It isn’t exactly accurate that the ARPA funds in question were for COVID response. These ARPA State & Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (SLFRF) dollars can also be used on any government costs that could have otherwise been funded by regular government revenues (taxes, license fees, etc), as a replacement for revenues that…

My partner escaped an abusive relationship, fleeing with three of her children in fear of her life. There are D.V. protective orders in place, the whole nine yards... and yet whenever he starts poking around (like when he recently showed up to a hospital to try to find out what room partner and one of the kids was…

I made it about 10 minutes before turning to something else. Jaskier’s slapstick overacting is a lot to swallow even at the best of times, and doesn’t really work in the opening of a new show where they need to get you hooked and engaged (especially doubled up with him playing against himself?). And as soon as the…

Kotaku slideshows: not even once. 

First they came for Paragon...

A table on Wikipedia too large to view clearly on my phone: still something I’m more likely to take the time to view than a video on Kotaku.

I’m all for democracy, but oof. 

Agreed, unlocking more complex characters over time (but offering players to accelerate or skip that progression with a paid option) is common and pretty unobjectionable. I actually like it myself, because it motivates me to try a variety of characters and play styles as I learn a new game, and gives me that mild RPG…

See, but that isn’t actually true. In 2020, for example, 593k people voted in the Primaries, and 598k voted in the General. 597k people voted in this Primary... there isn’t some huge slug of other voters that are going to suddenly swoop back in from fishing and hunting seasons to spoil the General, voters with…

A total of 6 people were killed including all the members of a singular family: 23-year-old Asherey Ryan, the child she was pregnant with, her partner 24-year-old Reynold Lester (the father of her unborn child) and her son Alonzo who was about to turn one.

Yeah, I had the iOS port in mind while writing Pixel Remaster. But Pixel Remaster still has inferior character sprites to the original, dropping most of the shading and details pixels for flatter, simpler sprites. 

Wait, I was thinking of the shitty 2013 FFVI mobile port, was Pixel Remaster the 2021 attempt to bring back (still inferior) sprites? Either way, you get it, blurry smoothed out pixels suck.

These are basically the same sprites as the original, so it definitely isn’t FFVI Pixel Remaster level of badness. However, it does still slap the same weird blurry filter on top, which like.... why? That article about “HD-2D” being popular was right on target, so why do developers keep... just not doing that, with…

I felt that My Time at Portia leaned a little more on the schedule management side of these games than Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon do, with some pretty oppressive and front-and-center calendars that you’re racing against when deciding who to talk to and what resource nodes to visit each day. That’s the part of…

This… just isn’t true? It’s certainly on a large (80%) sale right now, but Mario+Rabids is still $10 or $15 right now on the switch store, even with Nintendo Online.

https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/defense/laws/felony-murder-rule/

The distinction between what at-home modders and employed game developers are spending their time doing is something that really isn’t so obvious until you spell it out like that! From the outside, the product of both is a game. Laboring on a creative work you can never hope to profit from, versus laboring on a job…

Agreed! FFXII’s ‘active dimension battle’ system was a fun alternate to turn based, but the FFVII remake system was just too active, and left me feeling like I had no time to optimize what the character I was controlling was doing, much less pay attention to what anyone else in the party was. Especially early on it…

What’s the accepted standard on “child” or “teenager” vs. “man” for 18-year-olds in these stories? I’m probably okay with “man,” so long as we’re sticking with it.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. The articles and threads suggesting that people stack decades of cheap subscriptions to exploit the upgrade all were pretty clear that it was probably an unintended loophole.