@Zagorath I did but I couldn’t get into it and quit so early that I didn’t even see the save function.

Broadly speaking, I enjoy stealth in games as long as it’s implemented correctly and doesn’t break the game or function poorly and leave you at a disadvantage. Despite the many qualms I have with tlou2, the added mechanic of going prone and all the upgrades associated with stealth was quite fun—and, of course, the functionality of the bow and arrow, and how you can conserve ammo. Parsing an area with dogs and navigating their heightened scent through long grass and deciding when to pick off certain enemies or ninja though is tremendously fun for me.

Desperados III and Shadow Tactics are two other stealth games that I love that use a design similar to The Commandos series. You can navigate through their detailed environments deciphering a path through on your own, using whichever abilities your party has to your advantage. I think the ninja/feudal Japan game world fits better with Shadow Tactics (I also prefer the characters) but Desperados III has just as good, if not better level design.

To add a somewhat weird one, I’ll say a good save feature. Saving with an ink ribbon in RE was so freaking awesome—especially in regards to how it adds a level of complexity to item management. Another cool example that doesn’t add anything to gameplay but was neat: ICO and how you save your game with Yorda on the couch. So wholesome; I can hear the music in my head, even.

E: Also, Demon’s Souls’ character and world tendency mechanics were so incredibly imaginative. The fact that you can unknowingly die too many times in human form, turn an area into black world tendency, and get eviscerated by black phantoms for seemingly no reason is wildly brutal and awesome.

Man, I feel exactly the same way. Litterboxd has the most obnoxious, effusive reviews of that film, acting like it is the most groundbreaking film ever. Inglourious basterds, Death Proof, and Kill Bill was like his last stride of phenomenal film making IMO. Everything after that has been edgelord garbage for me…

Leave it to tumblr for a stupendous shower thought, lmao

I’m not sure. I’ve heard that some high schools no longer have typing classes, and there’s apparently a rise in gen z kids who are unable to type the traditional, “touch type,” way with all ten fingers and opt for the two-finger style or some hybrid quasi-effective style. They say it can be just as fast but I’m pretty dubious about that.

I certainly think it is valuable, and I hope it remains a required learned skill for kids, but as someone with dysgraphia—and much to my dismay, dyslexia—writing has always been completely miserable to me. Although I’m glad I learned how to write properly in both regular hand and in cursive, and I’m fully able to read it as long as it isn’t excessively ornate, I’m so thankful I was able to learn to type as a kid. What a wonderous feeling it was to actually excel in my typing class. To this day it’s one of the most worthwhile skills I learned at such a young age.

Thank you very much :)

I sure do: https://www.flickr.com/photos/88949688@N02/

The OG Dead Space completely blew my mind back in the day and probably is still the game to frighten me the most, but I tried to replay it—twice—and dropped it because of how much worse the controls felt than what I remembered. The juking necromorphs were much more irritating to dismember on replay. I thought about getting the remake but people say the controls are the same; and regardless, that’s my own issue with the AI, not really the controls…

I don’t normally care for roguelikes but I think I’ve put more hours into Noita than any other—and I’ve never even made it very far at all. I just panic my way through hoping I chose a good way down and don’t have the dumbest wand in existence.

I think the only game I played for the first time during this year was Disco Elysium. And, like many others, I was wowed. I won’t devolve into purple prose or string together a maelstrom of superlatives, so I’ll just say this with possible slight spoilers:

Despite starting and stopping the game after being lambasted by the immediate consequences of my character’s deplorable, ethanol-fueled behavior that hit way too close to home, I finally came back to it with the utmost enthusiasm. Harry’s abject level of rock bottom that hits you over the head as soon as you start the game was so disturbing for me as someone with similar struggles. The helplessness to change your sorry state and to win over your partner’s approval was so affecting. It makes me wonder how many people in the throes of addiction picked this up and put it down immediately from getting too triggered.

There is so much I would love to just go on and on about so I’ll just hit some aspects that really stand out for me. One thing that I loved, so freaking much, was the wondrously imaginative nomenclature. One of the biggest killers for my immersion into a work of fiction is the vapid or lazy naming of the world—which is sadly often. I mean, come on: Revachol, Insulindian isola, Graad… Harry’s rank as “double yefreitor” or all the character paths like “Electrochemistry”… I thought it was all so very inspired. Never mind the incredible inner dialogue of each upgrade character type—Half Light’s biting dialogue is totally savage, Shivers prose of the world, Inland Empire’s unhinged musings… unreal.

I went on much longer than I meant to so I’ll just say the game world is just as inspired. It is enigmatically dystopian to the most agonizing degree. Which honestly felt just as alluring as deeply distressing for all the neat people you come across. And to segue to the last point of the characters/VAs: what a glorious menagerie of souls… I fell in love with some, wrinkled my nose at others, and found myself enraged at a few.

Hard to not write a novel, but what a freaking game.

Oh no, consequences for my actions! He has one of the most punchable faces I’ve ever seen. He’s lucky most Asian people are cool and passive and never caught a pipe to the face early on—but ofc, people can only be pushed so far.

It isn’t worth it. At least for me at this point. When you are dealing with the ineptitude of the simple-minded masses—which is either bandied at best or they are totally blinded by hatred from vacuuming up disinformation without an iota of effort to fact-check anything—the best hope is face-to-face discourse. But even then you are unlikely to change most peoples’ minds that they have been deluded and taken for a ride—especially the older they are. Which is sad and frankly disturbing. One of the most disgusting things to me is a myopic person who is so intransigent, that they can’t for a moment believe they might be mistaken about something.

From looking at the line I was in voting, it’s no wonder this happened: these simple-minded geriatrics turned out in droves for their dictator.

GOP: Geriatrics for an Orwellian Power

Thank you very much :)

Thanks!

almost choked on my sandwich lmao

That’s great to hear; thank you very much!

Dude, Windhand’s Forest Clouds is so freaking sick. What a vibe—the album art, the track names, and ofc the sound is so awesome. Man, it feels so hyperbolic, but I honestly haven’t had this feeling listening to music in sooo long.

For sure, I dig some death/black metal stuff a bit, but I’ve always been a nu metal plebian that having this convo on reddit would just have die-hard gatekeepers take a dump on me, tbh. I’ve always hated how gatekeepy metal has always been. Thanks for the recs and interesting genre info! All the genre names are so hilariously awesome xD

Hey, thanks!

I’ve been on a non-stop yt metal rabbit hole after googling some of these bands. Thanks for re-awakening the wide world of metal. It’s strange how you go through different types of music throughout your life.

I’d also give it up to Carhartt. As someone who has worked his entire life in the tree business, they are pretty freaking tough. I switched to crewneck, though; got tired of the kangaroo pouch filling with sawdust. One caveat: the sizing skews large—substantially, IMO. At least when the fit says “loose,” in any case.