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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • I’m going to spoiler it and talk about it, because I am genuinely interested in other people’s opinion/experiences on this.

    Spoilers for late chapter 1, early chapter 2

    This is mostly centered around the kiss. Save the “proposition” innuendo, it became pretty clear that Blonde Blazer’s whole schtick was to recruit Robert. Even in the moment when she moved close to him, she kind of sizes him up like someone looking at a horses teeth as opposed to someone losing themselves in the eyes of a prospective lover, so I didn’t kiss her, and save making a joke on the “proposition” comment, didn’t say anything overly romantic of flirty.

    This made the whole conversation the next day feel weird and out of place. It was toned like Robert DID kiss her, as Blazer just constantly apologized, and the responses I had options for (“I don’t think it was a mistake” met with “it was, for reasons I’ll explain later”) kept that same awkward connotation. Blonde Blazer acted like she did something incredibly inappropriate in… being slightly drunk when she offered Robert a job? But as a result of my options, there really was nothing to act like this about. But the conversation HAD to be toned this way, otherwise Invisigirl overhearing and responding with “what, you two fuck?” wouldn’t make any sense. The game didn’t “assume I made choices I didn’t” as much as they clearly wrote it with an expectation in mind, but my choices didn’t meet those expectations, leaving the whole section flowing weird.


  • Just finished Chapter 3 of 8. It has some very classic Telltale foibles. Sometimes the script seems to assume you made a decisions that you didn’t make and it makes the dialogue feel awkward. Other times, the sarcastic tone in a written dialogue choice isn’t clear when you select the option and the resulting scene isn’t at all what you thought you were suggesting. I suspect by the time I am done, I’ll have the general sense of “oh, my decisions didn’t ACTUALLY matter,” as is Telltale tradition, but I’m not far enough to judge in that space yet

    Despite these fairly common for Telltale problems, it’s an incredibly witty and entertaining piece of entertainment, and perhaps one of better “no, seriously, there’s a game in here” Telltale products. The “dispatch” mechanic is, imo, a fun management game, and they tie it into the narrative in ways that feel clever. Everyone is at each others throats because of a story beat? People are actively sabotaging each other on the job and it’s making your job as their dispatcher harder. As a comedy and near-film, the writing is laugh-out-loud funny, the voice acting and character animation is top notch, and there’s an interesting story and world holding it all together. I’m sure people will argue that it’s a better movie than it is a game, and, as much as I enjoy the corporate dispatcher half of the game, I am sure many will agree, as the dialogue writing is truly the stand-out element of the game.

    It’s very good. Not perfect, but very good, and compared to the older Telltale games, a real home-run.


  • Capitalism is built on the notion that wealth is virtue.

    If you are rich, you made good decisions and the invisible hand has guided money to your pockets. You’ve created things that contribute to the comfort/progress of society as a whole, and your reward for it is to be held above others.

    If you are poor, you have not been actively contributing to society. You have instead been a drain, and the invisible hand is punishing you got this. Your inability to find meaningful ways to contribute is a vice, which should be looked down on. Ultimately, if you cannot afford to live, that is survival of the fittest, and the world is better off without you.

    If you believe any of the above to be true, you are delusional scum of the earth, and you are the reason everything sucks. You’d also feel right at home with the right-wing chuds currently undoing decades of progress.



  • I can’t wait to see the exemption for “part time workers” and suddenly everyone making less than a triple digit salary has exactly 32 hours a week, or whatever is legally permissible to pass as “part time work” in your country.

    You’ve provided a fantastic common-sense solution designed off the simple premise that no one needs 12x of a living wage, and I can’t agree enough, but I know the capitalists would fuck it up at every stage possible, while simultaneously arguing that they’re justified in doing so because the method of economy that they worships has given them moral purchase to look down on the poors.






  • Balatro, Loop Hero, all three of the noteworthy Mihoyo games, Sword of Convallaria - I’m going to get flak for including gacha games, but these ones are surprisingly well designed and written games, despite predatory monetization practices - Stardew Valley, Dead Cells, Vampire Survivors…

    I think we’re kidding ourselves if we ignore that Among Us was a genuinely good game, despite being notorious brainrot zoomer bait.

    I’m not sure why we shifted the goal post to mobile games, but the point stands.

    Edit: I had to come back because I remembered how much I enjoyed Monster Hunter Stories on mobile, and the mobile version is actually the most complete version.


  • Hades 2, Silksong, and the FFTactics remake, all of which came out in the last like 3 weeks.

    I’d genuinely call the first two 10/10s, and the only thing stopping me saying that about all three is FFTactics’ commitment to staying true to the original, as they kept some features, qualities and even bugs moving forward that are jank in the modern era, but keep the game feeling more authentic.


  • Ah, I see you have never picked up a “1000 best games for Windows” CD.

    There are a lot of low quality games to complain about. There are also a lot of high quality, new games to experience. 10 years from now, the low quality games will be forgotten, while the high quality games will be looked back on, fondly. Posts will be made comparing the “high effort, high quality games from 10 years ago” to the modern slop, and the cycle will repeat…





  • Funnily enough, I’m on a stock Pixel 6. I flashed custom firmware onto my Pixel 2XL back in the day, and the gain wasn’t super worth it. My phone before that, some Motorola brand, I flashed custom firmware onto and it helped a lot with features I wanted and bloatware removal. But, let be real, save being in the Google ecosphere, the Pixel is as stripped down baseline as a phone gets. And since my job is all-in on the Google apps, I have to be in that space anyway. At some stage, it just doesn’t feel like there’s much of a point.



  • You know, fundamentally, I don’t hate Gamepass as a concept. “Netflix, but for videogames” is an idea I can get behind, as it widens the audience for something I love by lowering the bar of entry. There are plenty of people out there that benefit from being able to play a few games here and there without needing to commit hundreds of hours to $100 purchases.

    But Netflix has overstepped with price hikes and ads, and I’ve cancelled my service with them. That Microsoft thinks it can charge some ~$40CAD a month is pure hubris. I hope they learn quickly that, at that price point, the enthusiast market will happily cancel and just buy their games outright, and the casual market will decide it’s an expense they don’t need.