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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • I like collecting achievements, so if it’s a requirement, I usually do. The last one was Silent Hill 2, which kind of doesn’t count. You start with nothing, and the only difference is that items appear when they weren’t there on the first run. I’ve done the FromSoft Soulsborne games, but Elden Ring had so much content that I had to take a long break before going back. The ones I’ve enjoyed most though are games that have upgrade systems that you can’t complete without a ton of grinding, like Ratchet and Clank (plus NG+ has the RYNO). They just can’t be super-long. I’m probably never replaying Persona 5, just because of the time commitment.



  • Regarding Elden Ring, I would argue it does the sense of exploration better than Hollow Knight, but only by a small degree. For every area, there’s no map at the start, and the entire map’s size is obscured since it only shows what you’ve traveled through. It gets bigger as you go, but it’s still obscured by a fog of war for areas that fit inside the map, but you don’t have a map fragment for. You can see on the map where you can obtain the fragment, but not how to get there. Most times you can just cut a straight line to it, but sometimes it’s a pain.

    All that said, the thing it does better than Hollow Knight for exploration is a limitation of Hollow Knight’s map system. It’s split into different rooms, and each room has finite entrances and exits. Because you fill out the map through exploration, you’re going to know what you have and haven’t found.

    Because Elden Ring gives you the entirety of the map, it’s both helpful and not. You can figure out (mostly) how to get from point A to point B, and you have markers for everywhere you’ve been. There’s two minor issues with that, though. It’s a 2D map for a 3D world, which means you end up with some locations not being properly shown, because they’re underneath cliffs. The second is that the map does almost nothing to show what places of interest there are. You have large buildings shown, but that excludes all the catacombs (dungeon areas) you can visit. There are areas on the map that are right there, but due to the topography you have no idea how to get there. Going by the map alone means you’re going to miss out on a solid amount of the content available.

    It’s because the map is so limiting that it feels so good. You’re able to use it to figure where places are in directional relation, but you still have to look yourself to try and uncover areas. My first run, I prided myself on uncovering everything. I searched high and low, inspected the map to make sure I went to every corner, and really made sure I knew what was out there, and it felt amazing in terms of how much content there was and how much exploration you could do. I started a second run when the DLC came out, and found an area that, somehow, I had entirely missed. It took over a hundred and forty hours of searching, really searching, to get what I thought was complete, and it still wasn’t. It was a fantastic feeling on my second run.

    Hollow Knight’s map is excellent. The gameplay is excellent, the exploration is rewarding and challenging. But the issue it has is that it only has those two dimensions to work with. Elden Ring really works to emphasize that third dimension when scouring for secrets.




  • I genuinely enjoyed Arkham Knight, but those mandatory Batmobile sections are easily the most miserable part of the game. If we had those for an entire game, it might not be too bad, but most of the time you just end up using it to get from point A to point B. If you can put up with being stuck for a bit on those sections, you might enjoy it.

    Its big issue is that it has to follow up on Arkham City. It’s not a bad game by any stretch, but it’s following up to one of the best superhero games out there. If you’re not invested in the story, there’s no harm in dropping it. Play something you’ll have fun with.




  • I absolutely appreciate all the work done recently, but I was wondering if there was any chance we could get thumbnails that, when clicked, don’t have ?thumbnail=1500&format=webp appended to them. For some posts, it doesn’t make a difference, but for longer posts, or posts with smaller text, it makes the image blurry unless you click into the post comments, and select the image there. It feels like a needless extra step when trying to open an image.







  • To preface this, I don’t really like JRPGs. Especially turn-based ones. That doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate them, it’s just that a lot of them have had, in the past, an emphasis on things like grinding over gameplay. This might not be true for more modern ones, but considering I largely avoid the genre, I don’t know.

    All that said, Sea of Stars does everything so right. I remember playing Persona 5 and having a blast, primarily because of the story and presentation, but Sea of Stars not only has that, but does everything it can to keep you immersed.

    Combat is turn-based, but you have the opportunity to time button presses to attacks to do extra attacks. I know that sounds not amazing, but the combat system also requires attacks of specific types to stop an enemy from doing a special attack. Nail the timing, and you can interrupt an attack completely. Fail, and you either have to brace for it, or find another way around it (and early game, that’s not an option most times). Likewise, timing the button press when getting hit blocks damage, and with an item early on, it also recovers MP. The game goes all in on rewarding you for actively playing instead of just sitting back and clicking through menus.

    Plus, the traversal is just so great. Yeah, an isometric game has great traversal mechanics. It feels weird saying that, but it does. Almost every screen has multiple layers to move up and down, making it feel like a real world instead of just walking from point A to point B. Plus it encourages exploration of those layers for cooking ingredients and treasures, which are hidden away in secrets, but if you’ve played enough games you generally know where to look.

    This is also going to sound kind of like more weird praise, but there’s no bullshit with needing to find several keys spread across the world to go back to one location to get a chest. Everything you see can be obtained if you can figure out how to get to it, with literally one exception that I’ve found in the first right hours. The puzzles aren’t that hard, and as long as you’re thorough you can find everything.

    Regarding the story, it’s nothing groundbreaking, but it’s presented so well that it’s still entertaining. It’s almost relentlessly positive, and even the darkest parts are handled in the manner of “we’ll get through this” instead of “this is hopeless.” It’s good, but it’s not the best I’ve played (though given everything else, I wouldn’t be surprised if it improved later).

    I have no idea if you’ve played, or even heard of, a GBA series called Golden Sun. It feels a lot like a spiritual successor to it. But the thing that keeps me playing is that not only is the gameplay fun and the story entertaining, but it seems to absolutely value your time. No grinding, you’re capable of maintaining your party through good combat decisions, and limited backtracking. You’re not there to play a game, you’re there to experience a journey, and it keeps you moving forward. I love this game, but I feel safe saying that you could buy this on Steam, and figure out in the two-hour return window whether or not it’s for you.




  • Apparently, at least for groceries, there’s an estimated extra $700/year increase next year, with food costs slowing to 2.5-4.5% increases in general, but sticking at 5-7% for bread, vegetables, and meat. It’s still going to cost an average 4-person family $16.3k a year for groceries, though (AKA just over half a full-time minimum-wage salary, prior to paying taxes).

    Metro reported a 14% increase in profits for their last quarter compared to last year, and Loblaw’s 11%. According to Google’s earning statements of the last year, Metro has made 27.4% more profits in the last four quarters than they reported in 2020. Loblaws, on the other hand, is actually down 12%, though Google reports they had two really bad quarters this year, and posted a 40% increase in profits between FY 2022 and 2020. So yeah, nothing as egregious as the article, but they’re still outpacing (year over year for the last quarter) both regular and grocery inflation.

    I’m sure if I really wanted to, I could dig up the same financial information for Soebys, but I have no clue if Walmart and Costco would keep clean financials readily available for Canada.




  • I’ve heard that and decided to look myself. According to their fundraising report for fiscal year 2021/22, they received $165.2m from 13m people. Removing “major gifts,” $20.8m (only 18,000 people), it comes out to a bit over $11 per person. Additionally, they got $13.5m to their trust, the Wikimedia Endowment (average donation of $13.91/person). So definitely, most of their income comes from small donations.

    As to whether they need it, according to their FY 21/22 financials statement, they’re sitting on $198m in assets ($51m of which is cash), with an additional $52m they can’t touch because they’re long-term investments. However, their expenditures made up $154m. In total, they’re reporting they netted $8m last year for additional assets, but assuming that everyone stopped donating, Wikipedia would probably die in a year, even with liquidation of short-term assets.