Personally I hated the whole gang warfare mechanic in San Andreas, so I never finished the game.

GTA IV was filled with details and graphically very good at the time. But the constant hounding by your companions was a major turn off. Fuck that “cousin Romain disliked you didn’t pick up your phone while you were being chased by the police” shit.

For me Vice City was the part I enjoyed most, I loved that 80’s vibe. 🤤

Yup. And the preorder bonus for the first part became available to everybody at some point, so chances are that will happen again. And if not: fuck FOMO, I’m done with that dark pattern shit.

I seriously considered preordering, seeing how much I enjoyed the first installment. Fortunately Denuvo prevented me from doing so. I’ll wait until that piece of trash is patched out, it’ll probably be cheaper by that time as well. Thanks Denuvo!

Could someone elaborate which empire this used to be, for the non-US users? 🙂

I’ll just continue referring to it as Twitter. If Musk insists on deadnaming his kid, I’ll keep on deadnaming his adopted child.

Soulslike games only frustrate me immensely. I don’t mind a challenge, but when a game starts to feel more like work than hobby I’ll pass. So Elden Ring has never been on my wishlist, but I applaud those who have the motivation to git gud and persevere.

To each their own, research a bit before you buy something and accept that you might sometimes buy a game that doesn’t suit you. Mistakes and wrong decisions happen, that’s life.

Absolutely not, as that would mean my company violates my country’s privacy laws. In my field of work there is no valid reason for wearing a body cam.

My laptop refuses to go beyond 30hz on 5120*1440, so Wayland and X11 both feel laggy. But at least X11 is stable, can’t say the same for Wayland, no matter how much I want to like it.

Damn, that morning coffee hasn’t kicked in yet. Even despite the context it took me a few seconds to realise you meant Secret Service, not Schutzstaffel. Although the latter feels awfully appropriate when we’re talking about Trump.

If it’s written in the law, it’s lawful. You can of course (and should!) debate about the morality of the diverse forms of lawful interception, but a blanket statement like ‘“lawful interception” is a fallacy’, is a fallacy in of itself.

Unreal only had a single Automag though, so either you are thinking of Unreal Tournament or you played on a modded server. Some servers did have dual automags (I’ve still got a mod and mutator lying around to get them in single player as well) and dual Automags (Enforcer in Unreal Tournament) did indeed dish out major punishment.

Yes, how could I forget Deus Ex. Incredible story and again such a wonderful soundtrack, not surprising as it was also composed Alexander Brandon, Michiel van den Bos, and Dan Gardopee.

As for Half-Life, that game was also something else. But part of me resents that game a bit because it overshadowed Unreal. 😋

The original Unreal. For me it was a perfect combination of beautiful graphics (back in the days of course) and a soundtrack which complemented and elevated the atmosphere of that game. And the gunplay was nice, with a collection of somewhat unconventional weapons. A relic from a time where developers were not afraid to experiment a bit.

Time to install FreeSpace Open again. 😄 For those who have managed to miss that project: it’s a completely rebuilt engine for FS2. Together with the MediaVPs from The FreeSpace Upgrade Project it makes the game look pretty modern again. Take a look at https://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/Getting_started if you need instructions.

I believe even there is even a mod available which allows playing the first FreeSpace in FSO.

Yup, that went well for Van Moof owners in the Netherlands. Also hipster bikes, the latest model turned out to be of dubious quality and was built using all custom parts. They had fun times getting their ridiculously overpriced bikes repaired after the company went belly up.

Nah. But I would recommend not trying to go for orange next you you try the vending machine. You might end up with lemon-lime.

I want to do my part!

Well, that takes ‘required reading’ to a whole new dystopian level. I’m sorry you had to go through that, that’s terrible and I just cannot see any other outcome than forging a severe resentment against reading. Hopefully you’ll one day find the motivation again, but I certainly wouldn’t blame you if you never want to read anything again after going through that.

I read so much in my youth, I could read cover to cover in one go thanks to the power of hyperfocus. Reading was fun and synergised greatly with my ADD-fueled daydreaming.

Unfortunately though high school came along and had to fuck up my intrinsic motivation by force feeding the boomer drivel that ‘everybody should have read in their lives’, and having to write book reports where you’d have to analyse those books to death. Assignments could vary from analysing all the different narrative arcs in the story to the relationship between each main character in the story and even more obscure stuff that I don’t even (want to) remember.

Anyway, this meant reading the ‘classic’ Dutch writers like Reve, Mullisch, Wolkers etc and then analysing a story you didn’t even care about. Fun fact: those writers seem to have an extremely limited repertoire: do you want to read about addiction, WWII, or sex? Ok ok, you had ‘het Gouden Ei’ by Krabbé, on which the movie ‘the Vanishing’ was based. Guess that was a breath of less stale air.

But in the end it sucked the enjoyment I felt when reading from my very soul and replaced it with the feeling that reading books is a chore. At times a slight shimmer of that old spark returns, but never for long. Depending on how often I feel like reading, getting through a book usually takes me months to years these days and rarely captures me like in the past. I’ll never forgive the sadistic bastards who came up with this part of our educational system.

Anyway, sorry for dumping this on you, turned out to be more of a rant than I initially intended. If anybody knows how to convince my brain to consider reading to be fun again, I welcome any insights.

Thanks, I know my way around the high seas should the need arise. But I can’t play every game out there anyway, so as long as I can get my gaming needs satisfied through non-shittified legal means I prefer that.