Kovukono

Regarding Elden Ring, I would argue it does the sense of exploration better than Hollow Knight, but only by a small degree. For every area, there’s no map at the start, and the entire map’s size is obscured since it only shows what you’ve traveled through. It gets bigger as you go, but it’s still obscured by a fog of war for areas that fit inside the map, but you don’t have a map fragment for. You can see on the map where you can obtain the fragment, but not how to get there. Most times you can just cut a straight line to it, but sometimes it’s a pain.

All that said, the thing it does better than Hollow Knight for exploration is a limitation of Hollow Knight’s map system. It’s split into different rooms, and each room has finite entrances and exits. Because you fill out the map through exploration, you’re going to know what you have and haven’t found.

Because Elden Ring gives you the entirety of the map, it’s both helpful and not. You can figure out (mostly) how to get from point A to point B, and you have markers for everywhere you’ve been. There’s two minor issues with that, though. It’s a 2D map for a 3D world, which means you end up with some locations not being properly shown, because they’re underneath cliffs. The second is that the map does almost nothing to show what places of interest there are. You have large buildings shown, but that excludes all the catacombs (dungeon areas) you can visit. There are areas on the map that are right there, but due to the topography you have no idea how to get there. Going by the map alone means you’re going to miss out on a solid amount of the content available.

It’s because the map is so limiting that it feels so good. You’re able to use it to figure where places are in directional relation, but you still have to look yourself to try and uncover areas. My first run, I prided myself on uncovering everything. I searched high and low, inspected the map to make sure I went to every corner, and really made sure I knew what was out there, and it felt amazing in terms of how much content there was and how much exploration you could do. I started a second run when the DLC came out, and found an area that, somehow, I had entirely missed. It took over a hundred and forty hours of searching, really searching, to get what I thought was complete, and it still wasn’t. It was a fantastic feeling on my second run.

Hollow Knight’s map is excellent. The gameplay is excellent, the exploration is rewarding and challenging. But the issue it has is that it only has those two dimensions to work with. Elden Ring really works to emphasize that third dimension when scouring for secrets.

It’s kind of wild that I’ve seen trailers and posts for Lollipop Chainsaw’s remaster, but the first time I hear about a Shadows of the Damned remaster is buried in the last paragraph of a dev interview.

I get that you’re trying to say that the NDP was able to do something, but there’s no evidence they were consulted on it. Given that it lasted less than a day before the strike was stopped, it was probably something the government didn’t discuss long.

The action was taken by a cabinet member to order the Canadian Industrial Relations Board to step in. The CIRB isn’t controlled by any party. Singh came out with a statement that condemns the move, and says it signals that any federally-regulated field doesn’t have to negotiate with workers in good faith. I don’t know where you heard that any party has the ability to stop this other than the party who the current Minister of Labour belongs to, but no action was taken that needed to pass the House.

Logan Lucky came out in 2017, and this scene is still relevant.

I can’t find a result that’s not Tiktok, Instagram, or Facebook, but Brad Pitt played a depressing weatherman on the Jim Jefferies show.

They’re pretty much only in line with the people who like his humor, but SsethTzeentach has some funny ones.

I genuinely enjoyed Arkham Knight, but those mandatory Batmobile sections are easily the most miserable part of the game. If we had those for an entire game, it might not be too bad, but most of the time you just end up using it to get from point A to point B. If you can put up with being stuck for a bit on those sections, you might enjoy it.

Its big issue is that it has to follow up on Arkham City. It’s not a bad game by any stretch, but it’s following up to one of the best superhero games out there. If you’re not invested in the story, there’s no harm in dropping it. Play something you’ll have fun with.

Co-ops have been shown to be less likely to fail than traditional businesses in their first ten years. The article argues that if Canada spent $1b on helping workers to purchase businesses from retiring entrepreneurs, it would drastically raise the wealth of the poorest citizens and allow for more stable businesses.

The game didn’t really appeal to me, but I want to say that the trailer music absolutely slaps.

It’s not a sex thing. It’s actually a lot worse.

They didn’t cancel it after the second season, it’s even worse. They released the first half, announced the second half of the first season was coming and renewal for a second, then released the second half and canned the second season. We barely got a single season.

You can get past the black screen by deleting the config file in the game’s appdata. After that, it’ll launch, you’ll apply settings, and you’ll get stuck on the “Defrosting Helldiver” screen because you can’t access a server, and be stuck with a black screen the next time you launch. I’m having so much fun.

We are the Dorg. You will become a good boy. Resistance is futile.

You can’t be here!

Is that an actual screenshot from the game?

I take it you’re not familiar with famous lawyer Saul Goodman.

High-level overviews of a couple big scandals:

Sexual harassment/assault cases:

• One of California’s government’s departments brought forward a case in 2021 detailing that women had unequal pay, were sexually harassed, were subject to retaliation for reporting issues, and were also subject to discrimination if pregnant. Wikipedia article here.
• Lawsuit also detailed that “frat boy culture” was prevalent and there was no meaningful penalty for sexual discrimination.
• One woman had nude photos of herself shared, and as a result committed suicide during a company retreat.
• Multiple other agencies have pursued Blizzard over this. The SEC has had Blizzard pay out $35 million for not having a proper reporting structure, and made a $18 million settlement pool. The pool has been criticized for being far too small.
• Original lawsuit appears to still be continuing.

Hong Kong

• A player in a Hearthstone tournament said “Liberate Hong Kong. Revolution of our age!” He was immediately removed from the tournament, given a 1-year ban, and forfeited all winnings.
• Two stream casters also had their contact cancelled.
• Blizzard later stated that they would return the player’s winnings, reduce the ban to six months, change the streamers’ ban to six months, and would ban a team that supported the player’s action for six months, stating his actions violated a contract term that “offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages [Blizzard’s] image.”
• Blizzard has denied this has anything to do with their financial ties to Tencent.
• Wikipedia article about this

Diablo 4 expansion

• Bringing this up because of the question about Diablo 4 specifically: Blizzard apparently sent out a survey asking if $90 was an appropriate price point for the expansion, though that price point might have extra perks attached. For reference, the base game is $70.

The first two were lifted from the controversies section of Blizzard’s Wikipedia page, and they have more information in the linked pages and articles in those pages. For more information, I’d suggest reading there.

Personally, the way the sexual harassment has been handled has stopped me from touching their games. They’ve shown no remorse aside from being caught, they’ve been accused of shredding evidence during the investigation, and instead of addressing the issues, were instead upset that they weren’t approached privately before the public lawsuit. Instead of showing a willingness to reform, they appear to be entirely concerned with preventing financial damage.