I’m probably not going to be doing much gaming on my laptop, if any. I could be persuaded to experiment if you have any other suggestions.

I used to use UbuntuStudio back when I was playing around with music recording and production ages ago because it ran the real-time kernel which was important for JACK I think. Last time though was just Mint.

My gaming PC is on Win 11 because it’s recent and I’m lazy and it’s convenient. My laptop runs Win 10 so it’ll be Linux I guess. Not really looking forward to finding a distro and reinstalling and whatnot but what can you do. It’s been a good few years since I last had a Linux box so I’m pretty rusty and not up to date on the recent best distros.

You’ll like it I think, I played it earlier this year and absolutely loved it. Great vibe, good story, beautiful pixel art and a great retro feel without the clunk of actual retro games 😄 Cool world building too.

Are we certain Witcher is the larger game in which Gwent resides and not the other way around?

Latching on to your Lovecraftian recommendations I’d like to put forth Skald: Against the Black Priory, which should presumably also run excellently on the Steam Deck. Keep an eye out for it during the sale, it’s a great tribute to retro CRPGs and has a wonderfully gloomy lovecraftian vibe.

Okay this is a little off script since it’s not an open world game, but if you’re only looking for satisfying movement you should take a look at Neon White. Just be warned that the writing is… on the cringier side. But that doesn’t really matter in the end.

Hey now, equating MAGA to coronavirus is a gross injustice to coronavirus!

How dare people play with their dolls in the way they enjoy!?

Not really, though I can understand your point of view. I went into STALKER 2 fully aware that it wasn’t Anomaly, and I was able to enjoy it for what it is (despite needing to use console commands on three separate occasions to progress past hard-locking bugs). I finished it probably a month after release so don’t know its current state.

I was sufficiently engaged in the story and the presentation to definitely want to finish the game, and I enjoyed the new map and the blend of new and familiar locations. After spending so much time with the originals and the Anomaly map it was great to get a fix of more new content with the same vibe - some of the underground lab locations managed to hit classic STALKER vibes for me and kept me going to the end.

If I were to boot up some STALKER right now I might go for Anomaly over another run of S2 though, and that will probably continue to be the case until the DLC drops.

I enjoyed the early mythos of M:tG, but I already started losing interest when they went all Marvel with their whole Gatewatch thing.

Even though individual sets (like LOTR) have been well made and successful, the whole Universes Beyond thing just further dilutes the identity of Magic too much for me. I’m sick of endless exploitation of existing IPs from all over the entertainment business. I understand why they do it from a financial perspective, but it doesn’t appeal to me at all.

Add to that the endless garbage of Secret Lair drops like goddamn Spider-Man and SpongeBob and I think MTG just isn’t for me anymore.

Relevant Basically Homeless video.

I’ve almost completely stopped keeping up with M:TG these days. I used to be into it but it just feels like it’s completely jumped the shark these days.

I’m playing Mankind Divided right now and loving it, already bracing for the heartbreak of the unresolved cliffhanger I know is coming.

Doesn’t load for me in Voyager either but it works in browser so there there alright. What the hell

GIF inclusion

On that note, the GIFs don’t seem to load for me. Tried three different apps (Summit, Thunder, Sync).

I’ve been trying to get through NOLF this year (never played it before) and it definitely feels janky and clunky. Some pretty awful stealth too. It doesn’t really feel like they’ve aged all that well. Maybe the sequel is better, who knows.

I gave up after a couple of hours as I just wasn’t having fun at all, I realised I was only playing because it’s a classic and I wanted to be able to say I had played it.

I played BG3 straight after Cyberpunk and that really stood out to me as well. The immersion and emotional impact of voiced protagonist lines really got me invested in Cyberpunk in a way I missed in BG3.

A lot of the details do unsurprisingly sound rather derivative, and it will be very, very difficult to reach the bar of writing set by writers who are no longer around. But the absolute worst part of this is that some of their ideas do sound interesting. A more elaborate thought cabinet is something I assume most Disco fans have wished for at some point, especially knowing the initial concepts floated around that had to be cut.

Also I didn’t know Anton Vill still worked there.

The Alice videos in AW2 are some of the best acting I’ve seen in a video game.