Zeusthecat

Galaxy was pretty good. But it was marred by some atrocious motion controls in certain spots (tilting the Wii remote to roll that ball was the most frustrating goddamn thing ever). 3D World is just pure joy from beginning to end. Well, except for Champion's Road. I liked Sunshine more than Galaxy...

You guys are so wrong about 3D World. It is hands down the best Mario game ever made. It's even better than Sunshine. It does so many clever things with its mechanics and perspective, is packed with so many surprises, and has some of the most challenging stuff to be found in a Mario game. I could write a super long post extolling the virtues of 3D World but the greatness of that game should speak for itself.

Thanks a lot! I set my stuff up to auto host you as well but I'm not sure if I did it right. I'm not quite fully understanding how team hosting works versus auto hosting or how you even join a team. Anything else I need to do beyond just adding your name to the auto hosting list? My friend and I managed to successfully stream a couple hours of minecraft last night and I feel like it went pretty okay. I was a bit worried about the volume mix being a little out of whack with us chatting over Skype but OBS seemed to nail everything pretty well at the default settings. On the video side I ended up streaming at 2500 bit rate, 720p/48fps and the quality seemed acceptable but I'm tempted to bump up the resolution and bit rate. Is that still considered fairly standard these days or is it all 1080p/60fps? Looks like we're gonna give it another go tonight here in the next hour and a half or so. We're either gonna venture out from our base on our horses in search of a jungle biome or we'll scour the nether for more nether quartz which we need to finish a temple thingy we are building.

I continue to be obsessed with finding different arrangements of Corridors of Time. Two more really good ones that I don't think I ever posted here:

Anime! I've watched a bunch of stuff recently. Clannad and Clannad After Story It took awhile but I finally did make it through both of these. Overall, I didn't really enjoy Clannad very much and After Story was only marginally better up until the last half of it. Somehow though, they managed to shift the tone and focus of the show in just the right way in the second half of the series that it really resonated with me emotionally. I think it even produced a tear or two, which is why I wanted to watch in the first place. The dumb high school setting with dumb high school hijinks and coma ghost girls and genius girls and all the other cliche stuff fell really flat for me. Luckily I have a whole shitload of patience and was able to push through the main Clannad storylines. After Story got a tad bit better once they got to the post high school part of the story but even then it was just really drab and uninteresting. There were a few entertaining moments here and there, mostly with the main girl's parents (I've forgotten all of the names by now) but I didn't have high hopes for it turning around. But somehow it did, and in the second half, it drastically shifted gears and had a lot of really touching and poignant moments. For a show that completely failed to get me invested in its characters, it managed to pull off one of the most gut-wrenching, and unpredictable arcs I have seen. Although it kind of copped out at the very end, it made its impact and I'm glad I watched. I have never been so glad to feel so sad. Knights of Sidonia Season 2 This show was fairly enjoyable, but I had to go back and read some Wikis to understand what the hell was going on with certain characters. The Gauna didn't feel as terrifying as it did in Season 1 which was a bit of a bummer but there were a lot of cool action scenes and I continue to enjoy the weird mix of realism that is thrown into this wacky ass show. I still don't know what the hell is up with the hybrid that has a friendly appendage that travels through the city sewer system and sleeps with the main characters, I don't know why certain characters had the tips of their fingers sliced off and were then perfectly fine, but also possessed by the memories of a dead dude (or something like that?), and I don't know why that girl that died in season 1 ended up naked inside of the main character's gundam thingy after being secreted out of the Crimson Moth thingy. I kind of just enjoy this show as a thing that I build my own interpretation of. I hope the bear starts getting in on the action soon. Ajin: Demi-Human This was mediocre at best. The animation and art style actually bothered me a lot in this show and it was a rare case where it actually got in the way of me enjoying the show. It is somewhat interesting how the main character is basically a sociopath but still kind of a hero and I think they could go to some interesting places with that, but after season 1, I'm not so sure. I guess its cool that they haven't gotten too cliche yet and he hasn't really had any significant moment of redemption, just selfish decisions that happened to work out well for some of the other characters. I don't know, I worry that they are going to turn this into some major torture porn based on some of the threats that have been issued by certain characters. As it stands, it is already a little too heavy with that stuff. I see season 2 is out now but I don't think I'm interested enough to bother. Your Lie in April This was absolutely fantastic and has already become one of my favorite anime of all time. It was so good that I watched it through twice and got my wife into it. The music is so beautiful. The way they dangle this potential love story in front of you the entire time and never give any kind of payoff was brilliant and made it actually feel super believable. And that ending was so powerful and unexpected. I definitely cried more than once while watching this show. Another great touch was how the main character was basically a hero to all of his rivals. I worried at first that they would basically be "the bad guys", but the show quickly established them as interesting and compassionate characters that wanted nothing more than to be inspired once again by the main character the way they were the first time they heard him and to motivate them to get better. Considering how much I have disliked other shows that portray high school and middle school kids, I was pleasantly surprised by how realistically these kids were portrayed. Maybe realistic is a little strong considering kids that young would probably never be that mature but still. My only complaint is that this show did not go on for long enough. They could have easily stretched it out another 10 episodes and it still would have felt short. Gurren Lagann I liked what this show was doing for awhile and thought it was some good, dumb fun. And then they went and killed the most interesting character in the show less than halfway through. Fuck that. I was also a little embarrassed to watch this in front of my wife because they went a little overboard with the boobies thing. But not in a winking Space Dandy kind of way. Here it was just gross. I also just watched through Steins;Gate again, probably for the 4th time now. It's definitely my number one anime by a lot. I really hope the new Steins;Gate visual novel gets adapted into a season 2 of sorts for this show because I hear it's really good.

I have no idea what I just saw. But now my nose itches dammit.

There's a new paranoia I have where when I'm talking to someone and they make a wiping or brushing motion across their nose without breaking eye contact, I can't figure out if they just have a nose itch or if they are trying to give me a subtle hint that I have a visible chunk of booger somewhere. So then I start rubbing my nose just in case, but then they keep rubbing their nose and I can't figure out if it's because I missed it or if now they think I am trying to subtly tell them they have a booger chunk on their nose. Wish it was easier for people to just say "Hey, you have a booger on your nose" and eliminate this vicious cycle.

I do wonder if there really is still a market for a Wii-like experience. I definitely don't think there is among so-called hardcore gamers. In fact, Game Informer has one of their little informal surveys up on the main site for Switch games that people are most looking forward to and 1-2 Switch and Arms are right near the bottom. But who knows, the grandmothers of the Wii generation are now great grandmothers and there could be a whole new market of grandmothers that missed out on the original craze. I feel like a trajectory is starting to emerge. With the Wii, they introduced motion controls so your movements would translate to the screen. Then with the WiiU, they initially tried and failed to take that to the next level by having you put the screen on the floor and whack golfballs off of it onto the TV screen. Now, with the Switch, they have evolved past you even needing a screen and multiplayer gaming just involves you staring into your opponents eyes as your senses are melted with haptic feedback. I'm calling it, the next Nintendo system will be the Nintendo Pretendo. And it will just be an empty box with limitless possibilities. And a fee for online play.

I'm hoping to get back into occasionally streaming some of the games I'm playing. Not sure that I've actually streamed anything since some of my LucasArts replays and a Far Cry 2 playthrough a couple years ago so I'm not exactly an experienced entertainer. Right now I'm tentatively planning on being super cliche and streaming some Minecraft with my friend, probably this Friday or Saturday night if I can get the details worked out. If it goes well I'm hoping to take it one step further and stream some of our gameplay while I attempt to play in VR using the Vivecraft mod. I've been meaning to do this for awhile and I'm partially posting this to give myself the kick in the ass I need to follow through and actually do it. Here's my channel if anyone is interested. https://www.twitch.tv/xxzeusthecatxx

I know it wouldn't be feasible for them to do this, but I think if they were to drop the price to $200 it would make a world of difference and a whole lot of people would probably be going ape shit over the Switch (given the price of everything else, I think even $250 would be a bit too much for a lot of people when you consider the cost of extra controllers and other accessories.). That would put it in the standard handheld price range and would probably instantly bring a whole lot of that 3DS install base over as well as lapsed Nintendo fans that didn't feel that they could justify the price point of the WiiU. I know it would definitely be enough to make it a day one purchase for me and would make the cost of an extra controller sting a whole lot less. It seems like, historically, $200 is the golden price point where people will just drop the money so they can have the latest Nintendo. Even with the Wii, that was a big factor in why it was so successful. $250 for a new console and a game was a pretty killer deal and I think it had the added benefit of still being in the price range of a lot of popular toys, which I'm sure helped convince a lot of parents to purchase one for their kids. I doubt we'll see a price point like that any time soon, or ever. But if they chip away at the price of the console and also bring down the cost of the accessories a bit, I could see this garnering a lot more enthusiasm from consumers than the WiiU ever managed to do.

I like to play games with maxed out graphics settings and decent framerates. Unfortunately, shit's complicated and even with a decent system, certain settings or configurations will make everything slow down to a crawl. I have found it somewhat difficult to find solutions to some of the specific graphical/performance issues I have come across in various games and I figure having a thread where people can get advice from the excellent community here on specific issues they are having is appropriate. Rules: If asking for help, preface your post by listing your processor, RAM, and graphic card specs. Name the game(s) you are having issues with and the graphics settings and resolution. Be as specific as you can about the issue(s) you are experiencing and how/when they occur. I'll start. Specs: Processor - AMD Phenom II Hex Core RAM - 8GB Graphic Card - GTX 580 w/ 1.5GB GDDR5 Game: Dragon Age Origins Graphics Settings: All settings maxed with 1920 X 1080 resolution Details: Generally speaking, this game runs pretty smooth and typically runs at 60 FPS or higher. However, if I enter an area with a lot of foliage or an unobstructed view of stuff in the distance, my frame rate plummets to around 25 FPS. Still totally playable but kind of annoying. I recall having similar issues with other Bioware games like The Old Republic and I seem to remember needing to tweak some setting in the NVidia control panel that caused some kind of conflict with some of the in-game settings. But so far I haven't had any luck after messing around with those settings again for this game. Considering the card and processor I have were released a couple years after DA:O was released and were at the upper end of the spectrum at the time, I would expect that I should be able to run this game maxed out without my system breaking a sweat. Has anyone else experienced similar issues with this or other Bioware games or have any advice on potential causes for framerate drops under these circumstances? I've done most of the obvious stuff at this point like making sure my PC power consumption is set to 'High Performance' and that where possible, the settings in Nvidia control panel are set to use the in-game graphics settings.

I'm most definitely going to end up getting the Switch. I love Nintendo and want to continue supporting them and experiencing the unique shit they have to offer. But damn there are a whole lot of major concerns that don't have me feeling very enthusiastic about this system doing any better than the WiiU from a business perspective. The first, most obvious issue is the price. I think this is actually a much bigger concern than a lot of people realize. First, there is the base system at $300. Which I think would be acceptable if that was all you needed to spend to get up and running, but unfortunately it looks like there are some fairly mandatory minimum costs on top of that. Right off the bat, I think it is fair to say that the 32 GB of storage they are providing is not going to be enough. Even if you try to go for only physical releases, it is unavoidable that you will need hard drive space for patches, virtual console games, digital only releases, DLC, etc. So let's say that you could get by with an added 128 GB of storage (this would probably be a comfortable amount of space for most people assuming they aren't buying only digital). A 128 GB micro SD card is currently going for around $40 on Amazon. It didn't look like they were bundling any games with the Switch, so let's assume you are just getting a single game to start. Assuming that game isn't 1-2 Switch, that's another $60. To be fair, I don't think there is necessarily anything wrong with the system not coming bundled with a game, but when it costs $300 and requires these other upfront costs, it is a little more frustrating to not have something bundled in with the system and have that be another mandatory cost if you want to do anything with the system. Now this is where it gets really funky. For me, and most other people I know that stick with Nintendo systems, local multiplayer is and always has been one of their biggest selling points. I don't think it would be inaccurate to say that a very large percentage of prospective Switch buyers will be buying the system largely so that they have a good local co-op machine they can play with friends and family. Given how much we play the WiiU together in my household and how many awesome local co-op games we have purchased, that is definitely a large reason I continue to get Nintendo systems and is what keeps them from gathering dust. Unfortunately, if I want to continue having these types of experiences, it looks like I would need to get another pair of joy cons (and let's face it, you will need to get a pair if you really want to guarantee that you can effectively play anything beyond the simplistic waggle mini-game collections). That's another $80. And then it looks like you will definitely need another joy con grip if you want to have an option to make those joy cons into a standard controller (that offset thumb stick on the right hand controller looks like it would be impossible to manipulate without the support you would get by snapping it into the grip) for non waggle games and that is another $30 (not sure if they are offering a cheaper one that doesn't charge the joy cons but I would imagine most people would opt for the charging one since it seems like it would be a major hassle to keep any joy cons beyond the initial 2 charged). So that comes out to another $110 minimum if you plan to play a lot of local co-op. I guess you could opt for the $70 controller for your second controller instead but it is hard to tell exactly how far Nintendo is leaning back into motion controls and how much you would lose by not having the functionality of the joy cons. So that comes out to $300 (base system) + $60 (1 game) + $40 (128 GB storage) + $110 (extra pair of joy cons with grip). That is an absolutely ludicrous $510. Let's be extra generous and say you really don't need the extra storage and are just buying this for the core Nintendo games. That's still $470! That is beyond unreasonable. It's actually kind of insane when you consider what you can get for that money if you opt for Microsoft's or Sony's console, which if you are going to compare is probably the most apt comparison to other things on the market. Unfortunately, for those who are able to put down that kind of money, it looks like this will once again be a situation where there is very little 3rd party support and it will be largely up to Nintendo to ensure that it has a robust enough catalog of games to justify the asking price. Even if it could compete graphically, the storage limitations guarantee that there is no way we are going to see any releases of AAA 3rd party games that are available on other platforms. If the WiiU life cycle was any indication, I think this is going to be another major obstacle to the Switch finding any kind of mainstream success. The new gimmick (console gaming on the go) just isn't enough of a paradigm shift to offset these major obstacles and get people excited enough to bring them onboard the way the original Wii did. In fact, in some ways this is even less appealing than the WiiU because you don't automatically have extra controllers lying around from the previous generation that you can use for multiplayer and there is no backwards compatibility to play any of the existing games you might have. Taking those features away and making the tablet portable seems like a bit of a net loss, or a wash at best. Then there's the fee for online, which isn't as big of a concern to me. But I do wonder how that will impact the online community for a game like Splatoon 2. If its multiplayer requires paid online, that could be disastrous for fostering a strong online community since I doubt most people will want to pay a fee for the lackluster online service that Nintendo will likely be offering. The only possible silver lining here is that the 3DS is sitting around 60 million units of lifetime sales right now. That tells me that there is definitely an appetite at some level for what Nintendo provides. But on the opposite end you have the WiiU, which is sitting at a little over 13 million units of lifetime sales. Looking at the big picture, I would say the 2 biggest factors that would indicate whether this will be a success or not is the price and the core gimmick. The Wii nailed both of those and was a huge success. The 3DS has one of those, the price point (based on the initial sales before the early price drops it looks like the 3D was little more than a "nice feature" for the vast majority of people and being portable was less important than it being affordable), and it has been pretty damn successful too. The Switch, in my opinion, has neither. Gaming on the go will be huge for some people, and won't be much more than a "nice feature" for most. And it's expensive as hell. I think that is going to make it really fucking difficult for this console to take a significant bite out of the 3DS install base. If I'm being as optimistic as possible, this system will hopefully eventually sit somewhere between the 13 million units that the WiiU sold and the 60 million units that the 3DS sold, most likely leaning more towards the lower number. I just really don't think the Switch is doing anything special enough to attract anyone outside of the 3DS and WiiU install base and I fear that the price, weak specs, and lack of meaningful innovation are poised to drive even more people away. Zelda and Mario look great though and I can't wait for both of those games. It just sucks that they are leaning so hard back into motion controls for so many of their other games. Seeing one of their big announced games basically being a re-hash of Wario Ware Smooth Moves just looks sad.

Hey thanks Gorm, good to see you too! I had one final thought I wanted to share based on my VR experiences. If you have any expectation of a wealth of good VR content on YouTube 360, don't bother. I downloaded Virtual Desktop, which is a solid app and does everything it needs to do, but after spending several hours trying to find good content on YouTube, I ultimately gave up. What is there is really weak compared to the dedicated experiences you can purchase. It isn't that there aren't interesting videos; there are actually a lot of cool skydiving videos and things of that sort. The problem is that almost everything I found was filmed with a basic "360" camera, not a "Stereoscopic 360" camera. The result is that nothing in those videos pops out and feels like it's right in front of you the way other proper VR experiences do. Unfortunately, this greatly diminishes the wow factor that is present with true VR experiences and it feels more like you are watching everything on a flat screen that surrounds your body. So yeah, it's cool that it is all around you but you don't for a second feel like you are actually "there". With that said, I did find a small handful of stereoscopic 360 videos that looked okay, but even those weren't very impressive and the resolution seemed to fall short of my expectations. Unfortunately, with a few exceptions here and there (Vivecraft being the most notable one), the best experiences seem to be the ones that aren't free.

Oh, and one more that I forgot! Vivecraft This is the latest and greatest Minecraft mod optimized for the Vive. It works with the latest version of Minecraft and works with multiplayer servers as well. I tried it out last night and was able to tour the latest multiplayer server that my friend and I have been working on for the last year. It was absolutely breathtaking seeing all of our hard work and creations up close and personal and is definitely right at the top of my list of best VR experiences. I just hope my friend gets a Vive too so we can take our Minecrafting to the ultimate next level (even if it does make things a little more cumbersome). What is also great about this is that they went to extra lengths to make the interactions more intuitive. Swing your Vive wand while holding a sword and it swings your sword. Likewise, mine blocks by physically swinging your pickaxe. They even went as far as to make the bow more realistic to where you need to set your arrow and go through the motion of pulling it back and releasing the trigger to fire the arrow. And the scale of everything is really impressive too. Considering the blocks are supposed to each be 1 cubic meter, you can never really appreciate that scale until you are immersed in it. And also, riding around our crazy minecart tracks is really vomit inducing, but in a good way. If you like Minecraft and have a VR headset, you absolutely have to check this one out.

I just want to chime in to share some of my thoughts on my VR experiences over the last 8 months or so. This post will be a long one. I picked up the Vive back in May, and thanks to the fact that we had recently moved into a bigger house, I was able to snag one of the extra bedrooms to be my dedicated office/VR room. Once I got my desk and gaming collection all set up, I only really had room for just about the bare minimum required space. I think my current play area is about 5' x 6'. To those concerned about limitations in their play space size, I wouldn't worry about it too much as long as you can at least get the minimum required space for room-scale VR. Every now and then there are certain things I play that feel just a little bit restricted by the size of my play area but it has generally been a non-issue for me. Although that may also be partially due to the specific games and experiences I have been playing through. If I was playing more active games where I need to bob and weave and flail my extremities all over the place, I could see it being a little more restrictive. At a high level, I am very happy to be a VR early adopter, especially with how everything has really come together over the last couple of months. Back when I first got it, I got a good handful of games and experiences, had my mind sufficiently blown for about a month or so, and then didn't really touch it for a solid 5 months. It wasn't until around mid-December that I picked it back up and started using it regularly, and based on my experiences since then, I expect I will continue to play regularly for the foreseeable future. It is just so good and I think I'm fully convinced that this is much much more than a gimmick at this point. I think it was last night that I realized I am still having my mind blown every single time I put on the headset and then I go to bed with my mind racing, thinking of all of the countless things I still want to do and try and experiences I hope to have. Contrast that with my Wii experience where I went to bed every night trying to convince myself that motion controls were amazing, but deep down I knew that the only thing it would ever be great at replicating was the act of masturbating. With VR, my brain is sufficiently convinced that I can do so much more than masturbate. So here's a breakdown of what I've been doing and enjoying. Elite Dangerous This was my first purchase and I picked up a Thrustmaster flight stick to ensure that I was getting the best experience. It took a lot of tweaking to the controls to get something decent and to get the map navigation working with the flight stick and then a lot of additional research to learn how to play the game but once I got all of that down and knew how to do things, I started having a pretty great time. Cockpit games are probably the single best fit for VR from what I've tried and this one just nails it so well. The experience of being able to look around my cockpit and out the side windows to track a dude while trying to chase him down and destroy him is something that elevates this above what you would get on a standard display, in my opinion. With the scale of the planets, the great sound design, and the process of jumping in and out of hyperspace/supercruise and going through landing procedures, my brain is stimulated enough by how immersive everything is and how much I have to do mechanically that I don't really care that there isn't much that the game does to drive me forward and give me a "reason" for things. Being this immersed and having to go through every minute motion in a manual fashion is satisfying in and of itself by how it all comes together with VR and a flight stick. I've probably put in a little over 20 hours at this point and ended up moving on to other things, but I definitely plan on playing a lot more of this at some point. There's just a lot of other really cool stuff out there also competing for my time. One other note, with the Vive specifically, I ran into some visual issues with this game where things were really badly aliased and certain areas looked worse than a PS2 game. I ended up doing a ton of research and found that there was an issue with the way this game was rendered on the Vive. Frontier had acknowledged the issue and that they were working on a fix, but for awhile, I understand that this game looked much better on the Rift compared to the Vive. I checked back on this several months later and found that a community member had discovered what the issue was and had found a workaround. They found that by adding a 'renderTargetMultiplier' line to the steamvr config file and tweaking the value to 1.5 (or higher if their PC could handle it), they were able to get vastly improved visuals. I tried it myself and downloaded a chaperone switcher to do this automatically and it did indeed improve things substantially. And it turns out, increasing this value produces crisper visuals in the VR landing area and other games as well, if your hardware can handle it. I've bumped it back down to 1 and only increase it when I play Elite Dangerous specifically but it is a good tweak to know about. And from what I've read, it sounds like the consensus is that you get the best results in Elite if you set the in game super sampling to 0.65 and the steamvr rendertargetmultiplier to 2. Not sure if this will help anyone here but figured I'd share it as I have found it quite useful. Theblu This is just an underwater experience with a short Blue Whale encounter, a 5-10 minute coral reef encounter with a really cool jellyfish swarm, and another 5-10 minute experience at the bottom of the ocean where your Vive wands act as a flashlight and a bunch of glowing shit shows up at some point. I've gone through each of these a few times and they are nice to go back to regularly just because of how spectacular of a job WEVR did making the visuals so crisp and making it feel so immersive. While there isn't much substance here, it might be the best VR experience I've had from a technical perspective. Everything feels very 'in focus' compared to a lot of other offerings and it is just very beautiful and relaxing. This is also the very first thing I show when demoing the Vive to friends and family. It is simple enough to put the headset on and perform what light interaction there is and it has so far blown everyone away that has tried it. I highly recommend this if you want to see what VR is capable of or if you just want a good app that will sufficiently convince skeptics of what VR is capable of. Irrational Exuberance Prologue This was made by the same people that made TheBlue and it is pretty cool. You are on some kind of a space rock and you get to go through a 5-10 minute experience where shit floats around you and some cool space stuff happens. It's short and sweet (and free) and worth trying out. But given some of the other options for VR in space, it isn't anything too special. Fantastic Contraption I've played a couple hours and beat a bunch of puzzles but never finished. I hope to come back as it is another good example of VR done well and things being sharp and in focus but I've been distracted again by higher priorities. My favorite thing about this is that it is perfect for just sitting on the floor with my legs crossed and building some total bullshit Rube Goldberg device that flies off of the level as soon as I set it off. It's quite a bit of fun but between my skills and the game's toolset, most of what I've created has felt pretty sloppy and pretty much just limped and morphed it's way to the goal. Job Simulator It's cute and designed well. I like that each of the environments puts you in a space that fits in the context of your play space. Being in a cubicle or behind a cash register at a gas station works really well with my small space and I never feel like I need to be too careful not to hit walls or anything (not that that happens much anyways). Even though I enjoyed what was here, it wasn't especially impressive and isn't something I felt drawn back to the way other experiences did. The Lab This is a great sampling of various things you can potentially do in VR. The games are pretty fun to run through a couple times and I hear they've improved it a bit with some subsequent updates but this isn't something I would likely spend more than a couple hours messing around with since it is fairly limited. I will say though that this is another really good example where they got the visuals and focus to a place where it all looks super crisp. Tilt Brush This is definitely one of the best things on VR and is usually the second thing I show people after TheBlu. The effect of being able to draw in thin air all around you with dozens of different clever brush types is incredible and never gets old. I'm not much of an artist though so I tend to spend less time trying to draw a hobbit hill around my body and more time loading up the various drawings from the community that you can watch being painted in real time. There are a ton of them too so it's great to just sit there and watch an amazing 3d painting slowly spring up around you as you space out to some good music. Google Earth VR This is also one of the best things on VR and is usually the third thing I show people who are trying VR for the first time. My wife almost cried when she put it on and found her way to the house she grew up in. It defaults to a large scale mode where you feel like you are about the size of Godzilla but in the settings you can change it to human scale so you can get right down to street level. Unfortunately, the images are just not high enough resolution for it to look all that great at human scale. However, if you go to some of the more nature-y spots like the grand canyon, the resolution issues are less noticeable and it tends to look much better. Regardless of any issues with image resolution, this is still very very cool and can be quite breathtaking at times. Also being able to reach up and grab the sun to move it around and make a nice sunset is really great. And the music they have woven into this complements it very nicely as well, making for a super relaxing experience. Universe Sandbox Another extremely cool experience. From my perspective, possibly one of the coolest things I've ever had the opportunity to play with. I love that it is basically a god simulator where you can load up various scenarios and start chucking asteroids and planets into other planets and suns and then start firing lasers at everything and then slow down the time scale and watch as armageddon spreads across a planet in slow motion. And it also helps that this game has a phenomenal, sweeping soundtrack that makes you feel like everything happening is beyond epic. One of my favorites is loading up Saturn and just sitting there as I watch it peacefully spinning 5 inches in front of my face, then launching an Earth into orbit around Saturn and watching Earth's gravity gobble up Saturn's rings and seeing the spots of fire from the ring debris spreading across Earth's surface as it continues it's orbit. It's just a beautiful thing to watch. Another time I shot probably 30 or 40 Neptunes into orbit around Jupiter and almost puked because the framerate tanked. But I stuck with it and was rewarded with a bunch of really cool explosions and crazy chain reactions as all of the Neptunes slowly collided with each other and with Jupiter until they had eventually all merged into one entity. Then there are the simple pleasures like shooting Jupiter into a Mercury-like orbit around the sun and watching it slowly change color into a gross burnt Jupiter. Or smashing two suns into each other and slowing time down to watch a super nova spreading towards and eventually engulfing me. There is just some kind of a specific primal enjoyment that I get out of this experience that I haven't really experienced with anything else. Thumper This is probably one most people are very aware of but it is indeed incredible. When I play this game I feel like it penetrates into the very fabric of my being. Getting locked into the rhythm feels so good and it feels like constant sensory overload, but in a really good way. I'm only two levels in and I very much look forward to getting through the rest of this game. If you want to feel like you are on some kind of psychedelic substance, but don't want to actually take a psychedelic substance, this is the perfect game. Cloudlands Minigolf This is a great co-op game and a surprisingly well done miniature golf game. The controls are as intuitive as they get (since your Vive wand is the putter and the tracking is good enough to not require any action beyond just swinging your putter) and when I had a couple friends over, we were immediately able to jump in with almost no explanation. It's got a ton of courses as well as a built in course editor and with recent updates, there are pretty much unlimited options since community courses have been woven in with the default ones. It was awesome playing super complex courses like a par 42 hole where the ball went through loop de loops and got shot out of cannons to other parts of the course as it slowly made its way to the hole. The crazy courses are especially good for co-op so each person gets a few minutes with the headset before handing it to the next person. Shorter courses can be a bit more cumbersome with the constant passing back and forth of the headset but we fell into a rhythm pretty quickly and had a great time. I definitely look forward to playing more of this and am surprised more people aren't singing its praises. Anyways, yeah, VR is pretty alright and I'm glad I bought in. And also, I missed everyone around here and hope everyone is doing well.

Goddammit, you guys read my reader mail... sorry about that. That dog got into a lot of trouble. Eating shit, escaping from the house and making us lure him back with lunch meat and laser pointers, and bringing a decomposing gerbil into the house after I made it's grave way too shallow. Unfortunately he was hit by a car a few years later and his brother accidentally hung himself.

I can only imagine that this is what Nick was trying to build in front of his closet.

Don't worry about it man. I've just been abnormally frustrated lately and lashed out. I think I'm gonna take a break from posting here for awhile. This place demands such an impeccable level of social awareness and carefully thought out posts and I just don't have the mental fortitude for it lately for a variety of personal reasons I won't go into. Even though I delete about 80% of the posts I start, I feel like those that I do hit the post button on have just been rubbing people the wrong way. Most people here are pretty solid though so it's probably just me. Sorry for the way I acted in this thread. Later.

That's very informative. Thanks for posting that Gormongous. So it's clear that there is a sizeable percentage of people making less than minimum wage, the vast majority of which have their wages supplemented by tips. What isn't clear though is what the relative turnover rate is for those industries that pay less than minimum wage. In my experience, turnover is very high in the restaurant industry, indicating that the vast majority of that subset of workers are leaving these jobs to find other jobs on a regular basis. I would be curious to see if there is some kind of data to that effect that could quantitatively show roughly how many people are truly stuck in these jobs making less than minimum wage with no way out.

Oh I saw plenty of condescending and snarky responses to Syntheticgerbil's earlier posts in this thread before it all reached fever pitch. And even though Ninety Three could be a little abrasive at times, he was always dog piled on too. I'm fucking tired of everyone coming into these arguments with their minds already made up. I remain unconvinced by the majority opinion here and was hoping to broaden my perspective.

Damn, going against the group think on these forums can be rough. I wish we welcomed more diverse opinions without shouting down anybody who dares go against the majority consensus.

I'm dubious of the claim that there is a significant number of citizens in the US who are completely stuck in a less than minimum wage job and are completely unable to find another job. I grew up in poverty, got my first job at 14, and landed various other jobs throughout my teenage years and early 20's until I started making much more decent money as a server at Applebee's. I have honestly yet to meet this hypothetical person that is working a job where they make less than minimum wage and are completely unable to leave that job and search for another one. Even some of my least fortunate friends growing up had no problem getting hired at McDonald's or a call center or working at a stand in the mall selling cell phones. I recognize these people do exist out there and it really sucks if you have somehow managed to get hired at the only job that will ever employ you and you are completely stuck. But I think it is false to assume that the number of people in that situation is so large that we just have to suck it up and participate in this system and make up the difference so they are making a living wage. I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of people in a shitty job are perfectly capable of leaving that job to find a better one. If there were data to suggest that this isn't the case and that there is this huge percentage of people that can't leave to find a better job, then I would definitely re-think my opinion on this and probably land where most of you are. As it stands now though, I've just never seen any indication that that is the case other than claims made by people here.

Eh, I don't know. If you are saying that the situation is hopeless and therefore it is the customer's duty to tip appropriately to ensure fair wages are being paid I completely disagree. That is just perpetuating a broken system. It's shitty to think that some people are theoretically stuck in a job where they bring home less than minimum wage and have absolutely no ability to change that situation, but extending that to say it is the customer's job to fix that problem is just wrong. The cycle has to be broken somehow and I think the single most valid way to do that is for everyone to stop tipping entirely, forcing companies to address these shitty business practices. Continuing with the narrative that we all need to be tipping well to make sure these people are making living wages just continues to put the onus on the customer and continues to breed a situation where companies see this as a viable business practice, creating an even larger market of employees that are underpaid and rely on the generosity customers to pay them a living wage. It is a vicious broken system. Tipping is the worst and everyone would be better off without it. I'm with Synth on this one.

I try to avoid paying attention to dumb celebrity stuff but inevitably, some of it still bleeds into my brain thanks to the prevalence of Twitter and social media. One thing that is amazing to me is how a person as terrible as Kanye West is still able to land gigs and maintain a following despite his constant awfulness. It is kind of fascinating. There have been very few people I've witnessed that have had such a wide combination of terrible traits and have managed to maintain so much support despite all of that. As much as I can't stand the guy, everything I ever hear or read involving him is entertaining as hell.