No, you’re fine, I totally understand the mistake. I AM a pretty big HoMM fan and I was unaware that they had licensed out the IP as well, so I can’t blame you for not knowing.

I agree that there is something bland about the aesthetics of the game. From a distance (or in a thumbnail), it looks very good and faithful to the art style of the original games, just with some extra bells and whistles. However, upon closer examination there is something about the design language which feels like I’m looking at a mobile game ad. It could be that I associate HoMM with a hyper specific micro genre of fantasy art. My views are very HoMM 2 coded, and that game feels its art was ripped from the book jackets of Del Rey and Tor published paperbacks circa 1987. I love the look, especially the hero portraits.

So, this new look doesn’t really do anything for me. I’m not knowledgeable enough to suggest that AI was used to design some of these assets, but that’s the impression the art gives me, which I’m sure was not their intent.

But, it’s not? Unless you’re aware of something I’m not, this game is published by Hooded Horse, and developed by Team Unfrozen.

I’ve no idea what documentary you are referring to, but I can tell you that I’ll be referring to the theremin as the God Wand from now on.

If you have affinity for survival horror and adventure game (or 90s goth aesthetic)I recommend adding Grim Beard to your rotation.

I mean,isn’t that what a foreclosure sale is?

I’m honestly asking. The world of corporate raiding is a foreign and distasteful place to my arts and sciences brain. The world of home buying is also foreign to my arts and sciences brain, but that’s cause I leaned more into arts than sciences.

That being said, you put up 20 grand of your money for a down payment. The bank loans you 200k. You fail to make your payments. Bank forecloses and sells off the property to cover the remaining debt, or at least claw back whatever they can get from it. Would that be so different than what’s likely to happen if EA fails to pay JP Morgan back? Is it the liability of Kushner et al vs the liability of a homeowner that is the primary difference?

It’s an Albany expression.

Article speculates that the cancellation of Contraband, an Xbox exclusive announced in 2021, is likely the chief driver behind the layoffs. So, indirectly, Microsoft, I guess?

3 did break party line. Fetterman, some guy from Maine and I think a gal from Arizona?

Fwiw, on the Republican side, Rand Paul broke from their party line and voted against the stopgap funding measure.

I don’t shop at Trader Joe’s because it’s outside of my budget, but I have friends that do. I’ll be sure to ask them. Their niche as what I guess I’d call a “boutique grocery store” would seemingly allow for coffee grinders in-shop, if for no other reason than I think it appeals to what I’d imagine their key demographic is.

Oh wow! That’s even more expensive a selection than I remember. Is this a chain, or a local store?

Star Wars is not exclusively listened to EA anymore. The original deal between Disney and EA was slated for 10 years of exclusivity, signed in 2013. However, after several PR disaster (mainly the Battlefront 2 controversies), Disney apparently terminated the exclusivity contract when they announced Star Wars: Outlaws would be published by Ubisoft in 2020. Of course, that game released in 2024, so, I guess EA technically got their 10 years?

I don’t know of any other projects pending, though I’ve fallen off tracking gaming news that closely in recent years, so I could be mistaken.

if you like that, you’re probably gonna love this

Whenever I hear people complaining about people taking videos or pictures at concerts, I think of this footage. Now, I get it, it’s not a 1:1 comparison, but, still, I find so much value in this as a historical artifact, and even as a bit of art in and of itself. The zoom in on the shadow dancing on the wall? Perfection. Scorcese could never. God bless you random 80s punk / early home video enthusiast.

more info than you could ever want about Pitchford’s porn habits

In short, there was a legal dispute between Pitchford and a former counsel for Gearbox. As part of a pattern of suit-countersuit, the former employee alleged that Pitchford had left a USB stick at a local restaurant which contained proprietary company info as well as underage pornography. Pitchford confirmed that all of the above, with the notable exception of the “underage” part. Given nothing came of it, and he was remarkably candid about what type of porn was actually on the USB, I’m inclined to believe him.

It’s always odd to me when words develop parallel but distinct meanings based on context. Like, I know “to cleave to” something is to attach to it, but it trips me up (esp. in a Warhammer context where Saltzpyre would be hanging out) since I default to “he was cleaved in twain”.

As with most other English oddities, I assume this is holdover from my ancestors treating other languages like swap meets.

For both rich atmosphere and unique game mechanics, you could do a lot worse than Return of the Obra Dinn.

If you’re unfamiliar, the presentation evokes early PC (or Mac, more specifically) black and white “1 bit” games, but real time 3d. This already is very distinctive, but the gameplay also sets it apart.

You are an insurance investigator with a magic pocket watch which allows you to travel back to the moment in time that someone expired, if you find their corpse. From these brief flashes (and by cross-referencing the ship manifest) you piece together what happened to all the crew and passengers on the ships ill-fated voyage, before it’s baffling reemergence years after the fact.

Josh Ritter’s Kathleen performance from Live at the Iveagh Gardens has far and away subsumed the studio version for me. The original track is fine, I guess, but there’s some kind of alchemy in that live performance that takes it from a kinda sleepy singer/songwriter ballad to a roots rock revival jam. Or something like that. Idk, I’m certainly no music critic, but I know which version I prefer.

Suggesting Symphony of the Night is well-known because of a goofy menu screen is almost comically missing the forest for the trees.

Perhaps, but I think that misses the point of Gunn harkening back to Silver Age comics with this movie. Puzzling out the “logic” of who knows what and why is sort of antithetical to the exercise being conducted. It’s like the folks who get wrapped around the axle about the conclusion of Superman 1978 not making a lick of sense to someone with an elementary understanding of physics. Oh, Superman can turn back time by flying around the Earth backwards? That’s absurd!! Yes, it is, now shut up and pass me the popcorn.

If it is necessary for the story, Superman’s identity will become relevant. Otherwise, everything operates on a shrug and a hand wave, and I’m sort of fine with that. Secret identity management is a fun aspect of a character like Spiderman, for example, because his whole thing is the burden of being a gifted individual. Great power = great responsibility and all. Therefore, making Peter Parker suffer because of Spiderman is kind of baked into the text of the character.

Meanwhile, I think Gunn’s approach to Superman/Clark is that neither is burdened by the other. I’m not even really sure he views it as a duality in that way. The text of the film seems to indicate that, in Gunn’s view, Clark and Superman are indistinguishable from one another, or even that Clark (the human) takes primacy over Kal-El/Superman. This intentionally contrasts with the Snyderverse interpretation of DC heroes, which was much more interested in how INhuman the DC canon of heroes were, Superman most of all.

There’s the kernel of a pretty good 3 minute YouTube skit in here.