So, MS announced a new version of Windows 10, codenamed Polaris, which is going to be their new main consumer version of the OS... and it won't natively run Win32 applications, it's UWP-only. Other "unimportant legacy features" are also going to be disabled. What this means is that people who only use their PC for web browsing and such will be fine, but for gamers is catastrophic!
I think that if Microsoft sticks to this path they will have signed Windows' death warrant as a gaming platform. Because no UWP-only, Microsoft Store-focused OS will ever be the amazing gaming platform that the PC is. I wonder, will Microsoft come to their senses (or be forced into it by user criticism), or will they stick to this awful, AWFUL idea?
I don't want to have to go to Linux; I mostly like Windows, its issues aside. I'm used to it, it has a good interface, it's got the largest software library of any platform, and so much more! I have some issues with Windows 10, but for the most part it is still Windows. But THIS? If this is what it sounds like, this thing is not Windows, and it's not an open computer operating system the way all computer OSes need to be. It's one more step towards turning PCs into a walled garden and requiring developers pay MS for the privilege of releasing software on the "PC", while turning Windows into a service you pay for yearly for the privilege of continuing to use. Anyone who thought MS was not going to do that should have their confidence seriously shaken now, because it seems to be happening.
This ResetEra post by Jams775 sums up quite well why this is such a big issue:
Quote:Yup, companies do it all the time. I used to have a checking account that got bought out by a bigger one. They promised to keep the free checking for grandfathered accounts. They did... for like a year. Then they didn't.
This is how it'll go. They promise support for win32 and keeping normal 10 updated. They'll do it for a year or two. All the while win32 apps will be in compatibility hell either right away or after "updates" that'll keep breaking compatibility. Over time, companies like Adobe can switch over. But stores like Steam will probably not be allowed to. Eventually they'll just come out with some statement saying it's been long enough and now they're dropping support completely. By that time though, most people have been forced over because they're not knowledgeable enough to Linux or have the dough for Apple. The conversion will be assisted by apologist or whatever you'd want to call them. They'll continue brow beating and calling people who dare question Microsoft crazy or ridiculous.
Exactly, this is very well said! And that's why people saying "but Win32 and real Windows aren't going away, you will still be able to buy Win10 Pro!" are so wrong. This is just one step in a process, and keeping Win32 or non-UWP Windows application support are not a step that will stay in that process forever. Microsoft doesn't make money from Win32.
People are way WAY more different than I ever knew. Now I know what this one old teacher I had insisted that thought was "impossible" without language, which seemed so bizarre to me since I don't usually think in words at all but rather connect the raw ideas and logic in my head instead. I can "picture" things, but I guess some people do it like, literally and not metaphorically?
Seriously, this site has a bunch of lingering issues which need fixing!
- This text is on the top of the screen on every page in Tendo City:
Quote:Warning: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in ..../includes/class_bootstrap.php(430) : eval()'d code on line 118
Sometimes it's only that one, and sometimes you also see this one (below) below it, either once or several times, but it's kind of annoying and should be fixed.
Quote:Warning: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in ..../includes/class_bbcode.php on line 2958
- As of a few days ago the "Edit Post" button stopped working for in-line post edits. Now all I can do is center-click it to open the full edit window in a new tab, but cannot do an in-line edit as you are supposed to be able to. This is annoying!
- The new or edit post screen is a jumbled mess, with text overlapping text and checkboxes underneath buttons. I don't know what happened here but it's not good.
- It automatically double posts pretty much every time I post. Having to then delete the extra post after posting, every time, is kind of a pain.
- And lastly, once again, the admin panel does not have the export database feature in it anymore, so there is no way to back up the database without FTP access that we do not have! I really, REALLY want a more up-to-date backup of the database, instead of the now years-old one that I have...
This seems like what Amiibo and other toys to life should have been from the start. It's a toy you actually play with to play the video game, and its a cardboard kit you can probably just make yourself if you don't want to pay for Nintendo's own kit (excluding the needed software of course).
So I saw this movie last night, and I've got very mixed feelings on it.
In its style, writing, plot, and more, I saw this as the least Star Wars movie ever. This shows throughout, such as in the acting and composition. Even more than The Force Awakens, this is clearly a movie by a different person, not George Lucas, making a very different film. It also shows in the writing, as the central "kill the past" theme is a major divergence from Star Wars' past. It also ignores or very weakly answers the major unanswered questions from the last movie, The Force Awakens, which is kind of annoying.
All of that stuff is understandably divisive. As a big fan of all of George Lucas's Star Wars movies, but a critic of the post-Lucas ones, I was expecting to not exactly love this movie, and that is the case for the most part. I love the Lucas movies, "bad" acting or no, and this extremely different style was offputting. Even I didn't think it was all bad, though; I liked it sometimes and disliked it other times. Like the style or not it is, for the most part, a well-made movie which tells an interesting story. I think that story has some critical flaws, but still, it was interesting and tense. The space battle scenes are probably the highlight, I think.
Here's the thing, though. Beyond any complaints about some other details of the plot, and I could get into that, I think there is a central, crippling irony behind this movie. While on the one hand The Last Jedi goes against Star Wars convention in many ways, on the other hand it continues on one element of The Force Awakens: it is dedicated to the terrible idea that they must recreate the universe of the original trilogy, whether or not it makes any sense whatsoever.
So, in The Force Awakens, the New Republic was a thing... but then, seemingly out of nowhere, a massive force appeared called the First Order. It is not explained how they got so strong so quickly. They have a giant superweapon which can blow up multiple planets at once, and during TFA it fires, destroying the New Republic's capitol world and some of their fleet or something, as if it would all be in one place or something. The Last Jedi continues on this theme; now the Republic is dead, the Order has taken over the galaxy, and the movie cuts the good guys, the Resistance, down more and more until it's like a couple dozen people by the end, max.
Now, two problems: first, none of the First Order's rise makes any sense at all, and none is explained in either film to any degree worth mentioning. And second, this basic concept, that a secret army appears out of nowhere and crushes the actually weak known armies of the world/universe in a single stroke, in order to set up an 'underdog' arc in a series where it does not make any sense at all, is REALLY REALLY BAD writing. It's terrible conspiracy-theory stuff, and I pretty much hate it. This is not an uncommon trope in fiction, and it is both always terrible and makes absolutely no sense almost all of the time. I am not one to believe in conspiracy theories, I want things to be plausible within their world's rules. This kind of story fails on that level. It's one thing if it is a literal alien invasion out of nowhere, but in a known world you can't do this and get away with it, not if you want to have written an actual credible story! And yet, the plots of both TFA and TLJ ONLY work if you accept this, without almost anything in the movies themselves that makes me believe for a second that any of that could ever have happened.
Now, part of my dislike is of course also about the old Expanded Universe, about all of those Star Wars books I read in the '90s and '00s. The EU had its ups and downs for sure, much more downs than ups in its later years, but to distill the difference between the EU and TFA/TLJ, the EU's version is "safer" and more positive. Lots of really bad stuff happens, more and more in the books from the '00s on, but it never gets anywhere near as bad as it does in these new movies, and in retrospect I appreciate it for that. This is not my main reason for disliking this kind of story, but seriously, I know that sci-fi is often quite dark, but this movie is a bit much.
So overall, considering all of that, how can I take this movie seriously at all? The whole plot of The Last Jedi is about the chase, about how this unstoppable, galaxy-controlling First Order has the last remnants of hope on the run, dying one by one. It's a dark and sometimes interesting film, and I like parts, such as the settings, the space battles, the segment with Rey in the cave, and more. It has other issues as well, such as how its version of Luke goes. I think that this Luke made for a good story, but does not fit well at all with the Luke of the original trilogy, or with how the Jedi work. Or how about Leia? Even ignoring the silly flying-through-space bit, she's reduced back to her ESB-ish role of "base commander of the rebellion", which is certainly not what an older Leia should be. The politician Leia of the Expanded Universe was a much better character I think... but behind all of that, the whole setup only happens because of an idiotic and impossible to believe piece of badly written nonsense! The rest of that stuff matters, and I might address that in another post, but this is the most important problem with both of the new, post-Lucas Star Wars movies: that they felt the need to recreate the "rebels versus empire" setup of the original trilogy, in a setting where you cannot do that.
On the other hand though, I definitely like that this series has a female lead protagonist. Lucas's Star Wars movies are great, but the original trilogy barely has any female characters, and the prequels aren't as much improved as they should be. Apparently the idea of a female lead in this series actually comes from George Lucas, but regardless, seeing in this movie that it's not only Rey, there are a lot of female roles, is a very good thing.
On the whole though, I think that it's kind of unfortunate that The Last Jedi, while making a boldly different kind of Star Wars movie -- in a lot of ways that rub me seriously the wrong way as a longtime Star Wars fan, but also some that I liked -- on the other hand also decided to double down on the previous film's worst element, the devotion to recreating the rebels-versus-overpowering-empire universe of the original trilogy in a setting where you really cannot do that credibly. It's really ironic that this movie which exists to "kill the past" and 'free' Star Wars from its past... is also dedicated to recreating that past in a central, and yet really badly conceived and almost utterly unexplained, way. Too bad.
... So yeah, I thought The Last Jedi was ... okay-ish? Disappointing, but maybe not as awful as I thought it might be, I guess? And yet, it is very disappointing and a waste, in some key elements; it's sad that this movie will be the last time we see Luke and Leia on screen together, because it sure doesn't do well with them in so many ways! The Force Awakens is, in my opinion, the worst Star Wars movie. This one... uh, it might be better, or worse? I'm not sure that I can decide that yet.
So it's game of the year time again, and despite all they have said about what a great year this is for games, the gaming press has a nearly unanimous choice for 2017's best game: Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It's won from IGN, Gamespot, Kotaku, etc, etc; nothing else is remotely close. Games like Mario, Horizon, PUBG, and such don't have many GOTY awards yet, though I'm sure they will get them from somewhere. (Giant Bomb hasn't announced their winner yet, but for some time now PUBG has been the one they're most likely to have picked. I guess we'll see though...)
As for me though, while BotW is a pretty good game, it's certainly not one of my favorites. Sure it's good, and you can do some pretty interesting things as you explore around the world, but the open-world nature of the game loses me. I've never liked open world games much, pretty much ever, and while even I did find wandering around looking for stuff fun for a little while, the game didn't keep me coming back and I haven't played it in months now.
Despite that though, this year, for the first time in a long time, I actually played a lot of modern games. Oh, I still love and played a lot of older games, but I got a new PC, a Wii U, and an Xbox One (S) this year, and played lots of games on them, and on my (New) 3DS as well. Indeed, when I looked at the list of games I have that released in 2017, the 3DS dominates the list as far as quality goes. It's not quite as great as the original DS, but still the 3DS is amazing and one of the best handhelds ever.
That said, I've got two lists this year, one for my favorite games I played that released in 2017, and a second for my favorite games that I bought in 2017 but are older. Neither is really finished yet, but the year isn't over yet so there's still more time to decide!
My Favorite Games of 2017 That Released In 2017 (Preliminary?)
--
1. Starcraft Remastered (PC)
2. Yooka-Laylee (PC)
3?. Etrian Odyssey V (3DS)
4?. Ever Oasis (3DS)
5?. Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS)
Honorable Mentions: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Wii U), For Honor (Xbox One), Chicken Wiggle (3DS)
I Also Liked: Snake Pass (PC), Parascientific Escape: Crossing at the Farthest Horizon (3DS)
Second, while it's not a finished list, here are all of the older games that I bought in 2017 and I liked enough to mention. These are all games I think of as being probably at least worth an A- grade, though I have finished few so I wouldn't formally score them of course.
Note: these are not in order at all. Additionally, I do not count games which I bought for one system but previously owned for another platform unless the two games are actually different.
--
Color Zen (3DS)
Shantae (3DS VC - GBC)
R-Type Dimensions (PS3)
Dark Lord (Famicom)* [Game is only good with translation patch though since I don't read Japanese]
Xenoblade Chronicles X (Wii U)
Super Mario 3D World (Wii U)
Super Mario Maker (Wii U)
Splatoon (Wii U)
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (Wii U)
Kid Icarus Uprising (3DS)
Garou: Mark of the Wolves (360 - Neo-Geo rerelease)
Picross 3D Round 2 (3DS)
Rosenkreuzstillette (PC)
Dishonored 2 (PC)
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD (Wii U)
Meteos: Disney Magic (DS)
Puzzle Quest 2 (DS)
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (Wii U)
Overwatch (PC and Xbox One)
Gravitar (Atari 2600)
Professor Layton and the Last Spectre (DS)
Rare Replay (Xbox One)
TrackMania Turbo (Xbox One)
If I was also mentioning games I got for a system but previously owned for another, I'd mention Ikaruga, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved, and Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition for the 360, Dead or Alive 5 Last Round and Diablo III for Xbox One, and Geometry Wars 3 for PC and Xbox One, certainly.
Seriously, who is this game FOR? Shut-in MRAs? That's who it's for, isn't it? Why would the giant Furby be sexually attracted to humans? Is that furby a deviant of his species? Also, I'm pretty sure that robot is built like a child, so, pedophile. This game is intentionally trying to appeal to pedophiles.
There's a LOT of groups handing out awards, but what makes this one stand out? Who are they? What are they? What makes them so "The" that they don't even need a name? Did the king of video games crown them?
