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?

One area of The Talos Principle is set in Greco-Roman ruins. It captues a very specific tone. The puzzles are fun too

It’s unofficial, but you can play it via browser at shin.itch.io/elden-ring-gb, or download it and play via emulator

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

I second CalyxOS, been using it for about a year now and I think it’s a good compromise between privacy and convenience. Is it the absolute most secure and private? Maybe not, but my threat model is low and I don’t mind trading a little bit of privacy for a bit of ease of use.

My favorite console has got to be the original Xbox. I would play it all day when I was younger and to this day I still use it because emulation is iffy for a lot of titles. Games from that era from like 1999 to 2006 hit home for me and I love replaying the greats like Knights of the Old Republic, Halo 2, and 007 Nightfire.

For everything else I do a lot of steam gaming and emulating on my linux pc, steam deck, and mobile. I use mobile for casual, quick, or pauseable games, steam deck for games that “feel” right like racing games and old adventure games, and pc for longer gaming sessions, or mouse and keyboard games like Starcraft and Age of Empires.

It’s hard to beat pc because it can litterally do everything better (except maybe portability) and you can customize it into anything, so it’s definitely the objective winner, but og Xbox is still my biased favorite.

I switched my daily driver to Linux Mint Debian Edition recently and it definitely does combine the best of both. It’s easy to use and coming from plain debian has everything that I’m used to. Been loving it so far.