Computer Games

[noddy]

I recently got *all* of the old valve games for about $10 on sale.

2 portals and 2 half lifes and about 8 expansions.

both portals still stand up great , good as ever.

half life one, pretty rough - half life 2 , excellent.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

That's a great deal.

The caveat for me is that I don't like Portal 2 all that much.

The puzzling isn't as good; it suffers the Jaws 2 "I've already seen the shark" problem; and it goes on for too long- I don't think the writing is better but it certainly does!

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I know most people put 2 on their best ever lists; but for me, 1 would be in the running.

[noddy]

thats perfectly fair.

1 is short , sharp and glados is a perfect villain.

2 drags on a lot longer, and the novelty is gone - and i never bothered finishing the very last boss battle, I was over it.

the main surprise for me wasnt the portals (which I already knew I liked) but half life 2 in particular - after replaying bioshock and feeling very flat on how crap it was, then playing half life 1 and remembering how bad the second half is, and how janky some parts of the controls are, I was dreading half life 2.

and its still the best "story happens while you play" game ever done, as far as I can tell - it barely shows its age in some ways - the only bits I havent enjoyed are that both of the driving sections are too long, their should have been only one of them, and of half the length.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

One day I will get around to Half Life 2.

You're completely right about Bioshock, a game which aged like milk.

[noddy]

some of the evironmental puzzles are as fun as portal in their way - I think thats the secret sauce of that era of Valve games, they had a guy with an eye for such things.

the shooting is a bit meh by halfway through, not enough variety in approach, too many generic solider encounters.

its possibly still the sheen of goodwill from back in the day giving me good vibes about it, but that didnt help the others at al.

[noddy]

Ive tried most of the "boomer shooters" now - got em for stuff all in a humble bundle.

mostly woeful, some that I previously liked, the fun wore off pretty quickly, so now that the dust has settled, their is only one and its called Turbo Overkill.



completeley stupid, very modern, but very fast and movement orientated, the enemies have projectiles, not hit scanners and its just fun.

the best part is it just keeps on adding more stuff every level, more movement, more guns, more powerups, more sillyness, keeps itself fresh.

--

Got this one free for having a prime account



Ive actually been enjoying it but im not sure Id recommend it - its replaced Northgard as my minimal attention span and carefactor strategy game.

no micromanagement, you just do land expansion, army management and high level resource management, and its biggest feature is you can play an entire campaign fairly quickly, in a single session.

it fills a gap when i need some mindless distraction with just a bit of strategy and planning to it - and its fun being set in the bronze age and doing a papua new guinea empire, or whatever.

the maps are fixed, which is a blessing and a curse, the variety comes from a card deck that delivers modifiers to each turn or picking a harder empire on a higher difficulty.

where you are on the map makes a huge difference, the initial resource acquisition stage is a lot harder when you are surrounded by other empires.

[noddy]

One day I will get around to Half Life 2.

You're completely right about Bioshock, a game which aged like milk.

I did eventually finish all the half life 2 - base game and the 2 expansions but It was getting chore like towards the end so I turned the difficulty down just to see what happened.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Ozymandias has been on my list for a while now. Unfortunately, I see no good timing to tackle anything on the list.

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For me, I'm burnt out on almost everything that doesn't have a sense of strategy and stakes to it.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

The best bit of the steamdeck is the effort being put into porting games to the virtual windows system - proton.

I just set up the beta of steam on my main linux box to see how its going and now 265 out of 266 games are claiming to possibly work.

Steamdeck is back on the radar here as a dream emulation machine. The 3ds stuff is unfortunately still a bit iffy and that coupled with the price tag is the only reason I've not jumped in yet.

Part of me says to still hold off because every year I wait, the emulators get better and the toy-devices get better for cheaper prices and it becomes simpler to do.

[noddy]

None of the toys will get the long term support of the steam one, I wont be buying any of those again, they never update the OS or fix bugs.

Im not playing enough games to warrant the outlay tho - many other things in the list before that.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

That's definitely part of the pros and cons.

Valve is a lot better looking and more reliable in the emulation-toy department than the Chinese competitors. For example, I've had my eye on the Ayin Odin and despite the praise (however reliable *that* is, ) the unreliable shipping complaints I've read coupled with the base models still only having 8 GB RAM, sort of sours me on it.

[noddy]

That's definitely part of the pros and cons.

Valve is a lot better looking and more reliable in the emulation-toy department than the Chinese competitors. For example, I've had my eye on the Ayin Odin and despite the praise (however reliable *that* is, ) the unreliable shipping complaints I've read coupled with the base models still only having 8 GB RAM, sort of sours me on it.

also comes with 30 years of pc games with the highest levels of ongoing suport aswell

My loungeroom machine is a linux box, running steam, built from a slightly earlier generation of AMD/Radeon tech than the steam deck, and I can play quite a bit of my back catalog on it just fine at 1080p

my studio has the fancy windows machine with the modern graphics card and all the music gear on it, but I tend to use it less now im back wage slaving again.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Valve has a discount on the base 64 GB Steamdeck while supplies last, so I jumped.

It became too annoying searching through specs on cheaper, refurbished machines while crossing my fingers I'd get something usable. And as previously mentioned, I couldn't really commit to the other toy ones.

Could wait another 2 years but I'd be in a similar situation, arguing over whether I should continue waiting for better technology/better coverage.

[noddy]

yep, their will always be something better later - its a nice point in the cycle to get something good, cheap.

that model is the most popular because its easy to swap the 64gb ssd out for a 1tb or even 2tb aftermarket one - so its the most desired amongst the crowd who know they can do that.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

yep, and it looks like they'll be phasing that model out with the introduction of the oled decks.

I'll have my eye on that for down the road-- read that the 2230 drives are a hassle to come by.

Right now, the hunts for a solid 3rd party dock that isn't 90 dollars, wires & controller- don't know if I'll be going Nintendo or Microsoft on that or maybe something by 8bitdo.

[Nonc Hilaire]

Computer games as a Russian terrorist tool. Links in the description/substack.

https://youtu.be/ubquz5lJmjQ?si=B-uFIDGl9VQnAK8m

[noddy]

Its more profitable to argue moh's existance with an ISIS member while they have you hanging from the wall with electrodes on your nipples than get involved in American conspiracies on their precious guns.

as for the fact you can use computer games to have conversations off the radar of the normal 5 eyes monitoring on chat apps, why yes you can.

my conspiracy theory instead will be any place on the internet that the eye of sauron has incomplete coverage will be attacked from all angles as a hive of terrorism and pedophillia and drugs.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

The valve machine arrived, opened the box to check if it was all there then sealed it up again and will be putting it under the Christmas tree.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Adam Lanza was a sick dude before the event; he was known throughout the area and people knew something was very off.

I don't think induced psychosis explains what was going on there.

If anything, I think technology frustrated what was otherwise a person who in another time and place would've gravitated towards serial killing and sexual violation.

[noddy]

The valve machine arrived, opened the box to check if it was all there then sealed it up again and will be putting it under the Christmas tree.

nice way to avoid the aumtumn and black friday sales

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

[Nonc Hilaire]

Adam Lanza was a sick dude before the event; he was known throughout the area and people knew something was very off.

I don't think induced psychosis explains what was going on there.

If anything, I think technology frustrated what was otherwise a person who in another time and place would've gravitated towards serial killing and sexual violation.

Agreed. The parts I found most interesting were the admissions that 1) government agencies were using game data to target people and 2) that they were actively attempting to manipulate behavior based on that data.

[noddy]

https://www.protondb.com/ is the officla resource for keeping track of which PC games have good steam emulation on linux

[Typhoon]

Nuclear Reactor Simulator

from the Dalton Nuclear Institute, University of Manchester