The Art of Extortion.

Dude just can’t help himself. Gotta open his mouth and dropkick his own throat.

All because he fucked up.

Yakuza 0, kiwami, kiwami 2, Yakuza 3, 4, 5, 6, then 7, then Gaiden, then 8.

Then play Judgement and Lost Judgement. Not part of Yakuza’s core canon. But adjacent.

I’m not a huge fan of Borderlands. I like the stories. But I don’t like the loot goblining. Constant hunt for ever higher damage numbers.

There’s only 1 company I’ll pay $80 for a new game. And that is Ryu Ga Gotoku. Cuz they don’t miss. No bad half finished launches. No bad games. Every game is a masterclass in Peak.

It’s a threat. To your security. To your data. To you in general.

Real Spiderman points at Spiderman moment here.

Live service garbage has costed the industry billions in losses and costed tens of thousands of devs their jobs. Fad chasing in general.

Everyone wants to make the fortnite killer or overwatch killer. They set billions of dollars on fire and get nothing for it. And it’s the devs who pay the price. Not the c-suite dipshits who threw all that money in the fire pit.

Millennium Challenge 2002.

That’s when we learned that low tech can beat high tech in this manner.

Did they learn the lesson at DOD? Of course not. They demoted the guy who won and made him play out a cosplay battle where America Wins!

Normal Store Citizen behavior.

The Trump regime needed to feel the pain. They don’t care about consumer spending. That isn’t what GovCo cares about. Just look at the state of the domestic economy. The rare earth metals was about impacting the MIC. That’s the sector that matters. And China made it hurt.

You want a fan fucking tastic game that you can put 250 hours in and never regret a minute of it?

The Yakuza franchise. Start wirh Yakuza 0. Play them all. You will laugh. You will cry. You will get so irrationally angry at pixels you’ll want to actually murder them. You’ll fall in love. And cry some more. Your heart will break many times. And nothing will ever be the same.

Ever had a game or movie or book leave you in stunned silence? You spend the next week thinking about it? That’s the Yakuza franchise. It’s silly and stupid and hilarious and it’ll tear your damn heart out when you least expect it.

The base game is fine. Once. Its just fine. Once.

When you beat the game and go thru The Unity to a whole ass different dimension and not one single detail is different in any way. That’s what kills the drive to go onward. Because the game was fine. Once.

The whole story is predicated on a multiverse that effectively doesn’t exist. Except on 1 sidequest for Barrett.

I’m gonna emulate even harder now.

Legalize it. There are no cons.

Well there is technically one. And it’s the only reason it’s illegal anywhere. And that is that Big Pharma can’t monopolize it for profit.

Edit - keep downvoting. You know I’m right. Pharma lobbyists bribing corrupt politicians. It’s the exact same reason the IRS can’t just tell us how much we owe or are owed. Base, rank corruption.

Everyone is stealing your data and selling it. Feeding it into AI. Building profiles on you to better send you ads.

Yes. Literally every company. There’s no regulation so to them it’s free money.

Soon as Chump took office the moderation flipped. It was open and handled well. Now if you call a corrupt politician an asshole you get a violation.

Talk about Palestine get a violation. Critical of the Chump regime get a violation.

Chow somehow inserted himself fully up Chumps ass on like Jan 22. TT hasn’t been the same since.

Well. That isn’t surprising. But it is disappointing.