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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   992 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 13, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Video Game Thread

What are you playing this week?

After 20 hours total spent on the game, I finally finished a run in Slay the Spire 2. Very happy. :) I used The Defect and lots of 0 cost attack cards + draws.

Working on finishing RDR2, hopefully I'll finish this weekend. I have found the game to be very overrated - the story is good, but it isn't uniquely so, the gameplay is worse than the previous game due to Rockstar pursuing "immersion" over fun in various ways, and the game is a buggy mess (at least on PC). I have enjoyed it well enough, but once I finish I doubt very much if I will ever play it again, and I certainly don't think it's as good as it gets hyped up to be.

Have to disagree. The slowness is the point. I feel strongly that Red Dead 2 is a game designed to be played in ~10 8-hour sessions. One must be fully immersed, this is an all-day activity. That is inconvenient, but it’s hardly unique, plenty of hobbies have that kind of time commitment, just not most video games.

The slowness is the point because the game is holistically and intentionally designed to reject game convention. Like GTAIV (Rockstar’s other masterpiece, and the game closest to Red Dead 2 in both tone and style, albeit compromised by immaturity and GTA convention), it is as much about the slice of life activities and the general vibe as about the actual main storyline. The minimalist soundtrack is a masterpiece, tense beats, the occasional restrained strum, a handful of songs that fit perfectly deployed at precisely the right moment. The story is more conservative than any major comparable game, the rich inner lives and stories of Arthur’s companions fully present (and clearly known to the writers) but revealed only in fragments, rarely explicitly, just there, if you care for it. The game does not care particularly for the player, which is a great argument in its favor. You may come to camp at the right time, on the right day, in between story missions and see an entire, extensive, motion captured and voiced and acted vignette between Arthur’s companions. Other players may miss it, the game doesn’t care, unlike any other game, in which there would be a mandatory reminder to return to camp and the event would only trigger when the player did so.

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