The best thing about Portal 1/2 and possibly the secret to it's success is that it always ensured the insanity was able to fit inside my limited dumb brain, though the removal of limits is always welcome in any editor.

I think the concerns are valid, I know a few kids that have signed up to fight in the forever wars and regretted it. All brought up on a healthy diet of western propaganda and call of duty.

And in this instance, more than the more abstract arab shooters of yore, this was a real battle, with real white phosphorus and depleted uranium rounds, a civilian casualyy count 6-10 times that of the western occupiers, and a lot of dodgy shit like not letting any "Military aged males" leave the city before or during the battle (This would include all of us in a similar situation btw, regardless of your fanaticism or armaments).

I think there are plenty of good, moral reasons to deplatform this shit. Would MS put up with a Turner Diaries FPS? An adventure game where you play as hitler? I think sometimes we need to accept that we are the baddies and glorifying or whitewashing our atrocities is bad fucking taste. Not saying shut down development, let them build and sell it where they can. But anyone who chooses to sell it will take a reputation hit with me, that's for sure. And the thousands of dollars a year I spend on entertainment will take that into account.

I'm not that precious about all this shit. Weve had the live game thing going for a while now, I don't expect full functionality at launch. It's sad but it is what it is. Synthetic or even actual beta tests can never replicate the engineering issues behind a real launch (on gamepass no less! Fuck that! Too scary. Big respect fot rare with Sea of Theives thats insane that they pulled that off.)

I actually like the game, which has been flawless single player for me but don't see myself getting obsessed with it. Destiny has issues but it's strength in art and sound design, being first person perspective, gunplay and color pallet really put it on another level, though Outriders seems really strong in a lot of other ancillary ways I can't quite put my finger on. Good luck to them.

fakespyder wrote on Mar 29, 2021, 22:04:
Will the battles still sound like a bad hen's night?
* description paraphrased from Mack at WaB

Never realy got this. I love "Realism" in games but a few screaming anachronistic female soldiers isn't as rediculous as say, the absolute lack of civilian noncombatants and children getting murdered accidently on the battlefield, respawning and lack of hideous non-fatal woundings not to mention all the fancy guns that nobody actually had in these theaters, or never in such numbers for the few that were. I'm starting to judge people by which specific concessions to gameplay and accessibility they have issues with.

Cutter wrote on Mar 14, 2021, 19:21:

OpticNerve wrote on Mar 14, 2021, 16:29:

Prez wrote on Mar 14, 2021, 16:12:
Side question: can anyone explain the relatively tiny download size?

Proc-gen (seeded) maps + low-res textures and low-poly models is probably why the game is relatively tiny in size. That isn't to say that the game is ugly. Due to the small dev size, I think that this "style" was done on purpose. The lighting, weather and fog effects are very atmospheric and beautiful though and makes exploration fun compared to most other survival games. Needless to say, it's very subjective on if people find the game good looking or not

Oh it's definitely ugly. It would have looked great 20 years ago, but not today.

I think it's up there with Sea of Theives in terms of technical art accomplishment, but I'm not saying you are wrong. For me it's amazing. I'd rather have that lighting, destructibility, view distance, density of forests, building detail and the amazing framerate than something that looks like cyberpunk and can barely render an interior scene with a few models properly on a decent rig.

I'm all in on this, solo ATM. Hoping they bring it to Xbox so I can get the kid in.
The graphics seem horrid at first but like Sea of Theives, the technical art is world class and the whole style grows on you and gels so quickly, for me it's one of the most beuitiful things I think I've ever played. The way lighting, fog, shadows all interact is better than anything I've seen before. Those stroms are wild! Nighttime in the forest? Goosebumps! The fog over the depressions, the eyes of the tree zombies in the dark, the 30 meter high troll getting pissed at the racket you are making at that coal deposit? Frightening! The dungeons are simple but channel that classic Morrowind vibe in a way I've missed since 2002. I think it does mood and ambiance better than SoT and RDR2. But the expeditions are actually scary, fun and profitable on land unlike SoT.

Really good stuff. Might be the first actual minecraft killer for me. Only took over a decade!

Rain wrote on Feb 15, 2021, 15:10:
Maybe I am getting old, but I always felt it was too hard to actually see the components.

I had some trouble with this. Especially on switch with it's low resolution. OC2 on Xbox at 65" seems fine, though keeping up with the noise on screen/leanring the kitchens is part of the fun!

I think I enjoyed Moving Out even more, same publisher and heavily inspired by OC, even more. It's got all the slapstick and a lot less of the fiddlyness except when it's kind of intended. Works for younger children as well.

eRe4s3r wrote on Feb 14, 2021, 23:02:

Dacron wrote on Feb 14, 2021, 19:26:
Dyson Sphere program is Factorio on crack (and factorio itself was crack... so dyson sphere would be speed balls?) . Like an expanded 3d version of it requiring planetary involvement as opposed to railways. LOVE the liquid extraction (it puts them in packaged bars in conveyor, back to liquid when it hits a tank) it was a cute way of doing it, hope it isn't replaced by pipes in the future.

Though with a TON of similarities (resources, mining, storage, recipes, terrain manipulation, research, research items [even the colors are the same to start for research items] automation / transport... basically the whole game is a copy of Factorio that's been expanded) it'll be interesting to sere if it spawns any legal issues.

The joke is, if DSP adds more features they will EASILY overtake Factorio in terms of gameplay thanks to the insanely low feature density in Factorio. It's really mind-blowing that a game that was nearly a decade in development has not actually changed much in those years.... even removing gameplay features instead of adding new ones near the end (campaign.. and enemy science drops making enemies completely pointless to ever fight) instead revising visuals.. as if ANYONE played Factorio for the visuals. Could have been pixel art and it'd probably even have ended up a better game.. oh well I got my money out of Factorio and then some.. and same for DSP.. which is criminally underpriced in this Early Access.. way too cheap for what it already does.

Playing DSP now. It's certainly pretty and has some cool features but I enjoy the trains and belt logic in Factorio, and nothing else has come close. And Satisfactory has DSP beat in terms of verticality. But most developers will tell you the last 10% of a game is the hardest, and Factorio devs were lucky they got 3 years to spend on that. I'm not that gutted about the campaign, it's not like any of the competitors have thought it was a good idea or had enough pent up demand to try and do it themselves. Again, cutting features is normal in gamedev. If something still isn't fun after a few years maybe it's not worth shipping. Blizzard in the old days would kill entire games because of this principal instead of shipping junk.

Whatever problems Destiny has, and there are multitudes, there is nowhere else that feels as fun to shoot heads for dozens of hours and nothing that competes with a good raid on the odd occasion you can get a decent group together.

It would be nice if it had Path of Exile or Warframe levels of content but for some reason I don’t enjoy being in those spaces killing those enemies. Got the kid on the old Xbox, got the exapansion with gamepass, it feels like 2014 in the cosmodrome again. Nothing feels as good to pull a trigger in. Loving it.

Fuck yes. I'm a whitey straighty boring dude and the industry is run by more talented versions of me. It's great that every product seems aimed right at me but this website's comments are a living testament to how bad we are at this. Get some different perspectives in!

Double FIIIIIIIINE!

These remasters are fantastic. The pinacle of the genre in many ways.

Would love mouse support on XBOX for it though... booted up tentacle and it looks great on the 65". Monkey Island 1/2 and Sam and Max added to the collection would be nice as well but Timmy wasn't lead on those so probably no chance.

jdreyer wrote on Oct 22, 2020, 20:10:

RedEye9 wrote on Oct 21, 2020, 21:51:

NKD wrote on Oct 21, 2020, 21:45:
New Zealand seems to be the go-to for billionaires looking to leave the sinking ship that is the United States.

What country wouldn’t accept a billionaire?
You go up to the local government and you say that you’ll give them $1 million a year , you’ll buy a house , you’ll pay property taxes , you’ll pay income taxes , you’ll hire x number of locals for your staff , you’ll donate to local charities and you’ll tip well when you eat out and you won’t be a crazy McAfee person.

Well, true, but which countries would billionaires want to go to? New Zealand is literally the end of the Earth from which you can escape the zombie hoards.

Wrong. We learned from Myth:The Fallen Lords that zombies, being dead, find walking under water not an issue. Though the subduction zones around New Zealand might cause some issues for them.

It's so good. Will get it on PC for the crossplay unless the port is broken. It's fantastic on PS4 other than the optimisations needed for online. Dozens of hours in already. Hundreds to go.

Everyone buy and play Hades. Much nicer on PC but still amazing enough on switch if you want it on the big telle. Feels like the ultimate action RPG distilled into short experimental runs with a really good meta narrative that takes it all into account. 6 fantastic feeling, diverse weapons with 4 variants each plus what feels like an infinite number of ways to add to and modify and combo your builds, I spent dozens of hours in EA on PC and I'm liable to play this sucker for the hundreds it takes to max out. Really phenomenal.

HorrorScope wrote on Sep 25, 2020, 10:31:
"Just don't really see the need for any of the 30xx cards for most of us. A 3080 is just major overkill for almost any sort of gaming right now"

Words like that are people that still need to understand we are a free people who all think different.

Even if it were that (it isn't), headroom is a thing to and if offered in time devs will eat it up someway, that's what they do.

Yep, and some poeple are on on 9 and 10 series cards and overdue for an upgrade and have the cash to support this or the 3070 isn't good enough for whatever they need it to do. Some people like my dad are into monsters like DCS or FS2020 and cannot get enough frames 1440 or in VR on even 20 series cards. I'm not getting one, can probably afford to wait a refresh or two unless something really good comes out that demands it but why would I question anyone else. We are all in different situations.

Dev wrote on Sep 24, 2020, 11:37:
So I'm trying this free on gamepass.
Really enjoyed the first attempt. HOWEVER it took so long! Is there any way to speed this up? Speed up animations or use keyboard shortcuts or anything?
That's something I love about monster train, can do a run in a reasonable time.

I don't know. I thought this game was amazing but the pacing in Hades and Spelunky 2 have me hooked so havn't touched it in weeks.

It might be a case of a brilliant combat system with an overrought meta game, even though it's very pretty and interesting enough. The nemesis style system is cool but also possibly unecessary? Or maybe when you are good you can play faster than I? I'm probably at 3 hours a run at least which dosn't really work for me.

There is a reason Into the Breach canned their strategy layer in favour of their chill, command and conquer style mission selection screen. Or maybe the long runs are ok and we are just thinking about it wrong. I guess original xcom runs could go for 40 hours and still end in failure and we thought that was cool.

RedEye9 wrote on Sep 18, 2020, 20:51:

Bill Borre wrote on Sep 18, 2020, 20:34:
I bet Trump is asking his advisors just how fast he can nominate a supreme court justice.

Mitch McConnell blocked President Barack Obama's Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland, for 293 days.

If that worthless piece of excrement approves a nominee before the election there will be hell to pay.

It was a dick/anti democratic move, but one they were able to pull off with a lame duck president. Because the USA is populated by a huge number of insane people, Trump does not have the same conditions that would allow the Democrats to cockblock him.

And the GOP will go with it. Even the ones that hate Trump know they will get more of their judges and legislation through with him and his cult in charge, as opposed to under Biden in the unlikely event that he wins where they still get most of their legislation or at least comparable laws but not the judges.

On of the two establishment parties knows how to seize, hold and use power and wield propaganda and capital to maintain it. The other is made of mostly career politicians who seem way too comfortable in opposition.

Undocumented Alien wrote on Sep 6, 2020, 12:29:
Enjoying CKIII so far, doing better than I did with CKII, not sure why. I was able to unite Ireland with the tutorial for the first time which gave me some much needed confidence. I also found this YouTube-r helpful for how a person that's good at the game (not me!) plays it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlGqM9HCWJk

Another good CK3 YouTube'r that is helpful (shows how to conquer Ireland): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCc43BtQeYU

Thanks for these man! I'm a 300 hour CK2 vet but never been great at it. The few times i've managed to unite a decent kingdom I havn't had the skills to hold it together or protect it from forgein wolves. I'm not much of a people person, I think you need the kind of trumpish vinidictiveness to follow/remember people and their crimes against you to really keep up.

So I can keep the petty kingdom of munster together and hold 25-75% of ireland at any time but there is always a succession, invasion, evil faction ready to hold me back. If these videos get me past that hump I'll be happy.

Not that I'm complaining. I'm pretty sure real medieval dukes struggled to expand their holdings as well and history only really highlights the few that did. Such a good game. Much easier than CK2 to keep up with, but still difficult. My Dunbar number is much lower than most people. But I'm a shitty drunk Irishman it all works. The tutorial is perfect that is exactly where I went to learn CK2. Now excuse me I have to murder a cousin I really should have thought twice about marrying off to a sneak scottsman.

So. Damn. Good.

Best on Switch, they nailed the console UI so hard it's unbelievable. One of those games I can load up any time for a run an have a good time. Very different to FTL, maybe less ambitious in some ways, but a much better game.

VaranDragon wrote on Sep 2, 2020, 09:12:
Never played this series but heard pretty good things about it. Is it kind of like Civilization?

Nope! More like the sims combined with a visual novel interacting with a strategy layer but 100 times better than that sounds. You play successive heirs, not always connected to their original geographical powerbase. It's medieval times titles to places where you don't speak the language is fine fucking peasants just need to cough up them taxes and levys! It's super awesome. Lots of RNG or bullshit from parts of the planet you were not even thinking about brewing to ruin your day, though "painting the map" can be a goal of yours, it's more of a "Stay alive and try and keep at least my favorite kids also alive".

You might spend a night or two securing ireland but good luck if you took your eyes off england and the monstrous continental force of Normans that are eyeing you off with a snack! It's not always fair but it wouldn't be historical if it was. That said things get ahistorical very quickly depending on who wins wars or dies of syphylis at certain times. Does islam conquer all of europe instead of getting reqonquisted? Do the russians somehow survive the mongols and do the same? Do the vikings create colonies in africa and give it the new world treatment 400 years earlier? All part of the fun!

CK2 was getting creaky after 8 years and a million DLC. This sounds like a good refresh but I better go find out... sleep is for the weak right?