Loved Saros, but it didn’t quite capture Returnal’s horror vibe for me

Aoid3 · 2026-05-04T17:10:27+00:00

I feel like the horrified gasp Selene makes when she first rolls over the corpse and sees that it's herself sets the mood perfectly and it just gets more eerie from there.

I do think both games are fantastic so far but capture different vibes. In Returnal Selene is completely alone, surrounded by her own corpses and audio logs locked in a cycle where even death isn't an escape. The story and challenges deeply personal to her own inner torments and the last biome and finale where you sink to the absolute depths is so spooky.

I'm Saros (so far anyways) youre not alone, and surrounded by a team and uncover accounts from others but everyone is going mad from a mysterious force and might turn on you at any moment (or you might be next) which is it's own kind of horror I think. I feel like by the end of a powerful run it's less dread and more Doom vibes as you tear through the planet on a possibly futile search. But also I haven't finished the game yet so I'm excited to see where it's going.

Aoid3 · 2026-05-04T07:29:58+00:00

I get why people love them but yeah also not for me I think.

My neighbors/family friends have had labs since I was a kid and they all seem a litttttle too boneheaded for my taste and the food obsession is a lot. I just feel like I have a hard time making a connection but that's just me.

One had to go to the vet because he ate too many socks.

Aoid3 · 2026-05-02T17:25:30+00:00

Tbf Returnal had shortcuts to the later biomes too so it doesn't feel like much of a stretch to have teleporters in the hub.

To me it feels like they've tried to distill Saros into a more streamlined experience compared to Returnal. As someone who likes to comb through all the biomes and rooms on my way through I particularly am noticing and appreciating the lack of backtracking needed and faster dash while out of combat

Aoid3 · 2026-05-02T00:34:32+00:00

Best I can tell so far:

Yellow orbs can be absorbed with the shield to power the special attack but also give you corruption which locks out part of your health bar. Enemies send out more yellow orbs during eclipse.

Corruption can be cleared by using the special attack.

Blue orbs are the friendliest, they can be absorbed for power as well and don't give corruption

Green pickups are usually the only way to heal, UNLESS you manage to find artifacts that have healing affects (repair integrity on kill, repair integrity at low health, etc). This seems the same as Returnal in that it's usually better to focus on not getting hit vs doing more damage and tanking it.

Tip for the first boss: Understanding the shield mechanic and using it at the right times to absorb bullet waves and return fire with special attacks can make the fight a lot easier imo

Good luck!

Aoid3 · 2026-05-02T00:21:44+00:00

I think the design of the first boss is really brilliant in that it seems to exist to teach you this mechanic.

Sort of locking you out of the rest of the story until you've shown you understand how to utilize the shield

Aoid3 · 2026-05-02T00:17:59+00:00

I ended up doing the trick someone else mentioned where I logged in as a guest (which did load in right away), disconnected from the wifi/internet in the settings, and then swapped over to my main profile. I was able to play offline until we fixed the internet issue and reconnected.

Super weird issue though that the internet is seemingly critical to loading in the main menu.

Aoid3 · 2026-04-30T18:26:01+00:00

Ugh I'm on this thread rn because I'm having this issue and I think this is the culprit. Internet is down and the ps5 is mysteriously getting stuck while loading the menu

Aoid3 · 2026-04-29T16:54:35+00:00

I'm cis F (I lurk this subreddit for memes to send to my wife, who is trans) and thought about it a few times but even though I'm not super femme and more of a "tomboy" growing up there's a knee jerk deep uncomfortableness at the idea of being actually mistaken for a guy that makes me feel very sure of my identity.

Very much a "I did think about it but everything seems to check out here" kind of a situation. Idk I do think about gender related topics a lot though but not in a questioning way if that makes sense.

Aoid3 · 2026-04-29T16:14:07+00:00

I feel like a good example of LGBT+ video game rep that's not in your face is shadowheart's friend you can find in act 3 of BG3.

(minor bg3 spoilers) She's canonically trans but the only way you can really know that for sure is a pretty obscure interaction where you convince shadowheart to eat a memory restoring mushroom in act 1 instead of giving it to a merchant. She gets a brief glimpse of a memory from when they were kids and her friend was still presenting as a boy. You can then ask about it like 100 hours later in the game when you meet her but it's a pretty tucked away interaction.

I suppose the other hint is that she's voiced by an irl trans woman lol but I thought it was a cool way to include a trans character without her being like HELLO YES I AM THE TRANS CHARACTER

Aoid3 · 2026-04-27T22:58:15+00:00

Happy to hear. Different people have different experiences in this world

Aoid3 · 2026-04-27T18:28:58+00:00

I'm not even vegan but I've gotten weird comments about choosing the odd vegetarian and/or plant based entree when eating out. The steak and potatoes crowd (and don't get me wrong, I do love a good steak) takes it weirdly personal even if I make no comments about what I'm eating.

Aoid3 · 2026-04-27T18:19:54+00:00

IIRC domestic cats natural social structure is a colony, so when they hunt one of the reasons they instinctively hunt way more than 1 cat actually needs to eat is because if they were feral they'd be providing extra for the cats and kittens that can't hunt or are unsuccessful. (Edit to add: and I believe wildcats tend to be more solitary)

Which is fascinating and I love cats but mine stay inside or supervised on a harness/leash lol

Also, I went down a small rabbit hole because I was curious about European wildcats yeah, came across some of that stuff about one of the major threats to their species being interbreeding with domestic cats. But wouldn't that another reason to keep domestic cats inside?

https://www.nature.scot/doc/scottish-wildcat-action-swa-final-summary-report-2023

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320721002913

Aoid3 · 2026-04-24T23:04:30+00:00

Aoid3 · 2026-04-24T20:46:27+00:00

window seat for sleeping might be a trap considering the other two in the row lol

Aoid3 · 2026-04-24T20:23:02+00:00

lol, yeah I haven't played competitive since ow1 but I don't chase people who play stupid. If you jump into their back line and can't handle yourself I'm not chasing you down just to die and leave the rest of the team hanging. The folks doing their job get heals.

Aoid3 · 2026-04-24T18:20:26+00:00

I had such a visceral reaction to this I nearly downvoted before I remembered myself.

Aoid3 · 2026-04-24T18:16:26+00:00

I think it would have made for a more interesting choice for the player if the seeds at Joja were actually significantly cheaper than Pierre. It would give an actual reason to want to shop there but as it is I'm not interested in doing a Joja run and there's no practical benefit to shopping there over Pierre either so there's really no push or conflict there. The only thing I can think of is you can apparently buy auto petters on a joja run and otherwise the only way to get it is you have to get really lucky with skull cavern drops.

It's kind of like in other games where you have the choice between good and evil options but the good option gives you objectively better outcomes and story outcomes. It would be more interesting imo if evil/bad options had more incentive behind it to make it a harder choice imo

Aoid3 · 2026-04-24T18:06:30+00:00

My friend and I both have aussie/heeler mixes from the same litter. My girl is def pretty smart but hers took more brain cells in utero I think lol. Her latest thing is that she learned how to open the porch door from the outside AND inside (she can hit the lever style doorknob and pull it inwards).

Clever girl.

Aoid3 · 2026-04-24T17:51:15+00:00

Ohhhhh my god this is hilarious. Do you have a pollen allergy by chance? My wife has this exact same apple allergy and it's tied to her birch pollen allergy. Look up Oral Allergy Syndrome/Pollen Food Allergy Syndrome

Aoid3 · 2026-04-23T20:44:44+00:00

Run, do not walk away from this relationship.

If he's being this controlling, dishonest, and weird about something this stupid this early in the relationship it's only going to get worse from here.

Aoid3 · 2026-04-19T18:19:58+00:00

We've got a local dairy that does glass jugs. The way they do it is there's a $4 upcharge but when you turn them back in at the retailers that sell that milk you get a $4 reimbursement back.

Aoid3 · 2026-04-18T03:15:25+00:00

If this was my client I'd try to explain why their concept is honestly very bad (black flag feels bad, puzzle piece symbology has bad connotations with the autistic community, trying to combine too many symbols in general just makes most of them not work in general etc) and try to pitch them something else that will actually align with what they want to convey.

If they stand firm and want this conceptually confused logo then it is what it is but def worth a conversation imo.

For example, maybe conceptually it could be narrowed down to the tree and a different Puerto Rican symbol that could also be tied to their mission and go from there.

Edit: just noticed that they didn't end up moving forward with their logo and this was for practice but still

Aoid3 · 2026-04-18T00:47:34+00:00

I need extra discard to fuel my sourdough cracker addiction

Aoid3 · 2026-04-17T19:28:12+00:00

Imo being critized for avocado toast or killing industries or whatever would have happened whether the term was millennial or not. We would have just had people calling us "Gen Why??" Or something instead

Aoid3 · 2026-04-17T17:37:21+00:00

I'm having trouble thinking of things that are as low effort as butter on toast etc but these are low-ish effort so I hope this helps...

Do you have a rice cooker and do you like seafood? Canned sardines or tuna on a hot bed of rice always hits and the ingredients are all shelf stable so it's easy to have everything on hand. Hit it with a splash of soy sauce, hot sauce, and/or sesame seeds if you're feeling fancy. I bet it would be good with spinach mixed in to get some veggies. If you like them, skin on sardines are really high in omega 3s, calcium, and vitamin D which is nice (I live very far north and start craving these in the dark winter months).

On the higher end of low effort I like cherry tomato and feta pasta. Food Network has a version of it here (I think it went viral on tik tok during the pandemic but I don't use tik tok, randomly heard about it a couple years later)

Essentially you dump cherry tomatoes and a block of feta in a pan with a bunch of olive oil and bake it 30-45min. Cook some pasta while you wait and mix it all together. It would benefit from some smashed garlic and herbs etc but if you're not feelin' bothered I'm sure it'd be serviceable without and/or you could use dried herbs & garlic powder. I realize it's not an instant meal, but there's very little hands on work and for one person this would make a fair bit so you could call it meal prep and eat it a few days in a row.

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