Lurker > StartTheMachine

For those that pieced together The Golden Path on their own, was the satisfaction worth it? The Witness definitely had Golden Path-esque intricate puzzles I DID dedicate myself to, pen and pad out, and felt super rewarded for it. So I kind of wonder if I should have braved The Golden Path and missed out. The secret save file to uncover one of the missing pieces is brilliant.

That said, there was also stuff in The Witness I never bothered completing legitimately. Fuck that one ship puzzle.

Probably 50+ times. The thing is though, where I live there's a "dollar theater" (literally $2.50 for a ticket now; 10 years ago or so it was an actual dollar) which movies go to after they've been out a few months. So it's really easy to justify seeing any great movie a second time.

Still quite a few I've paid full price twice though and didn't wait for the dollar theater discount.

solving The Golden Path without a guide is incredible. props to Para on that one

Easiest yes ever

JonThePenguin posted...

https://twitter.com/grocerieswegner/status/1559290958843449346

This was one of the GOAT tweets ever until I realized it's not the real Twitter page for the business. Just someone online making a parody account and having some fun.

My number two game of the year behind Elden Ring. Definitely a lot of similar thoughts as others here. I'll just post my brief write-up from the "Post Each Time You Beat a Game" topic.

StartTheMachine posted...

Tunic

Man, this game absolutely rules, though I'm a little bit mixed on the post-game, where it basically transitions from a Zelda-like to The Witness. What surprised me about this game is how much I enjoy its original ideas - it's not really the Zelda influence at all that's the highlight here. It's the weird ideas, like assembling the instruction manual in-game, the use of perspective, the more Souls-like combat. There's a lot going for it. While I absolutely don't have it in me to figure out all of its insane secrets without a guide, I have mad respect for games that do these absurdly intricate secrets. Rightfully belongs in the "secrets games" hall of greats, alongside The Witness, Braid, Fez and the like.

I need to play 6! But 4 is one of the best games ever made so yeah

Negative forces aren't the only way to empower the Chaos Emeralds. Our positive feelings towards each other can make them work. Our hearts together form awesome power!

LightningStrikes posted...

3/10. A lot of kindness in this topic. It has the basic ingredients for what a more story-focused Sonic game could be but the dialogue and general writing are awful. The Gamma stuff is good but very short.

Came in ready to give this a 2 or so but people remimded me of the Gamma stuff. But yeah the god awful dialogue makes anything above a 5 a pretty laughable score to me.

That said, I think the story here is way better than SA2 (though that one reaches "so bad it's good" territory at times) and I think I gave that a 1 or 2.

5

Ape Escape

there is never a bad time to talk about the best game

red_sox_777 posted...

I don't agree with the idea that Trump isn't smart. Trump is smart enough to have run circles around every other Republican candidate in 2016 and to tie the party establishment in knots. Trump is smart enough to make millions of people believe the most ridiculous lies. Trump is smart enough to construct sentences where people who want to hear wisdom hear what they perceive as wisdom, and people who want to hear stupidity hear the worst stupidity.

Trump does not care about anyone but himself.

I just know this is gonna go the way of the charisma discussion all over again and I don't want to start it

I'll just say I agree. I think he's socially smart and good at reading crowds, but that's just completely unrelated from what an IQ test would measure

IQ tests are dumb (but most Trumpers would still do better on them than Trump)

Leafeon13N posted...

They might be victims of propaganda but they aren't good people in the first place.

Since we're going on anecdotal evidence here, strong disagree. My mom used to always talk shit about immigrants and the like when she consumed Fox News. Now she doesn't even believe me when I tell her she did this and gets extremely angry when I show her clips of Tucker Carlson being a racist piece of shit

TheRock1525 posted...

My dad is the opposite. Was a big Limbaugh/O'Reilly fan but has moved left on a lot of stuff (save guns where he was always very left). Now thinks guys like Hannity are huge pieces of shit.

My mom is a former right-winger now deprogrammed as well

Her deprogramming? Simply...a lack of Fox News. Literally all it took. The unfortunate passing of my stepdad led to her stop watching Fox with him. 5 years later she turns it on and tells me one day "those Fox News people are kind of crazy."

Then she voted for Bernie in 2020, literally with zero influence from me. She's the one who came to me telling me she was voting for Bernie. My dad thinks I got her to do it. My mom is the GOAT

Having parents fork along their paths like this is probably a big reason I have the perspective on these issues that I do. But nahhh really it's mostly the insane shift to fascism the right has been trudging towards the last 25 years

PerfectChaosZ posted...

Its not even good brainwashing. Its not subtle.

Now this I agree with though. Like holy fuck. Even though I predicted Trump being elected, I also had some small shred of hope that he might also finally deconvert a chunk of Fox News viewers (now Newsmax viewers) like my Dad through his sheer idiocy and egregious narcissism. I guarantee you, the average Trumper is smarter than Trump is by simple IQ metrics (obviously a horrible way to measure critical thinking skills). Genuinely think Trump is near the level of mental disability.

But you know, once that didn't happen, it was also obvious they would all buy his lie that he won the election

This post is now just about making fun of foolmo for saying 2% of the American public would believe the election was stolen or whatever dumb shit he said. Let's all just make fun of foolmo together

Kenri posted...

I don't see what people who were genuinely good beforehand got out of this stuff initially, though. Like, if I turn on the TV and hear Tucker Carlson, my reaction is "this sucks shit" and then I turn it off. But a lot of people keep watching, and what am I supposed to think of that if not "well, they're probably being told something they already like"?

Getting them very young is the indoctrination process that works on mass shooters. Appealing to things like "Christian and family values", '"patriotism", "strong work ethic" is what works on others. And certainly their own natural dissatisfaction with their lives and fear of others.

It's just an empirical fact that the conservative leaders of this country went from Eisenhower to Trump. A shift like that is simply not possible with an informed electorate.

Let's put it this way: you find out someone is a scientologist - is your first instinct to call them a massive piece of shit or a victim?

That's not to rob anyone of their agency, and hopefully I made that clear. But you can indeed acknowledge someone as having agency of their shitty choices and still recognize their being a victim of something larger.

StealThisSheen posted...

Now give us your thoughts on The Last Jedi.

one of the best Star Wars movies

whoops I just gave up my two alts

KamikazePotato posted...

Yeah like, what's the endgame of having empathy towards GOP-brainwashed people? I don't care about the moral high ground and pragmatically speaking there's way more cons than pros.

Focusing on the root of the problem

There's a very obvious reason for the dramatic right-wing shift of the country since the 90s

GuessMyUserName posted...

he hated conservatives and liberals and had been a lifelong NDP stan (basic canadapoli lesson: NDP left, Liberals center, Conservatives right) til recently

nevertheless he still has a sketchy nazi high school history some of it edgelord shock shit, some of it New Atheist Sam Harris bell curve garbage

he's only gotten into actual right-wing shit over COVID and the PPC (new fringe ultra-right party), now calling the NDP shills for the ~mainstream media~

was also a big Yang guy

so what you're telling me is he consumed media that shaped his views

maybe people aren't naturally born racist pieces of shit?

anyway the right-wing propaganda machine has destroyed our country and these people also suck and I'm drunk

GuessMyUserName posted...

do i gotta mention my brother again

he literally never consumed anything right-wing before becoming a Nazi? it just happened spontaneously? obviously nobody young watches Fox News, they get all their Nazi propaganda from reddit and 4chan

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Theyre victims of disinformation literally trying to rally their buddies to kill people.

Theres a point where empathizing with that crosses into negligence.

StealThisSheen posted...

I'm honestly not even convinced they all believe the lies. I'd say there's a good percentage just using it all as an excuse. It gives them a "reason" they can point to to talk about killing people they already want to kill.

Take it from somebody who once had a kind-hearted father who genuinely believes this shit now. He never "needed an excuse" to hurt people. He only cared for and wanted to help people before the right-wing brainworms. He's a fucking victim.

I also have very little sympathy for him and he's a miserable human being to be around these days, and he'll likely never be pulled out of the cult no matter what facts are presented to him. But I can still recognize the obvious fact that he's a slave to the emotional turmoil created for him by the super rich to keep him voting against his own interests.

If you were already Nazi-affiliated before consuming some form of right-wing media, well fuck you. But you also probably don't even exist.

These people genuinely believe all the lies they've been told of a stolen election and a rogue FBI agency targeting Trump for "fighting the establishment." They're idiots, but they're also victims.

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

https://twitter.com/livingbluetx/status/1557138184563314690?s=21&t=mwHhIncxEs6xDpkLZYHkew

Many many psychos having a normal one. No reason to care at all, not like the elected officials they support have said we wont let the election get stolen again or anything.

I genuinely feel so bad for these people. They're victims of an incredibly powerful propaganda machine that at this point no longer cares if people die. Directly, I should add. They've never cared if people die indirectly through horrible policies.

RaidenGarai posted...

He pleaded the 5th already.

Ah yeah. At least this article went with the correct headline!

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-pleads-fifth-after-saying-only-guilty-people-do-1732549

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/09/trump-tax-returns-must-be-given-to-congress-court-says-.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-real-estate-appraiser-hands-thousands-documents-ny-ag-civil-prob-rcna42023

So much beautiful, bigly news. No one's ever seen this much beautiful news

E: Trump will be under oath in that NY civil case deposition. There is literally a zero percent chance he doesn't perjure himself

Thorn posted...

https://twitter.com/yarbro/status/1557136280785403904

Trump-appointed FBI Director enforces Trump-signed law. LOL "whoops"

Trump's old nemesis reading strikes again

Wordle 417 3/6





Cough
Cigar
Cling

My 2 streak has ended :(

7

Pretty solid. Ezlo and Vaati are both great. I'd rather play Minish Cap over ALttP any day.

Wordle 416 2/6




Plant
Patty

Killin' it lately. Three twos in a row, I have no idea how

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

I should have taken a picture, but just the other day I saw a bumper sticker combination with one that said Are you AMERICAN or DEMOCRAT?"

Saw this one last week. I'm in TN so dumb shit like that isn't exactly uncommon

E: My dad used to have a "Drill Baby, Drill" bumper sticker for like 10 years

LeonhartFour posted...

*checks to see if certain character usernames are now available*

interesting

in before Baseball

him up

Lock

LMS stop ruining a beautiful moment in politics containment topic history

BotW 2 > Silksong > REmake 4 (> Jedi, but I didn't even realize it's supposed to come out next year)

5.5

Cosmic karma: this is the same date as Nixon's resignation

Lmao what a bad finals

I just couldn't live with myself playing something like God of War Ragnarok on the PS4, knowing a superior experience of the game exists. Getting one soon for sure.

ctesjbuvf posted...

Uhh an average 5, which is perfect for the game.

Also this

SMW

Wordle 411 2/6




Fuck yes

Super Metroid

Never been an easier vote in my life

5 (changed rating)

You know what, I was being hard on this game with that initial rating solely because it's a bad game. Characters are still largely entertaining. It's alright for what it is.

Yes

3

SMW

but damn this was a tough call

Axl_Rose_85 posted...

City > Asylum > Knight

This. But I'm itching for a replay, especially for Asylum.

DKC