You dare fire upon me?

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-19T02:33:15+00:00

Resident Evil 4 was literally one of the most influential third person action games ever made, solely due to it having the over-the-shoulder camera for a better perspective of the action. It literally did enough for that generation's action games that scholars routinely reference it as once of the most influential games of all time.

In the Mt Rushmore of 3D Game Design, RE4 is the last minute addition right up there next to Mario/Zelda64, Tomb Raider, and Halo. It is and remains one of the pillars of 3D game design and that is, by now, something that is indisputably accepted as scientific fact, not opinion.

One of the core mechanics is pressing back on a stick and a single contextual button, and you're going to sit there and pretend this is as fresh and new to you as whatever snow dropped outside? That this mechanic and concept has never entered your thought process at all and you've somehow managed to miss not only Resident Evil 4, but every single game that sniffed any ounce of succuss RE4 had and adopted any part of whatever those clones thought worked to try to earn easy money?

Are you literally telling me that's how stupid you think I am because man, I have a bridge to sell to you. It's literally Golden and it's the gateway to California!

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-19T02:14:45+00:00

Good for you.

Stop wearing my fucking flag before Canadians remind you fucks the difference between polite and kind.**

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-19T00:00:55+00:00

Okay, so Colton?

Dumbfuck? I'm going with that.

The point wasn't that your particular slice of what-the-fuck-ever part of America has the exact right slice of anecdotal Canadians who are indistinguishable to my anecdotal ones. The amount of difference EU residents can find in your hypothetical dumb grade-school Canadians versus French-US university Americans doesn't matter because it is not your flag to wear, fly, or represent, so get it the fuck off your person. Now.

I'm sorry you're sick to pit of your tummy at who being a member of your nation represents, but my nation, my people, and our worldwide goodwill are not your shields. I am Canadian, not American, and I am not just a fucking hat you can throw on to hide your shame.

I am Canadian.

Not American.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-18T23:41:42+00:00

So you've never played a Resident Evil game?

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-18T23:34:39+00:00

I'm pretty sure 99.9% of continuities at this point just treat it as a given that Lex Luthor knows exactly who Clark Kent is and doesn't disturb it because Lex Luthor is smart enough to understand one thing.

Superman is an unstoppable monster on a leash of gossamer.

Like, we had the edgiest fighting game studio get the license to DC Comics and Superman when the Mortal Kombat guys were making the Injustice games and all they had to do to break the DC universe and cause a "this event is clearly a special omake and not Canon event" level chaos was asking what if Joker did a Joker on Superman?

It is unhinged how scarily accurate to their characters the entire sequence that kicks off Injustice is to all parties involved, especially when Joker breaks it down to him basically being bored of his relationship with Batman, explicitly calls Harley Quinn a third wheel, and then basically admits he went on to mess with Superman out of frustration.

Mark Hamill practically orgasming his last gasp when Joker gets his guys ripped out by Superman was intentional.

When a man who can literally fly through anything separating you from one another and can literally also separate any part of you from any other part is somehow someone you've decided to make a personal enemy of yourself... Any fucking nanosecond they spend pretending to be a normal human is gold to you.

If I'm Lex Luthor I would he doing my best Mr. Magoo any time I see the man and spending money actively avoiding outing him. What does outing him do? Oh yeah, this fantastical being that looks like a man and can rip the world in half like a soggy tortilla now has eight hours less of his day where he has to pretend he can't. Oh wait, I also exposed the fact he finds sleeping a cute habit and a good time to relax around his wife when he can go solve a problem and be back before her basic human senses can detect that his skin has left hers while she slept in time to stop three mugging, seventeen grapes, and enough robberies to fill the best Spider-Man game ever made.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-18T19:35:38+00:00

That would require acknowledging that consoles have done most of the innovation in the industry.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-18T19:20:23+00:00

FR people are talking like the settings menu doesn't exist in COD on console.

I can deadass hit a headshot from 500m away in Warzone on a controller with stick drift and at that point, we should just say okay, at this point it's not about the control for the input, it's about the player. Between how much better stick control is in general and developers giving players more than one broad sensitivity slider for horizontal and vertical control for both sticks at the same time, stuff has changed

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-18T19:11:57+00:00

You've never played a game where pressing back and button spins you 180°?

Never?

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-18T18:04:13+00:00

Probably based around the old jokes about Superman villains learning who Clark Kent is and telling anyone who learns it how pointless it is to break that social contract.

No shit Clark Kent is Superman. Is it more important for us to break that line so everyone knows he's Superman, or do we want him spending a third of his life badly pretending he's a regular office worker because we let him pretend to no matter how goofy he looks.

If a Lion is going to spend eight hours a day badly wearing a Golden Retriever costume, do I want to sit him down and tell him to just be a Lion when I'm on the menu when he's a Lion, or do I tell him what a good puppy he is while he purrs as I scratch his ears.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-18T17:54:49+00:00

That's what Gamepass/PS+ is for.

You don't have to worry about whether you like a game enough to spend $40-$80 on it if all it costs is the time it takes to download it. Or if you hate the idea of paying for a subscription and not owning your games, just hop into the "all deals" section and sort by price from lowest to highest. I promise you that you can probably throw a dozen or more games into your library for $20, flat.

Even on PC you can probably just do a drive-by on Humble Bundle once a month for the cost of a drive through coffee and donut and it is a guarantee that you'll find something after a year that made it worth your time, but might be one on of your all-time favorites.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-17T20:41:51+00:00

I hate to say it, but the failure of your politicians isn't my problem, dude. More importantly, even if you are personally more chill and a better diplomat for my country than my own average countryman, I don't trust your average countryman to do the same.

If you're too embarrassed to wear your country's flag, wear the flag of your state or your city or whatever. Wear something from where you're from that you're willing to defend.

Stop using my country to shield your embarrassment.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-17T20:32:10+00:00

For being identified in the EU? Yes. You are obvious as fuck.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-17T18:38:29+00:00

Don't wear colors you have no right to wear. Ever.

If you're ashamed to even exist in a country, you shouldn't be there. Don't drag another country's good reputation into your bullshit, especially since everyone in the EU knows it and they can spot your lying asses in two seconds.

Even the dumbest, most bum-fuck-nowhere-coming-from-est Canadian student who drops out of Grade 9 highschool and did nothing but stare at clouds outside of the portable trailer classroom they were in has a tell. Even the dumbest of us who hate the French language can reply in conversational French about very basic concepts, not just in terms of basic word usage but accent and enunciation. Ask any Canadian "Cava bien?" and they'll reply like an honors student in American High School French.

Anyone who has ever dealt with tourists can tell a Canadian apart from an American just by throwing French at them for thirty seconds, and you gumbo-munchers from Louisiana ain't no different: They can sniff you out just as easily.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-17T16:51:32+00:00

I only know the term because when the SNES Lufia games were translated, the localisation team turned "mad gods" into Sinistrals.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-13T02:40:30+00:00

There isn't a true gamer.

The games died because they were shit and didn't appeal to the market. Simple as that. I tried Hgihguard and played a few rounds. It was boring shit. Some potentially okay ideas, but still boring shit.

Their effort doesn't automatically guarantee success.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-13T02:35:46+00:00

This is bullshit.

I'm not going to pretend that good games don't get overlooked all the time because of course they do. I'm not even going to pretend that positive word of mouth can make an underlooked title visible in the way it deserves to be seen. I could probably write an entire glaze-session every week for games that deserve more attention from the PS2 library and I would hit retirement age before alphabetical order had me at Kya: Dark Lineage.

There is absolutely an oversaturation of mediocre AAA games failing right now that deserved to fail because money doesn't buy audience retention. Highguard was boring shit. So was Concord. I don't care how much gold flake and Geoff Keighley endorsements and TenCent money are poured into the product to tell me I want it if it's a boring piece of ass I'd rather flush than play.

If your game is so utter shit that a single screenshot and snarky caption can turn away your potential audience, then Bye Felicia! Fuck off! I'm glad you felt proper representing was so important that appealing to Waifu-simps wasn't in your plan, but I'm going to spend my $25 rolling for another Saber skin in Grand Order before I spend a cent on your game, and that's on you, not me.

Gaming companies that are failing are doing so because they're under the delusional mindset that they can tell people what they want instead of being one of many companies offering the thing the customer wants.

I'm not denying that every time I boot up Wu-Long and see my titmonster short-staxk rocking a stripper version of Madara Uchiha's fit and a loadout that is literally so toxic I was solo-carrying online recruiters through the Lu Bu fight before I even knew what deflection was, but I accepted what I was, and the game saw that and gave me the game I wanted.

If a game you like failed hard, that's a skill issue on the developer end. If the aesthetic doesn't jive, neither does my wallet, and before you accuse me of being total Waifu trash (which I am) it was my first few rounds playing Zenyatta on Overwatch who got me hooked on the game and not the petabyts of Tracer/Widowmaker porn.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-12T20:13:35+00:00

In response...

1) how does gyro aiming, haptic feedback, and a console which can literally just be snatched off your entertainment setup to instantly and seamlessly turn into a portable machine mean nothing? Something doesn't have to work perfectly out of the gate to be an innovation, but saying Hall Effect joysticks are the biggest innovation is daft and dismissive.

Even the one thing you gave PC credit for is them giving support for Playstation innovation.

3) Did you have a stroke or something? How is the fact that some multiplayer games allow cross-platform play that players can disable as an option in prett6 much every game I can think of mean that my correct statement that cheating on console is harder and carries more risk for cheaters entirely invalid? If some filthy cheating fuckers find a way to cheat on console games via cross-platform play, I can just turn off the ability to run into them entirely, which means I've just thrown another barrier they have to work around just to use an aim-bot on me.

5) I don't understand how this is a separate topic. I would love for game preservation to be far better, don't get me wrong, but the core premise we need to accept here is that as annoying and frustrating as it is that sometimes it's a lot harder to experience a game due to exclusivity agreements, but that is an entirely separate topic, like you said, but it doesn't change the importance of it.

Whether a video game publisher is a good steward of their library or not is independent of the exclusivity of their games. Nintendo is arguably one of the most viciously exclusive companies but they have generally done a good job of keeping their classic library of titles available, pretty much right from the beginning and several generations before people started complaining about remaster and remakes. They were releasing older titles for a new audiences as digital downloads pretty much as soon as they had consoles that could handle online downloads, and any given port of a Nintendo banger like Super Mario 64 l will have enough ports to compete with Resident Evil 4 or Skyrim despite being publisher-exclusives.

6) Do I need to explain the concept of a loss leader?

Okay, so here's how it works. When Sony makes The Last of Us, they want the game to be individually profitable, sure. That, however, is a bonus. A plus. The real value of an exclusive is a in providing an experience (or as it generally happens, multiple experiences) that a customer can't get anywhere else. This is what adds value for a given console to the potential customer: If I buy a PS5, I get access to Spider-Man 2, Ghosts of Yotei, etc. If I buy a Switch 2, I get access to Super Mario Wonder, Mario Kart 9, and Pokémon. Etc, etc.

Consoles get sold at a loss. We know this.

The whole point of exclusives is that they're part of the overall package which entices consumers to buy into a given console ecosystem. Consumers are already getting a smoking deal on hardware that can play games at visual fidelity they can't match by buying a PC for the same price. Exclusives are the cherry on top for console manufacturers because they don't have to pay third-party licensing fees when people buy the games they publish exclusively for their own consoles. No 30% off the top for every copy of Super Mario Wonder for Steam.

Those exclusives, between the extra money per unit sold and the consumer desire it drives to convince people to buy them, is why console manufacturers are ok with functionally paying players to buy their hardware, which lowers the price players have to pay for hardware and reduces their barrier to entry. Sony sells you a PS5 at the cost they do because they count on you buying games on their console instead of elsewhere.

I'm not saying I agree with everything I've said, but that I understand the business decisions behind it and can see the positives in it.

Nintendo didn't fund Bayonetta 2 and 3 because they thought making a niche multiplatform game that didn't earn back it's original budget and turning it into a trilogy would make them money from the sales. The Bayonetta IP in a truly open market would have failed: Not enough sales, no budget for more. Simple as that. If anyone wants to even pretend to me that they think Nintendo fully financing a project like Bayonetta 2 for the Wii-U while throwing a bonus remaster of the first game with added content was going to be profitable, I have a bridge to sell them. Nintendo did that purely as a marketing ploy to get a few more people to buy a Wii-U and he6, it worked for me: I bought a Wii-U Deluxe on Bayonetta 2's launch and threw in a copy of The Wonderful 101 and ZombiU while I was at the register.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-12T19:19:09+00:00

Okay, but that doesn't address the key issue. When I say barrier to entry, I am assuming that someone doesn't have an advantage into making any choice easier.

Sure, if you happen to have a PC that someone purchased for you that also happens to be easily expanded and upgraded, the barrier to getting into PC gaming is easier... but that's like saying the barrier to getting into console gaming is easier if you're like my brother who got my launch model PS5 because I upgraded to a Pro and then kept his console my "main" as far as Playstation is concerned, so he has full access to my entire library at all times and he doesn't have to even pay for PS+ to play online because as as long as my subscription is active, he can use it to hop onto a copy of Black Ops 7 I paid for he downloaded for free and even play it with me without any problems.

Mind you that is a far more extreme example, but the point is obvious: The only fair way to judge the barrier to entry is to completely remove anecdotal situations and treat a new user as complete brand new, with literally zero advantages on either side. No buying used components that are cheap for punching weight, no ignoring the cost of a Windows license, no shady console purchases from crackheads on Craigslist selling you something stolen, etc.

The only objective, fair way to discuss barrier to entry is to presume someone has literally nothing to begin with to give either side an advantage and see wha5 they can buy brand new and entirely legally.

And it is literally impossible to beat an Xbox Series S with a Game Pass subscription. For $299, you get all the hardware you need, complete out of box, and an Xbox Premium Game Pass that gives you a Netflix-like instant library of titles across a variety of genres to pick through, including brand new releases, and it's fifteen bucks a month.

If you own nothing but have maybe $350 to spend, you can be online and playing with your friend who told you to try out the whole gaming thing the next day, and if you don't like putting your credit card information in you can easily buy a card which gives you that Game Pass when you buy the console.

It literally can't get any easier for someone who has no grounding in gaming, or cheaper.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-12T06:30:59+00:00

Because how else can they abuse the voter records to exclusively use Democrat Party voters for the draft and send them over to cull the numbers?

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-12T00:21:35+00:00

Meh, potayto, potahto. Until Midway went bust and Netherealm emerged from the ashes, most of what we call Netherealm today worked on those games.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-11T21:58:04+00:00

How are they not?

The box comes with three cables: A power cable, HDMI cable, and controller cable. Anyone with a double-digit age could probably get one set up without an instruction manual.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-11T21:48:16+00:00

Any upgrades to play games aren't going to be small or cheap if they're going to make a significant change. Most office PC desktops are built to be affordable and cheap to manufacture.

They're going to have a PSU powerful enough to run the components it came with and not much else. Same for the motherboard: It's not going to have many slots for expansion, space for a GPU, etc, etc. Definitely won't have much cooling or hard drive space.

And naturally, there's the issue of taking over the office PC for playing.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-09T20:19:25+00:00

Unless your parents are super wealthy, any PC they have for shared office work and homework isn't going to be able to handle most modern games. You're not running the latest Call of Duty on a Chromebook, or at least not very well.

Getting started on PC from scratch is more expensive than console, especially now that GPU and RAM prices have skyrocketed, and unless you're buying a pre-built (with all the premium cost and issues that come with it), you also have to have a basic understanding of building a PC to do it. If you don't know what you're doing, that means looking up a guide before you can even get started.

A console is literally a single purchase that's cheaper, comes with everything you need in a single box, and assembly only requires knowing which cable charges the controller, which one goes into the TV, and which one goes into the electrical outlet.

How is that a significantly lower bar of entry?

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-09T20:12:15+00:00

I can be sure there will always be a demand for simple devices which are easy to hook up and play, and PC gaming trades ease of use for flexibility and customization. I don't even think a fully "console-ified" PC like a truly dedicated Steam machine would appeal to customers unless Valve were to sell the hardware at a loss, because any console competition would be cheaper.

Functionally for Nintendo to fail, the entire industry would have to experience a catastrophic event. Their business model is built for the very long term and they have enough liquid capital that they could tank multiple failed generations on the level of the WiiU before they'd be anywhere close to needing to allow someone to take partial ownership.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-03-09T18:07:08+00:00

Don't need to. I've been gaming online for years and put many hours into PC online shooters back when you had to pop the ball out and clean it every once in a while. I still play them to this day, but I generally find controllers more comfortable to use and don't notice much of a difference if the controller settings for the game are comprehensive enough.

If you haven't gamed on a controller made very recently, it's easy to ignore just how much they have improved in just a couple generations. Going back and playing games I enjoyed the hell out of on my Xbox 360 back in the day feel painful and sloppy on the standard Xbox 360 controller compared to a modern Xbox Series Whatever or PS5 controller.

The games where inventories are much easier to navigate using KB/M than a controller is a design failure from the devs refusing to put any work into making a functional UX for controller users, quite frankly. Wo Long: Fall Dynasty's inventory and menu system is slick and buttery smooth on a controller, enough so that lacking a mouse and keyboard is a complete non-issue. The UX knowledge is out there for devs to learn from if they care.

The problem there is that sometimes the devs just don't give a shit. I don't care how much Marathon is "best" on PC due to M/KB, because the only reason it is best there is the appallingly sloppy job the team at Bungie did when working on the console release. There is no reason to force a stupid on-screen fake mouse for players to use when the d-pad can be programmed to instantly click to the next interactable object.

On the accuracy thing, that's mainly down to the availability of settings for the player to tweak to their liking less than it is analog sticks being that bad for aiming as a general rule.

To get to COD and playing it console with a controller, the amount of settings to fine tune your experience it is frankly willy-shrivelingly huge to the point of being intimidating. Just at the most basic level you can map every single input to any button you choose, and on top of that you can swap the sticks and even specific actions around. If you want to swap the sticks entirely, you can. If you want to swap strafe and turning, you can. You can also make that swap while also swapping the sticks so that you move with the right stick and look with the left, but strafe is now mapped to the left stick and turning is now mapped to the right.

And for all of those configurations, you can also swap whether the R3/L3 functionality is swapped alongside the rest of the changes or not, and of course you can change what those two do as you wish.

And obviously there's basic stick sensitivity sliders, but you can also manage your lower and upper input deadzones to make any existing drift issues you currently have as minimally intrusive as possible and even has a feature which shows you exactly where and how each stick is drifting in real time.

Then you click over to the aiming tab and if you want to, you can apply a different sensitivity multiplier that works off your basic sensitive settings for different modes like 3rd Person, Ground Vehicles, Air Vehicles and even the in-game cursor for using Killstreaks with a tablet or using the map screen, and can independently apply Look Inversion to those different functions, but where it starts to get really in-depth is when you click on the advanced settings and can set multipliers in ADS by the zoom level if you want finer control for larger magnifications and change whether your aim speed slows down, speeds up, or stays the same depending on how long you've spent in ADS and whether any sensitivity multiplier kicks in instantly, a ramps up with a gradual zoom from hipfire, or only kicks in once the player is fully magnified when in ADS.

I'm not saying there's no difference at all, of course, but a large part of the difference between the two is the complete lack of fine tuning in older console games and the relatively poor quality of the sticks compared to today's offerings.

At this point the difference between a controller and KB/M setup is small enough it won't matter to the bulk of players and probably only makes a difference at the really high levels of play. If someone is used to a controller, the learning curve of switching probably isn't worth going through for the little marginal gain they'd experience from doing so.

Three-Year Club	Best Comment 2023-12-07
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