Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

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...Ugh, what year is it? Is it still 2021? I really, REALLY need more sleep....Cool, dreary day, not helped by flipping time zones.

@TheJGG Funnily enough, my first attempt with Twilight Princess didn't go well. I got stuck in the first dungeon and didn't know how to progress, so after about an hour of aimless wandering I stopped playing. What convinced me to come back was how much fun I had playing and completing the Okami Wii port; the latter has many similarities to the Zelda formula, which I recognized even then. It's by no means a clone as it does plenty of things differently as well. I highly recommend the game if you (or anyone reading this) hasn't played it!

I honestly wasn't too fond of Fi at first, but she grew on me. Outside of the 4th wall interruptions at times, she was an interesting take on a personified sword. And she did, going by the end of the game exhibit some emotions, though I feel this could have been handled better. Navi could get mildly annoying, but overall I didn't mind her either (I've also only played OoT on 3DS though). In terms of fairy companions, Tatl is definitely my favorite due to the reasons you mentioned.

On the fairy pointer in TP: ...Come to think of it, I think the HD version at least did briefly try to personify the pointer. But there was only that brief mention before it never surfaced again. I'm not sure if the Wii version references the pointer as well since it's been several years since I've played through it.

I'm fine with hyper-realistic graphics, my problem is that it's an art direction that's so overused at this point, particularly by Western studios. I do agree that some aesthetics benefit some games and genres more than others, but I don't see the harm in diversifying some of the visuals. I think this is why the Borderlands series, though I haven't played it, seems to stand out from the crowd more than many.

I've had some negative experiences playing online with others, namely in my WoW days; some people think they're allowed to be rude just because they're hiding behind a screen and will face few (if any) consequences. Never played console or PC games with TeamSpeak or anything similar though. So at least I've never been sworn at outside of text. That's not to say all of my online experiences have been bad, but I usually stick with single player games or local co-op these days. I'm opening up to playing with online acquaintances I've conversed with repeatedly though.

Also, this turns Fi's annoyance WAY up to eleven, but I recently ran across this nugget from Dorkly again:

I find the channel to be hit or miss, but some of their stuff is hilarious...and a good chunk of it is NSFW.

@MarioLover92 I've tried the original Call of Duty: Black Ops, and that wasn't a pleasant experience. I was sort of thrown into the deep end even though I was playing against the CPU. I found the experience boring, confusing, and "ZOMG I'm not familiar with this controller" impressions.

I appreciate Splatoon and am glad Nintendo tried something VERY different from the norm. The entire concept of the game is very unique. I have yet to try a series entry, but I'd be up for trying a demo (if there isn't one already) or some sort of trial period for NSO subscribers.

@ThanosReXXX Oof. First of all, my sympathies on the swallowed mega post. I've had that happen more than once. A first world problem, but a VERY frustrating one lol. Especially when one hasn't already had the best day.

Funny that you mention the availability of Super Mario 3D All-Stars; I picked up the game this evening! There will still plenty of copies, and the Walmart chain over here automatically knocks a few bucks off of most of their physical games. Not sure when I'll get to the compilation yet, but at least I have it!

On Xbox: I don't dislike the brand by any means. It's just, of the three last gen systems, the Xbox One had by far the least exclusives I was into. Specs and power only get me so far. Exclusives are what drive me to pick up a system. I'm not one who buys a pretty piece of tech for only three pieces of software lol (Which is an exaggeration, but it's to make a point). And I do fully realize there are more exclusives on the system besides shooters. Thing is, at least here, that genre (GoW, Halo) is what seems to get the most airtime. Same with sports games (which I'm REALLY not into, particularly since EA handles a lot of them, but these are hardly exclusives) and racing (Forza. Which I don't dislike by any means, but the genre gets repetitive for me fast).

To be fair, I was mainly referring to full exclusives not found elsewhere; many of those timed or former exclusives are now on other platforms, some of which I've played and enjoyed (Ori and the Blind Forest, Inside). I do appreciate that Microsoft has been more open with sharing some of their exclusives and, as @TheJGG put so eloquently, allowing Banjo/Kazooie to be in SSBU.

I do also appreciate Phil Spencer's presence and how he interacts with the public. He seems genuine, isn't afraid to engage with fans, and likeable. Much better than Don Mattrick. Not sure how I feel about Microsoft acquiring Bethesda, but to me it's of little consequence as long as Elder Scrolls is still widely available. Or at least doesn't go fully Xbox exclusive. XD I'd love to at least see both Morrowind (Haven't played it) and Oblivion (Played the first few opening hours on a cousin's 360 back in the day) migrate to the Switch.

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@Snatcher Thanks. It's just how I am, though, so I don't know if I should take credit for being me, but appreciated nonetheless.

@ogo79 Pork chops, huh? Now all we need is the sticks to go with it...

@TheJGG I've no idea if Mario Sunshine was more refined on the GameCube/Wii. Far as I know, it's been put on the cartridge as a 1:1 copy, no added bells and whistles, other than wide screen support, but I have read that controlling it with the JoyCon feels less responsive than with the original controls. Haven't gotten around to playing it on Switch so far, so I can't comment on the difference yet. I'll have to get back to you at a later point in time concerning that one.

Concerning the spoiler mistake: I think you did SO many spoiler comments on that page alone, that a mistake was bound to happen at some point, but the funny thing was, obviously, that it still worked, even though you did it the wrong way around. So, what it came down to is that I actually learned that fun fact. It would never occur to me to try that on purpose so that I happen to stumble upon you doing that by accident was fortunate in that way.

As for Forza Motorsports: not a personal opinion, but a fact. It actually HAS surpassed GT, in several ways, and it is also officially regarded as such, as mentioned earlier. Currently, it's simply the better, more complete game/sim racer. And then on top of that, you get its sim-cade sibling Forza Horizon, which is simply some of the best and most accessible racing that you could get on any platform.

But having said that, I do have to add that arguably, the best realistic sim racers that you can get on either platform nowadays are the Project CARS games, which are getting better with each iteration, but even though I do own both the first and second game, I find them a bit too dry/course to easily get into. They are the most extensively customizable sims to date, and that is what kind of holds me back, because if you don't tweak your cars to perfection, the results in racing will always linger around the average.

So, if you're looking for the ultimate sim, give these a go and see if you like them. On Xbox, the games also have demos, so maybe there's demos on the PS Store as well, in case you haven't played Project CARS already.

As for F1 racing in real life: sorry to disappoint, but it isn't something that I'm interested in at all. I've always been more of a supporter of sports where just the human body is needed, because the results gained in those I find FAR more impressive than anything achieved by sitting in or on a vehicle. I understand that it is very attractive to other people, so I'm glad that the option to choose it is there for those that do like it. In all honesty, I'd probably only be interested in all those skimpily dressed ladies hanging around the tracks, but considering this day and age's PC and cancel culture, these too will pretty soon be a thing of the past...

As for the Xbox: I don't own a Series S or X yet, so I wouldn't be able to comment on that, but I do own an Xbox One S and an Xbox 360, so I own several Xbox consoles, not just one. Hence the previous comments and the links.

And as for Windows: no, I'm not using Vista. It's actually Windows 7, which is the maximum that this old rig can run. Before that, I was running a hybrid version of Vista and XP, called Black XP, which was running miles better than this crappy OS, so I'm kinda sorry I updated it. I did that because I was getting WAY too many nagging messages from all kinds of programs that they either needed updating and/or that they weren't supported anymore for my version of Windows. I suppose that in a year or so, I'll get the same crap on Windows 7...

@MarioLover92 Backwards compatibility was never 100 percent to begin with, but on Xbox 360 there originally was a list of almost 300 OG Xbox games that could be played, which was ultimately brought down to around 250 titles, partially also due to licensing and stuff.

Moving on to the Xbox One, the same thing more or less happened to Xbox 360 titles, albeit on a larger scale: if I remember correctly, there's already well over 400 or maybe even 500 games that can run on the Xbox One, and a small part of that is also a number of OG Xbox titles. Because of the move to different hardware and OS, it apparently wasn't possible to port everything 1:1 to the Xbox One ecosystem, which is a shame, but it is what is.

But now we have the Xbox Series S and X and the great thing about these is that those are largely 1:1 compatible with previous generation systems, so almost everything that already worked on the Xbox One, also works on the current systems, meaning you can have three generations of games in one box, which is obviously a great deal, and in that regard, the Xbox brand is making their system far more interesting and accessible than Sony is, with just PS4 backwards compatibility, and also with lesser emulation as well. (Xbox uses dedicated emulation per title, which means all titles will run at their peak performance WITH current gen added bells and whistles included, while on PS, there's just one emu to run them all, meaning games are not individually optimized to take advantage of the new hardware, so they just run "as is").

As for your personal interest in the Xbox One: I could never imagine buying a console for just one title. That's a bit too much of a good thing for me. Technically speaking, Rare Replay obviously consists of multiple games, but still: I suppose you get the point.

@Tyranexx Yeah, when comparing Phil Spencer to Don Mattrick on a scale of 1 to 10, Spencer would be an 11 and Mattrick a -5 or lower. What a tool that guy was...

Oh, well. That's all in the past now, but I do kinda feel for Spencer that he had to clean all that up before he could even begin his own positive track record, which has been steadily going uphill ever since. And yes, he truly is a genuinely likeable guy. The Western version of Miyamoto in that regard. Approachable, matter of fact and definitely not tunnel-visioned in regards to his own platform. All qualities of a great CEO.

Running through those lists though, you'll actually find hundreds of full exclusives across both Xbox 360 and Xbox One, and by extension on Series S/X, but of course if most of them don't interest you, then that list could whittle down to just a handful of titles in no time, obviously, so fair enough I guess. I just wanted to make a point for getting rid of that dumb@ss stigma of "the Xbox brand only has grey-brown shooters to offer".

There's also SO many great RPGs on offer, a type of game that I know you like, also through backwards compatibility (the simply stellar Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey among them, to name but a few), and besides that, there's plenty of other stuff. I also kind of think that US marketing vs EU marketing has a slightly different angle. For example: over here, we obviously have soccer, you have American Football, which is larger than life over there, so no small wonder that it is featured heavily in Xbox related commercials, while over here, you basically never see it. Only the odd Fifa commercial...

Either way, I personally find the commercials for both high end platforms rather lacking because they only show the smallest of slivers of the entire library and one focuses on heavy story telling while the other brand focuses more on sports and action-heavy games. Both give the wrong impression in my personal opinion, but who am I to judge, right? Just your average cranky, rapidly aging Mad Titan....

Congrats on getting the Mario anniversary trilogy. I'm pretty sure you'll find it more than entertaining enough, now that you've binge-played Breath of the Wild...

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Two textwall comments to respond to? Well I started at 7:15 am, let's see what time I finish...

Ladies first... and also this one was posted first. @Tyranexx I have Ōkami, I bought it with some Gold Points a few months ago when I found it on discount on eShop (which seemed to always be the case for that specific game), and only paid £7.99. I started it and the artstyle is so eye catching. The companion character is extremely annoying though, so that's the reason, I imagine, why you compare it to Zelda games. And regarding your comment on aimless wandering around the Forest Temple, I also did that, when I got Ocarina of Time for 3DS back in 2012. I had no idea what to do, how to enter the first dungeon, anything. A few years later I made it to Dodongo's Cavern but got lost again. Then, two years ago I went back, started again and managed to beat the entire game. It took me seven years, fittingly.

Fi was for me a seemingly uninspired take on the seemingly trope-like device of "machine becomes human". She was the opposite of Midna personality wise; she had almost no personality apart from, serve my master and guide him. Midna was admittedly quite sassy, bossy, controlling and dismissive, but she grew to appreciate the world of light despite her hating it at the beginning of her character arc. Fi doesn't really have resentment for anything, having minimal emotion but she manages to understand humans in a way that implies a switch was flipped in her head. The transition towards the final cutscene with Link and Fi is virtually nonexistent. Maybe mid-game, during sidequests, or throughout there could have been small cutscenes where Fi asks; "Master, I don't quite seem to understand why _____ did ______. My databases and analysis don't match this behaviour," and there, some small development. And as for the Pointer in TP, it's only on Wii. Similarly to the star pointer in Super Mario Galaxy.

I too like realistic art styles but only now. If I had played a game with realistic graphics as early as seven years ago I'm not sure I would have liked it as much as I do now. And thanks to recent advances in technology combined with the more mainstream appeal of video games means that motion-capture, celebrity performances and cameos (think Norman Reedus, Mads Mikkelsen and Léa Seydoux in Death Stranding or Lance Reddick in Horizon Zero Dawn) are much more streamlined, and can make for some extremely immersive performances. Take a look at this opening cinematic, I almost confused it for a real movie.

Having seen some comments from other users here, namely @Blooper987 and Eel it's easy to assume that online play is bad but there's much more to it than that. Of course one's enjoyment is somewhat dependent on one's skill level but there's varied instances where I've had fun despite playing rather badly. Glad you finally acquired Super Mario 3D All-Stars, just two short weeks before it's going to be delisted permanently. The games themselves are sublime even though it's so patently obvious that it was a low effort project.

And your comments on Xbox... I don't really go out to 'choose' a console per se, nowadays it's both Nintendo and Sony consoles that are automatic purchases. But of course I do consider what kind of gaming experience I'll end up having, and what games will entice me. The PS5 game lineup so far, after four months of release, has been admittedly very dry. But hey, I have the console and sooner or later it'll come good. You did nail the part about the shooter games getting more attention, there's no doubt going to be a massive catalogue of Xbox games that need attention, and hopefully Bethesda's numerous IPs don't get buried. And whether I was eloquent or not I'm happy for Xbox players, who arguably have the best leader out of Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.

Now, @ThanosReXXX! We'll have to wait and see, so I'll ask you on your verdict in good time, about how good the games feel on Switch. Again, as I said to Tyranexx they're masterpieces held together by some of the most bland and uninspiring strings in human history. My spoiler mistake was not intended but at least I didn't inadvertently spoil someone with my error...

I've seen some gameplay, and if you saw my comments about Mugello back on page 2543, you'll know that I love that track. The fact that Forza has that track alone makes it a good game in my book. And Project CARS? I've looked it up, and my assumption based off Metacritic searches is that 2 is the best, followed by 1, and 3 is in a league of bad. At least from a sim racer's point of view. I'll play arcade-y racers like the DiRT series (not DiRT Rally, that's bloody tough) but only once in a blue moon. The Need for Speed series is way too gimmicky for me. Bottom line, I'm willing to accept it, since I'm not that experienced as a racing game player. Score one for the Mad Titan!

Shame you don't follow F1 but funnily enough the "grid girls", namely the models who stand on the grid before the race, were replaced with "grid kids", children. I remember Jos Verstappen, your typical bad boy Dutchie, taking a picture of one of the grid girls back in 2017 because apparently, she looked nice. The grid kids take away any potential for perverse behaviour but doing it with children for me ain't much better. It screams political correctness. So in my view, take away both and just let them bloody race.

Again, come back to me when you've sampled the newer generation, from what I've played it's simply simply lovely. Don't take this the wrong way but if you're able to get a faster, more updated computer I humbly ask you to do so. Loading is much faster, UI is just snappier, yadda yadda.

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@Ryu_Niiyama
Thanks. It definitely feels like I’m living a second life now, and the old life is just a distant memory of a version of me from a dream. It cost me everything. But I’m stronger because of it. It makes me appreciate life in a whole new way. That’s partly why I got into video games. Needed something to do with my spare time. And idle mind is the devils workshop, after all.

As for ADA, it’s not available on Coinbase, although, just today, it got added to Coinbase Pro. Which was a major announcement and it shot up another 30% in response (from $1.04 48 hrs ago to $1.35 today). It may take a few days for full trading once liquidity requirements are met, but Coinbase Pro is where I started at. Still don’t see ADA listed yet in the app. Maybe it’s desktop only atm? It’s also on BinanceUS, and Voyager.

ADA is created by Charles Hoskinson, one of the co-founders of Ethereum. He had a disagreement with Vitalik Buterin about management and vision, so he started the Cardano Foundation and IOHK (Input Output Hong Kong) in an effort to build a gen 3 crypto that solves all the issues of Bitcoin (1st gen) and Ethereum (2nd gen). It uses Proof of Stake rather than Proof of Work, running on Ouroboros, which they developed as open source, and was actually adopted by Polkadot (DOT) after the fact.

Network fees are 0.17 ADA, and always will be unless the stakeholders vote to change it in the future some day. That’s like 20 cents at today’s prices. Even if it rises in price 5X and overtakes the ETH market cap, it would still have network fees under $1 for any transaction of any amount. It’s also designed to scale to millions and eventually, billions of users. They are really focusing on scalability and inter-operability. Building an ECR-20 converter so native tokens on ETH can convert to the Cardano Blockchain.

The reason most people have overlooked it is because it isn’t fully implemented yet. There’s 5 “eras” or phases of implementation. In June 2020, we moved from Byron era to Shelly era with decentralization. By the end of March, like 2 weeks from today, Cardano will be 100% decentralized with thousands of stake pools. Even now it’s like 90% decentralized. Then, just a month ago, we entered the Goguen era with the ability to add native assets, like how you can mint coins on the Ethereum Blockchain. This is a huge step forward and we’re already starting to see coins make the jump from Ethereum to Cardano due to excessively high gas fees and infighting among miners.

The final step of Goguen era comes later this year with smart contracts. At which point it will offer more functional utility than Ethereum. There are two more eras after that- onewhich focuses on scaling and inter-operability, and one which focuses on governance, voting and the treasury. Because so many coins have hard forked due to divergent visions (Ehereum Classic, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV, LiteCoin, etc), Cardano was designed with self governance and sustenance by implementing a treasury, where are a tiny portion of every transaction is diverted to the treasury automatically to fund future projects. Anyone who holds ADA can vote on proposals or submit proposals. The community then votes on whether they want to implement that proposal or not, and if the proposal is approved, the necessary funds are released from the treasury via smart contracts. It’s all very brilliant stuff. This will prevent a hard fork of Cardano like we see in so many other coins in the space.

The other thing that makes Cardano unique is the fact they take a scientific approach and write peer reviewed papers before doing anything. They’re very slow and methodical, and never implement anything until they have written dozens of papers with academic peer review to ensure it’ll work right the first time. A lot of people just want to see something now, and don’t have the patience to see something built correctly over a longer time frame. So a lot of people ignored Cardano because it wasn’t yet decentralized, it didn’t have native assets, it didn’t have smart contracts, etc. But now it does. Except smart contracts but that’s going to be implemented in like 6 months from now. Definitely by year’s end. It’s a coin I’d definitely recommend DCA’ing into.

Lastly, one thing to know about Cardano is, they have their sights set high. The goal is to run entire countries on the Cardano blockchain. They’ve already signed a deal with Ethiopia, and I believe there is at least half a dozen other sovereign nations that are going to be using Cardano in some way, either to tie land ownership to the block chain in South Africa or build a new financial system in Uzbekistan using ADA (just to give examples- we don’t have all the details yet). Hoskinson is really gunning for Africa, trying to bank the unbanked and help 3rd world countries leap frog the legacy financial system since they don’t have the same legacy infrastructure holding them back from progress.

As for Ripple, LiteCoin and Monero, I don’t own any of those. I know ripple has a pretty strong use case, but the SEC going after it kind of made me hesitant. Plus it’s risen so much now. Perhaps if we get a nice downturn I’ll use the opportunity to buy a small amount. LiteCoin I just don’t see a use case for. Same for things like bitcoin cash. Reason being, using free-market crypto as a currency doesn’t really seem to work well because of the volatility, but more than, the government will surely introduce their own cryptocurrency. And right now, paying for things with a credit card works really well. Although free market cryptocurrencies were originally intended as a means of exchange, i’ve think they found more use in being a store of value, among other things. Not to say being a means of exchange also is a bad thing, but when that’s the only thing a coin has to offer, I tend to think that official government currencies will just do the job better. Except perhaps in nations where they’ve completely destroyed their currencies, since BTC and ETH have such high network fees.

Monero has a fantastic use case as a true privacy coin, and when I tried mining that was actually the coin I mined. The problem is, I think privacy coins will ultimately be banned due to the governments desire to control everything, and if it can’t be controlled and under their watchful eye, then they don’t want it legal. So I’m very hesitant to invest in privacy coins.

I do have a tiny position in Binance Coin (BNB) and Solana (SOL). Binance Coin I just bought to pay for fees on Binance US. Bought one for $15 and it’s now $250. And Solana can do like 60,000 transactions per second by using proof of history technology, and I haven’t seen any other coin do that, so I thought it was worth putting a couple hundred bucks in just in case it does 20-30X down the line like my Cardano investment did.

And ya, making steady investments is the way to go. Having a lump sum of dry powder that you can use to buy in when the market crashes is a fantastic approach. That’s how I bought all my gold when it hit market bottoms at $1200/oz, and that’s how I bought the bulk of my crypto holdings last March-April. But you can’t always count on that strategy. If you get the opportunity that’s great, but you need a more reliable way to enter the market. And Dollar Cost Averaging with scheduled purchases is the way to do it. Set it and forget it. Remove emotion from the equation entirely.

I wanted to buy into REITs last year when they had orange clearance sticker prices from the COVID sell off, but I was worried a lot of them would go out of business so I didn’t act on it (it’s all good though- used that money to buy crypto instead which has far outperformed my wildest expectations). But they are fantastic if you’re looking for high-yield and passive income. As for stocks, I tend to stick with S&P500, Contrafund-K mutual fund from Fidelity, and 10% into technology mutual funds. If you have any suggestions for good REIT ETFs, let me know.

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@Anti-Matter Probably. There should be some kind of converter/adapter available for other controllers, but personally, I'd advise against it, because the in-game controls will obviously not make use of these controllers, which could make the button commands confusing, especially in games which are more fast-paced or frantic.

As for the home button: no idea how that would work, since it's an extra button that other controllers lack. Anyway, I wouldn't dismiss the controller based upon your initial impressions or ideas. As my father used to say: you can't say you don't like something unless you've actually tasted it. And the same goes for trying out hardware. The Xbox controller isn't a fan favorite for nothing: it's definitely one of the best controllers around, ever since the Xbox 360.

@TheJGG Grid kids, huh? That sounds like all kinds of shades of wrong, and then some. I would LOVE for people to become less PC, woke, overly #metoo and uber-sensitive, but apparently my matter of fact, rugged, slightly harsh at times manliness is fast becoming a thing of the (decidedly glorious) past.

Nowadays, we men have to apologize for all kinds of stuff that we either never did or never intended as anything other than positive feedback or compliments. Heck, even looking at someone from the other gender at the office in the (perceived) wrong way could result in me getting roasted by a host of angry activists, either in real life or online.

I appreciate beautiful women and I'm not ashamed or embarrassed to admit that, period. And appreciating the female form, in whatever shape it comes (I don't have any single perfect figure or appearance in mind) is simply natural, normal and positive to me. Whoever considers that insulting, mysogynistic or whatever other kind of derogatory term, needs to be summarily sh.. oh, wait: I can't say these kinds of things here, but suffice to say that I find such individuals useless additions to human society, and as such, I can do without them, and so could the world.

People having/gaining a little more backbone and thicker skin could do the entire Earth a world of good. Mind you: always with respect. I'm not saying we need to go back to the 1970's or anything, just a tad more realism, and not having to always triple-check any action you take or words you're about to utter or write, out of fear or annoyance that you might just step on some minority group's toes. I find it infinitely tiresome and a prime example of an exercise in futility because beside it being a near constant in today's society, it's also a monster with a never-ending appetite, because whenever we give way, it always wants something more or something new, so it's a slippery downhill slope we're on.

In that respect, even though I'm in no rush whatsoever, I'm almost glad that I won't be around for too many decades anymore, because it definitely takes the fun out of life for me personally, what with it invading my private space and all that. I'll assume that some of all this will go completely past you or over your head, since we're worlds apart, generation-wise, but trust you me that I am a positive, highly social and empathic person at heart, which makes it all the harder for me to understand some parts of this always insulted, never having enough crowd.

Back in the day, you took your wins AND your losses like a man. It's realistic, because you can't win 'em all, but nowadays it's lobby, lobby, protest, Tweet, protest, march and so on, until something or someone budges. I'm not against fighting for what is good, but I'm also a big defender of enough is enough and there having to be a balance in all things. A method to the madness, if you will, and I hardly find any of that in quite a few of these individuals and groups.

Anyway, I'll stop here, before I go to deep down the rabbit hole and either offend someone, get banned or start a sh** storm that I never intended to. I just needed to get that off of my chest and apparently, grid girls was the match that lit the fire...

P.S.

On a side note: I forgot to mention in my previous comment that I actually did play the older GT games. The PSX ones actually on my Dreamcast by way of the excellent Bleem! (or Bleemcast, as it is sometimes called), which allowed for PS1 games to be played on the Dreamcast with far superior graphics (think near-GameCube/PS2, just look up comparison videos), and I even played some of the later installments, because one of my friends always buys all consoles, so whenever I visited him, I was always able to sample some of the games.

I've been trying to think of a way how to more precisely describe the difference between GT and Forza Motorsports, even though both are serious sims, and perhaps the moniker 'clinical', that I previously used, doesn't suffice. Today I kind of came to the conclusion that it might also be a difference of one series being made by an Asian team and the other by a decidedly Western/American team, and that difference has a distinct look and feel to it, and that definitely comes across, far as I'm concerned.

As for getting another PC: I'm afraid that current funds/savings don't allow for that. I came from a position of not having a job last summer to now having a rather common office sales job with an average salary, which I'm still glad to have acquired, especially during these current times, but it doesn't amount to being able to save or set aside enough money for large purchases, so for the time being, I'll still have to make do with what I currently have.

Anyway, time to close for now. I'm almost starting to get used again to making every comment a text wall, which I was actually trying to get rid of a while back...