Same.

The writing wastes a LOT of time. Yes, I get it, that’s the vibe they want to set, but the vibe was set like 5 minutes ago, and all you’ve done since is print synonyms for “drunk asshole.”

It’s also paraded as pro-communist media, and it really isn’t at all. People are so capitalist-brained, that any game which places communism and capitalism on equal footing, pointing out the faults in both and mocking them relentlessly, is somehow “pro-communist.” In particular, the games plot-relevant example of a die-hard communist is not someone to aspire to. Neither are the capitalists or fascists, but that’s kind of the point: it’s hard to say it supports any political viewpoint when it shits on everyone fairly equally.

Honestly, I wanted and expected a lot more out of it. Particularly in the ending.

Though it was absolutely worth the playthrough. It’s a fantastic game, just not this pinnacle of writing the way the internet plays it off to be.

Let’s be straight: as amazing as Baldur’s Gate 3 is today, Act 3 launched half baked and half broken. My first playthrough experience was horrible, largely thanks to broken flags and missing content from the Upper City, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have comparable experiences with early versions of Original Sin 2. Hell, they rewrote basically the entire final act of that game with the definitive edition, and I’m under the impression Original Sin 1 had a similiar situation, though I didn’t play it enough between the original and the definitive edition to experience it.

Now, part of all this is because Larian opts to make decisions to cut content and reduce scope rather than abuse their staff or delay a project. In Baldur’s Gate specificslly, I won’t say I am perfectly happy with the outcome, but they are a good studio that practices reasonable employee ethics, and ultimately puts in the work to get there with the product as well. I’d have no issue buying Divinity day one or even pre-ordering, but I do not expect a perfectly complete and polished experience on release.

You can’t just expect people to actively interpret media. We have entire school systems designed to avoid educating them with those skills.

Oh god, the replacement of he iron workers in the skyscraper with the ruling elite class who literally contribute a tiny fraction of what they take from society is perhaps the most tone deaf take I have ever seen. Just absolutely disgusting, gutwrenching comparison, yet strangely poignant, as their goal is to make the working class disappear.

Boys, my little rhythm gamer heart has quite possibly never been as blessed as it is this week. Rhythm Doctor, unbeatable, now Bits and Bops?

We just need Tango Gameworks to officially announce that their studio is up and running working on Hi-Fi Rush 2, and my cup will have completely run over.

Played the entire thing start to finish last night. The new content is incredible, as expected.

Come for the quirky, one-button rhythm game. Stay for the character driven story about the weight of the expectations we place on ourselves and each other, and the way that effects our mental health, physical health, relationships, and worldview.

He did not explicity state this, no. But the entire premise of the invisible hand metaphor is to show that a core function of the capitalist system is that it moves wealth to those that bring good to their society. The natural inference from this is that wealth is representative of virtue, ie, if Roblox was doing net bad things, it wouldn’t be worth millions.

Don’t get me wrong, fuck the various Catholic attempts to justify wealth as a virtue too, but the issue is as prevalent in the secular world as it is in the non-secular.

It’s even worse than that.

At it’s root, capitalism, as shown via Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” theory, infers that wealth equals virtue. To receive wealth is to have provided a benefit to society, and to be bereft of wealth is to contribute little while taking much. This system inadvertedly places a dollar value on the abuse of minors in Roblox: any suffering caused is of no consequence to the great good being provided to society, otherwise Roblox would go bankrupt.

CEOs and corporations take the moral high ground because they live within a system that tells them that wealth is virtue, and they are overflowing in wealth. Until we accept that the core principals of capitalism are flawed, we will never begin holding bad actor’s appropriately accountable.

The most interesting part of this is that Musk allowed it to happen. Either he genuinely did not realize he had been working with and supporting other foreign actors attempting to destabilize the US, or some X dev is about to get fired/disappear/“fall” out of a window. There’s no way Musk knew these accounts were dishonest foreign astroturfers and permitted this feature go live.

There are people who exist between “I build, format and otherwise manage my own gaming rig,” and “I don’t need a PC for games.”

My partner is a perfect example. She has my old PC shell, with some $500 of GPU, internal memory, and accessories, hooked up to the TV. She uses it daily, almost exclusively for Steam games and streaming services that she finds more comfortable to navigate with a keyboard and mouse. A smaller, quieter, streamlined, “this more or less will do the things you want to do straight out of the box” product would have saved both her (and I, because that thing has had some troubleshooting) a lot of headache, while looking far more presentable to boot.

Maybe she’s the odd one out and the target audience is more niche than my bias’ recognize, but I guess we’ll see for sure when this thing releases.

Turning into? Sony has been worse than Nintendo or Disney for years. They’re the OG “we’re going to silently brick your machine to protect our digital assets.”

At least Nintendo had the decency to put in their EULA that they’re going to fuck you for trying to pirate content on their proprietary hardware. Sony just bricked your personal PC because fuck you and then lied about it.

I’m going to spoiler it and talk about it, because I am genuinely interested in other people’s opinion/experiences on this.

Just finished Chapter 3 of 8. It has some very classic Telltale foibles. Sometimes the script seems to assume you made a decisions that you didn’t make and it makes the dialogue feel awkward. Other times, the sarcastic tone in a written dialogue choice isn’t clear when you select the option and the resulting scene isn’t at all what you thought you were suggesting. I suspect by the time I am done, I’ll have the general sense of “oh, my decisions didn’t ACTUALLY matter,” as is Telltale tradition, but I’m not far enough to judge in that space yet

Despite these fairly common for Telltale problems, it’s an incredibly witty and entertaining piece of entertainment, and perhaps one of better “no, seriously, there’s a game in here” Telltale products. The “dispatch” mechanic is, imo, a fun management game, and they tie it into the narrative in ways that feel clever. Everyone is at each others throats because of a story beat? People are actively sabotaging each other on the job and it’s making your job as their dispatcher harder. As a comedy and near-film, the writing is laugh-out-loud funny, the voice acting and character animation is top notch, and there’s an interesting story and world holding it all together. I’m sure people will argue that it’s a better movie than it is a game, and, as much as I enjoy the corporate dispatcher half of the game, I am sure many will agree, as the dialogue writing is truly the stand-out element of the game.

It’s very good. Not perfect, but very good, and compared to the older Telltale games, a real home-run.

Olympics ends Esports plans

Aww…

with Saudi Arabia

Oh. Nevermind. Carry on, then.

What the actual fuck is this article, lmfao. They act like they’ve cracked the code of what a “gooner” is, and likened it to this almost religious state of being. It’s slang for someone who unapologetically gives their time and energy to one of more targets of their sexual fantasy. That’s it. They’re not trying to ascend to a state of goonvana, or whatever the fuck this article is trying to paint it as. It’s literally just a culturally accepted way of referencing obsession with sexual fantasy.

So fucking weird, dude.

I can’t wait to see the exemption for “part time workers” and suddenly everyone making less than a triple digit salary has exactly 32 hours a week, or whatever is legally permissible to pass as “part time work” in your country.

You’ve provided a fantastic common-sense solution designed off the simple premise that no one needs 12x of a living wage, and I can’t agree enough, but I know the capitalists would fuck it up at every stage possible, while simultaneously arguing that they’re justified in doing so because the method of economy that they worships has given them moral purchase to look down on the poors.

The ceo makes $96.5 million a year.

This should be severely punishable by the law. It causes more societal harm than many crimes with serious penalties.

While you are absolutely right, that doesn’t make it engaging to listen to. Perhaps ludonarrative harmony can go too far.

Fantastic response tbh.

It’s a good game, and very unique in what it does, but it’s not the objectively best written masterpiece it gets praise for.

My friend who thinks it is also thinks the same o Shakespeare, which I think explains a lot. I tend to be impressed with works that say more with fewer words rather than say little with very many. If the author could pull his head out of his own ass and get to his points, I think it would be a better game, but I suspect Disco Elysium fans would argue that that would ruin the best part of the game, so I just accept I’m not the target audience.

Bless.

Fairly confident I wound up with some malware from a “GOG” download from one of the sites in the megathread. I’ve already formatted and the files are long gone but I’ll tuck this link away for the future.