the entire reason I switched to Linux – back in January I asked myself “if I have to fight my operating system to make it work right for me anyways, why pay for the privilege?”

like sure updates break things on Linux too occasionally but at least they don’t reinstall spyware I had to spend a day ripping out after the last update.

If y’all wanna get good at it and learn some advanced tactics, watch videos by MB93 or Duckwit. Invasion is about a lot more than just being the better shot, there are some excellent mind-games, misdirection, and traps you can use on both sides.

Wait til SE5 goes on sale if you do decide to get it, I’m wagering they’ll discount it somewhere around the release of SE6 in January. Probably for Christmas.

If not for the fact you said one’s on an Xbox, for a co-op experience I’d recommend Helldivers 2. However, a similar game to HD2 is Deep Rock Galactic, and it’s on Xbox as well as PC. Fantastic co-op shooter with some very funny humor, much like HD2 you can tell a lot of love went into the game; and much like HD2 the developers actually give a shit about it and their community. Since you said you don’t have a load of screen time, you should know a full mission is usually about 20-30 minutes.

For a PVP experience, you said you have two brothers – three is actually the perfect number if you wanted to get Sniper Elite 5 and play through the campaign with Axis Invasion enabled, you can invite one to play co-op and for the other, you can invite a specific invader. Two players would be playing as allied snipers infiltrating various locations in France and taking out Nazis, and the third would be an elite German sniper hunting them. It’s supremely fun to hunt people (as well as be “hunted” – though with two players you can really flip that on its head). And a mission in SE5, depending on how you play, can either take as short as 15 minutes or as long as 45 minutes, though probably on the longer end if you’re doing invasion – you do not play it like COD if you actually want to survive against a hunter.

Both of those have crossplay and should work on a Steam Deck, as well; although I’ve noticed Sniper Elite 5’s anti-cheat, when run through Proton on Linux, doesn’t like the game being installed on an external drive and won’t let you play online if it’s not running on the same drive the OS is installed on, and I imagine that’d probably extend to SD cards. So, if you go for SE5, make sure that brother installs it to the Deck’s internal storage or they might run into trouble.

47

Oh no! Anyways…

I air gap my shit

that’s an interesting claim, how do you use online multiplayer games and discord while “air gapped”?

and again, your “tangible benefit” is rendered largely moot by the fact that you can absolutely get around kernel anticheat.

“I’m OK with companies using incredibly shitty, intrusive software practices because I don’t think they’ll affect me personally” is such a shit take for so many reasons, to name a few:

1. giving software kernel access, especially when it does not or should not need kernel access, is a security risk, and does open the door for malicious actors to take advantage of vulnerabilities even if the software is not malicious in and of itself

2. occasionally, intensively intrusive programs like this do break things unintentionally, which can lead to all sorts of fun issues. StarForce DRM is a good example from years past.

3. just because you do not have anything on your PC that you consider sensitive, does not mean that applies to everyone.

4. Kernel level anticheat can be bypassed. It’s usually not cheap/easy, but it can and has been done. Meaning you are giving up all of this, for no real benefit.

these are just the few I can think of immediately.

And then nobody ever made another emulator for Nintendo products again and this definitely does not foreshadow an endless game of whack-a-mole powered by spite.

Surely not.

I’m Brazil

hi Brazil, I’m Dad!

it’s nice to see I’ve never had an original thought in my life