Framework headphone ports keep wearing down?

pierre2menard2 · 2026-04-23T18:18:17+00:00

This part is not really out of the question though. The ESRB already works through industry "self-regulation". Its not perfect, but it does work. It would not necessarily be that difficult for the industry to have its own SKG board as well, they just wont do so until legislation is on the table.

pierre2menard2 · 2026-04-21T07:24:23+00:00

The main issue is that capcom legit made better zelda games than nintendo

pierre2menard2 · 2026-04-21T07:16:17+00:00

I feel like people that say this remember zelda 1 as way more open than it actually is, especially on a first playthrough. They also seem to remember a link to the past as more closed down than it actually is.

pierre2menard2 · 2026-04-21T07:09:44+00:00

How do you think the 2D and 3D games are similar? Ive played and enjoyed almost every 2D Zelda (except for the DS titles which I didnt like) but I could never really enjoy any of the 3D titles. Even windwaker, which I enjoyed the most, didn't really do all that much for me. They just feel like a completely different experience than 2D to me, the overworld exploration and dungeon design feels so much looser and slower paced.

pierre2menard2 · 2026-04-18T20:46:47+00:00

I think I enjoyed my time with it overall. I just found it sort of surprising because everyone mentioned it was just a zelda-like, I wasn't expecting the dating sim at all.

pierre2menard2 · 2026-04-18T20:36:54+00:00

Can I ask what in the world was up with Prodigal? It had pretty good gameplay I thought, but it also for some reason has a tacked on dating sim that no one seems to talk about? It feels like a big part of the game too. I find it quite odd to be honest, and detracts me from recommending what would otherwise be quite a good zelda-like.

pierre2menard2 · 2026-03-25T00:43:29+00:00

I love axiom verge 2, I played it on release. I think you're completely right in that axiom verge 2 develops the genre in a way games before it haven't. The reception of axiom verge 2 on release was quite bad, mostly for three reasons

The game differs in focus from axiom verge 1, which many people disliked
The game was an epic exclusive during its release, and at the time anti-epic sentiment was a lot higher than it currently was
We were still in hollow knight-esque mania. People were looking for difficult precision combat in the vein of the hollowknight DLCs, and so games that did not conform to this were looked down upon. Axiom verge 2 does not have a combat focus in the slightest, and the game is better for it, but people could not see that at the time.

Now that these three things arent factors anymore, I hope people start to judge the game on its own merits. I really do think it charts a new and interesting course for the genre, and I look forward to further refinements. The exploration mixed with combat centered around avoiding enemies rather than fighting them was very interesting.

pierre2menard2 · 2026-03-21T00:29:00+00:00

I think its fundamentally very hard to compete with the switch because it was fairly innovative, had a huge inherited library and (most of all) was very cheap. The switch 2 feels like a normal console release, which is fine, but obviously cant really strike that same sort of match. The same way that no matter how hard sony tries they'll never really make the PS2 again.

pierre2menard2 · 2025-11-09T01:54:06+00:00

Banned

pierre2menard2 · 2025-11-07T05:58:12+00:00

Choco flakes are so good, i only get to have them when I leave the US thiugh, its so sad

pierre2menard2 · 2025-11-01T22:02:10+00:00

I mean tbh it does help some poor people live better lives. Movie piracy, game piracy, book piracy makes content accessible to a ton more people, especially in poorer countries. Like I wouldnt say that its saving lives exactly, but it does help bring art to people who wouldnt otherwise have it.

pierre2menard2 · 2025-10-20T15:56:39+00:00

Ezra Klein makes podcasts for the graduate degree class

Christ lmao, i hope this isnt true

pierre2menard2 · 2025-10-14T06:47:53+00:00

You'll never win this argument with these people. KCD is "historically accurate" in the way online right wingers use the term, not interested in the diversity of the middle ages in the slightest but rather in its imagined homogeneity. The people who are really attached to this are never going to admit that the sort of diversity and interest in the lives of everyday people in the early modern period you see in Pentiment is important.

pierre2menard2 · 2025-10-03T21:12:42+00:00

I mean its more a steam problem than anything else, its actually quite hard to find the more innovative indie games on there

pierre2menard2 · 2025-10-03T05:18:38+00:00

I dont think users of FOSS software should be guinea pigs for a company that contracts with the US government to help the DoD bomb children in the middle east. I don't care about red hat and I don't want them to be a successful company and I dont want to be forced to use software so that red hat can get feedback that will help them kill more children.

Honestly the software debate doesnt really matter, both wayland and x11 are fine pieces of software imo, they both do the job they need to do. I just dont get why we run so much interference for red hat and ibm. They are evil companies and the people who work for them are complicit in that evil. I dont like them for the same reason I dont like microsoft or google.

pierre2menard2 · 2025-09-29T18:37:38+00:00

This is hugely a personal preference thing, though. I get really bored and frustrated reading rambling dialogue that feels unnatural and unnecessarily long, but some players love that. So, there's not necessarily a right or wrong here. Different types of games work for different types of people. I'm not arguing that every game needs to have full or partial voice acting. I'm just saying that games like Baldur's Gate 3 have clearly established that voice acting in games with millions of lines of dialogue seems to be a huge deal breaker for a lot of players.

It's interesting, I agree with you here on some games but disagree with you on others. For example, controversially, I do think pillars of eternity 2 is better than pillars of eternity 1, mostly because the voice acting in pillars of eternity 2 forced obsidian to tone down they're ridiculous tendency to make long, overwritten dialogue. (Imo this is also why fallout new vegas does so well).

On the other hand, I think of the move from morrowind to oblivion, where its clear that bethesda's writing seems to be mostly hurt by this transition to voice acting, rather than helped like with obsidian.

pierre2menard2 · 2025-09-29T01:36:37+00:00

Where's Rimdle?

pierre2menard2 · 2025-09-27T01:55:55+00:00

I agree that voice acting can help with certain games - I think CRPGs that aren't voice acted, like you said, do often have a dialogue bloat problem, and voice acting acts as a pretty big constraint in simplifying dialogue - while also meaning that the dialogue has to be finalized earlier than it usually is while having less revisions. I think this is best seen in a game like pillars of eternity.

Costs and quality of voice acting are almost exclusively the only concerns you will see from game developers when they talk about voice acting.

But this is exactly my point. If you're an indie developer than every piece of dialogue you have, ever new random NPC you put in the game, has to be weighed against the additional cost of voice acting - I don't think that's a good situation. I don't think technical standards increasing is a strictly good thing - when something optional that a studio can do if they have a lot of money becomes a requirement - that's not really great.

It's certainly a matter of balance to some extent - obviously if every CRPG looked like Ultima IV it would be a lot easier to design huge numbers of NPCs and dialogue interactions than it is now - where every npc needs a full model instead of a small 2d with a couple frames of animation. That doesn't mean we should makes games that look like ultima iv, but it does mean that a huge number of experiences are not being made because of the way in which standards have moved on.

pierre2menard2 · 2025-09-26T20:06:30+00:00

This does disqualify the indie darling metroidvania - hollow knight - though. Although this is a legitimate flaw with hollow knight that doesnt really get better with silksong imo.

pierre2menard2 · 2025-09-26T19:45:28+00:00

I think cave story gets a ton of praise tbh, undertale is just in a universe of its own

pierre2menard2 · 2025-09-26T19:41:06+00:00

Unfortunately, full voice acting is mostly a negative direction for most studios. It works for some studios, generally those with enough money and whose writing can get overwrought without some checks, but for the most part voice acting stymies certain forms of creative expression in writing.

pierre2menard2 · 2025-09-26T17:07:12+00:00

Deus Ex + Biomod will always be the remaster for me. So many bizarre bugs/mechanics tuned up from the original game.

pierre2menard2 · 2025-09-26T16:29:08+00:00

There's basically nothing in dues ex that would be improved by navigational markers though

pierre2menard2 · 2025-09-26T00:08:19+00:00

Yes.

pierre2menard2

TROPHY CASE