“We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior.” Stephen Covey

Surprised I haven’t seen Quantum Break in here. It’s a pretty good shooter with some magic powers thrown in for fun. You don’t get much say in the story, but it still kept my interest all the way through. And it has an interesting take on time travel, woven into the story quite well. It was made by Remedy Entertainment, before Control but after Alan Wake. Also I liked how they cast real actors in the game and made them recognizable. I picked out Courtney Hope in the game from seeing her in Control, even though her character is different in QB.

As a kid, probably Lode Runner. It ran on my pc. Some arcade games were fun. I enjoyed Asteroids. Colossal Cave, and the Infocom games like Planetfall were fun too. Though what really hooked me was Doom. It was the first real 3d FPS game and it blew my mind. It’s been my favorite genre ever since.

Just finished Breathedge. Subnautica in space? Sort of, but with a ‘ha, aren’t we game developers funny’ kind of humor. Portal is an immersive game that’s really funny. The humor in Breathedge, however, insures you can never really settle in to the game. Even so, It’s most impressive what such a small team was able to accomplish.

Just started Plague Tale: Innocence. Stealth survival with hordes of rats - a little creepy and I’m not really expecting an uplifting ending, but we’ll see how it goes.

The issue with quests in RDR2 is that they give you no autonomy. Most games set a quest objective and give you a dozen ways to achieve it. RDR2 forces you to follow the exact path through the quest that the game wants you to take. If you deviate it either fails to progress or simply fails the quest. It felt more to me like an interactive movie than a game in that respect, though you get full freedom outside of quests.

Enshittification in action.

“Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.”

Facebook, TikTok, Amazon, it’s everywhere. Once a platform has lock-in from users it turns its attention to vendors. Then once they’re locked in it rakes in the profits until nobody can tolerate it any more and something else takes its place.

Have you ever tried telling a friend that you didn’t like their partner and they should not be together? They are much more likely to get mad at you and stop talking with you than they are to leave their partner. Just search the advice columns on ‘how to tell a friend their partner is bad’. Every one is filled with comments like “I did that and they got mad at me”, or “we told her and she ignored us and keeps going back”. I’m not really surprised nobody intervened.

I wonder if you were mostly angry at yourself for being in that situation. Maybe angry you could be so foolish or naive. Then you projected that anger onto your friends and family. Anyways, I’m glad you made it through that period.

I’m playing that one now too. You’re right, it’s annoying that you can only drive for like two or three minutes on the bike before it’s out of fuel. But I quickly got used to looking for fuel cans and planning around gas stations. There are enough of them. It’s a deliberate choice, I think, to increase your engagement with the world and prevent you from just driving through it.

Overall I’m very impressed with the game. The story is really engaging. The gameplay and mechanics are solid and well balanced. The rules are not always intuitive, but once you learn them they are consistent. The longer I play it the more time I want to spend with it.

Does bamboo count? It’s a common wood flooring and cutting board option. Lots of furniture is made from it. It’s used like wood, even though it doesn’t grow quite the same as a normal tree. And people have been eating bamboo shoots for a long time.