Fix for VRAM leak on some AMD systems.

That’s why everything kept crashing when I tried to play anything?! Praise be, here I thought my PC is on its last legs. Looks like you’ll have to survive a bit longer old chap.

No prob, glad it was of some use.

I have some experience with that so I’ll throw in my two cents.

TL;DR for Poland:
It’s the usual case of loud minority (far-right) and silent majority (everyone else). Most people are fine with immigrants, especially if they get to interact with them. Things may change as polarisation increases though (and there’s a pretty significant push for that at the moment, unfortunately).

Long version:
Poland was a pretty multicultural country through a good chunk of its history. It had it ups and downs, plus plenty of conflict and racism (similar to what was present in other European countries at the time) but it wasn’t until WW2 that population homogenised into what you’d think of today.

After the war, immigration has been slowly but steadily increasing - starting with people from USSR and south east Asia (there’s a pretty significant number of people of Vietnamese descent for example). University cities like Warsaw, Cracow or Lublin are full of international students from all over the world. These people often find jobs and stay around integrating without issues and functioning like everyone else. Same with those who immigrate for purely monetary reasons though here integration can often depend on what kind of job they do/work environment they end up in (low pay workers often live and function together to a higher degree than blue collar ones). Even then, there’s usually some interactions between them and the local population (don’t expect any stereotypical ghettos of unwanted “invaders”).

Are things perfect? Obviously not, especially with the rise of far-right rhetoric, but most Poles in my experience either don’t care or are more than happy to interact with foreigners. Heck, many still treat it as something unusual and exotic.

As for Poles being blunt and rude, some of it has to do with how Poles are in general. There’s less “fake” friendliness you’d often see in the Anglosphere and more straightforward “what you see is what you get”. For example, if you ask a Pole “how are you” the usual response won’t be an automatic “fine” or “I’m good” but rather how they actually feel at the moment.
As always, there’s no one size fits all in this kind of thing and temperaments will differ based on person, region etc. but it’s not just people being ass-holes (usually).

Anyway, these are my observations on this. I’m sure there are people with less positive view on this topic but hopefully it’ll clear some things at least.

As the other user said, it was a reboot. One that doubled down on the bad parts of the original and added some new poor ideas on top of it. Stuff like:

• Even worse story - plot of the first game wasn’t a masterpiece but it was serviceable. It also focused on a personal story rather than a huge threat like the sequel.
• More combat encounters - something that could’ve been completely skipped in the original (except for one boss fight, if I recall correctly?) now was forced whether you liked it or not. It also felt worse (to me).
• Locking movement options behind a skill tree - some of the most basic moves from the original game were unavailable for the sake of a worthless progression mechanic.
• Open world didn’t flow as well as the linear levels of the first game, it was also poorly divided into districts connected by a few specific routes you couldn’t avoid, making it feel even worse.

There’s probably more that I forgot at the moment but it was simply a bad sequel which didn’t know what made the first game good (in my opinion).

As for how this one is different? We’ll see when a public version becomes available. One thing that makes me hopeful is the complete lack of talk about combat on their store page. If they can focus on good movement mechanics and the actual delivery gameplay that in itself will be an improvement over Catalyst.

I love how unapologetically Mirror’s Edge it is and really hope it turns out well. I need my ME fix.

Jumping between Ridge Racer 2 (PSP one) and The Legend of Linkle: Breath of the Wild (BotW, just modded).

With RR2 I pretty much stick to random tours at this point as I really don’t want to deal with playing the final duels of the pro tour (I cleared one, tried another and decided it’s just not fun). I’ve been on a bit of a binge of RR related media (videos, listening to the soundtracks) so I come back to this game regularly. I also decided to try out Ridge Racer Type 4 but I’m doing it on my PC due to laziness. Didn’t play enough to have an opinion on that one yet.

With BotW I came back after a year or so long break and decided to start from scratch with refreshed attitude instead of continuing my previous save. I’m having a bit more fun and less pressure to progress this time so there’s a chance I’ll be able to finish it (I got about half-way on my first attempt). We’ll see how it goes.
At the very least, I’d love a proper Zelda game with Linkle as a protagonist. Heck, I’d settle for a decent knockoff.

Hm, sounds good but not necessarily like a must-have for someone who enjoys the series more casually/from the sidelines rather than being an active part of the fandom. I’ll keep that in mind for the future, thanks.

Are there any projects you could suggest as worth checking out? I love mods but I never really thought about using them with FF7 - it’s just not a game that comes to mind when I think about doing a modded playthrough. Anything transformative enough to make it more than just FF7 but with QoL or nicer graphics?

Hmm, seems like sticking with emulating my copy might be good enough for now. I might jump into the other entries instead since I neither have nor played them. Thanks for the reply!

I have the PS1 version but this does look enticing for convenience’s sake. How does the modern PC release compare to the original one (besides the quality of life additions mentioned on the store page)?

Older games are purely singleplayer, multi is something they leaned on later on. For PC Rayman Legends also supports local co-op, I believe. This one however is only available on Steam and requires Uplay account or linking your Steam to it. Origins is available on both Steam and GOG - I can confirm the latter version does not require any additional accounts or services.

Finally, there’s Rayman Raving Rabbids but that’s more of a mini-game compilation/party game rather than a platformer. It also has multiplayer.

Since you mentioned platformers, Rayman Origins might be worth a look. It’s a 2D platformer from 2011 so it doesn’t require a lot of power, levels take a few minutes to complete which makes it perfect for short sessions and it has local co-op (up to 4 players).

I tried it recently on my desktop (Pop!_OS, ubuntu based) and Steam Deck, played without issues on both of them.

Yup, something like this or simple sliders would be an ideal solution for what I’m talking about - preferably both, depending on whether the setting is a numerical one or not. It doesn’t have to be a completely granular access to every value, I just want enough control to adjust the experience when things are close but not exactly right.

Jose Pavli, composer for Project Wingman, (re)created music for this project. It’s available on his Bandcamp page.

I’d be down with that. Or at the very least give us modifiers like skulls in Halo games - dunno if that’s just Master Chief Collection addition or if they became a thing after 1 but it’s better than nothing.

I completely agree that accessibility/assist modes are more important and if I had to choose I’d go with that. Since we’re in a fantasy land however I’m still going to advocate for customisation because, let’s be honest, most of the difficulties (besides “the main one”) are usually not that great.

I’m speaking from a perspective of someone who tends to go for the higher difficulty options which extremely often go with the laziest possible decisions like turning enemies into damage sponge and increasing their attack power. That’s it. Stuff like improved enemy awareness, faster reaction times, smarter tactics aren’t exactly common and that’s my main pain point when selecting difficulty. There are also other things like ammo/loot scarcity, need drain in survival games etc.

Having an option to tweak at least some of these things could help folks like me who often end up in a situation when one difficulty is piss easy and the other feels like a drag. Peoples skills and expectations vary way too and there’s simply no way few basic difficulty settings will be right for everyone. And if someone damages their experience? Oh well, let people make mistakes and take responsibility for their choices. Inform them that changing this stuff will affect their experience and leave them to their decisions. We can’t (and shouldn’t) baby-proof everything, in my opinion.

I agree to an extent but there’s a difference between “we made a specific design choice because it fits with what we want the game to convey” and “well, normal mode works like X and feels super easy to anyone experienced with gaming but on hard all the enemies are bullet sponges with 5x HP and player dies in one hit”. The latter approach brings nothing to the table and that’s what I’m against. Plus already mentioned accessibility options for those who need them.

Besides, many games ALREADY HAVE easy modes - giving me ability to adjust things manually (which in my case is usually up, not down) wouldn’t affect their vision any more than it’s already possible.

Oh totally, I’m mostly focusing on solo and co-op titles like Terraria/Minecraft/Raft or whatever is popular for multiplayer these days. That said, it’s not like Souls games have to by played with online functionality even now - it’s already off when not in human form after all.

It’s not a perfect choice for every single title but a good chunk of games could support it without worrying about matchmaking and the like.

Customisable difficulty. Have a single or multiple presets balanced to what you’d like your players to experience but give me an option to adjust some of the stuff to my liking. There are SO MANY games I’d love to play way more than I do but none of the difficulty options feel “right”, bringing the whole experience down.
It’s also a great feature from an accessibility standpoint - pretty important thing for those who literally can’t play your game for reasons that could be easily worked around if such customisation was there.

“But my artistic integrity and vision!”

No, shut up. Your vision doesn’t mean squat if my experience with the game is annoying to the point where I don’t even care about the lore implication of an enemy placement or how gameplay systems intertwine with themes and story of the game. It’s important, sure, but it shouldn’t be more important than player’s enjoyment of your product.

Balance your game how you imagine it but let me play with the sliders to make it feel how I want it to. Just drop a scary message about it not being the intended way to play and it’ll be fine.

It was also an unfortunate victim of the time when IOI struggled with figuring out how to transition from “classic” way of making games to the modern, high budget approach. I’m glad they managed to get back into the rhythm with new Hitman games but it’s still a little disappointing K&L had to serve as a stepping stone towards better times.