No, mate. Zalyssia just feels like that. We’re all very drunk.

Mainly the nostalgia of it. The familiar peaceful Christmas hymns and the way Christmas lights reflect against soft snow. My spirit drifts somewhere between commercial Christmas and Yule.

I loved the six hours or so that I played, but have tabled the game until the A-life is (hopefully) fixed, the mutants are better balanced, and (hopefully) the timescale can be adjusted. Bonus points if they can stop my cutscenes/dialogue events from dropping to 10 FPS. But I want to be playing it and I think about it a lot. Until then, I’ve started over fresh in Anomaly and will patiently inhabit the Zone there.

I’ve never cared much about TikTok but old Vine memes make me wish I had been more involved with that platform. If Loops ends up being cool, it might be neat to help pioneer something for once.

Not hearing the kind stranger line for over a year now has been wonderful.

I believe WoW was the tipping point for this. Never had these experiences with older games like Dark Age of Camelot.

I had just mentioned this in a similar post, but Discord culture has really killed multi-player games for me. Especially guilds in MMORPGs. I remember joining one before 2010 felt like this very regal thing. They were these sacred orders of gentlemen with cool names like “The Iron Wolves”, “The Order of Light”, or “The Knights Templar”. Upon initiation you were inducted into a fellowship and granted access to private forums to stay in touch and keep up with the guild. You’d get to know the more productive members who would forge you equipment and look after you. You would gather in great halls beneath the severed head of the world dragon and discuss official guild business. Somewhere along the way that magic just died.

Now the guilds are all edgy and gamey, like “HATE”, “FURY”, “APEX”, “FIRST IN”, and “METHOD”. Initiation involves two paths. You either remain in relative obscurity in the fringes of the guild, never really growing much or forging meaningful relationships, or you take the other fork; walking closely with the sweaty, most egotistical edge-lords of the guild who don’t actually care about or support you, and spread toxicity throughout the ranks. Both paths tend to require you to live in Discord, partaking in constant banter with a group of perpetually online sigma males. It’s like plugging yourself in directly to the guild hive-mind and permanently altering the game’s atmosphere. You’re just playing “ENVY” now, or whatever your dumb guild is called. I’ve joined guilds that want you to have Discord on your phone so you are connected even while offline. That’s fucking nuts.

Anyway, that garbage doesn’t exist with single-player games. I can read dialogue at my own pace, toggle walk through the entire village to take in the sights/sounds and slow down the pacing, and truly absorb every last bit of that wonderfully thick atmosphere. Single-player games are so much deeper for me.

Take a heavily modded playthrough of Skyrim for example, with camping/tenting mods. Dusk begins to fall and you hear the call of a northern flicker in the forest around you. Better make camp. You find a clear spot outside or town and pitch a tent, raise a tanning rack, and build a fire. Now it’s getting dark. You walk to the river’s edge to fill your waterskin and return with a large salmon to cook over the fire. Now the stars are out. The score is swelling to inspiring highs that move your soul. The aurora dances above you in brilliant colors. You sit beside the fire and thumb through your inventory, deciding which lore book to read first. After some time you study a spell or record your thoughts into your journal, then quell your fire and sleep.

That’s my shit right there. That’s a single-player game.

Mushroom and pepperoni.

I’ve been paying $25 CAD to support five family accounts and prevent my daughter from seeing ads during her monitored viewing. If that price goes up 30-50%, I’m fucking done. This was an expense I was willing to incur, as YouTube is literally the only media platform my family even uses anymore. Better price than cable and multiple streaming platforms, and (again) I’m paying that for five active accounts.

If anyone knows of a way for me to adblock through my Roku TV so that we can continue watching YouTube on it without a Premium account, I’m all ears. The TV is the only reason I’m not just using uBlock to begin with. I’m really not into the idea of hooking a laptop up via HDMI if I can avoid it. Just feels like a sloppy user experience for anyone else in the household wanting to watch YouTube on TV.

Yeah, the white, brown and green uniform.

Monolith look so rad.

Mastodon overwhelmed me. I hopped on the website and had no idea what I was looking at. I didn’t understand federation. I basically had the option of what niche hobby to join on Mastadon and no indication that I would he able to access a broader forum, so I said “Well, this fucking sucks.” and left.

Threads and BlueSky are likely as accessible as making an account and you’re done.

Ah, I thought consoles were still rolling with 30. Haven’t owned one in years.

Isn’t 30 the standard on console anyway? Doesn’t seem too bad if they’re getting close. Either way, every time the game is delayed it gives me renewed hope that the developer at least cares about getting it right. And hey, if they fuck it up, the modders will have Anomaly 2 or something similar coming down the pipeline within a year or two.

Have we forgotten Revan and Malak’s misuse of the Starforge already?!

I believe they call that the watermelon crawl.

Night of the Full Moon is incredible.

Wow. I’ve never seen this before and I really liked it.

Honestly, that’s on her for not liking the smell of cumin.

Bruh…