FWIW, my last phone (until 3 weeks ago) was a OnePlus Nord N20. Absolutely stellar budget phone with a solid mid-range experience and features. It had a headphone jack AND an SD card slot, as well as dual SIM tray if that’s useful. I think it’s actually higher spec than the N30. You can still find those. OnePlus is pretty good about including a lot of that stuff, except on their flagship phones. Hope that’s helpful.
I played it back on the PS4. My memory is that I enjoyed the vast majority of it, and was pretty completionist on that one. Mostly because the world and environments are hauntingly beautiful. I enjoyed riding slowly through the world, almost never using travel, and exploring the nooks and crannies. If that’s your bag I think you might like it. But The story does go through some contortions to fill out the play time.
So, just sword and sandal Sims? Jesus, it sounds so plausible now.
By your logic the president can only be arrested if the morality police and religious hardliners disagree. 🤔
It’s interesting that we had reverse experiences regarding the recent FF titles. I think for me, it was because I played them very close to each other, and I probably would have been fed up by halfway through whichever one I played second. My gaming buddy mostly really liked Rebirth.
But they both had a slightly different version of this same issue, and my tolerance was pretty low by the time I got to Rebirth.
I think you’re hitting on a slightly broader problem. Any game where combat is the major mechanic shouldn’t have a situation where you can’t do any damage for any extended amount of time. The Yakuza series handles this well, enemies can block, but the moment they do you have attacks that can break the block immediately, and start damaging again. (Or you can skill up to that that attack.) As the game goes on, it gets more intricate, different enemies have different blocks that require different moves to break. The player character also has different fighting styles that have different block breaking moves that you have to keep track of, but if you know what you’re doing, you can break almost ANY block with one move.
Far far too many other games decide to arbitrarily create a mechanic where you can’t do any damage for a WHILE. It’s either the invincible enemy that you just have to spend 3 minutes dodging, which is boring and miserable in both action and even turn based RPG battles. Or they have a shield that you have to do some elaborate and rhythm breaking routine to remove the shield. It’s a miserable slog whenever they do that kind of thing. Back in the early 2000s The second game of the Xenosaga trilogy changed the entire combat design and added the thing I hate most, the RPG stagger. You can do no appreciable damage to any thing in the game until you figure out what combination of attacks cause a stagger. It could be a three move sequence involving two characters that has to be done in the right order, or woops! Start all over. If you didn’t give one of your characters a specific ability or attack during leveling, screw you, you’re basically fucked.
The players, rightfully, rejected that crap then and they got rid of it for the third game. Now, it’s everywhere. Every RPG I’ve played recently has that crap. I finally just put down FFVII Rebirth half way through and said, screw this, because it was so exhausting and miserable. Every battle becomes the equivalent of getting on a non-working escalator and your body still jerks because you think you’re going to start moving. I hate this trend and it’s everywhere as developers think, “this battle isn’t bossy enough.” “Add a stagger mechanic to make it last longer” “Brilliant old chap.”
I don’t know what disease is moving through the game development community that boss battles, especially, have to be a certain length. Is this a marketing thing? Is this being handed down from the publishing execs? FFXVI had 20-25 minute battles towards the end that were just repetitive dodging and a kaleidoscope of flashing lights. I could have just had a gummy and watched an old screensaver and it would be more memorable and less annoying.
Okay, I’m done complaining, but the long battle for no reason other than to make it feel like a boss, is, I think, an extension of the collect-a-thon, open world, sandbox mentality that just adds superfluous crap so they can say “This game is 44% larger than the last game we made, and will take you 215 hours to complete!” Who cares if it sucks?
Look at it this way, Google stopped caring about their viewers as anything more than wallets to empty years ago. Now they’re going through the same cycle with advertisers. They don’t care if the ads land, or the targeting works, just that they can convince them to keep buying ad space.
Eventually the ROI will show as not worth it to the advertisers, but by then Pichai and the rest of the C-suite will be pulling the same scam at another company whose investors are more greedy and stupid than saavy.
Because the horrible truth of America now, is that CEOs and their ilk have stopped caring about creating value, or building a sustainable business model with long term revenue. Now they just look at witless investors as wallets to be emptied too.
As an old person, I approve this message. It’s exhausting to keep screwing things up for everyone that comes after us.
Consider how the federalization of Student Loans has contributed to the price of college outpacing inflation by many times, and income by a magnitude.
That’s still only part of the problem, of course, hiring university leadership from the for profit business sector, privatizing loan servicing, etc. have all made college tuition skyrocket, but the loan program is a major issue.
A better option for college would be to subsidize universities directly with the requirements that their tuition stay within a linear relationship to inflation. Somewhat like state colleges offering low tuition for residents.
Housing needs more federal controls, which, to her credit she has explored in her platform along with disincentivizing, exploitative investment in private housing.
FWIW, I didn’t read anything in BM’s post that made me think he was arguing the incident was fake. I interpreted that (s)he was saying it probably was other debris or shrapnel, and he’s insisting it was an actual slug to look like a tough guy.
“I think you’re missing the point, they’re pointing out a woman with a VERY comfortable life made up a racist lie to demonise those less fortunate than herself.”
I wonder when her best selling children’s fantasy book is going to drop?🤔
CNN link for backup / corroboration: CNN coverage
FWIW, I had a subscription over a decade ago. I can’t say I ever thought of it as “Left”, it was at best, corporate center. But it definitely has gone more right as it has also gone more sensationalist. They partnered with Daily Beast for a while, and then were sold to IBT media, an international “news and Information” conglomerate. I think your memories are from the old hard journalism days, and they have gone back to corporate, but corporate-right.
Obligatory: Uncle Tom was actually a good guy. The idea that he was some kind of traitor or such comes from a crappy adaptation of the book. In the actual book he dies to save some other slaves.
“Rock the vote”?
If we’re going that far, then no radio or person either. Black holes have disappeared from Hawking radiation, protons have all decayed, and the distribution of energy is so even and so rarified no exchange can happen, so literally nothing can happen.
If we allow a magic radio, we can allow a magic air bubble.
Oh! And we may get rid of Non-compete agreements because the FTC just voted to recommend a ban.
His FCC brought back net Neutrality. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/net-neutrality-fcc/
His CFPB put up limits to anti-consumer terms for payday loans and bank fees. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-cfpb-is-cleaning-up-junk-fees/
His administration raised fees for oil drilling in several major areas, although he also approved a large number of drilling permits so this may be a wash. https://apnews.com/article/oil-gas-drilling-public-lands-interior-climate-ffc88438d6f9c5d48e9a8fc7cffc749a
The UAW endorsed Biden. This gets weird, because many blame Biden for ending the rail strike, which he did, and which echoes the Bush Sr. Foul play with ATCs and pilots. But in exchange for ending the strike they got nearly everything they were asking for in the first place. Fain plays hardball and has probably gotten more for unions and their members than almost anyone, if he’s okay with Biden, I’m inclined to agree.
https://uaw.org/uaw-endorses-joe-biden-for-president-of-the-united-states/
Also thought it was webs in a sunbeam for a sec. The opposite of calming, really.
Balatro high contrast mode is a godsend.