There’s a pretty big leap between “Most posting happens during work hours” and “Many federal civil service workers spend most of their workdays complaining about their jobs on Reddit.” It’s not like it matters if people are shit posting at work all day anyways but their data doesn’t even back up what they are saying.
I don’t necessarily disagree that people in the US would take a bird flu pandemic with a much higher fatality rate than COVID more seriously. I do think it’s worth pointing out that COVID is still a serious problem that the vast majority of people are ignoring even if they know it means putting their well-being at risk. Even according to the CDC, COVID has been killing an average of 525 people in the US a week over the last 12 weeks. To compare, gun violence deaths minus suicides in the US in 2024 was about 319 deaths per week. It’s also well known at this point that even a “mild” COVID infection comes with significant risks of long term complications, from a severely increased chance of heart attack and stroke, to neurological issues, to damage to the immune system, and more.
Obviously it is not killing as many people as it did early in the pandemic, nor is it anywhere near 10% CFR, but it is still something that people should be concerned over and yet are not. I’ve talked to many people who know these things, who agree that COVID is still something worth worrying about, and yet do not mask or even keep their vaccines up to date. These are normal people, not even your Q-Anon freaks. It worries me to imagine having to rely on those same people in the potential bird flu pandemic.
Oh, and my pinball grind continues as well! I’ve learned a few techniques and I’m actually getting to the point where I can keep a game going for a bit and aim the ball intentionally, though I still miss my target a lot of the time.
I started Dark Souls II and made a cartoonish fancy butler type guy because I’m planning on doing a dex build to change it up from my usual build in these games (all strength caveman), and a goofy posh asshole seemed like the appropriate form for that. I also started 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors for when I’m not feeling up to getting my head smashed in. Plus handheld gaming is always nice for the commute home.
As far as virtual pinball goes, Visual Pinball X is a FOSS simulator and works great. Agreed that it can be an expensive hobby though. I’m pretty poor and even playing in arcades is too expensive for me to do regularly. I can’t imagine ever owning a table, or even one of those faux tables that looks like a real machine but is actually just a simulation.
Espgaluda, or really any Cave game imo but I especially like this one and MAME is the best way to play it. The slowdown in the CV1000 games isn’t very accurate*, but everything else should emulate great. Battle Garegga is another good game if you are a sicko.
*You can lower the CPU speed in the settings for those games and it makes it feel good enough, but it’s still not really accurate and there’s not just a default Good setting for it either. Usually around 50% is close enough iirc.
Up on your thumb feels pretty comfortable imo since you mostly just need it for jumping. It’s rough if you play a character that has 360 inputs or something like that though. Hitbox style controllers in SSBM put up on your right pinky by default, that was tough for me to get used to…
You do hit a certain point where you basically can’t lose though, especially if you use Shield Maiden block build.
Shield Maiden is so silly lol. Granted I’ve only done one run as her, but I was excited to try a new character since she wasn’t in the game the last time I had played. Then I built up enough block strength that I noticed I could just stand still and realized maybe I don’t want to play this character… The idea of being so tanky that nothing can hurt you is kinda fun but in practice it just feels like, if I can put my controller down and let the game play itself for a minute while I sip my drink, then what’s the point of playing a game where the whole appeal is dodging swarms of enemies?
I couldn’t fight off the urge to start something new so Final Fantasy VI is on the back burner for now. In its place I’ve started Cave Story, which I’ve only played about 2 hours of so far but I’ve been enjoying. Other than that I’ve been on a big pinball kick. There’s a table at my work that I found a good virtual recreation of, so I’ve been learning the mechanics and practicing in the hopes that I can get on the leaderboard. I only need 30 or 40 million to get on there, I can’t remember which at the moment, and I’ve already gotten a little over 20 million as my personal best so I think with some more practice and a little luck I’ll get on there soon enough.
As for my favorite games I played for the first time this year:
What is there to say about this one? Everyone knows it’s a beloved game. Pretty close to the ideal RPG for me. Fun combat, fantastic music, lovable cast, interesting story with just the right amount of cheesiness, nice art, no annoying random encounters, not too long. AND there’s a bisexual cave woman? What else can I ask for?
My first foray into the Castlevania series, and I’m very glad I did. I was a little worried I wouldn’t be able to enjoy this one because I am honestly ass at platformers/side-scrolling action games, but it actually wasn’t too bad. The game feels great to move around in and almost all of the bosses were fun to tackle. I really loved the feeling of struggling with a fight the first couple tries and then figuring out a strategy that the boss couldn’t deal with and just obliterating it. The exploration was a good time too, you’d think the backtracking would get tedious but in my experience it wasn’t bad. I ended up playing Aria of Sorrow right afterwards and will definitely be playing Dawn of Sorrow in the near future. I definitely want to try the SotN randomizer some time soon and check out some of the indie metroidvanias that passed me by before as well.
Two somewhat notorious mystery visual novels. Technically I started Higurashi in 2023, but a good amount of the time I spent reading it was in 2024, and I went from that straight into Umineko so I’m just gonna count the two together. Both of these have rattled around in my brain basically non-stop since finishing them, and yet I still don’t really know how to put my feelings into words. I don’t really know if I would recommend either? They are both extremely long (each has a longer word count than the Bible lol), have some seriously problematic elements, and deal with very heavy topics. Due to the nature of the stories I don’t really want to say any more than that. If you did want to check these out, just be warned that they can be triggering in many ways. I would say if you need it to get someone you trust to screen each first through something like doesthedogdie.com, or if they’ve already read it themselves even better. Otherwise go in knowing as little as possible.
As for games that actually came out this year, well, I barely played any… I guess Caves of Qud is pretty fun? I think I would really like it if I played more, but roguelikes where you play as the same character over several play sessions never really stick for me. Halls of Torment and Balatro have both been good for the occasional play session, but I’m not too excited about either. There was some cool looking stuff on my back log I meant to play that came out this year, but I never got around to them. Maybe next year!
I found out last night that Visual Pinball X actually runs on Linux now so I stayed up late trying it out. The setup is still pretty confusing but I was able to get some tables running at least!
Last time I did this it was Stardew Valley, and Terraria before that. Monster Hunter is good for this as well but only if you are gathering or farming something that isn’t too difficult. Old School RuneScape if you are into that kind of thing. Haven’t actually tried it with these ones but I bet OpenRCT2 and Monster Rancher would be great podcast games.
Trying to stay motivated to finish Final Fantasy 6, I’m really loving it but my brain is ready to move on to something else. Otherwise I’ve been playing a bit of the full release of Halls of Torment. I gave Dungeons of Blood and Dream a try, it’s got a cool aesthetic but I don’t know if this one is for me. The game itself didn’t really hook me, plus the controller support isn’t great and playing on m/kb was hurting my hands. I tried Balatro too, it’s pretty fun. I think I was expecting more because so many people were talking about how amazing it is.
English is not my first language. My original language has a true neutral pronoun applicable to all and the correct usage of they still confuses me when I type in English. I’m sorry for that.
That’s okay, I figured you weren’t doing it to be malicious. I appreciate you correcting it.
You’re using me as a strawman to vent your argument and frustrations with an entire community. Please leave me alone.
I am not. I admit I am getting frustrated, but I responded to you because you specifically were being ableist. I replied to you because I hoped you might reflect on how your behavior is making a hostile environment for disabled people.
Nice! Do you think you are gonna play Mother 3 as well?
“They” and “she” are not interchangeable, please edit your comment and fix your misgendering.
I was there for that massive argument, and it was not how you are making it out to be. It wasn’t just her who was aggrieved by the Covid denialism festering in this community, several of us called it out for what it is, ableism. The same topic on discussion here. In fact, many of the anti-masking comments then were removed after a while, so clearly she was “taken seriously” and the consensus wasn’t so one-sided as you imply. In any case it’s not really relevant. You are seeing a disabled person talk about ableism among people who should be her comrades, in a thread about ableism from communists, using the most clear and obvious example of ableism and eugenicist behavior by communists. And your response is to paint her as an overly-emotional troll and accuse her of virtue signaling? To ignore what people are saying and deflect? To call other users who point out your personal ableist language sockpuppets? You are actively showing why these comments are made to begin with, why people have reached such a level of frustration. You are part of the problem that turns a community that should be clearly hostile towards ableism instead into spaces that are clearly hostile towards disabled people.
It isn’t bait. I believe her point is that it’s easy for communists to claim to be against eugenics and ableism, but in practice many of us are failing to live up to our claims. The Covid pandemic and masking is brought up because it is a major example of this. It is an enormous threat particularly to disabled people, and yet in practice most of the left is, by virtue of their actions, siding with the ableists and the eugenicists. DeadlyBunny was revealing this as well, it’s all well and good if we say we are against ableism, but if we are using ableist language, then it shows a lack of solidarity that puts off the disabled people we should be working with. If we talk the talk, we gotta walk the walk, you know?
And sure, maybe they should have reported those comments, but I mean, any of us could have and apparently none of us did. And rather than accept their accurate criticism of our behavior and reflect, they were spammed with downvotes and their criticisms were deflected. What does that say to our would-be disabled comrades? From my view, it says “shut up and get in line.” Who would stand side by side with people like that?
I love CRT displays, but I think an LCD is still fine, and it’s definitely the more reasonable option. CRTs are inefficient space-wise, use far more power than an LCD, and are slowly becoming a collector’s item. Plus, if you are using a CRT TV, you need to either own the actual consoles plus either the games themselves or a flash cart, or go through a lot of effort and potentially need special equipment to output a 15kHz analog signal from a computer/modern emulation device. I think a good shader to mimic scanlines and an analog signal like in your screenshot is the ideal compromise, but ultimately it’s fine to just leave it to personal preference.
That being said, if you do have the ability to play these old games on a CRT, for sure go for it! No shaders can mimic the look of a CRT in motion, and games like Sonic where the screen scrolls very quickly especially benefit from it a lot imo.
Glad I could help! Same here, it’s really cool that the game is playable now, but I’ve never beaten it before so I think I’m gonna give it some more time to cook.
Did the emulator close completely or was it just unresponsive? When I installed the package the emulator was unresponsive but I just left it in the background and after like half an hour it finished installing. By the way, I also have a 1080ti and it runs mostly smoothly even with the 60fps patch, so hopefully the same will be true for you once the installation problems are solved! Other specs are an i5-10400 and 16GB RAM.
Still working my way through Dark Souls II. Aside from a couple frustrating parts it’s been really fun, I wish I had played it when it was new instead of being a little hater so I could enjoy the online more. Other than that I’ve been getting back into Super Smash Bros. Melee a bit. I’ve been flirting with the idea of organizing tournaments that requires masks because I’d really like to play at locals again but the community here is really shitty about COVID safety (and accessibility in general tbh)