I think the limit for me was the articles about forced repatriation, where China had snatch squads sent into other countries to force people to return, even when they had broken no laws recognized by that country. Oh, and the Uyghur genocides, which multiple global newspapers have reported on.

I will accept “US Bad”. These days, any claim of a large empire being perfect should be treated with massive suspicion.

You can get quite a few options at Itch.io if you filter for games that have an HTML5 version, and click through - much faster than installing options from Steam Next Fest. Unity and other small game engines have been perfect for that.

“We are on the cusp of the next AI evolution, in which we, the tech company, can simply say the word ‘Money’ to our AI, and it will automatically transfer money directly from our investors into our wallets. Future versions won’t require us to say anything, permitting AIs to write their own next press release for budding, just-around-the-corner technology in an E-mail to investors.”

A little lesson about technical projects: You will quickly reach 95% completion and have something amazing to show off. Then, 95% of the work is completing that last 5% in order to make the prototype usable.

AI is good at making itself look ready. It is nowhere near ready.

I think this is why a certain scrolling shooter at the endgame of a certain game closely located to a tomato didn’t emotionally work for me. I can do the math - it can’t just throw that many other players at the problem to get me through the enemy ships, and the game needed to be playable off the internet since little else of it was online.

Dead by Daylight is funniest. It’s already a game about terrifying horror, but then for Halloween they add a lot of silly spooky pumpkin-related event deco and mechanics.

The above poster is likely to become a racist terrorist, given their history of comments getting downvoted.

/logic

Not with de facto mayor Roland promising them a better future under his factory empire.

(Yeah, hard to work in Another Crab’s Treasure references)

FUNKYHEART: In which the people who wrote that bunny-hopping script for Half-Life 2 speedrunning made a video game, in which they’re also strange cyber demon lesbians.

For some of the cases where enemies are getting multiple turns in a row, using an S-Break (RT+D-pad) can be a good way to get yourself back on positive ground. If you get a turn, it also helps to give defensive buffs to the VIP before the enemy attacks them.

That said, I have heard that while Nightmare difficulty poses a great challenge to some masochists and optimizers, it’s not a difficulty level the developers really balanced around.

Just tried it out. I’m unfamiliar with the extraction shooter genre, but it was interesting, I’m not necessarily opposed to tactical complexity for its own sake. I died to a minefield, and then on the next go didn’t have a weapon; so some of the mechanics come across a little bit unclear.

I’m glad it has a demo because I know a lot of people don’t enjoy characters like that; there’s some great heartfelt conversations once you get to know the characters, but you have to be able to stand 20+ narmy and overly polite banter sequences to get to the moments where each of them surprises you. If you get that far, you usually get invested.

I REALLY like what they’ve done with the combat in this one. Even on normal, I was losing early boss fights for playing without consideration and using nothing but the enemy’s elemental weakness. I just finished Chapter 1, and I especially liked having moments where half the party was dead, and attacking was actually a good option to give my team a moment to revive each other, thanks to the stun/delay systems.

I uploaded some now slightly-outdated versions of the first few chapters to Royal Road.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/100178/rangers-of-the-frostscape

Writing, or rather written, a book, but it’s hard to find interested literary agents. So, I’m working on a complicated plan to leverage an audience for self publishing.

I suppose I’m implying such an assassination is how the book opens, but it mostly just translates to a shift in the way warfare is conducted - fewer battle lines, more war of information.

The fictional world I’m building is at an interesting point. For decades, a few people have held most of the magical power and control, thus dominating entire battlefields. But firearms have just been refined to precision, meaning a good sniper can take down one of these mages in a surprise shot in one go. No sudden “spider sense” escape buttons.

I wonder how much they’re paying Rockstar to delay The Only New Release of that generation; which will doubtless be available on PS5/XSX anyway.

There was still back and forth between PlayStation and Xbox. For the PS3, Sony went bonkers on architecture, and as a result Xbox won a lot of players. With the Xbox One, they made stupid plays on TV access and always-online, and Sony succeeded against their foot-shooting. Then, with the Series S|X, Xbox still lost but won back some consumers by introducing service-based game rental, which Sony followed suit on later.

The two have bettered each other by serving as competition to capitalize on the other’s anti-consumer actions, and by at least competing on pricing and ideas. Imagine if people called out the Xbox One’s always online, but PlayStation didn’t exist.

“lol, too bad gamers”

Here’s a question. For ages back, the console market had three contenders. Who do you think would compete in the trifecta between Nintendo and Sony?

Normally, PC markets stay aside from that conversation, but it might be Valve and the Steam Deck. I’m just not sure if Valve is the type to be interested in running big promotions at Wal-Mart by Mountain Dew displays.

If you want something a bit closer to Starfox, rather than an all-range flight arena, try Rogue Flight. It definitely evokes the power fantasy feeling, living up the classic arcade trope of “one ship being readied on a mission to save humanity”. There’s some very big-name voice actor work in it, as well.

Another good game for the “power fantasy” trope, though it’s a bit more outside the target, is Ace Combat 7. Or, perhaps any games in the series, but this one is pretty accessible. The combat is close to what you’d get in X-Wing/Tie-Fighter, but with fighter planes. It breaks from realism a little bit where needed to make the stunts fun. And, the story very much orients around the silent player character being “scary tough” in a fight, to the point enemy fighters are retreating just from seeing your wing markings.

Estelle, from Trails in the Sky.

She’s introduced as a bit of a cocky moron who constantly has to be wrangled by her more mature brother. But, there’s a slow development of competency where she starts to become decently sufficient at all the things her brother is good at, while he meanwhile lays bare some heavy emotional flaws - many of which Estelle excels at processing (call it a feminine trope, but it works).

Of note, all the rest of the Trails series have had male leads, and their pace of character development ground to a complete halt.