ConstableJelly

I don’t do multiplayer games, so Elden Ring I think is at the top for me at around 200 hours. Although, if you looked on Playstation it would probably be one of the Spider-Man games because my kids use my account to just play them as a sandbox.

I like the Dualsense a lot at its best, but I go through roughly a controller per year probably. One of them something with the rumble loosened. Not noticeable in some games, but when I was playing Returnal it sounded like a jackhammer. Another the sticks got…sticky in a way that was really distracting. Stick drift on another, and my current one the right arrow stopped working. I had to re-map it to the left stick click to play Infinite Wealth, and other games like Elden Ring just won’t work with it.

The linked article is from California’s office of the attorney general related to an existing lawsuit. As a non-Californian, I am supremely disappointed that this is happening just at the state level, but credit should still go where its due. And if their legal action sets a precedent that makes it easier for other states (or dare I hope, at the federal level if and when we get strong antitrust regulators like we had under Biden), then all the better.

Search results on Amazon are fully pay-to-play anyway. You don’t get anywhere near the top of the list without paying for the privilege. No big deal for slop producers who sell in volume, but basically useless for small businesses or private sellers.

I’m also playing this for the first time after owning it for a while. Took me a while to really get into it - it’s the first high-production, AAA action game that I’ve played in a while, and it felt strangely linear and repetitive. The puzzles are so clearly tailored to your specific abilities they feel kind of silly against the otherwise immersive world. The rewards and upgrades are kind of trivial on normal difficulty; I’m still mostly spamming normal and sidekick attacks for every battle.

Eventually though I settled into the rhythm and I noticed that stuff less. The acting and scene choreography are outstanding - it feels like theater in a way that’s unique to my experience with games. And I’m enjoying it more for what it is. It’s just overall not landing as satisfyingly as the first one did, and I think that’s because indie games have done increasingly cool things since the 2018 game came out and I’ve been playing them more, and my tastes have just changed a lot.

I did read the synopsis of it and thought it sounded like an interesting take. I’m not sure I liked the movie enough to bother with the sequel though. As an ending to its own contained story, it felt really tone-deaf.

I just watched The Black Phone last night. Spoiler:

Fucking yikes.