Okay so I spent some time driving around, and replayed some missions. The actual drifting dynamics feel how I remember, which is to say intuitive and responsive, though a little too forgiving imo. More on the “arcade” side of “simcade”. So overall good. Though I think they re-tuned the grip? Lower hp and generally unmodified cars feel way easier to initiate and hold in a drift. In low hp cars the handbrake used to rob too much of your speed and make your engine bog when you got back on power, so clutch kicking was the move. Now you really don’t need to clutch kick at all except in the super low power cars, and even then it’s usually optional. Also they gave the tofu delivery car way more steering angle, which is a positive imo.

Grip driving is definitely not this games forte. Even when a car is set up for grip, it feels like it wants to be a drift car. I can’t quite get the steering setup to make it not feel like a drift car. Every steering input when gripped feels more like trying to initiate a drift than actually turn.

So making the beginner cars easier to drift does reduce some of the progression that I really enjoyed. Still, I think it’s fun, and I’m going to do some of the new missions that have been added.

I remember there being a major change to the handling like a month after release that was a big improvement, but I haven’t played in several months, so not sure if it’s changed further. But I can play some tomorrow and report back

I miss racing games that had real progression and plot lines. Are there any more recent big games that deliver on this? I had high hopes for the new Assetto Corsa, but sounds like they abandoned a progression system.

JDM: Japanese Drift Master does in a lot of ways, but you can burn through the story pretty fast, though I did still thoroughly enjoy it. The grip driving is kinda jank, and is pretty much unplayable with my wheel. But is a lot of fun to just drift around Japan with a controller in some heavily modified jdm legends

Very strange this doesn’t have a 3.5mm jack. That’s one of the main reasons I daily carry a handheld (psp) these days. It’s as valuable to me as a mp3 player as it is a gaming device.

Yeah they all either look like a scam or cost more than they did new…

If they don’t rerelease it, I’ll probably pick up a used 5800x(t). Still a big upgrade from my 1700

3-5 was pretty normal for a long time, in general and for myself. But I’m sitting at 7 years now, and idk if I’ll build a new one until there’s some kind of crash in prices. Might upgrade the cpu to a 5700x3d though if AMD does actually make more of those

DQ11 was incredible, excited to see what they do next

Framework catching strays with that thumbnail

Unless they’re super aggressively pro-ai and I just haven’t heard that.

I feel like the popularity or gaming handhelds could help accelerate this as well. I would actually love a higher performance sbc standard that you could chuck into a mini desktop, laptop, or handheld. That would kind of be the dream for me. You could cascade your boards down to your other systems. Like take the board out of the desktop and put it in your handheld, and the one from your handheld into your laptop. Would be sick

Doubt it, but it does feel like the good times are behind us. I imagine pc building as we know it is going to continue to skew towards high end.

Though I can see mid range and lower end stuff move in the direction of sbc’s and stuff like the Framework desktop, where your cpu, ram, and probably gpu are a single package soldered to your main board. So when you upgrade you might keep your chassis, psu, and storage, but everything else is one piece and has to be replaced at the same time. Which, tbh, I don’t think is the worst thing in the world.

Not that I know of. But Brave blocks YouTube ads on iOS. I know brave is somewhat problematic, but options on iOS are limited

Setting looks sick, if it has actually has some rpg elements again I might be in for the first time since 3.

That said, their dlc schemes have been horrific in the past, and I’m sure they’ll be just as bad now. Also I’d be surprised if they can make the racing feel like it matters. I know it’s a simcade kind of game, but the racing is a lame joke compared to LMU, AC, etc.

Tangentially related, shout out to Japanese Drift Master, a drifting simcade. Way lower budget and kinda jank, but I had a lot of fun with it. Super engaging drifting, you actually have to work for upgrades and better cars, the visuals and map are surprisingly sweet for a pretty low budget game, and the story is actually good

It’s pretty average sized, but bad, but maybe good news on the headphone jack.

It doesn’t have one, but they plan to make accessories that replace the rear cover. But a DAC & headphone jack is sitting at #5 priority for that based on votes. But if they do make one of those, and use all the space to get level with the cameras for some decently big speakers, it would be so sick

If it was a really great game and I’m not ready for it to be over, I’ll play the post-game until I’m out of content or over it. Mostly jrpg’s

As funny as that is, something tells me it’s not that hard to spot an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean

Which would mean it’s unlikely to be PlayStation exclusive, even under their alleged push for exlusive games. So… good?

Ah, yeah tbh I forgot that was the first that wasn’t turn based. I just remembered loving the characters, plot, and environments.

So guess the battles were so pointless I forgot about them. Maybe after the success of Expedition 33 square enix will bring back turn based. At least as an option? Please?

Agree, as long as we can leave the piss filter of that era in the past

If you ever get the itch, I thought XII was better than X. But if you didn’t like X, you almost certainly won’t like any of the XIII series or XV. I haven’t played XVI or VII remake yet

And yeah X-2 was pretty bad. Of the ones I’ve played I think I’d only put XIII-2 behind it

Jealous yours works. The battery on my 1st gen 2gb bloated and killed the screen. But apparently there was a recall on them years before, so I sent it in to apple and they sent me a 7th gen 16gb, which I still use. At the time it just felt like an upgrade, but now I kind of wish I just fixed the 1st gen