New window screen design finished this afternoon. Not my favorite work, it's a little more... idk literal? than I like, but the guy wanted ravens and ravens it does have ☑

Same, installed

they shouldnt be allowed to put that much banger material on one album

I was going to rant about how I’m so tired of these, but after I learned I could turn off the annoying “search” button on the Home Screen of my phone, I wondered hm, could I disable this other annoying feature? And yes! I can!

Settings > App Store > In-App Ratings & Reviews

The evil is defeated once again!

Edit 2023-01-31 01:50: added screenshot of the option mentioned within the settings application, for clarity

The Dead Space remake coming out has made me think about the place of remakes in the medium, mostly because they now especially feel like they are taking the place of making anything new when enough money gets involved

As someone who does a lot of theater from a lot of different angles, I like seeing things get reinterpreted and reworked to be relevant for the present times! but here's the thing about theater compared to games, theater is about finding the novelty in a script over and over again, through an infinite number of productions or just one

games are a little different, games are that but contained within a piece of software. A game is an infinite number of theater productions unto itself, and this is where remakes make me feel weird. They can be reinterpretations sure, but so often they're about sanding off Signs Of The Times including clever decisions used to work within limitations. Yes this makes things more approachable and Modern, but we tend to step on the head of the previous work to do it

we're also remaking games that aren't even a decade old, come on folks. yeah Dead Space is 16 years old now but here's the problem with games from the 360/PS3 generation, design hasn't moved that far since then. visuals sure, audio tech sure, but design? the reason people say Dead Space has aged well is because it was very smart about how it used its elements and its gameplay had a lot of personality even when it was cobbled together from System Shock 2 and Resident Evil 4. They wanted it to say something specific and different than those games and you can feel it when you pick up the plasma cutter the first time. The remake as it has been done can only be that but more polished (and polishing an already polished game is a task you could take upon yourself)

I'll probably play the Dead Space remake at some point but I'm not jumping for it because for all the tweaks they did, it from everything I've heard, is updating that game from 2008 to have modern sensibilities which, fine. What new is it bringing to the table besides its reverence for the first game? I don't care enough to jump up and spend $60

Wolfenstein

a little addendum here is the MachineGames Wolfenstein duology. They aren't exactly reboots, aren't exactly sequels, but are taking a very different look at some very mechanics focused games and turning them narrative focused. That is the kind of thing that excites me, someone taking something we know and turning it on its head and sideways

modernizing an old game is fine, and can do a lot, I still haven't finished FF7 or played the remake but those are a bit closer to the retellings I'm more interested in than just polishing an old favorite

Freespace Open

because you can facelift an old ass game with solid systems and it will feel new. Freespace 2 still runs the original game basically the way it was in 1999 with some very nice coats of paint, and it feels like new 30 years later, so no you don't need to sand off the rough edges all the time