Another horrible reason to despise Trump and his cohorts? Add it to the pile I suppose.

Okay I haven’t actually had time to watch it yet but please tell me it goes into whether

Researchers used A.I. and photo editing tools to create this digital reconstruction of the older victim’s escape.

What has the world come to.

I know we’re on the Fediverse and all but I never really saw Matrix as a real 1:1 Discord replacement. Maybe it’ll get there one day though, who knows.

Neat, good to know! Also I guess you’ve settled on Matrix now but fwiw there is also a Discord-Fluxer bridge now if you want other Discord alternatives for the future.

Is there a bridge between the two servers or is it just one big headache of split conversations?

This is my annual manifestation of official VR support for this game 🙏

I know it’s not going to happen but it would be so perfect. You can mod in VR already but being able to drive with VR hand controllers and stuff like that would be so immersive.

Oh fuck me I managed to exorcise Dota from my memory like the cancerous tumor it is. Yeah that might be my most played game overall actually, across Dota 1&2.

Not that I’m suggesting you starting to play again is a bad decision or anything. I’m sure you’ll have a great time.

I would think probably Diablo 2 over the course of my childhood, although it’s hard to tell. It might be EVE Online, I was very much into that for a few years between 2010-2015 or so. And it’s not exactly a game you play casually, or at least I didn’t. Over the last decade it’s probably been Football Manager. 17 is the iteration I have the most hours in but I probably have a thousand hours combined across multiple editions across the last ten years.

EDIT: I actually managed to exorcise Dota from my memory, probably because of all the accumulated misery it has accrued. Yeah, that’s the one. Easily the most hours combined over Dota 1&2.

I think the Deus Ex games are all solid imsims. The original DX is or course one of the foundational imsims and fathers of the genre, but I think both HR and MD qualifies well too. And for me Dishonored is too, both stealth and violence are equally viable and you have lots of player freedom, and the world is affected by your choices. The first two hubs of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines are also solid imsim gameplay, the latter half is unfinished however and corners you into combat. STALKER: Call or Pripyat is fairly imsim-y in my opinion.

Bioshock is not an imsim, it’s just a very good shooter.

Nobody knows what imsims are, not even fans of them. It’s the vaguest most vibes based genre in existence.

God, I love Disco Elysium so much. For me it’s the best game of all time. It’s funny you single out what you call DM railroading, because it was one thing that was talked about a lot around the release, but they called it a “fail-forward” design philosophy. And it’s so important to the game because failure is such a major theme of the game, and trying and failing checks is a big part of that. That’s why there are several red checks right at the start of the game that actually have advantageous outcomes on failure - to teach you that trying and failing is okay. A lot of my favourite moments in the game comes from failed checks.

And the same goes for all those “wacky” dialogue options. A lot of people miss out on so much because they are afraid to “sound crazy”, because we have been conditioned by every other RPG that picking stupid options leads to being punished. Buy Disco doesn’t really work like that, it’s one of the least punishing games ever in that sense. You’re more often than not rewarded for picking those dialogues. There is even a loading screen tooltip encouraging them.

Anyway sorry my latent hyperfixation got awakened and I’m ranting…

That’s very fair, well explained! I think I may be underestimating the areas of DS1 simply because I know them so well. Some of them are treacherous and it definitely has more opportunities to get stuck for example, like accidentally touching the bottom bonfire in Great Hollow before the Lordvessel or whatnot. At the same time the bosses are so so simple.

Also yeah I know what you mean. I think the lack of rough edges is part of why some people don’t like DS3 so much and others like it the most out of the trilogy. It’s definitely the most “smooth sailing”. And I really don’t like how the game is just one long corridor.

You think it’s even easier than DS1? Those bosses have like three moves and punish windows for aeons, plus you have broken poise that lets you just facetank whatever you want if you feel like it. And pyro without mana costs. Anyway in typical Fromsoft fashion the challenge level is stepped up in the DLCs, so maybe those will satiate your appetite.

Also… Farron Greatsword my beloved <3

I finished Death Howl over the weekend. In the end I enjoyed it quite a bit, it’s probably a solid 8/10 for me. If you can pick it up on sale especially I think you’ll definitely get your money’s worth, at least provided you like both grid-based strategy and deckbuilding since it’s pretty much equal bits of both. I was a little dismayed at first that your freedom in deckbuilding is stifled by having the cards of one area cost an additional mana if you attempt to use them in another area, but that concern was alleviated a bit by the final zone of the game where - in the run up to and including the final boss - you can use all your cards from all your zones without extra costs. So you do even get a little bit of creative freedom at the end.

The story was so-so for me, but mostly because it was so predictable. It even tries to include a little twist, but unfortunately that twist has no impact on the overall story or moral of the conclusion, so it didn’t end up moving the needle much for me. I could see where the story was going pretty much from the get go, and that was exactly how it unfolded. That being said the message is good, the story isn’t offensively bad or anything and it’s not a story heavy game. 90% of it is gameplay, which is good. And the art is fantastic - some really great pixel art that I liked a whole lot.

For me Alan Wake 2 was the best game of 2023.

Looks decent. Will face stiff competition for my money though as Metroidvania is probably the only genre even more oversaturated than Soulslikes these days. At first I thought it was a sequel to the game Eastern Exorcist, but different developers it seems.

BG3 can be fun to play and all, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. BG3 wasn’t even the best game of 2023.

The first Greedfall is very passable eurojank imo. I had a good time with it. Definitely stretching the budget and talents of the team a bit thin, but it has a lot of heart and charm and I felt like the world building was solid. They get bonus points from me for consulting with actual linguists to create their fake language and make sure native island NPCs have consistent accents (which is better than whatever CDPR did with the Blood & Wine expansion for Witcher 3, but I digress).

As noted and translated by Kotaku, French video game union Syndicat des Travailleureuses du Jeu Vidéo pinned blame on Nacon and its executives for the mismanagement of the studio, writing in a statement from March, “Their disdain for video game production and their incompetence actively sabotaged studios which were viable until their acquisition, and jeopardized projects with a high potential. The deterioration of working conditions in the last years, and the creation of new studios with the barely hidden goal of sabotaging existing ones, were already convoluted ways of reducing headcount and they only made matters worse.”

Just horrible. Spiders was a studio with a lot of heart and it always felt like it was just a matter of time until they’d hit a home run and make a game that isn’t just charming jank but genuinely good.