Wish more people realized this, and realized it's a bipartisan practice too.

Larian is an unusual case. It's indie but it's huge. They aren't funded by or marketing through a bigger publishing company so IMO that's still indie. But they're hundreds of people so not really small, and BG3 can by all means be considered a AAA game because the difference in quality and scale is indistinguishable from AAA published games.

It baffles me how anyone can stand to preorder any game with the market being so oversaturated. There are SO MANY great games on a constant $20 or less sale rotation you'll probably never have a chance to play if you're a full-time working adult. I'm worried about grabbing a highly acclaimed title that's been out for 5 years before it fades into obscurity, and I have to stumble upon a shout-out 3 years later to be reminded of its existence. Not about some stupid launch skin bonus, or OST mp3s you'll never click open.

"Choose" isn't really an accurate term to use in your comment though, is it? Obviously high-realism AAA game graphics are going to come with a high budget outside the realm of possibility for the average indie dev, unless they have some super talented people with a passion for the project working for cheap.

A lot of us are willing to make this concession or adjust expectations for an experience that has great gameplay, soundtrack, story, etc. as easily as reading subtitles to enjoy a foreign film. The imagination can do plenty of the heavy lifting.

He couldn't even if the military did design fighter jets lmao.

Just saw a YouTube vid showcasing a whole damn multiplayer mod. A whole squad rolling up on the area with floating user tags. It looked fun as hell.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon! It's on steam sale for $12 reg version, but I bought the Hero Edition for $14. It has two extra job classes and something else I've forgotten. I'm 4 hours in and it's been a LOT of character and plot set up while just scratching the surface of their turn-based combat. The story is pretty good so far and full of Japan's particular brand of uncanny fringe humor that I'm expecting to snowball as time goes on.

The 3rd act of MGS2 hits like a sledgehammer after so much light hearted, self-parodying, comfortably familiar heroic espionage. The story has aged so well. It invokes that eerie 4th wall break feeling that Psycho Mantis delivered, but on a prolonged and more meaningful scale.

Here's a close up of some perforated foliage

It's about 4ft or a little taller at this point, and has been a bit of a pain in the ass keeping up right. This cool spiral support has been serving pretty well, but has needed a few readjustments as it grows. We keep it out on the north-facing front porch where it's well shaded all day long with the help of big front yard tree.

The bar is apparently low these days.

"They released it almost bug free!" is the new "AAA devs announced there will be no micro transactions!" Gamers as a group are basically abused spouses.

Didn’t think I would have to explain that.

You didn't. You just repeated what the other guy said in different words, haha. I think he's looking for a little more detail. It's an 11yo console and we're not all Nintendo historians.

Yeah, it's the not buying it.

It’s a fair price.

That's a valid opinion that I disagree with. My opinion on the price isn't why the guy sucks. It's just another reason I won't buy the game, personally. It's just the basis for him acting like a damn fool on a public forum about it.

No need to come to their defense if you like that game, that's cool. I'm just voting with my wallet for my own personal reasons. Simple as that.

So what it went from $20 to $35? Game has been out for a long time and updated quite a bit in that time. Also if the devs don’t want to put it on sale… that’s their decision 🤷‍♂️

I thought all of this went without saying, so I didn't. That's just stuff I personally dislike as a consumer. Nothing egregious about it.

It's how the douchebag thinks it's okay to treat other people is what turned me off of ever giving them business.

They're staunchly anti-sale, and the game will not ever be available at any kind of sale price. On top of that earlier this year they increased the price to "adjust for inflation". When they announced it there was a reddit thread with plenty of criticism in the comments. He proceeded to come in hot, fling shit, and condescend to everyone with the attitude of a grade school bully. It was mildy entertaining tbh. They really need a PR person with a guy like that in the lead.

I'll wait for the updated cracked file. Sorry to the rest of the team but their lead dev is a collosal cunt.

^Boosting this as it's the only non-anime suggestion atm.

I just watched this and thought it was decent. Directed by Hideaki Anno, known best for Neon Genesis Evangelion, and it's pretty apparent. The montages of button down politicians and scientists working in sync, filing into perfectly symmetrical makeshift office spaces, and standing at attention like they're military personnel felt very familiar. I saw a review afterwards that called it "The Dunkirk of Godzilla Movies" which I found hilariously accurate.

I'll also throw in the very aged, but influential Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)

Meta never had a good thing. Oculus had a good thing. Meta WAS the bad thing. The writing was on the wall from the start and the open VR community has preached about it for years. It's a shame for the best outgoing PC-Free VR hardware.

What else can you expect, when those site redesigns are usually driven by the desire for increased ad revenue. Even idiots who don't know why, will know it somehow sucks more than it used to. Other times it's just a blatant removal of loved features. Funny skit aside, the simpler explanation is enshittification.

Other movies after The Wind Rises were just Ghibli productions, but not Miyazaki directed.

Yeah, as with bands reuniting for another FINAL album, it sort of cheapens the finality of both productions for whatever that's worth.

As a side note; I freaking LOVED The Wind Rises, more than most Ghibli fans it feels like. My father is a retired aircraft loadmaster so I've had a soft spot for aviation since I was a child, but being an absolute commie, liberal, beta-cuck, that appreciation was tempered over time with the reality of the military industrial complex. I felt targeted directly by that movie.

I have no idea what this is about, and I'm going to try to keep it that way until I get a chance to watch.

Search Esther Lin UFC photography. She's retired from shooting the UFC now, but shot some of the most legendary UFC moments with insanely good quality and composition.

I've always used Free ver. of PowerISO to "mount" the disc image to a virtual drive like others mentioned. Anyone who's emulated PlayStation 1/2 games would be very familiar with this format. Otherwise any old software released on CD format you'll probably find as an ISO.

Excellent presentation, Chef. HANDS PLEASE, THANK YOU!

Crazy seeing that in a Vacutainer/Vacuette tube, the standard transportation medium you'd see in any clinic/hospital for routine intravenous blood draw.

Amen to locked out slsk "sharers". Always hated that, though it honestly feels less common than it did back at its peak popularity as a platform.

Half of all QT movies reference. Jackie Brown, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Death Proof.

Not sure how you mean. Stable Diffusion is the golden standard right now and it's free. You just have to run it locally on your own hardware for the full configurability and features. It's a pretty steep learning curve, and requires a decent, discreet GPU.

Yeah, crazy fast roadmap.

That's on the editor and, at large, the public's misconception. We can establish categories, creator labels and whatever we need to do to satisfy our egos, but make no mistake; generating "good" AI art is difficult. Generating the best quality work requires good knowledge of prompting syntax and usually some basic Photoshop skills for preprocessing and ControlNet.

I can also use my own sketch art as the ControlNet. It's just a new powerful tool and another new digital medium. This time it's colored by the gatekeeping sentiment that LESS talented individuals might produce art that is good. Which is an absurd way of thinking.

That's what I just got done doing. Submissions sorted by Top, deleted. Comments sorted by Top, deleted.

He waited a surprisingly long amount of time before mounting the high horse. Longer than usual. Patient Dom.

He looked a little tipsy the way he did all that reffing and stuff.

1st event on /m/mma. Let's go booyyyz!

I'm down to paying a full $60 price tag for a game, maybe 1-3 times a year at most. And one of those is usually a family/shared game for my wife or son. It's whatever big zeitgeist game I can't miss like Elden Ring. Next one will probably be Zelda TotK around Christmas. Maybe 2 copies of Diablo 4 if the wife wants to play it badly. Other than that I'm usually playing some indie game. Or a AAA that's 5+ years old. The household is 2 gaming PCs and just the switch for the living room.