The EU went after Apple for their proprietary chargers and the court directed them to switch to the USB standard.

Whatever the case, just make sure you keep your catma inside so it doesn’t get run over by your karma.

Given his post, he’s likely already using an AI for making decisions and writing emails (and LinkedIn slop). Much less work while still enjoying a bloated paycheck - what’s that saying about having your cake and eating it, too?

Super Nintendo:

• Megaman X. I was never a fan of classic Megaman, but the faster, more action-oriented sequel/spinoff X series rates amongst my favorites. It has tight controls, good music, varied stages, and memorable bosses and combat encounters. I must have beaten the first game dozens of times over the years.
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. It and Link’s Awakening on the Game Boy were so close to perfect that decades later they’re still the basis of comparison for any new 2D Zelda-like.

PC:

• Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn. it was the game that introduced Bioware’s trademark party banter and focus on interesting and likeable characters. The systems are a little rough but it still mostly holds up. Though it’s been a while since my last playthrough, and I usually stop once I hit the Underdark and the open world structure constricts for a few hours.

You need to hold the PS button and select (I’ll never stop calling it that) until the LED starts flashing, then it’ll be in pairing mode.

You can buy phone mounts for PlayStation controllers. It’d definitely be cheaper than a whole new controller.

It looks like the game that changed its dailies was Star Rail, not Genshin Impact. Which makes sense: I remember seeing the change in-game but I haven’t played Genshin since around the time of that event in Enk… whatever the underground area is called.

I’m trying to find good articles about it but internet search is abysmal these days, especially for news outside the anglosphere. I did find a forum thread about the Star Rail change as well as a Reddit comment translating and explaining the proposed law though.

The TL;DR of it all seems to be that some time around December 2023, new restrictions were proposed affecting gacha games to curb addicting behavior. The news caused stock prices for affected Chinese companies to plummet, and the person who proposed the law was quickly removed from his position and the proposal dropped.

Is this just cope because he really wants to drop a nuke but his handlers won’t let him?

Thanks for the detailed write-up! I’ll have to pick it up at some point; even if it doesn’t hit the same highs as JA2, there hasn’t really been much else that comes close and a more modern coat of polish would be welcome.

What did you think of the new aiming system? I’ve heard mixed things, but it sounded good to me (or at least way better than a flat percentage).

Many programmers who start working on new personal open source projects wrongly assume that building something cool guarantees users, fans, and revenue will follow. Maybe it’s because they have seen too many cool stories of influencers on Twitter and believe it is true.

It’s statements like these that remind me just how different the internet is for some people. I don’t think I’ve ever strayed far outside of the “look at this cool thing I made!” parts of the open source community. The idea of chasing fame and monetization isn’t really a thing in those circles, let alone “influencers” shilling content like that.

I’ve heard good things about 3, but haven’t bought it myself. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts if you ever get back into it!

There was also COVID screwing up sales projections for the last few years. People were stuck at home for months and ended up buying a ton of digital media such as games to stay sane. Executives are stupid and were somehow shocked when numbers dropped after quarantine ended and people went back to their regular lives. Since then, a bunch of projects or even entire studios have been axed due to “underperforming” because they couldn’t compete sales-wise with a period where the entire world was a captive audience.

Jagged Alliance 2 (especially with the 1.13 mod) is the most ludicrously detailed tactical RPG you’ll ever find. It can be a nightmare to actually play until you spend many, many hours learning all its systems, but nothing else comes close immersion-wise. You can customize every mercenary’s loadout down to individual weapon attachments, capturing different parts of the map gives bonuses that actually make sense (like being able to ship in weapons once you’ve taken the airport), you can train militias to hold onto captured sectors for you, and you can even use the in-game internet to send flowers to the main villain.

Steam is banned in Vietnam because it couldn’t/wouldn’t comply with their restrictive content laws.

The battle pass removed its daily check-in IIRC.

China started drafting legislation cracking down on engagement bait daily tasks a few years ago and some games (like Genshin and other Hoyoverse titles) dropped daily check-in bonuses and made more things reset weekly in response. I think China later backtracked (IIRC the politician pushing the laws fell out of favor?), but not feeling forced to log in every day made those games so much less stressful.

I haven’t played anything in the genre in years, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that crap crept back in again.

What other game lets you fight the demonic personification of Fox News and Bill O’Reilly?

I know a lot of people hyped up Outer Worlds as a spiritual successor to New Vegas and were disappointed when it didn’t reach the same heights of writing. Obsidian not being given any time to make New Vegas and then missing their contracted bonus payout by a single Metacritic point was brought up a lot before release, and gamers trumpeted this new game as what Obsidian could have made without Bethesda mismanagement. Then it came out and had the temerity to be average, leaving fans acting like they’d somehow been betrayed by Obsidian.

It wasn’t Obsidian’s or the game’s fault that people decided it had to be a 10/10 masterpiece, it just got caught up in a stupid fanbase war against Bethesda and its reputation suffered when it couldn’t meet people’s sky-high expectations.

Portal 2 has the best introduction to jumping controls of any tutorial in existence.

Same here. Though considering how the last attempt at a Dungeon Keeper revival turned out, it might be a good thing it’s not…

At least we have War For The Overworld.

Except those imports were used by a huge section of code you temporarily commented out, and now you’ll need to manually select a dozen imports to get it working again when you come back to it.

(Sure you could have just commented out the unused imports, but the linter auto-sorted them and you’re feeling too lazy to copy-paste a dozen scattered lines)