I enjoyed the Tokyo Drift achievement in Sea of Thieves. I was running from a larger ship and naturally thought of going full steer around a rock and dropping anchor. It worked! We lived.

I quit around 2019 because I just didn’t stand a chance anymore. I’d place 2 walls and a ramp in the time it took most top-25 players to build a small castle with a wine cellar, jacuzzi, and escalator (or so it felt). I can’t keep up with these goddamn Ritalin-riddled kids.

It always cracks me up when my go-to move (in zero build) is to just stand still when it gets to close quarters. They start jumping like a cracked out kangaroo and miss shot after shot. I only do pitch/yaw and some sideways strafe, no jumping. It lets me use my Ps1/Ps2 era PvE experience.

Is it? I actually just played the mission where you find out Mihaly has 20 names and thought “this must be a joke, right?”. If it’s anime tropes, I’m totally unaware. The subreddit was just full of meta memes so I didn’t learn anything useful in my reddit days

Fortnite. No story to catch up on, no true goals besides winning, no long-term strategizing. I’m sure PUBG is the same/better, but my SO is entertained by the cartoonish nature of FN. It brings us excitement when I’m close to winning. With the introduction of zero build, I fair well. I used to feel more guilt for it being a “bad” game and for not giving time to the betrer story/campaign titles, bur you know what? I’m tired and my time is limited as an actual adult. I’ll take my dopamine where I can get it, thank you.

I’m replaying Ace Combat 7 right now. I can’t believe how bad the writing is. I played it in 2020 and had a grand time with probably 6 runs for the various achievements. Turns out, I remember basically nothing of the story. It’s definitely amusing to revisit the AI story aspects now that “AI” is in full swing. I guess AC5 set my standard for AC stories, but maybe that doesn’t hold up well either. Regardless, I’m in it for the fun, respectable flight physics. Just don’t ask me where I keep 144 missiles stored.

I tried MW3 (I think?) but never figured out ANYTHING. I was young, joystick drivers didn’t work, and I hadn’t the slightest idea how to map out all the functions of a mech suit. Now I have nearly 50 inputs mapped to an Xbox controller for Elite Dangerous fully memorized. What a change in times.

I liked Cauldron Born. I had that and Mad Cat as K’nex models. Hated Orion. Since I never figure out how to do anything, all I can judge them on is their appearance in the build menu. I was also like… 10?

I played AC: Rogue most recently. Its the first time I refused to 100% the missions and, for the most part, skipped collectibles. I started off going for everything and was struggling to enjoy it and didn’t feel motivated to play it. Granted, Rogue is a weak game in the series (alternate dev), but I still wanted the story (even though the script and voice acting was laughable at points).

I 100%d the missions and got 90%+ collectibles (in this order) in Unity, Syndicate, Origins, Odyssey, and IV prior to that. It was kinda nice to be free and and pin myself in side-quest-purgatory at 90% mission completion to not “end the game too soon”.

That was a good time for the story portion of the Ubisoft formula. 360-era and early One-era Assin and Far Cry games did a lot to make you question your own morality while not giving you a clear “good guy” ending. I only played a little of AC3 and I guess AC4 wasn’t that deep on the topic. FC2 had you aiding opposing factions in a foreign conflict and manages to make you, potentially, sympathetic to the Jackal at the end. FC3 kinda saves it for the ending when you realize the fantasy mass-killer hero life is incompatible normal life. FC4 has you actively watching competing revolutionaries advance with different drastic flawsgiving validity to Min’s dictatorship. ACU gives a strong case for the Templars while giving you such a hollow ending. I’d say ACOri also has a hollow ending, though the baddies are shallow along the way. .

I can’t recall any major moral conflicts in ACOdy (played 2020) and they definitely went light in FC6 (played 2024, dictator makes the country money with drugs but gives nothing back to the people). Haven’t played anything later.

Life’s too short to avoid something you actually enjoy just because other people told you it’s not good enough.

This week marks 10 years with my Xbox One Forza Motorsport 6 edition. I was thinking that’s a good mile marker to admit it’s struggling under modern games and upgrade to a disc XSX. Guess I won’t expect any cool discounts this holiday. Probably just discounted to the prior price.

I really like the blue console/controller with racing stripes and car sounds, so it’s a shame they haven’t matched that. Part of the reason I didn’t want to replace it yet

Not a true sim, but Ace Combat 7 novice controls are non-inverted. I feel like Far Cry 5/6 and definitely Fortnite put the non-inverted pitch control on the planes, which were not the focus of the game. I assumed other plane-including games did the same.

For decades, we’ve had a question live as a meme of misunderstanding and yet, it’s exactly the question this committee should be asking now instead: “who is 4chan?”

Roblox as a platform? OK, whatever, new audience I guess. Have at it

Wait

Oh no, I’ve misunderstood

Mutualism, parasitism? The group wants some puritanical bullshit and knows a tactic to make other services comply

Are you sure gun and violence culture is on the chopping block? In the American market?

BRB gonna throw that initial description somewhere on a LinkedIn post for a remote job

I can appreciate the personal part you added regarding losing faith. I left catholicism in my teens. Too many inconsistencies, too much abuse of power. It started by questioning how multiple christianities could have such different rules, followed by learning how most religion is abrahamic and even more diverse in interpretation, to finally saying fuck all this.

I got FC5 in 2020 and it became hard to stomach. It felt like a real potential reality of the US that year. Cults, vehement religious figures, gun fetish, and a classic Americana setting. The prior titles were all far away, imaginary lands offering even a small degree of dissociation. FC5 was just home. I’d relate it to Harry Potter villains in the sense that yeah, of course we know Voldemort is evil, but Umbridge is the most hated character. Not because she’s worse, but because we know a real-life Umbridge personally.

FC6 hit me kinda hard in a similar way. I got into it about a year ago, not long after the israel/Palestine conflict flared up. There’s a ton of genocidal themes there.

Without seeing what you’ve seen, that honestly sounds more like a symptom of the platform, current internet trends, and algorithm gaming than it sounds like a cheesy viral marketing campaign

Idk, maybe I’m the one who phased out of cup stacking by being old. But still, we can’t be that far off from when explaining cup stacking will sound like how I feel about pole sitting.

Skrillex is sort of the face of mainstreamed dubstep. I just learned his subgenre is brostep. The work that came before him was… Gritty. Close to the Key & Peele skit. The FC3 song is closer to common EDM.

Sierra Leone by Mt Eden is probably what I’d use as an example of the best of traditional dubstep

4 is very similar to 3, in my opinion. It generally ranks lower than 3, but I’d attribute that to 3 defining expectations and 4 meeting expectations rather than pulling another groundbreaking move. 3 shared some notable elements with 2 but refined the direction of FC. 2 doesn’t have magic and FC enjoyers begroaned 3’s supernatural element, but here we are.

5 removed the supernatural element and got some mixed feelings. I’d put some of that on the fact that they brought the white American savior trope home to America. Instead of a foreign land under a whimsical authoritarian regime the West likes to go to war with, it’s a religious cult in classic Americana rural towns. It’s like changing from 1990s Batman movies to the Nolan trilogy. Gritty, more realistic, closer to historical fiction than fantasy. It harks back to the 1993 Waco Massacre.

I’ve played 6 on and off over the last few years. I read lots of hate but still enjoyed it. It’s in Cuba, so it was back to being a far-off fantasy for me, with lots of story rooted in the 1960s revolution (though the game is present day). That is until the Gaza war flared up. Suddenly the game got uncomfortable for me. You play as a terrorist group fighting the military. That’s not exactly different from 4. Sure, if you win, it’s a revolution, but if you lose, historical speaking, the winners call it terrorism. I suppose the story could be considered weaker, but it’s a change up. Instead of basing the story on you vs the big bad, it’s rooted more in the friends you make along the way. You’re building a revolution as one faction gathering 3 more.

There’s also 3 half-games. Between the main titles, half of the prior maps for alternate experiments. I’d wait for all the titles to be discounted but would say the halfsies need to be discounted more. Granted, they’re probably all regularly under $20 now anyway.

After 3 came Blood Dragon, using one of the islands for an over the top 1980s synthwave action comedy. It has corny 80s moves in lieu of superpowers. It’s fun.

After 4 came Primal, a prehistoric version of the FC formula. I think it’s neat that they developed a proto-proto-indo-european language for a 10,000BC setting. Spears, slings, clubs, and knives are the weapons here with some grenade-like items. There’s spiritual elements resembling living a mythology. It’s also fun.

After 5, New Dawn is actually a continuation of the story. A quasi-Fallout/Mad Max post-nuke-apocalypse world in which Joseph Seed still lives - and becomes an ally. I think it brought in supernatural powers from nuclear stuff. Probably my least favorite of the 3, but still enjoyable. It also introduced a number of the elements people begroaned in 6, so maybe that’s why I don’t mind 6 as much.

I’m surprised there hasn’t been a halfsies between 6 and, presumably, an upcoming 7. 6 does have some extra story (dlc?) that has you relive parts of the prior titles. I haven’t done them nor read about them much so I can experience them myself.

Make it Bun Dem by Skrillex and Damien Marley

I’m glad you enjoyed the song. I don’t know your age, but seeing that screenshot made me realize how hard it’d be to explain the popularity of dubstep and, in particular, Skrillex to anyone who wasn’t there. Same goes for the immortalization of the “oh my god!” featured in Nice Sprites and Scary Monsters, screamed by the girl who stacked cups in record time. Or stacking cups. This feels like the making of an “onion tied to my belt” type of rambling story. I imagine most of this platform was there for dubstep and that the young adults today had way more internet access than I did as a kid, so it’s probably not even unknown yet.

The song shuffles into my playlist sometimes and takes me back to both that game moment and the generalized memory of blasting that from my ipod nano into my grandpa’s handmedown Ford Taurus with the headphone wire I hardwired into the cassette deck. If you think dubstep sounds bad now, I made it sound worse.

What a coincidence. I looked up the Key & Peele skit about dubstep. My exact generation of Taurus is involved, identified by the circular rear window. The skit is worth it on its own, of course

https://youtu.be/5Kod1q39ddE