• 0 Posts
  • 23 Comments
Joined 11 months ago
cake
Cake day: September 27th, 2023

help-circle

  • From my (small) friends circle, I haven’t heard any of them talk about getting one. However, it’s worth noting that these friends of mine are also not the ones who would buy new smartphones every year. They typically hold onto their phones for a few years and only switch when it seems like the phone isn’t performing as expected (e.g. battery draining too quickly; slowness in software actions; to name a few).

    One question I do have is, what happens if you clean install an AOSP like GrapheneOS onto these newer Pixels phones? Does that remove the AI features completely?



  • Now that you mentioned this, I do recall in the early days of mobile games, back when the App Shops were first introduced, there were games that you would pay somewhere between $1 and $5, and you get the whole thing. No in-app purchases, no ads, and no lotteries for special characters or gear. I remember Square Enix had some really good JRPG games that were made specifically for the iPhone and iPad. Chaos Rings and DrakeRider were two games I recall playing, but they were much more expensive compared to the usual games I found. But, when you paid for it, you got the whole game and all.

    I think mobile app developers have realized that they could get more engagement and cash from their users if they made games that had a gambling aspect to it. Kinda like the casinos in Vegas, the house always wins, but you keep putting in money on the hopes you get a jackpot.

    That being said, there is one freemium game that I do find quite fun, and that is Romancing SaGa Re;univerSe. The thing that makes this freemium game a bit different is that Square Enix is quite generous in their in-game currency. You can actually do quite well without making any in-app purchases.




  • Might I recommend Romancing SaGa 3 and SaGa Scarlet Grace Ambitions? Both of these games involve non-linear, open world explorations. As for combat, they are turn-based, so I’m not sure if that’s what you would consider a “good” combat system. Also, unlike traditional RPGs, which use a point-based system to level up and gain new skills, SaGa games involve a “Spark” system, where new techniques are learned randomly or through use of an existing technique during battles.






  • I don’t think this should surprise anyone, given the new CEO they got and the announcement that was made immediately afterwards, followed by the layoffs. Fortunately, there are Firefox forks that we can switch to as a form of protest, provided that the forks keep these changes out of their codebases.

    One thing I predict happening is that this move by Mozilla could spur more activities for the Firefox Forks. It would be a good opportunity for the developers of Mull, Librewolf, and Waterfox to think of ways to make their respective browsers stand out or be unique. Maybe we can one day see an Android version of Librewolf or a new web engine get developed in response to all this mess. Just a thought, of course.