u/LargeCombination9

My puppy is 9 months old and I think she's in her first heat, she's been a little swollen the past week or so.

I don't see any blood or discharge but it's my understanding Dobermans are known to be very clean so I might not see it.

She's acting completely normal, drinking, eating and playing and cuddling with my senior female Doberman.

How do I know if she's in fact in heat when there are no visible changes except the swelling? Do I need to be attentive to anything in particular or do anything?

A whole year ago I signed up for a Microsoft 365 Business Basic trial, I used a regular Gmail Adress that I use for my business. I ended up not using it at all but when I went in to cancel my subscription it kept failing to log in and kept saying "you need to use a business email to log in" basically there was no way to access the account, I kept getting emails every month about the charge so but I was never able to find where or how they're charging it because there is no charge on any of my cards! I figured maybe I could dispute the charge through my credit card but there was never a charge to be disputed.

I honestly can't remember what I did one night but I was able to access something in microsoft somehow and delete some kind of billing thing that was on there, there was no credit card on file but anyways, I must have deleted whatever payment method they thought they had on my file and soon after got an email saying payment was declined I figured I would get a couple warning emails before they finallt cancel the account alltogether..

It has been 3 months!! and they are still sending me emails saying my card was declined evert single day!! at what point do they just get the memo and stop? Do I just block them at this point and forget about it?

Warnings:

1.contains spoilers for Uncharted 4, Lost Legacy and The Last of Us, do not proceed if you have not completed but intend to play any of these games

2.I am not a hater, and not everything is for everyone but I am brutally honest here, so if you hate reading criticism on a game you love and you can't take if, it's ok to skip this post.

3.It is very rambly because I literally finished the game 30 minutes ago and it's still very raw in my mind so these are just my thoughts.

4.English is not my first language so sorry in advance for any misspellings or grammatical errors.

So, After playing The Last of Us 2 I fell into a deep post game depression, not only did the story break me completely, the gameplay was so satisfyingly good I kept comparing it to every game I played after that and it felt like nothing would live up to it, so I replayed it several times, platinumed it on grounded permadeath watched several streamer playthroughs of it, this was not healthy and I urgently needed something to get my mind and heart off of this game so I maybe I'll be able to enjoy gaming (or any other form of media for that matter) again.

I made a post talking about how I felt like it ruined gaming for me and many people really resonated with me, I felt seen and less weird and alone with what I felt about TLOU2, this game changed many people and changed the entire world of gaming. I also got a bunch of suggestions for games that helped people get out of the post TLOU2 slump. I played RDR2 for a while but although the story was good it was way too depressing for the state I was in after TLOU2. And as the game progressed it felt very repetitive, I will probably get back to it some day but it just didn't satisfy that itch for me.

Then Uncharted 4 went on sale. I'm a PC gamer so I couldn't play the first 3 but I watched playthroughs of them and although they seemed fun they also seemed very outdated as far as gameplay, I was told Uncharted 4 gameplay was much more similar to TLOU2 and had a great story, some even called it a masterpiece so I had high hopes and was excited to play a game that has the potential to give me an adventurous gameplay without the depression.

I went in, it was going good at first, I was able to get into the story too. The moment Sam died in Mexico, I had already known the fake death trope in these series and I remember rolling my eyes and there was zero emotion or empathy, like yeah I got to know this dude 30 minutes ago and he's already fake dead and I'm supposed to be torn over it or?.. anyways I kept playing, got the hang of jumping and roping, there is no sprint function and stealth and combat are very choppy, I played on Hard mode expecting to put my TLOU grounded skills to good use but essentially just rolling around shooting was enough and there was no real challenge or reason to use stealth if you're dying of getting shot 20 times in the face just roll around some more or dive under water, no need to heal or anything.

One of the first downsides I noticed was I really miss looting. The map is massive and absolutely gorgeous and mostly felt like open world but the lack of looting and only being able to find absolutely meaningless treasures that didn't even have descriptions, like why am I supposed to care about finding this? Ellie's cards and Abbys coins at least had a point, and finding pills, upgrades, weapons and other nessecities that you would otherwise not make it without made it so you needed and wanted to explore every inch of the map. So yeah, all that beautiful open world coupled with the complete lack of looting made it so that there was no incentive to explore at all and I just don't understand that.

As the story progressed it just felt so incredibly repetitive, the story was completely predictable to me, the antagonists were not antagonizing and it felt like Drake, Sam and Sully kept acting like they were above killing someone that, mind you, has been actively trying to kill them for weeks??? and also after they've killed like 200 people so what's the issue and why the need to act all mighty right now as your brother has a gun to his head? And then as your brother is slowly dying (which of course is fake) you're gonna stand and have a whole convo and sword fight with this dude that you should have killed yestarsay? What are we doing?

Driving was a little exciting until it again got old and repetitive very fast.

The puzzles were far and few between and super easy to solve.

The conversations between Drake, Sully and Sam were ok but nothing too exciting.

The allys were generally useless, especially Sam, and especially because the same thing kept getting repeated throughout the game and it got old really fast, you boost Sam up somewhere then the bridge/ladder/ledge breaks and you either have to wait an obnoxiously long amount of time for him to drop a crate, you fall and have to find your way up, or he dissappears for an obnoxiously long amount of time so you have to find your way up.

One thing I felt throughout the entire game was there was no sense of urgency, no sweaty palms, I already knew and expected every fall, turn, twist and 100th fake death in the game that there was absolutely no excitement whatsoever, it almost felt like I was on my 2nd or 3rd playthrough when you already know what to expect.

I could pinpoint exactly where each mechanic was used in TLOU2 and how exciting, unique and nerve wrecking it was in TLOU2, but it was so lazily overused in Uncharted 4, like why do we need 3 elevators in the span of 15 minutes?

As a person with severe acrophobia (fear of heights) TLOU2 triggered me so much in that department that I would have knots in my stomach, I would close my eyes everytime I accidentally fell otherwise my heart would drop out my ass. I remember my palms literally sweating trying to grip the controller as Lev takes us higher and higher and the elevator scene was there to try and calm us down before it gets even worse, I was scared to death having to climb between those two buildings. But interestingly Uncharted, being a game revolved around jumping, climbing and falling off EXTREME heights did none of that for me, I had no problem "Oh no Drake"ing myself off a cliff just to reset the encounter.

Basically my takeaway was that this felt like it was a game created to test out mechanics for TLOU2 and there was zero creativity in how they used them, the story was also super lazy and except for maybe Sam lying everything was completely predictable to me (and I'm pronably dumb for this but Sam lying was only a surprise to me because I had completely missed that Rafe and Alcazar were two different people, it had been too long to remember these two random people we saw at the beginning of the game were not the same person).

I know people love and adore this game, and I can see why, so I don't want to shit all over it, and I'm honestly not, it was overall a good game, but I have definetly played much better ones and this was just not the one that did it for me personally. I think I would have appreciated it much more had I not played TLOU2 (and also Death Stranding) prior to it and not came into it with possibly unrealistic expectations.

Now by the end I was honestly so over it, but I didn't have another game lined up and I also payed for the collection so I decided to just give The Lost Legacy a go, I was also told it was a shorter game so I was hoping it would hold me off until I found something else worth playing.

Now let me tell you, I was hooked from the first moment. I was plopped right in the middle of an Indian market, this sassy little girl is on my case and I have no idea whats going on but I fall in love with her in those 5 minutes I spend walking around with her. Then ITS ON!!

I have no idea wtf is happening, it's dark, moody, almost cyberpunk feeling but we're in an active warzone?? And I'm just sneaking around?? Where are we going? Who are we looking for? Then Nadine pops up, I'm supposed to like her now? Ok

Some crazy stealth, combat and running all jammed into what felt like 5 minutes of pure adrenaline, then we're plopped into an absolutely gorgeous enviorment and this is the first time I really got TLOU2 vibes, this threw me right back to Dina and Ellie in Downtown Seattle but on an epic scale. This section had so many puzzles jammed into it and they were all unique and so creative! The token collection made it so I had to actually explore and find a literal hole underwater and climb into an elephants, whattt?? I'm getting to know Nadine and Chloe as we freely explore and drive around doing whatever. The roping and climbing was also used so much more cleverly in this game, jumping across the map to complete different parts of the puzzle was soo fun!

I started to love Chloe so fast, and watching Nadine open up to her as the two of them slowly started to like and care for each other, even though neither of them would admit it, was so sweet.

Then a sense of dread and loss of hope as Nadine finds out the person she grew to trust lied to her, this was supposed to be their -Elena confronts Drake for lying- part, but we already knew Elena would forgive him and just join in on the journey. Heck, we knew Elena would join us as soon as the game started. We don't know much about Nadine, and if anything, we know that she's the type of person to put herself first, is she just going to leave Chloe behind and get the tusk herself? Is Nadine now back to being the antagonist?

Now we're not only trying to get to the tusk before Asav, we also need to save Sam and we also have no idea if we're going to need to fight Nadine. I was also personally completely expecting Sam to betray us at any point because if he duped his brother so easily there is no reason for him to be loyal to Chloe.

We reunite with Nadine mid battle (I really appriciated them not doing the whole Chloe fake dies and Nadine saves her and says she forgives her thing). We get the absolutely gorgeous albiet awkward elephant ride, I know I'm annoying but again it threw me back to the magic of TLOU1 giraffe scene and TLOU2 dinosaur flashback. It was truly magical and I loved that they took the moment to do that and remind us of the charm and magic that is India.

Sam is probably my only ick in the game, it sucks because he's a cool dude and I love anything Troy Baker, but his entire purpose in this game was to create friction between Chloe and Nadine, he was as, and arguably more useless and annoying than he was in U4, watching the girls push and pull and lift and literally do everything as Sam is just standing there looking at them was so annoying. I understand the "we are strong women we don't need a man" trope but it got old after the third or forth time, I kept turning the camera back every time I only saw Nadine step up to help and watching him just stand there was infuriating.

He also kept pulling a Dina on me and literally always being in my way which almost sent me over the edge.

Anyways, we get another super cool puzzle which was not complicated but I loved rope jumping around the map as Nadine and Chloe chit chat and bond some more.

Then we reunite with Sam and Asav has all three of us tied up, it was at this point I realized why this game was so much more exciting, it was because at no point did I know where any of this was going, the dude ran off with the Tusk, we're tied up and about to drown, I'm with two people who want to kill eachtother and also have a high chance of betraying me and leaving me for dead (it's not like I'm tied up next to my brother, wife or lifelong mentor).

We get to the train station, Sam is at least a little useful on the way there, by breaking a ladder and then dropping a crate, of course. But the following battle made up for it! Some very good stealth that completely made sense because rolling around the map was not going to work this time with the amount of enemies and a helicopter flying above us. The screen was gray 80% of the time as I completely obliterate every last one of them and climb onto a freaking helicopter with my new BFF to fuck up this guy?? Hell yeah!

I lied previously when I said nothing was predictable, at that point I already knew Nadine and Sam were not leaving Chloe to fight alone, they were BFFFF's now and Sam is probably in love with one or both of them so he's definetly going to help her prevent a genocide.

Then we proceed to go on one of the coolest action packed adventures chasing the bomb on the train, it was pure chaos in the best way possible, which worked so well with the gun mechanics. Nadine fake dies but we already know she's coming back to fuck everyone up in a minute. And fuck up Arav she did, oh let me tell you, it was so satisfying watching that piece of shit evil man go down by the bare hands of these two badass women.

The moment Chloe and Nadine were hanging off the rope on the tracks is where I finally broke down crying and seeing the three of them sitting together is when I realized, this was the game that healed me.

Warnings:

1.contains spoilers for Uncharted 4, Lost Legacy and The Last of Us, do not proceed if you have not completed but intend to play any of these games

2.I am not a hater, and not everything is for everyone but I am brutally honest here, so if you hate reading criticism on a game you love and you can't take if, it's ok to skip this post.

3.It is very rambly because I literally finished the game 30 minutes ago and it's still very raw in my mind so these are just my thoughts.

4.English is not my first language so sorry in advance for any misspellings or grammatical errors.

So, After playing The Last of Us 2 I fell into a deep post game depression, not only did the story break me completely, the gameplay was so satisfyingly good I kept comparing it to every game I played after that and it felt like nothing would live up to it, so I replayed it several times, platinumed it on grounded permadeath watched several streamer playthroughs of it, this was not healthy and I urgently needed something to get my mind and heart off of this game so I maybe I'll be able to enjoy gaming (or any other form of media for that matter) again.

I made a post talking about how I felt like it ruined gaming for me and many people really resonated with me, I felt seen and less weird and alone with what I felt about TLOU2, this game changed many people and changed the entire world of gaming. I also got a bunch of suggestions for games that helped people get out of the post TLOU2 slump. I played RDR2 for a while but although the story was good it was way too depressing for the state I was in after TLOU2. And as the game progressed it felt very repetitive, I will probably get back to it some day but it just didn't satisfy that itch for me.

Then Uncharted 4 went on sale. I'm a PC gamer so I couldn't play the first 3 but I watched playthroughs of them and although they seemed fun they also seemed very outdated as far as gameplay, I was told Uncharted 4 gameplay was much more similar to TLOU2 and had a great story, some even called it a masterpiece so I had high hopes and was excited to play a game that has the potential to give me an adventurous gameplay without the depression.

I went in, it was going good at first, I was able to get into the story too. The moment Sam died in Mexico, I had already known the fake death trope in these series and I remember rolling my eyes and there was zero emotion or empathy, like yeah I got to know this dude 30 minutes ago and he's already fake dead and I'm supposed to be torn over it or?.. anyways I kept playing, got the hang of jumping and roping, there is no sprint function and stealth and combat are very choppy, I played on Hard mode expecting to put my TLOU grounded skills to good use but essentially just rolling around shooting was enough and there was no real challenge or reason to use stealth if you're dying of getting shot 20 times in the face just roll around some more or dive under water, no need to heal or anything.

One of the first downsides I noticed was I really miss looting. The map is massive and absolutely gorgeous and mostly felt like open world but the lack of looting and only being able to find absolutely meaningless treasures that didn't even have descriptions, like why am I supposed to care about finding this? Ellie's cards and Abbys coins at least had a point, and finding pills, upgrades, weapons and other nessecities that you would otherwise not make it without made it so you needed and wanted to explore every inch of the map. So yeah, all that beautiful open world coupled with the complete lack of looting made it so that there was no incentive to explore at all and I just don't understand that.

As the story progressed it just felt so incredibly repetitive, the story was completely predictable to me, the antagonists were not antagonizing and it felt like Drake, Sam and Sully kept acting like they were above killing someone that, mind you, has been actively trying to kill them for weeks??? and also after they've killed like 200 people so what's the issue and why the need to act all mighty right now as your brother has a gun to his head? And then as your brother is slowly dying (which of course is fake) you're gonna stand and have a whole convo and sword fight with this dude that you should have killed yestarsay? What are we doing?

Driving was a little exciting until it again got old and repetitive very fast.

The puzzles were far and few between and super easy to solve.

The conversations between Drake, Sully and Sam were ok but nothing too exciting.

The allys were generally useless, especially Sam, and especially because the same thing kept getting repeated throughout the game and it got old really fast, you boost Sam up somewhere then the bridge/ladder/ledge breaks and you either have to wait an obnoxiously long amount of time for him to drop a crate, you fall and have to find your way up, or he dissappears for an obnoxiously long amount of time so you have to find your way up.

One thing I felt throughout the entire game was there was no sense of urgency, no sweaty palms, I already knew and expected every fall, turn, twist and 100th fake death in the game that there was absolutely no excitement whatsoever, it almost felt like I was on my 2nd or 3rd playthrough when you already know what to expect.

I could pinpoint exactly where each mechanic was used in TLOU2 and how exciting, unique and nerve wrecking it was in TLOU2, but it was so lazily overused in Uncharted 4, like why do we need 3 elevators in the span of 15 minutes?

As a person with severe acrophobia (fear of heights) TLOU2 triggered me so much in that department that I would have knots in my stomach, I would close my eyes everytime I accidentally fell otherwise my heart would drop out my ass. I remember my palms literally sweating trying to grip the controller as Lev takes us higher and higher and the elevator scene was there to try and calm us down before it gets even worse, I was scared to death having to climb between those two buildings. But interestingly Uncharted, being a game revolved around jumping, climbing and falling off EXTREME heights did none of that for me, I had no problem "Oh no Drake"ing myself off a cliff just to reset the encounter.

Basically my takeaway was that this felt like it was a game created to test out mechanics for TLOU2 and there was zero creativity in how they used them, the story was also super lazy and except for maybe Sam lying everything was completely predictable to me (and I'm pronably dumb for this but Sam lying was only a surprise to me because I had completely missed that Rafe and Alcazar were two different people, it had been too long to remember these two random people we saw at the beginning of the game were not the same person).

I know people love and adore this game, and I can see why, so I don't want to shit all over it, and I'm honestly not, it was overall a good game, but I have definetly played much better ones and this was just not the one that did it for me personally. I think I would have appreciated it much more had I not played TLOU2 (and also Death Stranding) prior to it and not came into it with possibly unrealistic expectations.

Now by the end I was honestly so over it, but I didn't have another game lined up and I also payed for the collection so I decided to just give The Lost Legacy a go, I was also told it was a shorter game so I was hoping it would hold me off until I found something else worth playing.

Now let me tell you, I was hooked from the first moment. I was plopped right in the middle of an Indian market, this sassy little girl is on my case and I have no idea whats going on but I fall in love with her in those 5 minutes I spend walking around with her. Then ITS ON!!

I have no idea wtf is happening, it's dark, moody, almost cyberpunk feeling but we're in an active warzone?? And I'm just sneaking around?? Where are we going? Who are we looking for? Then Nadine pops up, I'm supposed to like her now? Ok

Some crazy stealth, combat and running all jammed into what felt like 5 minutes of pure adrenaline, then we're plopped into an absolutely gorgeous enviorment and this is the first time I really got TLOU2 vibes, this threw me right back to Dina and Ellie in Downtown Seattle but on an epic scale. This section had so many puzzles jammed into it and they were all unique and so creative! The token collection made it so I had to actually explore and find a literal hole underwater and climb into an elephants, whattt?? I'm getting to know Nadine and Chloe as we freely explore and drive around doing whatever. The roping and climbing was also used so much more cleverly in this game, jumping across the map to complete different parts of the puzzle was soo fun!

I started to love Chloe so fast, and watching Nadine open up to her as the two of them slowly started to like and care for each other, even though neither of them would admit it, was so sweet.

Then a sense of dread and loss of hope as Nadine finds out the person she grew to trust lied to her, this was supposed to be their -Elena confronts Drake for lying- part, but we already knew Elena would forgive him and just join in on the journey. Heck, we knew Elena would join us as soon as the game started. We don't know much about Nadine, and if anything, we know that she's the type of person to put herself first, is she just going to leave Chloe behind and get the tusk herself? Is Nadine now back to being the antagonist?

Now we're not only trying to get to the tusk before Asav, we also need to save Sam and we also have no idea if we're going to need to fight Nadine. I was also personally completely expecting Sam to betray us at any point because if he duped his brother so easily there is no reason for him to be loyal to Chloe.

We reunite with Nadine mid battle (I really appriciated them not doing the whole Chloe fake dies and Nadine saves her and says she forgives her thing). We get the absolutely gorgeous albiet awkward elephant ride, I know I'm annoying but again it threw me back to the magic of TLOU1 giraffe scene and TLOU2 dinosaur flashback. It was truly magical and I loved that they took the moment to do that and remind us of the charm and magic that is India.

Sam is probably my only ick in the game, it sucks because he's a cool dude and I love anything Troy Baker, but his entire purpose in this game was to create friction between Chloe and Nadine, he was as, and arguably more useless and annoying than he was in U4, watching the girls push and pull and lift and literally do everything as Sam is just standing there looking at them was so annoying. I understand the "we are strong women we don't need a man" trope but it got old after the third or forth time, I kept turning the camera back every time I only saw Nadine step up to help and watching him just stand there was infuriating.

He also kept pulling a Dina on me and literally always being in my way which almost sent me over the edge.

Anyways, we get another super cool puzzle which was not complicated but I loved rope jumping around the map as Nadine and Chloe chit chat and bond some more.

Then we reunite with Sam and Asav has all three of us tied up, it was at this point I realized why this game was so much more exciting, it was because at no point did I know where any of this was going, the dude ran off with the Tusk, we're tied up and about to drown, I'm with two people who want to kill eachtother and also have a high chance of betraying me and leaving me for dead (it's not like I'm tied up next to my brother, wife or lifelong mentor).

We get to the train station, Sam is at least a little useful on the way there, by breaking a ladder and then dropping a crate, of course. But the following battle made up for it! Some very good stealth that completely made sense because rolling around the map was not going to work this time with the amount of enemies and a helicopter flying above us. The screen was gray 80% of the time as I completely obliterate every last one of them and climb onto a freaking helicopter with my new BFF to fuck up this guy?? Hell yeah!

I lied previously when I said nothing was predictable, at that point I already knew Nadine and Sam were not leaving Chloe to fight alone, they were BFFFF's now and Sam is probably in love with one or both of them so he's definetly going to help her prevent a genocide.

Then we proceed to go on one of the coolest action packed adventures chasing the bomb on the train, it was pure chaos in the best way possible, which worked so well with the gun mechanics. Nadine fake dies but we already know she's coming back to fuck everyone up in a minute. And fuck up Arav she did, oh let me tell you, it was so satisfying watching that piece of shit evil man go down by the bare hands of these two badass women.

The moment Chloe and Nadine were hanging off the rope on the tracks is where I finally broke down crying and seeing the three of them sitting together is when I realized, this was the game that healed me.