Disabling Google Chrome highlighting of search text on result pages

So if you've run into the new "feature" of Google Chrome when using the Google search page where you click a result and the text that was showing in the search result on Google will be highlighted and the page scrolled down to it, it is something that Google is apparently testing and doesn't allow you to disable. There apparently used to be something on the chrome://flags page which would let you disable it, but Google appears to have removed those flags, disallowing the user from disabling them. Which is asinine, because I hate this fucking horseshit.

However, someone has created an extension on the Chrome Web Store that supposedly disables it. I'm trying that now. Hopefully, it works as advertised and doesn't have any ulterior motives.

Regarding Denuvo, I figured it would happen eventually...

...or, rather, has already happened.

Looks like I've already bought a game that contains Denuvo, without realizing it until now. *weary fucking sigh*

Found out via randomly browsing this curator on Steam (which I now follow), and then when I checked the Life is Strange 2 Steam page itself, sure enough, it is flagged as containing that fucking malware.[1]

Bought it back in May (which means it's far too late to refund now or I would do so) when it was on sale, but before I'd really started more consistently paying attention to this shit. God fucking damn it. Well, I guess I'll just be marking it as a new category of "CONTAINS DENUVO DO NOT INSTALL" in the Steam client itself, as well as hiding it. Fucking hell.

Oh well, I never got much past the first episode of the original Life is Strange anyway, so it would have been a while, if ever, before I got to Life is Strange 2 (not that that really matters, since apparently the second game has little to do with the first one). And now, I'll never be getting to Life is Strange 2, at least not while it contains the Denuvo malware. Hell, this even makes me not want to ever try to replay the first game or its follow-up (which I also own on Steam but haven't played yet, due to not having finished the original) now, either, even though those don't contain the malware Denuvo. (EDIT 2) No, wait, Before the Storm apparently used to have Denuvo in it, so I can't really trust it either, now. Jesus Christ. (/EDIT 2)

(EDIT) And, fucking goddamn it, even Captain Spirit contains Denvuo, even though that was a fucking free game intended as a promo for Life is Strange 2. Glad I never got around to playing it, either. Seriously... malware DRM in a fucking free game. Fucking why?! (/EDIT)

(EDIT 3) Looks like Yakuza 0 is "no longer using Denuvo," as well, and I'd played the hell out of that a year ago or so. I have to wonder now if it had the malware in it when I was playing it, though I'm pretty sure it had already been (ostensibly) removed by that point, but still... I really wish I'd been paying more attention to this kind of shit back then. (/EDIT 3)

(EDIT 4) No, wait, found another fucking one that I'd already bought a while back (but fortunately haven't tried to play yet). What a fuckload of shit. So that's another one for the new "CONTAINS DENUVO DO NOT INSTALL" category. (/EDIT 4)

To fucking hell forever with the modern video game industry.

[1] - And I don't give a fuck how many times it's claimed that Denuvo isn't malware by reputation management drones or trolls or game developers or other such asshats, it's fucking malware. Just because it is supposedly a "sanctioned" malware, i.e. "signed drivers" or what the fuck ever, doesn't mean it's not still fucking malware. All that means is that Denuvo has enough sway in the industry to become "sanctioned," because developers love it (at the expense of the actual user/purchaser of the developers' product, but then, anti-consumer bullshit has become part and parcel of the modern video game industry, so fucking *SHRUG* I guess).

Okami

Or, technically, I guess I should call it Okami HD? I mean, whatever, it's Okami.

I thought I might have written a post about this game back when the original version came out, or when the Wii version came out, but if I did, I'm not able to find them at the moment, so I'll write one about it here, now, since I just finished the Steam version.

So... yeah, it's basically a Zelda-style game, in which you traverse the land, meeting quirky characters, fighting monsters, and looking for new abilities that you can use to open up traversal options to get farther in the game. Not to be confused with a Metroidvania. (Though, really, what actually is the difference between a Zelda-style game and a Metroidvania? I mean, I could try to list similarities and differences [and there are differences], but that's beyond the scope of this particular post. Maybe later, though the subject honestly doesn't interest me all that much.)

The art style is the whole cel-shaded thing, and it still looks amazing even now, and not just because of the whole "HD" thing. Okami was always a very beautiful game, even with the original PS2 release. (Though, apparently, at one point it had a rather different style of graphics, as can be seen in a video you can unlock after finishing the game. And I think if they'd gone that route, the graphics would be way more dated today than the current version.)

The music is amazing. The sound... for the most part, it's great, too, but the "voices" can get a little annoying after a while (fortunately, the game lets you turn those off, though I never did, since I just considered it to be part of the experience).

I don't know if it's because I was playing with keyboard and mouse, but for some reason, the game actually seemed easier than I remember it being, on the whole. The combat, even against bosses, was not nearly as potentially annoying as I recall. Maybe it was because I tended to remember most of the enemy weaknesses, or was more willing to experiment with brush techniques when I didn't, this time around, rather than just blindly attacking or whatever. And speaking of the brush techniques, I had far, far fewer misfires with that this time through than I remember having when playing on the PS2 and even on the Wii. All that said, however, racing Kai in Yoshpet and fishing (EDIT) and Blockhead Grande and rolling those fucking balls up that fucking hill to that fucking bear (/EDIT) were exactly as annoying as I recalled them being. The only thing truly annoying about the controls, at least on keyboard and mouse, is that when you enter the menu, for some reason, selection and cancel keys are mapped to backspace and enter, which means you have to take your hand off the mouse to press them, and as far as I could tell, there was no way to remap those particular keys. I'd have remapped them to left and right mouse clicks, if I could have done so. Or, at least, if it was possible to remap them, I was too dumb to figure it out.

One thing that really didn't age well was Issun's behavior. On many occasions, I found myself wishing that I had access to a "for the love of god, Issun, please shut the fuck up and quit being so belligerently idiotic for once in your life" command. Especially whenever any adult, non-elderly (non-god-wolf) female character was around. I don't recall it bothering me so much when I played it originally (or again when I played it on the Wii years later), and it certainly wasn't a dealbreaker this time either, but his casual sexism was way more grating this time around. And his aggressive stupidity was more annoying as well. E.g. him getting basically all of the plot of the Ryoshima Coast arc almost completely backwards as far as who the bad guys and good guys were, not to mention every encounter with Waka... though, to be fair, if you've never played it before, you wouldn't know for sure, either, which would make it a "twist" when things turn out to actually be different, but still. Spoiler alert for a 14 year old game, and all, I guess?

Anyway, aside from minor quibbles like that, I have to say that Okami is still probably one of my top five favorite The Legend of Zelda games.

I've never played Okamiden, and if I did want to play it now, I'd have to hunt up a rom and a DS emulator, I guess. I heard it wasn't nearly as good as Okami, though, and kind of just rehashed the first game. If they ever make a proper sequel to the first game, I'd be all over that (as long as it's not weighed down with shit like Denuvo or whatever).