how does that pad compare to a real ds3?
both my ds3 pads are broken and the only way i could see to get them last time i looked was to buy second hand ps3s that came with controllers and hope they also weren’t all broken
2 Likes
You probably already know this, but most of the parts that commonly break can be replaced cheaply and easily. (Most often it’s the rubber pads under the buttons but I’ve also had to replace sticks when they were chewed off by a dog.)
4 Likes
i hadnt thought of repairing them to be honest… it’s been a while since i used them so i don’t actually remember what was wrong… apart from the rubber on the sticks becoming horrible. i will have to look into it.
1 Like
I haven’t done any real playing with the PS3 VOYEE pad, but it feels surprisingly not-cheap; not as beefy as a DS4, but then DS3s were smaller than DS4s anyway; I haven’t used a DS3 in years so my ability to do a direct comparison isn’t great. But the form factor feels almost identical to what I think I remember of the DS3.
The buttons feel solid and springy (in contrast to what I seem to recall of DS3 and DS4 buttons, when new, feeling solid and unyielding–until broken in a bit, at which point they started to feel a little mushy).
From what I read in this thing’s directions, there are a few functions it doesn’t handle quite as gracefully as an actual DS3, particularly that–it says–the charge light will keep blinking as long as it is plugged in (and the PS3 is on, as far as I’ve seen so far), so you apparently don’t get an indication via the light when it is fully charged. You can still hold the PS button and see the battery indicator in the on-screen display (mine shows full so far, so can’t say yet whether it changes to reflect actual charge).
The two problems I can remember taking out my DS3s were 1) left analog alignment getting off-center, so the character always drifting to one side in isometric games, etc and 2) my last DS3 doing non-stop activation of one of the buttons–Circle, I think it might have been. I don’t think I ever tried taking them apart and I have no idea how repairable those were.
I DID disassemble my DS4 on which the I think it was down direction on the d-pad abruptly stopped working. I hadn’t even used its d-pad much. Nothing looked worn and I couldn’t find any particles wedged in there or whatever; couldn’t figure out what that was unless maybe one of the circuits in those thin bendy plastic sheets had just gone out or something. It was interesting to disassemble and reassemble, at least.
1 Like
finally started Wario Land 3 today
10 Likes
Downloaded NFSUG2 for the xbox and preceeded to drink in mid 00’s open world racing in it’s infancy. Tokyo Extreme Racer did it first, and better. But I feel like with UG2 the mold was cast, so it’s interesting to see the world and event design before norms and standards were set in place.
One example: you can navigate the city just using road signs, which are huge and have symbols on them for where things are. There is a GPS waypoint system in the form of a huge arrow, but the path doesn’t show up on your minimap. This is crucial because, whenever it does in any other game I just end up staring at that corner of the screen at all times when navigating any open world.
Anyway, this game has the best gauge cluster customization in the game
Another feature I really like: if you make your car pretty enough you’re invited to do a photo shoot for…magazines and DVDs. remember those!?
I never saw this game to the end, so maybe I’ll do a full playthrough. It runs at a sluggish 30fps on the xbox and I remember the PC versions running much better even back in the day.
14 Likes
Repairing a PS3 controller seems nuts to me since I saw a friend take one apart and after 4 hours give up on ever putting it back together.
2 Likes
PS4 controllers are even worse. The key is to keep everything mostly together while you work on it. The hardest part is making sure it all lines up when you close it again.
It’s worth doing, though. Those things are expensive and I’ve done it successfully several times.
7 Likes
It would definitely help to have at least three hands while reassembling a DS4. : D
2 Likes
i cannnt imagine any of the 3rd party ps3 controllers have pressure sensitive buttons… it kinda matters for mgs3 especially yknow
2 Likes
Underground 2 was the first game I ever played that did something fancy with a day/night cycle, in that it only cycled from dusk until dawn and then started over at dusk, and that’s always stuck with me
10 Likes
I can test it with Daytona, but a good alternative to trying to hunt down a Dual Shock 3 in 2022 is to just use a Brook converter and a DS4.
2 Likes
That’s a good point, and would be interested to hear if that does work in Daytona, specifically the L2/R2 gas/break buttons. Would think so, Brook seem to have this stuff down pretty good.
Although, even assuming someone has a DS4 and in good working order, that converter is $40; the knock-off controller I got, which seems to work for Daytona like I needed, was $13.99. No idea how long it might hold up compared to a DS4 and converter; I guess that would be the remaining unknown factor, from my point of view. So far happy but could yet end in tears.
Also though getting the DS4 rebound to the PS4 after being on the PS3 this last time ended up requiring a soft reset of the DS4 and a reboot of the PS4; looking forward to not having to mess with that stuff now.
1 Like
Ah yeah I don’t think the VOYEE’s manual said anything about pressure sensitivity, and the face buttons don’t have that pressure sensitive mush feel to them at all, so you could very well be right about this one at least. Probably accounts for the springy rather than mushy feel of the buttons I had noticed.
Update: Their Amazon product page doesn’t mention pressure sensitivity either so yeah pretty much no chance it has it, one would think. I found conflicting answers from users in the thing’s Q&A section: dunno if the person saying they did get pressure sensitivity on the face buttons was just imagining it; someone else said it didn’t have it.
1 Like
I had forgotten that Dicey Dungeons existed but I got it in the Steam sale. It’s pretty good. The different characters are fun to play and I like that it forces you to try several of them because otherwise I might end up doing something equivalent to what I did with Slay the Spire, playing with the first character until I beat a boss and then never touching the game again.
I find some of the Dicey Dungeons characters challenging, but in a good way. What’s challenging in a bad way is the second area for the fighter where you’re cursed every turn. I don’t think I’ll ever beat that one unless I’m very lucky, and I don’t think I feel like trying it repeatedly until such luck occurs. But in saying that I know that I might end up feeling determined to beat it as sometimes happens with such things.
10 Likes
I think I found the point in NFSUG2 where I stop racing, and that’s when the races become mind numbingly repetitive and upgrades and new cars are locked behind an opaque progression system. One example: you can’t progress unless your car has a certain visual rating, you get a higher visual rating by adding more and more visual gubbins to your car except each part has a certain rating, so you have to keep throwing more and more garbage on your car to unlock more missions and areas. It’s…dumb I guess.
It also doesn’t tell you what races you have to win in order to unlock new cars or upgrades. this is problematic as some races have a certain difficulty, which is eased by having a faster car, but once it’s topped out on upgrades then it can’t physically go faster. The newer cars are marginally better starting stats, so upgrading them fully would have an equally marginal affect.
Handling wise, the game seems to reward good driving sometimes, which is more than I can say for many other racing games. The 3rd person camera is terrible and I’m often switching to the 1st person camera because I can’t see around tighter corners, leading me to often hit the inside wall edge of many of them. However it’s easier to chuck cars around corners in 3rd person, so uh, I guess it comes out in the wash.
EA games of this era have this kind of “game sludge” vibe to them where all the garish advertisements, corporate attempts to be “cool” and “street” and hearing the same Rise Against song over and over again detracts from the experience. The roads are all really snaky, and I feel like that’s due to technical limitations of the engine being able to only render so much of the game’s map at once. It makes the whole world feel labyrinth like.
edit: I think the main thing is: the cars handle like ass, you don’t really command them so much as mitigate and correct unpredictable movements they make. Since the game runs at 30fps, it feels sluggish and it can be really easy to get behind the 8ball, as it were, of where the car is going. there is no fast travel, so you have to drive everywhere, and the city layout is obnoxious and causes a lot of back tracking to get onto highway bridges and things.
10 Likes
one of the only songs in nfsu2 i could tolerate is the felix da housecat version of rocket ride, at one point me and a co-worker listened to like years of EA TRAX from madden and stuff and they were 80% AWFUL songs. i remember getting into forza initially cuz i was sick of games making you make your cars ugly or a certain way, or worse, forcing me to drive a certain car to progress. doing most of the career mode in forza 3 with a shitty toyota was a high point. the best street racing simulator nowadays is prolly doing JDM shit on the tokyo expressways in assetto corsa or initial unity
5 Likes
yes, and I’ve been meaning to dive into this at some point, since it seems super interesting
1 Like
The Underground 2 map has (mostly? completely? I forget if there’s a section or two still missing) been converted for Assetto, and also just in the past week or two has been mostly configured for the newer traffic generation system added recently.
4 Likes
Love that song.
2 Likes