Shintar revisits SWTOR’s Knights of the Fallen Empire and, gripes aside, gives it credit—especially for upgraded cutscenes that make your character look consistently screenshot-worthy and badass.
Kimimi pokes at Zanac’s “AI” ALC difficulty control, then tests runs with no shooting to see how the 1986 Famicom Disk System shmup adapts enemies, bullets, and patterns on the fly.
Belghast and crew talk Infinity terrain-building, Rabbit and Steel’s expansion, the games they never got around to (hello, Ys), Ashes of Creation’s implosion, and learning Star Trek Online.
Wilhelm’s Fantasy Critic League hits week six with Dragon Quest VII Reimagined and Nioh 3 finally posting strong review scores, reshuffling the top spots as more updates roll in.
Naithin’s January journal covers a growing Steam backlog, finally hitting Blue Prince’s Antechamber/Room 46 milestone, and a quick note on wrapping up Wuthering Waves 3.1’s main story quest.
Tofutush finishes Lorelei and the Laser Eyes (nearly 96%!) and loves its randomized puzzle solutions over Blue Prince’s approach, even while dunking on clunky one-hand keyboard controls.
Andrew Plotkin digs into Zork I’s combat math—villain tables, nine-sided dice, and knockout nastiness—and adds a new Combat tab to Visible Zork 1 to visualize the whole messy system.
Axxuy celebrates the web’s niche-enthusiasm side by “getting into popcorn,” finding recipes and the r/popcorn community, and ordering genuinely better kernels from Amish Country.
Emily weighs gambling’s addictiveness against “moderation with limits,” vents about Ontario’s nonstop online-casino ads, and points to fake-currency casino apps as a safer dopamine hit.
Tim Bray’s “Long Links” round-up bounces from Piketty and misinformation to open-source clothing, weird JWST discoveries, Willie Nelson, listening parties, and the emptying-out of tiny studio flats.
Dave Winer riffs on always-on campaigning in the Twitter era, a Bluesky dialog-box art/joke that actually lands, and a strong recommendation for HBO’s two-part Mel Brooks interview.
Anarchae documents getting non-Steam FFXIV running with ReShade on CachyOS (Wayland/KDE) via xivlauncher tweaks and scripts, with a pragmatic “here’s what worked for me” walkthrough.