I’ve always enjoyed rally games but only recently decided to buy a wheel (just a used Logitech G29) and also decided to give F1 22 a shot. I feel like I’m okay-ish at DiRT Rally 2.0 and WRC 10 but atrocious at F1 22. How do I actually learn to be better instead of constantly making mistakes?

To me, they feel kind of OP to discover if you're not a very motivated person, but I suppose that's who they're for. I did one of those trophies for Sonic Generations when I stumbled upon it online and it was to no-hit the final boss on hard mode with no add-ons (in game stuff) and I can't help but feel that there's no way I would have known that's the trophy.

So I just upgraded to an M1 Mac Mini. I was a little iffy on it, part of me wanted to build a PC just to play games but I really like MacOS and I mostly play on PS5 and the Switch with the PC only being for indie titles and stuff that only works with a keyboard and mouse like RTS, 4x, or city builders. I just don't play PC games enough to prioritize gaming as a use case in buying a computer, but I also really like RTS and city builder games.

I figured WINE and Parallels would meet most of my gaming needs but my forays into WINE have been frustrating and buggy, and this reddit thread about what works on Parallels is, frankly, just kind of sad to look at. What's worse, apparently the new Age of Empires has some kind of pathfinding instruction set that ONLY works with x86 architecture. So it won't work under any kind of virtualization or emulation.

Enter Cloud gaming. It seems the big contenders right now are ShadowPC, GeForce Now, and Paperspace. Has anyone tried these? When I last costed these out Shadow was only around $15-$20 a month which was almost a no-brainer. But it seems to have gone up to $30 a month now, which gets costly enough to where it almost seems like I'd rather get a Steam Deck. Paperspace is like $10 per month plus another ~$1 per hour of play, which would probably end up cheapest for how little I play. But how it is in terms of configuration and latency I have no idea.

I had a vasectomy this week and needed something to do for a few days while I was down. A co-worker recommended star citizen (explaining the caveats). I love it so far, and if anyone here plays I'd love to add you to my friends list.

My username is Grendel_84

I wanted to get a general discussion going on the opinions of game streaming services. This is a potentially huge market and the big companies out there are really trying to break into this market. I personally use google stadia and love it, there is a slight amount of latency in movements but it feels no different than a larger dead zone to me.

I love the idea of game streaming as it brings more games to more platforms like Linux, macOS and mobile devices. I know the big argument against them is that you don’t own the games, but from my perspective, you don’t own the games on steam either, you own the right to play someone else’s game just like with Google stadia or Luna or xcloud. If you want to own an actual copy then you have to buy the game from a vendor like gog or itch.io.

So let me know your opinions on this market, do you think it’s good, bad, or somewhere in between and why? If you play on any of these services what are your thoughts and experiences? Has it worked well for you and do you see yourself using services like this in the future? I genuinely am curious as it’s a completely different mindset than what we’re used too and it can really disrupt a market that hasn’t seen proper innovation in years.

Do you like them? Hate them? Don’t care about them? Take pride in them?

What do you consider good/bad achievements?

Do they affect how you play games?

Do you feel you have to get most/all of them?

What games have used them to novel effect?

Anything else you want to say about the topic is fair game as well. This is an open door for any discussion related to achievements.

About ten years ago, Sony promised they'd change how we play games. With the launch of the Playstation Vita, they showed us a world in which one could start playing a game at home on your big powerful console, and then you could take it with you in the form of cross-play, where your saves synced via the cloud and you could play the Vita version right where you dropped off. And of course, for games that didn't have a Vita version, there was always the option of streaming your games.

Of course, we know how well that worked out. There were maybe 5 games where you could buy both versions of the game at once, and the majority of the games that supported cross-play required you to buy the same game twice. Streaming is still what everyone's pushing today, but in many places (coughAmericacough) there isn't a good enough connection to stream games with a good experience - especially if it's got twitchy gameplay.

Time has passed and many companies have began to offer a service model for games - subscribe to a program, and you get free access to games. And many of these services have some sort of cross-play component to them, where you get access to multiple platforms, or even with streaming versions, but they all have their downsides.

But it turns out that one company offers a gaming service that actually does offer each of their games in native versions across computers, consoles, and phones, has cross-play support, and doesn't have any of the downsides of streaming, and it's from a company that most people don't associate with gaming - especially when it comes to computer games. I'm speaking, of course, about Apple Arcade.

Sure, it all only works on Apple hardware, and the console part is a bit of a stretch (who actually owns an Apple TV?), but it works remarkably well. And unlike a number of other systems I have tried, it works seamlessly - you can save your game on your mac, launch your game on your iPhone, and instantly be playing your game. And the higher-end games with nice 3D graphics actually do look remarkably better on the big screen.

Of course, the selection of games is much different than any other games service, but I find myself surprised at how many games I legitimately want to play. Sure, there are a lot of 'iPhone' style casual games - right now they just released a bunch of previously released iPhone games cleaned up and stripped of monetization schemes - but I view that as a positive thing - sometimes you just want something simple to pass time with that doesn't need to take space in your brain. But at the same time there are also bigger and more aspiring titles available. There's a new action game from PLATINUMGAMES with an Okami-like artstyle, a brand new RPG from Mistwalker built on top of dioramas, and complex adventure games like Beyond a Steel Sky.

Apple arcade, is, however, missing one notable meta-genre from it's library - Triple-A games. And honestly, I kind of love it for that. The majority of the games companies represented are independent, and that means that many of them are going to be able to offer me new types of gameplay or narratives that you won't get from the big guys. What other service is going to offer experiences like Assemble With Care? And from an ethical point of view, I'd rather reward independent creators who are pushing out these high-quality pieces of work than giant companies who are famous for exploiting their workers.

While Apple Arcade obviously won't be a good choice for everyone since it's limited to Apple hardware, and if you're already in Apple's ecosystem, you probably already know about it (they're surprisingly aggressive at marketing their free trial - which is actually what got me to write this in the first place). I had originally written them off as all casual games, but with the last big release of games it's got some pretty fantastic releases. It's worth trying if you've only got an iPhone, but it's more than worth it if you've got a recent Mac or Apple TV.