Could've been worse I guess. I know they did their best considering ridiculous market conditions, but it's a hard sell if this was meant to compete with consoles, you can still buy a normal console for roughly half the price.

In terms of being a prebuilt gaming PC, it's not bad. Some people have said a similar spec PC is roughly $100 cheaper if you get everything yourself. Now the question is how much stock Valve actually has to sell, because I assume they won't have that many made because of the component shortages...

Double top sticks won't be as comfortable as it sounds. You'll have to hold the device awkwardly if you're using the left analog stick but are playing a game that isn't using the right stick (like any 2D platformer). The analog stick on the left being at the top or bottom is mostly preference, I've seen devices go either way.

It really is such a weird show, I've watched a couple of random episodes and every single one is just:

Entrepreneur: I'd like to introduce the tablet magazine! It's like a magazine but it's a tablet for some reaso-

Guy on the left: This is the stupidest thing I've heard in my entire life. You should end it all today.

Old man who unironically calls himself Mr. Wonderful: I've heard enough. I can give you a loan of $200k, but I want to own half your company and get your children's souls when they die. Do we have a deal?

TL;DR:

But really, I don't buy that Nvidia can't regularly release improved GPUs for consumers. Consumer hardware is reaching a peak but there's still a lot more that can be done in terms of efficiency. Just look at how great modern flagship phone chips are. The M5 Max macbook pro for example is sooooooooo much more efficient than a typical gaming laptops, and it's in a slim chassis.

Nvidia just stopped caring because they make too much money selling to data centers now, and they are releasing regular improvements for their high end server hardware. Consumer GPUs are just pocket money to them now, and there's practically no competition so why would they bother releasing something new?

At this point I can't tell who's shitposting and who isn't lol

RIP. The Doom soundtrack was incredibly iconic.

How is it? I loved Braid but found The Witness a little pretentious honestly, not sure if I have time to try the demo soon.

I played a demo for a game called FISH which is a 2D run and gun, it's one of the most insane things I've played. Highly recommended to people who love silly and surreal games.

Some people just don't get real art...

Octopath Traveler 2 is basically a modern retro Final Fantasy game. Made by Square as well.

Better idea: Buy tens of major companies, run them to the ground, then shut them down even if they're doing well.

Trust me bro, a few more years of this strategy and Xbox will surely be on top!

Not sure if this counts because it's not that bad, but Final Fantasy 15.

I can't even begin to explain how much of a complete mess this game is. The combat consists of mashing buttons and teleporting away when you're low HP, the open world is very big and isn't that interesting, it's a mess of systems that don't work together because this game had a very troubled development, and the story is borderline incomprehensible - the last third of the game felt like I was skipping cutscenes. The few dungeons included were also terrible. Oh and there are parts in the game where you literally have to wait entire minutes in a car waiting to go from point A to B.

And yet, I played through the whole thing, it was weirdly relaxing. Whenever it wasn't trying to be a final fantasy game, it was actually pretty fun. Fishing, doing menial tasks, chocobo racing (and riding chocobos in general) were great. The game also has some of the most beautiful towns I've seen in gaming, and boy is that soundtrack perfect.

I enjoyed it a lot, but by all accounts I'd still call it a bad game.

Infinities were a little too easy in StS2 compared to the first, especially on release. You can still do infinites but it's more than just hitting every shop to thin your deck then spam card draws.

Note that this is based on the original novel, it's not actually affiliated with the Ghibli movie.

Yeah, I'm optimistic. The last Puss in Boots movie was great, and this looks pretty good. I just really, really hope they don't make it about about the children like Shrek 4. I want a good story with Shrek/Fiona/Donkey that doesn't involve them learning to accept and love their weird children or something.

Couldn't have said it better, I know Disney usually don't make great movies anymore but I still thought they were above making a generic YA fantasy Narnia knockoff. It just gives me straight to DVD vibes.

I'm sure it will make a gazillion dollars regardless. Kids eat this stuff up.

A nothingburger apology that follows the same patterns every company does

1. Introduce outrageous thing

2. Apologize

3. delay outrageous thing by a few months and hope people forgot about it, then do it again

I hate to break it to you but... It's been over 20 years. It's more retro now than the SNES was when the 360 came out.

Alright I know people rag on Epic all the time... but it's truly incredible how hard they keep dropping the ball. It's been SEVEN YEARS since it was created and it still feels so basic and terrible to use.

The store is drab and uses huge chunks of space just to advertise fortnite and f2p rewards. Discovery is terrible and the store is full of crypto scams and AI spam shovelware, which is ironic because Epic started off being very selective about what's allowed to be published there. The store also feels like adware because it keeps spamming random notifications and ads unless you turn it off.

The best part is that Epic constantly blames users for not wanting to leave Steam instead of admitting their store sucks. They keep spending tens of millions buying exclusives and giving away games for free rather than spending any time improving the store. Seriously, what are they doing over there?

Honestly I'm expecting this to take up most of the mid-range laptop market. 8gb RAM and only 256GB storage is lame, but the rest of it probably makes it really good value (especially with components getting more expensive recently).

Unless you're buying used or refurbished, most laptops I found at ~$600 or less kinda suck. Either it has terrible specs, or uses cheap plastic, or has a terrible screen, etc.

I don't like Apple, but hopefully this is a wake-up call for other vendors. Lower end laptops should stop being cheap garbage.