Living fossil.
Also on: @coelacanth@aggregatet.org @coelacanth@piefed.social @coelacanth@fedia.io
They did bother to check, they are just sloppy. It seems like it's more that one slipped through the cracks. There are plenty of unredacted "don t" in the files. Looks like they did blanket redactions of "Don T" (and other Trump related names) and then went through manually and unredacted false positives to cover their tracks. But they missed one. It's still a smoking gun, though, as there's literally no reason to redact "don t".
Probably. CSAM is CSAM, I'm not sure the law would differentiate. Probably one of the reasons Dataset 9 has taken time to get restored, as I believe it was said it had some accidentally unredacted/uncensored CSAM in it?
Yeah I haven't played it but I heard the stories. I haven't played every year, but in general I would recommend either
- FM 2024 The latest "classic" version, has the most support, mods, relevant player database etc. Probably recommended for most players. Most feature-rich while still not being completely fucked like 2026 apparently is.
- FM 2017 I have this game still installed, though I haven't played it in over a year now I think. I have my longest running save on this edition. Often comes up on top in votes for which FM has the best match engine. It still has some exploits if you look for them hard enough (every edition does), but for the most part all tactics are viable, the match engine feels good and you're not forced into any one archetype.
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If Donald Trump ever us put on trial, the court stenographers will probably have a mental breakdown
Right now he is essentially an untouchable king according to the supreme court, so the only way I see him getting tried for anything is if he happens to die while still in office but before he gets the chance to pardon himself, and the trial goes ahead posthumously.
That's good news. With the amount of people interested in these files and in data preservation it's bound to be only a matter of time until the whole dataset 9 is restored. Someone out there's gotta have the rest of the files.
Does anyone have any ideas for games where you can have shorter or longer term "projects"? Like building a character in an ARPG or building a base in a base builder? Or grinding for something specific? I want to have my brain locked in a project for leisure. Sorry if not the right place to ask, thought I'd throw this in here.
Build a dynasty at a lower leagues club in Football Manager. That'll be the next few months of your life sorted.
I've actually played three games this past week, so I think I will split up my ramblings into spoiler tags to not fill out the entire screen with a wall of text.
I am finished with The Last Express. Note that I didn't say I finished it. I played for a few hours, enjoyed some things immensely and grew frustrated by some other things, and ended up deciding I would rather just watch the rest of the game as a movie on YouTube. Which I ended up not regretting one bit.
There are parts of the game I adore. And it's cheap enough often enough that I still recommend people buying it and giving it a chance, because even if you don't finish it there is a lot of interesting, immersive things to enjoy here. The writing is especially strong - these are not your typical video game characters and for a 1997 title especially they are mind-blowingly human and well realised. I have to make a special mention of the lesbian couple and their tragic love story, which is all completely unrelated to the plot and missable side character content you must snoop around and eavesdrop to put together. But is a beautiful, mature and completely non-sexualized portrayal of homosexuality and its struggles in the early 1900s. Some of the best I've seen in any video game.
The rotoscoped animations are also - I think - gorgeous, although technical limitations of the time mean only certain cutscenes are fully animated and the rest plays out in a sort of stop-motion. It still goes a long way towards making the game timeless. The voice acting is also phenomenal across the board, and the use of native voice actors helps anchor the game georgraphically. It's a really well researched window into a very interesting and somewhat underexplored era.
But at the end of the day I can see why this game flopped commercially. The first hour or so is incredibly strong and immersive, but the lack of direction and guidance can quickly wear you down. There is just a whole lot of randomly wandering around the train with absolutely no idea of what you're supposed to, waiting for something to happen - or even waiting to start to get an idea of even what you're meant to be doing. And also a whole lot of rewinding and replaying sections, something I started to get particularly fed up with.
I found this great blog post about the game, and whether you intend to play it or not it's a fantastic read, and sums up a lot of my thoughts about the game. One part in particular stands out:
I fear that Smoking Car may have violated one of Sid Meier’s principles of game design: that it’s the player who should be the one having the fun, not the programmer or designer.
I also started Chrono Ark, which is a roguelike deckbuilder I've heard a lot of good things about. I have played about 6 or so runs, with varying success, and I did manage to make my first "clear" today, only to find that it was... well I will not spoil anything further as I've also heard a lot of good things about the story of this game. Unlike many deckbuilders this is a game that puts the story in a central focus, and so far I am quite liking what I see. It is quite a bit darker than it might seem at first, and I hope it continues to lean into that and continues to throw curve balls. I have only just scratched the surface but I hope the hints I've been seeing so far will pay off in the way I think they might, because there have been some really interesting moments.
Gameplay wise it's just a really solid roguelike deckbuilder. If you've played the genre before you know the drill. Cards, upgrades, boss mechanics, team compositions and synergies etc. It plays really well and every run has been fun and different, with more options opening up with meta progression as you unlock more characters and more items and so on. Would definitely recommend for any fans of the genre.
It also does have an "easy mode" if you just want the story, but I haven't seen enough of it yet to know if I would recommend it solely based on that.
Lastly, I finally pulled the trigger on Ninja Gaiden 4. I was intending on playing it on release last year (I even played the entire Ninja Gaiden series back-to-back to prepare) but at the last moment I got distracted by other things. But after the fairly slow-paced gameplay of The Last Express and Chrono Ark I needed something snappier and so I couldn't resist any longer.
So far I've only played like 2 hours, but I am impressed by what I'm seeing. I was worried that Platinum Games' involvement would dilute the Ninja Gaiden-ness of the game, but it still feels "right". I'm playing on Hard and enemies are good and aggressive, maybe not quite as much as in Ninja Gaiden 2, but still enough to give you that sensation of being pushed to just survive. I love that UTs are back, and On-Landing UTs, and essence orbs dropped by enemies. Combat is more complex than previous games, with stance switching and parrying now. But it's been very fun and satisfying and just exactly what I was looking for.
One thing I am somewhat miffed about however is the simplified combo system, with less focus on fighting game style inputs for combos. Although this could well be just the beginning and those are unlocked later with other weapons and/or upgrades. But I do miss that a bit.
I also needed to install a mod to remove the horrific blue tinted filter, which just doesn't look good to me. Not really sure why so many developers go for that type of heavily stylized filter, I just rarely find it looks good.
I like Team Ninja and the way they do character action, so I'm happy both Ninja Gaiden 4 and Nioh 3 were well reviewed and successful. Probably won't jump into this for a long time due to my backlog (I'm working on Ninja Gaiden 4 at the moment, though!), but will most likely tentatively wishlist this for a future sale.
I'm afraid you're conflating "Fallout" with "Bethesda". Fallout 1&2 are peak Fallout, and they are neither shallow nor janky. Well, maybe slightly janky but more in the sense of "dated" than Bethesda type jank.
If you're specifically looking for gaming then there are two gaming-focused distros to look at: Bazzite and CachyOS. Former is based on Fedora and latter on Arch, if that makes any difference to you. I've heard good things about both.
Do note that Linux doesn't support kernel-level anti cheat of any kind, so if you want to play any multiplayer games that require this you categorically cannot use Linux, unfortunately.
Ambivalent is probably correct. What I've seen of the writing doesn't live up to Disco, which makes sense because none of the writers remain at ZA/UM. I will still probably pirate it and see what it's like. Anton Vill is still at the studio (he drew the art for the Thought Cabinet) and I like his art. They have said some potentially interesting things about expanding the Thought Cabinet mechanically and making it more interactive and complex - which is pretty much just implementing scrapped DE features, but still.
The true follow-up will be one of the spiritual successors made by the people who were actually involved in the writing and world building: Hopetown (Martin Luiga is involved), Summer Eternal (Aargo Tuulik is involved) and whatever Red Info is cooking (Robert Kurvitz, Helen Hindpere and Aleksandr Rostov are involved).
Some say the game is only ever good for a first blind playthrough and that the open world stands in their way of getting to "the fun part™" of the game.
Yes, this is pretty much where I'm at and have been since the beginning. I played ER on release and had a blast exploring the world at that time before the wikis were even filled out, where everyone was discovering the game collectively and people on forums/group chats were constantly finding new stuff. However, after finishing it I have had no desire to go back. And after the dust had settled I also came away from it with the feeling that the best parts of the game - the legacy dungeons - were the places where ER stopped being ER and played like DS4 instead.
If the entire game was like Stormveil Castle I'd probably have done a second playthrough already.
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Viva New Vegas for Fallout: New Vegas and the Unofficial Patch for VtM: Bloodlines are my go-to examples. Not a mod but Ninja Gaiden Black is the definitive version and much better than both Ninja Gaiden (2004) and Ninja Gaiden Sigma.
I don't have an easy answer for you, and I identify with your issues a lot. I am intimately familiar with the situation of sitting down in front of the PC with a couple of hours to spare thinking "I want to play some games" and then just... Not getting around to actually double-clicking the shortcut of any of them.
That's a phenomenal photo. It's funny that Stockholm looks more Cyberpunky 100 years ago than it does now.
I mean Loops has a For You page, but the algorithm seems much worse than TikTok (unsurprisingly). Partly I'm sure simply because there is so much less content to pull from, so it might seem worse than it is purely because there might not actually be anything worthwhile on it to recommend to you in the first place. But TikTok's algorithm is famously extremely good at identifying things you would like, even things you might not know you would like yourself. To be able to be an alternative in the brainrot delivery market, Loops needs to be able to come at least closer.
PipePipe is a fork of NewPipe, with more and better features (like built in SponsorBlock). I was watching videos on it just an hour ago.
I agree, and I think it's a shame it has gotten to this point, but I understand his viewpoint completely and have seen the interactions myself. At this point it's simply more efficient to promote Piefed on Reddit instead of Lemmy, because you want the absolute least amount of friction for potential new users. Literally any single minor inconvenience/negative thing will cause people to not even consider trying it out. Lemmy has unfortunately already accumulated a reputation, and if you promote it you are very likely to run into comments about tankies which is typically enough to scare potential new users away.
At the end of the day it shouldn't matter to us which software people use, as long as we get more new users into the ecosystem.
PipePipe has never let me down yet. In case you still need to interact with YouTube.
Return of the Obra Dinn would be a good fit, I think. A library setting would be a great reason to get players looking up books on nautical history.