Although the concept of it being in a Sonic game was pretty silly (and an entire path to play through no less) and the character is really annoying, I heard that even the Big the Cat fishing mode in Sonic Adventure (originally on the Dreamcast) was even good, gameplay-wise. I have played it but I don’t have much experience in other fishing games to compare it to. The only other fishing (mini-)game I have for comparison is the fishing in the 3D Zelda games. Between the two I think I prefer Zelda, though.

(Finally) finished Fire Emblem Fates Conquest and started my run in Pokemon Alpha Sapphire. Got to the first gym slightly under-leveled, and the Nosepass almost swept me, but in the end I cheesed it by using Destiny Bond with my Ralts. I was hoping it and my Torchic would get some XP from the battle since they’re both going to be on my main team, but not losing to the first gym was more important, lol.

If I play anything on Switch it will probably be more Kirby’s Return to Dreamland. I’m on the ice world and it looks at first glance like this is a really short game, but I do know the plot twist so maybe there is a bunch more content coming. I’ll see.

The console looks like a nice upgrade and I’ll get one eventually, but with most games also releasing on Switch 1 at least for a while and not much announces for it that interests me right now, coupled with a personal financial situation that prevents me from comfortably affording a console regardless of its price, I can wait on it for now.

Ubuntu 8.10 in early 2009, after Windows Vista otherwise bricked my laptop. I’ve distro-hopped on a few occasions but most of my 16 years of Linux have been on Ubuntu. That said, I moved away from Ubuntu after a failed upgrade to 22.04 LTS, to OpenSUSE and then to KDE Neon, now I’m on Nobara and couldn’t be happier.

Like I mentioned before, “tutorial pulls” are part of that hyper-generosity that gachas will commonly have for new players to give them enough of a dopamine rush to hang around and be more likely to spend more later. That generosity will not last and can’t last or elee the game will not make nearly as much money. Give it another week and you will find that the supposed good luck runs out, as well as the free currency offered for things like logging in, and then it will start requiring a ton of grinding or real world money to acquire the necessary currency to get to the “pity” in order to ensure you get a top-rarity item. That’s how gacha systems work.

Most “pity” systems require hundreds of pulls beforehand, which unless someone saves months worth of free currency for those pulls, can be very expensive in real world money to get the currency to afford. In a way, pity systems are just designed to increase the amount of money players spend.

The difference is in the details, that with other paid DLC, you actually get the thing you paid for, guaranteed. With a gacha, if they’re promoting some super-strong character, weapon, etc. that you want and you buy currency to spend in the gacha, you are not guaranteed to get that item or anything of the same quality/rarity in any of those pulls you make. It’s all random chance, gambling at its core. Exceptionally good or bad luck can start playing psychological tricks on you, such as FOMO (there will always be something stronger coming soon), sunk cost fallacy (you’ve already dumped this much into it and got nothing, what’s the difference with this much more?), and before you know it, if you’re not watching carefully, you’ve spent far more in in-game and/or real money than you realized. That’s far different than a one-time purchase straight-up for a cosmetic or weapon to use with no further need to spend any more, and that’s what gets people hooked like gambling. You may not have experienced this much because gachas tend to be very generous to new players in order to get them started out quickly as whales fodder and get them hooked on the adrenaline rush of “winning” in the gacha system before the gacha currency starts to dry up on them.

I mean, it can be both at the same time. The games may be good as games (I play a few myself) but the mechanic can also be extremely predatory to those who have a problem with gambling and/or controlling their spending.

We won’t know who we’re getting until after the draft because they’re sacrificing all the best QB2 options for the sake of waiting for a comp pick in next years draft. That’s what KAM gets for selling the farm to bring in what few good draft choices he’s made, now he’s trying to recoup what few picks he can get from anywhere. He’s lucky he’s a master of the free agent market, because outside of last year he’s made only one really good draft choice (Jordan Addison). Jury’s still out on last year.

EDIT: That said, I do like KAM overall, he did a great job cleaning up the salary cap hell Rick Spielman left for him while keeping us competitive, and he is indeed a master of the free agent market. He just needs to improve his drafting skills.

Outrage farming is getting really tiring overall, not gonna lie. It’s OK, everyone, we can feel other things aside from angry and life will go on.

Probably the most legit scared I ever was in a video game, and I was 13.That, and Half-Mummified Gibdo Dad popping out of the wardrobe in Majora’s Mask.

Finished everything in the main story of Tears of the Kingdom except the last portion in the castle. Now I’m on the “final push” of prep for the finish to find the remaining shrines (I’ve found 98 of around 150 total so far, though I may stick to just the 120 on the surface) and level up my armor before I take the castle on (I did sneak in there once and grab one important item already). That could take a while, though, lol.

I prefer grids myself, I’ve never gotten very far in gridless strategy games I’ve played (Mario+Rabbids, Valkyria Chronicles) because I just have too hard a time keeping track of what I can do with any given unit when I don’t have the grid for reference. That said, I can understand the appeal to some as an immersion enhancement, as others have said, and as something of a “modernization” of turn-based strategy allowing for more freedom of movement. Cool if you enjoy that kind of thing in strategy, but just not my jam. I was raised on Fire Emblem in the genre, lol.

I have that on my wishlist, I should pick it up as a belated birthday gift to myself if it’s on sale then. 😁

As far as use cases where immutable distros would be more or less convenient, it appears to me that due to the security and reproducibility factors, immutable distros are better for server or enterprise environments where updates need to be rolled out quickly and smoothly, which are most actual Linux systems out there and where Linux companies make their money (hence why they seem like the hot new thing right now), and for desktops where people are primarily concerned with not wanting to “break” anything. But a classical distro, IMO, would be better for folks like me who do want the control to change or customize things down to the core parts of the OS. As far as I’m aware, you don’t have much freedom to tinker with an immutable distro until it’s wiped away with the next update.

As a fan of the Ace Attorney series, the whole series is amazing. Great writing (including the localization), music, characters and sprite work/art throughout. Have fun with it!

I’ve been busy with other things this week so didn’t play much. Got through the forest but haven’t claimed the Master Sword yet in TotK. I hope it’s not too spoilery to say that you really need to build up your stamina to get it, but even with all the shrine hunting I’ve been doing I didn’t have enough (I was remembering BotW where you needed a lot of health and built that up instead) so now I’m doing even MORE shrine hunting. (I could use a certain thing to trade but I don’t want to do that, I want to do it “legit”.) Fortunately I should only need three more shrines (one more stamina vessel) to have enough so it’s possible I’ll be able to do it this weekend.

I’m more interested in how according to the picture they managed to make the game starring one Biblical figure a 2-player game.

Garfield

Doesn’t help in that regard that the team basically treated him like old news the moment he got injured. I just feel like after that the team pretty much already decided to move on from him and everything to this point was just to try to raise his trade value. Hard to have confidence in yourself when your team has shown it has no confidence in you.

The music is also a hidden gem, especially in the PC version with CD quality. The PC version also had an extra level.