Yeah, one of the only games I’ve 100%ed, the achievements are deliberately set up so that you can get most of them organically by the time you get to the true ending. The rarest achievement on Steam has like a 6% obtainment rate, which is a lot.
The 2 hour refund window is for automated refunds, you can still make a request if you’re past that - it’s just going to need a human to take a look at it. I’ve once succesfully returned a game I’ve played for about 5 hours because it had game-breaking bugs and ran like crap for no reason, and it got accepted within a day without an issue.
So Helldivers owners have a chance. I’m assuming that Steam’s Customer Support department is having some kind of an internal discussion right now on how to handle this case.
I had a N3DS, it was my first handheld and it was great! Really good selection of games. My most played were Monster Hunter Generations (which was my introduction to the series) and Fantasy Life - one of my absolute faves, a charming and colorful fantasy adventure with life sim elements. The story is a bit meh but the gameplay loop is incredibly satisfying and there’s nothing else quite like it. I’ve been replaying it on an emulator (rip Yuzu/Citra devs) recently and it’s still a blast.
The spices are pretty good - great, portable money source that won’t get you killed for being a witch. Everything else sucks.
Nothing quite like Hardspace: Shipbreaker, but farming games/life sims often fill this niche for me. The classic one to recommend is Stardew Valley, I also really like Graveyard Keeper, Slime Rancher and Fantasy Life (3ds, works well on emulators).
ARPGs (Diablo style, so kill stuff to get loot to get your numbers up to kill bigger stuff) can be nice zone out games too, I recommend Grim Dawn (going to get an expansion soon, quite complex), recently released Last Epoch (very enjoyable, but might want to hold off for a while if you want to play online - the servers are a mess right now), and Chronicon (most casual of these three, very cheap, colorful explosions across the screens).
Other games I’ve tagged as “Space Maintenance” : Planet Crafter (pretty chill number go up/building kind of game where you’re slowly making a planet livable), Deep Sixed (short roguelike, try to keep a ship together enough to get through the game, very hectic and no progression between runs so may not be what you’re looking for), Delta V Rings of Saturn (top down space mining).
Something kind of adjacent to this happens in Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis series. Aliens come over to fix the Earth and humanity, but decide that human nature is part of the problem, and set out to modify it. It’s a really interesting read.
I was in the mood for a) something that won’t require a lot of thinking and b) something high fantasy. So… I started The Way of Kings. I’m not Sanderson’s biggest fan, but I can’t deny that it’s a very quick and fun read (despite its monstrous size). No thoughts, just get swept up in the world and enjoy.
The storm-based worldbuilding is very cool. Coincidentally, I’ve been playing Against the Storm a lot. Very interesting how a similar base idea (what if we had a world ruled by a cycle of storms?) can go in such different directions.
Spoilery thoughts:
I mostly like all of the main characters so far! Dalinar took a long time to grow on me (mostly because I share Kaladin’s burning hatred towards Lighteyed nobility and he is a part of the system), Shallan I immediately liked but I’m worried that if she doesn’t change/go through some character growth she could become annoying in future books. Kaladin is honestly the least interesting character-wise - I like reading his chapters because he is in the most immediately desperate situation and is Going Through It ™ but he’s just a bit too perfect. Y’know. Surgeon, gifted spearman, naturalborn leader, some kind of a wizard… at 19 years old. Sigh.
And boy oh boy do I hope that the eye colour-based caste system will get dismantled/at least critically examined in some detail cause… ouch. Kaladin is so right in hating on it. But I’m not holding my breath.
I’m trying to get out of a reading slump I’ve been in for the last… 3 months? Picked Orconomics to get back into things and just finished it today. Honestly, the first 50% was like pulling teeth. But I got pretty hooked after that, once it really got going and subverting the usual fantasy tropes, and enjoyed it enough that I’ll probably read the sequel at some point.
There was just one bit of weirdness that kinda bothered me - in the main cast there were two decently important female characters and they were both absolutely fine, I liked them a lot! But there were just… no other women in this world? No female city guards, innkeepers (there was the innkeeper’s wife, I guess, but she was there for a joke), no clerks or managers or shopkeepers. Idk.
I don’t think so, considering that it was written in 1999. And it’s just way too specific for something LLM would come up with.