th_in_gs

Do you still have to buy some tier of gamepass to be able to play multiplayer games that you own online?

He is so good at getting subtle facial expression through the prosthetic. Really remarkable.

to this day it’s still exiled on the Xbox 360, not a prime destination for the genre

It’s still ‘exiled’ on not-a-prime-destination-for-the-genre, but it does also run on modern Xbox systems thanks to backward compatibility - with vastly reduced load times and a solid 30fps frame rate.

I think the success of features based on calculated track position - like DRS and the Virtual Safety Car - proves that the time has come for Mario Kart style power-up cubes. Project them onto AR displays in the drivers’ helmets, and show them on the TV feeds.

• Mushroom allows the driver to cut corners and speed over track limits.
• Squid ink appears in the field of view of all other drivers’ visors.
• Verstappen gets blue-shelled and all his power cuts out until he’s stationary!
• etc.

Call me crazy, but I think in 10 years time you’ll be looking back on this post as prescient.

Been around since at least TNG:

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Structural_integrity_field

Yeah - as a Californian I considered driving to see it - day long road trip out there, stay for the Grand Prix, day trip home.

I stopped considering when I saw the prices.

How did Aston do so well again?!

Ugh, you’re right, Way to undermine my own point! There are no official third party wireless controllers.

8BitDo do make licensed controllers that work with Xbox though - for example: https://www.8bitdo.com/pro2-wired-controller-for-xbox/ and https://www.xbox.com/en-US/accessories/controllers/ultimate-wired-controller-for-xbox

[Edit: and there are a bunch of wired third party controllers on Microsoft’s store from other manufacturers: https://www.xbox.com/en-US/accessories?xr=shellnav]

8bitdo (and the other major 3rd party controller makers) have a license. Their controllers are even advertised on Microsoft’s site - e.g. https://www.xbox.com/en-US/accessories/mobile-gaming/sn30-pro

[Edit: @[email protected] points out correctly that this controller does not with with Xbox - it’s for mobile. Oops. There are some that do though - see later replies!]

Yes, there’s a proprietary authentication mechanism. It’s been used in all controllers from the Xbox One, released in 2013, onward. At the moment, at least publicly, it remains uncracked. That’s actually quite impressive!

I think a lot of people are interpreting this news to mean that all third party Xbox controllers will stop working. Controllers from the likes of PowerA, Razer or 8bitdo. But they will still work. They are licensed by Microsoft and contain their proprietary authentication processors.

Some third party accessories like the Cronos Zen allow other controllers (Joysticks, wheels, PC gamepads, Playstation controllers etc.) to work with Xbox - and also often contain ‘cheat’ mechanisms (like automatic direction input to compensate for gun recoil in shooters). They require you to connect an authentic Xbox controller to them and hijack communication to do ‘authentication’ via the authentic controller. Perhaps Microsoft has worked out a way to detect this?

Lastly, there are some cheap third party controllers, often from Chinese manufacturers, that seem, at the moment, to ‘just work’ without being licensed by Microsoft. General online consensus seems to be that they’re using recycled authentication chips - but perhaps some contain cracked copies of the algorithm and Microsoft has figured out a way to tell?

It’s these last two categories that Microsoft is presumably cracking down on.

It seems like it’s generally accepted that game 3 is the best of this trilogy, and game 2 the worst, but I’m in agreement with @[email protected] - there’s something about the balance of ‘Rise’ that made me like it a bit more than the rest. I hope you like it!

Tomb Raider 2013 is something of a poster-child for ‘ludonarrative dissonance’:

https://medium.com/@TurboHoodie/ludonarrative-dissonance-and-a-tale-of-two-lara-crofts-46d3f4d8be8b

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludonarrative_dissonance

I picked one, but just do any sort of web search for ‘tomb raider ludonarrative dissonance’ and you’ll see a huge number of articles and videos on the topic.

I still loved he game though!