Seconded on Talos Principle; it's a great game. It takes a more philosophical spin on the story rather than a comical spin like Portal, but it does scratch that 3D puzzler itch that Portal accomplishes so well
Nightfire is such a great game, you'll have a lot of fun with it. All the James Bond games are pretty slept on imo (except goldeneye, which everyone knows already).
I know Sonic Unleashed had an unofficial PC port, but I didn't know Midnight Club 3 had one, is there a PC version or are you talking about emulation on pc?
PS2/Xbox/Gamecube is my favorite era of gaming; there were so many good titles released. Here are some hidden gems some might like:
007 Nightfire: best Bond game imo aside from Goldeneye, spy themed fps, great splitscreen multiplayer
Marvel Ultimate Alliance: beat em up featuring a sizeable amount of marvel heroes (deadpool!)
Midnight Club 3: way ahead of its time; open world racing develeoped by rockstar. Basically GTA but just the car part
Sonic Unleashed: very slept-on sonic title, has the usual fast paced running but you can also become a werewolf sonic and it becomes more hack n slash / 3d platformer
SoulCalibur 2&3: SoulCalibur is my favorite fighting franchise, and SC2 is the best in that series. I like SC2 better on Gamecube because of Link, but SC3 was only released on Playstation 2
Star Trek Conquest: an RTS but for console? A decent Star Trek game? It's actually a lot of fun and challenging with certain civilizations. Winning as the Federation is HARD
Test Drive Off Road Wide Open: a racing game I used to play all the time, had an open world setting that I would just drive around in for hours. Fun, fast paced, and features Metallica!
Star Wars the Clone Wars: vehicular combat game with a surprisingly fun campaign. Flying around in a clone dropship is so much fun and the splitscreen multiplayer is a lot of fun too
I tend to agree, open world is becoming just a box to tick off for AAA developers, which means it just gets put in as filler basically. Halo Infinite is the worst example I can think of. However I do think there are 2 ways open world can be justified: if the world is just packed so full of interesting stuff that the game just gets huge, or if the way of traversing that world is fun.
Category 1 would be games like Morrowind, Skyrim , Fallout 4, or even Mass Effect on a smaller scale. There's just so much to do that it becomes an open world on its own. Category 2 would be games like the Arkham series , Assassins Creed, or Forza Horizon, where getting from point A to point B is fun on its own.
Open world is great when it's done right, but since when has Ubisoft or EA made a good game in the past 10 years?
I did a deep dive into frontends because I love organizing stuff in general. I use different frontends for each device I have because they all have different pros, but overall my favorite is Playnite because of its metadata and sorting features. For Windows I use Playnite, on Linux I use Pegasus, on Steam Deck I use RetroDeck/EmulationStation, and on handhelds I use Knulli Firefly.
Playnite is imo the king, because it has really beautiful themes with custom cover art and can sort games in basically any way possible: by system, rating, genre, name, release date, you name it. The only con is that it's Windows exclusive (for the near future) and is janky in Wine/Lutris.
Pegasus is spectacular for its fine grained control, and can be configured to do basically anything. Its like the Arch Linux of the frontend world; start with the basics and build from the ground up. With tinkering, it works great on almost any platform.
RetroDeck is great because it's plug n play. I love to tinker, but I also wanted a platform to just play my games without hastle or messing around. I find myself actually playing my games on the deck instead of tinkering with the frontend.
Knulli Firefly is great for smaller screen handhelds for a similar reason. It's very customizable, but also works straight away with little to no hastle. It's also better than most stock OSes that ship with emulation devices
If you enjoy Titanfall 2 you might like Call of Duty Black Ops 3. I still havent found a game that handles so well and feels so smooth. It got a lot of flak at the time (2014) because everyone was tired of future shoooters, but imo it has the best fps mechanics not only in cod, but in any fps game. The story is also really good; I wont spoil but it does get kinda philosophical and has plenty of twists and turns.
As others have said, the Half Life series is probably the best fps objectively. I started with 2 and then played 1, so while they do go in order, it isn't required. HL1 is a bit clunky but still great.
Also James Bond 007 games are criminally underrated. Everyone knows about Goldeneye for the N64, but some of my favorites are Nightfire, From Russia with Love, Everything or Nothing, and Goldeneye Reloaded. A lot of the Steam pages were taken down for them though, and are only really playable on console, but definitely worth it if you are able to play
I second this, I greatly prefer news from real people with their own style, especially when there's so much ai stuff and corporate boringness elsewhere. I'd love to see a part 5, good job!
Texas brisket was honestly a close second for me. It's so good when it's done right.
I totally agree on the West coast pick. San Diego and Tijuana have some of the best mexican food anywhere, and it greatly outshines the other food in the area
I had it somewhat like this in NYC, and the cheese curds are definitely a game changer. I believe it was made with russet crinkle fries though. Potato wedges are a great idea
I'll have to try this one! It vaguely reminds me of a dish I tried in Arizona called a Sonoran hot dog. Basically a piece of bread stuffed with a bacon wrapped hot dog and an insane amount of toppings and sauces/salsas
Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap for GBA is my all time favorite from the series. It was made late in the gameboy development cycle, and feels miles ahead of other gba titles. Imo it's the pinnacle of 2d Zelda.
Another great title is Fire Emblem. It's not the first one, but a lot of them can be played out of order, and it's tons of fun if you like turn based strategy.
Other mentions: Pokemon FireRed/LeafGreen, Pokemon Yellow/Blue, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Legend of Zelda Oracle of Seasons/Ages, Link's Awakening, Fire Emblem Sacred Stones, Final Fight One, and the Elden Ring demake
With firefox or a hardened fork of firefox (like mull/fennec/iceraven etc.) there is a button in settings where you can install/add to homescreen and have an app-like experience for any site including instagram. (Not sure if this is on ios though.) You can also have noscript, ublock origin, and privacy badger addons running for a bit of extra protection and as you said email alias and vpn at all times. If you're on a hardened OS like CalyxOS or Graphene you can also sandbox or work profile the browser to add another degree of separation.
You may run into problems during signup because meta has been known to use viseo/photo upload verification for accounts made with alias emails and/or from a vpn IP, but once you're in there shouldn't be an issue. If there is, you might want to bite the bullet and sign up in a normal way, then use privacy measures to mitigate data collection, depending on your threat model.
I only use Indeed.com so that my info is only siphoned from one place. I feel like they have good listings and they have options to hide some of your info from employers and random observers. Avoid linkedin at all costs, having a profile has gotten me zero benefits and it is an extreme pain deleting your account.
You can also take steps to protect your contact info, specifically your email/phone/address. I only put the city I'm from on my resume and you can use email masks or alts like firefox relay or protonmail plus, or just make a separate email only for work. For phone numbers I use JMP.chat to give me a second number to use solely for work and Indeed.
In the end a lot of your work info is gonna be pseudo-public, because you do need to convince prospective employers of who you are, but you can control the sphere of that information to keep it confined. Imo, having a stable job is worth that trade; you don't have to do a deep dive into your personality or personal life to get a job. Just enough to be convincing
Seconded on Talos Principle; it's a great game. It takes a more philosophical spin on the story rather than a comical spin like Portal, but it does scratch that 3D puzzler itch that Portal accomplishes so well