The last thing I broke over a game was a sweat.

No, really. The Portal games always make my eyes and brain argue about if I'm moving, which causes progressive symptoms including but not limited to chills, sweating, nausea and a splitting headache. Playing the new fan game Revolution sent me to bed repeatedly, and what's a more valuable thing to break than your health?

Swedish influencer Saskia Cort went viral in 2022 after telling her followers to ask their male partners the big question: How often do you think about the Roman Empire?The trend returned in August 2023, after history enthusiast Gaius Flavius, who is also based in Sweden, posted the same prompt in an Instagram reel. This popularized the meme to the point where it reached TikTok, where it exploded into the mainstream, with many of the videos accumulating millions of views.

So clearly it's actually in Sweden that there is so much fascination with the Roman Empire, or at least boyfriends who are happy to pretend interest in anything their girlfriends ask about. I see no reason to be particularly interested in them... though I suppose certain modern leaders do evoke Caligula.

If you really want to know how to add or change profile pictures, you go to the profile, then click on the link to appearance. You'll need an online-accessible image to point Vizzed at.

Not counting browser stuff I'd be stuck in Cultist Simulator, which I dusted off to try some of the workshop stuff because the last time I bothered with it there hadn't even been a Steam workshop. That's actually pretty alright; the vast bulk of the game world is completely undefined but my options are to go make a cult that finds it ridiculously easy to make me immortal or to skip the business of trying to peel the skin off the world and thus be immune to four fifths of its established complications while amassing such a fortune that I could easily afford to retire early and live a life of luxury until I died of old age.

http://ffn.nodwick.com/ffnstrips/2021-09-09.png

That is all.

If anyone's looking for a summary, Dante penned the Divine Comedy after backing the wrong man in a religious schism left him exiled from the place of his birth-and more importantly, for him, the place of the birth, life and death of a girl he thought he loved despite never having managed to get up the nerve to talk to her.

The Inferno established that he was important enough (classic self-promotion fantasies) to warrant being lead through hell, purgatory and heaven by one of his favorite authors (Virgil the poet)simply to see and finally speak with her before getting kicked back out to live a more informed life. The Inferno is also where he described the nine rings of hell, which he populated with people he hated so he could spit on them and have Virgil applaud the act. He named the leader of the faction that had won in that religious scuffle as doomed to be thrown into a flaming coffin where he would await whoever came next to lay on top of him and make his afterlife even more miserable, viciously attacked someone who was trying to use the boat to help him float in the river of Wrath (hypocrite much?) and condemned purely fictional characters to horrible punishments even if he had to change the fiction to justify it. (Odysseus' end was rewritten so he grew bored and forced his crew into a new journey that saw them all killed and condemned to hell while Cassius and Brutus, the thug who plotted Caesar's death in Shakespeare's play and the dumb brute he persuaded that offing the emperor was the only way to help the people, were both being eternally ground between the devil's teeth.) There is basically nothing anyone could do that would be more petty than Dante himself.

Two minor notes: this was the first attempt to actually describe hell beyond suggestions it is full of fire and brimstone and the church reviled him for writing details that he'd never had them vet first but still managed to steal the idea for their own use, and even though Dante will understood homosexuality was a Sin Against Nature to the church of his time, warranting especially hideous punishments, he still managed to be very sympathetic to a friend and fellow author who'd been a wonderful chap aside from his preferences. Virgil, unsurprisingly, forgot he was supposed to be chastising Dante for any and all expressions of sympathy or forgiveness to these who were cursed by his god.

I've never played any of them, but I always wanted to give one of the Persona games a shot.

There you go, one set of highest quality earbuds. Price: your sense of hearing.

I wish more people would just get their covid vaccinations.

Dragon - 20 (-3)
Electric - 18
Ground - 20
Psychic - 22 (+1)

According to Steam my preference is games that are about three years old, but I don't think it has a very clear idea what I want. class' problem is what I call simulation sickness, when your eye insists to your brain that your body is actually moving based on the data it's processing and your body disagrees. It hits different people at different graphics levels and can usually be stopped by getting farther away from the screen, but people having that problem with VR are kind of out of luck.

I know Bravely Default II has been released, at least.. how has that gone for you? I haven't really kept track of what's upcoming for awhile now but my brother used to throw money rather more freely than he ought on Kickstarter and I was sort of looking forward to seeing how Cyber Knights would turn out...

From a March 2021 they've pushed to Q1 2023, so nothing to report on that.

Right now Aragami, the $1 near-gimme from Humble Bundle's stealth offering. It's been about as bad as you'd expect something at that tier to be: the graphics try hard but it only helps emphasize that there are two body types (melee guard and archer) with maybe five different faces, the mechanics are clumsy and the way the world reacts to the character seems unstable. At least it tries, which is more than can be said for a lot of games made by more proficient devs. Once I finish slogging through the story I'll be looking at more highly valued games from the bundle.

For the record, the largest one is the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. There's so much to see and do there that you could easily spend all day at it if that's your thing.

I think I'll stick with online shopping, especially since most of the local-ish malls were half dead before covid killed the urge to hang out at massive retailers all day.

Congratulations on your official certification of verbosity. I'm sure the reviews helped but it sounds like your forum posting was the biggest contributor, so don't get too complacent about more complete reviews pushing you past the others if they're still active.

That was a horrible bust... work called to ask if I'd like to 'make up for lost Labor Day hours', gave me a whopping 1.5 hours of hard labor and I got home to a round of chores that lasted most of the day. I'll see if I can get the numbers up at least a little before bed, but I hope others were more active.

I'll see what I can do to help you get the numbers up, but you can count me as opting out on charging you if I get the most posts.

For those wondering, it looks to be a very Elder Scrolls-ish MMO. Being in the open beta will be a big leg up on the competition if you're the seriously competitive type in MMOs.

I mean, there's the Tomb Raider games and every Elder Scrolls has had at least a little cave crawling... Scanner Sombre is actually focused on caves, Subnautica has underwater caves (like anything in it isn't underwater), Miasma Caves is treasure hunting in procedurally generated caves if you don't mind that it's more of a silly platformer than a serious spelunking. If you do mind but don't care so much about graphics then there's also Goblet Cave, where you use your feeble abilities and tools to find rubies and ways to safely descend to where the hidden goblet is.

It's a lemon, that's what it is. Steam markets it as the most powerful gaming rig you've ever had and swears it will easily play the most demanding AAA games... that isn't true right now, it will be less true by the time you actually get the product you preordered, in a couple years it'll be known as better than nothing if you need your game fix on the go.

The console market works by making the console and restricting games to a standard that more or less suits the console's limits. The computer game industry never worked like that. It's always been about making whatever you want and if the average consumer cannot play it then they need to upgrade, which isn't going to happen with the Steam console.

Congrats on the job and don't worry about anyone who objects to it. If they care so much about the site they can offer to help with it, at the least do some moderating.