Noxy

No shit! Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe on Genesis/Megadrive was a ton of fun

That makes sense, and immutable OSes seem like a great idea from a security standpoint

Oh right, those. I honestly completely forgot that’s a thing. And is a fair point, even tho I just use physical cards I totally understand the convenience and security benefits of token based payment systems like that

Seems like you can’t re-lock the bootloader after installing an alternative OS, for one

I know exactly as much as you do about it. Just quoting the lead dev.

ask again in a week and then again in three months

It’s unfortunately really not that simple. But for a short answer, I use Aurora Store for anything I can’t get from F-Droid., and even tho I have the Google Play Store installed (as some apps require it for stuff like notifications or location) I’m not ever signed into it and I don’t use it to install or update apps

Which payments don’t work?

I do, yes. First on a Pixel 5 and then (and currently) on a Pixel 8 Pro.

The purely emotional icky feeling of giving Google money is far less important than the tangible security, privacy, and usability upsides of GrapheneOS on a supported device. But if that’s important to you, just buy a Pixel secondhand, Google gets no money from that.

I wish more devices were supported too, but my understanding is that only Google makes devices that are both secure and open enough.

Article in German, but the relevant points from the GrapheneOS lead are all in english: https://www.kuketz-blog.de/weshalb-grapheneos-aktuell-nur-google-pixel-geraete-unterstuetzt/

One point about Samsung:

Samsung takes security almost as seriously as Google, but they deliberately cripple their devices when you unlock them to install another OS and don’t allow an alternate OS to use important security features

Two credit union apps work fine, venmo and paypal work fine. YMMV with other financial institutions but it’s not been a problem for me so far.

To answer your last question, there’s way too many differences for a lemmy comment, so I suggest reading their features page for a broad overview: https://grapheneos.org/features

One feature that’s closest yo your question, though:

Google Play receives absolutely no special access or privileges on GrapheneOS as opposed to bypassing the app sandbox and receiving a massive amount of highly privileged access.

extremely pedantic whining over the term “ROM”, but when has a custom android distribution ever dealt with “read-only memory”? is or was there some immutable component of Android that could be interpreted as read-only?

also I switched from iPhones to Google Pixels running GrapheneOS four years ago and I’ve never looked back, it’s really solid and gives me the amount of control I expect and demand over hardware I’ve purchased upfront. Pedantry aside, I strongly recommend GrapheneOS

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Their chief weapon two weapons three weapons four… no… Amongst their weapons… Amongst their weaponry… are such elements as fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope

controls are very very good and it’s intended for use with cartridges. no roms needed - hell it’s actually a little extra effort to run rom files on it.

https://www.analogue.co/pocket

The indie shit is great tho. Analogue Pocket is an outstanding gaming device to run a whole bunch of portable console games (and some originally non-portable consoles too, like Genesis/Megadrive)

And folks are still making and sometimes even selling Gameboy games right now in 2024

Indie is great, and honestly vital when so much mainstream/AAA shit is such shit

electric? fine. combustion engine powered? fucking end them all.

suddenly craving ube

Amazing how I played this on my PC last night, guess I wasn’t aware of this new definition for “exclusive”. Happy about it tho!

Its good. Not perfect, but better than I expected.

Headphones definitely recommended, a halfway decent Atmos home theater system sounds great but I still picked up subtle sounds better with even just bluetooth headphones.

Ambience is very much on point. Dialogue is a good mix of well-acted, and a tad “off” like the original. Angela and Eddie seem faithfully redone, so far. James too honestly.

Apartments were a nice change-up from the original, not too different thematically but still essentially a whole new layout, not at all a copy and paste job. Showdown with big knife guy was a big departure, though. Not sure if better or worse, but different from the original

Some graphical glitches (something like ghosting of the fog around objects moving on the screen, also flashes of light in the distance) sometimes that are frankly unacceptable for a $70 game, especially a game of this sort of mood, but hopefully they get those patched soon.

Combat is not exactly great. Nor was it in the original, to be fair. The dodging mechanic is a bit much, and at least on the hardest combat difficulty, it feels like you gotta already be familiar with enemy attack patterns, since it doesn’t give you much chance to learn and survive. But it does all feel learnable, so we’ll see if I just need to get gooder.

Steam achievement notifications at least one broke immersion for me, I might try to mute those next time I play.

But overall I’m very eager to resume playing after work, I left off after the apartments (and stayed up far too late doing so!)

don’t listen to Crassius Curio

You were part of the problem. I’m glad that’s past tense.