Lucas Pope is so fucking talented it makes me mad. Not only has he designed genius level compelling gameplay out of ostensibly boring professions (border guard and insurance inspector?!), but he also composes absolute bangers for the soundtracks.

I don’t play D&D - in fact I don’t play any TTRPG anymore (imagine having friends) - but I’ve heard a lot of criticism about WOTC’s products, yes. A lion’s share of it is about how unhelpful the official adventures are for DMs, but I’ve also heard the writing criticised from time to time.

I’ve heard good things about Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and the Curse of Strahd remake though.

90% of the games I play are bought on Steam or GOG, 9% are free Epic giveaways and the last 1% is Alan Wake 2 which I had to buy on Epic because it’s not available anywhere else and I wanted to support Remedy.

I know the discussion about digital only, and I think game preservation is a great cause. There is definitely a danger with digital only. However, for me as a user having a digital library is just unbeatably convenient. My whole library is easily browsable and sortable and with modern high speed fiber internet any game I feel like playing or re-playing is just a click and a few minutes away.

I don’t really have any desire to go back to having to constantly fuck around with discs when I want to play something.

Well, canonically Edwin gets punked by Elminster and lives out his days as a bar wench. And since they decided from the get-go to set BG3 a hundred years after the originals he’d be long dead, along with any other human NPC from the older games. Which, the fact that they started from the point of “let’s set it 100 years later” tells you enough of how much they wanted to deal with the older games. Viconia is not the only thing in BG3 that gives vibes of disdain at worst and disinterest at best for the originals. Flail of Ages is a useless trash weapon randomly sold by a vendor, for fucks sake!

I wonder how many at Larian even played BG1&2. I get such a Wiki-research vibe from a lot of the callbacks.

I’ll play Infinite for the first time this year (maybe… it keeps getting pushed back in my backlog) and I am so curious about it. Some people say it’s one of the best games of all time and some that it’s overrated and meh.

Was a pretty dangerous spot to try that, high speed corner and if Lewis doesn’t take evasive action that’s a potentially nasty crash.

Also a little puzzles there was no penalty.

Viconia and Sarevok had no reason to be in BG3 and by choosing to use WOTCs deplorably terrible supplemental product lore as canon Larian has now cemented those character portrayals forever, which was just pure character assassination.

Almost 200 comments and not one single mention of Disco Elysium? What are we doing here guys? It’s one of the most fitting , most perfect and beautiful soundtracks I’ve heard. Captures the vibe so perfectly Robert Kurvitz personally convinced Sea Power to get on board, including - allegedly - by being the man inside the bear costume at one of their gigs.

Have listen: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_n9enLNuLjWTn67qj2aXP6FuJbX239vQdI

Absolute underrated banger for sure. God Chaos Theory was just such a perfect game.

I finished Blasphemous. I didn’t go through the DLC as I apparently missed the chance for the True Ending by not doing it early anyway, so I couldn’t be bothered as I wasn’t really enjoying the game that much. Also I’ve heard it’s even more annoying. I’ll save it for a hypothetical second playthrough. I did beat the one optional DLC boss I had access to - Isidora - and the difference between the main game and the DLC is staggering. I first tried the last two bosses in the main game, but Isidora took me probably 50ish attempts. And I’m not sure it was “fun difficult” either, that second phase sure was something.

My notes remain the same: terrible platforming (and an overabundance of it) and design elements that are deliberately meant to waste your time and/or piss you off hold back what could otherwise have been a great game. I respect the artistic vision, I just didn’t have a lot of fun playing it.

As a palate cleanser I played through LIMBO, which I bought solely because it is supposedly an indie darling and was being delisted on GOG. I was assured by somebody on here that it wasn’t really “that bad” as puzzle platformers go (I hate platformers) and that it was “mostly vibes”. That was a lie - this is clearly a puzzle platformer. And it didn’t feel like a particularly good one either. Fortunately it was only a couple of hours long or I would never have been able to force myself to finish it. YMMV but it’s a solid 5.5-6/10 for me, I’m glad I only paid a dollar for it. I hope INSIDE is better as I foolishly bought both.

I love this from GOG. I already liked them because of their game conservation efforts, but now I like them even more.

I feel like the Formula 1 community is fairly active with quite a bit of actual discussion going on?

There is one last sliver of copium remaining for Hamilton and his fans: the regulation change. He has never been able to get along with these ground effect cars. Now, that in and of itself should be a point of criticism: other drivers have adapted their driving style and Lewis has been unable or unwilling to do so. But there is still a small chance next year’s regs will suit him better. The move to Ferrari was always a play for '26.

Now if he still struggles next year then… Hoo boy.

Bortoleto got it.

That was a pretty good race, bit of a slow burn but we got a really tense few laps at the end with Piastri chasing and Norris holding off - with direct championship implications to boot. Despite the usual lap one from Norris he recovered really well, though perhaps aided by ending up on the more favourable one-stop strategy. It was a good audible from the team and well driven by Norris to bring it home.

I always like when all three compounds are in play, though starting on the softs today maybe wasn’t really the play. It was interesting seeing the strategy split, and lots of teams seemed to fail to identify the one-stop.

Alonso drove a really good race, good start and great race management with both being the train conductor early on and saving tires to managing his pace throughout the last stint. There was nothing more than 5th on the table today and the team did everything they could to secure it.

Also good on Stroll for bringing home 7th, though overtaking is hard enough here that he just needed to not make any major mistakes and ride the correct strategy home. Both him and Alonso laid the groundwork yesterday in qualy, but fair play to them nonetheless. The Aston did seem really suited to this track, but I hope the team learns something from it.

I feel for Leclerc, he had a genuine shot at a win - but of course his Ferrari has an issue with the chassis and started bleeding performance. Time to post the depressed Leclerc meme again, I guess? Though at the moment it’s a depression competition with Hamilton.

Good race by Russel picking up the scraps though, again in the colder temperatures the Merc looks better and even Antonelli had a bit of a recovery drive too getting a point in the end. Probably not enough to give him his confidence back but it’s a spark of life?

Special shout-out to Colapinto who got omega-fucked by some Alpine^TM pitstops. Poor guy, his pace wasn’t even bad.

I want to give DotD to Alonso but that could be my bias.

!guitarporn@sfw.community is basically dead, though I am as guilty anyone of not posting more.

!reallyshittycopper@lemmy.world has seen some posts lately but I wish it was more active.

!autoracing@crazypeople.online for motorsports.

I have to go back and look at the statistics but we’ve had a lot of one-stoppers the last two to three years. The two-stopper is almost always faster on paper but not always the best strategy, especially with all the dirty air.

I want to say it was 2023 that the one-stop trend started?

In the current era cars and tires it just often works out to be the case.

I don’t know, maybe he should have setup for the attempt on lap 70 instead of 69, but being closer around the lap doesn’t mean much around here where turn one is the only real overtaking spot. I understand why he went for it.