GammaOS, acmeplus who is behind KNULLI. This is a very detailed and long review, so if you do have interest, you can follow my usual link:

https://gardinerbryant.com/hands-on-with-the-anbernic-rg-vita-pro-a-unique-dual-boot-handheld-finding-its-place/

BONUS SCREENSHOT!

The last of the cool sights I saw on the train I found in Part 1 in the game Crimson Desert! (Part 2 is here!)

I seem to have stumbled upon a community or village that has electricity (?) or something akin to electricity. They also had a few robots (?) and "drone" robots flying around as the train was passing by. I really just like the glow of the lights with the "god rays" of the moon shining down through the clouds. It felt both cozy and strange at the same time. I will find out if my suspicions are right or wrong eventually!

As you can see from my bonus screenshot, there will be plenty more screenshot worthy moments I'm sure, but this was just a little share of a self-imposed trip on a train that led to me seeing lots of pretty and interesting things. If you've been following along, thank you! If you are just now seeing this, please take a look at the other posts linked above!

I just like taking cool or interesting screenshots. :-]

While the scope of layoffs has stunned employees, industry analysts have told IGN that cost-reduction within Epic Games was inevitable amid growing external pressures and costly industry battles.

Today’s game is Stardew Valley. I got my friends to join me some more for our farm. We are currently at 6 members (one of our players didn’t get the memo we were playing and refunded it thinking we had given up playing), so no change unfortunately in player count. We’ve made a lot of progress though.

Near the end of Summer I was already getting Married (I picked Haley). I set things up right with gifts, the cart, and even the Luau to get there.

This would be the third time I’ve ever gotten married in Stardew Valley, which is weird considering I have almost 25 different saves spread across my Switch, my PC, and my phone.

I even managed to catch the Crimson Fish, which brings me to my key talking point. I like how the game has these clearly defined routes for each of the money making paths. It really makes it fun to kind of pick out one method of making money and reach the pinnacle of that. And then later you can add another into the mix, or even do them all.

Stardew valley I feel like is made up of a bunch of really simple moving parts but they’re so well oiled and all add together to make something really fun to play. Not to mention the support from the developer over the years. It’s crazy to think. I remember playing this game in middle school. Now I’m in college, I can drink, and I even have a job. And after all these years the game still is supported. It’s respectable.

More and more games seem to suck on thier own, but can be great with mods. You have entire platforms like roblox where all the games are more or less mods. How long until the platform itself is community created and managed and the viability of games created by companies dissappears?

The Berlin Apartment feels less like a traditional game and more like an interactive story, but it’s the everyday personal moments that make experiencing its shared place and the lives shaped by history more powerful.

I've been playing CSGO lately, since it came back to Steam store but problem is just the same as CS2 maybe worse, because you don't need Prime Account (I think) to surf the communities servers and the game is free.

I just left a match with 2 guys using wall and aim, we all agreed on our own team they're cheating. We end up just quitting.

I tried Delta Force too even tho the Warfare matches are filled with bots not so many cheaters, the Extraction mode is filled with cheaters.

I wonder if there is anything decent at all. I don't mind the game mode, 5v5, 32v32 or Battle Royale. Any FPS I'd be down to play it.

I'm starting to think that online play without cheaters is an utopia.

For me, it has to be Alien: Colonial Marines as it's terrible due to inconsistent frame rate (moments the game ran smooth and times where lag was insane, even with the best hardware). Both player & enemy AI is crap since the combat wasn't even that immersive plus Xenomorph AI isn't as intimidating due to it being poorly implemented.

For example, I reside in Japan and bought Death Stranding 2: On the Beach (Deluxe) for ¥9,980 (54,15€ / £47.00) but it's 89,99€ (EU) / £79.99 (UK) despite purchasing it from Steam. And that's not the only instance: as Resident Evil: Requiem (Deluxe) is around ¥9,990 (54,25€ / £47.05) but 79,99€ & £69.99 like why? I've heard that Euro has close to a +30% price hike when referencing from the USD metric in regards to regional pricing.

The same kind of argument from American gamers who winge about $70 games being the default price forgot one thing, taxes are not accounted for (so they're paying even more) while for both British & European gamers: VAT is accounted in the final price hence why they often look expensive at launch. The reason why games have different prices is due to PPP of a country taken into account, but are (physical copies) of games expensive in the West?

Gamers who live in countries with weaker currencies tend to have lower thresholds in their pricing but are paid less in minimum wage than those living in the EU, UK or US. The alternative gamers use to save money on steam game purchases are either Green Man or Fanatical in which they are authorized game key providers who obtain them from the developers themselves, selling keys for a fraction of Steam's default price tag.

I've been working on Abaddon, (a first person Lovecraftian horror game) for Almost 4 years now, this journey has been amazing, I can't believe It's almost ready for release! If you are into horror games please consider wishlisting it as it helps me out a lot! Thank you all so much for the support ❤️

EDIT: Part 3 is here!

This is a continuation of my other post! The game is Crimson Desert.

After riding around for a few minutes, the sun started to go down and a thunderstorm started happening. Since it was darker and not as much to see at that point, I didn't get to take a lot of screenshots until it started to clear up a little.

This screenshot is after getting through the thunderstorm into a new chunk of the map. You can kind of see the same towers that were in my last screenshot on the left side. It may not seem like that far away, but the developers sure did know how to make things scale to large proportion. It would probably take me 10 minutes to continually sprint back to that area!

This screenshot is in my favorites because of how the atmosphere and lighting really enhance that sense of large scale open world. It's like in Skyrim where "if you see a mountain, you can probably climb that mountain", but actually more true than that. With the Breath of the Wild inspired climbing (and the stamina bar with drain, which I don't like personally), you can use a variety of skills to get so high above the map that travel becomes a breeze! As long as you watch your stamina bar anyway..!

I'll share the last screenshot of my train journey tomorrow! Hopefully you'll see it! :-]

"When asked how he feels about there being less prolific “auetur” developers in the scene, like Hideo Kojima, Suda51, SWERY, and Kenji Eno, Niikawa suggests that this might be due to the “corporate” nature of the video game industry. “That’s a bit unfortunate, to be honest. To put it in my own words, I feel like the salaryman-ification of creators keeps progressing,” he says. For context, a “salaryman” in Japan refers to white-collar workers, employed at large corporations, who stereotypically prioritize work over anything else and are subservient to their organization."

"On the other hand, when you’re a developer who works for a company, various other factors, like company policies and decision-making, as well as profitability, come into play, making it more difficult for “individuality” to come through..."

Isn't this also happening in the West? In any case, AAA rarely appeals to me; almost underground-like indies/mods/Foss games are the places to find the really experimental works.

It was an award winning game that started with K a few years back, but for the life of me I can't remember the name. Dont even remember which award; it released when I was burned out from Gaming. (It's not Bafta though, I checked)

Any help in this regard would be greatly appreciated.

Today’s game is some more Halo. Today I felt a little experimental. You might notice that the aspect ratio is 9:16 rather than 16:9. I in fact did not crop it but went through the effort of setting up my monitor that way to get experimental with portrait screenshots. I’ve done Landscape for 619 Days, so mixing things up seemed like a good idea.

To start things off we did a game of Assault in Halo 3. With Halo I feel like there’s sometimes a “perfect” combo of map and game mode, like Zealot and Infection. Or Beaver Creek and CtF. Or Blood Gulch and CtF. And this feels like one of those situations. It’s a pretty basic setup. You have the “Stronghold” and you have the “invaders” who have to invade it. It makes for an amazing setup though. Especially because the Invaders have such little space before they breach the walls. So it feels like you’re always on your toes while still having the inner walls to work with.

Speaking of Beaver Creek we also did that with CtF. The way this map is done it feels like it could work with Assault too, but with the routes above and on the ground it really feels like it was made for CtF. I personally prefer the above route. Crouch out the side door and up the ramp and then across to my own base with the flag.

It was nice to get to socialize again after being out sick since like yesterday. Really Halo feels like the perfect social game on top of the PvP. Hopefully if I’m feeling better tomorrow I can really sink my teeth back into something like Final Fantasy 8

EDIT: Part 2 is here! Part 3 is here!

I've been playing Crimson Desert since it came out. It didn't start out all that great story-wise, but the rest of the game was fun so I kept going. Eventually I got enough stuff to start free roaming, and exploration has always been my favorite thing to do in games that are rich with it.

I found a train while just going around getting fast travel spots unlocked for easier mission progress later. I got to the train and hopped aboard. It seems to be a steam train, and there was no one aboard, not even a conductor. I realized I could open the window, and then went into first person, eventually snapping this screenshot. It's one of my favorites just for how the whole thing came out while on a moving train!

I spent at least an hour or two atop the train, just to see where it would lead me. I've got a few more screenshots I'd like to share as the days go by of that train ride. For something so mundane, the sights I was able to see were pretty and very interesting.

I haven't played a game that sucked my attention so wholly since Elden Ring came out! Hopefully you'll see tomorrow's screenshot! :-]