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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • I think it’s pretty hard to go wrong with any of the 8BitDo stuff and there are so many variations to suit different tastes and hands. I’ve been using an SN30 (modernized SNES style) across PC, Switch, and Deck and it’s the best controller I’ve ever owned. Outlasted my now-drifty Switch Pro controller and two pairs of Nintendo’s inexcusably shitty OEM joycons. Small, light, comfortable, gets good battery life, and connects reliably. Has everything a person needs for modern games, unless you need analog triggers for something.


  • The weirdness was so perfect and that personality and flavor is completely lacking in Skyrim. There was so much more variety in items and the unique stuff was great. This really enriched the storytelling and made for a lot of memorable moments. One of my favorites is when you’re just walking through the world and an NPC just falls out of the sky, hits the ground, and dies. Then you loot his corpse, get his unique item of super jumping, and probably 99% of players immediately try it out, launch into the stratosphere, and splat like a tomato in exactly the same fashion. Or there were the unique boots that massively increased your running speed, but made you blind. Crafty players could leverage magic resistance to reduce the blinding effect and basically zoom around at superhuman speed with sunglasses on. Magic actually felt magical, compared to Skyrim where it amounts to little past being a source of damage. The system was designed to allow you freedom and find ways to surpass human abilities, and I think the world of the newer games is conversely designed to limit you as much as possible. No spellcrafting, extremely limited enchantments, few summoning options, no levitation, and the scaling system actually disincentivizes leveling. All the gear is essentially the same. It’s a tragedy.

    Now if you N’wahs will excuse me I have some clouds to yell at.


  • Seconding this, at first I thought it was obtuse and overly difficult. But once you get a feel for how the synergies work it’s amazing. Despite the simple structure it’s a much deeper and more mechanically complex game than Vampire Survivors, and you have a lot more control over your builds.

    On the other hand it’s a positively insidious timewaster. (But isn’t that the point?) I certainly never expected to get 100 hours of fun out of it, but that’s what happened.

    As for FPS, visually simpler stuff is perhaps easier to enjoy on the small screen. I highly recommend Amid Evil if you enjoy classic Quake style shooters. I used it to teach myself how to effectively play shooters with the touchpads, which can be a tough hill to climb but definitely pays off. Don’t be afraid to play with the control settings through Steam; personally I run 175% sensitivity, no accel or haptics, with high friction trackball to help quickly change directions. It took a few hours to figure out what worked but once you get a feel for what’s comfortable for you personally it only takes a couple minutes per game to dial in the control settings.


  • The low quality parts thing can’t be overstated. The original DS was really the last “Nintendium” quality hardware in my book. The DS Lite had a ton of issues people tend to forget about. Extremely flaky shoulder buttons, yellowed screens, and cracked hinges were not a question of if, but when. Mine lasted about 6 months before the R button stopped working reliably. The first generation 3DS was a step back in the right direction, and mine is still going strong, but the circle pad longevity is dubious and the bottom screen plastic scratches if you look at it wrong. Then came the New 3DS, which looked good on paper but the New 3DS LL was a huge disappointment. The backplate cracks around the screws, the hinge has tons of flop in it, and within a year the paint and coating was flaking off of the top shell leaving a ~2cm patch of bare metal. Then came the Switch, with the lowest quality sticks I’ve ever seen. Even my Switch Pro Controller drifts like crazy.

    Knowing Nintendo the Switch 2 will already be obsolete at launch and power users will get better performance emulating the damn thing on modern hardware instead. Fool me twice, I, uh, won’t get fooled again, or something.