I wonder if I can make a cheat that doesn’t do anything but turn myself into a frog…

“Real world politics”? Did I miss the news that Undead Demon Margaret Thatcher is running in the next UK election?

I was way too busy telling Chuck Norris jokes in the Barrens and looking for Mankrik’s wife.

Nomura was in high school in the 80s, I wonder what game it was.

“Good news! We’ve shoddily reconfigured this triangle maker to make circles. You have to hold onto it as it goes through the machine or else it will get thrown around, because the machine is designed with the assumption that the product has corners. Ignore those stickers that say not to put your hands that close when it’s operating, that’s just CYA shit that doesn’t matter in the real world. Also when the machine jams because it wasn’t designed to operate on circles, we’ll blame you for using it wrong.”

— Management the last time I had a factory job.

(At that job it was actually a machine that was designed to wrap large objects in plastic, but was being used to wrap cabinet doors, some of which were less than 18 inches long and weighed just a few pounds. The thing is covered in labels that say not to put your arms near the rotating plastic spool, but if you don’t hold onto the doors for dear life it will fling them all over the place, endangering you and everyone else nearby, because it is only intended to operate on stuff that weighs many times as much as the average object they were putting through it. Also if the doors are not wide enough, the plastic will be in the wrong position when it gets cut and some of it will get caught on a moving part, which will eventually jam it, so you have to hold onto the door with one hand and pull the plastic out of the way with the other, and if you fail to do that enough times (due to needing both hands to hold the smallest doors as they move through the wrapper) then it will jam and it will be your fault, because you should have magically had an extra hand or something.)

Sorry, I didn’t start this comment intending to write a whole rant, but it kind of ended up there. :P

All, top 6 hours.

I just finished replaying Dark Souls 2. And I’m going back for NG+, and there’s nothing you can do about it!

/me cackles evilly

The mentor/parent figure has to die for the protag to prove that they’re self-actualized or whatever. Sometimes I can point out who’s going to bite it as soon as the first few scenes of the book/movie/game and it makes me want to stop reading/watching/playing, and then if I keep going anyway I regret it when it turns out I was right.

Okay the image is messy but the snake coiling around the scales is actually a sick concept.

Welp, time to learn the real version of the fight!

Edit: Got him!

The experience is very similar, overall. The most noticeable difference is that the textures for overlays like blood spatter are very low res on PS5 in performance mode. Not sure what quality mode looks like, I tend to leave everything on performance out of habit.

I started a new character (mostly because I no longer have a working PC, so I had to switch to playing on my roommate’s PS5) and am about 40 hours in now. I know I should be trying to actually advance, but I can’t stop myself from puttering around the open world.

I did, for once, decide to restrain myself and only level my main stats (Strength, Vigor, Endurance) instead of branching out into a little bit of everything to hit stat requirements for spells and weapons just to try them out. Either I suddenly got a lot better than I remembered being, or leveling sensibly makes the game like 10x easier.

One problem I’m anticipating for the DLC: I’ve already settled into an aesthetic I like, with lightly-armored sellsword vibes (bastard sword, Vulgar Militia armor, bandit boots, bandit manchettes). So there is a good chance that I pick up all the new DLC items, go “oh that’s neat, but not for this character” and then never give them a decent shot. :P

Edit: Holy shit Starscourge Radahn is, like, a real boss? The first time I played I killed him on my second try and I didn’t really understand what all the fuss was about. I spent the entire rest of the game making fun of him by pointing out enemies that are “literally stronger than Radahn.” But, uh, now he’s kicking my teeth in and it turns out I didn’t learn the fight at all. Did his hitboxes used to be bugged or something? I seem to recall that I previously killed him just by hugging his feet and mashing R1 while all his attacks missed me, but that is not currently happening, LMAO.

Damn. I knew this would happen eventually, I guess. I’ve been avoiding mentioning them by name on public sites for years in hopes of keeping the heat off.

Amnesia reminds me: another problem with horror games is that “game” elements are at odds with “horror” elements. I played the demo for Amnesia and the atmosphere broke as soon as I picked up a chair, because the next thing I thought was “If I can pick up chairs, can I stack them?” and there was nothing to stop me from lugging it to the next chair, which looked very silly and distracted from the feeling the game was trying to impart… and the answer turned out to be yes, you can stack chairs.

You know you start that level having apparently fallen through a hole from an upper floor? I wanted to know what was up there, so I went around and gathered all the chairs in the level to make a big rickety chair stack I could sort of awkwardly jump up. I guess they knew someone would do that, because there was a cheeky message scrawled on the wall up there. But it’s completely impossible to be scared by a game after you’ve spent twenty minutes faffing around with physics objects.

Perfect! :D

If I weren’t lazy I’d make a “I’m literally the guy in the photo” meme about this.

Based on the linked article, I think they’re implying that the rise of a free press in what was then a region of the Ottoman Empire was linked to an increasing sense of Palestinian identity and/or nationalism, and resistance to the growing Zionist movement.

I worked for an environmentalist canvassing org in Texas for about a month but I didn’t stay long enough to find out their stance on unions. I’m not cut out to spend all day getting yelled at by people threatening to call the cops on me for knocking on their door. Also I just kind of got a weird vibe from them overall.

Is that bad? I love almond milk but I feel like it deserves its own word. :P

I usually am pleasant, though. I would feel much less human if I just demanded things!