I hate always online licensing DRM schemes 
But it's not even a cool product placement car 
TheronGuard
joined 2 years ago
Why is this boring four door Mercedes Benz in Mario Kart? It doesn't even have an exciting paint job
Well when I say Fortnite monetization, I also mean that the intent seems to be to also buy into existing licenses and throw a bunch of disparate IP together. It looks like they have Spongebob out the gate and plan to get characters based on streamers (ick)... but just to give an idea.
Not gonna lie, that sounds pretty grim
Monetization seems like another thing MK8D has over CTR:NF from the looks of it. From what I can tell MK8D only has simple DLC packs that add more tracks and characters where CTR:NF had a whole battle pass arrangement with the usual loads and loads of ugly skins and cosmetics. When I first unlocked all the DLC and Pit Stop content I went 
at all the ugly character recolors and distracting, animated skins that were suddenly populating my races. Oh cool, it's a green Neo Cortex whose tires leave behind rainbows
(not antinatalist, but do hate mk8d babies)
I don't care for them either. Mario and Luigi don't even have the same art style as their adult counterparts, looking like they're from some European comic book. I actually think the character selection is a bit lame overall in Mario Kart 8D. Maybe it's because I'm not a huge Nintendo head but so much of it is wasted on random generic Mario mooks who don't have much personality. Nintendo has so many franchises but the only ones represented here outside of Mario are Donkey Kong, Animal Crossing, F-Zero and Zelda. Where the fuck is Pokemon??? That's like an entire game's worth of track concepts right there.
There's a pc kart racer in development that looks promising called Oh Baby Kart. It doesn't look as bad as most PC kartracers, at least from early screens.
I probably wouldn't care about a kart racer without an established license even if it was good, sadly. It feels weirdly integral to the entire appeal of the genre
I was about to say that it's not that bulky actually, but looking them up apparently the backbone part retracts completely on the Kishi v1. I assume there were probably issues with the cable in there breaking since that seems to be a problem with all of these collapsible controllers.
When I bought the BSP-D8 I also got a cheap Nintendo Switch case/bag for 3 bucks that just about fits the phone and controller. The old phone I use as an emulator handheld is pretty old, with a 5 inch display. If I used anything bigger I'd have to take the phone out of the controller and keep them separate in the case. Maybe there are other sorts of knockoff cases on AliExpress 
Kishi is a usb connect not a bluetooth though, so it can't really substitute for a PC controller.
I mean, with a long enough USB cable it's definitely usable on PC that way. In fact, when I used the BSP-D8 on PC I just used a cable since I didn't want to bother with Windows' bluetooth pairing process.
In CTR's case I believe they weren't even strictly gated behind microtransactions, being also "earnable" but still requiring you to interact with an online component. Though I think the game also had a Battle Pass system which means some of the content was probably vaulted because that FOMO has to be leveraged.
Making a game less horny for any reason automatically makes you worse than Hitler in their eyes.
Was that game even any good? I remember liking the original when I played it as a kid.
Also, I assume you could just cheat those in as well if it came out on PC or Switch 
I was about to recommend the Fatal Frame games if you're looking for classic survival horror recommendations but on second thought they don't really fit your parameters about descending into madness. They're more about exploring haunted Japanese manors and villages with the protagonists themselves being mostly blank and static.
If you decide to check the series out, I would recommend you grab iso files of the first three PS2 games and play them on your nightly build of PCSX2. While 4 and 5 have been made available on all modern platforms, I don't think either of them really showcases the series at its best. 5 is just a huge mess all around and while 4 is more in line with the PS2 trilogy, it's still frustratingly railroady and trivially easy.
I also came across a giant fish skeleton but on land. It was pretty impressive- then I traveled south and found another copy, exact same orientation and even the exact same x co-ordinates : 
Yes, it's from When Dungeons Arise. This structure is apparently called Keep Kayra. I don't have a problem with giant elaborate structures, even if this specific one I do think is ludicrously gigantic compared to the other ones. After all, I downloaded the mod myself and had an idea of what I was getting into. What I do have a problem with is that these buildings tend to repeat way too often. While I was mapping out the corner of the continent I started on I ran into several copies of the same exact structures multiple times, and since there is no randomisation when it comes to layout with these, they will always be the exact same structures which takes the fun out of exploring them.
Way south of this enormous tower I found a cool Arabian Nights-themed fantasy palace complex in a desert. It looked great! But literally right next to it was a copy of the same palace rotated 90 degrees which kind of took the impact away 
I like caves too but I don't like how infinitely sprawling they are. I get kind of anxious when I think I've mapped out a cave system only to discover an opening leading to another one that's 10 times larger, which leads to 10 other cave systems, which open to 10 more cave systems, etc
33
>You can't eat me, I'm HERBERT MOON!!!!
John Marston just basically shrugged his shoulders when he got eaten 
I'm enjoying Undead Nightmare so far. They didn't even attempt to take the premise seriously and it's essentially just Red Dead Redemption: Halloween Special. The moon's a sickly yellow color and there's black goats and vampire bats in place of normal animals
32
Looking up laptop battery replacements on AliExpress, I have questions about the flame graphic in the corner
(hexbear.net)
It's got twice the capacity of the stock battery though! 
15
I bought a BSP-D3 controller back in May, turns out they're already up to BSP-D8 by now
(hexbear.net)
You have to love these small Chinese companies and the speed with which they come up with new controllers, emulator handhelds and other gadgets 
These are a series of cheap (10-30 bucks depending on the seller and when you get them) Chinese Bluetooth controllers intended for use with phones and other mobile devices. The one I got was the D3 which I believe was the only model that was even available back in May, and it looked like this:
As you can see, it was very heavily inspired by the Switch, and that unfortunately extended to the dpad, or lack thereof. I've used it to play emulators on an Android phone and while it feels cheap, I've actually really liked it and my only real issue with it has been the horrible separated dpad. Trying to do any sort of diagonal movements on those tiny little round buttons has just made me map the dpad to the left joystick where applicable and made me avoid 2D platformers.
The last 3 models- D6, D7, and D8- have all had a proper dpad instead, with the D8 looking like the best controller design they've done yet. The reviews I found for it seemed to agree so I ended up ordering one from AliExpress' Black Friday sale. Apparently it has Hall Effect joysticks and analog triggers, but all I need is for the dpad to be actually passable this time around. Here's hoping I won't get a lemon🤞
Looking on Reddit it seems like these are all designed by one guy who posts videos on Douyin and he's already teased what the D9 is going to look like. While the D8 looks heavily inspired by Xbox controllers, the D9 looks to be even more heavily inspired by something else that recently came out:
Once again, you gotta love these Chinese companies, no shits given
Now, which one of these 999 save state slots was I using in my last session 
Is there a way to toggle between save states you have saved or see them in a list instead of just trying different slots until you find the right one? I'm on Android
52
I installed Alex's Mobs for more animal variety but I didn't realize how many unbalanced hostile mobs it also adds
(i.imgur.com)
For the most part I'd heartily recommend Alex's Mobs, since it adds a ton of biome-appropriate animals that fit the Minecraft art style that make the world feel much more alive.
I had it installed when I last played Minecraft over a year ago, but I didn't make it far enough to encounter its many overpowered hostile fantasy creatures and now they've been responsible for most of my deaths in my current world.
My first encounter with one of them was when I was scoping out an ocean on a boat and was suddenly being killed by a giant skeletal swordfish in a matter of seconds. These guys spawn near shipwrecks, have an insanely long aggro distance and can outrun your boat so you're basically screwed the moment you accidentally wander near a shipwreck you can't even see on the bottom of the ocean.
Then I built a Nether Portal and realized I hadn't yet even seen the new Nether biomes. I enjoyed the view for about 30 seconds until I was swarmed by giant mosquitos that attached to my face and sucked half my healthbar away in one go. I managed to kill a couple but they just kept spawning, instantly making a beeline for me the moment they appeared. Very fun and balanced 
After I'd gotten annoyed and just disabled the mosquitos from spawning I was building a bridge across a lava-filled chasm when a gigantic snake skeleton knocked me off and I burned to death. My first warning that they existed was the second one of them leaped up at me from a dozen blocks below. At least they're only limited to lava lakes, I guess.
Later, I was back in the Overworld exploring a giant deepslate cave when all of a sudden I was being attacked by a shrieking head floating up from the caverns below. After I once again got killed in a few hits I looked up what the hell even happened and it turns out it was this Japanese youkai thing that has an attack range of 50 fucking blocks. Just now I was surveying another deep cave from a ledge, saw one of these spawn in way below and it just aggroed instantly and murdered me.
I mostly like these monster designs but why do they have to be this overly aggressive and powerful? They give you no warning and can outrun you and kill you in seconds- it's just completely out of tune with the way Minecraft's hostile mobs are designed. Even the more dangerous mobs like Ghasts make their presence well known far in advance. I guess they're balanced for players kitted out in enchanted diamond armor but they completely kill exploration for me... until I disable them in the config, but I just wish you could turn their aggro range down instead.
The mod also adds several large dangerous animals, like crocodiles and grizzly bears, but you can just avoid those or run away if you too get too close and they feel much closer to how Minecraft usually operates.
I started a new Minecraft world after a long time, the last time being shortly after the update that added the new cave biomes and changed world generation and I'm instantly reminded of how useless copper is. Can't make tools with it, can't light torches with it, can't use it as fuel, and it's all over the depths you'd typically find iron and coal, the two early ores that actually do those things
That's okay, I'll still keep playing that garbage 
spoiler
A bit of context: When Gears 5 released in 2019, it was monetized out the wazoo in all the ways you'd expect a major AAA release to be in a post-Fortnite world, with content seasons, a store, two different ingame currencies (an earnable one and one you had to buy with real cash), buyable emotes, banners, weapon and character skins, etc.
They also sold all kinds of even more pointless customisation, like the little marks that show up on enemies when you tag them for your teammates or, the most pointless of all, the blood spray pattern that appears on the ground when you execute an enemy. They must have realized that no one would ever notice or care about the shape of a puddle of blood on the ground in the middle of a multiplayer game so they also made it so the graphic shows up on the screen of the players you kill. Because the Gears fanbase is the Gears fanbase, most people equip the giant middle finger.
Somehow this plain family car makes perfect sense as a collaboration between huge German and Japanese corporations.