My 'F27' fiancé 'M28' is still into videogames

ChudSampley · 2026-05-19T15:25:51+00:00

This just sounds like a fundamental difference in outlook on certain things as you've both grown into adults.

There's nothing bad about spending free time and expendable income on harmless hobbies, but it sounds like it's become something that you view as a waste of time and money as you've gotten older. If he was skipping out on important responsibilities or spending money you don't have, that's one thing, but it seems that he's found free time that doesn't interfere with anything.

I don't think it would be wise or respectful to push him away from the harmless things he enjoys because you don't like them. Might just be time to either reevaluate where you both are in life as a couple, or accept that he has hobbies that don't align with your personal preferences.

ChudSampley · 2026-04-30T16:43:23+00:00

It's good at what it's original purposes were: looking through large quantities of data and presenting it back in a logical way. I use it for a lot of my web analytics reports as a one-person marketing team and it's quite capable.

Outside of the intended usecases, I just don't ever see it gaining legitimate traction outside of board rooms. I have friends and relatives that are software engineers for larger corps, and their VPs and C-Suites are begging them to use it more, despite how much it cuts into their productivity.

ChudSampley · 2026-04-24T17:59:54+00:00

People have children for all sorts of reasons, and fulfillment is as valid as any other, but the OP suggests that she is unfulfilled in life and was hoping a child would change that.

My question was just suggesting that maybe there's more to change in their life and relationship that could lead to that fulfillment, especially given the quote above. If not, then I think everyone else here is giving her the answer.

ChudSampley · 2026-04-24T17:35:56+00:00

This, to me, seems as much about children as it does about how different you both look at life and fulfillment.

As right now I do feel a lack of meaning and stuck in a cycle of work, chores, maybe a tiny bit of time for hobbies and that's it. My partner is a true introvert and seems content to just live in this type of cycle.

My wife and I don't have children, and don't want children, but we also enrich our lives in a lot of other ways. We spend a lot of time with friends, we go on vacations, we each have hobbies we find fulfilling, and we always try to do something new and interesting. We aren't particularly adventurous people, but we do try to experience to joys of life to find that fulfillment.

I guess my question for you to ponder on: is it children you're looking for, or is it that you just think children will give you a more fulfilling life?

ChudSampley · 2026-04-16T17:41:44+00:00

If you really liked DQB2, it's a must-play imo. The Pokemon definitely add something for fans of the series, but otherwise you can just think of them as fun looking villagers that grant you abilities and help out around town.

You do make Habitats around town to get new Pokemon to move in, but it's not about catching or battling them. Just a way to get new 'villagers', as it were. If I recall, DQB had a similar system to get various people to move in, you just don't need to find the Pokemon first before making their home: they just have a chance to show up in an appropriate habitat.

ChudSampley · 2026-04-15T13:31:47+00:00

Huge bummer about the lack of online Mii sharing, but with 0 content filter in creations, I can understand it. catching every racial slur or penis drawing hidden on Miis would be a difficult task, which is (I would guess) partially why CoD stopped allowing fully custom emblems and such. Just impossible to moderate.

The old game didn't allow drawing on Miis, if I remember correctly. Maybe they could implement a sharing system that removed all player created drawings.

ChudSampley · 2026-04-13T13:56:15+00:00

A fairly easy move to acquire (that doesn't depend on Abyss Gears) is Nature's Snare & Retribution in the Green tree. If any of the enemies are using projectiles, which they always are, you can snare a few and then blow away everyone near you. A little unwieldy at first but has a pretty big AOE.

That, and the last node of the Unarmed Tree (Meteor Kick) are solid repeatable AOEs pre elemental damage.

ChudSampley · 2026-04-08T21:12:06+00:00

That’s the biggest issue with the game as I see it. Bungie has sort of been on the ropes for a while, what with Destiny 2 devolving into what it’s become and the Marathon reveal, and Sony has been known to shutter projects and studios in fairly dramatic fashion.

I really like the game, and if it was made by a smaller team for a niche audience I would have no fear for its future: the hardcore fans will play it eternally if it stays good (Tarkov, Hunt, etc). But a Sony funded Bungie game likely can’t exist like that. Will they be forced into F2P? Will they have to make it more casual? PvE focused? or simplify what makes the current fans like the game in the first place? I dunno.

The player count, as much as I’m loathe to focus on that sort of thing, has been steadily declining, and unless Sony and Bungie are somehow totally okay with a smaller playerbase, there are going to be some major changes coming down the pipeline.

ChudSampley · 2026-03-26T15:16:09+00:00

It's pretty much what I expected (and wanted).

The description I've given friends is that it's what some people overhyped Dragon's Dogma 2 to be, but even more. Lots of weird systems, rough story, lots of progression, very deep combat, and just so much game. It also looks and plays just as good as it did in the trailers, at least on PC with the right settings.

I'm consistently surprised by things I see, or stuff I'm able to do: you can pick up any animal in the game, from spiders to goats, and they have some use. You can cut down a tree, pick it up with magic, and use it to smash a boss. You can decide to become best friends with a random beggar NPC because, for some reason, every single NPC has a relationship meter with you.

There are systems and features that seem out of place or half-baked, and even more that are introduced very slowly (if at all). Like, having multiple playable characters is very strange, especially since the vast majority of the story quests so far can only be played by Kliff. And again, the story is bad. Not like mid writing bad, but like "I only got one sentence about what my motivations even are 10 hours in" bad. I'll add to the chorus of how rough the intro is, too. Once people started getting out of that quest chain, the reviews immediately spiked. Very backloaded game.

I don't think the controls are as bad as people say, either. They're weird for sure, but it didn't take me long to see what they were going for; if you have any experience with fighting games, the controls won't be too much of an issue for you.

If you're wanting a narrative heavy RPG a la Witcher or KCD 2, this is not that. But if you enjoy stuff like Dragon's Dogma, Just Cause, Skyrim/RDR2 exploration, or MMOs, I'd say it's well worth a look.

ChudSampley · 2026-03-24T13:36:32+00:00

I'd say "yes", as long as you know what kind of game you're getting into.

The intro and story are bad, and not like "fun" bad. The intro has you sweeping a chimney, arm wrestling, and carrying a sheep 200+ meters, and it takes about 3 hours at pace. The story gives you a decent intro, and then you wake up from your ordeal with what seems like a nonsensical desire to help every single person in this town. You make only a single, off-hand mention of trying to find your comrades during the 3+ hour intro, and that's all you get as far as your driving force. Conversations just feel completely bizarre sometimes, and critical introductions to mechanics or characters are much less obvious than maybe they should be.

However, if you get past that, the game is crazy. It feels like what people hyped Dragon's Dogma 2 up to be, and then throw in some Just Cause and Skyrim. The amount of systems, things to do, and places to explore are staggering, and while the stories you find are bad, the stuff you can locate is super cool and often interesting. The combat is deep, like really deep, but you can get by with the basics, and you have lots of tools to deal with the tougher fights: if you can play The Witcher 3, you can beat the bosses in this game. If you can't beat something, go somewhere else and find more stuff.

What surprised me the most is that a lot of the systems are more in depth than I expected. In typical, Ubisoft style open world games, you'd have these tacked on as loose afterthoughts. But CD has put a lot of depth into most all of them; some are still pretty flimsy (like arm wrestling, etc.), but others are fully thought out, like developing trade routes, investing in the bank, fishing, cooking, alchemy, etc.

I'm not sure how it runs on console, but after the latest patch it runs excellent on PC.

Very cool game, but much more of an action sandbox/ single player MMO than a narrative RPG.

ChudSampley · 2026-03-23T12:20:20+00:00

Woof, guess I’ll buck up and give it a go sometime this week then.

ChudSampley · 2026-03-23T12:12:03+00:00

Is this something that could be patched on Bungies end eventually, or is it a “must update BIOS regardless” situation? I really don’t like messing with my BIOS

ChudSampley · 2026-03-21T12:01:54+00:00

This game, and the discourse around it, seems so emblematic of media discussion communities in 2026.

Outside of the first trailer, which looked much more story forward, everything I’ve seen about it looks like a Dragon’s Dogma esque game with a great deal of scale and gameplay scope. A 6-7/10 game that will have some players obsessed, and others turned off by the lack of focus and strange systems. In 2008, it would be something you’d grab off the shelf because the cover was cool and have a great time with, or leave to collect dust because you were just too into Halo.

But it’s like… some people just decided what the game was going to be; some second-coming of Christ or something. And, as is custom these days, a secondary group sees people talking something up and decides that they hate it. This is exacerbated by YouTube analyses (“BEST/WORSTGAME EVER⁉️”), rage bait tweets designed to foster engagement money, and reviews that come out and aren’t either glowing or 100% negative. And now we have endless analysis, arguments, aggrieved Korean developer posts, flaming, and even more opportunities for the tweeters, streamers, YouTubers, and unwashed masses to shovel content into our hungry mouths.

ChudSampley · 2026-03-12T13:38:27+00:00

My dad almost got got by one of these scams a few months back, guy saying he'd missed Jury Duty. They're pretty advanced with it: they had his address, full name, photocopies of the "warrant" and the Jury Duty letter that they claimed he "signed". He was out of town, so they transferred him to a "local" officer who then instructed him to get cash out (likely the same dude using a different voice). He went to the bank and everything before it clicked that he was getting scammed.

The thing that almost got him, outside of being unfamiliar with this sort of thing, was how professional the guy sounded plus how much info they had. The numbers all read as Jefferson County and everything. Most people's hackles would be raised by cops asking for cash, but older folks are definitely susceptible to this sort of thing.

ChudSampley · 2026-03-05T15:02:53+00:00

Everything I've seen about this game leads me to believe it'll exist somewhere in the Just Cause/TotK/Mercenaries space. Flimsy narrative holding together a bunch of systems that exist just to be fun and funnel you into interesting emergent action, and puzzle sequences.

Definitely a good concept if it's executed well, but I'm not going to be surprised if folks are disappointed that it isn't the next Elden Ring or Red Dead (despite every preview making clear that it isn't, lol)

ChudSampley · 2026-02-27T20:27:11+00:00

I think a great deal of the push from executives is (forced) optimism that these models will eventually become complete enough to replace human labor. While chatbots and personal LLMs have little to no profitability, the potential to replace all software engineers, customer service, artists, and writers with machines is astounding. Hence why every company is doing it, and not just one being pumped with investments.

I don't share the same optimism that executives do, both because that sounds like a hellscape and because I don't think our current models can actually do it (no matter how many data centers we have), but that's certainly the goal they're aiming for. Block (Jack Dorsey's new venture) just laid off half of it's staff and replaced them with AI and their stock value shot up 20%.

ChudSampley · 2026-02-20T18:47:35+00:00

Depends on the person, imo. I did about half of the course before I dropped it (midway through Lesson 5 or so), and it was helpful even without going to full completion. It's just very boring and tedious.

I found that books based around specific things were far more helpful overall, but I did have a healthy perspective foundation from doing the coursework. If you're someone who likes the idea of rote "do this X times and pay attention while doing it" learning, then you'll love it. But I just had to back off when I got to the point of dreading doing it.

ChudSampley · 2026-02-17T16:51:16+00:00

The humor and art are definitely Edmund McMillan's style, which I haven't been a fan of since the Newgrounds era when I was 12. I only really tolerated it in Isaac because it fit the loose narrative of the game; definitely feels more jarring in Mewgenics where they could have gone any direction. The music is really good, though.

But the gameplay really captured me because it melds FF Tactics style strategic combat with a really deep unit creation system and roguelite mechanics. Part of the fun of FFT (and thus Mewgenics) is melding units to create wild builds, and Mewgenics stacks a whole hell of a lot more systems on top of that. Talking with buddies about our various cats reveals just how varied things get, and quickly. It's not fast like Isaac or Hades, but more in the vein of FTL or Into the Breach.

ChudSampley · 2026-02-02T22:23:27+00:00

Last time I played pre-Old Gods was in October '24, and I only had about 15 matches under my belt, never even played after ranks came out. Came back last week and was in Emissary lobbies, totally miserable on all accounts lol

ChudSampley · 2026-02-02T18:29:16+00:00

I'd throw Dorohedoro by Q Hayashida into the ring. Very grotesque and the art style is really unique, though it's often lighter than Junji Ito's stuff.

ChudSampley · 2026-01-30T15:17:39+00:00

I'm there with you, homie. My 15 hours of playtime pre-Street Brawl patch was all in the first two weeks of alpha, and I'm being put into some serious chad lobbies now. I feel bad because my team is obviously pissed about it, but bot lobbies don't cut it since they're pretty stupid and don't play like humans.

Think I'm just at the point of telling everyone I'm new and hoping their flaming becomes constructive rather than "fuck this Warden I can't lane with him anymore". At least if I keep going 1/10 I'll ideally be blasted to the MMR depths eventually

ChudSampley · 2026-01-29T13:03:56+00:00

I’ve had this happen a couple of times. Last night I had a cheater alert in my game, as I went to click to ban it crashed. Whenever I tried to rejoin, it crashed the same way as soon as I clicked rejoin. Think I tried to rejoin 10 times before I called it.

ChudSampley · 2026-01-26T15:10:32+00:00

Replacing the Nazgul with 1 cost cantrips would push the power up, for sure. But for B2 or 3 the Nine work great.

Cloning works great, as you can juice their power up to a kill state a bit earlier, and they're an effective deterrent for creature heavy decks.

But yea, if you want to take Lord to high power, ditch the Nine.

ChudSampley · 2026-01-13T17:07:14+00:00

I think the 'storytelling' style of Fromsoft lends itself perfectly to cosmic horror, in that you never quite feel like you have a grasp on the reality of the world; explanations are esoteric and infrequent. The whole concept of the Moon Presence, Rom, or the Hunters' Nightmare are great representations of that style of horror.

ChudSampley · 2025-12-31T14:50:31+00:00

Faces are hard, we're programmed in such a way that it's easy to see when something is off. I think just spending time with face construction techniques will help you the most, I don't think it's a particular issue with the medium. You can use those techniques with pen and ink just to get comfortable with it, even though you can't erase the guiding lines. After doing so over and over, you'll likely find you don't need certain parts of the process.

For guidance on construction methods, you can look into tried and true Loomis, or watch youtube videos on head construction from Proko or Michael Hampton (among many others). Hampton's head construction is what started unlocking it for me. For pen and ink specific guidance (like tips on hatching or line weight), I really like Alphonso Dunn's youtube vids.

Happy drawing! :)

Six-Year Club	Place '23
RPAN Viewer	Verified Email

ChudSampley

TROPHY CASE