Matchmaking was only open so many hours in a day. I don’t know if the available uptime was region based, but at least in North America, it was open in the late afternoon/early evenings Monday through Friday. It was open for most of the day on Saturday and Sunday.

It’s VERY MUCH a work in progress. Despite how many people are already playing it, they’re actively changing it all the time, and patches can and will drop without any warning.

That’s much higher than normal. A quick google suggests between $200-$500 is more in line with a normal student loan monthly payment, which is still a burden on someone just starting out.

I never got too deep into it, but I enjoyed ~10 hours of it before getting distracted by other games. It felt more like a park business simulator like Roller Coaster Tycoon, rather than an elaborate park and ride designer like Planet Coaster.

It’s totally worth $15 if you want to scratch that itch.

There’s a fantastic LotR total conversion mod for TW: Rome. It was also ported to RW: Rome Remastered, so very easy to play even on modern hardware.

EDIT: Search for Lord of the Rings: Total War (Remastered) for the most recent version of the mod.

Weirdly enough, Yakuza 7: Like a Dragon. I’d dipped in to the Yakuza series here and there, but never had one grab me. LAD played with some classic JRPG mechanics (specifically inspired by the Dragon Quest style games the protagonist would have played in his youths), and combined that with a mature protagonist (in his early 40s at the start of the game) who still managed to radiate the relentlessly positive himbo energy that was refreshing and fun.

Of course, the story itself is bonkers and fun in a way that the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series has always been. I went in not expecting much, and found it to be the most refreshing game I’d played in years.

Trader Joe’s has been owned by Aldi* since 1979. The fact that they managed to maintain the image of a wholesome company as long as they have is astounding.

(there are actually two different Aldi companies from Germany, owned by two brothers who split from the original company to make Aldi Nord (North) and Aldi Sud (South), that go by different names depending on the country they’re in. Aldi Nord is Trader Joe’s in the US, and Aldi Sud just goes by Aldi in the US)

So in the report by Meta, they go into a little more detail. One post in particular claimed that Fort Detrick is the origin of Covid. Fort Detrick is located in Maryland, and a quick google shows that it hasn’t worked on biological weapons since the late 60s.

Here’s Meta’s full report: https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.8562-6/10000000_180063885098584_6098733693167598956_n.pdf?_nc_cat=110&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=ae5e01&_nc_ohc=xfoti16XMyMAX_H1sjP&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.xx&oh=00_AfBw-FF6-NEqznOXr7ZYyGNvrEZbb-9FFm6Bw6K8eZJ_pg&oe=64F1F5AE

Closest I can think of is the Dark Messiah of Might and Magic game from 2006, from Arkane (who later went on to make Dishonored and more recently Prey and Deathloop). First person, you pick your class between Fighter, Wizard, and Rogue, and most of the combat involves figuring out how to use traps, physic, and magic to kill your targets. Lots of ledges to kick monsters off of or spikes to knock monsters into, or creating ice on the floor as a wizard to make enemies slip to their deaths. Holds up pretty well for a 15+ year old game.