TotesIllegit

TotesIllegit, 9 months ago

Yes. Former presidents do not lose their benefits if they’re convicted of crimes and sent to prison; changing that would take an act of Congress, and there’s probably not enough political will or support to curtail the executive branch in such a way.

If he’s actually given a prison sentence and not home confinement, though, I feel that they’d likely hold him in a military prison- for his own safety, to keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn’t keep committing crimes or attempt to flee, and to dissuade jailbreak attempts by outside actors.

TotesIllegit, 9 months ago

I feel that sometimes realistic graphics are what a game needs- like some simulators or horror titles going for that form in immersion. We’re not quite over the uncanny valley in AAA titles, and pushing the boundaries of real-time rendering technology can lead to improvements in efficiency of existing processes.

Other times, pushing the boundaries of realism can lead to new game mechanics. Take Counter-Strike 2 and their smoke grenades: they look more realistic and shooting through them disturbs only a portion of the cloud.

I do miss working mirrors in games, though.

TotesIllegit, 9 months ago

I waffle between preferring Jet Set Radio cell shading and hand-drawn pixels on any given day.

TotesIllegit, 9 months ago

It’s on Steam, and it’s very short compared to a lot of games so long as you’re not too rusty with the controls.

TotesIllegit, 9 months ago

It kept getting delayed so the release really caught me by surprise!

TotesIllegit, 9 months ago

Once the encryption schemes are broken, it’s not just posterity, but every malicious actor with access to encryption-breaking tech will have a field day.

I don’t mind a large collection of data about me being made available to historians, I just mind that happening with my contemporaries.

TotesIllegit, 9 months ago

A better comparison is with studio-owned movie theaters, which eventually led to the United States’ Paramount Antitrust Consent Decree (which was the law of the land for movies until the DOJ killed this ruling in 2020.)

I don’t feel that studios should get to have their own streaming services much like how I don’t feel movie studios should be allowed to run their own theaters.

For all of its faults, cable had a ton of competition between studios on the same distribution system, often with multiple channels with the same focus by entirely different studios. With current streaming services, ther are more accounts to keep track of, completely different (and often lackluster) UX between each streaming service which can make navigating a pain, and instead of competing with new content it can be just as- if not more- viable to buy up as much pop culture video content as possible and centralize it behind one studio-owned streaming services’ paywall. (Looking at you, Disney.)

If streaming services weren’t allowed to have their own studios, we’d probably have a better streaming landscape than we currently do.

TotesIllegit, 9 months ago

It sounds like a fuel explosion was caused by a fire that started across the street and spread.

TotesIllegit, 9 months ago

Yes, but Senate approval for higher promotions is supposed to function as a check on the presidents’ military powers. I’m by no means an expert, but I think the idea is that having the Senate vote to approve or deny promotions of a certain level or above keeps the president from installing a bunch of loyal followers to key positions and then dissolving the other branches of government through threat or use of his new personal military force.

TotesIllegit, 9 months ago

This reminds me of the internet discussions around Avatar: The Last Airbender years back and whether it counted as anime or not.

TotesIllegit, 9 months ago

I haven’t thought of that channel in over a decade, wow.

TotesIllegit, 9 months ago

I think Achievements are useful if they’re tracked separately by each save game. Minecraft does this, and I find it helpful when I return to a world save after a long time because I can use the achievements I unlocked to help remind me what I was doing and resume from there instead of looking at what clues may have been left behind.

I love New Game + mechanics. I think it’s a travesty more games don’t have them.

I hate excessive collectathons or overly repetitious cutscenes or dialogue. I love TotK, but the end-of-shrine bit got old real fast; I found myself missing pre-BotW heart container hunts where they could just be in a chest somewhere. I also feel exhausted just thinking about all the Koroks; I like trying to 100% save games, and the Koroks start to feel like work after a couple hundred in total.

I like when fps weapon recoil moves the player view with the recoil, particularly if the view resets back to where the player was aiming as the recoil cooldown ends. It’s satisfying and also gives the player an odd feeling of agency because the recoil mechanic lets them play “can I control the hose?”

TotesIllegit, 9 months ago

Fair, but from back when I played a ton on my 360, a large number of a games’ achievements were progression-based, sometimes entirely. That being said, tracking optional challenges within the save game itself can also be helpful in some instances.

For example, if there are challenges that require you to not use special weapons at all, and then you violate the challenge requirements, it could be grayed out to signify that the player locked themselves out of anything related to completing that challenge in that playthrough.

Resident Evil 4: Remake already does this to a degree, though my thought is that it would be most helpful in long rpgs, where it may not be clear after loading where you are in story or what you have and haven’t done if the save hadn’t been touched in months.