I wasn’t the biggest fan of Gaiden (the Daidoji in general are imo one of the worst plot devices they’ve ever introduced), but 7 was phenomenal for sure. 3, 4, and 5 are admittedly all over the place and products of the time, but each has their merits.

Never go for Y5’s platinum completion though. Worst mistake of my life.

It’s sad how much this franchise has fallen off since Nagoshi left. The demo may have been some of the worst combat and visuals I’ve experienced in this series, and I’ve 100%'d every single game. A clunky mess in an oversaturated world with 3 movesets that all feel like amateur modpacks. Plus Rikiya’s recast is extremely jarring especially next to Mikio, they brought back the annoying friendship thing from IW/Pirates and made it worse, so many issues already.

It’s actually wild how they went from Lost Judgment to this. Like Y6 and K2 were rough but they were working out the kinks of the new engine. LJ was phenomenal. All downhill from there

And that’s just the demo experience, let alone how the full game recast Hamazaki with a known sex pest (should’ve kept the original model but with a new VA, since the old VA was actually even worse in that regard).

anyway when’s Gang of Dragon coming out

C-suite drove that game into the ground with dogshit decisions for the past 3-4 years, and that’s just the game itself- the way that studio treats their devs is abysmal.

I’ve been eyeballing this one for a while, along with OpenFortress. Also found Gold Rush today which seems to be EXACTLY what I’m looking for (and the things they’re avoiding are literally the reasons I stopped playing TF2 around 2011ish). Unfortunately the playercounts for these sorts of mods are abysmally low.

Usually if this happens for me it’s an issue with the gluetun end, since all the big names love to throttle known VPNs. Fixes itself after a few minutes, but if I’m not feeling lazy a quick stack restart tends to fix it too.

Yeah this is something that keeps getting completely lost in this conversation.

The assets in question were from development during 2022-2023 at the latest. GenAI image tools at that time were extremely primitive compared to what’s out there now - remember DallE-Mini? That’s the kind of thing they were using. And because these tools hadn’t breached containment yet, literally no one was talking about ethical issues yet. Sandfall was basically just experimenting with brand new tech long before it was “good” and long before anyone was talking about it.

Now? It’s good to see them committed to avoiding it. GenAI is a plague and should be treated as such. But 2022-ish was totally different than today.

I was already leaning against getting a Switch 2 when they first announced it, but advertising a tech demo as a paid product sealed it for me.

A contractor used it for placeholder background assets in 2022 when the best genAI tech available was DallE-Mini and literally no one was even remotely aware of any ethical concerns yet.

Like I get that time feels nonexistent since 2020 but people seem to forget genAI was literally not even a known thing until 2024 at the earliest.

Today genAI and all those who support it in any capacity deserve to rot in hell, and it shouldn’t even be used for placeholders or concepts at any stage in the process. That’s a given. But why are we applying 2025 standards to something clearly done at a time before anyone knew anything about this shit?

Also the article people keep bringing up about Sandfall admitting they use “AI” is nothing but conflated buzzwords and has literally nothing to do with genAI, they’re very obviously referring to regular ass machine learning and Unreal tools that have existed for ages.

GenAI shouldn’t be used in any part of the process, including concepts and placeholders.

That being said, the assets that slipped through in E33 were from 2022. The most powerful publicly available genAI tool at the time was fuckin DallE-Mini, which basically just spit out fuzzy messes. None of the ethical concerns were common knowledge yet, Altman and his ilk were basically nobodies at the time, this was far before any of the current tools and companies that are driving everything to hell.

On top of that, there’s a dogshit article going around where Sandfall says they “use a small bit of AI” internally, and elaborate that they’re referring to Unreal machine learning tools and such, not genAI.

Fuck genAI, fuck Altman, and fuck anyone who intentionally uses any of this shit today, but the E33 case is a literal non-issue. They had 2022 fuzzy garbage slip through the cracks, immediately removed it, and there’s absolutely nothing to indicate that they’re using the modern, problematic tech today.

The only issue here is that there’s no reason for it to be considered an indie game. That’s it.

Also based on development timelines, these couple of textures were likely from the DallE-Mini era, long before anyone was even talking about ethical concerns with the tech and before fuckass Altman was a known name.

There’s another article going around where they say they use a “little bit” of AI but they’re very obviously referring to Unreal tools and regular old machine learning.

This whole thing is dramatically overblown. Absolutely fuck genAI and every data center should be bulldozed over. But this is a huge case over literally nothing.

E33 should be disqualified for all these awards for not being an indie game (the devs themselves have called it “AA” if I recall, and they had a sizeable budget to burn). Should genAI be tolerated in any part of the development process? Absolutely not. Should a game and studio be completely brought down because of 2022-ish placeholders from before the ethical issues of the tech were common knowledge, which were also quickly patched out in less than a week? Absolutely not.

Specifically, nazis and fascists. It’s a genuine nazi bar.

I was losing my damn mind when I saw this leak and my former roommate was on the first page 💀 Can’t say I was surprised.

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I’ve thought about switching to Technitium but dealing with network tools is a whole can of worms I don’t want to open up again until PiHole or Unbound shits the bed on me lmao. PiHole’s working just fine for what I need it to do.

I tried to break from Windows back in college after Windows 8 was such a disaster. Set up an Arch dual boot over a weekend and tried to use it whenever I could. Unfortunately found myself using the Windows partition far more often mostly because of gaming compatibility. Shelved it and suffered through MS’s bullshit ever since.

10 years later on the dot, I went on a huge degoogling/de-MS push this past winter/spring. Set up GrapheneOS on my phone, moved away from as many big tech services and tools as I could, changed my email, and eventually said fuck it and installed CachyOS on my brand new desktop to give it a go. It’s been my daily driver ever since. The whole degoogling push also got me to set up a home server and go down the entire selfhosting rabbit hole but that’s a discussion for another day.

The Steam Deck is what really reintroduced me to it and showed me how insane Proton is for compatibility, and with all the garbage big tech and fascists want to throw at us, this year was definitely time to make the switch.

Which reminds me, I should probably wipe that Windows partition that still gathers dust.

I think this is why it never quite clicked with me. It’s a gorgeous game and it’s really come such a long way, but personally I could use a bit more direction.

I finally finished my unhinged marathon of the entire Yakuza franchise that started when Infinite Wealth launched. At the time I’d played all the games up to that point but never really went for 100%, but that game’s platinum was so easy and the nostalgia bait in the second half of the game both made me want to replay all the games and go through spinoffs that I hadn’t played yet.

Right after IW I went back through the mainline starting from 0 (followed by the Kiwami remakes rather than the originals, but we’ll get there). Burnt out on 5 which I’d argue is the actual most tedious plat in the series, but got back to it a few months later, then breezed through the rest just in time for Pirates (which was certainly a game of all time…).

With the mainline out of the way, I replayed Judgment and LJ, finally played through Kaito Files for the first time, and then started working through spinoffs. I also got through the original PS2 games twice each - once in English emulated just to experience them, then again on the Japanese HD port on the PS3 for the trophy list. I still have nightmares of the 20 Home Run thing for Y1. Dead Souls was actually fun, Kurohyou 1 and 2 were fantastic games but incredibly grindy (and buggy) for 100%. Ishin’s plat wasn’t actually nearly as bad as people say. Through in Fist of the North Star Lost Paradise for good measure. Finally, got through Kenzan for the first time and its completion list with the help of way too many translation guides.

So, all that being said, at the time I was satisfied with achievement lists for games that had them, and completion lists for those that didn’t, but a handful of games don’t actually require full completion lists for plat (off the top of my head I think 3, 4, Dead Souls, 6, 7, Gaiden, IW, and Pirates). So I said fuck it, run it back and wrap them up.

About a year and a half later, I could say I’d just about 100%'d the entire franchise. I think the only thing I didn’t do was the Haruka’s Trust bullshit in games that didn’t require it.

I will add right now that I’m NOT currently planning on playing Kiwami 3 due to the Kagawa situation and just how the franchise is being handled in general. I’m happy calling this my stopping point if they don’t recast him.

Silksong surprise dropped this September after 7 years with like a 2 month heads up

Clair Obscur Expedition 33 came out of absolutely nowhere and is a work of art in every way

Deltarune chapters 3 and 4 finally launched, 3 is fun but 4 is incredible.

I think Balatro came out in that timeframe, and CloverPit in a similar vein this year (though the latter’s most recent update is frankly terrible and hopefully most of the charges will be reverted in the next update)

Ball X Pit becomes more of an idle game once you make progress, but it’s a great little casual take on Breakout, with a fair bit of grinding for completion.

Eden Ring Nightreign is an interesting take on the formula and IMO a far better game than its original counterpart

Alan Wake 2 may have been 2023, my memory’s a bit fuzzy, but I think if anything they dropped a decent sized update last year.

Mycopunk is a fantastic early access FPS, coop emphasis and super chaotic

Path of Exile 2’s early access is phase is finally nearing its end. Game has solid bones

Ninja Gaiden Ragebound is pretty underrated, first modern game in the series that builds on the classic NES formula instead

Antonblast is a great little Wario-inspired platformer. Not as speedy as Pizza Tower, but really tight.

Yakuza Pirates I guess, though I’d argue it’s legitimately the worst game in the franchise. It’s not bad but it’s not good.

Witchfire is another early access FPS about to hit 1.0. It’s been out for a few years now but they’ve been really cracking down on the updates lately.

I Am Your Beast is an underrated one for sure, very fast paced speedrun-driven FPS about taking down a fascist private military. Strange Scaffold never disappoints.

These couple years saw a huge resurgence of casual party-based games. Lethal Company, REPO, and Peak are all fun with the right group, though popularity of the first two is dwindling last I checked. A bit of a fad but they’re fun.

I’ve definitely missed a handful here and got my years wrong in some places, but these have been some standouts for me lately.

In general it really does depend on the interviewer. I was honest and open about how my new manager at my last job fucked over the team and myself, with specific details, and it led to good conversations during the interview process for the place I’m at now.

It feels like so many devs and studios have been trying to bring back the magic of that era but L4D was such a product of the times. Hard to imagine any similar games in that vein succeeding today.