You need to hold the PS button and select (I’ll never stop calling it that) until the LED starts flashing, then it’ll be in pairing mode.

You can buy phone mounts for PlayStation controllers. It’d definitely be cheaper than a whole new controller.

It looks like the game that changed its dailies was Star Rail, not Genshin Impact. Which makes sense: I remember seeing the change in-game but I haven’t played Genshin since around the time of that event in Enk… whatever the underground area is called.

I’m trying to find good articles about it but internet search is abysmal these days, especially for news outside the anglosphere. I did find a forum thread about the Star Rail change as well as a Reddit comment translating and explaining the proposed law though.

The TL;DR of it all seems to be that some time around December 2023, new restrictions were proposed affecting gacha games to curb addicting behavior. The news caused stock prices for affected Chinese companies to plummet, and the person who proposed the law was quickly removed from his position and the proposal dropped.

Is this just cope because he really wants to drop a nuke but his handlers won’t let him?

Plus since the proceedings were guaranteed to fail (even setting aside the party votes, while Trump has committed many constitutional violations, this one is shared by several of his predecessors and was an especially stupid thing to hinge an impeachment vote on - doubly so because it’s not technically a violation until 60 days have passed), all they’d accomplish is burning a substantial amount of political will (something the Democratic party is severely lacking in) to… accomplish nothing but making Donald even worse? He already attacks Democratic states that have shown relatively minor opposition; if their representatives supported impeachment then life could suddenly become a lot harder for their constituents. Unless you’re an accelerationist it was a bad idea all around.

(I should note I don’t support this rationale - cowardly appeasement has never worked - but I can understand it, at least in theory. I’m mostly pissed that they pulled this stunt on such a flimsy pretext when there were plenty of rock-solid justifications to base an impeachment on)

Thanks for the detailed write-up! I’ll have to pick it up at some point; even if it doesn’t hit the same highs as JA2, there hasn’t really been much else that comes close and a more modern coat of polish would be welcome.

What did you think of the new aiming system? I’ve heard mixed things, but it sounded good to me (or at least way better than a flat percentage).

ReVanced (a patched version of the official app) is straight up better than Premium because it can get rid of all the crap corporate insists on shoving into customers’ faces. My YouTube app has a subscriptions tab (that only shows videos, not shorts or random “informative” carousels) and my profile tab with all my playlists.

It’s glorious in its simplicity. Why would I ever pay Google for a worse product?

I’ve heard good things about 3, but haven’t bought it myself. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts if you ever get back into it!

Oh of course, but I doubt anyone else on the list rivals him in quantity.

There was also COVID screwing up sales projections for the last few years. People were stuck at home for months and ended up buying a ton of digital media such as games to stay sane. Executives are stupid and were somehow shocked when numbers dropped after quarantine ended and people went back to their regular lives. Since then, a bunch of projects or even entire studios have been axed due to “underperforming” because they couldn’t compete sales-wise with a period where the entire world was a captive audience.

It turns out conservatives are offended by sex, not sexual assault. They’re historically pretty okay with that one.

Though Henry Kissinger is pulling a “Spiders Georg” and really skewing the numbers there.

As an incentive to get Trump to aid them. He’s entirely ego-driven.

Speaking for myself, I’m too paranoid to buy a used book from some random charity because I can’t trust they ensure the books are clean before selling them.

My family brought home a bundle of music books from some charity event when I was a kid, and it unleashed an infestation of silverfish that proved impossible to get rid of. It’s been more than twenty years and they still pop up on my parent’s walls every few months.

Okay then, the labyrinthine structure spontaneously generates tiny minotaurs, which then consume the disease-causing miasma.

Jagged Alliance 2 (especially with the 1.13 mod) is the most ludicrously detailed tactical RPG you’ll ever find. It can be a nightmare to actually play until you spend many, many hours learning all its systems, but nothing else comes close immersion-wise. You can customize every mercenary’s loadout down to individual weapon attachments, capturing different parts of the map gives bonuses that actually make sense (like being able to ship in weapons once you’ve taken the airport), you can train militias to hold onto captured sectors for you, and you can even use the in-game internet to send flowers to the main villain.

Steam is banned in Vietnam because it couldn’t/wouldn’t comply with their restrictive content laws.

The battle pass removed its daily check-in IIRC.

China started drafting legislation cracking down on engagement bait daily tasks a few years ago and some games (like Genshin and other Hoyoverse titles) dropped daily check-in bonuses and made more things reset weekly in response. I think China later backtracked (IIRC the politician pushing the laws fell out of favor?), but not feeling forced to log in every day made those games so much less stressful.

I haven’t played anything in the genre in years, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that crap crept back in again.

What other game lets you fight the demonic personification of Fox News and Bill O’Reilly?

I know a lot of people hyped up Outer Worlds as a spiritual successor to New Vegas and were disappointed when it didn’t reach the same heights of writing. Obsidian not being given any time to make New Vegas and then missing their contracted bonus payout by a single Metacritic point was brought up a lot before release, and gamers trumpeted this new game as what Obsidian could have made without Bethesda mismanagement. Then it came out and had the temerity to be average, leaving fans acting like they’d somehow been betrayed by Obsidian.

It wasn’t Obsidian’s or the game’s fault that people decided it had to be a 10/10 masterpiece, it just got caught up in a stupid fanbase war against Bethesda and its reputation suffered when it couldn’t meet people’s sky-high expectations.