The 2 hour refund window is for automated refunds, you can still make a request if you're past that - it's just going to need a human to take a look at it. I've once succesfully returned a game I've played for about 5 hours because it had game-breaking bugs and ran like crap for no reason, and it got accepted within a day without an issue.

So Helldivers owners have a chance. I'm assuming that Steam's Customer Support department is having some kind of an internal discussion right now on how to handle this case.

(Lore nerd rant ahead, tl;dr: Ciri being the protag is 100% fine and I expected it but her being a full witcher is weird)

There's exactly one somewhat valid complaint to be had here, and it's that Ciri in the books explicitly didn't go through the Trial of the Grasses (aka one of the main mutation processes that makes you a witcher or, as it often happens, just straight up kills you), so idk how they'll justify her being able to use witcher potions and stuff now. And (also in the books) she has lost her access to magic at one point, so using witcher signs is strange too.

I can see her wanting to take the plunge and go through with the trials, but I'm also certain that Geralt wouldn't want that for her bc of how much it fucks you up + most of the secrets of the trials have been lost.

I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and wait and see what explanation they come up with for her being a full witcher, but it better be good.

So, from lore perspective, I have no objections to her being the protag but I don't love her being a full witcher. I liked what they did with her gameplay sections in W3, I hoped they'd have just expanded on that gameplay idea more.

...yes? That's how physics works (provided that that something is moving at a constant velocity). The only difference between an enclosed moving platform and unenclosed one is that there may be additional issues with the wind/surrounding air, but the train in this post isn't moving fast enough for that to be a concern.

I got a highly ominous one

Way less gross. Human and centaur are both intelligent, can communicate, and give consent, so it would be fine. With a horse (which has none of these things) the centaur would be committing bestiality.

The spices are pretty good - great, portable money source that won't get you killed for being a witch. Everything else sucks.

I've reinstalled Sims 3, because I wanted to play the Sims but just can't deal with the broken cash machine that is the Sims 4. It took a decent amount of effort to get it to run, and it doesn't run very well, but it mostly works. And... it's so good. I forgot just how good it was.

I'm amazed at how much there is to do, and just how well my sims can take care of themselves - when playing 4 I always just made 1 or 2 sims, so that I could control their every move bc otherwise they'd be stuck doing something useless on a loop. Here I can have a family of 4 and actively play just one of them, and the rest will cook, clean, do homework, and generally look after themselves while I'm not there. It's amazing how they had this figured out so many years ago, and regressed so horribly.

...wait, you just throw socks onto the pile without putting matching pairs together beforehand? I've learned that an alternate universe exists, and I'm not okay with it.

...no? This is specifically referring to things like fanfiction. Haters rarely actually write fanfiction - you'd have to be really dedicated to despise a work enough to devote hours of your life to writing in its universe. Fanfiction is generally quite earnest and made with love for the original work.

Not mentioned yet: Chronicon. A small indie game that doesn't take itself very seriously. It has much less build variety than something like Grim Dawn (obviously) but it's got some, and it's aiming to be a much more streamlined/casual experience. Won't demand as much of your time and attention, will deliver hugely satisfying colorful explosions across the screen. When I'm in the mood for an ARPG it's a toss up whether I'll install this or Grim Dawn.

I don't think so, considering that it was written in 1999. And it's just way too specific for something LLM would come up with.

I have a T450, I'm dual booting Windows 10 and Ubuntu (...I know, I know, I'm just too lazy to swap) on it and it works great, I get better performance on Ubuntu than I do on Windows. The fans worked oob.

Trams are, as you've noticed, a different usecase - subways are for getting you from A to B quickly, and trams are for getting you to the subway stop/straight to your destination on a shorter trip. One prioritises speed and throughput, the other - access and ease of use. Both should be used together to form a good transportation network, with buses and trains going to more remote/less dense areas.

My favourite tactic is based around Hunger of Hadar, a Warlock spell that creates a zone that a) deals damage to everything in it at the start and end of its turn; b) is difficult terrain (aka slows everything down); c) blinds everything in it; d) best of all, has no save. Plonk it down in the middle of the enemy team, use another control spell to slow everyone inside even more, use shove/repelling blast/whatever to push anything that's made its way to the edge back to the middle. Wait for everything to die, rinse & repeat.

But the greatest cheese in the game must be casting darkness (or shooting arrow of darkness) on your own party. As long as you're inside the cloud you are basically untargettable by spells and ranged attacks - and the enemies don't seem to be smart ebough to be throwing Fireballs on just any weird clouds they see. On your turn you just need to step out, cast/shoot, step back in. The only way they can get you is if they come inside the cloud with you (aka in range of whoever is on blender duty, Lae'zel or Karlach like this posting a lot), and the AI gets a bit confused when it can't see you so it's not a sure bet that they'll even try. It's a thing of beauty.

I'm trying to get out of a reading slump I've been in for the last... 3 months? Picked Orconomics to get back into things and just finished it today. Honestly, the first 50% was like pulling teeth. But I got pretty hooked after that, once it really got going and subverting the usual fantasy tropes, and enjoyed it enough that I'll probably read the sequel at some point.

There was just one bit of weirdness that kinda bothered me - in the main cast there were two decently important female characters and they were both absolutely fine, I liked them a lot! But there were just... no other women in this world? No female city guards, innkeepers (there was the innkeeper's wife, I guess, but she was there for a joke), no clerks or managers or shopkeepers. Idk.

All of these are classic roguelikes, a genre of games which frequently aren't much to look at. The tradeoff for the looks is that they offer vast depth and complexity... and (usually) permadeath and a learning curve that's more of a cliff. I recommend watching some yt videos about any roguelike you want to learn more about, just so a fan can explain the appeal and show off all the basics.

That said:

Caves of Qud - actually one of the prettier classic roguelikes, if you can belive it. You're a traveller in a strange and unique world of vast salt deserts, jungles, and the titular caves. There is a ton of flavorful, semi-randomly generated history (especially the ever-important tales of the sultans) and cultures, so every run feels different. There is technically a main plot, but you can just ignore it and go exploring - it's a sandbox experience. The best parts, to me, are the aforementioned flavour, the tactical combat (that can get incredibly chaotic, with screen-warping effects going off every turn), the build diversity, and delving too greedily and too deeply into the caves.

Cogmind - haven't played this one, but it's on a list. You're a robot. You're building yourself from parts as you go, fighting other robots and stealing their parts.

CDDA - one of my faves, but definitely not something I'd recommend as an intro to this genre. You're a survivor in a zombie apocalypse. Go do things and don't get bitten. It's a sandbox - survive as long as you can, achieve a self-set goal. The distinguishing feature of CDDA is how realistic it tries to be - crafting is very complex, you need to track your thirst, nutrition, and sleep, you can easily get sick or get your arm broken, the zombies can track you by sight, noise, and lingering scent... My favourite part is surviving long enough to build elaborate apocalypse death mobiles, Mad Max style.

I was in the mood for a) something that won't require a lot of thinking and b) something high fantasy. So... I started The Way of Kings. I'm not Sanderson's biggest fan, but I can't deny that it's a very quick and fun read (despite its monstrous size). No thoughts, just get swept up in the world and enjoy.

The storm-based worldbuilding is very cool. Coincidentally, I've been playing Against the Storm a lot. Very interesting how a similar base idea (what if we had a world ruled by a cycle of storms?) can go in such different directions.

Spoilery thoughts:

::: spoiler spoiler I mostly like all of the main characters so far! Dalinar took a long time to grow on me (mostly because I share Kaladin's burning hatred towards Lighteyed nobility and he is a part of the system), Shallan I immediately liked but I'm worried that if she doesn't change/go through some character growth she could become annoying in future books. Kaladin is honestly the least interesting character-wise - I like reading his chapters because he is in the most immediately desperate situation and is Going Through It (TM) but he's just a bit too perfect. Y'know. Surgeon, gifted spearman, naturalborn leader, some kind of a wizard... at 19 years old. Sigh.

And boy oh boy do I hope that the eye colour-based caste system will get dismantled/at least critically examined in some detail cause... ouch. Kaladin is so right in hating on it. But I'm not holding my breath. :::

Something kind of adjacent to this happens in Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis series. Aliens come over to fix the Earth and humanity, but decide that human nature is part of the problem, and set out to modify it. It's a really interesting read.

The real juice of modded minecraft is in the modpacks - curated sets of mods that were configured to work well with each other, frequently with some custom recipes added by the pack developer, and sometimes some kind of a quest line to guide you through the pack and provide a more structured experience. There are many different types of modpacks - kitchen sinks (large collections of mods, frequently without a lot of balance tweaks or changes, for a more sandbox experience), questing packs (with the aforementioned quest books to guide you through the mods), vanilla+ packs that intend to expand on the vanilla minecraft experience and not change the gameplay loop significantly, packs focused exclusively on magic or technology mods (or both), expert packs (questing packs with heavily reworked recipes, where you need to build elaborate machines and automate stuff Factorio-style)...

I'm not up to date with the modpack scene, so can't really make you a definitive list - back on reddit (sigh) there is a r/feedthebeast community that specializes in modded play.

That said:

• FTB Academy seems to be a pack specifically meant to teach the basics of modded play.
• Project Ozone 3 comes up quite often as a pack with a good quest book that guides you through everything.
• Cottage Witch is what I'm currently starting, it's (so far) a chill magic vanilla+ pack. New creatures, new plants, some new mechanics, tons of new decorations for building.
• Peace of Mind is an older pack made specifically for playing on Peaceful, if mobs are stressing you out. It's got a good questbook too.
• and if you want to jump straight into the deep end... Enigmatica 2 (or 6) Expert, Gregtech New Horizons. Expert packs in which you need to automate everything to progress. Gregtech in particular is infamous for its complexity, difficulty, and length, but if you enjoy solving hard problems it might be for you.

You'll also need a launcher to install these packs - FTB have their own if you want FTB Academy, otherwise there are some options such as Curseforge (do not recommend, eats resources just by existing), Prism (seems to come up a lot as a recommendation), or GDLauncher (what I'm using).

Fingers crossed for the surgery! That's very sad that you'll have to miss out :/ Well, at least you didn't get hit with this bs during the trip?