I think for me, it’s just difficulty with training steps, the same way many students struggle with the common ways of teaching math, but are great at it once practiced.

I used to religiously follow directions around my area. Now, I bring my smartphone for safety, but I often find myself navigating without it.

I’d still struggle with paper alone, since there would be so many turns I’d want to verify - and quite often, street signs are obscured in some way.

“Wrong direction” sums up my anger towards everything FromSoft.

Two Soulslike games I really enjoyed though, are Tunic, and Another Crab’s Treasure. Both are generally pretty rewarding of exploration, but also tightly guide you at the beginning. I honestly just don’t feel like FromSoft is very fair when it comes to early exploration. One path utterly destroys you and has no reward at the end.

My first PlayStation was a PS3, and thankfully, around then they were still releasing a number of ported “trilogies”.

Even though mine was not a backwards compatible model, I was also able to play digital versions of the Fatal Frame series, which is sadly now pretty much inaccessible.

I never played Jax, but I saw an analysis of its vector-based facial animation, where there were few enough vertices for animators to directly tweak; and it does feel like a nostalgic way to make cartoony, expressive faces.

Funny side topic:

Insurance doesn’t cover acts of terrorism. So, by the DOJ placing that label on recent Tesla vandalism, the insurance claims become invalid.

Peans: Not quite peas, not quite beans. But they’re somewhere inbetweens.

For all the doomscrolling we do on smartphones, I’m still of the mindset that there are many ways their existence has made people’s lives better. For instance, I likely never would have become so transit-brained if not for smartphones. I practically have nightmares of trying to navigate train maps/schedules through nothing but paper and a loose idea of where my destination was.

Legend? This is an image of Paris transforming from an active volcano into a radioactive site.

It was only recently I saw that Blue Prince did not make a PS4 release, which surprised me - quite a lot of games even in the past year have still put that out when there’s nothing in them that’s highly demanding. Usually, it just means it hovers around 25-30fps.

It did sound like the initial comments were taken from Discord, not an interview, which to me paints it in a different light.

I’m sure I’ve claimed to be the Queen of England on there once.

Something that provides a whole lot of modern context is realizing that America was France’s early “Proxy war”. They wanted to give Britain a hard time, and so they gave colonials weapons to do it. Both of us won out from that exchange.

The key part here is that France didn’t keep an iron stranglehold of us. It was enough to win us our freedom that we would want to be their buddies without being forced. Fun story for anyone who insists the US wants to control the Ukrainian government.

What most people get irked about is loss of ownership, which can be a separate topic with careful management. For instance, if you buy an ItchIO game, there’s no DRM and you can copy it anywhere - I imagine many would be fine with digital downloads if everywhere used that system, but on the corporate side they’d likely be grumbling about piracy.

That’s why my better version of male trip power fantasy is the tough-as-nails delta operative Captain Martin Walker, of Spec Ops: The Line.

Did this happen because of Google API pricing changes?

I was a mega-fan of both Ori 1 and 2. I’ve got a mug based on the first game, but when I first saw the trailer for this game, nothing about it interested me. Kind of like the Xbox 360 era of “brown and gray cover shooters” I’ve never understood the appeal for grim, depressing medieval worlds. I like having some vibrancy and inventiveness, as well as some motivation behind the violence used to achieve some end.

One of the only Soulslike games I’ve finished is Another Crab’s Treasure. The story/setting in that game ends up being pretty depressing, but it at least maintains a lot of humor and colorful design.

What’s more, I looked through the negative reviews, and a lot of them touch on incomplete or over-punishing systems, rather than seeming motivated by external factors.

I wouldn’t see it SO negatively. If they were paying people for reviews, then yes, that’s corruption; but every YouTuber uses phrases like “Drop a like” and it’s considered normal. When you worked hard on something, I think it’s common to ask for a positive review. People are sentient enough to choose whether to do so.

The most secure device ever made is a Rock.

You cannot have your bank account stolen from a Rock. People will never get your personal files or medical info from a Rock. People will never spy on you through the Rock.

But you also can’t do much with a Rock.

Maybe I’m bitter, but I’m still not ready to forgive them for their treatment of Mick Gordon. Plus, they’re part of Microsoft Studios, who are now openly okay with genocide.

A book I was just reading told a story of how the Massachusetts church was trying for a long time to build more affordable housing, and basically got blocked out by NIMBYs and white patriarchy. So, given recent media, I’ve found them to sometimes be okay.

I don’t think we should be surprised their pro-zionists in the Bible Belt are psychopaths molesting children though.

I mean, this level of Darwinism would be fine. What grates me is not recognizing the effect it has on others.

Still seeking an analogy where not eating food somehow puts a neighbor or classmate at risk of starvation.

Overwatch 2 situation. We just add numbers now to excite people.