Flattened Ears

Those primaries sure are tickin' on, huh? Kind of shitshow as far as I'm concerned, what with Bernie's faltering momentum and the Neoliberal Voltron all lining up behind Biden to try and push him into the oval office before he drops dead or calls someone the gamer word or something. All except Elizabeth Warren, the neoliberal who wants to pretend to be a leftist. She's taking her damn sweet time making a decision as to who to endorse, isn't she? Some of us are getting antsy. Others, however, seem to be in no hurry at all, extolling Warren's bravery for standing up as her own person and refusing to bend the knee to either of the candidates who are actually still in the race at this point. She doesn't owe anyone anything, right? Well, aside from the fact that actually, as a public servant whose salary is paid by taxes, yes, she actually does  owe the voting public something, the problem here is that this take obviously comes from such a place of privilege

My PC died recently and I've been struggling to fill the DOOM void in my life ever since. I have a Chromebook now, which can run DOSbox and therefore DOOM, but it's far from an ideal way to play. The Chromebook version of DOSbox doesn't seem to support mouse input, and the machine is so underpowered that I get pretty awful performance. In desperation, I bought the Switch versions of DOOM and DOOM II, for a total of 3 dollars. DOOM on a gamepad is not an ideal experience. The Switch port at least runs better than the DOS version on my Chromebook, but aiming with an analog stick doesn't feel great when you can't aim up or down, and more importantly, the speed of this game's movement is just way too fast for an analog stick to keep up with. It's one thing when you have a mouse that you can use to turn as fast as you want, but when there's a specific speed at which you turn, it's impossible to find one that's fast enough to keep up with the movem

I recently turned 23 and my younger sibling bought me a Nintendo Labo VR kit for my switch, so I spent most of today putting that together and messing around with it and figured I might as well make a post out of it. First of all, I was surprised by how intensive the building process really is. A lot of these builds are actually really complex, involving multiple folded parts that all nest into each other in particular ways, and the result is often a surprisingly weighty-feeling peripheral for being made out of literally folded cardboard. That's another thing, actually, there's a crazy amount of physical feedback here in comparison to more traditional VR which just uses rumble controllers or what have you. These peripherals feel solid in your hands and have moving buttons and parts that really sell the action being performed. The blaster is a particular standout, which uses loose internal parts and rubber bands to allow the player to actually cock it like a shotgun, placing o

This here's a classic level, and one featuring more nukage than the supposed "Nuclear Plant." As soon as you open the first door, you're greeted with on the most iconic rooms in the entire WAD; a raised walkway bordering a big ol' pool of corrosive sludge, teeming to the brim with pinkies, shotgunners, and zombiemen. Toxin Refinery is a great example of what most people think of when they think DOOM; On Ultraviolence (and especially UV-fast) you really start getting put through your paces here, with crowds of hitscanners that start out across the room while you're stuck dealing with the up-close melee monsters, plus a smattering of imps to harass you as well. It's on this stage where you really start to learn how terrifying pinkies can be when playing with -fast, they'll get right up in your face and stay there in a way that you just really don't have to deal with at normal speed, and of course shotgunners will almost instantly deal damage on sigh

So yesterday I finished 3D Realms' recent Build Engine shooter Ion Fury (previously Ion Maiden, copyright law can eat my ass) and man is it fucking wild that this game exists. We've been living through a bit of a shooter renaissance lately, what with your DOOM and your DUSK and your AMID EVIL and various other games with all-caps titles, and between them we're kind of running the gamut of full 3D, from early low-poly stuff to modern AAA and everything in between. Ion Fury takes a slightly different approach seeing as it's, as mentioned before, built in the Build Engine, by absolute madmen. It's ridiculous, the size and scope of levels that are achieved in this over 20 year old engine, not to mention several standout gimmicks and setpieces that make it behave in ways it was absolutely never meant to. I can't overstate how much of a technical achievement it is to get the build engine to look and act like this, without utterly falling apart in the process. Mind y

Despite the name there's not really a massive amount of nukage in this level, the wavy green texture only cropping up surrounding a switch that opens a secret, under a walkway in a room toward the end of the level, and in a small pool around another secret, which disappears when you hit a switch. What it does have, though, it two new weapons to be nabbed by eagle-eyed players; first, find a pretty well-telegraphed secret door (it's got a different texture than the surrounding wall) to open up a window and grab the chaingun from outside. Later in the level, shoot an unmarked section of wall in the dark computer maze to find the chainsaw. These weapons make a fun pair, both functioning as a wait to spit out a near-continuous stream of damage at far and close range, respectively. And you'll want to nab both of them, because this level really lays the low-tier enemies on thick. The shotgun is a great general workhouse for small group of low-to-mid-tier enemies, but when you

With the advent of accessible porn distribution methods like pornhub, manvids, and chaturbate, the internet has seen a surge in amateur pornographers. Obviously lowering barriers to entry and getting more artists working in a space is always a good thing for the medium in question, as it allows for a larger variety of content to appeal to more people's individual tastes, and in the field of porn the particular effect it's had is an increase in personality-driven content, thanks to the distribution platforms' proximity to social media. For example, there's a pornhub user who goes by the pseudonym TeenyGinger , uploading mainly JOI-style videos, but occasionally vlogs or sex toy reviews (with demonstrations, of course.) The tone of these videos is uniformly positive; she makes an effort to convey a sense of herself and the viewer just having some fun together, with her JOI commentary coming across as very encouraging and each video ending with a bit of cooldown where sh