not the country or the triangle :)

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Cake day: Jun 13, 2023

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Easy to employ so few when you dont rarely make games anymore


I played journey for the first time when it was posted to PC and consequentially went on sale on Steam. Very good game. I tried to connect with the guy who I played the majority of it with but he didn’t speak English and I don’t speak much Spanish so it kinda fizzled.



I have over 4,000 hours across all the trackmania games. So that, I guess. Most is 2,000 in United followed by a couple hundred in all the rest. 1,000 in trackmania 2020


Oh no boomer shooter means very fast FPS, it just has old-school mechanics like health packs, a large loadout, arena-style gameplay, stuff like that. Things that were considered outdated when games like Battlefield and COD rolled around in the mid 2000s. Like you’re not supposed to take cover in DOOM, but you are in Battlefield.


Those are tactical shooters. If it’s a simulator like ARMA then the term “milsim” (military simulator) is also used. Good example of a non-ARMA tactical shooter would be Ready or Not, Squad, Insurgency, or S.W.A.T


bermuda
creator
toGaming@beehaw.orgBest PS2 games?
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English
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Interesting, I heard cod 3 was the worst one


Best PS2 games?
I bought a PS2 about 6 months ago from a coworker and finally got around to getting it working at a good enough resolution on my monitor. I currently have: - GTA 3 - GTA Vice City - Gran Turismo 3 - Matrix: Path of Neo - Katamari Damacy - Midnight Club: Street Racing Any other suggestions? I know off the top of my head I want to get the SSX games, maybe some sports games, and of course the MGS titles that came out on PS2. Anything else?
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South Africa is .za from Zuid-Africa, the dutch term for the country



Oh good. Quick time events. In 2024.


Eh it’s fine ill just type it here.

Basically I was disappointed by the lack of star variety and the very predictable story. The environments were pretty but I also disliked that the devs put more effort into preventing alternate solutions, those were some of my favorite aspects of the first game.

The stars were 100% the biggest issue though. They were some of the most fun parts of the first game, but in 2 once you solved some of them you pretty much knew how to do the rest, and they became a major chore instead of a puzzle.


It’s on PS4, so there should be backwards compatibility


The Witness Appreciation Post
I got the urge to play the witness for the 3rd (or maybe even 4th) time again after being slightly disappointed by the Talos Principle 2, and man I cannot express enough how much I enjoy this game. It just satisfies something deep inside me every time I play it. And I know a LOT of people (probably some here) strongly dislike this game, but for me it's just sublime to play. Relaxing yet challenging, mysterious and layered, it's great in my opinion. It does however deeply annoy me how misunderstood the game is. Mostly from people who didn't play it all the way through. You'd be surprised how many times I've heard somebody complain about an aspect being "useless" or not making any sense when it IS useful and DOES make sense as long as you just keep playing the game. Also what's frustrating is when somebody complains about stumbling onto a puzzle they haven't learned yet in an **open world puzzle game** and then refusing to use the **open world** to go and find where it teaches you... idk. Anyway, LOVE this game. If there's anybody reading this who's into puzzles, especially 2D puzzle games, you may love the witness (but your computer might hate you, it's surprisingly graphically intense at times)
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That’s because they were led by the rich landowners.



Maybe I should target him for ‘improperly applied hair dye’


Lot of much more constructive answers here but I just wanna say that if you update a game so it no longer has unintuitive controls then I’m all for it


I used to live in a fairly Republican area of the country and you’re 100% correct. It’s not something people watch, it’s just that fox is always in the background. bars, restaurants, bowling alleys, the country club, it’s the default TV channel wherever you go. If you ask to change the channel people look at you like you’ve gone insane.


last year

not to downplay the events as tragic as they are but the headline made me think this happened like, yesterday.


It’s not just deciding the candidates. It’s a lot less of a vote in an election (like a primary) and more of a neighborhood meeting. People give speeches, express support or disdain, and try to convince other people to support their candidate. I believe they still vote at the end, but it’s not like an election where voting is the only thing you do. It’s different depending on the state, but that’s how it generally works in Iowa.

Edit; also important to note that caucus has different meanings depending on where it happens. I.e. if it happens in Congress then it’s a meeting of peers with similar backgrounds who then vote or decide on policy positions.


When it comes to arcade racers people seem to either forget or just don’t know about trackmania games. They aren’t perfect by any means but id certainly consider them among the best


This is a good video on the topic While I personally can very much see why they’ve banned some runners, I just can’t see why for others. I don’t agree with everything the youtuber says but it’s very compelling.

In short, the organization just seems very quick to blow minor mishaps way out of the water. They seem to enjoy treating their customers and their fanbase as children, and instead of letting people work out their own differences as the adults they are, they like to step in and handle it themselves. Sometimes this goes well, but most of the time it doesn’t.

Basically, the way they run the event just tends to cause drama and it doesn’t look like they’ll be changing anytime soon. I enjoy the runners and the runs, but the event organizers clearly have a lot of issues going on. There’s a reason you just don’t see this kind of drama with ESA.


Honestly I might check it out but they rarely seem to play games I’m interested in (first person shooters) and their management style gives me the ick. Very very puritanical over the most minor things.




it’s entertaining at this point

Been on the Internet for a while. 100% of people who say this are not entertained and are really saying this to stroke a badly bruised ego. OP, it’s clear to me that you got your ego damaged when people poked holes in your plan to make less money by buying things from shady sites. I hope after your sleep you come back to engage in a healthy manner without constantly trying to act morally superior or at least uncaring about real moral grey areas. Supporting these sites negatively affects real people.


Bud, it’s literally called skate.


Lived in Japan in the Kanto plain area (out of Tokyo) between 2014 - 2017 and this was always my worst nightmare. Hope as many people got to safety / high ground as possible.


I searched for “counter strike surf” and the first result was about the origin of the idiom “with all the bells and whistles.”

Much search engine.


For teens it almost certainly was. The “no phone policy” of many American high schools was implemented long before the iPhone. And yeah, texts may have been 10c each but that wasn’t your 10c ;)


I was in 12th grade and I remember my English teacher was weirdly prophetic about it. He told us that it would be the worst pandemic in decades, and this was before the US had its first case. Looking back, he was the only teacher I had who mentioned anything about it


Is this the same Tesla plant that has no caution stripes because Elon hates yellow and black? Or the one that violated EPA regulations? Not surprised in the slightest


I got sick of trying to make every avatar I have like me. Even if a game isn’t even an RPG I like to mentally roleplay as somebody very different. Having a female avatar helps with that sometimes.


Agree with the varied depictions. I did two playthroughs of cyberpunk (before phantom liberty) and female V says similar lines but in such different tones and much more expressive. I.e. when I pick an aggressive dialogue option it sounds like she’s more devious where male V is more of a brute. Stuff like that.


It’s the 4th skate game now


I’m ok with off board stuff. I thought it was fun to do when the points scoring got boring.


I tried one of those and I thought it was way too bland. I think it was Skater XL? Session looks neat but I’ve heard it’s way too hard and I’m not really looking for a challenge

And idk what you mean by “off board mechanics”? Hall of meat or…?


thoughts on the new skate game?
I love skate 3 and have been super excited since they announced the game was in development. I even played the alpha on PC but it was fairly sparse so there wasn't much to do. I've heard the beta tests now are more filled in but I have yet to get invited to those ones. Any other skate 1/2/3 fans? Any thoughts on the new game? (**For people out of the know, this is not a newly released game but it was announced in 2021 and has been steadily in development since.**)
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Not a lawyer but it’s amazing that what looks to be an attorney for Virginia is working so hard to dismantle freedom of the press, a foundation of US law (yes I know it’s not part of international laws in other countries but it’s still incredibly ironic)





I just wanted to commend Croteam
So, Croteam, the creators of the Serious Sam series as well as the Talos Principle game have just announced the sequel to the Talos Principle, The Talos Principle 2, is set to release a little over a week from this post, about **9 years** after the first game came out. I was always a huge puzzle fan and so I loved the first game, as well as its story, so I've been looking forward to this ever since it was announced like a year ago. Just recently the team released a [*demo*](https://store.steampowered.com/app/835960/The_Talos_Principle_2/) for the game, which is also quite astonishing in this day. I know the occasional game has released a demo here and there every other year or so, but I think I remember the last demo I played was Skate 3's back in 2010. I'm not quite old enough for it, but I do know that it wasn't that long ago where every game had a free demo. Sometimes they were shit, sometimes they were totally unique experiences, but they all allowed you to at least experience some part of the game before you bought it. I don't know how to word this more properly, but it just felt so nice actually being able to *play* a game before it comes out, without having to be a famous youtube reviewer or having to attend a ridiculously expensive convention. I don't want to be too optimistic here, but I'm far more optimistic for the release after playing this demo than I have ever been for most other AAA releases that only show trailers and developer promises. And not only that, but it also advances the story in a pretty spectacular way. The original game has multiple endings but the canon ending is sort of a cliffhanger and they expand on the story in that direction, so if you're a fan of the original and want to get a head-start on the game's story then I highly recommend checking it out. Anyway, I like it when studios are at least semi-transparent like this. It's nice to see them put out *something* tangible that people can interact with before choosing to buy something. Who knows, maybe the full release will be the usual buggy mess next week, but after playing the demo I don't get that feeling as much. edit: and to top of it off, even on medium settings this game. looks. **amazing.** It felt like something you'd see created by [Cyan](https://cyan.com/) (another puzzle game company), not by the people who made *Serious Sam* edit2: here are my key takeaway from the demo, marked in spoilers because well they are kinda spoilers: ::: spoiler spoiler 1. The usual croteam janky voice acting, which is honestly to be expected considering how Serious Sam's voice acting usually is. 2. There are animals in this game, I saw some but I'm unsure about how much interactivity there is with them. They all ran away from me :( 3. The world *appears* to be extremely open, probably more similar to the gameplay and exploration style of The Witness. There were many puzzles that seemed very different on the outset from the original game but I couldn't attempt them because this was a demo. 4. The new mechanics are *crazy*. Seriously. I've never seen a game do a mechanic like the Driller except the portal games. Hopefully that gives you lazy folk a reason to try the demo. 5. The RGB mechanic isn't as hard to figure out as it seems. Just subtract the color you want to get from RGB, and the remaining two are the ones you need to combine. Hopefully it's not a tough challenge for colorblind folks though. 6. I mentioned cyan earlier and I could really see it in the design of the second world. Almost alien architecture in a very Earth-like setting. It reminded me a lot of the design in Myst II: Riven. 7. Judging by the world map I got a quick glimpse of near the end of the demo, this game is looking to be utterly massive in terms of puzzle games. The first game was already crazy huge, but there's like 12 "worlds" with probably 15 puzzles each, + secret areas that didn't look like puzzles + you can just walk around each one and they're all massive. I assume if you do more exploration in the demo than I did you'll find more stuff. 8. Despite the aforementioned new mechanics being "crazy," they still felt really intuitive to me as a veteran player of the first game. It felt like the logic for them still made a lot of sense when combined with the logic of the original lasers, buttons, fans, turrets, and mines. I'm interested to see if this logic holds up when one goes further into the game. As is all the puzzles were still pretty easy, maybe medium difficulty for a complete noob. 9. I was disappointed not to see more of New Jerusalem, although I guess that makes sense. Devs probably didn't want there to be too much downtime. The warning at the start of the demo said some of the story was deleted or condensed for the demo so maybe there's more exploration in the full game. 10. The story didn't go too much into it, but I can already tell it's going to be about philosophy again (yay!) specifically around religion. "Do not say the Founder's name in vain" was a pretty clear clue. :::
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Shout out to that moment back in 2009 when Robin Walker of Valve once wrote that they started working on Team Fortress 2 back in 1987.
(2nd paragraph) ...which would have put the development of TF2 11 years before the first Team Fortress came out. Nice one, Robin.
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I totally forgot how terrible a non-ad-free YouTube experience is
So I've been using youtube ad blockers since pretty much when ad blocker extensions were first available. Lately though I've been getting hit more and more with these messages that YT was sending out every 5 or so videos telling me that adblockers aren't allowed. No problem, just gotta wait 5 seconds to x it out and then close my video. The straw that broke the camel's back though was when instead of a close-able pop-up, they just posted it in front of a video and wouldn't let me watch *anything* until I disabled my adblocker. So I disabled it and... wow. It's just so, so, trash. 2 ads before a video plus midrolls and every video ever. I tried listening to a playlist of songs and was getting a midroll ad every single time. Imagine trying to just listen to music for 3 minutes and getting interrupted by a commercial for a chevy silverado! Half the ads were for youtube premium and they specifically mentioned that it would get rid of all the ads. It just felt so damn predatory. I couldn't enjoy anything that wasn't already demonetized. And you know I'm fine with ads I guess. I could live with an ad before every video, but the fact that I was getting upwards of 5 ads in a 10 minute video was just plain absurd. I also hate that youtube got rid of the yellow markers to show you when an ad was coming up, so now it's just out of nowhere and always interrupts a key part of the video. E: I've been on Firefox for over a year.
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Anybody else in love with the base-control gameplay loop of the middle Far Cry games?
specifically talking about 3, 4, 5, and the "expansion" games like Blood Dragon and New Dawn. And I still haven't played Far Cry 6 so I can't comment on that. Every time I get bored of all my favorite games I reinstall one of the three and go on like 30 hour binge through the whole game again. I just love them so much. I don't love the *whole* games, each one has some shockingly frustrating main missions and some really odd writing (even 3, which has a villain who was written in a great way). Specifically I'm talking about the whole base control gameplay loop. Taking over the map meant taking over bases or fortifications of enemies, raising a flag, maybe rescuing some hostages. In all three games they start you with bases that only have 4 or 5 enemies, but the endgame bases are dozens of high level enemies in a military compound. I love approaching a base, sulking through the woods, finding high ground and scouting it out, and oh man the options presented were amazing, especially when you were nearing the endgame and had unlocked most of the weapons. You could go on a mountaintop and snipe everybody, or just blast em all with your rocket launcher. And the developers never prevented you from using the "nuclear option" of just doing a strafing run on everybody with a helicopter. I also loved how often you'd approach a base of enemies and see some clearly developer-placed options. I remember in Far Cry 4 there was one base of enemies really near the end of the game which had like 20 foot high concrete walls, and if you explored a little you could find a place you could put your grappling hook to get over the wall. But it wasn't exactly developer-intended because you weren't even nearly safe as soon as you scaled the wall. And I love how much of an action game these three games are. I love getting chased by enemies then whipping out the grenade launcher and blowing them all up in a fireball, or stealth killing one guy and stealing his knife to stealth kill another one a couple meters down the road. It felt like Metal Gear Solid V on steroids, doing all these insane things that no human could conceivably accomplish. Hell in Far Cry 4 and 5 you can wingsuit off a ledge then assassinate an enemy and take no falling damage. That isn't to say the games' main missions or even side missions are great. I remember getting insanely frustrated at one Far Cry 4 mission that I had to go take a walk outside, and Far Cry 5 seemed to really like to repeat the same exact mission type three times in the main story. But they redeemed themselves with some killer action setpieces. In Far Cry 4 there's one where you storm a massive fortification of enemies on a bridge by just driving straight into it and some [amazing music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMCRWlDv4JE) plays during the whole thing. And the best part to me is that I would never finish a base capturing mission and get bored of it or think it was tedious to go on to the next one. I would just be excited to look at the map and see another one a mile down the road to do the same cool shit at. When the games ended I was always disappointed that there were no more to take over. Sorry I know this post is mostly just me gushing about the games but I haven't really had a place to talk to people about them besides people who already like the games.
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What are some games that “spin” failure states?
What I mean by this, is instead of when you fail and are met with a game over, the game finds some way to keep it going. Instead of being forced to reset to a previous save or an autosave checkpoint, the game's story continues in an interesting path. Are there any games like this? Asking because in IRL TTRPG's, a lot of DM's will find reasons to keep the story going, no matter how ludicrous because I mean.. that's why you're there. Do games do this? What are some that do?
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What’s the funniest game you’ve played?
For me it's probably Jazzpunk, but I liked Disco Elysium too. I've been looking for something to scratch that "Jazzpunk surrealist comedy itch" for a while and not many games have come even close.
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What’s a good game you played with an awful tutorial?
Either it didn't teach you anything at all, or it taught you the most irrelevant parts of the game.
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What are some game genres / styles you like that aren’t being made anymore, or are being mde but not very often?
For me it's first person puzzle games. I can think of maybe a dozen off the top of my head that came out in the last decade. I especially enjoy when they're open world. The ability to just quit a puzzle that's stumped you and go try something else for a little bit is incredibly refreshing.
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I hate how much my brain starts remembering interesting stuff when I finally sit down to play a video game
This might sound super weird, but whenever I actually find time to go "I have like 4 hours to spare, might as well play a game," my brain just goes "hey, remember that movie you wanted to watch?" or "hey, remember that thing you wanted to wikipedia?" or "Might as well pay rent now, it's due in 3 days." I just wish my brain would do this when I'm actually bored.
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I wish I could experience a game with the ambience of the Submachine series for the first time again
I recently wrote about this series in another comment on here and I wanted to expand on it. For those who don't know, Submachine is/was a series of 13-or-so flash point and click adventure games. Each game was based on "screens," and you clicked the edges of each screen to move around the game world. You could collect objects and then use them on other static objects in the environment to solve increasingly challenging puzzles. As of me writing this, there are 10 mainline games, Submachine 1: The Basement (2005) up to Submachine 10: The Exit (2015). Then there's the prequel, Submachine 0: Ancient Adventure, as well as a few spinoff games like FLF, 32 Chambers, and Universe, which is a sandbox game allowing you to explore all of the screens from every other game. All the games are hand-drawn either on paper like the first few games or digitally like the rest of them by artist Mateusz Skutnik. His art style (trust me, google screenshots of the game) is really something I've never seen before, plus that added with the [insanely creepy soundtrack present in all games](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEgQGE1TPGo) has made his series into something I've really never experienced before. I've definitely played games with *similar* ambiences in *either* art or the music, but never the amazing combination I found playing his games. I remember loading up submachine 2 on my mother's laptop's awful speakers and hearing that droning soundtrack, mixed with the borderline creepy artstyle and feeling almost haunted by the games, but I couldn't stop playing because they were so mysterious. In the games, avoiding any spoilers, the player character actually never sees another living person. Every other tiny interaction with other people is through things like computer screens or the notes they left behind. This also lends to a super creepy atmosphere as you play the game to discover these *massive* buildings without a soul inside them. You can find rusted video screens, chairs fallen over, doors left slightly ajar, doors left *locked,* but not a soul in sight. What makes it interesting too, is that despite being creepy there isn't a monster chasing you or your character going insane or anything like that. You're just in these empty, lived-in spaces with nothing but yourself and a bunch of puzzles. I just wish I could experience a game like this again. Creepy, but not too creepy that I'm turned off from the experience, and cryptic but not too cryptic that it becomes confusing. The puzzles in the game can definitely be hard, *especially* from sub7 to sub10, but I always found myself drawn to solving them because I wanted to see what more Mateusz had to offer. Without going into too many spoilers, the story itself is also pretty damn deep for a flash game series. Mateusz says he's currently working on [Submachine Legacy](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1564790/Submachine_Legacy/), a version on steam that combines all of the games into one, and remasters both their visuals and their audio. The release date currently says "Q3 2023" so I'm really anxiously awaiting that, but I'm worried it won't be as interesting to play Legacy as it was to play the series through for the first time.
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USB battery bank recommendations?
In need of a rechargeable battery bank I can keep in my car and use to charge my phone. My car is a little older and has one of those cigarette lighter things. Only problem is it doesn't *charge* the phone, it just keeps it from dying, which is inconvenient for my current setup. Looking for good ones for the price, and hopefully ones that won't explode or anything like that. edit: It's complicated to explain but with the position of the only spot I can put my phone holder due to a myriad of issues with my car, the wire would have to go over the steering wheel or over my lap or on the dash and with each one of those options it comes with its own problems that make me uncomfortable. With the way my job is, I need to constantly get back in and out of my car so I'd like if the wire weren't in the way. I figure if I have a battery bank in the door pocket or something, I can just unplug the wire and stuff it back into the door. while I appreciate people trying to help, this is also why i dislike asking tech questions on the internet. :/ Only two people actually answered the question
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Hoping Starfield won’t force me into base-building / micromanaging like Fallout 4 did
I loved Fallout 4 but one of my least favorite aspects of it was how it forced me into base building when I pretty much wasn't interested in that aspect of the game. I get Bethesda was doing something new and wanted to show it off, but it was so annoying being so prevalent in a lot of the main missions of that game. I'm really hoping they don't make the same mistake with Starfield. I know a lot of people are hyped about the settlement building and the micro managing just as they were in Fallout 4, but personally I'm not super interested in that. I'm more interested in the RPG stuff.
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Privacy-focused alternatives to duckduckgo (ddg)?
I've been using DuckDuckGo for a few months now and to be honest I'm kind of disappointed. I really appreciate the privacy concerns and the lack of tracking software. It got really annoying how Google would "recommend" things that it thought I was interested in when I wasn't interested in them, that kind of thing. But on the other hand, I've been starting to get really frustrated at just how hard it is to search for anything. You have to be *really* specific, especially if it's something niche or if you don't fully know the right terms to ask for. At least with Google, if you weren't completely correct about a topic, it could at least parse what hobby or activity you were trying to ask about and bring up things related to that. But with DDG, I've found it doesn't even really try in that regard. Plus it's frankly really dumb how it uses *Apple Maps* as opposed to, I dunno? OSM? I honestly prefer Google Maps despite my dislike of the search engine so the usage of Apple Maps is really offputting. Now, before you say anything, going in I knew it wouldn't be as easy to search for things as on Google, but I'm pretty experienced with the internet and I didn't think it would be a problem. But even being hyper-specific yields surprisingly little results if it's something niche. Even wording it like you would on a University library search engine doesn't seem to work as good as I might expect. I'm open to considering more mainstream options too like Bing if it's better than I remember it being. edit: I should've mentioned, I'm not necessarily saying I want to make a full switch just yet to any daily driver situation, I'd just like some recommendations for when DDG is being DDG and not giving me any relevant results.
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