codexarcanum
@codexarcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Comment on Kingdom Hearts AI art accusations hit Square Enix, and that sure looks like slop to me 1 day ago:
It’s some ugly slop no matter how it was made. Lot of speculation they took several screenshots or renders and asked AI to cartoonify and upscale.
- Comment on Unexpected item in the bagging area! 4 days ago:
I have, in the US, never seen a person “randomly selected” for a grocery rescan. I imagine the first store to try it would get sued for discrimination within short order. I have seen many kinds of shoplifting done multiple times though:
- scan a different UPC
- lie about which kind of fruit it is
- scan one, bag 2 (for light items)
- scan one cheap thing multiple times while bagging other stuff
- just straight up “forget” to scan a big item and walk out with it
- walk in with old receipt, skip checkout entirely
Some stores do a receipt check but they almost always just do a count and don’t have time for detailed looks. Supposedly several US stores (Amazon-owned Whole Foods is notorious for it) will save up security footage of chronic shoplifters to wait until they’ve stolen enough to bring federal charges.
There are cameras all over self-checkout but it’s easy enough to palm things or slip expensive items into your bags without it being obvious. Maybe with AI they can start scanning every video for signals but it seems to me that only the really bold and overt thieves get caught.
- Comment on Super-threesome 1 week ago:
Heh, happy cake day! Would you like…
…a Twinkie?
- Comment on Well damn. Glad he's dead. 1 week ago:
Fuuuuck, I forgot how much I like that song and how I knew all that already. Damn. There’s been several bands and singers over the years I’ve had to forget. I’m not very good at separating art and artist.
- Comment on Fable - 30 Minute Gameplay Demo | Build An Extraordinary Life 1 week ago:
Fable 3 was so good and bad at the same time. Well, so were Fable 1 and 2 for that matter, but at least they all had vision!
- Comment on SBA #144 Nosferatu! 1 week ago:
Denied. Continue the experiment.
- Comment on Punk rock 1 week ago:
This guy punks
- Comment on Punk rock 1 week ago:
All the bands you like and have heard of are bad. Only bands that only I’ve heard of and like are good.
- Comment on inception'd into reforming czechoslovakia 4 weeks ago:
That was a pretty good album, I should listen to it again. (Ah no stealth marketing! Everything is secretly an ad!)
- Comment on No soy chorizo 1 month ago:
- Comment on I might shit my pants just a little if I saw this 2 months ago:
This discussion was kinda interesting, but I feel like it kinda lost the plot after a while. Anyway, this is my kinda response post: funny, succinct, kinda antagonistic. Great work ddplf, you’re kinda my kinda people.
- Comment on No cap Fr Fr 2 months ago:
It never stops being funny that business dorks and tech bros adopted “drinking the koolaid” as a phrase to mean getting buy in. That and “dogfooding” really tells you a lot about how we think of ourselves, or at least how the executive class wants us to think of ourselves.
- Comment on The forbidden fourth leche 2 months ago:
I once encountered a legendary seis leches cake. In addition to the standard tres, it also had I believe coconut cream, almond milk, and dulce de leche.
- Comment on 😎😎😎 2 months ago:
MAGA demons after a long day of politicizing people.
- Comment on Telling an AI model that it's an expert makes it worse 2 months ago:
Makes sense if you consider how LLMs work. No expert starts off a piece of writing with “I am an expert in math, here is a proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem.”
You’d get better results prompting it for a style of document. Instead of “you are a screenwriter” just start it off “Script for Harry Potter Goes for Surf n TERF. Scene 1: The Sweaty Troll, a wizard gay bar” and then let it run from there.
- Comment on Why do pot or other drug dealers "lace" their drugs knowing full well it will pretty much kill their customer base and rep? Is this not like a retail store telling customers everyday FUCK YOU and hope 2 months ago:
As others have said, marijuana is almost never adulterated. At best, you could mix some CBD or non psychoactive hemp to stretch it, but it’d be less potent and weed buyers today often buy for potency. (Not me man, I’m old, gimme that weak dad grass any day!) And of course, everyone has a story about the kid that bought a pound of oregano and thought it was ditch-grass.
For other harder drugs, you do sometimes get adulteration. Fentanyl, being a very powerful opiate, is sometimes mixed in small amounts into other “white powder” drugs, like heroin or cocaine, sometimes along with cheap non-reactive filler like talc. This is to stretch supply and make more money for the dealer. Ideally, this wouldn’t kill their users but:
- Different drugs act differently, so while it might be “safe” to do a larger heroin dose for a fun occasion, if you dont realize it’s been cut with fentanyl then you can easily overdose by accident. And people already overdose on heroin, the line between a wild time and dead can be rather thin.
- Drug Dealers aren’t graduate level chemists, often they haven’t graduated anything, and dont realize that some powder they’ve used as a filler is toxic or becomes toxic in combination with other things or when heated, etc.
- Comment on Since we're corn posting lately 6 months ago:
Came here to post this
- Comment on Why would I buy this? 8 months ago:
This kind of thing is why I dont get excited for steam sales now. Oh, 50% off Recent AAA Game? Haha, yeah, half off the base price, but the entire game is DLC now and each of those is still full price, and there’s a dozen of them.
- Comment on The infallebility of myself is the best source 8 months ago:
Theodore Kazinksy was a mathematician but is better known for being the Unibomber (and author of a manifesto against technology and academia). Quite the cheeky reference!
- Comment on Excuse the fuck me? 8 months ago:
Yeah, I hate these stories for the amount of Big Ethical Talk it beings out in people. “I would stand by my partner no matter what” is the “I could fight a bear” of emotional labor. Unless you’ve had a serious illness or been very close to someone who has (not parents or siblings, a voluntary relationship), then you just really don’t know what you’re talking about.
- Comment on Once again, looking for PS2 game suggestions! 8 months ago:
Good catch, my bad, I thought it was just the trilogy collection on PS3. It’s probably been since it first came out that i played it.
- Comment on Piegoth Ur 8 months ago:
My first, and only, thought
- Comment on Once again, looking for PS2 game suggestions! 8 months ago:
One of my favorite eras to live through and emulate!
Aside from Dark Cloud 2, mentioned already, I also really love:
Katamari, but on Deck the native version is better and includes the sequel.
The Jak and Daxter trilogy, simply amazing games! The first or the second are usually the favs. 1 is a solid mascot platformer. 2 also is, kind of, but adds guns and cars and a slightly GTA inspired open world. 3 is also fun but leans harder into vehicles and generally isn’t regarded as highly.
Odin Sphere. All the VanillaWare games are great, but OS is one of the most beautiful games ever drawn, and has really fun brawler\rpg combat. GrimGrimoire is another of theirs, also good, kind of a side scrolling RTS.
Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 are both a lot of fun, especially if you love Disney or SquareEnix games. If not, they’re still pretty fun and have an… interesting, if convoluted, lore. I probably would recommend if you dont care for Disney though. Probably worth playing Final Fantasy 7 first as well. It’s referenced quite reverently and is a great standalone game (and PS1 still counts I think, haha).
Devil May Cry 1 and 3. You can skip 2, even the fans and creators don’t care about it, and 3 is a prequel. DMC1 is a landmark game, and is required playing in my opinion for being both important and incredibly fun. It can be quite hard though. 3 is arguably the best in the whole series, and holds up really well near the top of the genre to this day.
God of War 1, 2, and 3. They’re all fantastic action games, and pretty influential still. I dont like them as much as DMC, but they’re still pretty fun.
There were actually a lot of pretty mediocre DMC clones on PS2, like Gungrave or Bujingai. If you love the genre, they’re neat and OK fun. God Hand is quite funny and kind of unique, probably the best of the 3 listed here.
I see Okami in there and I approve! Although I think the remasters released on other platform more recently are a better way to play. I also preferred the Wii version back in the day.
The Sly Cooper games and the Ratchet and Clank games are also both really excellent series. I liked Jak more, but they’re distinct games with their own neat elements. Sly’s particularly unique as a mascot stealth game.
Metal Gear Solid series and the Tony Hawk games are obviously excellent, but you’ve got so many other ways to play those I’m not sure they’re worth emulating.
Zone of the Enders, 1 and 2. ZoE 1 is infamous as being the game that came with the first MGS2 demo on it. The game is fine but short, and mostly serves to set up ZoE2, which fucking rules! You pilot a badass mecha and it just has a really fun plot, great music, and good action. An underrated gem!
Not your jam I’m sure, but I’d be remiss if I didnt mention the many hours I spent playing Capcom vs SNK 2. Still one of my favorite fighting games, legendary roster and soundtrack.
If you’d like a roguelike, I’d suggest Baroque or (PS1) Azure Dreams. Both pretty fun, quite long games with lots of replay value. Baroque is uh… well titled, kind of challenging to get into.
Ah, there were so many good games in that era. Truly one of the most stacked console lineups ever.
- Comment on Once again, looking for PS2 game suggestions! 8 months ago:
DC2 is absolutely a must play. Its a ridiculously big game though, be warned. You’ll be deep into the latter chapters with the game still throwing new mechanics at you like “omg, I have to play golf in dungeons now too, and fishing, and base building, and photography, and and and and”
I kind of do reccomend a guide for it as there’s some permanent misables.
- Comment on These mugs are getting out of hand 8 months ago:
Afraid to drink “ze german” water?
- Comment on Steam Autumn Sale 2025 Has Begun 8 months ago:
I’m feeling like a lot of y’all. My backlog is already immense, and i don’t even need DLC for the games I have, which are mostly all huge and never ending anyway. Have we reached peak gaming? Are we now making games faster than anyone can play them?
- Comment on Steam Autumn Sale 2025 Has Begun 8 months ago:
CB 2077 is really good and probably worth it if you enjoy open world games like GTA, skyrim, or RDR.
Atomic Heart I have been having a hard time getting into, for all the commonly cited reasons. The game looks gorgeous and its a fun setting, but you actually spend a lot of time in boring grey hallways fighting the same robots, and the combat just isnt especially great. Performance has been real hit or miss as well (I’m on Linux through proton).
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong Sparks Debate About Difficulty and Boss Runbacks 9 months ago:
I’m pretty early into the game as well, so I almost didn’t say anything. But even if theres a charm that adds HP bars later, I would be annoyed about it. Why wait so long? I’m over 10 hours in. Why take a slot with it? I get similar annoyances about the compass, but at least that one I can understand because maybe some people like the challenge of landmark navigation using just the maps. There is a skill there, and it is part of the skillset of Exploration (a major pillar of design in any metroidvania).
The yellow tools, in general, I’m iffy about the design of. So far I only have 3: compass, more shards, and auto-collect beads. Of these, auto-beads is the most obviously useful. You need many beads, and they get lost pretty easy. Shards are super common and don’t have many uses. But none of these are essential, and all of them get less useful the later into the game you get. The tradeoff is only meaningful early game, and seems to encourage a balance between memorizing the levels and grinding, neither are amazing activities.
Having the compass charm tied to ALL map markers would certainly up the utility of it, though it’s gating another feature behind both a purchase and a charm. I’ve also only found 1 semi useful trap\red-charm so far. Maybe having more traps and skills that required shell bits would put more pressure on needing them and make the charm that gives extras more appeal for a trap-heavy play style?
Again, I grant that maybe I’m too early in the game yet, but I feel like these systems should be coming together and cohering more after a half-dozen bosses and 10 hours of play.
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong Sparks Debate About Difficulty and Boss Runbacks 9 months ago:
The runbacks don’t bother me too much so far. I do think there’s some skills in the runback, but it relies heavily on the level designer as well. An ideal runback:
- is relatively short, you should have time to reflect on the boss, but not get sidetracked
- has enemies that drop currency, so repeated runs slowly build you up (assuming you always collect your shade)
- has enemies that train you on the bosses timings or counters (if the boss is parry heavy, put a tricky-to-parry enemy enroute back)
- has a “speed route” that let’s you bypass most or all of the run once you’ve figured it out
These factors make a run both interesting game play and still a form of progression. A badly designed run lacks these factors, being just a slow slog to get back into the boss fight.
My biggest complaint so far is the double damage. Every boss and so many common enemies do nothing but double damage. Why even have 5 HP instead of 3? And it being 5 (and bind healing 3) have compounding effects with this problem. Taking a single hit on the way to a boss actually costs you an entire “boss hit” so runbacks are worse all around. Trying to heal mid boss only gets you “one and a half” hits back which takes a lot of silk to build up and probably is a worse deal for you than just using the silk to power more attacks.
Double damage would suck a lot less (and be a better mechanic) if you had 6 HP to start, or if you healed 4 at a time, or if bosses didnt always do 2 damage. There’s no tension to avoiding punishing hits because every move is equally punishing. It makes fights feel very conservative which is maybe intentionally meant to evoke Hornet as a careful hunter, using traps and plans to take down big foes.
I find the opposite though, she feels fragile and reactive. I wish starting damage was higher too. I had this issue in Hollow Knight as well, everything takes too many hits. Common enemies are spongy, bosses take at least 33% too long across the board. Especially it gets annoying since a lot of bosses so far get spammier and faster towards their final phases, so you spend so much time dodging the same attacks and looking for openings to chip hits in. Skills and traps don’t do enough damage to feel especially useful either.
I also hate, and this is another compounding factor, the complete lack of enemy HP bars. On regular enemies this is annoying (gotta count my hits) but on bosses it feels negligent. Bosses have multiple phases and take so long to kill, it would be nice to know if my last run was just a hit or 2 away from the end or if I still had a 3rd phase to plan for. It adds to the poor perception of skills and traps as well. Sting Shard and Thread Storm both seem to hit several times, around a half-dozen, but neither seems to do much more damage than a couple of regular hits.
Overall I’m really loving Silksong, the art and music are top notch. The DLC for HK convinced me that Team Cherry and I disagree about some fundamental ideas in game design, and HKSS bears that out.
- Comment on Something we all can agree on 9 months ago:
Incorrect! Some of them are CIA ops who do it for love of the game!
