This is the United States. We don’t do cool trains. Only cars are allowed to be cool.

It happens a lot less often here than it did on Reddit, but I too get a slight twinge of dread from it.

“Ohhhh, I thought you meant kill count.”

That’s like saying webrings didn’t exist, only discrete websites.

Oh, I stand corrected! It’s only a reposted image with the signature cut off.

Thanks for the link to a cleaner version!

And eventually the heads start to fear for their safety and stop poking out of their safe spaces.

I’m not entirely sure being in a constant state of panicked contingency planning is necessarily masculine.

Blowing shit up is, though.

(Really though, caring about his fellow crawlers and insisting on always helping as many people as possible is very cool of him, and would qualify as positive masculinity.)

I feel like that is overly reductive. These are people who are seeing their lives become harder year over year, and are being handed a convenient scapegoat by people they were taught to trust. Their biggest crime is usually a lack of critical thinking… to start with. It often grows from there to a lack of empathy.

I hate it - but I at least have a reason. I can’t stand sweet and savory in the same dish without enough tartness to make up for the sweetness (see: barbecue sauce, and even then it’s dicey). Pineapple simply isn’t tart enough to go on a savory pizza in my opinion, especially when cooked.

I like all the online features that aren’t invasions.

Invasions, however, are simply punishing me for reviving. I don’t seek out PvP, which means I don’t have all the techniques they use for cheap crits, I don’t have a PvP focused loadout (I tend to go for slow weapons and I’m usually not all that optimized), etc., etc., so when I get invaded it’s mostly ‘Welp, this run is a loss. Better die somewhere I can get back to.’ I know I’m going to get one-shotted with some OP weapon from someone who fishes out a lagstab, and it’s been that way since Demon’s Souls.

Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some secret Google search engine that still has decent search results instead of the paid-for mess that us plebs get.

AI, on the other hand? The flaws are intrinsic.

Coconuts are just really, really big seeds. They’re a nut, as the name implies.

However, I have a counterpoint because there is one fruit that I absolutely like with chocolate. Dried mango slices in dark chocolate are delicous.

Well, okay, two - bananas in chocolate are tasty. Back in the times when chocolate fountains were a regular occurrence at events, I could have eaten half my body weight in them.

Bananas makes sense in my mind; they aren’t overly flavorful, so there isn’t a strong fruit flavor that clashes with the chocolate. Why mangoes work so well, on the other hand, is beyond me.

AI slop

the signature in the right margin is sloptext

Praise the shareholders!

Don’t forget that the models were built on blatant art theft.

Part of that is due to the sheer complexity of games now compared to then. It’s hard to test everything.

Of course, there’s also the problems of games getting released in noticeably buggy states, which seems a lot more common now than it used to be (there were definitely buggy games released for the PS1, but they were rare).

I like to call it a ward against boredom.

If I don’t have one, then I’m going to be bored. If I do have one, I’ll be busy enough that I won’t need it.

Okay, slow your roll there. Protecting pedophiles is not nearly in the same category as directly facilitating pedophilia and engaging in human trafficking.

Downvote all you like, but a murderer is still guilty of a greater crime than their friend who is helping them bury the bodies.

TF2 had a long and prosperous life. It’s 18 years old at this point. There are a few live service games (usually with subscriptions) that have survived longer, but TF2 had its run, and it was a good one. I bought it as part of the Orange Box and I absolutely got my money’s worth and then some from it.

As for physical media - I don’t know if you were around for it, but there was a period before Steam took over the industry when most major PC game releases had CD keys you had to input and validate before you could play the game. Do something the publisher doesn’t like? The key gets revoked and you can’t play the game any more unless you buy another license. There were entire underground communities devoted to cracking the CD key validations in games. Now you just use Luna or Steamless and call it a day.

All it would take for Valve to lose their effective monopoly on PC game distribution would be for someone else to make a better product.

Every other major PC game distribution platform (besides GOG, and they’re far more niche than Valve) has essentially started their attempt to unseat Valve with enshittification baked in, and it was obvious.