What Have You Been Playing... IN MAY 2025?
Well, that's my playlist this month. Did you play more games? Fewer?
Let's find out. Just answer the following question:
What Have You Been Playing... IN MAY 2025?
Well, that's my playlist this month. Did you play more games? Fewer?
Let's find out. Just answer the following question:
What Have You Been Playing... IN MAY 2025?
Well, that's my playlist this month. Did you play more games? Fewer?
Let's find out. Just answer the following question:
What Have You Been Playing... IN MAY 2025?
This doesn't sound appealing, I don't want to play through someone
else's inner demons and psychosis. Yes I've heard how great it is, but
I haven't been able to bring myself to play it because of that.
On Sun, 01 Jun 2025 12:37:42 -0400, Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote:
Fucking Win11!
MS peaked with win7, it's only gotten worse since then.
Hate to think what 12 and 13 will be like.
My favorite new "ohmigod, why is Windows 11 like that?" discovery is
that Notepad, if you shrink down the app's window-size to about
800x600 pixels across, also starts cropping its dialog boxes... even
if they'd still fit perfectly in that reduced space.
E.g., smallify the notepad window, and your "find" dialog box loses
the "replace all" button until you stretch the window out again... and there's no evidence that it's done so except that the button is just
gone.
And I know, 'why are you using windows notepad anyway; there are so
many better options' but it's the default on Windows for TXT files and
I've never bothered to change it even though -for most things- I do
use other apps for text editing.
But it's this sort of rampant "we know what you want better than you
do" attitude which permeates Windows11 (and really, all of Windows
ever since Win7) that makes using it such a chore. God knows where
else this sort of behavior appears.
(Microsoft is also adding fonts and font-effects (bold,underline,
colors) to Notepad in the next update. Because that's what people want
from a plain-text editor apparently.)
Another month down, and a quite chatty one here on c.s.i.p.g.action.
Not that I'm complaining --it was a pleasant surprise to see 20+
messages waiting for me when I finally get around to visiting the
newsgroup, rather than the usual five or six-- but... if you were all
yakking it up here on Usenet, did that leave you any time to actually
play video games? I guess we'll find out.
* Star Wars Battlefront 2 (2017)
I remember this game being a lot more fun the last time I played it.
Well, maybe 'fun' isn't the word I should be using. Perhaps ' less
janky' is better. Because despite it all --especially in the
moment-to-moment gameplay-- "Battlefront 2" _is_ fun. The gunplay is extremely satisfying; even if the lasers are little pew-pew pistols,
they /feel/ powerful, like a blaster should. The game is gorgeous too.
It's not quite as impressive as it was even a couple years ago --the competition has kept apace-- but it's still deliciously and
impressively detailed in every scene. I can see why I liked this game
so much in 2017.
But I now see the chinks in the armor too. The weird AI that moves
around quite artificially, for instance. It gets stuck on terrain, or
bounces back and forth between two pieces of cover, or --in at least
two instances-- phases directly through an object as it charges
towards me. Or the array of player weapons, none of which really feel distinctive from one another. The too-close viewpoint, with your
weapon weirdly dominant in the center of the screen. The almost
complete lack of interactibility with the game-world; everything feels static. It's a world that is made up of unbreakable and immovable
items. And --especially after shows like "Andor" raised the bar-- the
in-game narrative and characters feel shallow and unrealistic. The
setting can offer up better stories.
For some of these problems -the AI especially- I wonder if this is a
change caused by some upgrade since I last played the game; surely I
would have noticed its antics back in 2017. Other issues (like the
static game world) are less a failing by the game and more a result of
the industry moving on and games just becoming better in the eight
years since "Battlefront 2" released. These days we just expect every
window we see to be breakable and every item to have physics applied
to it. But some of the problems I'll own up to my own blindness. I'm
sure I was unconsciously ignoring some of these faults just because I
was dazzled by such a gorgeous game set in the Star Wars universe, but
now that there are even MORE gorgeous Star Wars games available, some
of that glamour has worn off.
"Battlefront 2" isn't terrible, of course. EA spent $200 million
developing it; you don't end up with crap after spending that much
money. But it's aged a lot poorer than I expected it to.
Well, that's my playlist this month. Did you play more games? Fewer?
Let's find out. Just answer the following question:
What Have You Been Playing... IN MAY 2025?
On Sun, 01 Jun 2025 12:37:42 -0400, Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote:
Fucking Win11!
MS peaked with win7, it's only gotten worse since then.
Hate to think what 12 and 13 will be like.
My favorite new "ohmigod, why is Windows 11 like that?" discovery is
that Notepad, if you shrink down the app's window-size to about
800x600 pixels across, also starts cropping its dialog boxes... even
if they'd still fit perfectly in that reduced space.
E.g., smallify the notepad window, and your "find" dialog box loses
the "replace all" button until you stretch the window out again... and there's no evidence that it's done so except that the button is just
gone.
And I know, 'why are you using windows notepad anyway; there are so
many better options' but it's the default on Windows for TXT files and
I've never bothered to change it even though -for most things- I do
use other apps for text editing.
But it's this sort of rampant "we know what you want better than you
do" attitude which permeates Windows11 (and really, all of Windows
ever since Win7) that makes using it such a chore. God knows where
else this sort of behavior appears.
(Microsoft is also adding fonts and font-effects (bold,underline,
colors) to Notepad in the next update. Because that's what people want
from a plain-text editor apparently.)
What Have You Been Playing... IN MAY 2025?
On Mon, 2 Jun 2025 18:19:10 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
<dtravel@sonic.net> wrote:
On 6/2/2025 7:13 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
(Microsoft is also adding fonts and font-effects (bold,underline,
colors) to Notepad in the next update. Because that's what people want
from a plain-text editor apparently.)
No. Its what MS wants to do to get rid of plain text editors entirely.
I doubt that's the case. There's no call against them and plain-text
is too incredibly useful --even for Windows-- that getting rid of them
would be silly.
But Microsoft deprecated Wordpad a few years back and it left a gap
between a full-fledged word-processor and a plain-text editor. Rather
than bring back Wordpad, they've decided to merge its functionality
into Notepad. Microsoft is on sort of a thing where they're very
boastful now about how they are updating all these ancient apps that
haven't been updated in decades. Plus, since they're trying to wedge
their Copilot AI into every app, Notepad was due a revamp anyway.
On 6/1/2025 7:10 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
I played Loddlenaut and some Little-Known Galaxy.
Well, that's my playlist this month. Did you play more games? Fewer?
Let's find out. Just answer the following question:
What Have You Been Playing... IN MAY 2025?
Loddlenaut is a short, cartoonish, game about cleaning up pollution on a water planet. I completed the game in less than 12 hours playtime. Its
a "chill" game, very child friendly and was a nice relaxing break from
other games for me.
After finishing that I picked up Little-Known Galaxy. AKA Stardew
Valley In Space. Basically the same kind of game as SDV, just IMO not
as well balanced. Progression feels gawd-awful slow but its another relatively child-friendly and chill game. Just a LOT of grind involved.
Still if you like the genre worth checking out. Demo is available in
the usual places.
Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> writes:
What Have You Been Playing... IN MAY 2025?
Pretty much just Star Wars Outlaws, had a business trip in May and was
tired after it what with the jet lag. There's a rhythm mini-game for
lock picking in Outlaws and I learned I can't do that when I'm
tired. Also in May, two long weekends and of course, it's spring even
here so it means some garden work.
Finally finished Outlaws, at least the main plot. Oh look, second DLC
came out. Not in a rush to get that or the first one for that matter but
it's a definite maybe, in a sale.
Star Wars Outlaws felt like an old sock. Comfortable, doesn't irritate
too much. Great Star Wars ambiance on one hand, silly video game tropes
on the other. I think the most ridiculous is that, among other things,
you're picking up hull armor for your space ship, in pocket sized bits! Crazy.
Still, it's mostly OK. Main plot twist wasn't what I thought, it managed
to surprise.
One thing I haven't experienced before, I wasn't always sure if I was supposed to keep sneaking around or just shoot everything in sight. The sneaking was fun anyways and alarms didn't propagate far and they could
be turned off so there was always the thought you can just keep
sneaking. With the shooting, in some areas enemies seemed to be on
eternal spawn so shooting everything in sight wasn't the best idea if
you wanted to collect loot or complete some objective.
Amusingly, with the freshly released second DLC they added two
no-brainer features: you can now shoot your blaster while riding your
speeder bike. You can also keep a pickup weapon as long as it has ammo
and even assign a hot key to it. Good things to be sure but feels
stupid, why wasn't that possible to begin with? Made me wonder if in the future more weapons can maybe be picked up or you might even be able to
ride someone else's speeder bike.
I always got the impression that the primary purpose of the speeder
bike wasn't transport but for those awful racing mini-games scattered
across the map (in typical Ubisoft fashion). After all, the assumption
was that if you wanted to go from place to place, you'd just use the fast-travel. Meanwhile, the races were all about speed and not
shooting your opponents, so no need for blasters there. It just didn't
occur to them that people would be revving across the landscape
picking fights.
I didn't have as much fun with "SW:Outlaws", although apparently one
of my major complaints --the too-frequent crashes-- had more to do
with Nvidia than Ubisoft. Supposedly, a major patch (and new drivers)
solves most of those issues. I figure I'll give the game another shot
one of these days but I'm in no immediate rush. I found the game too generically Ubisoft to want to rush back any time soon.
On Mon, 02 Jun 2025 06:56:11 +0100, Mr Rob
<noemailformethx@jsjsaiiowppw.com> wrote:
DOOM: The Dark Ages
So much Doom in one month! Kudos to you! May the spawn of hell tremble
at your coming!
| Sysop: | Keyop |
|---|---|
| Location: | Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK |
| Users: | 546 |
| Nodes: | 16 (2 / 14) |
| Uptime: | 150:31:51 |
| Calls: | 10,383 |
| Files: | 14,054 |
| Messages: | 6,417,788 |