I thought “cakewalk” was a clever American amalgamation of “a piece of cake” and “a walk in the park”.

Turns out it’s actually related to slavery, so probably doesn’t count.

Anecdotally Fifa (EA FC or whatever they’re calling it now) would have to be up there. Hadn’t played it in years but gave it a go last season as it was free on Game Pass.

They’ve combined the addictiveness of card collecting with loot box mechanics, FOMO and moving the goalposts (pun intended) to get the best players. The gameplay also seemed pretty rigged to prevent grinding rewards out.

Then when the new game is out, rather than dishing out all the rewards to those still playing it instead becomes infeasible to unlock any more decent players so you’re pretty much stuck with what you have.

Even if you pay full price for the next game you’ll have to use low stat players as they only seem to start releasing decent ones half way through the season.

Wow didn’t expect to see Akala already posted here.

This is the correct answer although I think Fire in the Booth Part 4 might even eclipse Part 1 in terms of talent.

Second place for me would be Lowkey. For message Soundtrack to the Struggle 2, for pure ability has to be The Return of Lowkey… Genius bars like a laptop shop.

“I saw it on TV!”

Took our jerbs, eat our dergs.

Why would you expect it to affect productivity when you were working the same number of hours?

It’s just slightly increased flexibility under the guise of a 4 day week.

Ok fair enough, just thought it was strangely straight for an “I’m ok folks” wave.

Anyone notice the salute Trump gave mere seconds after the shooting?

He swiftly turned it into a wave/fist and weirdly brought up that it was definitely a fist during his last speech.

Me: Here’s the URL for the web service I’ve just deployed. I’ve set up users and permissions so just copy it into your browser and you should see a very similar system to what you’ve been trained on with all your data in there.

Customer: All I’m getting is a blank screen.

Much panicking and headscratching later…

Me: Waaaiiiiittt, did you press Return/Go after copying the URL?

Customer: That was not in the instructions.

Good to see the left/centre rallying when it mattered most need to reject fascism again.

From an outside perspective this seemed like quite a shrewd political move by Macron for once. Is that a fair assessment?

I was going to say “Planet Earth” but yes you are correct.

So apparently I have a similar contorted expression to my mother when eating sour food.

My father always referred to this as my mother’s-maiden-name-gene. Let’s say her maiden name was Chaplin, he would say “Ah there’s that Chaplin gene again!”

Being young I misunderstood this as a verb, ie. I was “chaplinging”.

Cut to first year of school where I proudly waltz around informing any classmates eating fizzy sweets that the correct and proper term for their reaction is “chaplinging”. It was a few years until the penny dropped.

So they’ve failed at pushing full return to office and now they’re commissioning unscientific studies to try to make hybrid seem necessary?

These results really can’t be applied to all jobs. Some jobs obviously require in-person but many white collar jobs can be done entirely remotely saving workers time, money and freeing up infrastructure for those that need/want to go in. Not to mention other benefits to mental health and reduction of emissions involved in commuting.

We are just recovering from a similar situation here but the Overton window has shifted so far the supposed left-wing workers’ party now look like centre-right conservatives.

Right on cue, the descent into fascism begins ahead of the impending climate disasters.

It’s so depressing to see France like this, I always held it up as a prominent antifa nation.

Hard disagree. Most trailblazing console ever with one of the strongest lineups of first/second party games we’ve ever seen. Yes there were some shoddy third party ports but you didn’t buy it for those.

People moan about the controller but forget it was the first time a joystick was used and the only real issue was the redundant left prong. Loved the feel of the Z button for shooting games coupled with the Rumble Pak.

I expected it to be difficult with a possibility of not enjoying it but seemed pretty popular so thought I’d give it a go.

Will give your suggestions a shot but I find everything about it obtuse to be honest. To me good game design lowers you gently into mastering the controls and ramping up difficulty, not just chucking you in at the deep end with confusing menus so it’s on the player to look everything up.

Cheers, probably just not for me then.

Elden Ring.

Waited all year until it was on sale as I thought it might not be my cup of tea, tried not to let my prejudice get the better of me but felt it was such a drag I had to put it down.

It was recommended to me as I like Zelda but it couldn’t be further from the things I like about it: innovation, fluid gameplay, freedom, puzzles, multiple ways to tackle enemies.

I don’t think it’s the difficulty as I play lots of roguelike and bullet hell games. My main gripe is the clunkiness of the combat to the point it’s unfair. Like you don’t really stand a chance through reactions alone, you have to learn the patterns and hitboxes of enemies so that you know in advance when to react.

Also I kept hearing how good the graphics are but I think they’re kinda average although the actual art style is quite nice.

Any suggestions on how I might enjoy it would be much appreciated as I haven’t got very far.