Personally my favorite is the first game, but I was overall disappointed with the second game. I felt it was a somewhat dramatic step down in writing quality, and though there were some amazing set pieces, the latter half of the game felt like a bit of a slog to me.

The 3rd game has even worse writing IMO (especially the colonel’s dialog), but I was surprised that, for the most part, I enjoyed the gameplay most of the way through, and found the travelling aspect to be quite neat. I had more fun with it than the 2nd game, at least.

I just use cheap shark brand blades with it, as feathers in any safety razor seem to make it more prone to cut myself, they’re too sharp for my skin.

The Henson with cheap blades feels extremely close to a disposable, and it can be used in the same way with minimal thought, unlike a normal safety razor where you have to be careful with angle and pressure to avoid irritation or cuts.

I have one, I think it lives up to its claims and is worth the price. It is the only safety razor I’ve used that has comparable irritation and ease of use to a disposable razor. It’s particularly good for sensitive skin, and I’m significantly less likely to accidentally cut myself with it compared to my normal safety razor.

If you’re in a dry climate, it’s useful to coat the inside of your nose with vaseline to keep it from drying out.

Gloomwood is the only close spiritual successor, but its been in early access for a long time (though it does still get substantial updates).

Eh, I dunno, I think it’s possible to be fairly objective about the merits and downfalls of newer or older designs without nostalgia influencing it too much.

A different essayist made a semi-related point that there was a certain period in the late 90’s and early 2000’s where games were getting bigger budgets and better tech that allowed them to really expand their scope and possibilities, but with relatively little oversight from shareholders/CEO’s who would in later years essentially force higher budget games to fit a more generic mold for mass appeal. That era did seem to have a more risk-taking nature to it, which at least in the AAA space today, is a bit more muted.

That’s not to say there weren’t plenty of janky flops, if anything most of them probably don’t hold up, but the ones that do really show off what creative freedom combined with higher budgets could bring.

Today we have the indies who’ve brought back that creative freedom and resulted in some real bangers, and there are still some AAA stuff that slips through the cracks with some more risk-taking stuff (Death Stranding would be a good example, I suppose), but it does seem for the most part that AAA today is very much tending toward playing it safe, which can make things feel a bit samey or stagnant in that space.

I actually played the OG Doom right before Dark Forces (it was what reminded it me to try it), and while the first few levels of Doom are fun enough to the point where I beat the first episode, I very quickly lost interest in episode 2, as the level design begins to get really maze-like and sprawling, and the monster closets get old. Episode one gave me all the Doom I needed, personally.

While Dark Forces is definitely Doom-like, it added quite a lot to the experience over Doom that drastically helped to keep my attention. The addition of a story with cutscenes to provide context for the missions, the specific objectives that needed to be completed, and the far less game-y level design was drastically more interesting to engage with. I just really liked the set-up of each mission being an infiltration, with sometimes requirements to then escape back to the extraction point.

I also noticed that none of the missions in Dark Forces are really that long, they kinda felt bite-sized, which kept any one mission from overstaying its welcome.

Overall it’s just a much more fleshed out, more intriguing take on the doom formula.

Star Wars: Dark Forces (1995).

I had it growing up as a kid, but could never beat the third level so I shelved it and forgot about it, until a few days ago when I decided to try it with The Force Engine which adds mouselook and some quality of life features.

As an adult, I finally was able to figure out that 3rd level, and appreciate the cool setup for the missions (in a way, it’s kinda like Andor).

Was absolutely blown away by how much I enjoyed the combat and level design, had an absolute blast from start to finish, and now consider it one of my favorites.

From what I recall the 2nd game is regarded by some as the weakest in the series, while the 3rd is considered quite good, so if you don’t click with the 2nd’s school theme and anime tropes, you may want to skip to the 3rd one, which I think has a more serious tone.

Valkyria Chronicles 2 and 3 are PSP exclusives, if you liked the first one on PC or PS3 (I think the 3rd game needs a fan translation patch though).

There’s a couple decent Jak & Daxter exclusives, too.

Having or not having an internal monologue has nothing to do with being sociopathic, and it’s extremely rude to suggest it is. You now have a great opportunity to learn about how a large swath of other people experience consciousness.

The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow goes into how some Native Americans had slaves, and how/why other tribes refused to have them, though the whole book is an interesting and worthwhile read.

While Corsi boxes do work, I personally find that just using a single thicker 4" filter taped to the back of a fan works better, as it takes up a smaller footprint and allows you to direct the air flow at something other than the ceiling. The thicker filter is much, much less restrictive than a 1" filter due to the increased surface area. The thick ones (20x20x4") cost about $28 on ebay, and will last a very long time before needing to be replaced.

Regarding feeling like you’ll get covid from the AC circulating air: Covid appears to mostly spread in the air by the virus attaching to dust or particles in the air. All of the air in the house will be pulled to a single intake vent, where there should be an HVAC filter to filter all of the air (the AC heat exchanger would eventually get clogged with dust without one). If that filter has a high enough MERV rating (how strong the filter is) it will be capable of removing all of the particles the virus can attach to, MERV 13 can even remove the virus itself from the air. This would mean that the air coming into your bedroom would be filtered and safe.

If you cannot confirm what MERV rating your HVAC filter is, then you could instead attach a MERV-13 filter to the back of a normal box fan (I recommend a 4" thick filter for longevity and reduced strain on the motor, as the thicker filter has a less restrictive airflow compared to a 1" filter) and run it in your bedroom to purify the air.

Regarding it being too cold in your room, AC vents can usually be adjusted to limit the flow into your room, or you could ask your roommates if they would be willing to compromise on a slightly lower overall temp, or if that fails, putting on some warmer clothing that’s easy to take off if you need to go outside may be a good compromise.

I understand that neither of those things solve the issue of your cats or the smell of their litter, though. (A carbon anti-smell HVAC filter on the back of a box fan may help?)

No. I find virtually all AAA games for the past decade or so to be unsatisfying. I only pay for indie games nowadays.

Lemmy/piefed are still pretty resilient against bots and llms since most instances now require an application with short questions that often trip up bots into revealing themselves.

It also helps that most of our userbase is still real, so any bots that get through often stand out and get reported fast, and most instance admins collaborate to help spread the word if one is found to deal with it.

However, there may come a time when it becomes harder and harder to suss out bots in applications or in conversations, at which point we’ll likely need to adopt new ways of verifying that new applicants are human.

No prob :)

Stop Killing Games explicitly does not want endless support from a publisher. They are advocating for publishers to implement an End of Life plan during the development stages of a game that can be enacted after the publisher wishes to stop supporting a game, so that a player has a reasonable chance of continuing to play the game on their own, either by disabling Always Online DRM, removing the Online component of a game with a large single player campaign (like The Crew), or providing server binaries so the user can self-host a server.

The first game is glacial, but I found the 2nd game moved along pretty well even from the beginning.

I noticed it there, but it seems like on the GOG page it says it requires Doom II to function, so I opted not to link to them since it wouldn’t be free then. Do you happen to know if it works without any tinkering for GOG users who don’t own Doom II?