Outlaws looked great, and had you go to interesting locations, and fly in space. There were no towers to open up maps. The outlaw system wasn’t super amazing in the end, but it didn’t detract from anything.

I don’t disagree it has a reputation, but Outlaws was a fun break from the super boring Assassin’s Creed games of late.

It seems like to me some of their games simply just need another two months in the oven.

There were lots of little bugs in Star Wars Outlaws, but I found that game to be really fun, and largely pretty solid. But then they dropped updates a month out or so that fixed a lot of those little bugs. I wonder if they had just had that extra month to polish it up if it’d have gotten slammed as hard. People may still have wanted different things storywise or whatever, but on a technical level just one extra month could have helped.

True. And that is a lot of people. But I was assuming way more than that based on the headline.

kidRidingBikeAndPuttingStickIntoSpokes.meme

Though the article says they went from 1,900 to 1,700 employees, so not necessarily a huge amount relatively.

fReE sPeEcH AbSoLuTiOnIsT

2 in my opinion is the worst of the trilogy.

3 is a masterpiece, and doesn’t have that gotcha crap.

If I recall correctly, Nintendo announced the Switch on Jimmy Fallon (gross) in December before it dropped the following spring, so there is some precedent. Though I would agree now is a different ballgame since the switch exists and they still want to sell them until they can’t.

Pretty interesting that they are bringing this game out. We’ll be able to play all of the Xenoblade Chronicles games on the Switch, which is nice. Everyone needs to go out and waste about 500 hours on these games. At the very least XC 1-3 because that trilogy is so good, and ends so well.

What’s interesting to me is that the launch date is set for March, which means one of a few things:

Either the Switch 2 drops later than that (my guess around May), or this game will launch on both systems, or the Switch 2 is actually a fever dream and the regular Switch is Nintendo’s last console ever.

Bezos is also using his ownership of the Washington Post to silence the journalists there. So that’s fun.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/25/jeff-bezos-killed-washington-post-endorsement-of-kamala-harris-.html

Weirdly they are bringing back the PS/2 port.

One port!

Buy our special dongle to connect anything to it. It costs $200!

Barring an insane price jump, I may very well have a new little Mac Mini in a couple of weeks.

I’m very much due for an upgrade. But this one I’m using now has been really reliable for being 10 years old.

I happen to have a friend who works at Firaxis and worked on Midnight Suns. I am really happy for him/the team that game came out as well as it did.

The overworld running could certainly be better, but overall that game is super good. I really like the turn from Xcom of a somewhat fake 97% to hit (where your character right next to an alien will still miss) to simply having everything hit but it’s restricted by the skills you have at hand in that moment. I’d be more excited about a Midnight Suns 2 than Civ VII, honestly.

Excellent!

Kobo can connect to libraries via apps like Libby (or others), right?

I totally get that. And I have had that same experience once or twice. I break my own rule on those rare occasions where somehow the thing is only there.

The last time I bought from Amazon that I remember was in 2021 when I was putting together a new keyboard. Somehow they were the only ones that had the key caps I wanted. The only other place I could find them was Alibaba, and the shipping there was going to be literally 2 months according to the site.

But for normal items, I go to the seller as much as possible.*

(*And I know for some sellers it’s actually cheaper for them to use Amazon for shipping. I get it. But also, still, I don’t want to give Bezos money so I avoid it if possible.)

Reminder: don’t buy things from Amazon.

Like, anything.

“But fast shipping!” No. Stop. Most places now have pretty good shipping, often for free if you happen to buy a certain amount. It’s OK if the thing comes in 3-5 days and not tomorrow. You will survive.*

*I know there’s a couple of niche cases where some people do need things quick and Amazon serves that purpose. But 99.999% of things are not that.

“Bro I can’t wavedash in Ultimate.”

Switch 2 on the horizon, eh?

So…Smash Bros. Ultimate + to come out holiday 2026 or spring 2027?

Literally just fix the online experience and that game will live on forever.

What does “focuses on DEI” even mean? That it has non-white people?

Some stories don’t have straight, white people. That doesn’t mean there’s some agenda going on.