Oh, your link is broken in the post itself I think

Oh I seem to think you’re a dishonest, instigating time waster, huh? What makes it seem that way, the part where I directly accused you of it?

I’m not sure why you’re so resistant to it but I’ll just move on.

Oh, sorry yeah I can clear that up.

The reason I don’t feel like dancing for you is because you’re dishonest, aggressively self righteous, and obviously just want to fight about something meaningless for no reason.

Spend the extra forty bucks for something official if you don’t trust used, and don’t start dumb semantic arguments with people if you’re gonna want their help after. Not that I think you really do, mind. Just pointing out how ridiculous that whole pretense is.

Anyway, yeah. Probably is best if you moved along

But ultimately none of this is that high stakes

Been saying that for four comments now lol

Yes consoles are often the more economical choice

This right here is the main idea, yeah, even when looking at the used market for PC components. Glad we found our way back, and even ended up in complete agreement at the end

As for the help you requested sifting through listings, used and refurbished are different things, you should know. Refurbished direct from Sony is $400, looks like gamestop will do it for $370. This sets a hard cap on used prices, so you’ll notice all the used listings (that actually sell) are below that.

You should also know they have websites for you to track what actually sells, and not just the listings that are left standing for a while because the price is mediocre. Worth checking that out so you know where to watch, and have a good chance of getting a good price when it appears. Best of luck to you

And “well below” $300 is not $285-$330

You’re equivocating. In that instance I am responding directly to your claim that it’s far fetched to find a used one around the $300 point.

You’ll notice when you quoted me you also excluded the word “dips”. It’s dishonest for you frame my position as misrepresentative of the market by presenting my numbers without the couching I presented them with.

And why do you want to quibble over $50 when it doesn’t affect the discussion at all? Let’s just work with the higher prices, or even the brand new prices for that matter

Same, yeah I mean once you’re established the actual cost of games on steam is ludicrously small depending on your habits. I’m pretty much locked-in to pc gaming simply for the love of indie titles that more often than not do not get published to consoles. Lots of those games are just straight up free

We also have to consider the value the computer itself serves beyond just gaming. If you’re gonna get a $500 ps5 and you’re already going for an $800-$1200 computer, well hey. You could really get the best of both worlds without affecting the budget. Probably could even save money

But I think there’s also a big group that isn’t in that situation. I know plenty of people who rock like a chromebook and the cheapest xbox. Or people who only play like NBA 2k or something. Or people who play 1-2 big titles a year when they get caught in the hype train, and can enjoy them at 4k60fps for the much lower upfront cost

Why not? Like I said the certified refurbished directly from Sony is $399. Plenty of listings up right now for $285-330

But even if we compare new consoles to used PCs I think the conclusion is the same

Certainly, but we’d then have to compare with the used ps5 market, which dips well below $300.

Can a used pc or a build with used components be had with comparable performance to ps5? Even with a much larger budget of say, $800?

A certified refurbished ps5 can be had right at this moment for $399, $450 new. I game on PC for many other reasons but the performance for value is pretty amazing on the ps5

Yeah plenty of people develop these feelings about laser focussed games. Sekiro is a good example. Not gonna be your game if you don’t like parrying. Lots of comments online from such people who write the game off as “spam parry to win” as tho there’s no depth to it.

Huge parry fan on the other hand? Probably your favorite game, and you’re bewildered by those comments because you feel like you could write a novel about how interesting the system is and how rewarding it is to master all the way into your seventh charmless NG+ run.

I think at the end of the day, when the gameplay is simply not catered to our preferences we’re not really going to appreciate what makes it so great at what it is

Virtual Ricochet Projectile :p

It’s the game’s in-game (Crossworlds) terminology for the charged shot that bounces around, yeah. They cover it in the tutorial but the main cast basically ‘nerd emoji’s’ Sergey and they simply refer to it as “balls” for the rest of the game lol

timing-&-angling annoyances

But yeah, like I said, you just don’t like the central mechanic. It’s valid. This is the main point of contention for the minority of people who don’t click with the game, as is evidenced by filtering for negative reviews on steam

But imagine if you didn’t find it to be an annoyance, and instead found it to be inherently satisfying? One of my favorite parts about Crosscode is how unafraid they are to present you with puzzles that are not only difficult to solve in the typical sense, but also difficult to perform once you know what to do. It’s a rare treat, most games instead lean hard only into one direction (purely cerebral puzzling or purely focussed on action)

It’s a game that just gives and gives, and to the contrary of your experience, I found the constant innovation of the puzzles throughout the game is what brought it from A to S tier. I finished the final dungeon wishing there was more game to play. Imagine my delight when the DLC dropped and added another 20 hours of timing & angling goodness. Replayed the game 3 times over the years.

And yeah, frankly we should compare it to Zelda, the most celebrated and beloved puzzle adventure series of all time developed and supported for 40 years by one of the largest and most influential video game companies of all time. No joke, I think this is actually exactly where Crosscode stacks up. It’s up there for me with my favorite Zelda titles

Not a sequel, just their next game! Combat and UI look similar so far. They’re doing dev streams on their discord

I thought crosscode had the best puzzles haha. The way they built it out with the elemental system, the enemies that required puzzle mechanics you had learned, the tight timing where you had to send a ball flying and then race it to various objectives, the myriad of subtle environmental puzzles in the overworld. Could go on and on, but yeah the VRP is the game’s central mechanic so if you simply don’t enjoy lining up your shots then I imagine the game would be pretty rough lol

Crosscode for sure! They have a new game in the works as well, it looks like it will be just as good. Great time to get into it

Aside from the dozens of direct shameless hollow knight clones, more “legitimate” artistic efforts are unmistakably if not explicitly influenced by it in a massive way. I think Nine Sols is probably the apotheosis of this. Will of the Wisps was famously accused of completely copying HK, much to the ire of the devs lol.

It’s also quite complicated because HK and the souls genre share so much DNA. And Dark Souls itself owes much of what makes it great to metroidvanias. So with these three things in mind (soulslikes, metroidvanias, and HK itself) which are all so interconnected, my argument is basically contingent upon whether or not HK is a particularly strong inflection point in gaming as a whole.

I think it clearly is, and I think it’s because it effectively culminated everything about the genre that we’ve come to love while also contributing new things to it. It was made with absolute reverence for the style, with the devs saying more than anything they wanted to create a world where players could get truly and completely lost. The fact that the art and music are impeccable seals the deal for most people

I would argue Animal Well is another such inflection point in gaming, and also probably the best example of a modern metroidvania that strongly diverges from HK

Nah it’s totally different this time around.

For starters Leth acknowledged Nintendo’s tweet about it by retweeting it, and setting his profile background to the new key art (which was provided by TC themselves)

TC also provided four new screenshots of the game to Nintendo as part of a press kit.

The xbox situation was literally never acknowledged by them at all, except for when Leth ultimately posted that it wasn’t happening lol. Apparently just based on estimates that TC had communicated with them privately, and only ever “confirmed” by a single social media person at Microsoft

This isn’t some random Nintendo direct, but rather THE big event for their big console. And also officially and immediately supported by TC this time around. This is 100% an intentional press rollout

On the flipside, I’m a huge metroidvania fan and Hollow Knight is clearly one of the best to ever do it in my opinion. It also totally transformed the landscape of metroidvanias, with subsequent games imitating it left and right.

The fact that silksong has remained more or less the #1 wishlisted game on steam since it was announced speaks to the broader cultural impact of the game. Hollow knight really elevated metroidvanias as a genre

Xbox did that I think in like 2022-2023

From their FAQ, emphasis mine:

You shouldn’t get one if…

You need a perfectly polished smartwatch. This project is a labour of love rather than a startup trying to sell millions of watches. There may be some rough edges (literally). Things will get delayed. Some features will not be ready at launch. Things could break. Things could not last as long as you’d like. The only thing we can guarantee is that it will be awesome and a lot of fun! Every time you look down at your watch, you will smile

So yeah, I’d say your take is pretty accurate. At least they’re honest lol

Dolphins are the most classic example, having the blow hole.

Insects ‘breath’ through their ‘skin’

Typical rambling argument against random shit nobody said.

You are the one using your limited time to jump to the defense of society’s lowest, most pathetic losers. Look up this guy’s business, he’s a fucking scam artist. Worcester would be significantly better off if they drove him out of town over his dumbass car.

You, yes you personally, should direct that energy into defending trans people and immigrants whose lives are actually threatened by violence instead of wasting it on wealthy people who are merely made “uncomfortable” by people telling them to fuck off lmao. You know, since you are the one who claims to be so bothered by hate and everything.

Or just continue to hallucinate and argue with yourself about the deep philosophical trimmings of whether or not anybody at all should be allowed to experience any form of pleasure if even one among us anywhere in the world is suffering. That’ll come in handy in the future I’m sure, especially if you keep bringing it up when nobody asked