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The government wants me to send them my poop in the mail. I was selected for colon cancer screening it seems. there's a little plastic container thingie and an envelope with several hazmat seals. I'm speechless.

why is always online single player game still a thing this is obviously idiotic

Saints Row Sergio defeated. The context of the battle was fine, though I would not mind to have 2-3 missions dedicated to Los Panteros' lore. The Necromancer contract. And so the party decided to rescue this work of art. The nature in the game is beautiful. Unlocked the VTOL, which made the Threat side missions significantly easier. The aircraft was unlocked from the start in the previous SR. There was a hover craft and I discovered it only post-game. Randomly found several good cars and saved in the garage. The ones available by default were somehow harder to drive. These are loading screens with, I assume, the max settings. As I understand, the house was added in a free DLC. Probably the longest side mission chain I did not finish. Late-game spoilers (Marshall). The restored HQ. The final mission(s).

This is going to sound silly but apparently the best hip-therapy move for me so far was: folding a small dishtowel into a narrow rectangle and sticking it long ways under the middle of the extra cushion I have on my deskchair. You know how most office/desk chairs (and car seats, and some living room chairs etc) have that dip/higher sides, or even a slant, like a racing car (which I hate, why do they do that)? My hips are small/narrow enough that before long I have a dip within that dip. Hubby, for example, gets much more even/flat across the chairseat wear. So I buy cushions. They just mold to the chair and simply end up with a dip within a dip too. I would guess that creates too much outer hip pronation or something. I know when I get up after sitting for an hour or more sometimes I feel like my pelvis (walking) is really thrust inward/back. Exercises for "hip pronation" I saw on YT didn't help at all. Anyway, just that tiny bit of extra height in the middle and the cushion feels flat/not dippy, my pelvis doesn't feel pronated when I get up, etc. I've slept through the night several nights in a row. They're still stiff and somewhat achey but they don't want to/feel like they're going to pop out of socket with the barest of motion shifting now. Bizarre. But hey if it works. Maybe exercise/s will be more effective now. When I was younger, body could cope with constant "dippy" chairs, now it can't or something. We'll see.

I made a clear out the fridge soup topped with Parmesan, calabrian chili, and crispy prosciutto. and I'm reflected on the spoon.

Meh. It’s a mixed bag. Obviously, if a game has some form of multiplayer functionality, it will require internet connection, and it will better have build in security features so I can enjoy multiplayer with minimal amount of cheaters. As long as non-online functionality works fine, I would call it less of a DRM, and more “realities of life”. I also dont mind minor, meaningless rewards like in BG3, but we are entering a slippery slope of devs incentivising connecting online by unique content (and how disposable such content is will depend player to player). I have been mostly happy with GOG releases I bought, but they did relax their policy in recent years somewhat.

Saints Row side activities are hit and miss. Mind, I felt that way about side activities in previous games as well, and in other games of this type. I appreciate that in this game they tried to flesh them out. They did not do their best at integrating them. There is so much to do, and repeatedly, the main story is basically over, and you are still in the side activity drudgery. I completed my criminal empire, built the Saints Tower and uninstalled. Getting the skyscraper should feel awesome, not "good, I can uninstall now". It is unfortunate that the tedium resulting from "too much" side activity can overshadow the effort put in by the writing team to make the activities interesting compared to SR3 for example. Here rampages have a point - you demonstrate the destructive capability of weapons to buyers on the black market. Shady Oaks, the insurance scam, has well written dialogue which elevates is over the exact same activity in previous games. A couple of questlines, Eurekabator, Let's Pretend, Laundromat, are all well thought out. On the other hand, while I appreciate the Wages of Fear reference of Bright Future, doing that 12 times? Ugh. Similarly, grabbing things for Wuzyers Repo again and again is tedious and not that different from Choplifting - they could have cut half the missions from those two and merged them. And of course, by the time you get to Let's Pretend or First Strike Dojo, things like Pony Express and Wingsuit Saboteur may have tired you out. I 100%ed the base game. But in the end I looked up locations online.

There have been small levels of DRM in some of the released games, e.g., Twitch drops, online functionality/multiplayer, one (?) game "can be started but can't be played without creating a player profile and save game online. It is fully DRM-ed!". https://www.gog.com/forum/general/drm_on_gog_list_of_singleplayer_games_with_drm/page1

In what game? They had at some point inferior version of later Hitman, but after they found out how it sucks, theynremoved it from catalogue. Don’t remeber any other such case.

I have solved the "Mystery" in the Nashville station in Encased. The game has really a lot of text, but I got used to it. The story has taken a very interesting turn there. And I am now hyped, what to expect next. Even without the knowledge of the game, I am still able to move forward without attacking anyone. But it was already twice very close to fail at Nashville

The publisher should hire me as a consultant then. By having out-of-game mega-transactions, they can circumvent all the negative reviews over in-game micro-transactions. And by making it an elvish language course, they can probably get into a literacy program and have 0 expenses.

Does your character learn elvish at some point or do you as the player have to learn elvish, with Capcom offering two week intensive elvish language courses?

@Gorth I'm watching "Moonlit Fantasy" and you'll probably like it. It's very similar to "That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime", with a guy going to another world and eventually founding his own nation with monsters. He was taken by a goddess that thinks he is ugly, so he was cursed and can't speak the human language. Not to mention that every human in the new world is handsome/beautiful so people think he is not one of them.

https://mashable.com/article/the-crow-soundtrack-30-anniversary

Been plowing through Horizon Forbidden West on pc now. Completed the main quest and moved onto the Burning Shores dlc. Pretty good all in all, though possibly not quite as emotionally engaging or as deep a story as the first one. The music score still adds a lot of depth to the game and the emotional story beats you do get. Some of the context sensitive controls can be a bit finnicky, and I've sworn a bunch of times where I've meant to take several small steps carefully at climbable edges and it's read it as the double click for dodge-roll and launched Aloy off a high surface. Possibly because of the nature of the story this time around, since you aren't plumbing the depths of so many ancient ruins looking for answers you also don't get quite so much of the bittersweet and melancholic datapoints and holo/audio recordings of last moments from the fall. And I have to say, the end sequence for the main story is incredibly cinematically done for the credits. Aloy on flying mount going across the landscape, looking across glorious vistas as it slowly covers the entire game world map in lazy S paths, end credits emerging from the landscape only to scatter into glitter on the wind as the you move into them, finally reaching the point of the map the final mission occured just as the sun is setting behind that location and the credits morph into a "thank you for playing" all set to slow, epic orchestral music.

Note: I'm a product of my time - while I try not to overuse/buy plastic packaged products, will reuse packaged containers, am aware of microplastics etc, it's pretty difficult to avoid as a consumer, and I'm sure I don't do as well as I absolutely could. eg, I'm a part of the problem, as a consumer, no denying. That said, the mantra of "Reduce, Reuse and Recycle" has not taken the "reduce" part to heart at all, especially when it comes to manufacturing. We could go at least go back to glass for a lot of products. I'm not entirely sure if using more paper - eg, liquid detergent vs. powder packaging - is better or worse (trees, processing process), but I'd guess (?) better at least in terms of overall environmental waste/poisoning. Maybe I'm wrong. But for gosh sakes, does stuff like small wires, cpu's, every beauty product ever need to be surrounded with five+ inches square of plastic, and do we really need plastic container "six packs" of tomatoes etc?

Yesterday I made Baingan Bharta (with peas) for the first time, and it turned out much, much better than I'd expected. I highly recommend this to anyone who likes cooking, as it's not all that difficult if you've got at least some experience of cooking in general, and do not get jittery about roasting eggplants.

Finished Saints Row. Shared the late-game thoughts here. After finishing the post-game, I would add that I would love if the side activities were more tightly bound to the main story and less numerous and repetitive, while the main rivals and companions had more dedicated missions. I liked the Eurekabator quest line - there were 3 missions, they directly referenced Marshall, and each rewarded with a cool gadget. The Food Truck ones, on the other hand, were very similar, not related to anything, and there were 5 of them. So, to unlock the final final mission I spammed the Lottery Ticket in-game cheat to get the funds required to build the final Criminal Ventures. I probably could go and finish all side quests, while the funds built up through the passive income, but I did not want to. About DDDA. I liked that the nights were dark and the random areas were not FOMO-inducing - there was nothing of note there and nothing to miss by not exploring them meter by meter, while they still provided the sense of travel and adventure, thus, being the opposite of Ubisoft's approach.

I have 40 hours in DD2. I just recently 'legally immigrated' to Batthal. Seriously though, all backdoor ways into the country are very dangerous. I honestly can't wait to see what speedrunners can do with this game.

The Boy Friend (1971) by Ken Russell. Ken Russell said he made this film...um, "[...] to prove to people I'm not totally deranged; I love the innocence and charm of musicals", but I came away from this becoming certain that he must be. I think it's one of the most fun films I've ever viewed, but I feel I lost my sanity watching it through. I don't know what I was expecting after having seen Altered States and Crimes of Passion, but I certainly wasn't prepared for whatever that was.