Things you should never get caught liking on Lemmy:
Nintendo
Windows
Auth-right, lib-right, or lib-left politics
A can of beans
Police
Man vs bear hypothetical
CalyxOS
Etc.

(Edit: formatting)

All of my favorite Star Wars games are on sale. When star wars games were good; “before the dark times, before EA.”

Knights of the Old Republic I & II
Dark forces
Empire at War
Jedi Academy
Jedi Outcast
Republic Commando
Battlefront I & II (Lucasarts ones not EA)
Shadows of the Empire
Bounty Hunter

All great games worth playing imo

Xenia was one of the few programs I kept windows for, good to check it off the list. I’ll definitely be downloading and tinkering with it soon

I recently got back into Batman Arkham City. The last time I played it was 2016 or so, and I forgot what it was about. I remember it being really good, but I’m enjoying it even more this time around. They really nailed all the characters spot on (coming from reading the graphic novels and comics)

Seconded on Talos Principle; it’s a great game. It takes a more philosophical spin on the story rather than a comical spin like Portal, but it does scratch that 3D puzzler itch that Portal accomplishes so well

Mindustry is such a gem. It’s my most played game on Steam and for good reason

Heres a list of some favorites:

Imperfect perfection: Morrowind

Perfect perfection: Starcraft Brood War

Objective perfection: Plants vs Zombies

Subjective perfection: Knights of the Old Republic

Perfect for its time: Gauntlet IV

Perfect timeless: Sonic 2

Perfect for its genre: LOZ Minish Cap

Perfect All-in-one: Shenmue II

Ad baculum 🤔

Where’s Gordy when you need him?

Me in 2004: Roblox

Me in 2008: Roblox

Me in 2014: Roblox

Me in 2018: Roblox

Me in 2024: Roblox

Man, this is why I love lemmy. There’s always some extensive and insightful info in the comments somewhere. Great explaination! I might use some of these concepts in my dnd campaign

Do it, I left IT to become a chef. The pay is less but I feel so much better about my job. Theres a huge difference doing something that actually benefits people (making good food for people was my path, it doesn’t have to be cooking specifically) rather than slaving away for a corporation’s benefit. It’s awesome when you go out and see people enjoying what you did

If you enjoy Titanfall 2 you might like Call of Duty Black Ops 3. I still havent found a game that handles so well and feels so smooth. It got a lot of flak at the time (2014) because everyone was tired of future shoooters, but imo it has the best fps mechanics not only in cod, but in any fps game. The story is also really good; I wont spoil but it does get kinda philosophical and has plenty of twists and turns.

As others have said, the Half Life series is probably the best fps objectively. I started with 2 and then played 1, so while they do go in order, it isn’t required. HL1 is a bit clunky but still great.

Also James Bond 007 games are criminally underrated. Everyone knows about Goldeneye for the N64, but some of my favorites are Nightfire, From Russia with Love, Everything or Nothing, and Goldeneye Reloaded. A lot of the Steam pages were taken down for them though, and are only really playable on console, but definitely worth it if you are able to play

That first sentence hit me like a truck

No thanks, I’ll just keep playing Morrowind on my 2009 Toshiba

Texas brisket was honestly a close second for me. It’s so good when it’s done right.

I totally agree on the West coast pick. San Diego and Tijuana have some of the best mexican food anywhere, and it greatly outshines the other food in the area

I had it somewhat like this in NYC, and the cheese curds are definitely a game changer. I believe it was made with russet crinkle fries though. Potato wedges are a great idea

I’ll have to try this one! It vaguely reminds me of a dish I tried in Arizona called a Sonoran hot dog. Basically a piece of bread stuffed with a bacon wrapped hot dog and an insane amount of toppings and sauces/salsas

Greedy corpos aside, going back to BO1 the audio design was fantastic; everything from the subtle crunch of a boot on gravel to the clack of reloading a gun. Pure ear candy (except for maybe the crazy over-dramatic melee sound). BO 2-5 were good too in terms of sfx but nowhere near 1. I feel like that era had a special attention to detail to audio that modern games don’t care to emulate. Maybe they will with 6; either way microtransactions suck and I’ll stick to playing the older COD games for this very reason

With firefox or a hardened fork of firefox (like mull/fennec/iceraven etc.) there is a button in settings where you can install/add to homescreen and have an app-like experience for any site including instagram. (Not sure if this is on ios though.) You can also have noscript, ublock origin, and privacy badger addons running for a bit of extra protection and as you said email alias and vpn at all times. If you’re on a hardened OS like CalyxOS or Graphene you can also sandbox or work profile the browser to add another degree of separation.

You may run into problems during signup because meta has been known to use viseo/photo upload verification for accounts made with alias emails and/or from a vpn IP, but once you’re in there shouldn’t be an issue. If there is, you might want to bite the bullet and sign up in a normal way, then use privacy measures to mitigate data collection, depending on your threat model.