For me, being able to treat my Steam Deck as a "Gamecube Portable" is what I have wanted out of gaming for the last 20 years. I remember when the Gamecube Portable was just a hoax, now I essentially have it in my hands! Its wild.

Are you using RetroArch or something similar? I only have a little bit of experience with modding systems to play classic games, so I don't know if I'd be willing to risk such an expensive device, but being able to take my GameCube library with me anywhere would be awesome.

I mostly use my PS Vita as a portable PSOne, but pretty much every game I wanted was available legitimately through the store so I had no need to mod it.

Deus Ex. My parents got it for me as a surprise and it lodged itself in my heart ever since.

I think I tried to play Deus Ex too late because I wasn't able to get into it due to the relatively complex controls and interface. I had the same issue with System Shock 2. However, I played Morrowind when it first came out and have no problem going back to it, and it's arguably just as clunky, so I'm certain it's more about familiarity than quality. I hear nothing but great things about Deus Ex, so I wish I had tried it when I was younger and my brain was still malleable enough to learn how to play.

man it's been a real long time since i've last used a blackberry so my memory's pretty fuzzy, but i'd have to say that the hardware and build quality of the titan is just as good, if not better than, comparable blackberries. the whole phone is made out of aluminum and rubberized plastic so it's super stronk and has a nice heft to it. the keyboard is clicky and tactile, and the shape of the keys makes it easy to feel the difference between them, so it's a much more accurate typing experience than on a touchscreen. however, the keys are STIFF when brand-new, so typing long messages can be fatiguing until the keyboard 'breaks in' after extended use.

Blackberry's keyboards would always start to wear out on me after a few years. The keys would lose that "click" and were easier to push accidentally, or would sometimes register twice on a single press. So the stiffer keys on the Titan would probably be a benefit there.

if you're like me and primarily use your phone for texting and instant messaging, it's a fantastic device! however, if you do a lot of web browsing, video watching, and/or social media on your phone, this phone won't give you the best experience because most apps and websites expect you to have a big, tall screen instead of a small, square one.

That's another thing I loved about the KeyOne. It had the full hardware keyboard plus a tall screen with an aspect ratio comparable to other smart phones. It was a bit top heavy while holding it from the bottom to type, but it still worked pretty well. That said, I didn't mind the shorter screen on the Q10 that much either. It wasn't great for video or games, but it was serviceable. However, one of the first things I did when I bought the Duo 2 was set it up in tent mode and start watching The Mandalorian on one of its giant screens. A lot of people who purchased it actually use it more as a tablet than a phone and I can see why.

my main phone is a unihertz titan pocket, probably the last phone still being made with a real qwerty keyboard. it looks like a blackberry, but it actually runs android 11.

I considered the Titan when I was still shopping around, but wasn't sure about the quality since I had never heard of the brand before. If you've ever used a Blackberry, how would you say it stacks up?

If I called people more instead of messaging I would totally get this thing though

That thing looks amazing! But I almost never call anyone as well so it'd just be another shiny toy that I never use.

I was a big Blackberry fan for most of my adult life because I loved the hardware keyboard. I started with the Curve 9600, then the Q10 and finally rocked the KeyOne for five years that I wanted to be my forever-phone, but the battery eventually crapped out on me. When I was finally forced to replace it, it couldn't even hold a charge for a minute.

Since Blackberry is pretty much dead after their manufacturing deal with TCL ended, I was forced to find another brand. So after some shopping around I decided to get the Surface Duo 2 when it launched. Between my Blackberry Curve and the Q10 I owned two different Microsoft Lumia Windows phones and really liked them, and I've been a fan of the Surface device lineup for a long time so decided to give Microsoft another shot.

It was really expensive when it launched, but it's been so worth it. Just like Blackberry did with the KeyOne, this time around Microsoft went with Android instead of shoehorning Windows onto a mobile device, so it has all the benefits entailed therein. Plus, having two screens is so good for multitasking that I almost never use my desktop PC or laptop anymore unless I'm working on a project or need to type out something longer than a couple paragraphs because I still struggle with typing on a touchscreen.

It's a gorgeous device, too. With the bumper, mine looks exactly like the one in this image.



So what's your phone?

I think the PS3-PS4 change over was the first sign that the distinctiveness of console generations was loosing momentum; it was a big jump but nothing like the PS2-PS3. That said, I think the big change in the current generation is speed over graphics, loading times are almost non-existant, quick resume of games is fantastic and updates dont seem like the pain they used to be.

That's a fair point. Solid state drives are definitely becoming more ubiquitous as the cost comes down. I haven't actually used one yet, so I haven't experienced the difference myself.

On the point os PS5s OMG IS IT HUGE AND UGLY; you'd have to pay me to have that thing in my space

Hahah, yeah I agree. I might consider one if they release a "slim" model that isn't so gaudy.

I'm actually surprised how small an unobtrusive the Series X is. My dad bought one a while ago and it's a lot smaller than I thought it would be.

My partner and I share an Xbox Series S and it has really been one of the best investments we have made over the past years. Gamepass alone is worth it, and the price point is very low.

I'm curious whether you had an Xbox One before and upgraded, or started out with the Series S because in my mind they serve pretty much the same purpose. I love using my Xbox as an entertainment hub and am leaning toward a Series X as a replacement when the time comes.

Sounds about en par for most of the anti-intellectual modernist movements of the very early 20th century (situationism, avant garde, ...).

I am not particularly impressed at the implied defeatism; the idea that there is nothing left to innovate, that art is dead, and that everything needs to be corrupted to the absurd. It has a goulish, apocalyptic implication that I am not too fond of. It is certainly an imprint of its time though - the First World War, the advent of the large city, unseen horrors and incredible indulgence, the first capitalist subversion of the common way to live.

I think that modernism had its place in human history, but we are at a point now where real artistic radicalism is to believe in the mundane idea that art can, in fact, innovate, be artistic and beautiful without subversion, and that the future is not, in fact, terrible. A postmodern reinterpretation of the past to reflect the rules of history from the past and project them unto the future, as postmodernism without postmodernists.

I personally would like to see a new take on proletarian realism: no pretense of deconstructing art or modern human nature, no attempt at sentimental reflection of the past nor present, just a naive portrayal of the current world and the envisioned future, built from and about the tools available to and around us during our daily slog: labor, alienation, war. That is what I think the retro web revival is also capable of, in some strands, hence why I like all this. It is art built from and with the tools available to the common person, built as an antithesis to the mainstream internet, carrying within its social critique, but not as a pretentious work of art subverting what it means to be a webpage (or art, in the simile), but as a naive vision of a webpage, the archetype, the historical origin, remixed to take into account our postmodern world. That is, I think, radical.

Having studied modernist (and postmodern) literature in university, I've literally never heard anyone describe the modernists as "anti-intellectual" before. They were actually very elitist and with often fascist leanings (this being before WWII when fascism was first becoming popular worldwide). I think we can definitely associate the current fascist movement with anti-intellectualism, but not the likes of Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein or James Joyce. In fact, they would have derided the "proletarian realism" you describe as "middlebrow."

Maybe you're conflating this with the modernist rejection of Realism, but that's not to say they rejected the idea of objective reality (they were actually all about that epistemology). They simply didn't believe art had to depict things in a natural way as we see them, and we could in fact derive more of the truth about something by inspecting it in new ways. A lot of it looks like confusing gibberish as a result, but all that chaos is done with meticulous purpose. Cubism, for example, (as employed by Picasso and Stein) was an attempt to depict things from multiple angles at once.

As for the manifesto, I think it does fit with the retro web revival. A lot of the websites people are making on Neocities are trying to replicate the chaotic style of the early web. It's a top-down approach to intentionally design "badly", which I think is very neomodernist; whereas the actual artifacts they're recreating were decidedly postmodern, relying heavily on pastiche and ground-up design to make the product fit the pieces rather than the pieces fit the product.

I've read some of the Sandman comics, The Dreaming, read a chunk of The Incal, I used to really like Calvin and Hobbes, I read through all of Saga, uhhhhh what else... Oh I like Megg and Mogg! And most recently I was on like issue #8 of The Maxx.
I used to own some Tank Girl offshoots, but sold em a while back during a move

I totally forgot about Saga! I really liked it for a while. I read the first five volumes, but after that it felt like the series was dragging on. I was hoping it would have been something shorter, but the characters and world they created were really amazing.

I also should have mentioned the Mike Mignola comics I've read. I have a few collected editions of Hellboy, which are all great, as well as his Batman comics. Most people talk about Gotham by Gaslight, but I found the story so predictable that I actually cringed at the end. The one that really amazes me is The Doom That Came to Gotham. It's a Lovecraftian take on Batman, with the most disturbing version of Two-Face you'll ever see.

I also have Aliens: Salvation, but the story of that one is pretty lame; and The Amazing Screw-On Head and Other Curious Objects, which is really cool. There is also a pilot episode for a planned animated Screw-On Head series that you can watch on YouTube. Sad that it was never picked up.

I know this is a controversial topic, so let's keep it as civil as possible. And be wary that this will be full of spoilers.

So, what do you think of the Disney era of Star Wars now that we're five movies and a few TV series into it?

I have mixed opinions, so I'll start with the positive things I think about the new movies.

Rogue One is amazing. It's without a doubt my favourite Star Wars film. Even though I'm trying to stick to the positives right now, it's a lot easier to talk about what I didn't like about this movie because there's so little of it. And it basically comes down to the shoddy CGI recreations of Leia and Tarkin. When you first see Tarkin, the camera is behind him and it's just the reflection of his face in the window. If they had left it at that, it would have been a perfect homage to Peter Cushing's character. But then he turns around and is a major character throughout the whole film. It's bad enough that I think it's disrespectful to recreate actors performances (especially when they're deceased), but they didn't even do it well. The CGI looks like something out of Shrek.

The Leia puppet is a bit more forgivable because Carrie Fisher was still alive at the time and it's only seen briefly, but when taken with the excessive Tarkin scenes it's harder to ignore how bad it looks.

The only other thing I could complain about is Vader is a little bit... sassy when he says "try not to choke on your ambitions." Besides those things, it's a nearly perfect movie.

The Force Awakens was promising but was held down by way too much nostalgia and in retrospect had no payoff. I really appreciate the diverse cast, and the few original things the movie did were really great. But most of it is just a retelling of A New Hope and making classic references. It planted the seeds of something that could have been good, but just like everything Jar Jar Abrams has ever made, it failed to deliver on any of that early promise.

And that's pretty much it for what I've liked, really. The Last Jedi had some cool set pieces and at least tried to do something interesting by subverting conventions, but the movie itself was terrible. Finn and Rose's story was the worst because everything they did was totally pointless in the end. It's really upsetting that Kelly Marie Tran got so much hate for her role in the movie because it wasn't her fault (plus a lot of the hate was from racist/sexist "fans":wink:. She did her best with what she was given, but what she was given was awful.

Vice-Admiral Holdo gets a lot of hate too, but she's actually the only protagonist I like because she's the only one who acts reasonably in the whole film. People complain that she could have avoided the whole mutiny plot if she had just told Poe about her plan, but Poe had literally just been demoted for insubordination at the start of the film. She had no obligation to tell him anything, and especially not her secret plan if she didn't think he could be trusted.

Really, I think Poe, Finn and Rose should have been discharged for their actions, but the movie hand wipes it all away because they're supposed to be the heroes who literally do nothing heroic in the whole film. They're actually traitors whose actions made everything much, much worse. Holdo sacrifices herself in the most badass way possible to save everyone after the "heroes" screw everything up, so as far as I'm concerned Purple-hair Laura Dern is my hero.

And then there's The Rise of Skywalker. Just... ugh. I'm not even going to talk about this one. I think most people can agree that it's the worst of the new trilogy. Everyone has their own reasons.

As for Disney's output outside of the movies, I have watched the first season of The Mandalorian and enjoyed it quite a bit. I love the western aesthetic, and I do eventually want to get through season 2 because I think Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka looks awesome.

I also watched Obi-Wan Kenobi but didn't think it was very good. Having Leia and Ben go through so much together really doesn't align with what is implied about their relationship in A New Hope. I will say, though, that Hayden Christensen absolutely nailed it as Vader this time. He totally redeemed his performance in the prequels. I always thought the transition from his voice as Anakin to James Earl Jones as Vader in the suit was too jarring in Revenge of the Sith, but when his mask is damaged and you can see half of his face and both voices coming through overlayed on top of each other... it gave me chills.

Besides that, though, the series did everything it could to not do anything at all because it had to leave things in the same state as they were at the end of RotS.

I don't have any interest in the Book of Boba Fett because I hear it isn't very good and I never really got on board with how much fans idolize him anyway. He has cool armor and that's about it. Maybe he does more to justify his status among fans in the Legends universe, but I've never followed that side of the franchise outside of a few books and games.

As for what's upcoming, I'm interested in the Ahsoka series because, again, Rosario Dawson looks perfect in the role. But for as much as I loved Rogue One, I'm not interested in Andor at all. He was the dullest character in the whole movie and now they want me to care about him through an entire series? Nope. If they made a series about Chirrut Îmwe, the blind monk from the film, I'd be totally on board.

The rest of what Disney has released or announced hasn't made any impact on my radar, so I won't go into it.

I will end on a positive note, though. Jedi: Fallen Order is an awesome video game. It combines Star Wars plus metroidvania and soulsborne gameplay into something glorious. I can't wait for the sequel and hope that Cameron Monaghan gets to make a live action appearance as Cal Kestis at some point.

Edit: Oh, I completely forgot about Solo. But I guess that says everything I need to say about Solo

I'm curious how many people have actually bought a current generation console, because things definitely seem off with the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Most games right now are still playable on last-gen consoles, and besides RTX the graphical leap doesn't seem worth the upgrade this time around.

There have also been all of the manufacturing and shipping issues caused by the chip shortages and pandemic which have made the new consoles harder to come by, and yet according to Sony and Microsoft they're still apparently selling as good as or better than the last generation at the same point in their life cycle which seems strange to me.

Sony is definitely pushing more PS5 exclusives now, possibly because supply is starting to increase to meet demand, but the only game that interests me is the Demon's Souls remake so I still don't have much of a reason to buy a PS5. Especially not after they just announced a price increase. Their excuse is inflation, but to have a console go up in price after so many years instead of down is just absurd.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is pushing more cross-platform and cross-generation games. I can't think of a single Xbox game that isn't playable on both Xbox One and Series X/S. Maybe a few third-party games, but certainly nothing that's piqued my interest. It's great for players, which I'm all for, but has definitely reduced the need to invest in a new system so I wonder if it's hurting Microsoft or if the software sales make up for any decrease in hardware.

I don't know. I think this whole generation seems like a wash. But maybe that's just because I'm getting older and most games don't interest me anymore. The best new game that I've played in a long time is Inscryption, and that's a quirky card battling game with PS1-era graphics.

I wish I could find new and strange things on YouTube more often, but it's a pretty rare occurrence. I used to visit a content aggregate site that existed before Reddit and social media in general took over that sphere, and they would sometimes post the weirdest videos from YouTube.

But now I mostly just follow the same few channels that post regularly. Monstrum is a great series that does deep dives on different mythological creatures and cryptids. Outside Xbox/Xtra has a Dungeons and Dragons series as well as Blades in the Dark which are really entertaining. I'm actually watching the latest episode of Blades in the Dark right now.

College Humor used to be great for a laugh, and they eventually started Dimension 20 which had some free D&:grin: series on YouTube that were both hilarious and really well written. The first season of The Unsleeping City is my favourite D&:grin: series ever and involves an army of mutant Santa clones attacking New York. But most of their content now is exclusive to Dropout and requires a subscription.

I wish I could find more content like that, but every other channel I follow just posts top 10 lists related to movies, games and comics. It's mildly interesting but mostly just serves to fill time during the day.

I really enjoy open world games for immersive and/or sandbox games. Games like GTA, Watch Dogs, Minecraft, Just Cause, Red Faction, various MMOs, Red Dead Redemption, Mafia, Elder Scrolls, EVE Online, and many more, really profit from the open world, because it feels more like a portal into another world that you can do whatever you want in than a train ride in a theme park. In Watch Dogs and GTA titles, I spent days just walking around the world taking in the culture and the little NPC interactions, pretending to drive like a civilian, making up my own stories in my head. For me, it was a portal into a city I was never in.

But at the same time, some worlds just don't inspire getting immersed in them, and some games do not have gameplay loops that particularly support open worlds. I don't feel like a Mass Effect game needs to be open world, for example, unless they turn it into a different genre. I don't think a Myst game needs to be open world, or a Soulslike game, a Mario game or a Zelda game. Sure, these worlds and universes would be cool in an open-world game, but a game is more than a setting, and many times they just translate the same gameplay haphazardly into an open world, which just doesn't work.

You've put it really well here. Some types of games definitely need to be open world. I loved Red Dead Online and don't think it could have worked without being open world. You need it to evoke the feeling of being on the frontier. But slapping the Zelda or Souls formula on an open world left BotW and Elden Ring feeling hollow and stretched thin.

I definitely wouldn't call myself a Sonic fan these days, but I was absolutely obsessed with those games as a kid.

Same here. I was a Sega kid and loved all of the 2D Sonic games. Sonic 2 is another game that I know I played way too many times.

I don't mind the Adventure subseries, but after that the 3D games plummeted in quality. I definitely couldn't call myself a fan now.

Jak II is great. It's the only one in the series that I really got into, but I only played through the entire story once.

Resident Evil 4 is probably the game I've played through the most times. I know I finished the story at least six times on GameCube, then a few more times on Wii, and again on Xbox One and started playing it yet again on Switch a while ago. Yes, I have bought it four times, but I think each version added something extra to change or enhance the experience. Wii added motion controls for aiming, Xbox One added HD graphics, and Switch allows me to play it in handheld mode.

If you include multiplayer games, though, Team Fortress 2 is the winner. I put nearly 800 hours into it before finally quitting in 2015.

My first dive into Linux was in 2013 or 2014 (I don't know exactly what year this was) I had an old Dell laptop with no disk drive which meant no OS, and the only way I was able to get a functioning OS was with the live preview in Ubuntu.

...

It wasn't until I accidentally killed the laptop when I split water on it

This was the exact same fate as my first Ubuntu laptop. I loved that Toshiba Satellite like a brother.

I bought the original Microsoft Surface afterwards and tried installing Ubuntu on it because I thought the Unity desktop would be perfect on a tablet, but I could never get the wifi drivers to work. So that's when I went back to Windows, but I've been a Surface fan ever since.