Nicholas Karpuk

Review by thekarpuk - Dungeon Crawler Carl As an elder millennial man it was almost inevitable that people would suggest I read the book ...

I have read Dungeon Crawler Carl and I have some thoughts.

The way we fight modern warfare kills innocent people by default. Bombs don't discriminate. So if someone's starting a war they're actively saying their objectives are worth killing children for. Not very pro-life of them.

Crimson Desert impresses some RPG fans with its dialogue fast-forward feature, but leaves others questioning "why" it's even a thing: "TikTok has ruined this generation" "What is the point of playing a story title if you're not even invested?"

I absolutely get why this is a feature, and I routinely skip forward in dialogue in long-winded RPGs, but I feel it's worth pointing out: every piece of dialogue in a game is an opportunity to say something entertaining or informative, so why even create skip-worthy words? Talk less.

So cool that she used her platform for this. It also got me thinking about how games are an industry where people might still buy a copy 20 years later, and yet almost none of the people who labored over it get things like residuals.

I've tried playing the original Marathon games before, and they have that weird issue some 90's FPS games had where enemies moved like Benny Hill, zipping and wiggling around like idiots. It's just a reminder of how elegant and time-tested id's systems actually were.

Food-wise Americans feel like a combination of people who only eat chicken fingers and people who are daring god to kill them.

Citing AI, Jack Dorsey Fired 40% of His Staff and Block Stock Popped. This Is Fine. The anxiety around AI taking people's jobs is real and justified, even if most of the AI hype isn't. It's happening all around us.

Even if gen AI does what they claim it should, which is to let 10 people do the work of 100, that doesn't mean they won't still fire 4 of those 10 people.

It's wild that businesses are asking for tariff refunds when the bulk of them passed the cost directly on to the consumer.

I'm not a Pokemon guy, but these creatures are delightful.

My guess is that Paramount is probably over-extending themselves to pay for Warner Bros, and I wouldn't be shocked if this ends in an immense collapse.

I assume by the end of Resident Evil Requiem Leon is going to be giving zombies suplexes and spinning piledrivers.

I’m with you there. It’s not exactly breezy reading, but I’m still sort of invested in the characters.

It's wild how I've read hundreds of chapters of One Piece, and I could go on the Shonen Jump app and spend the whole weekend reading that comic and still be hundreds of chapters behind.

it's all just art. "porn" is just art that makes you horny, in precisely the way that "horror" is art that makes you scared and "metroidvania" is art that makes you write video essays

It's amazing how clear it is in interviews that Elon Musk bought Twitter because he couldn't stand a popular platform where people could criticize and insult him without facing immediate retribution. Rich people mostly exist in a world where they can punish anyone in their proximity.

Hegseth threatens to blacklist Anthropic over 'woke AI' concerns The company's Claude chatbot is one of the few AI systems cleared for use in classified settings. But a standoff between Anthropic and the Trump administration is putting its government work at risk.

The way these fucking dorks use the term "woke" continues to be deeply embarrassing.

I wish I could just look at awesome rats all day.

Let’s get RATICAL 🐀✨

Sony closes acclaimed Demon's Souls and Shadow Of The Colossus remake studio Bluepoint, despite acknowledging it had delivered "exceptional experiences for the PlayStation community" Sony has shut down Demon's Souls Remake developer Bluepoint.

How many times am I going to hear the same story of a corporation insisting a developer chase a fad that's in no way related to their strengths, and then closing the studio when it inevitably fails?

Brand New Day is one of my favorite Spider-man stories, and I can't say I'm thrilled to see Marvel Studios tackling it. To me it was a fun rejection of Sad Sack Peter Parker, a version of that character some creators seemed to absolutely love.

Horses kinda scare me, but all the horse art on my feed lately has been oddly delightful.

I'm not sure younger game players realize that David Jaffe has been coming out of the woodwork every few years to give a belligerent hot take pretty much since he stopped making good games.

I was cynical about this take, but after watching this, I'm genuinely just wondering if Reese is kind of dumb? This looks like ass.

It's weird how over time Garth Ennis became one of the less problematic creators from the old Vertigo days.

For years I had a whole sunken cost thing with all the Comixology titles I bought before they were absorbed into Amazon. But I think I'm done buying comics on Amazon. Many I can get through either manga apps or library tools. Amazon's prices suck and the shop is more full of AI slop every week.

It is with a heavy sigh that I have to say: Matt Stone

Kash Patel and Pam Bondi are weirdly similar in that they dissolve into absolute god damn babies the moment they're questioned. Beyond all their egregious politics, it just doesn't feel like there's an adult in the room.

I realize there’s a chunk of the Adam Sessler controversy that I can’t see because he blocked me a while ago.

I think I just asked what the logic was of a joke he made. Guy seems immensely thin-skinned.

David Cage’s games are fascinating because they’re mostly set in America but they give the impression he’s never even visited.

Hell yeah!