Slightly annoying that the magnified parts are directly over their original location. This blocks the view to see them in their original size and context.
This one would be much faster than the plustek though, if they keep their promises. I use a 8200. It takes more than 1 hour to scan a 36 frame color negative with dust removal on, and it requires constant manual input. Pushing the holder to the next frame, unloading and loading the holder, etc.
It's fine, sure. For the price I paid for it and the image quality I'm getting, I have no complaints. On the other hand, a new device that can cut the time down to 5 mins with modern software support (silverfast is kind of dated and VueScan will run you another 100), while priced at 1000 EUR, is not cheap, but also not that unreasonable tbh.
For a studio or a professional - sure. For me, an amateur, who simply does film photography for his own amusement, it makes no sense. I also use standing development process that takes around 40 mins. So the speed is irrelevant for me.
Taste is subjective, but as someone who have played: Baldur's Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, Mass Effect, Neverwinter Nights, MDK2, Shattered Steel, Jade Empire, Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age: Origins, Command & Conquer: Generals 2, Anthem on their release dates, I'd rank them in that order. So to me Mass Effect 2 wasn't one of their best games, but it was also not one of their worst.
Mass Effect 2 is the primary reason I've only played Mass Effect 3 once, because I just can't get myself to go through 2 again despite having replayed Mass Effect 1 several times. I don't think it's a terrible game, on the technical side it improved so many things, but I just don't like the story. To be fair, Dragon Age and Anthem were the only ones that really dissapointed me.
I wouldn't personally go that far; having recently replayed all three back-to-back, I'd say that they're just very different types of games.
ME1 is a an excellent story-driven action RPG with clunky combat and issues with environment size/complexity due to technological limitations of the platform it was built for.
ME2 is a very good story-driven third-person shooter with excellent combat and a thin veneer of RPG elements that has overcome a lot of the technical issues with ME1 despite the same platform/engine.
ME1 by far has the better story and I enjoyed it more than ME2 on my first playthrough years ago, but now, already knowing the story, ME2 was more fun to play this time. It's a shame they couldn't have improved on everything good about the first one instead of turning it into a shooter.
Personally, I'd love to see the whole trilogy reimagined and remade as a single giant open-world action RPG, but that's probably never happening.
To this day, I would love to have a trilogy of games that were like the first one. Alas that Bioware basically immediately abandoned the direction of the first game for a much worse one in a misguided attempt to try to appeal to the mass market.
You're right. The sense of wonder and exploration I got playing ME1 was just totally absent in ME2. But it was nonetheless a pretty good game in its own right, and for many people, a game they enjoyed more than the original.
I loved ME1 and was disappointed by ME2 because I loved ME1 so much. I devoured the lore, every codex entry, and even the long elevator rides where you had to listen to news reports about your earlier actions. The world-building was so much better, and all of this was reduced to a minimum in ME2.
ME1 was an epic space RPG with action elements, while ME2 was an action game built around a collection of crew side stories with lighter RPG elements.
ME2 was not particularly good. The characters were good, but the gameplay was severely dumbed down and the main story was flat out bad. I don't know who at Bioware thought it was a good idea to force the player to work for Cerberus (basically space Nazis, for anyone who hasn't played Mass Effect), but it wasn't a good idea. You can't just railroad the player into working for bad guys in a game that is supposed to celebrate player choice. Not only that but they mishandled the villains, and the entire Collector plot was a waste of time that didn't contribute to the overall story. ME2 was the beginning of the decline in Bioware's quality and it never stopped after.
PNBL was a thing at some point (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layaway) but was rendered obsolete by the advent of credit cards. Seems to me like a personal austerity measure which becomes more popular in worse economic conditions. The cynic in me believes that there's more money to be made when you encourage people to spend less responsibly and with less financial literacy.
But why would the merchants willing to pay the fees in providing a BNPL scheme for their customers?
One would assume that it would increase sales, which makes it worthwhile. It's not caused by increase outreach though: from what I've seen, BNPL is usually an additional payment option when you're already on the product page.
Then the question becomes: who are the extra customers that a BNPL scheme would bring, that wouldn't have made the purchase if such a scheme was not available?
