Thank you! Was just about to ask if there were any suggestions for someone who had never played the original.

Yes! It's the only kind of game where an LLM would be a good addition.

I bought Rayman 2 on GOG a few years ago, and it had a hard time recognizing controllers. I even tried launching it through Steam, which usually fixes all controller problems, but it still didn't work. The Dreamcast version still looks good enough, and your controller will definitely work.

Due to licensing issues, Crazy Taxi 2 has a different soundtrack on the PC from the original Dreamcast version. The Dreamcast version is the one with The Offspring.

Sonic 3 has also had music licensing issues, so the version included in Sonic Origins has a different soundtrack. Sonic Origins was also buggy at launch, but I hear that's fixed now. Sonic Origins also adds a bunch of new features though, so this one may be a tossup.

Question for y'all: did anyone buy the recent PC port of Metal Gear Solid 2? It seems to have both a lot of praise and a lot of complaints.

Seaman is one of those games that I'm intentionally not replaying, because it absolutely blew my mind when I was ten years old, and I just want to leave it that way. I'm guessing the tricks they used to mimic conversation would be very obvious to me now, but back then it seemed completely real. That game turned your CRT TV into a fish tank with an honest to god talking fish inside of it... and Spock gave you updates about how he was doing when you checked on him after school.

Me too; in fact I have two games for it on the way right now! Games made in the last few years! Intrepid Izzy and Postal.

I'm more than happy to jump over to whichever side is winning. Got my Andromeda flag ready to fly as soon as things start leaning in their favor.

I'm guessing GP was referring to the fact that the DRM-free download store is partnering with a "you don't actually own this" streaming service. As long as it's optional, I don't have an issue with it, and the word ironic doesn't necessarily imply that its a negative.

I suppose they only did it now due to some license agreement expiring?

Yep, if I understand it right, Denuvo charges an annual fee to be used. That's why you always see it getting removed after the game loses relevance, when sales aren't enough to justify paying for Denuvo anymore.

Kind of weird how, because Bethesda (and other publishers) are Denuvo's consumer, this particular anti-consumer license agreement is actually benefiting the players, haha.

I downloaded an ISO of it a while ago and played through maybe third of the game. I found it to be very playable. People always mention the long load times, but it's worth mentioning that long load times were much more common back then. (Although Half-Life on DC was even longer than usual.)

Also, I hate to be nit picky, but the blog post linked here manages to be weirdly wrong about two things and it's barely one paragraph long, lol.

Half-Life is one of the most successful video games of the early 2000s.

Ahhh, 1998. One of the best years of the early 2000s.

Half-Life was everywhere... except one notable place: Sega's Dreamcast. It has been a mystery as to what happened with a game destined to have a port on every possible platform.

Half-Life was a PC exclusive until the PS2 port in November 2001, ten months after the Dreamcast was discontinued. The PC and PS2 versions are still the only official versions to this day. Half-Life is not known for being on every platform. Was the author thinking of Doom, one of the best games of the mid 70s?

This may not work out the way I want it to, but I'm actually a little excited about these tech companies making a bunch of anti-consumer decisions all at once. So many mainstream users will be looking for alternatives, and it's going to provide a great opportunity for non-profit open source projects. It's already happening with the fediverse suddenly becoming a viable place for discussion in the last 1.5 years. After Windows Recall was announced, I've seen more people talking about switching to Linux than ever before. Part of me can't wait for unskippable Youtube ads.

How in the hell does anyone think that America's safety is dependent on Israel?

Oh man, I loved playing Dragon's Age: Origins. I had a sort of "unexpected companion" when I played through it in college.

I was a computer geek; I had a gaming PC. My roommate was in a frat and had an Xbox 360. The only games he ever played were Call of Duty and Madden.

One day he came home with a copy of Dragon Age for the 360. He said, "This seems like a game you would know about. One of my fraternity brothers lent it to me. Have you played it?" I had just bought it a few days earlier but hadn't played it yet. Of course I'm expecting Call-of-Duty-Madden-360 roommate to hate it.

Later that week I was going to party and he was staying home -- a reversal of how things usually went. I got home very late, very drunk, expecting 360 roommate to be asleep. But no, there he is, playing Dragon Age. As soon as I walk in he says, "BRO I'M IN THE DWARVEN CITY HOW FAR DID YOU GET CHECK OUT THIS SKILL I UNLOCKED FOR ALISTAIR AND DUDE THERE IS A DOG."

We played through the campaign on our respective machines over the next week, sharing tips and strategies along the way. It was great.

Actions like this create such a huge problem when trying to convince conservatives that Donald Trump is a unique and unprecedented danger.

It's one thing when I, a progressive, say that I did not like the most recent Republican president. My conservative neighbors expect me to say that, and therefore ignore the criticism. But it's not just me saying that; it's also Mike Pence, John Bolton, John Kelly, Bill Barr, and Chris Christie. That is a unique level of criticism leveled at their own party's president. But my conservative neighbors don't know that.

Trump has been called "dangerous" by his own:

• Vice President,
• Secretary of Defense,
• Chief of Staff,
• Attorney General,
• and other advisors,

yet your typical Republican voter will insist that it's just people on the left disliking a Republican president, just like any other Republican president.

Someone may comment that we all live in our own echo chambers, but the damn near impenetrable conservative bubble has no equivalence on the left. If conservative media doesn't want their audience to know something, conservatives will not know it.

From the article, emphasis mine:

also found that 56% of Republican registered voters said the case would have no effect on their vote and 35% said they were more likely to support Trump

Far more of them like that he paid off a porn star to keep quiet about the fact that he cheated on his wife.

I always thought it would have been cool if Pokemon were only found in environments that were "realistic" to that type. Like, if you had to go to a river to find water Pokemon, or if Geodude was only in the mountains. Seems like they didn't do that, though.

For me, the only reason to jump on a game early is if it's necessary for there to be a thriving multiplayer community to enjoy the game. That's something you would miss out on by waiting for a sale. That early stage, where everyone is still figuring out how the game works and finding new strategies, can be fun. But I rarely play multiplayer games now, so I just skip that and I don't mind.

If it's a singleplayer game, there's no reason to jump on it early -- and certainly not to enjoy it as a technical spectacle. It'll look just as good five years from now.

I remember replaying the original Half-Life in 2008 for its ten year anniversary, and thinking, "This is still fun, but the graphics are almost distractingly outdated." But when I replayed the original Mass Effect from 2007 just a couple years ago -- which was more than ten years old then -- I thought it looked just fine.

I mean, I'm no Trump apologist, but "let he who did not try looking at the eclipse cast the first stone."

Portal (1 and 2) and The Talos Principle are the only puzzle games I've played that not only had a story, but also managed to make the puzzle gameplay actually make sense within the story. Like, there is an in-universe explanation for why you are solving puzzles. I'm sure there are other games that do it, but those are the only ones I've played and they were fantastic. That's a hard thing to pull off -- how do you make a compelling narrative, complete with characters, around "moving some boxes?"

Looking forward to playing the sequel. Also, the original is $3 on Steam right now!

Obsidian is great; I was a happy user for a couple years. But I recently switched to Logseq and I think I'm already liking it more, and it's because of something Logseq doesn't do.

Obsidian lets you write a full markdown file, so step one is deciding how to write something down. Is it a nested list? Or a table? Or headings and subheadings with paragraphs?

In Logseq, everything is a nested list. This feels like a limitation, but I've been preferring it. The decision is made for you: you're going to jot this information down as a list. So then you just start writing it.

People often tout that Logseq is open source, and while that is great, IMO there is also a design consideration that makes it better. Pretty much any kind of information you want to write down can be represented as a nested list. Doing it that way keeps everything simple, consistent, and more searchable. (Logseq's built-in querying feature seems to be more powerful than Obsidian's Dataview plugin, although I can't say much about it since I haven't really played with it yet.)

Both Obsidian and Logseq save (kinda) standard markdown files, so if you spend a lot of time in a plain text editor, you can still use that. You don't lose anything by editing a file in a separate editor -- they will both parse and re-index the file next time you view it in the respective app.

That's Metal Gear Solid Y for those who are more familiar with the Xbox layout.

From the article, emphasis mine:

Dorsey, 52, was convicted and placed on death row in 2008 after pleading guilty [...]

The governor’s decision to proceed with Dorsey’s injection comes after his legal team filed a clemency application, stressing Dorsey’s “extraordinary rehabilitation” behind bars, his apparent mental state on the night of the murders as well as inadequate legal representation at trial

Sounds like there must have been inadequate legal representation -- how does one plead guilty and still wind up with the death penalty? What the hell was the plea deal?

I don't want to jump to conclusions, but that does sound like a very possible explanation.

Poo. I was hoping DDG would keep LLM-generated summaries out of their UI.

I read that as "surrendered to the authorities" and I thought WOW there must have been some Billy Mitchell developments that I was not aware of.

Yeah, it's hard to blame Nexus Mods for not wanting to poke the world's most litigious bear.

GN also asked him for advice as part of their video -- they mention him a few times in it.

They're late to the party anyway. The first 25-tuple-A game was released in 2009, and it's an indie gem. Got a remaster just a couple months ago, even. https://store.steampowered.com/app/15520/AaAaAA\_\_A\_Reckless\_Disregard\_for\_Gravity/

I'm sorry I have nothing helpful to add, other than congratulating you on the achievement of filling up a Gmail account. That is impressive.

Google should send out awards for that. Like, if you get a Youtube play button for having 1 million subscribers, they should give you some kind of "I'll get to it later" button for having 1 million unread emails in your inbox.

I'm not sure what kind of disagreement went on behind the scenes, but just as someone who enjoyed the game, this seems fine to me. Five years of post-release content is better than what you usually get, especially considering that they were all good updates and none were hasty cash grabs. The base game by itself was endlessly replayable, then they kept adding variety. It's not like people aren't going to get their money's worth, now that this game with near-infinite replayability isn't getting even more new content.

The article mentions the studio is a co-op; I was not aware of that before. From the studio's Wikipedia article:

Motion Twin is run as an anarcho-syndicalist workers cooperative with equal salary and decision-making power between its members.

WELL DAMN I already loved the game, now I love it all over again.

Someone on Mastodon made a good observation about how this headline is framed: https://mastodon.social/@jeffjarvis/112238112958275511

The New York Times does not assume Trump's motives whenever he says or does something; the headline simply reads "Trump Says Thing." But they will insert a motive for something Biden does. In this case, "swing-state pitch," instead of "doing more of the thing that he has done several times before." Can we assume that he hopes to pick up some votes by doing this? Of course. But the NYTimes' editorial standards are very inconsistent, and worth noticing.

I am posting this purely so that I can say that I called it:

No, it won't. This game will be very unpopular and they will abandon support for it quickly.

I'm hoping for a Steam controller 2. I've been using a PS4 and PS5 controller ever since they discontinued the original Steam controller. The gyro on the PlayStation controllers works great, but the touchpad isn't useable (or even reachable) like the Steam controller's trackpads were.

I've been thinking that would be their next product ever since they released an official dock. Seems like the two make sense together.

edit: OK I just read the article and it's probably not a controller. :( It's something with a 5Ghz radio in it, meaning it connects to wifi. A controller with a wireless dongle would only be using 2.4Ghz.

I like the fact that there are games that are still best played on the Dreamcast, or only played on the Dreamcast, since there was no follow-up console after it, or because the ports were not great. Today there's always a remaster, backwards compatibility with the next console, or at the very least a sequel, so games just move along with the hardware. But the Dreamcast had some games that just lived and died on that system.

Weirdly, most of these turned out to be fighting games. Probably because Capcom liked the Dreamcast.

My favorites that are still best (or only) played on that system:

• Crazy Taxi (the ports don't have the original soundtrack, an absolute sin)
• Power Stone and Power Stone 2
• Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (literally one of the best fighting games ever, and it can't be purchased on any systems today)
• Cannon Spike
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
• Project Justice

This blog post is pretty buzzword-heavy, but Penpot is a legitimately great tool. It's used for UI design and layouts. I've seen a couple of open source projects use a self-hosted Penpot instance for working on and discussing new designs.

Figma would be the most popular, proprietary example of this type of tool. I'm not aware of any open source competitors besides Penpot.

edit: It's like Google docs for web page layouts or app layouts. The animation on their homepage is probably the best way of showing what it does.

Yeah, this is perfectly consistent with the idea that people don't want to read AI generated news at all.

The title of the paper they are referencing is Or they could just not use it?: The paradox of AI disclosure for audience trust in news. So the source material definitely acknowledges that. And that is a great title, haha.

Haha, OK fine, how about "a particularly litigious bear, though not as litigious as Oracle, which is the world's only known lawsuit-seeking jellyfish: a completely mindless creature that instinctively sues anything that touches its tentacles."

Not sure what Half Life 2 is doing on there, pretty sure Valve is fully in control of that one on PC at least. Didn't EA publish the PS3 version of the Orange Box? I'm guessing that's for a console port.

Also, Biomutant? That only just came out like two years ago. Not sure what the online features are for that game though, I thought it was singleplayer.

This is all just another reason why I don't buy games where online multiplayer is the main selling point of the game. I might not even get around to playing it much before that feature is removed.

Old PC games with dedicated servers are still (and always will be) playable online, while games from a couple years ago have their centrally-managed servers taken offline. People are still playing Doom, Quake, and Unreal Tournament while games from this console generation are already unplayable.

Man, I'm hoping for a reintroduction of this character in Street Fighter 6. Twelve had so many unique properties that other SF characters have never had, like an air dash, and the fact that his forward walk simply went underneath projectiles. They just made him do no damage for some reason.

All of the SF6 rebooted characters have been great so far.

But that screenshot proves that no remake is necessary. Does that not look perfect already? Literally pictures of real people slapped onto 3D models. Photo realism, done. Perfected. No one else, besides the classic Mortal Kombat games, has had the courage to make a game out of straight up photographs of real people. Max Payne had the best graphics. The MOST graphics. THE PHOTO GRAPHICS.

Obsidian is reaching market criticality so I’m expecting enshitification any time now.

You could be right, but I'm not 100% sure of that. From the article:

Keeping the team small and spurning outside investment is Obsidian’s way of avoiding incentives that might lead the company astray.

If they can stick to that, they can avoid going downhill. The main driver for enshittification is big shareholders that want the company to keep growing -- shareholders don't care about stable profitability, they need growth for their ownership stake to increase in value. If Obsidian is profitable now and they're fine with just keeping it that way, they can make it work.

The way I played it, Sonic Adventure was a virtual pet raising game with a 3D platformer minigame in there for something else to do on the side.