Odd to say Veilguard was a success when from what I can tell, one of the few things uniting the very fractured and divided gaming community this year was that the writing in Veilguard was horrible. And you know that’s true when the various members of that community can give their own varied reasons why the writing was horrible and they would all be valid.

Bingo. This gives no indication of what they discussed or what said CEOs actually think of him. Basically just routine politics to ensure they don’t get on his bad side regardless.

The only time I was really caught off guard by a game like that was Darksiders II. I went into the final area expecting a gauntlet of challenges, beat the first big boss enemy in there… And final cutscene and credits. That guy was the final boss. Made me literally put down the controller and say “That was it?” I’ve always known long games were going to be long going in to them.

To piggy back on this, here’s some more specific examples (as far as I’m aware listed games have both Genesis and SNES versions unless otherwise noted; note that versions may differ in gameplay and/or quality):

• TMNT Turtles in Time (SNES)
• TMNT Hyperstone Heist (Genesis, IIRC same game different name)
• Captain America and the Avengers
• Spider-Man Maximum Carnage
• Batman Returns
• Adventures of Batman and Robin
• Spider-Man/X-Men Arcade’s Revenge
• X-Men 1 and 2 (Genesis only; for X-Men 1 you may need to work around resetting the console at one point in the game)
• there’s a Justice League fighting game, IIRC I think it’s called Justice League Task Force
• X-Men Mutant Apocalypse (SNES only)

How have I not heard of Freedom Force? That’s a pickup for me ASAP. Thanks! 👍

Combination of software availability and the perception that Linux is only for developers/servers and you have to be a computer genius to use it. Even if you can convince someone that just running Linux isn’t rocket science, there’s still commonly used software like the Adobe suite and MS Office that just don’t have feature-parity level alternatives, even if those alternatives are almost there. I can do most of the stuff I used to do at work on LibreOffice compared to MS Office, but not everything. And while compatibility with the MS Office file types has really improved leaps and bounds over time, there’s still some noticeable issues when opening those documents with one program after making changes with the other. People mention Photoshop a lot as a deal-breaker, but especially with GIMP 3.0 coming, GIMP will be a lot closer to Photoshop than most Linux PDF editors are to Acrobat. The only one I can find that has even close to Acrobat’s features is Master PDF Editor, a piece of paid software (if you want all those features without an annoying watermark) that I don’t think the free version of is in many repos. People say to use LibreOffice Draw, but that’s drawing software meant for entirely different file types and is really not good for any PDF with any type of formatting in it because Draw isn’t designed to handle it. I don’t need those features on my own home PC, so I’ve been running Linux on my personal machines since 2009, but for those who do need those things, it might be a hard sell.

Sounds a lot like Hypnospace Outlaw, which came out a few years ago and had you exploring a fictional Internet from the mid/late-90s era on an OS designed to mimic Windows 95/98 (with an upgrade to an XP-like desktop later in the game). You were basically a mod/censor who went around and busted people for copyright infringement and stuff. Also a real nostalgia trip if you miss that kind of aesthetic.

I’m half a year from 40 myself, and I’m quite concerned. We were fortunate enough that social media never really took off in popularity until we were adults. We’re basically the last ones who can claim that. Sure, our parents wrung their hands and got upset about too much garbage TV and video games, but there is something legitimately different and more alarming here. Even when social media was first coming onto the scene, the technology was different and any algorithms that existed weren’t nearly as fine-tuned as they are now. You basically just got a feed of whatever the people you included as your friends were up to or wanted to share, and efforts to profile you or curate that content in order to keep you glued to their site were not nearly as sophisticated. Smartphones were a brand new tech, so most people still had a “dumb” cell phone that could just present a super stripped-down mobile version of a website, and most apps for them came directly from the manufacturer or service provider. All of that technology has exploded in the last 10-15 years, faster than even the rapid rise of the Internet itself in the '90s. All the goofy Flash games and stuff back then, or skibidi toilet today, aren’t really the problem, I will agree on that (even if I think the stupidity of that stuff has only continued to go downhill). The danger is in that rapidly increasing sophistication of the algorithms and other psychological patterns that social media companies, advertisers and other big tech moguls have been using to ensure we never put our smartphones down, and all the data we give them just makes those algorithms stronger by the day. TV broadcasters and game developers could utilize some techniques to keep you watching or playing, but they could never fine-tune an experience tailor made for the individual user like these tech and social media companies can. The stupid nature of so much of the stuff that’s out there is certainly not helping, but that’s also a matter of “garbage in, garbage out”. But the user would never know exactly how garbage the content they’re consuming is if they never break out of the bubble these companies contain them in.

I’ve used GNOME in the past but currently use KDE Plasma. Both are good, but as for recommendations most Linux people I know of say for new users that if you’re coming from Windows start with Plasma and if you’re coming from Mac OS start with GNOME since those are the closer desktops to what you used before and will make things a bit easier. Depending on the distro you choose you may also have access to other desktops like Cinnamon, which I haven’t used but have heard is even easier than Plasma for new users coming from Windows. It’s not ready for daily use yet, but the upcoming Cosmic desktop may also be quite good for that.

I never owned a 32X, and I’ve only tried one or two games in its library through emulation. From what I’ve tried and seen, at least what was released for it barely qualifies as anything one would call “32 bit” by looking at it, it just pushes the Genesis slightly beyond the graphical capabilities of the SNES. It only existed in the first place because Sega of America and Sega of Japan never communicated properly so SoA had no idea SoJ was working on the Saturn, so SoA made the 32X to prolong the Genesis’ life span until a proper 32-bit console could be developed, and THEN they found out about the Saturn, but STILL tried to push it as Sega’s 32-bit solution, which was rejected soundly by SoJ in favor of the Saturn, and SoJ only approved the 32X for those stopgap purposes while they readied the Saturn for Western release. SoJ weren’t right about what would appeal to the Western market very often, but they did at least get that right. The Saturn didn’t sell well in the Western market, but it easily trounced the 32X in every way (and actually showed what 32-bit hardware could do without being shackled to an aging 16-bit console as an add-on). The 32X pulled Virtual Boy numbers and had about as long a lifespan and only a slightly larger library. Really an apt comparison: two consoles that failed spectacularly to deliver on their graphical promises, were rejected by the market, and became the biggest hardware flops in each company’s history for good reason.

IIRC both are made by the same dev.

I just clearly remember this making the rounds on Linux YouTube earlier this year with every one of them who looked at it telling people to not let it touch anything resembling your machine.

You have a narrow taste in games and that’s perfectly OK, nothing to be ashamed of at all. Enjoy what you like. You have no obligation whatsoever to play the newest, most popular thing just to keep up with the gaming Joneses. The list of popular games I haven’t tried myself is MUCH longer than the list of them I have played, either because they don’t appeal to me or I just don’t have the spare time or money, and I am 100% fine with that. I buy the games I know I’ll put time into and enjoy and don’t worry about the rest.

Checks out. I’m the same as others have mentioned, after work I’d rather just tune out and watch someone play a game (or have it on in the background) than actually build up the mental strength to play one myself, or at least a game that has any challenge to it, most days. If I play a game on an evening after work, I’m usually just cruising the Paldea region in Pokemon hunting for shinies or some other interesting pokemon to catch. I can just shut my brain off, move my character around, and look for a different colored pokemon.

TBF, the Smash Bros community brought their all-but-destruction on themselves. The rest is pretty valid, though.

A better question would be which one doesn’t, the list of those who don’t would be a lot shorter than those who do in some way, shape or form. All three major console companies, any second party devs associated with them, and most major third party console or PC devs and publishers pull some sort of anti-consumer BS or another. The wall of shame includes the likes of EA, Ubisoft, Capcom, Square-Enix, Activision Blizzard, and many more. One of the huge selling points of BG3 was that it was a major release that didn’t have anything in it designed to screw fans over, and it was (deservedly) greatly praised and rewarded by the fans for it, to the point that other jealous devs/publishers freaked out about the future of their business if more of them followed suit. That should tell you all you need to know.

Pokemon, either Pokemon Sword or Pokemon Violet, I would have to look at the Switch itself to compare, but last I looked at either one it was around 400-something hours. Shiny hunting can be a surprisingly cozy time-waster, lol.

I too am a 3D screen enjoyer on the 3DS. But I don’t really play fast-moving games where the 3D would create vision issues.

As many have said, it’s all about the games. How well the WiiMote functions in a game is largely dependent on the actual game as well. Nintendo pretty much showed the peak of what they can do with the Wii Sports games, and there are a few other games that use the motion controls well, but they tend to be the minority. That said, as a traditional controller it’s not the worst thing in the world, and you can still use a Pro controller, the classic controller attachment or a GameCube controller for more traditional controls. The Wii library can be underrated due to the prevalence of shovelware, but there are great games like the Mario Galaxy games, Mario Kart Wii, the last good Mario Party before Superstars, the original versions of Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, the aforementioned Wii Sports games, the second Mario Strikers, the best of the New Super Mario Bros games, Metroid Prime 3, Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn (if you can afford them), DKC Returns, Kirby’s Return to Dreamland, Kirby’s Epic Yarn (another game that used the motion controls well) and many more. (As an aside, I think the Wii U will also be known as a console with an under-rated library down the road.) Sadly, due to its perception and underpowered hardware for its generation, there’s not much actually good third-party software for it, but Nintendo themselves supported the Wii more than adequately.

I would imagine Astro Bot and Balatro would have to be the frontrunners given their reception and popularity.

I used Sabayon for a bit too. It was basically “Gentoo made easy” with a simpler installer and as you said a binarypackage manager rather than compiling packages from source. It’s wasn’t 100% completely dead after dropping the Sabayon branding, it morphed into Mocaccino Linux, but when they did so they re-based it on Funtoo, which is also now dead.