Wait, fallout 4 didn’t do the ending slideshow? That’s an iconic part of the series! I’m so glad I stopped buying Bethesda games.

Lol, no one’s putting a gun to people’s heads to make them act bigoted. If your response to being accused of racism is “Oh, yeah? I’ll show you racism!” then you’re just showing your true colors.

Yes, and the latest version, too. Silly me assuming the version on GoG would be kept up to date…thankfully I didn’t lose too much time.

I’m trying to get into Daggerfall. I probably wouldn’t have got past character creation without a guide, and I died an embarrassing number of times in the intro dungeon, but once I got to town and figured out how to pick up quests things started to come together. We’ll see how far I get.

Hegemony: Wars of Ancient Greece

I played it years ago when it came out and it’s still really good. It’s an indie grand strategy game with low production values but a game play loop I find very satisfying. The fact that it’s played on a realistic map of ancient Greece adds a lot of flavor and I love how the geography actually has important implications for strategy.

Everyone knows pro wrestling is all staged performances but I’ve never heard that said of boxing. As far as I know those are real.

Find a way to work a small amount of exercise into your daily routine. Walk places instead of driving, do some jumping jacks in the morning or before bed, something simple that you can get yourself to do without much stress or planning. If you do it consistently, even 10-20 minutes of exercise a day can make a big difference in the long run.

We have it the same as you. I never really gave it any thought.

Yup, Spiritfarer is my answer too. I played up through the first person to pass on and then couldn’t keep going.

Maybe this isn’t the case in your neighborhood but my local grocery stores have racks of gift cards, including for Steam. I know people who have similar concerns as your dad, so they just buy Steam credit for themselves.

I’ve been following Professor Phillips Obrien for analysis on this subject, and he largely shares your opinion.

He thinks that if the US really wanted Ukraine to win the administration would have been providing much more long-range weapons, and that they still could. Ukraine can still win, but it depends on their allies actually helping them do that.

Loria is a game from 2018 that is very obviously inspired by Warcraft 2. I remember enjoying my playthrough.

Depends on how you define “state”. IIRC, Marx drew a distinction between “state” and “government”, where the former is all the coercive institutions (cops, prisons, courts, etc). In this framework, you need a “government” to do the things you refer to, but participation in that government’s activities should be voluntary, without the threat of armed government agents showing up at your door if you don’t comply.

I’m not quite old enough to have played it on release, but I think you’re right that System Shock was a game with a lot of amazing ideas that was limited by the technology of the day. I was very happy to see such an authentic remake, which was clearly made by people who cared deeply about the source material.

Interesting that you interpret leaning to peek around corners as a modern convenience when it actually was in the original. The portrait in the top left of the original UI shows the player’s current posture.

Clean the filter in your dishwasher once every month or two, depending on how often you use it.

It’s important to note that DC have denied that Willingham can do this, so the first person who tries to take advantage is going to get sued. That alone is probably enough to scare off most people, regardless of who is technically in the right. We’ll see how this goes.

The point of putting a property in the public domain is precisely so anyone can do whatever they want with it. The basic idea is that all creators draw on their wider culture for ideas, and therefore all creative works belong, in part, to the wider culture, and need to be turned over eventually. The fact that Willingham uses so many public domain characters in his comics is itself a good illustration of how this works. Two of his main characters are Snow White and the Big Bad Wolf (among many other fairy tale characters). They eventually get married. Are you concerned about preserving the “spirit” of those original stories, which Willingham freely reinterprets? I doubt it, and you shouldn’t be. We all, as a culture, own those characters and can use them however we want. What this decision means is that the same now applies to Willingham’s specific versions. I have immense respect for the man for making a principled decision.

As for how it damages DC, it doesn’t do anything directly. They can still make and sell whatever they want, same as before. It’s just that now they have competition, because other people can also make and sell Fables books. Assuming DC loses the inevitable legal battle, at any rate.

Oh, thanks for the tip. That would have been frustrating to run into

Dead Space 1, the original. I recently realized I own it on the EA account I forgot having made and figured I’d take a look. I’m partway through chapter 3 now. The game really shows its age graphically, the ragdoll physics on the many corpses lying around keeps glitching out, and if the game is actually trying to be horrifying I feel a touch more subtlety would have been called for. It often feels more like a haunted house than something that’s supposed to seem like a real place.

That being said, the combat is satisfyingly visceral (the gimmick of focusing on cutting off limbs was a very good idea), and tech limitations aside both the art direction and sound design are very solid. The times the game actually manages to be unnerving is almost always due to the tension of hearing the monsters in the walls but not being able to pinpoint its location.

Overall, I’m not exactly in love with it but I’ll probably play it all the way through.