PlzGivHugs

I’m trying to be optimisitic, but the significant redesigns to be more in-line with other RTS games do worry me. Both because it adds a lot of new avenues to break or negatively change things, and because it removes of the lot the mechanics that help distinguish AoM from other games.

Heres a weirder one no one else has mentioned yet: I’ve heard art described as a way to express and emotion, and I really felt that with Hotline Miami. Its not done through the story or setting (in fact, the intentional ignorance there adds to it) but rather the contrest between the hyper-violent trance as you play through a level, and then the sudden cut of the music as you quietly walk past the mountains of bloodied corpses back to your car. I feel that shift, when you first notice it, really emphasises the pointless brutally of it far more so than many much more heavy-handed attempts in other games.

Currently two:

War Thunder - It has so many issues from the grind, to unadressed design issues (IE 10kg HE shells doing no damage on a direct hit), to balance issues including p2w vehicles. That said, under all the shit, theres a solid foundation, and no other game comes close to replicating it.

Super Auto Pets - Its an autobattler streamlined to the point where its the perfect casual game when I don’t feel like anything else. It also doesn’t have any of the normal f2p traps, and is monitized purely on cosmetics that can also be earned for free.

Edit: I guess Dota 2 counts too. I put a ton of time into that. I’m not a particularly good player, but its one of the best team-based games out there, so I enjoy playing it with friends.

IMO, Five is easier to learn and more straight-forward, while Six feels more convoluted, but Six gains some depth and variety from that if you put in the time to learn it.

At least the stuff I’ve seen is more a criticism of the lack of functionality for the Rabbit, esspecially unique functionality or areas where it excels. The fact that it is basically all able to be contained in one app is viewed as evidence of the relative simplicity, and the fact that (as reviews highlighted) a phone provides a better interaction method compared to the dedicated devices just highlights how unnecessary the hardware is.

Basically, its competing against phones in functionality, but a phone at that price can do everything it can and better, plus so much more. Even worse when considering everyone also already owns a phone and won’t be able to replace with a Rabbit.

By that standard, whats to stop people from just getting more phone numbers? Its just an additional cost.

Personally, was not a fan. While the gameplay is similar to Mass Effect 1’s combat (already not a stand-out, even if not bad), it feels so much more tacked-together, like they hadn’t started figuring out the gameplay until the last minute. Abilities and anything beyond basic basic aiming is clunky, AI characters are outright suicidal and it all just feels samey to play. The setting was cool though, at least.

AI struggles to make a complete, composite product. This is the limit on game creation as it is anyway, not number of assets available to steal/download/buy. There are thousands of options for near-complete games out there that can be easily customized further with the millions of art assets out there as it is.

Even then, Steam isn’t completely without moderation. It’s been possible to automate the creation of asset flips for a while (and we’ve seen it done plenty of mobile), but Steam makes some effort to remove the lowest quality games and make it ineffective to publish low-quality shovelware. AI is still quite a ways off from being even remotely faster or more effective than just buying a template and filling in the resources with cheap or free assets.

deleted by creator

Edit 2: I loaded it in an incognito window and it just says “youtube watch history is off” with no recommendations. I really think it’s you man

Might be something to do with Chrome or that. I’m on Firefox and get a filled out home page when first loading youtube (no history or cookies, mid levels of fingerprint blocking). After logging in, I get the notification for disabled watch history, but not before.

Yep. Every time I open YouTube, before signing in, the much of the front page is just far-right conspiracies, blatant misinformation, and other sketchy content.

Unless I’m misunderstanding something, the one that is now being sold for $400 used to be $550. All the LCD models have dropped in price (with the 64 GB and 512 GB models being discontinued) and the OLED filling in the now open higher price tiers.

Old one is still solid (and now discounted) but this offers some nice, mid-generation upgrades. If you already have one, or want one at a discount, stick with the old model, otherwise this is a nice upgrade for basically the same price.

I do, but I keep default settings within Ublock. I figure theres probably enough other Tor users using Ublock that it won’t stand out too much, and frankly, the internet feels unusable without an ad blocker nowdays.

You should add an edit to your original comment, to clairify.

I think the one area that Quake really falls flat on modern playthroughs, is the level aethetics. The assets all look fine, in my opinion, but the levels visually, all just feel so bland and same-y. So much of it is just brown-grey tunnels. The closest thing to a landmark within a level tends to be a stained glass window. It really highlights just how much of an improvement Half Life was. While I enjoy Quake on a moment-to-moment basis, I find it gets a tad tedious purely because everything looks too similar, and it doesn’t feel like you’re making much progress.

I mean, at least in this summary (the article is pay-gated) it sounds like his point is valid. The line, “The fact that he was a soldier does not mean that he was a Nazi.”, seems suspect, but I assume by “Nazi” he means the ideology or the political party directly, which could be true. Again, working purely off the summary. As Himka stated, those in Ukranian divisions may have been motivated to volunteer by fear of continued Soviet atrocities after witnessing the Holodomor and other crimes against humanity, or by vengence for these crimes.

If Yaroslav Hunka did join for these reasons, I think the matter is a lot more grey. If you watched your family and friends die to a violent, genocidal government, its not weird that you might be willing to work with another if you think they’re a less immediately dangerous. Of course, if thats not the case, or he did support the Nazi party, the ideology, or if he was involved in any of the division’s war crimes, then all of this is out the window and he deserves to be punished to the full extent of the law. My point is that he should be proven guilty before being counted as a supporter of the Nazi ideology, and these is still room for error currently (unless there’s social media posts or other evidence I don’t know of).

Edit: And just to be extra clear in case it wasn’t obvious, I think supporters of the Nazi ideology, its modern incarnations, facists, and racists are all terrible. I think anyone who supports these belefs should be denounced and avoided. I just also believe that it is important to be certain of the accusation of something so awful before condeming someone for them.

Everything stops after that right? There can be no saving grace for someone who was in the SS.

There are some rare cases where where individuals would breifly join SS divisions, specifically to fight the Soviets rather than due to alligence to the Nazi ideology. Larry Throne is a notable example. The First Galician seems to have had a significant number focused on fighting the Soviets in a similar matter, although elements of the division did commit atrocities in Poland. Canada’s 1986 investigation into the division after the war concluded that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to condem the whole group

Of course, “not found guilty” doesn’t mean innocent. My point is purely addressing the, “There can be no saving grace for someone who was in the SS.” I still think this is a ridiculous situation, that he should not have been invited unless they can confirm with great certainty that he was not a supporter of the Nazi ideology and did not commit any crimes. If they can’t even check what division he served in, clearly anything more is outside their ability. Hopefully he is investigated properly given the spotlight, and extradited if needed.

Edit: Worth noting that this was a Ukranian division after the Holodomor. Its no wonder that many would be willing to join a war against the country that had murdered millions of their people already. For scale, its estimated that the Holodomor killed 3-5 times as many as the holocost in Ukrane.

Even for renters, this isn’t a particularly large change, and there doesn’t seem to be much thought in terms of what happens to the property if its converted after the fact.

Probably my proudest is Crypt of the Necrodancer’s Vow Down. The game is already very difficult, but Vow Down requires beating the game in all-zones mode (rogue-like mode rather than the rogue-lite campaign) with one of the more difficult new-game+ characters, Monk. The basic game is a turn-based, grid-based RPG, with the gimmick being that you have to preform all actions to the beat, while the monsters have their turn between beats. Vow Down adds the catch that any gold, be it dropped by monsters or found in the world, kills you instantly and ends your run. Even ignoring the inherant urge to pick up dropped loot, this means you have to carefully position enemies as you kill them so as not to box yourself in with deadly loot, all while only having a fraction of a second to think per turn.

This game also has what is probably among the most difficult (while still being fair) achivememts on Steam: Beating the game with the final New Game+ character, Coda, which has the debuffs of every other character combined. According to Steam, 0.3% of players have this achivement, meaning roughly 0.3% of players have cheated in achievements.