Thursday Next

It sounds like we're going to get at least one more year of use out of our current PSVR setup, I'm quite happy to upgrade next year at some point. Especially if that means internal tracking (no cameras) and a cable plugged into the front of the PS5.

https://blog.playstation.com/2021/02/23/introducing-the-next-generation-of-vr-on-playstation/ PSVR 2 announced. Not wireless, but just the one cable (I hope that means no separate box) would definitely make it more viable for me as I would want to be able to plug and play, then unplug and put away without having to rewire my entire living room.

Agree. I think almost every game could benefit from being pared down a bit. There's so much filler because you have to have "a sprawling open world" and "over 120 hours of content" when a lot of games would be much better for being "only" 10 hours long and having a world that actually had interesting stuff in it and a quick way to get there.

That's more like it!

Needs more Techno Syndrome.

There's a thing a lot of games with health bars do where the first 80% of your health bar actually constitutes like... 60% of your HP. So when you think your health is very low, you actually have say 10% more health than you think you do. I wonder if this is something that Control does not do, so you really only get that low health warning when you are actually very low on health? I only suggest this because I found in Control that I also found it difficult to get myself out of the nearly dead zone. I think the other reason this doesn't really work is that health in Control is via pickups rather than hiding. Red screening is fine if you just need to hide for a few seconds and it clears, it encourages you to take a break till you can see clearly. When you have to actually be aggressive and get kills to get health drops, it stops being a handy reminder and becomes a huge hinderance.

Apparently Texas grid "independence" is a deliberate bird flip to the rest of the states. https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/energy-environment/2021/02/15/391519/why-does-texas-have-its-own-power-grid/

Ugh. So basically you are never playing that game again lol.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/17/conservatives-falsely-blame-renewables-for-texas-storm-outages According to the Graudian, (and an ERCOT press conference which I have not checked myself) there were twice as many outages caused by gas, coal and nuclear than renewables.

Did/could you save-scum so that you can get your stuff back after?

See, it's stuff like this that make me wonder if the Republicans even have any strategists in their ranks. They had their foot on Trump's throat, all they had to do was press down, vote to impeach, and everything would have gone back to normal. Not that "normal" is great, but it's better than having Trump ride roughshod over your entire party. If they had convicted, Trump would have been barred from running again, Reps would have had the perfect "we were left with no choice" excuse, and even if Rep voters were pissed off, are you really telling me that Trump's base would vote for a youngish, female, black/Indian candidate over whichever old white dude the Reps roll out in '24? Come on!

So you'd have to complete the whole game again??? That's not a "fix" that's repro steps for a <100% bug!

Haven't looked at this thread in ages, but feel I need to say, I flipping hate cinema sins.

I think Control was "good" too fwiw. I liked the cursed objects thing and the different powers they manifested, enemy variety was ok. The cast were generally likeable or at least interesting. I didn't watch the hotline videos properly, so I don't really have a brilliant grasp of the "lore", or what "the Board" and "Former" really are. I think 7 out of 10 is a fair score. I enjoyed it, but I am not playing through again on PS5 (even though I think I acquired the ultimax edition already), but might have picked it up again if I could have transferred my save. That puts it squarely in "good but not brilliant" territory.

Is that the one where they had to change up the enemy design a bit because it was a touch on the... colonial... side?

Quite. I thought age of calamity was a prequel to BotW?

Generally speaking I hate "complete it on very hard mode" trophies because normally I only like to play through a game the once and those modes only open up after completion, and normally I don't find more difficulty = more fun. The only recent exception was with FF7R, but I didn't mind that as it was an NG+ playthrough, so I was OP for much of it anyway. I do find FromSoft's "see all the endings" trophies a bit annoying, but at least you can normally save-scum it.

If you are shutting down your in-house studios, then third party exclusives are exactly what you want/need. It's what MS did with the Xbox One when they were paying for exclusives like Tomb Raider due to a dearth of homegrown titles. In terms of money, Google will have thrown some cash at SEGA or given them a minimum guarantee for the privilege so I'm sure they will be fine. Plus, this is almost certainly a timed exclusive, so SEGA might as well take a lump of cash up front from Google now, and then more from Steam customers later.

It must be, because nobody seems to make it any more. lol.

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B010B4L968/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1 I used this, connected hdmi from PS4 to the input, then output one went into the PSVR and output 2 into the TV. Just had to flick the switch to choose between HDR on TV or PSVR. But obviously requires 2 more HDMI cables so the rat king was even more ratty and kingly. At the time I struggled to find a switch that (a) Actually switched between inputs, rather than just splitting, and (b) didn't require power (and therefore even more cables).

I always use guides for collectibles. I also used guides heaps for Demon's Souls. I fact, I just use guides for trophies full stop. Normally I'll check for "missable" trophies, play through once blind, then if I want the plat, get a guide to hoover up whatever I missed.

Control is great. Concrete Genie will be nice to add to my PSVR Renaissance.

The Prince is actually a pretty easy read, and feels weirdly relevant to todays geo and office politics. I'd suggest you give it a go for a change.

Last book I finished was Machiavelli's The Prince, which is infinitely quotable these days. I've nearly finished re-reading Guards! Guards! so I'll probably end up doing the whole of the watch series now. A particularly apposite Machiavelli quote springs to mind as impeachment looms: "Upon this, one has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge."