I’ve enjoyed the other answers but I was thinking of Maryland, named after Queen Henrietta Maria of France, wife of King Charles I. Legal weed since last year.

There’s even a state named after one of their queens that they could have gone with as an example of recreational legalization.

Hold a “So you just lost access to the employee discount” sale on the Microsoft store.

I’m not entirely sure you’d want someone smoking around a large supply of oxygen, either.

To be serious, though, I’ve seen some places where they seal the entryway to a dedicated smoking room a bit better and vent the smoke outside. I feel like that would be safer/more practical than smoking booths.

Not necessarily gaming related, but I remember their early coverage of every new Apple product as somehow more masturbatory than anything MacWorld put out. Then you’ve got their infamous complete mess of a PC build video and everything that followed that. I guess at least they aren’t written by AI yet?

It’s possible I just haven’t come across those types of comments you’re making fun of, but I usually just see people making the case that we don’t need new, possibly overreaching, legislation to handle these situations. They want to avoid a disingenuous “think of the children” kind of situation.

a youth court in the city of Badajoz said it had convicted the minors of 20 counts of creating child abuse images and 20 counts of offences against their victims’ moral integrity

I’m not familiar with their legal system but I would be willing to bet the crimes they’ve committed were already illegal under existing laws.

I ran across software once that wouldn’t compile properly and the only documentation available was an archive.org hosted backup of an Intel help page that no longer exists. There is no alternative, Intel just removed it entirely.

I think their design philosophy is also probably playing a part in dropping player counts. The progression treadmill is severely hindered by their wish that weapons be weak to encourage players to depend on stratagems. Their passes are filled with lackluster guns and armor that isn’t really all that different from what players already have. They add a few new stratagems here and there, but not nearly enough to keep people grinding for new ones.

I would argue that a sizeable number of players can only grind out the same missions over and over with little tangible progression to show for it for so long.

That plus their ever growing pile of technical debt.

I have a theory it’s part of the same effort that’s resulting in some Sony-published games getting PlayStation trophy support on PC. They probably want to eventually accomplish something similar to what Microsoft did with cross-platform services between the Microsoft store and Xbox.

One of the Arrowhead community managers said they’re trying to get more information regarding regions, so it kinda seems like they weren’t fully prepared for this/got blindsided by Sony a bit. There should be an FAQ/QA with additional info coming soon.

The main story is basically Journey with friends and cosmetics. It expands a bit as you complete each area, easing you into more difficult/spookier content, but it never gets too complex.

There’s also a bunch of secret stuff to find and all of the older seasonal stuff that remains after they ended.

Spoilers for sure, but the wiki is helpful: https://sky-children-of-the-light.fandom.com/wiki/Sky:_Children_of_the_Light_Wiki

There were people spamming the devs with requests to make the game harder and saying it’s too easy.

I voted for every response that said any additional difficulty changes should be optional, like how palworld/valheim have configurable difficulty.

I’ve told myself I need to get around to watching Lexx so many times but never actually done it.

I need to get around to watching Lexx sometime.

There’s a short story, The Procrustean Petard, where the TOS crew get gender swapped by ancient alien tech. Fem Kirk is basically told he’s (she’s, but the story doesn’t respect pronouns) unfit for duty because he’s so hot his crew and everyone he interacts with wouldn’t be able to resist his charms.

It’s…problematic in so many ways.

Can’t forget the oubliette. Pretty sure it gave me nightmares when I was a kid.

I can’t access the research article “craic in a box: commodifying and exporting the irish pub” anymore, but there’s a decent enough Vice article that goes over it: https://www.vice.com/en/article/a3d8gb/why-irish-pubs-became-the-biggest-food-and-drink-export-since-mcdonalds

Basically corporations packaged up and sold the theme and decorations that made Irish pubs feel authentic.

I wonder if using AI/ML is just the natural evolution of that kinda thing.

It’s possible. It’s definitely a game that asks a lot of the player to get immersed in the underlying story. Lots of relatively dense philosophical excerpts to read in the terminals. That’s on top of lore-related text to read which really fleshes out the pretty dark story they’re telling. Then there are the puzzles which might not be everyone’s thing.

The second game improves this greatly by moving the majority of the story out of text and into voiced dialogue with NPCs and a few cutscenes. The jump from the Serious Sam engine to UE5 is pretty mind-blowing in terms of graphics. I think there’s going to be a third one, as well?

If the game can’t suck you in, I’d at least recommend looking up the story. It’s pretty neat.

Aside from obvious ones like Baldur’s Gate 3…

Talos Principle 2 is fantastic from start to finish and makes you feel smart. I’d say playing the first one is a must in order to really enjoy it. The dlc, Road to Gahenna, is skippable. Most people I’ve talked to find they already own the first one somehow and just never got around to playing it.

Viewfinder was also good but felt kind of short. It’s priced fairly, though, so it’s worth a try.

Ghost Trick was really really good on the ds, not sure how well it translates to pc but the reviewer liked it. Some part of its charm was the interaction with the stylus. If it goes on sale, absolutely pick it up.

Nu, it must be the one like Lexx!