This is just pure speculation from my part, but with

• Trump bending over for Russia
• his multiple visits to Moscow was made happen by KGB
• his relations with Jeremy Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell
• the rumor that Kremlin has an incriminating golden shower video tape on him that could be used to keep him obedient

And with

• Elon bending over for Russia
• his multiple visits to Moscow to buy rockets, in which there’s no way Russian govt aren’t involved
• the photograph of him with Ghislaine

I just can’t help to speculate that Kremlin has something really incriminating against these two. But again this is just pure speculation without any proofs.

Final Fantasy IX Remaster

• I’ve never finished FF9 on PS1 (my optical drive died), then I got distracted playing FF9 remaster a few years earlier. Finally decided to stream the game with a guide
• The battle is slow, even with fast forward, the animation seems to be slower than FF8 or FF7
• The fast forward in this remaster is not implemented as good as FF8 remaster’s.
  • It’s only either 1x or 4x speed
  • If you started the fast forward and forgot to turn it off before a cutscene, then the cutscene will play at 4x without any way to reset the speed.
• Despite all that, I am enjoying the game, characters are likable. I’m currently at Disc 2, after the Clerya section

Resident Evil Remake

• Again, I’m following a guide to get unlimited rocket launcher. I really dislike that 3 hour time limit. Or maybe I just really dislike time limit in games.
• I’m not into survival horror, but I enjoy the shooting / action part of Resident Evil
• So far, not enjoying it, since I’m just kiting zombies, skipping cutscenes, etc. My aim is to get unlimited ammo, then finally play both Chris and Jill sections without the ammo, and in some ways, inventory constraints.

2 game franchises came into my mind

• Zero Escape series, since I replayed it recently, and managed to skip some steps. It’s a flowchart game, so developer’s foresight is kinda needed.
• Metal Gear and anything by Hideo Kojima, I just found out while researching for this reply, that in Death Stranding since you can create pee grenade to damage BT, you can even pee on them directly.

Kinda expected, majority of Squeenix’s shareholders are big banks, they are expecting FF16 to sell a lot more than the current 3 mil copies.

Squeenix also had a kind of disappointing year between 2022 to 2023, with Babylon’s Fall failing, and Forspoken not doing great. The only big thing in the near future that’s announced is FF7 Rebirth, so I could see why shareholders don’t have much confidence in the company.

But I gotta admit, Square Enix of these past 2 years, have released tons of games that I want to play / enjoyed playing, albeit many of them are either remakes or smaller titles, e.g. Tactics Ogre Reborn, Chrono Cross Remastered, Octopath Traveler 2, Live a Live, Crisis Core, Paranormasight, FF Pixel Remaster, etc.

I hope this is just a stumble, and they will regain their footing, instead of them ended up getting acquired by large corporations.

I guess the reasoning varies based on regions.

I assume that in countries in Asia, Africa, or South America, people are wary of the term ‘democracy’ because:

• democracy can still be full of corruption,
• democracy when preached by the US, usually means ‘put politicians that allow our corporations to exploit your natural resources’
• democracy is synonymous with capitalism, politicians are bending over so that corporations can exploit citizens

I could see why disgruntled people, who see corrupt politicians or exploitative rich people go on scot free, wanted a government that could punish them. But of course anger leads to lack of clarity in making decision, thus they ended up preferring authoritarianism that will eventually backfire and target their own citizens.

I don’t know how European / North American youngsters feel, but somehow I have a nagging feeling that ISIS has casted a widespread fear that bolstered people’s support of right wing parties.

… someone should make Nic Cage the protagonist in their video game (that’s not Dead by Deadlight)

• NEO: The World Ends With You

  • I’ve only played TWEWY Final Remix on Switch recently. I find the control frustrating. Docked, it’s barely playable with joycon motion control, while undocked, it’s tiring, and my finger keeps obstructing the screen. The game also keeps interrupting you, very often when you moved between screens, and sometimes just halfway running, someone will just stop what you’re doing halfway for conversation that’s not that essential.

  • Now, this sequel has improved the gameplay part a lot. It still has problem with interruptions. But at least with proper controller support, this game is way better than its predecessor.

• Immortality

  • This is very slow, not sure if I will eventually enjoy a 10 hour FMV mainly consists of clips not in proper order. Also, I prefer Her Story’s keyword search than this, because now I need to manually scrub the clips to the point of interests. So far I’m not enjoying the story as much, mainly because it’s about acting for now.
  • spoiler

    I know there’s some supernatural stuff in it

  • I can’t help but fantasize, what if the setting is sci-fi mystery, you scrub thru a number of CCTV, interviews, interrogations videos, about some weird alien / sci-fi murder. So far Immortality feels like a slog.

Just an update, finished NG++ of Armored Core 6. NG+ is NG but with slight variation of the mission, since there was branching paths. NG++ has way more unique content than NG+, and the end is satisfying. Final boss is tough, I needed a couple of attempts, and finally found my older loadout that works better against the boss.

I really enjoyed the game, especially since I am having Souls fatigue. Breaking down the game into missions ala Peacewalker makes the game more manageable, and maybe because it focuses so much on loadout, I find the game bit easier / less frustrating than say Elden Ring.

Can’t say which one is the funniest (probably jazzpunk), but here are some that I found funny:

• Jazz Punk
• Procession to Cavalry
• Thousand Arms
• Metal Wolf Chaos
• Frog Fractions
• Monkey Island

I finished NG of Armored Core 6, it’s a good game, and I like it a bit more than other Souls games, largely thanks to how speedy the mech movement is.

I’m going to do bit more NG+, restart Wattam, since I was distracted by some other games previously, and replaying AI The Somnium Files, since I can’t remember the story and bought the sequel on sale a few months ago.

I believe from what I read is that some of these driverless car companies in the US are releasing their fleet, flooding the street 24/7. Some of them will take up parking places, cause traffic jam, or just stall in the middle of the road.

Maybe it’s different in the Europe, where there’s stricter regulation, since from the comments here, many who are okay with driverless car are mostly from European countries. Unless if you own stock in those companies, then there’s incentive caused bias.

Just like how drugs need to go on multiple clinical trials before going on the mass market, I believe that if you want driverless vehicles, a lot of testing is needed.

But this is not testing / gathering data phase, Cruise has 300 cars at night, 100 during the day in SF, while Waymo has around 250 cars. Again, this is not testing phase, there’s no driver to safeguard in case things go wrong, these are actual driverless taxi that charges people.

The main rationale of these companies is not to bring a safer environment with driverless cars, the main rationale is how to get rid of gig workers that causes problems to Uber or Lyft, problems such as demanding living wage, proper employment status, unions, etc.

If you want to look at a better approach, maybe look at how Singapore is doing it

• it’s operated by SMRT and SBS bus, which are regulated and owned by government
• it’s self driving bus
• “drivers will remain essential to the operation of autonomous vehicles even when these do take off, although their job scope will change”

So if you wanna support, maybe don’t support what Cruise is doing, but more of what Singapore is doing

• it’s still highly regulated
• it’s a bus, it’s a public transportation, so it still helps in tackling climate issues.
• it’s not being used to fire workers,
• there’s still failsafe, the drivers are standby, in case the bus goes haywire

Apparently Jeff Gerstmann received the review code quite a bit later than other publications. He said it’s quite a ridiculous story that perhaps he would talk about it someday (his tone sounds like this is a story in the far future)

Jeff is ex (old) Gamespot, ex Giantbomb, and the guy who got fired from Gamespot due to external pressure from Eidos after he gave Kane and Lynch a 6 out of 10.

Tenchu has kind of a weird / tangled development history.

• It was originally developed by Acquire and published by Sony Music Entertainment.
• Then Activision bought the rights from SME, and sold it to FromSoft afterwards.
• FromSoft holds the IP today
  • but out of the 9 games released, they only developed 3 Tenchu games, and 2 of them were PSP ports.
  • so effectively FromSoft have only developed 1 Tenchu game.
• Tenchu games were mostly developed by Acquire at first, and then K2 LLC
  • Acquire hasn’t done anything with Tenchu IP since 2009, and has been collaborating with other devs, making games like Octopath Traveler and Akiba Beat
  • meanwhile K2 LLC has been acquired by CAPCOM

I think it’s unlikely that we will get a another Tenchu entry with gameplay similar to older ones anymore.

If you want games with similar gameplay to Tenchu, then maybe you should watch Acquire’s outputs. They developed games like Kamiwaza and Shinobido that have stealth mechanics.

Edit: updated for readability

The image is a screenshot of my AC from Armored Core 6. It’s a reverse jointed AC, with the frame painted in purple and green similar to Evangelion’s Unit 01, while the weapons are painted in red, black, and gold

Here’s my current build:

• Unit
  • Right arm: DF-GA-08 HU-BEN Gatling Gun
  • Left arm: Vvc-770LB Laser Blade
  • Right shoulder: Vvc-70VPM (vertical) Plasma Missile Launcher
  • Left shoulder: BML-G1/PO3VTC-08 Vertical Missile Launcher
• Frame
  • Head: VP-44S
  • Core: EL-TC-10 FIRMEZA
  • Arms: AC-2000 TOOL ARM
  • Legs: RC-2000 SPRING CHICKEN Reverse Joint
• Inner
  • Booster: FLUEGEL/21Z
  • FCS: FCS-G2/P05
  • Generator: AG-E-013 YABA
• Expansion
  • Pulse Armor

Here’s the Share ID on Playstation: ECE34S7T1VW2

• I stopped playing Time Warpers, it’s an idle FPS game. The game is fun, but sadly there’s not enough interesting progressions to get me thru 500 levels. Most important for me, is that I’ve managed to play the game comfortably with a left-handed trackball (Kensington Expert placed on left hand side), since I’ve shifted from right handed mouse couple of months ago. I rarely play FPS, but the game was easy and comfortable enough that I can enjoy the experience with a trackball.

• Armored Core 6. The first AC game for me. While I do enjoy the battles, the mech movement can be a bit slippery, I’ve just switched to reverse joint legs, maybe it will feel better. The story is interesting, but I kinda wish the character banters are more like in Ace Combat 7, bit livelier, with character portraits. I’m enjoying the game very much

Oh wow, if it’s still possible to meet with online players, then I might want to replay the game again.

Journey still looks pretty pretty.

Not sure whether it’s still enjoyable to play, since probably not many people are playing it these days.

There’s this video that rates how close are the Bruce Lee-based fighting characters to Bruce Lee himself

• How’s the battery life though? If it only lasts for like 3 - 4 hours, then it’s quite a bummer
• Can the PS5 still output to the TV while using this?

I follow many musicians on YouTube, and this has happened to quite a number of smaller creators.

• Kmac was forced into hiatus, because some scammer uploaded the entire YouTube provided royalty free music, and copyright claimed Kmac’s video that used that

• Paul Davids also got copyright claimed for a music that he didn’t play on his video

It seems like there’s a new breed of scammers who upload songs to YT or Spotify, then use them as basis of copyright claims. This can only happen because of how broken YT’s automated system is.

Even without scammers exploiting loopholes, t’s already infuriating for cover musicians to deal with recording companies or artists with big egos, e.g. The Eagles keep copyright claiming Hotel California covers, even when the covers sound different from the original and the cover artists have shared revenue with them