Best way of handling this is to load the environment with random events that can occur on various return trips. Sea of Thieves and Red Read Redemption 2 do this, though it doesn’t work for every game.

The other good way to handle it is a fun movement system, eg Insomniac games.

To me, it’s an indicator that the rest of the industry bankrupted its talent and innovation. There’s been some great indie games, but nothing overwhelmingly amazing, certainly not in the AAA space.

I miss walmart.horse

(The site was just a picture of a Walmart with a horse in front of it)

If HL3 was ever to get news, I don’t really think Valve would do it on someone else’s awards show. They tend to own their own announcements.

Something I tried to do earlier to help with it, in this very channel, was a “Downvote any game you’ve heard of before” thread. It was a nice exercise to help people post odd games no one had heard of.

I’m a sucker for Zenless Zone Zero. I recognize it’s often catering to male gaze, but I appreciate there’s some uniqueness and interesting themes to the designs.

Basic example, “Corin” being on first blush just a cute maid cut, but also following a Frankenstein design theme with the bolts/chainsaw and hair color.

They’ve also had a “bunny-girl”, Alice, who much like real bunnies is skittish and easily frightened (and is thankfully not nearly as sexualized as the theme often carries)

If you haven’t played games in a while, a subscription service like game pass or PS+ can be a good idea.

It’ll let you try out a lot of games that you might not try otherwise, and also try/discard some games that seemed cool but turn out to be unlikable.

When this happens to me, I think it’s a bit of a mental decision between “They’re going to explain it, it’s meant to be mysterious now.” and “They explained it poorly”.

Biggest pet peeve is when the plot centers on one key character that people only talk about, and you never see. Or when one key piece of information is muttered in a heavy accent during five other things happening.

I of course love the former. I’ve been burnt by the latter many times, like “Oh, I should’ve rewound the movie.”

Silly Poly Beast - 3 GB Another Crab’s Treasure - 7.7 GB

Rabbit and Steel - 376 MB, coop PVE game, plays a lot like FFXIV raids

The worst part is, I consider myself a bit of a gooner; I like alluring, attractive characters. But that was meant to be a story-based game, and yet it designed so many jokes around attractive women dressing in rags, being clueless, easily offended, and seemed to design the story around an intense contact between a shonen hero and a large-breasted woman.

At least in something like Stellar Blade, they evade the subject because they know there’s nothing constructive to say.

dives to 50 feet, removes tube from mouth to shout to Gabe, and fucking drowns

I wonder how they plan to cover the events. Normally, you’d bring gaming journalists, but Saudis are terrified of journalists.

Ah yes, the fascist plan of “Look, we all know the foregone conclusion. X person will never change their mind (certainly not saying I support them), so you shouldn’t stand against them.”

I’d very much like to see the Accountable Capitalism act hit these companies. Force them to rethink their employee-hating positions when they need their votes to win over the board.

I know for myself, I have a bit of a mental barrier of separation between what I find kinky in fictional media, and what I would ever expect of real people. I fear for people that break that barrier, failing to understand the ways fiction goes outside of reality.

Of course, there’s rare cases where people somehow match porn - it’s probably best to let those be a surprise, not something you seek.

Apollo is out there in Kuh’rain, wondering if Ace Attorney will ever pick up on an old story so his boss can tell him something important and he can say back “Yeah, Mr. Wright, I figured that out because I’m not an idiot.”

It’s definitely been warped and beaten, but I at least appreciate that it’s a far more open system than cable, and thus there are ways to escape the worst of it for those who try. I let my Netflix sub expire, and instead have turned to library apps and PBS - there’s still far more content than I’d ever finish.

Installing CachyOS hasn’t quite given nostalgia, but it got me away from the feeling of Windows’ bloatware.

The internet’s creative centers pre YouTube algorithm.

Now, not just to make it big, but to get popular, you need someone talking for 10 minutes every week to draw attention - maybe even every day.

That forces hundreds of creators to consider what content can be made lazily with no effort, rather than with skill over the course of a few months. Rewind back to the better days of Flash animations and even my own hobby of Garry’s Mod / Source Filmmaker animations to see a lot of what I mean.

I mean…they considered piracy, and cheating, valid for a long time.