AoE III was excellent. It explored new ideas and did it well. As a long time AoE fan who played all of them since the first, AoE II is massively overhyped, and AoE III is unfairly shit on.

AoE2 genuinely had a small competitive scene on Voobly and Gameranger. It was being played as a grassroots esport by dedicated fans even before the HD and DE remasters.

One of the third game’s glaring problems was how poorly balanced it was. IIRC the winning strategy was to play French (who already had overpowered cavalry), rush to the third age and use a particular tech to effectively blockade your opponent’s home city and prevent them from playing anything in their deck.

Even when AoE3’s Definitive Edition came out, fixed a lot of the balance issues and added a bunch of new civs via expansions, the damage was already done and sales were so low that Microsoft cancelled their latest expansion and halted development a few months ago.

Also they were voluntold to do Halo Wars, and they did a good job on it. It’s a good game, and it did an excellent job on console with a controller scheme, which was impressive at the time.

Played the Xbox 360 demo of Halo Wars near its initial release and wasn’t impressed. All I really remember about the game beyond that was how bad the box art looked. I mean those spartans look like they have fucking long giraffe necks.

Gamepad controls and real time strategy just don’t mix. You either make something so mechanically slow that keyboard & mouse would shit all over that control style, or have to bastardize the game mechanics so much that it’s all but fully automated. The only game I’ve seen remotely work as a gamepad RTS is Tooth and Tail.

And that’s pretty much what Palestine Action did.

I 100% believe the claim that Microsoft executives mistakenly thought they’ve just nabbed the Donkey Kong IP by acquiring Rare. Definitely seems like something some c-suite ghouls who are totally out of touch with the games industry would believe.

Also, I’m not sure how much of Rare’s downfall was due to Microsoft’s mismanagement or their core talent leaving to form other studios. Maybe a bit of both.

To be fair, Age of Empires III was bad, and the last project Ensemble was working on before they got shuttered was a Halo MMO.

Also, Robot Entertainment (the studio that rose from the ashes of Ensemble) were the initial developers of Age of Empires Online, which was P2W slop that 90% of players couldn’t run because Games For Windows LIVE was a buggy crock of shit. And since then they’ve released nothing but Orcs Must Die games.

Eighteen months ago, I was an advocate for Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard, because I didn’t think anybody could have done a worse job than Bobby Kotick.

Phil Spencer has proven me wrong. This arsehole tried to shut down Tango Gameworks after they literally shadowdropped a critically acclaimed GOTY contender.

Ouch, Chávez Jr isn’t having a good week. Imagine losing a boxing match to Jake Paul of all people, then getting deported.

Reminds me of this really annoying “I don’t do politics” advert that was airing on British TV two decades ago. Like, I’m surprised the ad didn’t end with a punch to the face.

What is Zidane gonna do? Walk up to their president and headbutt him?

I’m more shocked it hasn’t already happened to Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain or Just Stop Oil.

But I guess blockading motorways and rocking up to art museums dressed like extras from a Wham music video and defacing paintings makes you less of a threat than wanting Netanyahu to stop his genocide of the Palestinian people.

United Kingdom (Bristol.)

Used to be pretty decent, but now the NHS is chronically overbooked and underfunded. Ambulances can take hours to come.

Only way to get a GP appointment is to literally call my practice at 8AM on the dot, wait in the queue and hope you’re lucky to have your call answered before all the appointments are gone. There is no online booking system, and if you call at any other time, they won’t be able to book you in advance unless you’re willing to wait months.

My dad (80 years old) has had to go to hospital a few times in the past few years for various reasons, and the longest he’s had to wait to be admitted into a ward was 13 hours. He had a hip replacement operation two years ago where he was on an 18 month waiting list.

If you want a suggestion for a bad movie, try watching FDR: American Badass Only managed to make it about half an hour in before we had to switch it off.

Don’t let the trailer fool you. The actual film is dogshit.

I used to do a monthly one with two close friends of mine. Let’s just call them Poppy and Sam (not their real names.)

Unfortunately, Sam pretty much disavowed our group last year. He had a falling-out with Poppy because she raised concerns about how he was spending his inheritance money. Sam had made some friends at his local pub and was buying them pints all the time. Apparently Poppy telling him that he can’t buy friends struck a nerve with him and he very vocally excommunicated us. My reaction to being cut off was one of frustration and bewilderment.

For some very important context, Sam has physical and mental health struggles, which I won’t go into. He had a particualrly bad month which broke him emotionally and decided there and then that he had no intentions of outliving his cats. That was three years prior to our falling-out.

Poppy did reach out to me two days ago and she wants to do another film night with me and reconnect like old times. We’re gonna meet up on Friday.

I used to participate in r/theredpill. It’s an ideology that got increasingly toxic over the years.

The part that truly made me ditch the manosphere was meeting a lady on a dating app who mentioned to me that RooshV was doing a rally near her town and that it had her fearing for her life. For the record, that was an incel/redpill influencer who was an advocate for legalizing spousal rape.

Yup.

Best kart/racer combination in the game is genuinely one of the Bowser ones, due to having the lowest acceleration and highest top speed in the game.

I’ll add some context, as I actually own a Switch 2 and Mario Kart World.

The game is full of “intermission tracks”, where the next race starts at the previous track and you effectively drive to the next track for the first two laps, then complete a single lap of the destination track. For example, in the Mushroom Cup, rather than start the second race at Crown City, you’d instead start at Mario Bros Circuit (the 1st track in the cup), drive to Crown City for two “laps” then complete a single lap of Crown City.

Many people voted Random in online multiplayer instead of picking one of the three interconnecting tracks, because the intermission tracks frankly suck for the most part, and are just straight-line roads. By picking Random, the game would actually pick a completely different course and you’d do a standard 3-lap race, like you would by selecting the course in Time Trial mode.

At least that’s what used to happen, before the latest patch… Now, random actually picks one of the three interconnecting courses, and no longer picks a random course.

To be honest, I think intermission tracks only really work in Free Roam and Knockout Tour. It doesn’t feel innovative to effectively drive to the next racetrack when you still have to wait between race results and loading screens.

Depends on what changed. Axis victory would have hinged on three possible outcomes:

• The United States staying out of the conflict (no Pearl Harbour assault, no German u-boat attacks on American vessels, and Hitler & Mussolini not declaring war on the USA in response to the US declaration of war on Japan.)
• Operation Barbarossa not happening.
• British defeat or withdrawal from the war.

In a scenario where the Japanese never attacked Pearl Harbour and never dragged the USA into the conflict, Hitler may have been able to eventually conquer Britain, turn his efforts towards Operation Barbarossa and take control of the entire European continent, along with parts of Asia. The Holocaust would likely have still happened, as the Final Solution was put in place six months prior to the Battle of Stalingrad, which turned the tide of the war in our current timeline.

Lack of US involvement leads to a scenario where nuclear weapons would not have been invented until much later, as Germany had not actually been working on weapons of mass destruction, and the Manhattan Project would never have occurred. World War III would likely have been fought between the Nazis/Japanese and Soviets, while the US would have remained isolationist.

A scenario where Operation Barbarossa never happens (neither Hitler nor Stalin attack each other) may be different. Hitler consolidates his European gains, never attacks the Soviet Union and focuses his efforts purely on the United States and Africa, securing many wins without his armies being stretched so thin. In that scenario, Jews are likely exiled to penal colonies established in Africa or the Middle East, from lands conquered from the British. The Holocaust may happen further down the line, but some historians think it was the unique wartime conditions on the Eastern Front that led to the Final Solution being considered - Nazi Germany actually tried resettling Jews in other lands prior to WW2.

British withdrawal (Hitler negotiating peace with Churchill) or defeat (Nazi Germany winning the Battle for Britain) may have led to Operation Barbarossa happening sooner, and with the Soviet Union not so far along in their industralization efforts, they would have likely lost Stalingrad, Petrograd and possibly Moscow. It either would have been a long and bloody war of attrition or a swift Soviet loss.

I’m not against polyamory, but I find it never works out when somebody decides to open up a previously monogamous relationship.

A (former) close friend of mine got engaged a few years back, and then his fiancé brought a third into the relationship and they became a throuple. That relationship lasted maybe another year or two, until she called off the engagement several days after his mother passed away, and left him for the other guy while he was grieving.

Found out sometime later that the third she brought into their relationship was actually her cousin, so there was definitely some Sweet Home Alabama crap going on.

Another friend of mine tried to commit suicide recently after getting dumped. Her relationship with her boyfriend of ~2 years had been rocky to say the least. They broke up, got back together, etc quite a few times, but the most recent breakup was after he brought a third into the relationship, then allegedly found out she was texting a guy and dumped her on the spot.

On Reddit, yes. To the point where I’ve actually had to self-censor a lot of my comments and tip-toe around certain topics to avoid my comments being nuked from orbit by Automoderator.

Lemmy? Not really.

Lemmy is full of tankies and Linux nerds. It’s a different kind of toxic to what you’d experience over on Reddit.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent was pretty damn good.