With recent big game releases, it's become obvious that a game is either a resounding success, or complete shit. There doesn't seem to be any middle ground.

Kingdom Come Deliverance II is a ambitious masterpiece, and Avowed is lazy slop. 93% of Steam users recommend KCD2, vs 77% for Avowed.

And maybe this has been an issue for a long time, fed by the need to get viewer numbers on articles and videos, leading to more polarized opinions that give people a reason to pick a side, even if they're never going to play the game.

But as regular people, gamers, Lemmy posters, why are we doing the same? How is it serving us? Are we all influencers in waiting, hoping to up our updoot count and build a following of... dozens?

More than 2/3rds of players of Dragon Age Veilguard recommend the game on Steam. And yet reading the comments here and other places, you'd think that 90% of people who tried the game found it to be, not just bad, but absolute trash, with a small number of people chiming in that they actually enjoyed it.

And game studios are reacting much the same way, and are quick to start layoffs, or shut down all together.

But hey, we don't owe those corporations anything. But, as a community, do we owe it to each other to foster more honest correspondence?

I just noticed the pills changed a bit, and instead of a 20 printed on one side, it's now a 25. I called the pharmacist and they said that it was changed and they don't know why.

Much more worryingly, I seem to be experiencing increased side effects since I started taking it a few days ago.

I'm curious if anyone else is taking these pills, and if you're noticing anything different?

Day one I pretty much slept all day. Day 2 I'm just irrationally fucking angry.

What will day 3 bring?

OK, I finally took the plunge on Baldur's Gate 3, and, coming from playing several hundreds of hours of Solasta recently, the first thing I noticed is the lack of a combat grid.

Going back a bit further, my son and I spent a ridiculous amount of time playing Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. We were super pumped for the sequel, but when it finally came out, it kind of fell flat for both of us. Whether or not it's down to this, I don't know, but they also removed the grid.

That game, of course, was an XCom-like. XCom used a grid, but a more recent Firaxis game, Marvel's Midnight Suns, got rid of the grid as well.

To me, all these gridless iterations of classic strategy games just aren't as engaging. I guess they're going for a more immersive rpg type of feel? But to me it seems to sacrifice the strategy aspect, and ultimately, judging based on my hours played, that always ends up being too great a sacrifice. My play time on Marvel's Midnight Suns is less than 10% of Xcom 2, and the same is true for Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope.

I'm sure BG3 is a great game, and I'm sure I'll enjoy the campaign, but so far it's not giving me the 'feels'.

Do you miss grids? Or did they only slow you down?

BP2. I've been in a depressive episode for almost 2 weeks now and I just can't fucking deal right now. I run my own business and I'm ready to fire one client and to tell another to take their project elsewhere. I know, I KNOW I should not be making decisions like this in this state, but I just can't handle it anymore. I basically quit in the middle of a meeting this morning because I couldn't handle another pedantic fucking conversation, and now everyone is messaging me asking if I'm OK, and I'm not. And there's really fun work that I should be focusing on, but I'm too preoccupied with the crap stuff, and I only have like 1/10th of the energy I should have, anyway, so I can barely muster the energy to just exist.

Thanks for reading. Maybe tell me to not screw up my life right now. Or tell me to go for it. I'm good either way.

He gets very excited when we feed him