When it comes to mobile games Apple has had a policy in place since at least early 2017 requiring gacha games to disclose odds for lootboxes. Since most of these games are multiplatform the policy indirectly carries over to Android games, but I don’t know if Google has any specific policy in the Play store.

Another example of this is that Chevron keeps one station in each state they operate in branded as Standard, as a way of retaining their rights to the Standard Oil name. Speaking of which, I’m sure someone could write a whole book about all the various trademark and copyright tomfoolery related to the Standard Oil…

Peak Fast and Furious was reached near the end of the 7th film when Hobbs drove a stolen ambulance off the edge of an overpass and crashed it into a Predator drone as it exited a tunnel. I don’t see how they’re ever going to be able to top that one in terms of raw shark-jumping ridiculousness.

I’ve got my new gaming desktop fully up and running now (aside from reinstalling a few things I use less often) and so far I seem to be stuck using it mostly on games that came out in 2012. Been playing a fair bit of Borderlands 2 lately, in a bit of a weird spot where I’ve finished TVHM on my Zer0, but my gear isn’t…

I stopped playing Pokemon Go for quite a while, but now that my workplace has a fairly well organized raiding group and three gyms within a couple of blocks of our building I have actually been playing a fair bit again. Still have a lot of catching up to do, as I mostly stopped playing shortly after the Johto region…

Should be easy to test this, just throw a copy at Horheristo or Gellot on YouTube and watch them put up the “Ultra hard dagger only no damage” video about ten minutes later. Although in the case of Bloodstained it sounds like Horheristo isn’t much of a fan...

Last year when I went to visit my sister I brought an Oculus Go with me (this was shortly after they were released) since I thought some people would be interested to see one. Basically, her kids spent the whole time glued to the thing and arguing over whose turn it was to use it (fortunately I had the “low battery”…

To further complicate things, there’s some developers out there who are developing $10-30 games that are better than most of the $60 releases coming out. I paid $15 for Hollow Knight (Switch version, the PC version can often be found cheaper on sale), and I’d rather play that than pretty much any of the games I spent…

My old PC is a bit newer than that, but not much (~6 years). I know I don’t get to upgrade my PC all that often so I like to build them up when I get the chance. I had a Core i5-3570k running a pretty aggressive overclock (4.2GHx) pretty well. I did also buy a GTX970 (upgrade from a GTX 660Ti) about a year after I…

Just built a new desktop PC for the first time in ~6 years, and will most likely be spending time getting things set back up on that. The old one was still keeping up reasonably well, but this new one should be a beast. That said, I’ve been playing mostly Borderlands 2 and Binding of Isaac Afterbirth+ lately.  Really…

“Partying with cheaters”sounds like the plot of the hottest new show on the CW next fall.

Need to finally finish up my True Vault Hunter playthrough on Borderlands 2 (stuck on Saturn currently, but apparently you can just skip him.)  Also working on a troll level (“A Good Sound Thwomping”) in Super Mario Maker 2.

From what I’ve seen of it, I think the term “Metroidvania” came about somewhat by accident. Originally I heard it being used as a way to distinguish Symphony of the Night, Circle of the Moon and the other exploration-heavy Castlevania games from the “Classicvania” (2d sidescroller) ones. For quite a long time it…

I think there’s a bit of a weird dichotomy to Mario Maker levels, especially if a lot of your exposure to the game comes from watching Twitch streamers and YouTube videos. The most popular categories for those (by far) are the Kaizo levels which only the most advanced players are going to make the effort to beat, and…

Definitely.  Also a good illustration of just how janky a “Million dollar showcar” in a movie can be in real life.  As long as it looks good on a camera sitting 20 feet away it doesn’t matter how terrible it is under the hood.

I think I’m 2 missions away from finishing True Vault Hunter mode in Borderlands 2 (been stuck at level 50 basically the entire time) so I’ll try to finish that up.  Aside from that it’s been mostly Binding of Isaac Afterbirth+ (picked it up again thanks to various YouTubers) and I’d like to pick up SMM2 but I’m not…

Based on other reviews (professional and ad hoc) I’ve seen of this game there seems to be little middle ground on it. Either you enjoy it or you despise it, it seems.. I’ll probably fall into the first category since SotN and Aria of Sorrow are a couple of my favorite games, but there seems to be a lot of the latter…

I’ve seen some pretty big companies decide at the top level that there’s no need for dedicated QA people, lay off every single SDET and then try to get the developers to do all the testing. I actually work in a company where dedicated QA people are something of a rarity, and the developers I work with were thrilled to…

The problem with QA isn’t that it’s considered unskilled labor, it’s that a lot of it is basically grunt work, especially at the entry level. A lot of it can also be very repetitive, and often you will find yourself running the same set of tests over and over every week or even every day.  If you want to make a career…

Unpopular opinion time: