Considering that Big Tech’s thing lately is “were going to fire 12,000 people and shunt their work onto other employees for no reason but to raise our stock price”, I’m a bit skeptical.

Why? It would be a cinch to just use a database, write a small script and automate it.

They’re completely different styles of games and BG3 has been out for months already, so okay.

it’s RNG at first but after level 50 you can select new Perk cards and make your build whatever you want.

Look at the video up near the top of their Xhitter profile. The douchebaggliness of those old white guys explains all of this.

if you aren’t happy with my answer,

whose answer? It’s unprofessional to talk in the first person on a company account without a signature or byline telling you who the speaker is.

That also shows up in the comparison between PS II and IV… IV is way more cut-sceney, linear and streamlined with less grinding required. I guess I actually like the grinding!

This is true. I played it when it was new and I had fond memories of insanely grinding SMS PS1, so it seemed normal. The best thing to do is to go to Climatrol and farm Blastoids (they reproduce within a battle and you can get insane EXP by waiting for them to do that). Some weird slima-slug-somethings do that too.

Phantasy Star II is pretty awesome too.

You’re literally the consumer in this instance. The game is the product. The computer is the product.

Yeah, I’ve never intentionally clicked on a Temu ad. Browsers do provide an additional layer of security as far as access permissions for mobile devices, though they can of course be exploited as well.

I never install an app if I can do something through a website. Twitbook, reddit, Instagram, whatever. If it really requires an app I generally choose to just not do it.

This is nice because one of the most annoying things has been to randomly watch a video and then they start suggesting all of this content that is not relevant or is bothersome. Like, watch a video on certain topics one time and all of a sudden “check out Ben Shapiro!”

Surely Google is still tracking watch history for analysis for ads and profiling though, right?

It’s difficult to tell if it is an ad, or simply recommending popular relevant services. This would definitely be an insidious method given how much people trust the advice of ChatGPT.

I think that OpenAI would be required to disclose that some info is there due to paid advertising or sponsorship if that was the case, same as websites and videos disclose it.

Cool, I’ll check those out! I do have Ys 1 and 2 for Windows, but haven’t thoroughly played them yet.

For clarification, it’s because I have played the original SMS one about 75 times.

Ys for the Sega Master System is an all time favorite (the first one). I also played Ys 2, which unfortunately was only NES and not released on the US. There was also a cool one called Ys 2 Plus from Korea for DOS, but it was basically a different game than Ys 2.

Perhaps I’ll try a newer one!

I’m a fan of some even earlier RPGs… Miracle Warriors, Phantasy Star, Phantasy Star II and Ys.

I am not sure which is better. I played the first at a seminal time, when the only other FPS I knew was quake. We also played a lot of HL P2P (back when it was ‘deathmatch’…). I played HL2 much later, several years after it was released, and did no PvP ever. All in all, I like about 60% of each one, as far as the single player story experience.

Oh, definitely! I don’t really recall the add-ons (Opposing Force, etc) but Half-Life 2 is a very worthy sequel.

The original is great. I actually haven’t played Black Mesa all the way, but played the original recently… I have to admit it looks quite dated, which isn’t surprising considering it is (amazingly) 25 years old.

Half Life/Black Mesa. I replayed it recently and I had forgotten the level of unease that pervades most of it. While short of horror, there’s been an obvious disaster, people are panicking, and it’s unclear to the PC what is going on for most of the game.

Google has been filled with automatically generated SEO spam like that for at least 5 years, maybe much longer. ChatGPT generation is just the latest tech and is better at writing something that sounds legitimate. It still is fairly noticeable on many sites though.

yeah, to be fair though it’s their first try at an MMO. The general mechanics of MMOs are horrible, like what you’re saying. I actually never played any previous fallout games as I took a 20 year break from video games, other than halflife 2 (6 years late) and lot of 80s/90s games on emulation. I am considering actually playing fallout 3 and 4 sometime. Pretty much what I wanted was a halflife MMO, and 76 is like, sort of like that. I would prefer a more techy and desolate feel - i also en joy the campy nature and humor of the game, though. Halflife 1/2 was sort of disconcerting and horrifying.

Just looking at this guy for 2 seconds I think “wow, this dude would totally rip you off”

i like a couple games that are not really obscure, but are far from the most popular MMOs or well received sequels:

• Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis
• Fallout 76

I remember when this was out… always sounded kinda cool. That was back in the era of Street Fighter II and Phantasy Star IV.

My brother and I used to play Quake a lot online. In 1998 we faced the choice of both buying Half-Life or Quake II. I am happy that we chose Half-Life, and once we got Quake II it was apparent that we made a very good choice.