Hardly. FF9 was *fine*.

It checked all the boxes to be a Final Fantasy game. It took few risks. It was fine.

Technically no. I’ve heard that the mobile version starts you off vs bots and will match you into lobbies with more human players as you play more. Also if you were to play at a really unpopular hour, say middle of the night, your lobby would be largely bots. The game doesn’t have a bot-only mode though

Having only jumped back into PUBG last month, these murder-bots have made the past couple weeks a little dicey, but not unpleasantly so. The old bots were predictable nuisances: they’d bee-line for you, plant themselves when close enough, engage with a predictable shooting cadence, and really only take cover if you…

It’s true and E-sports are so young there just aren’t that many older pros out there yet. We don’t have a good idea of what kinda mileage folks will get. But, at least for starcraft, it also depends on the race.

Terran is much more mechanically demanding Zerg or Protoss and so Terran pros seem to wear their wrists…

Damn, that’s a real shame! His triumphant return to GSL last year was too short lived and he’s always been a crowd favorite. Plus, at 26, he’s still younger than some other players who haven’t yet done their military service. The Starcraft 1 scene has certainly proven you can be competitive and world-class into your…

I’m a big believer in gamifying your backlog. I use hltbDOTcom to track my completion along with an annual list like Totilo would do. I also tackle my backlog methodically. I sort it into games I bought because I thought they’d be cool and games I actually *need* to play. I don’t necessarily stick to one list or the…

It looks to me like there are also similarities between this piece and Raymond Swanland’s art from “Ugin, the Spirit Dragon”. There are certainly more alteration made in that case, but the perspective and some specific details feel a touch close. I could be wrong

Try again

You’re so close. Raising the price did reduce demand... for the card with the jacked price. You decided that was too much and kept looking elsewhere. Maybe there’s someone out there still willing to pay $1400+ for a 3080. As long as they’re not shipping ‘em and all the GA102 are going into 3090's, as long as demand…

Nah, reselling is only sleazy if you think capitalism is inherently sleazy (that’s another discussion). Maybe for the folks scalping concert tickets where there’s a finite supply of the product. Sony’s making consoles as fast as the fabs can make silicon. That’s helping drive down secondary market pricing. What the…

No one is holding you down and making you spend extra for a PS5. That’s the whole point. You’re not the customer in mind. Pricing reduces demand to meet the available supply. PS5's used to go for $1000. Now they sell for less. Everyone who wanted one and was willing to pay $1000 already has one. In a month or two, they…

It did. You can’t sell a PS5 for $1200 right now. You used to be able to sell one for $1000. Now, they seem to go for $850. Less if you buy locally. Give it another month of restocks and maybe they’ll be down to $750. At a certain point, it’s not worth the risk and resellers will look for opportunities elsewhere. But…

Exactly. Which is partly why I have a hard time calling any of them scalpers at all. Folks who scalp concert tickets or sneakers are buying a product of limited quantity. They’re only selling so many. Those folks can corner the market and charge exorbitant prices for that stuff (x2 or x3 mark-up). Whereas they’re…

1) No one is desperate for a PS5. It’s a toy. You either get lucky, you pay extra or you wait until they restock. Their customer base is the affluent, not the desperate.

2) Take a real look at eBay (or whatever platform). The VAST majority are the individual flippers you’re talking about. The professional scalpers are…

Nah, they’re fine. They’re small volume and they help the folks buy who don’t mind spending an extra $150 get a console instead of waiting 6 months. Plus, most of the people reselling on eBay aren’t professional scalpers. They don’t have a pile of 30 PS5's they’re dumping. They got one console when Walmart restocked…

The primary impediment to buying a new console is demand. One of the easiest ways to reduce demand is to raise the price, which retailers can’t do (except with bundles). The only reason I can get a PS5 right now is because there’s someone selling one over MSRP and not keeping the console for themselves. I’m not…

Lemme play devil’s advocate for a sec. In a perfect distribution system (a lottery) where the only people getting PS5's are enthusiastic end-users, supply would still be hopelessly insufficient and the product unavailable for sale.

Scalpers/Resellers are adding value by setting prices that reduce demand. I can’t go to…

I can definitely see wanting to make sure you have the time to commit to Hollow Knight. I wouldn’t call it super long (took me <40 hours for good ending + DLC #1), but like any Souls-like game, you don’t wanna have to come back after an absence and try to figure out what you supposed to be doing.

That said, if it gets…

In 2019, I bought a PS4 Pro for the EXPRESS purpose of playing Bloodborne. I still haven’t done that (let alone boot the console up to play *any* game, woops), so 2021 is the year of Bloodborne for me. I did make some decent backlog headway this year, playing every Wii U game for which I had interest. In 2021, I’d…

Not quite. They’re all successors to Demon’s Souls. DS2 and DS3 have a common heritage with Demon’s Souls that skipped Dark Souls 1. They feel like actual sequels.