I have links set to open in a private firefox tab, then reader mode or whatever it’s called generally avoids all of the popups, paywalls & spaces where ads would be without ad blockers while letting you read the whole thing.

Agreed, there have been some comics that I just don’t enjoy, but the user also posts other stuff that I do like so I don’t want to block them. I don’t see any downside to making filtering & searching easier. I’m not weighing in on the deplatforming specific artists discussion, but for purely functional purposes tags make a lot of sense.

I’m sitting at work, staring at the clock. 40 minutes left until I can go home, then it’s probably Satisfactory time again. I played it about a year and a half ago for 45 days, with an average playtime of 9 hours per day (between working a full time job with 13h shifts 4 days a week). Yeah. I probably shouldn’t have started again.

It took me like 7 years to get the crowns in World, Rise was much quicker. Sadly I burned out after a couple hundred hours of Wilds, the Gold and Miniature crowns are the only achievements I have left. I jump in once a month or so for a few hunts and don’t enjoy myself all that much, hopefully once the expansion drops I can get back into it properly. I love the games so much, I just get to a point where I’d rather do anything than actually go on a hunt.

Looks legit to me, I got one too. My client (Thunderbird) only shows email adresses if you tap it to expand the sent/received stuff.

I work 2-3 nights in a row with 2-3 off in between, so I’ve been limiting myself to only jumping into Pokopia once between each batch of shifts so that I won’t overdo it. Once I start though, that’s it for the day - it’s bedtime the next time I’m aware of my surroundings.

I mainly just chill out in Palette Town (or Paulette Town because my Ditto is named Paul), building habitats and trying to make it into a nice little village. Despite spending at least a good 20 hours there I’ve barely made it 30 seconds’ jog away from the entry road. I’m basically only doing the story so that I’ll have more options for building and more friends to bring in, like I think I’ll need to get into the next (4th) main map to find cable cars to unlock the item for one of Eevee’s mates. I just like making my own little slice of paradise in post-apocalyptia.

Since I’m working this weekend and only have my Switch, I’m bouncing between Pokémon Violet, Scarlet (for exclusives), Arceus and Sword just doing a few little tasks each day in my endless quest for a shiny living dex.

I’ve also been playing a bit of Gale of Darkness now that it’s been rereleased. I played a lot of Colosseum as a kid, but never managed to get a copy of this one. It’s pretty rough, but about what you’d expect. Some of these models and animations are insane.

Looking forward to getting back to Monster Hunter Stories 3 and Resident Evil Requiem next week.

He didn’t “go” that way, he was always like that.

That’s basically what happened in Australia’s last election. The Liberals were trying to play up culture war shit & wanted to emulate DOGE, and it backfired hard. I was waiting to lock up a polling place for the night in Western Australia which is a couple of hours behind the eastern states, by the time they’d finished packing up the votes to be counted it was already so lopsided that even if every remaining vote was Liberal it wouldn’t have mattered.

The textures are flat on purpose so the AI filter looks “more detailed” in comparison.

Definitely. Boot up the game and look at the actual graphics. Their “OFF” pictures look terrible.

You don’t think Grace would have dolled herself up to go investigate the burned out hotel where her mother was murdered as soon as she finished having a panic attack?

Train them to… what? Get their shins instantly broken by someone with capped boots and realise real fights don’t have rules like UFC does? Cops have guns and tasers and stuff because they’ve already learned this won’t work.

I’m stuck at work, but I brought my deck for a little Monster Hunter Stories 3. I opted to start over rather than import the save from the demo, so I’m not very far in yet. It’s such a satisfying game to play and it looks so good!

I also smashed out a little Pokopia (brought the Switch too… Security can get a little slow some nights) and did something I’ve been ignoring for a few days but was told today is a limited time event. I hate timed shit in games :/ It took like 20 minutes to get more than enough trade-in items to buy everything, but I still don’t like being told when to play games. Oh well.

Yeah if you’re into Pokémon and want a simple little game (or big game because apparently it’s huge) I’d rec this. It’s worth it, the others are having fun too and you can’t put a price on your loved ones’ enjoyment. This is the first I’ve heard of that tradition and I’m not entirely convinced it’s a real one, but check your DMs.

I’m an outlier there. I like slow, atmospheric survival horror punctuated with small segments of high pressure action. 4 is a full game of all of the worst parts of the series, I hate it.

I loved 7, 2 Remake and 3 Remake, then pretty much find most of the rest of them dull & tedious to an unplayable level. I wasn’t paying much attention to Requiem, but I’ve been watching a mate play it and it looks really good. I think if you liked 7 it’ll be right up your alley. As for Village, it wasn’t for me (there’s one section I thought was great, the rest was eh) but most people I’ve spoken to who are into the newer ones rate it highly, so I hope you like it.

Since you asked for a follow-up, I’ve played a bit of Pokopia.

It’s cute, and it’s a lot more Minecrafty than I expected. You build little habitats for Pokemon like a few bunches of tall grass or tall grass under a tree or whatever, and things will move in to live there. Everyone has a basic personality, and it’s all super friendly. There’s no pressure, you can half-ass everything without consequence, but you advance by making your community happy by providing them with what they ask for. I’ve done the first 2 maps so far (they’re all based on towns from the Kanto region). The last thing I did was get to a map that basically has no real story and lets you build however you want, and the game said I can move my Pokemon from other maps there so I’m going to build a little community for my favourites.

As for negatives, building is quite tedious, you can place blocks in 3D space around you based on where the camera is looking so you kind of have to swing it around madly to get things where you want them, and building in a cramped area is rough. Destroying blocks takes a few punches but you punch in a little AoE attack, so you have to line things up very precisely with the same annoying system when you only want to hit a specific block. You can make pre-made building kits that require the help of a bunch of mons with different skills. This is great, but anything past the most basic couple of huts takes ages and it’s in real time (as in “Come back tomorrow and we should have this done”). Thankfully you can just change the console settings to time travel without consequence, because fuck that.

Anyway, it’s a nice cosy, low-pressure game with a surprisingly grim story. You wake up in the post-apocalypse and everyone’s gone, so you have to try to make the areas nicer to attract more Pokemon back, while rebuilding towns in the hope that humans will come back too. As you explore you find pre-whatever logs, & some post-whatever journal entries that seem to be suggesting the world became uninhabitable due to climate change so everyone “went away.” A lot of the friends you make are so sad that their trainer is gone and can’t wait to find them again, and I don’t know how this is going to end but well… I think you should get comfortable without them, guys.

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Other than that last week I mentioned Digimon Story Time Stranger, I played the demo but didn’t really like it. Then there was Monster Hunter World, which I mentioned was one my favourite games but my gf isn’t really enjoying it so my dreams of playing that together with her have been crushed. On the bright side the demo of Monster Hunter Stories 3 is fantastic, I never finished the 2nd game because while I liked the game I started to really hate the teammates’ AI and couldn’t force myself through it, but the upcoming game fixes a lot of issues and it so fun to play. I just dropped $330AUD on Pokopia this week (one for me, my for my gf and one for my sister’s birthday present), so I’m not sure about dropping another $108 on this, but it’s extremely tempting.

Nope, I’m not a hype kind of guy. I want a title and release date, then nothing else until it’s out. I didn’t even want to see the starters but it’s unavoidable unfortunately.

I have no idea about Pokopia, it looks vaguely Animal Crossing-y but I’ve never really played that either. Hopefully it’s fun. I don’t buy enough full price games to really care about that, maybe 1-2 a year. If I mainly played games on console I’m sure I’d have to be a little more frugal.

My sister and I both finished our shiny living dexes in Z-A, so it’s back to Arceus and Violet for me. I’ve also been told to try out Digimon Something Stranger (🤷 can’t remember), I’ve never been into Digimon but why not.

My girlfriend has started Monster Hunter World which is one of my favourite games, and I’m looking forward to some co-op with her for the optional stuff. I’m making her do the story missions on her own so that she’ll actually learn how to play without being carried, because the endgame will be rough if she doesn’t.

Other than that, just killing time until Pokopia.

My sister and I have 9 things left to complete both of our shiny living dexes in Z-A (I’m going for all forms - regional, alternates & sexes, while she’s just going for one mon per dex #), so probably more of that. 3 of my remaining guys are Pumpkaboo/Gourgeist forms, and since only the medium size spawns in Hyperspace I have to go back to doing those the old way by running through the Wild Zone over and over. Still, beats doing them in Sword.

I guess if anyone has any spare shiny Pumpkaboo (small or 2x jumbo) hit me up, I have 8 boxes of extra shinies I don’t need.