Starmer, but also Labour as a government as a whole, has really felt like they are trying to do a Tory Best Of / Greatest Hits of the Last Decade tribute.
The Tories have been doing austerity and tending further and further to the right for a while, which seems to have fairly obviously contributed to them losing the election. No idea how anyone looked at that and thought "good idea".
This seems like it fits more of a management/strategy type vibe to me.
Maybe you hear news of the 10 greatest knights of the realm coming to save you. But you don't know what they're great at and you only have a limited amount of instructions to give them.
You could have the first knight leave hints by telling him to leave marks in specific places. But he might be the best at combat and would be best sent against some of the other monsters guarding the path. You just don't have the information.
But honestly, I'm not sure if that makes a player feel trapped. They have power to change things. Maybe you steadily take away that power? I'm just not sure how.
Very interesting question though.
Yeah, they'll keep harping on about "once in a generation" as if multiple loads of crap hadn't hit the fan. Brexit of course being the big one, but Labour following up the Tories with more austerity and generally conservative governance also won't help.
The upcoming (Scottish) election cycle will probably matter a lot for indy and seeing how Scotland reacts to Labour. The SNP did get hit by a lot of scandals so things might get shaken up a bit. I wonder how many will put another referendum as one of their main points.
Oh, the journalists wrote and article that you clicked on and shared, and maybe even commented on on their website? And it points out a particularly problematic part of an otherwise pretty good game?
Fantastic, they did their job well.
I enjoyed playing the game but that achievement and "jennerising" really did leave a sour taste in my mouth (the latter is a drug effect that temporarily changes your body type). Though I found "tropic thunder" giving you dark skin somewhat amusing. Humour is subjective, and I could honestly accept all of these being just a tad too far to be funny anymore, in which case I'd rather the game was more friendly to everyone (and it's better for its success too).
To have some fun though at your expense; the funnily appropriate way you mistyped a sentence:
try to cancel a game just because an achievement
I assume you missed the word "of" but it lets me ask: just because an achievement is what? Come on, say it.
All that aside:
I'm surprised someone on the fediverse is using "social activist" as a pejorative though tbh. Moving away from centralised social media is similarly a way to speak out against social issues you believe in.
I disagree. All our current storage methods still degrade, not to mention they almost all rely on technology to be read.
If nothing happens, sure. We can keep things preserved, know how to access the data from them, make copies as needed, etc., but that would've applied to the Library of Alexandria.
Most, if not all (afaik) MySpace profiles are gone. We can archive all of Facebook and Instagram, but thousands of years is a long time to not have accidents, mistakes, war or even natural degradation destroy some or all of the data carriers.
Yeah... Would be smart. So Labour, who are trying to be the Tories but from 5-10 years ago, will not do it. Gotta court those undecided centre-right and right-wing voters: the people who still believe in Brexit, even though polls show that's definitely not a majority.
Sigh.
The Homeworld series is great with fantastic campaigns (minus Homeworld 3 I've heard, not even played that).
I'll also throw in a classic Imperium Galactica 2 because I still think for a 90s 4X RTS it has so many elements that I've just not seen replicated since. Though usually short and quick, it has fully simulated and controllable space and ground battles; espionage; diplomacy; you assign your unlocked tech to hard points on your ships... It's Stellaris but better in most ways, imo.
Unlikely to be it since it's nowhere near from the last 10 years, but CITY 2000 seems like it could be similar at least artistically?
I think the best I can recommend is looking through Steam, searching for "London" and the mystery genre. I didn't quite catch anything there that fit at a glance, but maybe you will. Similarly could be done on GOG, since it sounds like it could potentially be an older game? Or itch, but maybe the best way to search for that would be by googling london missing friend mystery site:itch.io.
I'm assuming a modern setting, with no supernatural elements and the mystery genre, so that's the best I could do. It's going to be very hard to find something without some details being fixed. Point and click? Photos or isometric? Is the player character visible? Do they have any identifying details? Does the pub have a name? Anything like that could do a lot.
You say you watched someone play it on youtube then you might be able to search your youtube viewing history?
If Deep Rock Galactic counts, then Monster Hunter games should as well. The hub is usually a bar/restaurant with food, drinking, and an arm wrestling mini game. You can also randomly cook meat out in the field or go to hot springs.
Many other games do have bars, but without any real interaction. Lego games and Borderlands come to mind.
Stardew Valley has cutscenes at the bar and you can play a mini game there, but not quite as interactively as DRG.
That's all I can think of right now. It feels like Baldur's Gate 3 or Saints Row should also have something similar to Stardew at least, but I can't remember how much you can do in those bars. Same with MMOs I haven't played in a while like Runescape. I'm sure if I mention them someone else will know though.
As a bonus: with modding, Lethal Company can have a casino with a bar you can get drinks at.
Late and I cannot possibly read everything here, but I'll come back to it as well.
And just to do some due diligence:
Very space- and RTS-themed, but that's what got my attention at the time. And they were having their golden age. Also I was very young in the 90s, so that's all I have.
I love that Santa looks super ominous from this angle. I keep thinking the bell is a broken bottle he's about to stab the kids with.
As others have mentioned, I don't think Labour will do well in the next election based on what they've been doing so far. So voting for "third" parties is inevitable. It's just a question of whether we can get a majority of progressives, or we just end up spread out and Reform sweeps the win.
I think maybe the ideal solution would be if the progressive parties formed some sort of coalition ahead of time, centred around electoral reform. Discuss who contests which seats, etc, and how they'd vote as a coalition.
Well the most ideal would be if they did that with the express purpose of getting electoral reform done and then calling a general election right after. That way even conservatives and right wingers might vote for them.
It really is past the time when Britain finally went through some actual changes.