I'm further behind in Ori but I'm enjoying it greatly. I'm not a big metroidvania aficionado, but I played and loved Hollow Knight despite it's difficulty (some of the bosses really tested my tolerance for punishment). I appreciate that Ori is (so far) a more accessible game.
I was persuaded to pick Elden Ring back up despite not really feeling a pull for it, but lo and behold once I was back in I fell in deep. I never actually finished the game with my first dex/bleed-based character, so I continued making my way through Crumbling Farum Azula. I've given Malekith a couple of attempts but I'm pretty burned out on bosses at the moment. I started up a new sorcery-based character and that's been the real joy. Magic really does make the game significantly easier, and part of me wishes I'd done my first playthrough this way. But I'd beaten Demon's Souls remake not too long before starting Elden Ring originally and wanted something different.
To fall back on when I get too frustrated, I've been playing 10tons's Undead Horde. Their game Dysmantle wound up being a major highlight the year that I played it (I really, really liked it), so I finally bought Undead Horde 1 and 2. It's not nearly as good as Dysmantle, but it's a really great, lightweight dungeon crawler. I like their vibe very much and am really looking forward to Dysplaced.
I also gave the Saints Row reboot a try since it was free a while back on PS+ and it's really, really (really) dumb. It's also kind of fun, a little at a time. Not sure it'll hold my interest all the way through but it's nice having an open world game that's just...easy to play and asks very little of the player.
Watcher Knights I think are near the top of my list. I just rewatched my recording of beating them and I was fumbling so badly lol. It's obvious I'm running with the "pure desperation" tactic rather a more skillful approach, but it finally managed to work out.
I was addicted to exploring that world but I am satisfied with the one playthrough I think.
They claim that entertainment companies exist "to provide that entertainment." Sure I think creative leads and the devs (especially in the games industry) are there to provide entertainment that they are passionate about. But idk if I can ever see a period where the publisher was in it for the art, despite what they may say.
I agree with you, except that up until the early-to-mid aughts, before Fortnight, and skinner box mobile games, and the promise of persistent revenue capitalizing on addictive tendencies and FOMO, publishers believed that the best path to profit was good games. Konami, to pick the (previously) worst example, published one of the weirdest, most cinematic, ambitious, influential games of all time with Metal Gear Solid. And then, eventually, they saw a straighter, shorter path to profit.
I am...way more personally upset about the Arkane closure than I usually get about these things. I have so much respect for what that studio created. This article is great though and gives the holistic perspective I've been looking for the past few days:
The point here, ultimately, is that this cycle has been repeating, and repeating, and repeating, and it does not show any sign of coming to an end. Xbox buys talent, mismanages it in search of impossible scale, and cuts it loose - be that the 20-year experts of Fable, or the battle-scarred makers of Dishonored, or the invigorating new generation behind Hi-Fi Rush. Xbox's leadership clearly knows it's a problem...they have to step behind this first, surface-level layer of justification for closing studios, and get to the real cause - not the decisions themselves, but the principles that inform them. The principles that say expertise, creativity and talent are less valuable than the cost to let them flourish.
There's a PlayStation community I was subscribed to whose main mod posted a gamergatey rant over the weekend with a number of factual inaccuracies. I wanted desperately to assume they were just benignly uninformed, but it didn't turn out that way.
I'm not interested in subscribing to a community at risk of being affected by that kind of toxicity, so I had to leave. Which is a bummer because I liked having PS-specific news in my feed.
I was the news editor of smaller of the two sister papers from 2003-2006, when I was pushed out by the IT manager (offsite at the other paper). Life conspired to keep me in town, as my fiancee was wrapping her undergrad. I got laid off the next year because the next place I worked shut down. I was able to quickly find a...
I think I have it. OP was staying at a hotel when it was evacuated by SWAT. This evacuation event was notable enough that it wound up on the front page of the paper (A1), so OP wound up being a source for a front-page story. As a result of reconnecting with people at the paper, they decided to try emailing the editor about any job opportunities.
Republican state representative Tiffany Esposito, who sponsored the new workplace heat bill, spent years as an operative in the business lobby before being elected in 2022.
Last month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the company that owns Pornhub to force compliance with the state’s age verification law and threatened millions of dollars in civil penalties.
My brain has actually defaulted to thinking of Ken Paxton as a particularly vile time traveling pilgrim, whose immediate response to arriving in the present day was outrage that the world had changed and a divine conviction that it was his purpose to revert the world to the puritanical Christian dominance that made him feel warm and safe in his own time.
That's easier for me to comprehend than that an actual 21st century person has this many stupid, hateful ideas he's willing to happily tie his name to.
When we were trying to book a hotel, my partner clicked on the top link of a Google search, which was of course a sponsored link and took her to some completely off-brand intermediary whose website was designed to mimic the appearance of the hotel's. She completed the booking there before ever realizing it wasn't the hotel itself, and when I quoted the same stay directly with the hotel it wound up being some $100-$200 cheaper.
I had to have a lengthy phone call with their customer support and exchange a few emails before they finally agreed to refund us. I suppose we're lucky they even had a reachable customer service, but I was and remain infuriated by the conditions that created the situation in the first place.
I finally tried out Hardspace Shipbreaker. I've played a few hours and just finished the reactor tutorial. So far it's that diamond in the rough I'm always looking for: an engaging but chill gameplay loop and enticing progression. Something I can turn on to relax and zone out with noncommitally, but that isn't just an objective-less sandbox ala No Man's Sky.
If anyone has recommendations for other games that fit the bill please let me know!
The Republican Party is full of “sycophantic cowards who would gladly watch Ukrainians get killed if it meant Trump had a higher chance of winning reelection,” according to one American veteran training Ukrainian soldiers.
Now, with Republicans withholding critical lethal assistance, largely at the behest of former President Donald Trump, Ukrainian troops are feeling the pressure.
The amount of damage being done globally at the behest of Donald Trump's personal ego is unconscionable.
Washington state health and workplace inspectors have repeatedly been denied entry to a for-profit federal immigration detention center in Tacoma, where detainees have filed hundreds of complaints over issues like neglected hygiene, poor food and inadequate medical care....
The company claims that fully complying with the state law would put it in breach of its contract to operate the facility, raising the prospect of $160 million in lost revenue. GEO also says that complying with HB 1470 would require building upgrades estimated to cost over $3 million, including a complete redesign of the heating, cooling and ventilation system at the detention center.
I'm a California restaurant operator preparing for the $20-an-hour fast-food wage by trimming hours, eliminating employee vacation, and raising menu prices
No media outfit should be covering these anecdotes unless the business owner is willing to divulge their margins and expected impact to them. Is Mr. Fatburger here protecting a 1% decrease in his 9% margin? Cut a hole in a cantaloupe and fuck it. Uncritical coverage like this also assumes that owners are operating efficiently and that the minimum wage increase isn't unduly affecting them because they suck at operating a restaurant.
36 here too, two kids. I have been overwhelmed with fear the past few years that something like this will happen. I can only imagine that if I received the news you did, it would cripple me. Immediate shutdown.
I wish I had more to offer than my sympathy. I wish we could do better with cancer than we can...
This is frustrating. We know that in the absence of regulation or oversight, workers' rights at the bottom of our supply chains approach or outright classify as slavery conditions.
Fair trade certification is essentially meant to be a means of opting out of funding those conditions as consumers, by indicating which products hold themselves to a higher labor standard. However, this report claims that the mechanisms used to enforce those standards are exploited by certified organizations by manipulating the auditing process (e.g., compelling workers to respond positively in interviews because corporate representation is present). Thus, this particular brand of private regulation is worse than useless because it tempers labor solidarity in favor of impotent "ethical consumerism."
If accurate, it's nothing short of an outrage. But abandoning the idea entirely in favor of global labor solidarity feels naively misguided. The majority of privileged consumers don't even care enough to choose fair trade options when given the choice, due to ignorance, apathy, and/or a sincere belief that we have a divine right to $1 king sized-snickers, and that the exploitation of invisible people is an unfortunate or righteous inevitability.
Per Labor Notes's own findings, certification audits are carried out by third parties, and their reporting covers only areas in Mexico through the testimony of 200 workers. Without seeing more information, I don't want to assume this isn't a localized issue or due to a single negligent auditor. When given the choice between idealistic purity or meaningfully pragmatic gains, I'll choose the latter. But it's becoming increasingly apparent that's not enough on its own.
As a side note, I get my coffee from Equal Exchange and I highly recommend it, unless someone tells me they're bullshit too.
Exact same reaction. First person feels so inappropriate for this property that I immediately assumed comparisons to Uncharted and Tomb Raider must have been a, if not the, major contributing factor to going first person.
First person perspective blurs the line between player and character for a specific type of immersion (when done well). An Indiana Jones game should be all about playing as motherfucking Indiana Jones, no blurred lines necessary. His stature and costume is integral to the formula that makes him iconic, and without them, the gameplay segments of this trailer make it look like Far Cry: The 80s Adventure Serial.
I've said before that being a PS Plus subscriber has changed the types of games I play by making indie games more accessible to try, with low stakes. Prior, I usually reserved my funds for what I assumed was the biggest bang with AAA titles.
There's value there with having a library of games to just try out. That being said, the trajectory of subscription services generally and "digital ownership" (see Playstation's recent Discovery kerfuffle) is really concerning.
I think Ubisoft's mindset here is on the wrong track (surprise...). Luckily, as others have said, there's not a lot of temptation here for Ubisoft's modern library (Prince of Persia being an admitted exception).
Still haven't seen the first season and am not too familiar with Dever's work, so I'm indifferent to this casting. Cool that she was Cassie Drake though.
I do hope she nails it. TLOU 2 was one of the most profoundly impactful works of art I've experienced: it exposed my susceptibility to bias resulting from narrative framing. Abby's depth of character was essential to that experience.
I also hope they keep the narrative structure from the games. The shock of the midpoint twist was also essential.
I'm really interested for this game to release. I expect it to be a critical failure and a commercial break-even, mostly due to Rocksteady's (as yet untarnished) pedigree and marketing.
But I also haven't ruled out that it will be a surprise hit. I didn't even realize this wasn't being fully marketed as a live-service game, and who knows, maybe all the hogwash in this article about the "trinity" of gameplay elements and sharing experiences with friends will actually work somehow.
But if it is all the worst things about the live service trend, I do hope it fails for the greater good, all due respect to the individuals who've done their best with it.
Mainly because of the hype/marketing, but I may be overestimating it. It's a good point that Avengers bombed, but I do think Rocksteady is a more competent developer than CD (I'm not personally a big fan of their Tomb Raider games).
I also just tend to think anything is possible until it isn't. It wouldn't be the first game to buck expectations if it somehow managed to be a hit.
Either way, the fact that this is the only game Rocksteady releases in nearly 10 years will be a deep source of bitterness.
Just started Alan Wake 2 myself yesterday. In the past couple months I played the original's remaster and then replayed Control (including the DLC).
This game's an absolute trip. I've said before that I wasn't terribly hooked by Alan Wake the first time I played it way back, but I fucking loved Control. The world building was fascinating, and there was some new, mind bending idea around every damn corner in the oldest house. But one of the best things it did was expand the world of Alan Wake in a way that benefited them both.
I'm only a few hours in but Remedy is so far promising to deliver on the best of both worlds with renewed vigor. I am hooked this time.
With over 1,500 antisemitic incidents between Oct. 7 and mid-November – three times the reported number in the entire 2022 – more French Jews seek to escape the climate of fear
I feel for anyone who feels unsafe in their homes and communities. I can't imagine the weight of the decision to uproot yourself and your family to emigrate to another country for reasons beyond your control, especially discrimination.
It's worth noting, though, that this article seemingly goes out of its way to obfuscate what qualifies as anti-semitic acts.
"This kind of expression is no longer coming only from the extreme right, but also by the far left — and while it’s doubtful that it’s always antisemitic, anyone sensitive can feel that it’s never far away in certain discourse,” warns Wieviorka.
Palestinian solidarity is not anti-semitism, and there are abundant indicators (from this article and its links) they're being conflated in France.
All your sources rely on the same primary source: the interior ministry. And I don't see a breakdown of the acts. In a number of articles, graffiti of stars of David across buildings in France was categorized as anti-Semitic, which seems really weird to me because they weren't defaced or altered in any way, just stars of David. On its face I would think that was...pro-semitic.
Either way, I'm not denying there has been an uptick in anti-Semitism and that any and all anti-semitism is indefensible. But there also seems to be a deliberate effort to embellish the narrative by treating anti-Israeli or pro-Paletinian acts as anti-Semitic. Then people react to that narrative with fear, and their fear is used to further credit the narrative.
The insidious part is that these stories treat the narrative as support for Israel's ongoing aggression.
Yeah, that's fair, I did not have that context originally. I should have quoted the article I linked, because the salient parts point out that it was strange the graffiti evoked the Israeli flag, which I had noticed originally:
Also the message in the medium was confusing. Conceivably a blue Israeli flag, or what immediately evokes it, could be seen as a pro-Jewish sign. Surely any genuine antisemite would have found a clearer way of expressing their hate.
I'm inclined to agree with the BBC's conclusion:
As for the purpose of Operation Star of David, like all dezinformatsiya it seems to have been to sow confusion and anxiety. The fact that the symbol could be either pro- or anti-Israeli made it all the more interesting: that way both sides would be suspicious.
I notice the Times of Israel doesn't consider this months-old information when continuing to reference it as evidence of anti-semitism.
"Tracking protection" sounds more like "alternative tracking."
Google's Privacy Sandbox initiative, just like its name implies, was designed to be an alternative to cookies that will allow advertisers to serve users ads while also protecting their privacy. It assigns users to groups according to their interests, based on their recent browsing activities, and advertisers can use that information to match them with relevant ads.
Lot of time, money, and effort toward a moderate improvement rather than just not perceiving users as products. But...improvement is improvement.
No argument here. There's a global paradigm shift needed to break out of that mindset should it even be possible, but it still boggles my mind in the meantime the resources invested in sustaining this ecosystem.
Article seems pretty flawed. Relevance is a vague metric, and the author relies pretty heavily on data related to government site visitation, which seems subject to bias toward certain types of users....
This is a very good example of the skewing I imagined. If you’re unable or prohibited from using Firefox on work devices (as many environments restrict), all that workday traffic will be coming from “approved” browsers.
I don’t think so. The article claims Firefox lost some of its lead developers to Google when it started developing Chrome and then took a long time to regain its footing around 2017. That sounds about right to my recollection. I had admittedly switched to Chrome myself for a while (I’m not terribly tech-savvy, maybe a little more than average) but switched back to Firefox last year. I am still pretty deeply embedded in the Google ecosystem though in other ways.
Me? Not at all. I actually posted this out of concern because, as I’ve said elsewhere, I’m a Firefox user, and my layman’s impression was that its reputation has been improving over the past couple years. I assumed its user base was doing the same as people grew increasingly concerned with Google’s intentions.
Apparently ZDnet has some reputational issues itself I was unaware of.
I prefer CHEAP, ACIDIC coffee because I did the pourover too fast on mediocre store-bought grounds that are too fine, LOL.
😄. Get yourself a decent burr grinder, a French press, and some Aldi oat milk (if you don’t want black) and you can make as good a cup of coffee as you can get at the best coffee shops.
As a relatively elder millennial (1987), I’d concede the title of last true pre-internet generation to Gen X. My family got AOL dial-up when I was in 6th grade, which was a little behind the curve compared to my peers, but not much. So I certainly lived through a seminal transition period as the internet developed and became…what it is today.
But the hallmark experiences of the pre-internet times, payphones, paper maps, coordinating with others, I only did so in my limited capacity as a child. I had a cell phone by…10th grade, I could at least print out MapQuest directions, etc.
I remember a lot, but didn’t truly interact with most of it.
Haha yeah, when I say I had a cell phone, I mean that I was essentially reachable at all times. I didn’t start using text messaging regularly until like…2009, and didn’t use it for anything else until I got my first Droid a few years later.
Fair point though, my response was very American-centric.
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of May 12th
What are you all playing!...
Eurogamer: What is the point of Xbox? (Opinion) ( www.eurogamer.net )
The platform holder has repeated the same terrible mistakes for over a decade. The reason is simple: its priorities are back-to-front.
The return of Gamergate is smaller and sadder ( www.theverge.com )
Evidently on a posting tear today. What happens when you're stuck in a Dr.'s waiting room, I guess...
Pondering drastically altering my resume after learning an employer that bookended several years of short stints due to layoffs shut down last year
I was the news editor of smaller of the two sister papers from 2003-2006, when I was pushed out by the IT manager (offsite at the other paper). Life conspired to keep me in town, as my fiancee was wrapping her undergrad. I got laid off the next year because the next place I worked shut down. I was able to quickly find a...
Florida Republicans Want to Ban Workplace Heat Protections ( jacobin.com )
18+ Pornhub disables website in Texas over objection to age verification law ( www.houstonchronicle.com )
On DMA eve, Google whines, Apple sounds alarms, and TikTok wants out ( arstechnica.com )
As a general rule, when trillion-dollar companies don't like regulation, it simply means they're admitting the rules are good for their customers.
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of February 25th
Hey y'all, what have you been playing!...
The High Cost of the GOP’s Reckless Decision to Withhold Aid to Ukraine ( newrepublic.com )
The Republican Party is full of “sycophantic cowards who would gladly watch Ukrainians get killed if it meant Trump had a higher chance of winning reelection,” according to one American veteran training Ukrainian soldiers.
Witness Told Feds She Was Paid for Sex Parties With Matt Gaetz ( www.thedailybeast.com )
State inspectors denied entry to privately-run immigration detention center in Tacoma ( washingtonstatestandard.com )
Washington state health and workplace inspectors have repeatedly been denied entry to a for-profit federal immigration detention center in Tacoma, where detainees have filed hundreds of complaints over issues like neglected hygiene, poor food and inadequate medical care....
Reporting on California’s Fast-Food Minimum Wage Raise Comes With Side Order of Fear ( fair.org )
how's your week going, Beehaw
it has been a pretty quiet week, although there was excellent schadenfreude yesterday from Ron Desantis dropping out
Why Fair Trade Produce Labels Are Bogus ( labornotes.org )
Indiana Jones And The Great Circle is first-person, stealthy, and coming 2024 ( www.rockpapershotgun.com )
Trademark Tussle: Remedy Entertainment And Take Two Clash Over Logo ( respawnfirst.com )
Take-Two Interactive and Remedy Entertainment are in a dispute over the letter R ( www.rockpapershotgun.com )
Take-Two Interactive think Remedy Entertainment's new logo is too close to Rockstar's big R logo, and they've filed an …
Ubisoft Wants You To Be Comfortable Not Owning Your Games ( kotaku.com )
How the term “genocide” is misused in the Israel-Hamas war ( www.economist.com )
I used to like The Economist, but this is Nazis propaganda right on their page....
UK Entertainment Shift as Gaming takes Backseat ( www.gamingarcade.co.uk )
In an unexpected turn, 2023 marked the first time since 2012 that video games were not the leading form of digital entertainment in the UK.
10 Days Into 2024 And 2300+ Video Game Layoffs Have Been Announced ( kotaku.com )
Mostly from Unity: 1800 through the end of March.
The Last Of Us Show Has Found Its Abby (Minor Spoilers) ( kotaku.com )
Suicide Squad Boss Downplays Live-Service Elements Of Obviously Live-Service Game ( kotaku.com )
Weekly “What are you watching” Thread || Week of January 7th
Shows / movies that I dropped halfway:...
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of January 7th
Happy new year!...
‘I’m afraid every day for my children’: As antisemitism soars, French Jews flee to Israel ( www.timesofisrael.com )
With over 1,500 antisemitic incidents between Oct. 7 and mid-November – three times the reported number in the entire 2022 – more French Jews seek to escape the climate of fear
The fall of Firefox: Mozilla's once-popular web browser slides into irrelevance ( www.zdnet.com )
Article seems pretty flawed. Relevance is a vague metric, and the author relies pretty heavily on data related to government site visitation, which seems subject to bias toward certain types of users....
Starbucks accused of manipulating app payments for $900 million profit ( www.androidauthority.com )
Get ready to hear more about "pre-internet" times ( www.axios.com )