Gotta go for ProtonMail. Have been running it for a year and I kinda like how it’s doing.

An additional feature is SimpleLogin’s “Hide My E-mail” Aliases, which are “burner” e-mail addresses to use with pre-determined SimpleLogin domains (you can add your own domains as well to go around Proton’s custom domain limit). Those are included in the full suite and Family subscriptions. (10 a month when subscribing for a year)

There’s also a cheaper variant for 3.50 a month but it lacks the SimpleLogin feature. You can get SimpleLogin seperately for 30 a year, however.

Spotting Super Mario RPG in there, you might appreciate knowing some people actually recreated some songs with the original synths used by Yoko Shimomura herself.

I’m honestly a bigger fan of the classic DOOM I/II (199X) soundtracks. Despite being obvious parodies of existing rock/metal songs, they had a certain appeal. Especially when someone makes a very good cover.

I get why people like 2016’s DOOM’s more “metal” approach, but for me nothing beats an adrenaline-rush song when ripping and tearing those damned demons.

any game with a story

Minecraft, Terraria, Factorio, Satisfactory, Rimworld, Starbound…

Super Mario Galaxy (1+2). Orchestrated music should be a must for main Nintendo games at this point, outside of Zelda (and the Pokémon anime, although that one’s not strictly Nintendo or used in actual games, sadly).

Agreed! Although I got the Rad Edition through Humble Choice a while back. They’ve been killing it this year imo, making it somewhat worth every month.

In what ways is NBA2K a great sim? I only know it because of the Ultimate Team mode.

I noticed someone mentioning 299, so about 40 more than a Snackbox. Couldn’t find any official source for it, however.

Little shoutout to /c/gamedeals at CompuVerse. The instance owner got a deal bot running there, cross-posted the Humble post of mine from there.

Hmm, I definitely should start planning one or two main games to beat on the Deck during commute. Definitely got some time to spare for playing something, would help knock down the backlog a peg or two.

I’ve definitely switched away from my main machine (gaming laptop) as it just overheats and hampers performance because of that, sadly. And you could play a racing sim quite easily on the Deck to be honest. You’ll only need something to mount the Deck or dock it.

Now I wanna know why he wore that. Hmmmmm. 👀

Thanks for posting here! Welcome to the federated message boards! :)

Starfield’s considered a separate show, being right after the Xbox Games Showcase.

I think it speaks to accepting the reality of where they are with regards to hardware sales. Agreed, but I wouldn’t say the Xbox situation is as hopeless as he paints it out to be if they got XGS games to show for it. Especially with Sony’s exclusivity deals (which luckily are far less than before, looking at Street Fighter 6 for example). Phil’s philosophy of getting games on any platform (despite starting to Xbox/PC lock Bethesda games) definitely shows with third party developers nowadays.

Sony set the bar low this time around, so I think it’ll be good. Last showcase with the Hi-Fi Rush shadow drop was a good format for them - quick, content-filled. If they stick with that type of format, I’m a happy guy.

I’m honestly glad both Sony and Microsoft keep pushing PC ports to Steam. My Deck’s taking advantage of that.

Hopefully an announcement of a global rollout of Game Pass Friends and Family too. 👀

I used to be optimistic for Microsoft since Phil Spencer got the Game Pass ball rolling, but I’m doubtful we’ll see a lot of concrete games. Especially with his recent speech that “even with games we won’t sell more Xboxes than PlayStations” (not that I care about the “console war”, but that’s definitely not a confident man speaking). If it’s a splash, it would’ve been bigger if the CMA and the FTC didn’t start stopping Microsoft from acquiring Activision-Blizzard-King.

I’m still rooting for them, though! Sony got some banger games, Nintendo’s “set for the year” with TOTK and their other smaller games, now it’s Xbox’ turn to swing.

Edit: My biggest hope currently is them finally rolling out Game Pass Friends and Family globally. That’s my “day one” purchase with 4 friends for sure. Would love to stream those games to my Deck.

You’re welcome! I was a bit surprised there was no thread yet at Beehaw.

To add onto the comment from @[email protected]:

• Valve uses Arch Linux as a base, otherwise they pick open source packages and own stuff to make it as it is. Their own stuff involves Proton (which is a fork/derivative from Wine, which is used to run Windows applications onto Linux and macOS) and the “Game Mode” environment you’re used to see (the console-like UI from the Steam Deck).
• Both Valve and CrossOver are responsible for Proton - a compatibility layer that essentially converts the calls Windows apps make to Windows-related functions (“API calls”, for graphics rendering like DirectX) into something Linux can understand. CrossOver made Wine, while Valve works together with them to create the more gaming-focused Proton.
  • Kernel-level anti-cheat solutions of Windows games (Easy Anti-Cheat, BattlEye etc.) do not work on those compatibility layers, but sometimes get exempted to let Linux players run the games just fine. That’s on a game-by-game basis.
  • There is a community fork named Proton-GE that accepts community fixes and workarounds for an increase in compatibility.

Overall: Proton’s almost like magic with how many games run decent to amazing on it. There are community resources like ProtonDB to help out knowing what does work exactly and whether manual workarounds are needed.

I got to ask: what’s your secret on still clearing the backlog since that time? I’ve gotten mine since June '22 if I remember correctly, and my backlog-beating definitely got reduced.

+rep for Spelunky and Rogue Legacy 2! Really loved my short play session with RL2 when trying several games out for my backlog list, but haven’t gotten back to it. Spelunky I adore, but I can’t deny it’s frustrating to get through it despite actually making progress after a while.

Big respect to Valve and CrossOver for turning Wine into something more usable for handheld devices running Linux (and now even macOS is profiting from it with their Game Porting Kit). There are still caveats, but it’s definitely good enough for me. Software engineers like us can easily tweak with settings or improve compatibility with quick tricks compared to a regular Joe, but it’s still impressive. I’ve always wanted to build a tiny Raspberry Pi handheld just for coding, but this is way better.

One More Turn, indeed!

Fun fact: Civ V actually was really pushed into using Linux and the Steam Controller by Valve when Steam Machines (expensive Linux PC boxes for TVs, but without Proton/WINE to run Windows-based games), hence the presence of native Linux. Not sure if Civ VI’s development was any holdover from that era, considering it has (an abandoned) Linux build and the Steam Controller (and Deck) control schemes since launch.