Kill beams charging up

I got my Steam Controller the day they were released and still use it. The stick has never drifted, though I also prefer to use the left pad for most “left stick” purposes. The real problem I’m having with the stick is that the rubbery coating on top is rubbing off, which is kind of gross and makes it harder than it should be to use it for an extended time. Good thing pads never drift! The rough texture of the pads has stayed remarkably well; no smooth and shiny spots.

Mine also has the usual things after almost a decade of use. The A button feels a little soft and the right trigger sounds a bit clangy. The body is plastic faces screwed together. It’s a tiny bit creaky but remarkably sturdy, with no flex spots other than the back keys, which are pressed with the flexible parts of the battery cover.

Overall, it’s lasted me a good long while and I expect it to go longer. I even bought a backup from someone after they were discontinued.

I recommend it, but in response to the first part of your comment, I guess it depends on what parts of Pokémon you dislike.

Mechanically, I see the combat as more matured and nuanced. Battles are almost always 2v2. It uses a board game-inspired system where you pay action points to use a move; you gain 2 each turn, plus a bonus one when you hit with type advantage. The type system has interesting interactions: advantaged moves apply status effects, which give you setups for comboing moves together, instead of nuking opponents with double damage. For example, lightning ⇒ earth turns the target into glass, then metal ⇒ glass spreads damaging shards onto the battlefield. The game cuts down the grinding as well, with your character gaining levels instead of your monster tapes, so you can get to using a new tape with no catch-up grind at all. Stickers are a powerful evolution of the move system. You can freely move stickers around and they can appear with rare mods, ARPG-style, that customize how the sticker works. As an equivalent of Pokémon abilities are passive stickers, which trigger with certain conditions, which let you “program” a tape. There’s also an impressively robust fusion system that comes with an interesting strategic tradeoff: you get bigger stats in a fusion with your partner but lose action economy.

The game’s plot is a fresh one that breaks the standard formula of creature collectors. There’s a side quest that makes a nod to the usual “gym leader series”, but the plot is focused on discovering the mysteries of the island you’re stuck on and finding a way home. There’s a memorable and surprising cast of characters and a clear anti-capitalist message (you fight vampire landlords). I like the worldbuilding, too. It avoids the usual uncomfortable questions surrounding creature collectors, like notably the whole capturing and fighting part — you record images of monsters to tape and transform into them instead.

I find the monster designs imaginative and distinct. The roster is must less focused on elemental animals and more on folklore and cryptids, which ties into the overall plot of the game. The boss designs are also really cool, but that’s a spoiler.

Also, there are mods.

There might be reasons you still won’t like Cassette Beasts. The combat is still turn-based. The post-game is pretty thin, though I suppose this update is expanding that. You have to collect crafting materials to trade with NPCs for stuff, but only a few materials are scarce enough to care about. The game is pretty easy on the default difficulty, but there are settings to make it harder.

Hell yeah, Steam Controller

I’m so hyped to listen to the new commentary.

It’s Linux native

They have mentioned before that they gave up on episodic development, which tacitly ditches Episode 3. The episodes ended up not being that much easier or faster to make and in a time when PC games in retail was still kind of relevant, it was a pain to make, distribute, and get shelf space for.

Shoutout to Zogg for all the Earth sciences

You will need games that have crossplay between PC and Xbox One so you can play together across different platforms. Multiple people have suggested Left 4 Dead 2, but that doesn’t have crossplay. Most of the shooters I personally play don’t have it, but there definitely are shooters with crossplay.

Here are my recommendations that have crossplay:

• Borderlands 3 — Collect wacky guns, travel the universe, and shoot bad guys together. The previous games in the series don’t have crossplay.

…Yeah, that’s it for crossplay shooters I recommend. For crossplay games that aren’t shooters:

• Overcooked! All You Can Eat — Chaotic co-op cooking. Work together to prepare, cook, and serve food in increasingly absurd scenarios: in the middle of the highway, on an iceberg, in a hot air balloon that crashes into a different restaurant.
• Ultimate Chicken Horse — Platformer where you build the levels together and then race to the finish. You only score if someone died, so you need to make the level extra dangerous.
• Moving Out 2 — Goofy co-op game where your group plays as a ridiculously reckless moving company. Carry furniture from the house and shove or throw it into the truck. No one will notice if you break all the windows.

If everyone is on PC, things will open up a good bunch. Old-school networked games generally still work. You can go FFA deathmatch in your old favourites or in newer arena shooters, like Warsow or Disco Dodgeball.

There was a very big plot arc from 2009 to 2019. The story is officially over and the comic has returned to gag-a-day format, but now with the expanded cast from the storyline.

I recommend diving into the archive to read through that arc. It’s one of my favourite webcomic storylines.

Truly, he is the peak of manliness.

Terrorblade? More like terrible with a blade!

Basketball 🏀

I’ve been out of the RSS metagame for a long while, so I don’t have any particular recommendation. I’ve just been using Inoreader on mobile as well for the past several years since it works for my purposes. There very well could be better choices out there but there’s no urgency for me to switch.

If patch notes are announced in an official blog, it’s likely that it has an RSS or Atom feed. You can subscribe to the blog from an RSS reader and it’ll appear in the feed.

And if you haven’t heard of RSS readers before, welcome to the world of being able to subscribe to almost any website you want! The news and webcomics come to you, not the other way around.

Update: an example.

I open my reader (Inoreader), select “Add feed”, and enter https://www.teamfortress.com/. It detects the TF2 official blog and I select “Follow” to add it to my feeds. Now, when TF2 updates and patch notes are posted, I can refresh my reader to see the latest patch notes.

Edward Waste

That’s what he’s been building up to!

We decided to avoid using “free” or “libre” in the name because we don’t think it does the project justice.

Extremely correct call.

I guess you’re looking to spend time with interesting characters.

Endearing party of playable characters:

• Bug Fables — A big tiny adventure of three cute insects, with Paper Mario-inspired turn-based combat
• Cassette Beasts — Creature-collecting with heart. You bring one of several interesting companions with you.
• Moonlight Pulse — A metroidvania set on a planet-sized creature. You play as a team of planet-creature denizens fighting off a parasite infestation.

Encountering interesting NPCs:

• A Short Hike — A very small but dense open world game. You encounter characters on your way to find a cell signal in a remote mountain park. With no quest tracker or minimap, you just wander and do what you want.
• Inscryption — Card game with an immersive, spooky atmosphere. The game is hiding secrets from you, though, and you’ll meet plenty of shady characters before you can get the truth.
• CrossCode — Action RPG set in a fictional VR MMO of the distant future. You wake up as a player character with no memories of real life, unable to log out. You quickly make friends, go do MMO stuff together and get to the bottom of why you’re stuck in-game.

Parasocial weirdness:

• Hypnospace Outlaw — You are a janitor on a Geocities-like service in a simulated 1999 internet. You learn about all the users through their personal websites. This game expresses a large emotional range with just website updates (or the lack of them).

Cone of wrath and vengeance