The Beginning got TONS of crap when it came out. DK2 as well, although a bit less so because it's less of a departure.
I've gone back to both since and I agree with you that Populous was way ahead of its time and holds up much better than other strategy games of the time.
It is exactly the same beast. The beasts are the same. It's the same picture.
I mean, respect to your extremely wrong preferences, friend. Not everybody has the same use case. I'm not too sure who feels the need to come all the way out to do PR for a multibillion dollar corporation specifically on the basis of not being super into playing the stuff they buy from them, but you guys are clearly out there and I hope you are living your best lives. I'm not gonna say the cultish vibes one sometimes gets from the Valve apologia aren't concerning, but if it works for you it works for you.
For the record, I don't even dislike Valve. They're just a gaming first party like any other gaming first party. I buy stuff on Steam just like I buy stuff on PSN. It's all good. And I do like most of their first party stuff. If they ever decide to get back in the business of actually making games I'll probably check them out.
Also for the record, I do download and back up everything I buy on GOG. It all goes to the same backup space where I dump my BluRays and my CDs. And I absolutely have purchased most of the 2000+ games I own on GOG through sales, so I don't know about the value part either. Just today I played a 30 year old game and bought a brand new game from 2024 on GOG, so...
Well, most of these run on Dosbox and you can download DRM free installer packages directly from their website, so there's that.
But the Linux gaming crowd here keeps telling me how well Lutris and Heroic are supposed to work when I explain to them that I use a Windows handheld while my Steam Deck is gathering dust, so I'll point them to this next time instead of just telling them those don't quite do it for me.
All joking aside, yeah, I'd love GOG having a better client overall, including a Linux port, but the quality of the packages and the lack of DRM easily trump that, so still buy these on GOG.
All of these were already on GOG.
Buy them there instead.
I rip enough physical media to tell you that post-compression 14GB is not far from average for a 4K movie. I guarantee that Netflix isn't storing those any bigger than that. Hard drives don't grow on trees, you know?
It's still good to know where the top end of optical storage is, even at an academic level, even if these end up not being widely used or being used for specific applications at smaller capacities. We'll see where or if they resurface next, but I'm pretty sure we're not gonna get femtosecond lasers built into our laptops anytime soon.
Yeah, I keep hearing the "you don't get how big it is" thing, too.
I get how big it is.
European agriculture workers just reversed EU-wide policy as recently as last week by blocking major roads throughout the continent with tractors. They didn't even agree with each other (half those guys are pissed at the other guys for being too competitive), and the regulations they opposed were climate protection regulations, among other more reasonable things, so this isn't necessarily a feel-good story.
But they won.
They didn't even have to try that hard, honestly. Besides mild traffic jams and some tense standoffs with police it was all pretty mild. And yet politicians across the entire continent, over multiple countries, were terrified of the optics of working class people protesting in loose coordination, especially with right wing parties trying to co-opt their anger.
I get how big it is. The size is not the reason.
Yeah, ok.
I don't want to speak for the OP, but... I'm guessing that's what they're saying.
I mean, this issue is not on the ballot elsewhere. Even conservatives who are actively trying to dismantle public health care won't dare suggest that they want less public health care. At most they'll tell you they found ways to invest more and then turn around and give that money to private managers. You certainly broke through the propaganda. I don't think I've spoken to an American anywhere who has made a case for the current health care system. Polls suggest this issue, among other "aren't Americans weird" stuff are wildly impopular with the actual population.
But I also constantly hear from Americans that it's impossible to turn it around, that candidates who support these common sense moves are unelectable and that there is nothing they could ever do about it.
That part is what I don't get. I mean, I'm familiar with elections not going my way, it happens to everybody, but holy crap. There's a reason why this is not on the ballot elsewhere. You wouldn't need an election to figure this out. Even in countries with the bare minimum of democratic guarantees and no money you would have the mother of all endless riots under these circumstances.
Me, personally, I'm not so much judgemental of the American public as I am baffled at their defeatism and conformism.
Honestly? The real feeling I get from this is being scared for the future. I do know that there are powerful forces seeing a business opportunity in that status quo that can be exported. And you can see the impetus towards eroding the safety nets here following marching orders from the far right, anarchocapitalist mothership all throughout the world. In some of the countries I've lived in there is already a push towards this model, just moderated by the existence of some sort of universal health care. Sure, even the bare minimum of public service care takes a TON of the edge off. Those ER bills are what some of my friends in those places paid for, say, having major surgery or good care while having a baby... but it's a slippery slope.
Best guess, the left of the democrats in the primaries, for a start.
It's not that you lack politicians who agree with the changes that are needed, it's that they are seen as less electable than the guy who did tons of fraud and at least one confirmed rape, somehow. I don't know that Americans are "bad people", but the fact that these common sense positions aren't the default, centrist view across both major parties is baffling.
It's a clumsy way to put it, but it's not wrong that the lack of universal consensus around these things in the US is confusing and unreasonable.
Man, I've had two separate devices fail to install updates the last week, leading to tons of weirdness and troubleshooting. I even had to chkdsk c: /F at one point like a neanderthal.
I have enough coomputers laying around that I'd move more of them to other OSs, Linux included if I hadn't tried that and found it as much or more of a hassle in those specific machines, be it compatibility issues or just fitness for the application. I'm not married to Windows at all, but there are definitely things that are much easier to handle there, which does justify sticking with it through the reinstalls and awkward weirdness on those.
Hi, yes, I'm here. The user. Of both, in fact.
Both Bluesky and Mastodon have their quirks and their different cultures. The feature sets of their protocols may also be different, but they sure aren't relevant to the experience at all, because federation is not a user-facing feature for the vast majority of the social media experience.
Stop cheerleading for social networks. Social networks are not your friends, including Mastodon or the rest of the "fediverse".
It absolutely does.
I do take issue with the idea that shilling for Valve versus GOG is on the same level, though. CDPR's entire market valuation is like 20% of Steam's revenue for one year. Based on best data available CounterStrike loot boxes make more money than all of GOG's store.
I'm not shilling for GOG. I'm shilling for DRM free stores in general. GOG just happens to be the one that has these EA games, but if you can find what you're looking for in a different place with a DRM free mandate go for that!