I remember planting so, so many rings in a single place with debug mode enabled in Sonic 2 just so I could play through each stage as Super Sonic without effort- aside from the super slippery controls.

To add to this: taking territory is the easy part.

The hard part is holding it, because you don’t just have to worry about staffing the front line, but maintaining security in the occupied regions long enough for non-state actors to cease hostilities and accept the invading force as the new legitimate authority- which may never fully occur- all the while dealing with resistance fighters.

This means orders of magnitude more personnel, funding, and equipment for an unknowable length of time across a much larger area than just the line of incursion.

It’s taken them two years to fail to take the land, and now have an incursion into their own soil to contend with. so I’m skeptical they’d manage to keep it permanently.

I’ve been playing this game off and on for years, and it’s always a delight.

That perfect investigation bonus can get pretty big, and that needs a full photo album of 3-Star photos. Disturbed salt is an easy way to get close to that, so your friend is sleeping on some great cheese.

For C&C fans, Tempest Rising is C&C in all but name. The most recent playtest felt like a hybrid of Tiberian Sun and Tiberium Wars. It’s not out yet, but I’m very excited about it.

I enjoy them; they’re a small, mundane, humanising element in a sea of (often bad) news or game trailer links in my feed.

Though I also appreciate the parody.

They’re effectively visual novels with light gameplay mechanics for navigation or making some narrative path choices. At least, that’s how I felt about Until Dawn.

Not to add to the whataboutism, but don’t forget how the US firebombed Tokyo.

Tax evasion on top of the other illegal activity can increase the consequences if you’re caught. They tend to require warrants before divulging information to other authorities, however any information gathered through legal means can be used against you.

The main benefit of reporting the income is to reduce the likelihood that somebody gets suspicious of the change in buying habits and starts in investigation in the first place.

I’ve been enjoying Signalis. It’s a survival horror game with a top down 2.5d perspective and a late ps1-early ps2 graphics style. It’s very reminiscent of the older Resident Evil games where ammo is scarce(more or less is available based on difficulty), inventory space is limited(adjustable limits are available in settings), and there are specific rooms with a storage container where you can store items and save your game (there is no autosave or checkpoint system; you have to manually save your game), but it very much feels like it’s own thing.

I picked it up on a whim when looking for games with female protagonists to play on a new-to-me hand-me-down Steam Deck, and it happens to run perfectly on it.

It’s not hard, but it’s still a hurdle. Warrants also can’t be requested from a judge by just anyone in the USPS iirc, so the start of the process often relies on an employee taking time out of their day to report something they deem suspicious in the first place, likely in an understaffed and overworked office that’s not built to handle the package volume of the area they serve.

Iirc, the USPS can’t unilaterally search your letters or packages because, as a government institution, it would be a major violation of the 4th amendment- even postal inspectors need to get a warrant to open a letter or package that’s not expressly addressed to them if it was in the care of the USPS. I think the only exception is when it’s an ‘Operation Santa’ letter, and there are regulations in place for how those get handled to protect the privacy of the sender.

The private parcel and package companies probably don’t have to abide by the same restrictions because they’re not government owned and operated.

What’s frustrating for me is when the PC side cripples mixed-input entirely even though I just want mouse-look, gyro aim, and analog movement from my controller without any aim assist. (Looking at you, Destiny 2 and Halo.)