I bought a PS2 about 6 months ago from a coworker and finally got around to getting it working at a good enough resolution on my monitor. I currently have:

• GTA 3
• GTA Vice City
• Gran Turismo 3
• Matrix: Path of Neo
• Katamari Damacy
• Midnight Club: Street Racing

Any other suggestions? I know off the top of my head I want to get the SSX games, maybe some sports games, and of course the MGS titles that came out on PS2. Anything else?

I got the urge to play the witness for the 3rd (or maybe even 4th) time again after being slightly disappointed by the Talos Principle 2, and man I cannot express enough how much I enjoy this game. It just satisfies something deep inside me every time I play it. And I know a LOT of people (probably some here) strongly dislike this game, but for me it's just sublime to play. Relaxing yet challenging, mysterious and layered, it's great in my opinion.

It does however deeply annoy me how misunderstood the game is. Mostly from people who didn't play it all the way through. You'd be surprised how many times I've heard somebody complain about an aspect being "useless" or not making any sense when it IS useful and DOES make sense as long as you just keep playing the game. Also what's frustrating is when somebody complains about stumbling onto a puzzle they haven't learned yet in an open world puzzle game and then refusing to use the open world to go and find where it teaches you... idk. Anyway, LOVE this game. If there's anybody reading this who's into puzzles, especially 2D puzzle games, you may love the witness (but your computer might hate you, it's surprisingly graphically intense at times)

I made a post on r/civ (Civilization games subreddit) showing a really funky shaped randomly generated river I saw and most comments were fine but one guy was convinced that I went through the comparatively monumental effort of opening the map editor and changing the river for karma, as opposed to just starting the game and taking a screenshot.

And just to top it off another guy saw the fact that my scout unit was in the far north of the map and went on an obscenely condescending diatribe about how "ackshually" I should be placing my units in the far south of the map because that way I can explore better and whatever the hell. Dude did not stop for one second to consider that maybe the scout that was in the far north was exploring the cool river and that I didn't waste any production points on him because I got him for free from a tribal village...

God every time I go on that website (because let's be honest not a whole lot of good communities here for what I'm interested in) I get excited to share something super innocent and then some total loser has to come and ruin it all.

I love skate 3 and have been super excited since they announced the game was in development. I even played the alpha on PC but it was fairly sparse so there wasn't much to do. I've heard the beta tests now are more filled in but I have yet to get invited to those ones.

Any other skate 1/2/3 fans? Any thoughts on the new game?

(For people out of the know, this is not a newly released game but it was announced in 2021 and has been steadily in development since.)

I just hate how it's the only retail space left that never bothers to organize things beyond men's sections, women's sections, and the dreaded kids' section. I had to go shopping today to get long sleeve black shirts for my job (long story). All I needed were like 3 larges that were black. That's it! But it took me well over an hour because of how much of a nightmare it is. I even had to go to another store down the road because the first one I tried was just a maze.

What I can't get over is how even the consumer big box stores don't bother to organize shit. You get men's, women's, kids' sections like stated previously and that's like it? There's been times where I wanted to grab some jeans but I had to dart around the store because there just wasn't a centralized jean section. It's like if I went to a sporting goods store to buy a tennis racket but the tennis rackets were divided into 3 separate corners of the store. Just... why? And the worst part is I have yet to go to a place where the sizes were actually organized beyond thrift stores. Oh you need a large? Be prepared to sift through 10 mediums and 14 smalls before getting there, and sometimes your large might not even be there but you just spent 10 minutes of your life searching. I'm not kidding when I say this, I once went to Value Village which is a big box thrift store and got jeans that fit me in less than 10 minutes because the jean racks were all in one place (!) and organized in ascending order of waist size (!!). But heaven forbid JCPenney or Kohl's or Target or Old Navy or any of the other stores for "regular people" do this.

I ended up finding the shirts I needed at Old Navy but they weren't even the type of fabric I wanted. Apparently we're in the season now where 90% of men's section tops are heavy jackets or graphic tees. (hate graphic tees btw, just wanted to say that).

And don't even get me started on jeans. I'm quite a tall fella and so I need to buy jeans from stores' "Big & Tall" sections (Big & Tall the retail chain doesn't even exist where I live), but their "Big & Tall" sections only ever have the "big." I once went to every clothes store in my area that I could think of and none had an "average" waist size pair of black pants that I also needed for my job that were also tall. They just had big waist sizes that were also like 40 inches down.

And then let's say you finally find the stuff you're looking for, now you gotta wait in line and when you finally get to the checkout they ask if you want to register for their account... then their credit card... then do you really not want an account... then they ask if you want a coupon... and then you finally get to pay for your stuff. To use the sporting goods analogy again, I don't remember Dick's Sporting Goods asking me all that BS just to buy exercise equipment...

The shirt thing has actually gotten to the point where I usually order my shirts from LL Bean online because they don't shrink much in the wash and they always fit. Only downside is they take like 2 weeks to ship and only come in solid colors, so I had to go in person for shopping because I needed these shirts by tomorrow.

/rant.

Anybody else struggle with this to such a degree? If you know any retail chains in the west coast US that aren't Value Village and aren't a total maze to navigate then please drop them down below.

edit: to drive home the first point about organization, if I go to buy a baseball bat then most sports stores will have a Baseball Section but it's like if those stores had a "Stick and Ball Game section" that also included Cricket bats among the baseball bats.

So, Croteam, the creators of the Serious Sam series as well as the Talos Principle game have just announced the sequel to the Talos Principle, The Talos Principle 2, is set to release a little over a week from this post, about 9 years after the first game came out. I was always a huge puzzle fan and so I loved the first game, as well as its story, so I've been looking forward to this ever since it was announced like a year ago. Just recently the team released a demo for the game, which is also quite astonishing in this day. I know the occasional game has released a demo here and there every other year or so, but I think I remember the last demo I played was Skate 3's back in 2010. I'm not quite old enough for it, but I do know that it wasn't that long ago where every game had a free demo. Sometimes they were shit, sometimes they were totally unique experiences, but they all allowed you to at least experience some part of the game before you bought it.

I don't know how to word this more properly, but it just felt so nice actually being able to play a game before it comes out, without having to be a famous youtube reviewer or having to attend a ridiculously expensive convention. I don't want to be too optimistic here, but I'm far more optimistic for the release after playing this demo than I have ever been for most other AAA releases that only show trailers and developer promises.

And not only that, but it also advances the story in a pretty spectacular way. The original game has multiple endings but the canon ending is sort of a cliffhanger and they expand on the story in that direction, so if you're a fan of the original and want to get a head-start on the game's story then I highly recommend checking it out.

Anyway, I like it when studios are at least semi-transparent like this. It's nice to see them put out something tangible that people can interact with before choosing to buy something. Who knows, maybe the full release will be the usual buggy mess next week, but after playing the demo I don't get that feeling as much.

edit: and to top of it off, even on medium settings this game. looks. amazing. It felt like something you'd see created by Cyan (another puzzle game company), not by the people who made Serious Sam

edit2: here are my key takeaway from the demo, marked in spoilers because well they are kinda spoilers:

So I have a pretty severe peanut allergy which means Ive never purposely ate a peanut and have therefore never tasted one without being in panic mode. People have told me that they taste like regular nuts which just makes me more confused. If you were given a selection of other nuts like cashews and almonds, what would compel you to go out of your way for peanuts? A lot of my friends who like them can't even explain why they like them.

I know that most people like them salted or roasted. Is it just a fidget exercise when you eat them plain?

I don't wanna dive super deep into this, but ever since the news broke it feels like this place has become a hub for shit-flinging from literally everybody about the topic. Sure, I've seen some nuanced opinions and some people attempting to have a normal human conversation, but I just dislike people using this particular instance as the "place to be" to continue this endless flame war. Isn't this counter to the goals of the instance? How many of us come here to argue like children about geopolitics?

Plus, a lot of the people I've seen pointlessly arguing about this have accounts from other instances... I've even seen one person post on their beehaw account, get flak for it, then switch to kbin for no reason.

And at the risk of sounding too conspiratorial, something definitely seems off about a lot of these comments. Maybe it's how a lot just seem to be infodumping. I dunno.

It's only been a few days. Maybe it'll simmer down. But I don't like the direction this is going.

Edit: I'm not recommending we censor political discussion, however in this particular instance I would say it's wise to take a step back and think about what we say to each other