I hesitated on where exactly to post this, but it seems more suited here than Patient Gamers which is mostly about getting relatively modern games that have hit bottom prices.

The 3rd person mode was a big difference. The levels are also different, while following the same general plot and premise.

When it comes to Tom Clancy games, GRAW is only second to Splinter Cell Double Agent when it comes to how wildly different releases of the “same” game are on different platforms.

That’s more or less how I feel about the first game. I really liked the setting and characters, but found the gameplay underwhelming. Combat was especially boring, which made me go towards stealth or dialog resolutions just to skip it, except the game had a long chunk where fighting the local wildlife was the only option.

I don’t think anyone should preorder. It’s a predatory way to suck a full price of the game or even higher than normal price out of customers by using often laughably cheap benefits to drum up FOMO.

For me personally, I rarely have interest in brand new AAA games, which are the most guilty of pre-order sales tactics, so the problem more or less solves itself.

Early Access games can be a different story. I’m more willing to throw money at a small studio or solo project that appears to have some passion behind it. Even so I only spend with the mindset that whatever state the game is in might be all I ever get, so match the price to that expectation. I recently played through Deathtrash. It’s unfinished and is historically slow to get updates, however for the $11 I got it for on sale, it had a lot of content and I felt happy with what I got.

Project Zomboid is another example of a “permanently Early Access” game. It might never get out of Early Access but it has so much content now that $20 is a perfectly acceptable price. The history of devs supporting it and the community around it means support for it is unlikely to simply disappear.

I don’t feel bad about playing retro games because it’s not like Nintendo gets a cut on N64 games on ebay or that I got from people I know. The N64 is the newest Nintendo system I have any interest in, so I dodge all the issues of supporting the company.

That’s all of them.

Perfect. I don’t notice any lag.

FWIW, I don’t like the sequel games nearly as much so maybe the development overall of the first game was better.

I’m not a hardcore collector. Most of these were kept by me or scavenged from people I know who were clearing old stuff out.

If I ever sit down and get through all the games to the point I’m bored of them, I might try and find a reasonably priced copy of Majora’s Mask though.

Sadly no, I took the expedient route and exchanged money for it.

It’s a great game, it feels right on the N64. The PC version to me just feels off.

It’s got great missions, and I really like the variety of fighters. It even has the Naboo fighter as a secret, which blew my mind to see before the movie was actually out.

Honestly I never really liked it single player. The Star Wars podracer game keeps me way more engaged. The customization really helps.

This is partially why I’ve lost all interest in ultra-realistic, cutting edge graphics. I know that with them comes so much bloat that they are difficult to run, and really I realized how little I care about those.

He’s actually talked about that other extreme, though I don’t recall which video. Sometimes it will be ultra optimizing something that ends up entirely cut, or optimizing it to the point where it’s inflexible.

Tim Cain (the lead on the original Fallout and a long time programmer) talked about his experience being a programmer for hire at a major studio later in his career. It as a culture shock for him to see younger programmers basically doing no optimization. When he talked to them about it the attitude was basically that it wasn’t worth the time to do, since none of the higher ups cared about it, and the programmers could easily get whatever they assignment was done with bloated, unoptimized code. There wasn’t any experience in optimizing or a culture of doing it.

All the new releases were under $20 indie or “AA” games like Microprose published titles.

Fat babies need the most attention.

The first words of the article:

So this is interesting. Just weeks after Google’s campaign to promote Android as being more secure than iPhone, the smartphone battle has taken a sudden twist.

‘Architectcracy.’ Which is more or less, “rule by architects.”