- 1 Post
- 37 Comments
I think original Sims made the biggest impact on me since I probably played that one the most. Our PC couldn’t handle The Sims 2 when it came out, and I only tangentially tried 3 and 4. Mostly enough to build a cool house and spend a few days with the Sims I created. Sims 1 I probably poured a ton of hours into it.
One thing I did discover and never fully completed in the later games was trying to do some sort of haunted house family. As in, have someone move in and intentionally die in a way that created a new color of ghost. Get all of the different ghost colors in one house/lot then move a normal family in. I don’t think it really mattered in any way, I just loved the idea of a regular family cohabitating with a rainbow of ghosts.
There’s something both so unique and also so simple to the Sims that I’m surprised it’s taken this long for folks to try and “go for it” the way Cities:Skylines went for Sim City. Like, you have to craft interesting stories within the game but you don’t need to wholecloth invent a galactic empire/fantasy world/etc…you can broadly look at our world and copy/paste for inspiration. With Paralives and Life By You “coming soon” in some fashion, there’s going to be some interesting competition here.
We just had our second kid so any games have to basically be on the phone right now. Luckily, someone mentioned Wildfrost in the same breath as Slay the Spire and it has been awesome to play while holding the little one.
It’s a card/deck builder rogue like, but you’re deploying units into one of two lanes and positioning them for maximum effect. Each unit counts down until it attacks, but you have a handful of cards to directly attack as well. You run until you fight the final boss, unlock more stuff along the way, etc…it’s been a blast. The art style is cute (how big can Yuki’s snowball get? Try and find out!) and I love the soundtrack.
On iOS at least, the game is free to download and try out before purchasing (think it was $7). If you like Slay the Spire and similar games, well worth looking into!
If you want to pay for audiobooks, Libro.FM is a DRM free alternative that allows you to easily download your books without any issues that Libation solves for. It also supports local bookstores in your community while not giving more to Amazon. Only a handful of books aren’t available on Libro but it’s been a seamless transition for us. It’s only going to be difficult if you’re one of those folks who returns/refunds audible credits regularly as it’s not easy to do with Libro.
I mean, words could be said about Kyrsten Sinema but I think this is far more appropriate of a summary of her time as a politician…
The best part of it too was for Wi-Fi calling, if it was off, couldn’t be turned on since it relied on AT&T’s website/capabilities to approve and authenticate. That was at least my experience as well as my family’s.
So if you hadn’t already enabled it before the outage, you literally couldn’t turn it on.
I thought this article from Vox did a good job laying out how it could fall in Trump’s favor.
Taking Trump out of the equation for a moment, I do find resonance with the argument that a state shouldn’t be able to disqualify someone from a national election and that a decision like that should sit at the federal level. I’ll also echo circularfish in that I don’t trust Republican states to fairly apply this standard. It seems like something Democrat-controlled states might do because they believe in rules/institutions so they’ll only do it when pressured, if even then. Republican-controlled states will do to score points on Fox/OAN against anyone from Joe Manchin and leftwards on the political spectrum.
Enjoying it a lot, maybe ~12h in or so?
I put about 30h into Valheim and this feels like it will play out a similar way. I’ll have a blast for a concentrated time, maybe play with a friend or two, then find something else. I thought the mishmash of realistic world and cute cartoony monsters would clash but it’s working for me. Just starting to see the loop of automation and what to look for in a second base. It has a charming amount of jank attached to it.
I spent most of my time yesterday rebuilding my base after one of those grass elephants attacked us for no obvious reason, then a bunch of WAY higher level Relaxasaurus raided alongside the elephant and burned my base down.
Totally could see that being the case. I think it was a combination of seeing the difficulty curve and not having a consistent group to play with that probably did me in. I’m happy to lose and learn, but not maybe as much as it seemed like I would playing solo!
Given more time, definitely something I’d want to get into more.
The marketing for Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and The Man Who Erased His Name seem to have worked on me because I decided to start playing Yakuza 0 on my Steam Deck. Sticking to pure easy mode and mainlining the story. It’s got some weird jank to it but I also kinda like it? If it hooks me, maybe I’ll take the plunge on the others. Yakuza: Like A Dragon looked like a lot of fun so I’ll probably stop and smell the roses when I get to that one.
Otherwise, Fights in Tight Spaces is my current non-story focused game I’m making my way through.
I don’t think I played any truly bad games, but I do have a list of games that I bounced off of for one reason or another. Maybe I ran out of steam to play them, maybe life got in the way and I couldn’t come back to it, or I just didn’t want to “git gud” with the limited time I have. I basically deemed them not worth my time when I did manage to sink a ton of hours into Spider-Man, Cyberpunk, and Talos Principle.
So that abandoned graveyard consists of…
- Tunic - I hit a wall at one of the bosses and just couldn’t progress. Ran out of juice unfortunately.
- Mr. Sun’s Hatbox - Such a weird quirky game. Didn’t get close to beating it but I got enough out of it and called it quits.
- Hunt: Showdown - This one was a bummer. It’s been on my “need to try” list. I tried it, solo, and died right away. I could tell it was one of those games that needed a time investment to make it work and I just don’t have it in me.
- Cult of the Lamb - Something about the roguelike aspect of it didn’t mesh with me, which is weird because I feel like that’s really become a genre I like.
- Overwatch 2 - I played poorly as Lifeweaver, was griefed in chat, and quit :)
I think I’m almost done with Cyberpunk 2077. Cleared all Scanner Hustles and Side Gigs, most Side Missions, so I think I just have the main story, the Phantom Liberty story, and whatever Side Missions might need a day in-game to complete. When it’s done I think I’m going to find something much lower impact to just veg out in for a bit, but Cyberpunk has been a lot of fun to dive into and I can see myself coming back to it in a few years.
I also took the plunge into a gacha game for some reason on my phone. Reverse 1999. The art style was intriguing and I’m enjoying it a lot so far. We’ll see how long it sticks around.
I might have just turned to dust and blown away in the wind reading this!
Seriously though, it’s nice how just simple they are. Even times I’ve fired up my PS3 it’s got just a little bit of friction in ways you don’t expect there to be. The trade off for all that simplicity though is you get what’s on the disc/cartridge and that is it. No patches, no DLC or expansions, and you lose/break/give away that disc you’re out of luck. It’s weird even now feeling like those games could be “lesser versions” because they can’t be updated in any way, but as a kid at the time that wasn’t even an expectation.
Probably the hardest thing at this point is remembering you need that ADC to connect it to a modern TV!
I think term limits really depends. I get why it makes sense in the abstract and I would love to see it implemented but I’ve stopped really advocating for it as a long term fix. It just moves the “institutional knowledge” about how Congress works into the hands of lobbyists instead of Congress. The revolving door just gets worse. It would have to be something like term limits + campaign finance reform to make a meaningful impact. That’s a noble goal but we’ve needed campaign finance reform for a while and no one seems to want to address it.
Age limits seems to be a good balance of making an individual Congress critter’s term long enough to still have some sway/power/authority (instead of lobbyists) while making sure they don’t blue screen on us during a press conference. Given such high profile issues with McConnell and Feinstein I’ll be a little optimistic in hoping for some change.
Yep. I hit a wall with a couple of the final battles in the DLC missions (Morbius and Storm) that I finally ratcheted down my difficulty level back to “normal” just to get through and not sour my experience with the game.
It did mean I annihilated the final boss of the campaign but I didn’t mind. It was still fun :)
(finally) Finished Midnight Suns. About 80h towards it and while I did enjoy it immensely, I’m glad it’s over and time to move on to other things.
I started and finished the first Frog Detective game last night. I figured it would be short but not 1.5h short! Quirky and it got a couple of legit laughs out of me. I’m definitely interested in playing the other two episodes.
And I decided to play Overwatch 2 now that it’s on Steam. I stopped playing OW1 years ago and this seemed a good excuse to try it again. I am starting from the ground up since I apparently deleted my old Battle.net account, which is frustrating to not have all the heroes/skins available but it’s also easing me back in. The monetization at least seems to be an improvement over loot boxes. I’m really just playing with whatever I’ve managed to unlock and not paying for the BP until I know how far a super casual player like myself can get. The core game is luckily still solid and since I don’t have the bad blood of the scrapped PvE mode or anything, I’m just enjoying playing more Overwatch again.
This is interesting to say the least. I tried out Vortex on my last major Stardew Valley playthrough and I found it a bit clunky. I got it to work, but I feel like it had a learning curve to its own vocabulary and how it organized everything. Then when I found a few of the mods recommended skipping Vortex and just doing a direct download, I keyed in to a much simpler workflow I could wrap my head around with updating the mods.
Interested to see what the new app might look like in time. If they can take lessons learned from Vortex and apply them forward, that’s great.
That’s the most infuriating part. You pay for it no matter what. You’re gambling that you won’t get sick and you can keep yourself healthy. But the thing this always ignores is the human body ALWAYS breaks down over time. We all need healthcare at some point, whether it’s for a surprise tumor, a pregnancy, or just getting old. You can do everything right and at some point you will still need to engage the system, either for yourself or for a loved one. You’re still going to pay for it.
But heaven forbid you pay for it out of your (shudder) taxes.
I think I’m nearing the end of Midnight Suns. Story seems to be wrapping up so I’m trying to get the last few friendship levels for folks. This has been such a blast to play and I’m glad I picked up the complete edition for ~$35 in a Steam sale.
Not sure what the next one will be. Really tempted to grab Baldurs Gate but I’ll probably go back to some indie backlog games for a few.
Skimming through my Steam library, here are the games that I’d call memorable/left an imprint for me in the last year.
-
Neon White - Score attack/leaderboard chasing is NOT my genre at all, but the game felt so good to get into a flow state and solve the puzzle, chasing that last Ace medal timing. There are more things I could have gone and chased, but getting all Ace medals, gifts and finishing the story was sufficient for me. I’d be curious to figure out if playing again, almost a year later, if I could do any of the later levels!
-
Security Booth: Director’s Cut - A very short experience but such a fascinating and creepy one. You’re asked to man a security booth and let in or reject cars based on a list of license plates. Things get weird and that’s all I really want to say. This is also a game that feels like it was originally released on a PS1.
-
The Case of the Golden Idol - Both Outer Wilds and Return of the Obra Dinn are some of my favorites of all time , so when I heard that Golden Idol was like both of them together I was extremely curious. It’s more Obra Dinn than Outer Wilds, but the core mystery in each level is so interesting to uncover. Nothing ever really comes out and says “So this is what happened” in a cutscene, but you read a letter in one room, maybe a letter in another, then you’re checking between them for the dates and trying to figure out what happened when. I felt so smart when a puzzle came together and when I saw/solved one of the big mysteries before they basically tell you the answer. So so so much fun and I need to get into the DLC.
-
Marvel’s Spider Man and Miles Morales - I played the first Spider Man on Sony’s streaming service a couple years ago, so I knew all the story beats already. That didn’t stop the emotional impact from STILL hitting me from some of the final villain’s speech to Peter. I had also never played Miles Morales, so it was great to put them both back to back. The story can feel very routine/by the numbers but I almost didn’t care because I was having so much fun swinging through New York. Cannot wait for Spider Man 2.
Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod - https://techpod.content.town/
Brad Shoemaker of Gamespot/GiantBomb/Nextlander and Will Smith of Tested.com and several other things (but not THAT Will Smith) both dive into tech issues and are more to the left. They also have a separate FOSS Pod.
Democrats fall in love. Republicans fall in line.
It’s reductive, but look at the Christian Right and Trump. Trump is nowhere close to the picture of a Christian. It’s astounding he can safely cross the threshold of a church. But he promises to make sure abortion is illegal and men can’t pretend to be women to steal kids, so they vote for him. Replace the abortion issue with guns and you get another set of voters who will vote Republican regardless of what they might personally feel.
Meanwhile and to your point on the left, each candidate’s worst flaws are held as some kind of uncrossable line by people who are terminally online (which isn’t helpful) and the Democratic Party does what they can to feed this and make sure they don’t have to enact meaningful change. They just want to maintain the status quo but they get to do it with a pride flag waving behind them. If the Party establishment would just stop putting a thumb on the scale (not just against Bernie but ANYONE remotely progressive/left of the neoliberal center) and let the primary process shake out the most popular candidate, they might actually find themselves winning elections.
- •
- 1Y
- •
I totally agree, and aside from my personal stance of not owning a Tesla, I can’t deny they’ve managed to nail it on the Supercharger front. I think my frustration is more that the one major holdout on a non-CCS standard was already planning to build CCS support into their network. If they’re going to keep on that path, great, but I also won’t trust Musk’s promises on something like this until it’s completed (especially if more manufacturers jump onboard to NACS).
Just seems like it would have been easier to drag one company one way vs. keeping it the wild west.
This is upsetting since Tesla was going to adopt the CCS standard at their charging stations, since as far as I understand it, they were the only manufacturer with an unusual charging plug. Most everyone else was using CCS.
This announcement now means we’re farther away from a standard charging port, with Tesla, Ford, GM, and now Rivian adopting one set and others adopting another at the moment. I don’t care which one “wins” in the end or which is better, just pick one and be done with it.
I put about 20+ hours into Monster Train on the PC/Steam Deck late last year and ended up picking it up again on iOS. It has me hooked all over again.
If you’ve enjoyed games like Slay the Spire in the past for deckbuilding rougelikes, it’s perfect to hammer out a battle pretty quickly. The main difference is each level is like playing three battles of Slay The Spire since there are three “lanes” that the enemies move through. It has enough depth and replayability that you can go for quite some time before burning out.
Plus, you can add googly eyes to every character/minion in the game and I can’t not play with that option turned on.
I tried to use Reddit over old.reddit and I was OK with it for a while, but I gave up when topics with barely any engagement would show up at the “top” in my feed and I would get suggestions from other subreddits that I wasn’t a part of.
I can adapt to a UI given time and I did like some aspects of their new layout. I’m not on board with desperately trying to fill my feed with “something new” every time I visit the site though because sometimes I want to follow up on a topic from earlier. It just kept burying things and I switched back to old.reddit after maybe six months of trying the new one.
For the sake of the app developers, I hope Reddit reverses course, sets a more reasonable cost, or the devs find ways to hook into something like Lemmy so they can keep doing what they do best. That said, I’m happy to have found a much better community in the whole process :)
Hmm…440 hours on Steam…probably another 125 on the Switch…
I love this game. It’s so cozy and comfortable. I found SDV after my divorce just when it had originally released and I was drawn into the cute world and how much character oozes from every corner. Every person you meet has something going on or you can just be a weird hermit building out your farm in peace. There’s enough of a story to propel you forward but never overbearing and it gets out of the way when it’s “done”.
As time has gone on from my first playthrough, I’ll typically dive back in when the itch strikes or a new content update comes along. The last few playthroughs I’ve done a lot to mod the game and introduce new things into the world to discover, some of which just feels indistinguishable from the official content and others that just help reduce barriers that I want to skip over (like fishing).
Stardew Valley is a game I will likely always go back to. I’m sure it will eventually eclipse my current most played game (Team Fortress 2 @ ~800 hours). I’ve tried other games like it and while they’re fun, none seem to have the staying power that Stardew has over me. While I will absolutely check out his next game, I’m hoping Stardew Valley never really stops being updated over the years.