Hot takes

[Leo-Dash]

Most indie games are Tumblr inspired content with characters trying too hard to be quirky and adorkable, that they feel more like a pain in the ass, boring, repetitive and unlikeable personalities with ugly repetitive designs.

As someone who has been using Tumblr over a Decade I can CONFIRM this!

 

[Xdqwerty Xdqwerty]

Movies need more non-orchestral background music

 

[grifoXD]

Thank you, I really liked your response, I tried to be as direct and dry as possible, because I have listened to people say so many things about gaming that just wasn't true and this was kind of vent for me, LOL, thus the why of some obvious things also being in the thread, thus water is wet.

 

[Jimbo_McDumbo]

Batman is the worst part of the Arkham games, he's so boring and aggro. He's like an edgy sonic OC, the only reason why people like him is because he's voiced by the late great Kevin Conroy. He's best written in Arkham Origins and Arkham Shadow, and performed amazingly by Roger Craig Smith.

Legacy of Kain is amazing, but all the actual gameplay either sucks ass or just fills space between story moments or puzzles. It would be 1,000x better as a tv show, novel, or comic series. And it can't come back without Tony Jay, no one can replace him.

Edgy sincerity is better than bright, ironic, and hollow. I'll take a thousand Dark Voids over one more Saints Row reboot or Mass Effect: Andromeda.

 

[Deleted member 440565]

Outside of the original Card Pocket Jockey (which is now available in an inferior port to Nintendo Switch), There are no worthwhile exclusive Nintendo 3DS games that are true classic must-play games. The only reason the console is beloved is because of the compatibility witu the superior DS library and the large selection of virtual console and cheap digital releases games that were available for the console. Nintendo's output for the system were basically forgettable sequels, remakes rehashes, and collections. Nintendo really phoned it in with the likes of Mario Party Top 100, Warioware Gold, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Yoshi's Wooly World, Luigi's Mansion 1, Star Fox 64 3D. As a system that could play GB, GBC, GBA (for the Ambassador ones), DS, and 3DS, it was great. But the 3DS library is completely forgettable.

 

[Deleted member 257420]

Lmao tf I miss? Another boring argument?

 

[OpenVMS]

Totally agree. RA's UX is hot garbage.

It feels particularly frustrating on PC. They had to really compromise the friendliness to make sure you can use the whole thing with a controller.

To me, the killer thing about RetroArch is the whole cores system. It's really sweet that it's like a generic target for all these different emulators. I guess in theory someone else could make a totally different emulator that's able to load libretro cores, but it's such a massive undertaking I don't think there's a lot of these floating around.

I find Retroarch pretty annoying to configure, but it is something you can get a bit better at, and after hours of tweaking on whatever handheld you have, if you backup that config, you can just use Retroarch for playing games instead of fiddling.

 

[MegaDrive1987]

I used to swear by RetroArch up until late last year as I love the CRT-Royale shader but I use USB controllers (Mega Drive, NES and Saturn so far) and getting them to work properly with each core was just too much of a hassle so now I use mednefen and standalone emulators. I still have RetroArch installed in case I need to emulate a certain computer or console and for Netplay although I haven't used it with anyone yet.

 

[Jeanfranc]

I think its more anglos or ppl who grew up on the 2010s internet than the west, europeans I meet online dont see themselves as the moral standard of the world. Anglos can have very Very strict ways of thinking, that's why they're easily triggered

Society if we had separate and isolated internet spaces for each continent

 

[GardeniaSky's icon GardeniaSky GardeniaSky]

Wow it got really stupid in here.

 

[Deleted member 884]

Hot take: this thread is going to die soon.

 

[Dyne]

Black licorice is tasty but its hard to find here because I guess a lot of people don't like it. I kind of want some now. Not enough to order some online though. I need to find a local shopkeep with the goods.

 

[Rebecca]

Not a hot take. While useful, its interface suffers from less than ideal user experience decisions. And that's for the platform it was designed for, it gets even worse when you put it on other platforms like android (where it's not prepared with how permissions for external devices work, or decides to switch to keyboard input).
It's good it exists and that it's free, but one cannot deny how difficult it can be when one wants to customize things up.

 

[Fray Guillermo]

For now I only use it for PC Engine and MegaDrive, I very much prefer stand-alone emulators if they're good enough. RetroArch menus are innecessarily convoluted, but at least the shaders are cool.

I use RA on my phone for gb/gbc/gba, tho

 

[Xdqwerty Xdqwerty]

Nobody who isnt japanese calls Fullmetal Alchemist "Hagane no Renkinjutsushi"

 

[Lee__Kanker]

Society if we had separate and isolated internet spaces for each continent

Fuck yeah

 

[Deleted member 403103]

wipeout pulse ps2 sucks hard

 

[Natsuyasumi]

It feels particularly frustrating on PC. They had to really compromise the friendliness to make sure you can use the whole thing with a controller.

To me, the killer thing about RetroArch is the whole cores system. It's really sweet that it's like a generic target for all these different emulators. I guess in theory someone else could make a totally different emulator that's able to load libretro cores, but it's such a massive undertaking I don't think there's a lot of these floating around.

I find Retroarch pretty annoying to configure, but it is something you can get a bit better at, and after hours of tweaking on whatever handheld you have, if you backup that config, you can just use Retroarch for playing games instead of fiddling.

Yeah you’re totally right, the idea is great, but execution: poor.

OpenEmu is a great example of how you can make a multi-core emulator with a killer UI. It’s a visually beautiful app, easy to navigate and customize, and has a a wide range of emulator cores. But, it’s for MacOS only.

 

[Leon]

Yeah you’re totally right, the idea is great, but execution: poor.

OpenEmu is a great example of how you can make a multi-core emulator with a killer UI. It’s a visually beautiful app, easy to navigate and customize, and has a a wide range of emulator cores. But, it’s for MacOS only.

A better example would probably be mesen, which runs like 10 emulators and is simple and easy to use.

 

[TerrySaw]

I recently set up my old PC to be an emulation machine on my TV and decided to use RetroArch for the first time. It for sure was not intuitive at first and took a while to get used to, but I got used to it. I already have a bit of a technical background so I don't know if that maybe gave me an advantage for certain things, but I haven't had much issue with it after the initial learning curve. Especially since I only use RA to set up cores and configurations, and ES-DE to actually select and launch games.

I do use standalone for Dolphin, PCSX2, and anything beyond, though.

 

[OpenVMS]

I recently set up my old PC to be an emulation machine on my TV and decided to use RetroArch for the first time. It for sure was not intuitive at first and took a while to get used to, but I got used to it. I already have a bit of a technical background so I don't know if that maybe gave me an advantage for certain things, but I haven't had much issue with it after the initial learning curve. Especially since I only use RA to set up cores and configurations, and ES-DE to actually select and launch games.

I do use standalone for Dolphin, PCSX2, and anything beyond, though.

I'm not sure it's possible to have a program with the scope and configuration possibilities of Retroarch while also being intuitive. It's somewhat impressive that the Retroarch devs have managed to wrangle the "core" of dozens of different emulators into a single usable thing.

The opposite situation where i have 25 different emulators on my device, each with different options / control scheme / configuration / storage doesn't seem great either.

I guess it goes back to that old quote: "There's two kinds of software: the kind everyone complains about and the kind nobody uses".

 

[Leon]

I'm not sure it's possible to have a program with the scope and configuration possibilities of Retroarch while also being intuitive. It's somewhat impressive that the Retroarch devs have managed to wrangle the "core" of dozens of different emulators into a single usable thing.

The opposite situation where i have 25 different emulators on my device, each with different options / control scheme / configuration / storage doesn't seem great either.

I guess it goes back to that old quote: "There's two kinds of software: the kind everyone complains about and the kind nobody uses".

No it's possible, there's mesen, mednafen, ares etc, the problem isn't to get it working, it's getting retroarch to actually implement the more intuitive ui as a option, fun fact retroarch does in fact have a mouse/keyboard ui you can switch to, but it lacks a ton of features and pardon my phrasing, feels half-assed and not worked on much, heck i've had it crash on me when i tried to use it multiple times.

 

[Cantarella]

Welllll, I have a lot of different emulators on my pc. Not 25, but as many standalones as I could want, and I vastly prefer just setting them up all similarly and doing things that way.

Completely, 100% intuitive might not be possible. Mednafen I'm used to now, but there was a little bit of a learning curve. But retroarch ain't even at 10% intuitive. It is less user-friendly than several programs that demand you operate them with the command line. The way menus are nested often makes no sense, the nests go frustratingly deep, and it will often not do stuff you take for granted like save/load controller profiles in a way that one would expect. Probably the worst UI/UX experience I've ever come across for what it's supposed to do.

 

[Natsuyasumi]

A better example would probably be mesen, which runs like 10 emulators and is simple and easy to use.

No, OpenEmu is the better example for what I'm referring to.

Mesen is great, but it's not really an actual competitor to retroarch in terms of consoles supported (7-10 consoles up to 16 bit), and it has a very 'Windows 98' vibe, meaning it's very obvious it is a computer program; it doesn't have that console experience at all.

No offense to Mesen, of course, it's great for what it is. But OpenEmu is a direct competitor with Retroarch, but with a vastly superior UI/UX. It supports 31 cores, from Vectrex all the way up to Gamecube and PSP, and, while still functioning as a computer program (you click the games with your mouse to open them), the whole thing is set up as a premium, console like experience. Rretroarch could be like that, and still include all the detailed settings and options OpenEmu doesn't have (mainly just graphical enhancements, since OpenEmu is committed to the authentic limits of real hardware.), but the developers are not concerned or skilled with good UX design.

And that's fine, it's a free program and maybe someone with that concern/skill will make some changes to it some day.

Post automatically merged: Apr 29, 2025

I'm not sure it's possible to have a program with the scope and configuration possibilities of Retroarch while also being intuitive. It's somewhat impressive that the Retroarch devs have managed to wrangle the "core" of dozens of different emulators into a single usable thing.

The opposite situation where i have 25 different emulators on my device, each with different options / control scheme / configuration / storage doesn't seem great either.

I guess it goes back to that old quote: "There's two kinds of software: the kind everyone complains about and the kind nobody uses".

It's most definitely possible (see OpenEmu), but it takes a good working knowledge of UX design, and of course, the time and effort to implement it.

As someone who has not contributed to the retroarch project financially or otherwise, I can't realistically expect them to put a lot of work into it. But it is absolutely possible.

 

[rugal]

i use retroarch when i need to but its a mess it has potential to be great if it was not so hard to setup all the settings in it
it took me alot of patience the first time i did use retroarch and to really do all the setting changes

now i have used it so many times that i find it easy to do all the settings but still it takes time to do all the changes in settings and emulator settings on top of that

its mutch easier to setup emulators than it is to setup retroarch