DdCno1

Since the US doesn’t officially recognize Palestine as a sovereign state, it would be a blunder for individual officials to name it.

I haven’t really kept track of Android sites, since I’m rarely playing native Android games other than The Battle of Polytopia, an accessible, but endlessly replayable Civ-clone. Please send help - I’ve been playing it almost since its release seven years ago and can not stop. The base game is free and each additional tribe is only a small one-time purchase. The more tribes you have purchased, the larger maps are unlocked. A single tribe purchase unlocks multiplayer. There’s also one additional skin for each tribe. Perhaps the best monetization model on mobile to date.

There are few standout titles like these for mobile devices. If you want to seriously play games on your phone or tablet, use an emulator. I’m currently revisiting Vice City in GTA Vice City Stories, a lesser known, but nonetheless high quality spin-off in the series (there’s also one for GTA 3: Liberty City Stories), which runs perfectly in AetherSX2 (although I should switch to NetherSX2, which continues development of this PS2 emulator). If you have a less powerful device, you can play the only slightly inferior PSP versions (worse textures and significantly downgraded lighting, some missing side-missions, but overall the exact same games) in PPSSPP, which has much lower hardware requirements. You can even add a second thumb stick to the PSP versions using this patch:

https://github.com/Freakler/ppsspp-GTARemastered

The PSP version of Chinatown wars is superior to the Android port, having better visuals and more missions, so consider playing this one in PPSSPP as well.

I’ve recommended PSP racing games here:

https://beehaw.org/comment/2784912

And PS2/GC/Wii action games here:

https://beehaw.org/comment/2994175

I would highly recommend using a controller for most of these titles. You can connect almost anything to an Android device, either wirelessly or through USB. Wii or newer, PS3 or newer and Xbox One S or newer work via Bluetooth in every emulator I’ve tried. With wired controllers, you can go as far back as you want. I’m playing PS2 games using an original PS2 controller with a PS2 to USB adapter, which is connected to a USB A to USB C adapter. If portability is of concern, 8bitdo makes very high quality, but nonetheless affordable controllers that you can easily fit into even the smallest pockets. The d-pad on my FC30 Pro is perhaps the single best d-pad I’ve ever had the pleasure of using.

There’s a German word called “fremdschämen”, which roughly translates to “second-hand embarrassment”. It think it’s appropriate here.

At the very least put a space bat between thingy and CC.

This is the tech bro equivalent of posting this kind of message on Facebook:

https://i.imgur.com/In7lZg5.png

It doesn’t work. If you don’t want things you post publicly on the Internet to be scraped, don’t post things publicly on the Internet.

Yes, since gog is PC-exclusive, so is gog-games.

Forcing console manufacturers to open their systems to third party stores might be coming in the future, at least in the EU, which could also provide avenues for piracy.

Gog.com are selling DRM-free games, so there’s no copy protection, Internet activation, mandatory launcher, etc. It used to stand for “good old games”, but they also have new titles these days. Same parent company as The Witcher developers. There is a launcher, but it’s entirely optional - you can just pay prices that are generally comparable to Steam and download the installation files for a game, which require no Internet connection at all (apart from some edge cases, e.g. a very small number of multiplayer games).

Gog-games meanwhile is a piracy site that redistributes these DRM-free installers to people who are not inclined to pay for the privilege. What makes them preferable to other sites is that you get the trustworthy installers from gog and do not have to fiddle with potentially malicious cracks yourself. They are also uploading to fast file hosts. One thing they are particularly useful for is preservation, games that are now delisted on gog.com and elsewhere, only available there if you have purchased them in the past. The rather decent licensed Back to the Future game from Telltale for example can’t be bought anywhere anymore (since the license for the movie franchise was only granted for a few years), but it’s still available in its most convenient shape on gog-games.

They released a few statements about being upset about people sending demanding/rude messages to them. They also complained about the cost of hosting (there are no ads on the page). Originally, they wanted to only open for people who are donating, but they appear to have backtracked on that, at least for now.

It’s a common issue on the Internet. The moment you’re doing anything, especially for free, you are basically inviting vitriol.

I thought these are still working?

I would expect Valve’s next headset to be expensive, complex and requiring extensive configuration by the user, just like their previous efforts. Pretty much the polar opposite of the Quest.

No, both of these titles are “halo games” (not in the Bungie series, but in the way that they are showcase titles) that sold poorly compared to their development costs - and their publishers likely knew that these would sell very poorly, but chose to publish them regardless, because they bring prestige to their platforms. They sold poorly, because they are niche games, not due to their platform exclusivity.

It’s kind of like a car manufacturer making an exclusive sports car that only a few hundred people will buy, but that is meant to elevate the entire brand, bring in customers for other products and wow journalists so that they think of the brand more highly. Most of Sony’s publishing strategy hinges on strong exclusive titles - since their hardware is virtually identical to Microsoft’s - and they started this by going down the “high art” game route all the way back with the PS1 (with extremely niche games like “The Book of Watermarks”) before creating more mainstream blockbuster exclusives like the Uncharted series.

I get your frustration with this, I have felt it myself with exclusives that I wanted to play, but couldn’t justify the expense of buying a console for, but there are solid reasons from the perspective of developers and publishers for doing it and outlawing this practice would result in a far less vibrant and interesting gaming landscape. Another comparison is how rich aristocrats used to pay artists like Leonardo DaVinci to create art for them. This was also an exclusivity deal of sorts, since most of the public didn’t see these artworks until centuries later (the platform exclusivity was being born to the right kind of family), but without these wealthy, selfish patrons of the arts, mankind would have been deprived of amazing creations.

Thanks for informing me about Monado, but it seems like it’s exclusive to Linux. That’s hardly ideal. Then again, it’s more than two years until November of 2026, so a lot might happen until then.

Do you see developers making games exclusively for one console manufacturer the same way? Are you willing to deprive the gaming community as a whole from these titles? Games like Shadow of the Colossus or Alan Wake 2 would not have happened without exclusivity.

I was going to call shenanigans, but then I looked at the details of the application:

https://i.imgur.com/J30SGAr.png

So it seems there is something to it.

They are anti-consumer, but for smaller devs in particular, they can mean the difference between between canceling and releasing a game, between bankruptcy and the studio’s continued existence.

A similar thing will happen with WMR headsets in November of 2026, by the way (they’ll work beyond that, but you can’t download the software anymore after that date):

https://www.uploadvr.com/windows-mixed-reality-headset-support-end-date/

Since these depend on Windows itself, I don’t think there will be an easy (or even possible) workaround.

Sad news, because these are cheap, high-res, fast to set up, easy to use and generally very decent headsets. Controllers are not top of the class, but good enough for almost anything. Ideal for people interested in tipping their toes into proper PCVR.

Let’s be honest, was anyone expecting any different outcome from Embracer’s hasty growth with cheap money? There was no way this would have worked out.

You actually went to the website and looked it up? Alright then, carry on.

I’m still not a fan of the placement of these. There’s a reason Valve placed their touchpads further up on the Deck.

Avoid the OLED model (due to the danger of burn-in) and get it. It’s a great device for portable gaming, both for games running directly on it and emulation up to and including Switch. It’s fantastic for rediscovering games in your library. Just be aware that the slick user interface gets replaced by bog-standard (and extremely unpleasant to use on the small display) Linux clunkiness the moment you need to tweak anything outside of Steam and games.

Exactly. That’s what nearly all of the competitors fail at. Sure, they might have more performance, are slimmer, have this feature or that advantage, but when it comes to actually getting games to work with them and the user experience, none are as good as Valve’s handheld.

What a perfect place for speakers, half-obscured by the user’s hands.