cobysev

Chronologically, Metal Gear Solid 3 is the first game in the series. It shows Snake’s origin story, which leads into the original Metal Gear 1 and 2 games for the old Nintendo Entertainment System (long before the Metal Gear Solid series). So it’s a perfect place to start if you’re picking up the Metal Gear franchise for the first time.

Metal Gear Solid ∆ is just a modern remake of Metal Gear Solid 3, so it’s basically the same thing but better graphics and controls. I read once that due to the falling out with Hideo Kojima, Konami can’t legally re-release the original MGS3 game, so a remake from the ground up was their legal compromise.

Now Metal Gear Solid 4 is the only Metal Gear game that hasn’t been re-released on any other platform since it debuted on the PlayStation 3. But Konami plans to finally release it for PC and all modern consoles in August this year. Woo!

I had planned to review Metal Gear Solid ∆ for my Lemmy screenshot series, but I was having so much fun with the game, I forgot about preparing a review and just played my way through it. MGS3 is my favorite of the entire franchise! There’s something rewarding about actually trying to avoid detection in a game. It’s easy to go in guns blazing, but sneaking past guards and not alerting anyone? That takes skill and dedication.

I gave up Reddit the day I moved here. Haven’t been back to Reddit since. I much prefer it here.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard him laugh.

It’s like posting “lol” or “roflmao” in text, when your face doesn’t even change IRL. Except we’re voice chatting, so he’s using a laugh track instead of “lol.”

I voice chat with friends on Discord pretty regularly. I have one friend who, instead of laughing, will click a laugh track on our soundboard, filling the voice chat with boisterous sitcom laughter. I don’t know why, but that’s kind of unsettling.

TL;DR: “Making democratic threats legible,” i.e. spreading the word about how every action Trump takes is a threat to our democracy. It has been proven in several other countries run by authoritarian governments to be effective at stomping out fascism before it can take hold.

Saved you a click.

I live in a forested countryside in the Northern Midwest. Leaving the windows open invites in bugs and other small critters. Even with screens on the windows, insects crawl through the cracks, and I’ve definitely had several field mice chew their way through screens. I also have rabbits and possums who tend to nest up against the foundation of my house, and if a lower window is left open for prolonged periods, I sometimes find babies nesting in the window frame.

If I open my windows, it’s for a limited time to get some fresh air moving through the house. I’ll turn on strategically placed fans in various rooms to encourage rapid airflow through the house so I can close the windows sooner.

I only open windows in the winter if I need to cool a room quickly. For instance, I’m renting my first floor to a friend and I live on the second floor. But I only have one HVAC unit and thermostat for the entire house. The first floor always stays a few degrees cooler than the second floor (heat rises), so I keep it a little extra hot upstairs to ensure I’m not freezing out my friend. But I’m always hot in general, so I’ll either have fans on me all winter, or I’ll occasionally shut myself in a bedroom and open the window for 15-20 minutes, just to lower my body temp a bit and help me tolerate the hot house.

There have been a few winter nights where my wife and I have left the bedroom window open to cool down our bedroom, while burying ourselves in thick blankets. We don’t sleep well if we’re sweaty and stuck to the bed. I usually get up a few hours later and close the window, so we don’t freeze overnight.

When I was deployed to Iraq in 2007, I worked for a Communications Squadron, which managed the base’s computer network. Someone built a media server in our server room, so we could legally host movies and music on our network for other military members to enjoy at work.

We would borrow copies of DVDs and CDs from our base library and rip them to the server, then we built a rudimentary website where people could browse the catalog and stream content through the site. Nobody could download copies of anything, so we weren’t guilty of government-sponsored illegal filesharing. It was basically a way to digitally access the content from our library.

A part of the server that was locked down just for our squadron included video games we could install and run from our work computers. Our squadron especially liked to close up shop around lunchtime for some “simulated warfare training” and then jump into a giant Call of Duty multiplayer free-for-all map and shoot each other up for about 30 minutes.

Anyway, this is a long-winded way to explain that one day, I noticed someone added World of Warcraft to the server. I thought it was odd, considering MMOs needed an Internet connection and our military networks are specifically designed to block most non-work related content. Battle.net would definitely be on the block list.

Still, curiosity got the best of me and I installed it on my PC. And to my surprise, it was a local server instance! I could access all of vanilla WoW, and I was the only person online.

I don’t know what exactly that game mode was. I thought maybe it was a beta instance, but I’ve never been able to get any of Blizzard’s beta or test servers to run locally without an Internet connection. Someone had obtained an actual working offline copy of the game to play!

Suffice to say, that kept me entertained for most of my deployment. Back in those days, there were a lot of griefers online and you didn’t have much of a choice in avoiding PvP (this was before they started making specifically RP servers), so I was frustrated when other players would interrupt my gameplay to fight me. Having a whole MMO to myself was fantastic!

The only downside was that my character was isolated on my local server; all my progress couldn’t come with me when I left Iraq. But I was addicted to WoW back in those days, so it let me continue to enjoy the game while I was unable to access my actual account back home.

Interestingly enough, the reason Brad Pitt is advertised so heavily is the reason I still haven’t watched it.

Don’t get me wrong, I think he’s an excellent actor and I enjoy seeing him on screen. I just don’t understand why an F1 movie needed Brad Pitt. I’m here to watch race cars, not some famous actor behind the wheel!

If they cast an unknown in the lead, I’d be more intrigued because I’m interested in Formula 1 racing. But putting a famous guy in the lead makes me feel like this is gonna be some dramatic feel-good fantasy story, not something more grounded in reality.

And yes, I know this movie is just a giant advertisement for Formula 1. But that’s a real motorsport race, so I’d be more invested if the movie felt like watching a real person’s story, not an actor telling a fictional story in the setting of F1 racing.

I know this is a shitpost, but to answer honestly… the last pear I had was when I was a child, and I’m in my 40s now.

I still remember their wonderful taste and I haven’t been intentionally avoiding them. I just never came across an opportunity to eat one since my childhood. I’ve primarily consumed apples and oranges over the years and I can’t even remember seeing pears at the store.

Maybe I should go check out my local grocery store and buy a few.