Ah cool. One of my friends just did Bloodborne, so it might be time to knock these two off the list finally.

Yeah, EGS isn’t ideal, but this actually being available on PC was the best news of the month for me. I thought sure it was going to be exiled to PlayStation again. I still haven’t been able to play The Last Guardian.

Season 1’s a decent candidate for this question in its own right; the parent comment is right that season 1 is excellent overall, but on first watch you potentially do kinda have to stick it out until episode 12.

The Outer Wilds. Completely not for me.

I’m not big on puzzle games in general and I found the ship controls infuriating.

Old El Paso taco seasoning. I think they changed it a long time ago. I’m sure it was cost considerations, and not broader appeal.

I’ve tried making my own but I can never get it quite right.

This is me with berries, at least at my local supermarkets. I didn’t even realize how bad it was until I had blackberries right off the bush at a friend’s house. Now I only ever get them frozen or (when I can splurge a little) at a farmer’s market.

The unrelated ones I don’t get, but the closed caption-style stuff makes it more likely someone on the endless scroll will stop on your video when they have their apps set not to play audio unless the video is focused.

I mean, if I didn’t have a standing appointment to watch game showcases with some friends, I could definitely see a scenario where I missed this. It’s not the kind of thing that would pop up at all in my regular gaming feeds.

The funny thing is that I was genuinely tired of seeing it at every single State of Play for however long it’s been now. It was heavily marketed within a specific media channel, and didn’t stir up any controversy or buzz that reached my eyes or ears.

The word “tycoon” was brought into English from the Japanese word taikun (大君), one of the words for “lord.” The Japanese word itself would have been brought over from China a long time before.

Started up Final Fantasy VI T-Edition this week, very early in. Mog absolutely wrecked face on the guard boss fight, that was funny. It’ll be fun to use chars in different ways, and I don’t even know what all is different yet.

The amount of “The [clearly disproportionate response] was completely justified here” I used to see in the comments on that genre is terrifying.

It happened again in the newest game, too. I was so disappointed. Thought we were past this 😭

I think that’s just the hardcore raiding crowd everywhere. I’ve seen it across multiple MMOs. When you’re that highly invested in something, any changes are going to get under your skin. Especially so if competition for seats is involved.

What I wish was more universal was the dungeon etiquette. It’s been a few years since I was in World of Warcraft, but the pick-up group dungeon experience there had the most toxic people I’ve ever seen in gaming by a long way. And I’ve solo queued in League of Legends!

Based on years of experience moderating a public Discord server:

• Weirdest - Trails. Unfortunately, this is weird in the problematic way; think Pragmata. Some of the most well-known names in the fandom are that kind of weird. The series doesn’t do itself any favors leaning into it a bit, too. Adding to it is the perception that series fans are gatekeeping when they tell you to play the series in order when in reality, yes, the developers are insane enough to keep building a continuous narrative that’s gone 20 years, One Piece-style. Hard to convince people of that when video game series just don’t do that.

• Nicest - Stardew Valley. I agree with the others here on that.

• Meanest - Fire Emblem. I’ve seen some wars, holy hell. Aside from general fandom insularity from out-groups, there are intense, internecine wars going on within the fandom over the newer parasocial elements in the series. And then there are waifu wars on top of that within the part of the fandom that’s embraced the parasocial stuff. It’s a fandom crucible.

You’re welcome to join us over at Seventh Heaven. It’s a generalist JRPG server but we do have a small cadre of Trails fans.

That said, Trails was going to be my vote for weirdest, heh.

The Expanse is the only show I’ve never once skipped the opening credits on, even on rewatch. The song’s a pitch-perfect mood throughout the whole series, and a great length, too. Doesn’t overstay its welcome.

If you’re willing to spend a little time learning the editor and some general web hosting basics, you can get up and running fairly quickly with Wordpress. Just stick to the templates and don’t try to stretch the design too much, that’s where you’ll fall into a really deep rabbit hole.

For tips on how to use it, whatever you do, don’t use traditional web search. It’s beyond bad for this topic. Use AI search. If it hallucinates on you, you’ll know. Just try again with a different prompt.

Nice! I hear some familiar soundfonts in there, I wonder if Japanese composers back then had a lot of the same ones.

Nice, best gaming news so far this year for me. I played the crap out of the original.

There’s a stock wind instrument recording that showed up in a bunch of places in 90’s media. It’s right at the start of “Distant Mountain” from Suikoden.