If they let it cook this time it could be good… human kissing aside.

A laudable goal. Can they pull it off, tho?

As with intel, I would recommend not really paying attention to the 3, 5, 7, 9 numbers. Those are just marketing vague indicators; ideally of performance, but realistically just of cost.

Instead, look at the actual model numbers and seek out benchmarks performed by groups you trust with workloads similar to what you might actually do with them. E.g. If you are a gamer, look for comparisons between CPUs as to how they perform in various games. Linus Tech Tips do videos about recent CPU releases and compare how they do vs the competition in a bunch of games, and it shouldn’t be hard to find websites with the same kind of comparisons.

But also, yes, they are due to release a 9900x3D and 9950x3D early next year, supposedly. I am keen to see if the 9950x3D is symmetrical this time around; the 7950x3D was asymmetrical so I avoided it.

I don’t have VR so I haven’t played that one.

Oooo! Thanks! That’s way more interesting.

It feels like we only just recently got the HL1 fan remake done, and now we have what I assume is a HL2 remake?

I’m tempted, but I would miss the raw core count of my 7950x for my workloads. Hope those vague rumours I heard about the 9950x3D having the extra cache on both chiplets are true, because then I’d just get that one.

Streaming the game is never gonna be viable for me because of where I live, even if I wanted it, and I very much don’t. But then I don’t care for the kind of competitive games where what hardware you run on makes that much difference, anyway.

I don’t think we need “the best”. Just to be able to detect and ban the egregious offenders would be enough.

I will say we agree on one thing; competitive games should not be taken as seriously as they are. But then I’m of the controversial opinion that esports made gaming worse.

Client-side anti-cheat is effectively pointless in the long run. The software is running on a machine the devs do not control, and ultimately that means it cannot be trusted. They should be working harder on server-side detection, but that requires work not just buying a product and dusting your hands off…

Yeah, I was all like “Wait, Telltale still exists?”

The only real difference is being fairly certain that anything you buy on GOG will be DRM-free, since that is their stated policy and they offer the standalone installers for download. Granted they also offer a launcher like Steam, and if you’re only using that then you’re no better off; if a game gets delisted and you don’t have the installers archived you may be out of luck, depending on the details.

That said you are right, the problem is the laws and the publishers. But getting access to those offline installers certainly doesn’t hurt, in the meantime.

This will almost certainly happen.

There’s no way Unreal is completely free of inherent tech debt. But at the same time, there’s no way it doesn’t have way less baggage than the creation engine. Epic actually work on it, for a start.

They should. They don’t really have a good track record for quality, but the first step is trying.

Not for me, I fear. If I’m playing a turn based game I don’t want there to be reflex challenges.

I remember reading an anecdote about a guy’s kid relative, who would describe a game they want to play (not even make themselves), and before describing mechanics even they listed out all the hypothetical microtransactions.

There’s hope for me yet, then. Though I think FS have long since sailed from what I liked about Soulslikes into something else entirely.

I definitely agree on the lack of local / direct connection options.

I don’t think this is a graphics problem. I think people are just tired of silent protags. I mean, people were starting to make fun of it even when HL2 was new, enough so that the game actually draws attention to it in order to lampshade the issue somewhat.

Hm, fair point. I personally hate external accounts because it makes your ownership of your purchase that little bit more tenuous. Your continued access is now contingent on Valve remaining extant and good, Epic remaining extant and… tolerable, and the game’s servers, assuming EFD has those and offers no local / P2P option. Admittedly if that last is the case, you would hope if things fell through with Epic that the publishers would come up with some other solution, but I know it took a LONG time for most games that straddled the Steam+GFWL boundary to become playable again after GFLW died. And I’m not sure if they all did.