Surprisingly, I haven’t been able to find much merch other than the chryssalids, but it’s so far after the fact now that yeah, custom stuff is basically the only way. The chryssalids are still on eBay for about 10 bucks.

I played Enemy Unknown, but most of my time over the past decade(?) has been WOTC. I would have the same pattern of sinking hours into it, then getting distracted, then restarting. Over the past few months, I’ve been really grinding out Legendary+Ironman and finally just beat it for the first time ever. It took dozens and dozens of attempts. I’m eager to go back and play the original stuff too. I have them on steam, but the UI seems like a challenge to get used to.

PS: I created an XCOM community here when I joined lemmy, but it never really took off. It’s probably too niche to have regular content with the size of lemmy. https://lemmy.world/c/xcom

Damn, that’s cool.

I have that Vigilo Confido as a sticker on my PC case, and I picked up one of these Chryssalids to live on a shelf above where I usually play.

Yeah, I wouldn’t say there’s much of a message intended in these either, other than that she’s often relatable and sticks up for herself. A big part of the humor is that she’s ditsy and free-spirited, and there’s definitely a trend of “fan-service”, or titillation, or whatever you want to call it. I like the art, the jokes are good, and I largely appreciate it as a window into the past.

I haven’t delved into fan art myself, but I can imagine. Fan art on the internet always seems to go down that path…

Yeah, I agree on the larger environmental goals and necessity. I suppose what I’m getting at is more of the part that feels like normative pressure and shaming eccentricities. As in, the same thing that has contributed to car colors becoming more and more bland over the years too. There’s a pressure for conformity that pushes people back into their box when they stick a toe out.

Maybe I’ve gone too many years without religion, but sometimes the talk about simulations sounds less crazy than it should.

Everyone should just get what makes them happy and ignore the weird shaming for driving anything other than a standard beige sedan.

Fast cars, off-road cars, big cars, small cars, electric cars, big trucks, custom wrapped/painted cars, ducked out jeeps, w/e.

How do I know that someone isn’t going to fully replace the trolley piece by piece after I pull the lever?

I’m with you. What these games are selling is that feeling you get after overcoming their challenges, and if you modify that, it’s not the same product. It’s like asking an artist to also offer their painting with changes to the colors, scene, or poses of the subjects to appeal to personal tastes - yes, they could do it, but it’s a different piece of art at that point.

And omg yes, O&S. It’s not as hard now after many years of playing souls-like games, but relatively it was so hard on my first exposure to dark souls in DS1. I had no idea what I was doing, my build was jank as hell, and it took ages to beat.

I had to look it up, because I initially thought it was a beaker and they were saying that in Budapest everyone appreciates science above all, but it’s supposed to be a traditional Hungarian decanter for alcohol, lol.

I’ve been slowly ripping boxes of cds for months and putting them on my media server. I don’t know if there’s a simpler way, but I’ve been using “abcde” (A Better CD Encoder) on Linux, and it’s fairly straightforward.

Owl is a hard fight too. It still holds me up for a while on replays of the game.

I like it

Omg, lol, ok you’re right. My memory is clearly not to be trusted.

Oh yeah, I didn’t notice that the other day until you mentioned it. It’s nicely done and sort of 4th wall breaking.

The comic where someone first commented on it was this one, where the 2nd and 3rd panels sort of connect:

Since then, I’ve been noticing that the artist seems to like doing this on purpose.

It’s just pleasantly aligned, not necessarily a connected scene. The overpass lines up in this one, and the track does in the post from yesterday.

This is what I’ve been hearing from people too.

The art in this comic is way better than it has any right to be.

Someone pointed out the other day that this cartoonist likes to “connect” the scenes in the panels, and now I notice it every time it happens.

This is why I could never be a streamer.