Fallout 76: Hopping aboard the Battle Royale trend train (Pre-order now to pay *us* to become QA testers!).

Can't get too excited yet, seeing as how Fallout 76 is November this year, Starfield will then probably be November 2019, and this one November 2020. Even though time flies now in my advancing age (and, when you... don't do... anything), I still have the mindset of even 6 months out being too far away to get excited for anything, let alone plan for it, haha.

*yawwwwwwwwwwwwwn*

And Elder Arthur Maxson claimed to have been born in 2287, and the *youngest* Elder of the Brotherhood of Steel at his appointment... Tut-tut...

StingingVelvet wrote on May 22, 2018, 20:22:
I know people associate length with value, but I find most of those old shooters a little too long today. Pacing is an issue, they kind of drag on. Plus we've all got more limited time as we age.

Pshhh, "no true gamer" has anything more going on 20 years later. School and schoolwork were mandatory for me back when this came out, now I have *more* time! #ForeverAloneAndSpottilyEmployed

That said, I remember this being advertised as the "Quake Killer" (think it may have even said that on the box?) but I didn't play it long, switching back to Quake 2 quickly. The weapons just didn't feel right to me and I wasn't particularly interested in the story/level design. Unreal Tournament, however, was a MASSIVE upgrade, I played the hell out of that, and not so much out of Quake 3.

MeanJim wrote on Jan 2, 2018, 20:21:
Video games are a fucking hobby. At least with video games, there is some activity and interaction going on, unlike TV, movies and books where you just sit and consume the entertainment through your face holes. If I don't play video games in my free time, I would do something else to fill that time. They might as well call it "free time entertainment disorder."

I'm sure gambling addicts make the same argument...
Like anything that provokes serotonin release, gaming absolutely can be addictive. The gaming industry knows that, that's why they've been hiring people with backgrounds in I/O psychology for years (and why the ESA would be fighting this, just like the tobacco industry fought declaring tobacco addictive). I sure have realized more and more often while playing games, "Wait a minute... What I'm doing here isn't actually even FUN, -why do I feel so compelled to keep playing??"

Figuring out how best to trigger compulsion has been what MMO's have always relied heavily on, and then they realized that if they threw in micro-transactions to speed up/bypass the parts where people might start to realize they were not actually having fun, they could ensure people continued to play longer and keep giving them more money.

I remember hearing that the team working on their ill-fated WoD MMO lived in a constant state of fear of lay-offs that was 100% justified. Wonder if any of those casualties are going to apply this for this now, ha.
But seriously, screw CCP. Buying White Wolf and keeping the entire WoD IP tied up for an entire decade without getting any digital games released at all. Paradox darn well better not repeat that... *still waiting for an announcement from them*

Creston wrote on Oct 2, 2017, 15:43:

You can't. There's literally no way to prevent this. That won't stop the government from claiming every American citizen needs ankle trackers, though.

Condolences to all those affected, as empty as that sounds.

+1
The press releases are already beginning...

The Hellfire Power Armor on the Creation Club now has been available for free on the Nexus.

It seems most likely Vampire since Paradox bought the WOD from CCP, but, they're currently denying it's anything White Wolf related. We'll know soon enough, though!

Oh snap, do we dare to dream it's Bloodlines 2?

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhocking.

I think it's pretty funny that everyone finds this setting so ludicrous when the past several BF games (at least as played by 90% of the population) already pretty much ARE endless meat-grinders where you get nailed by an explosion, machine gun, or sniper rifle every 30 seconds, and then respawn 5 seconds later to go rush into the next choke-point kill-zone, haha

When I read "in my spare time" I had to look him up and catch up because I was kind of under the impression he's had *nothing but* free time since Daikatana... though I do vaguely remember reading he was going to switch to making mobile games or something.

harlock wrote on Jan 6, 2016, 19:04:

VR wont die... Ive got one word for you - PORN

I had almost forgotten about the VR pr0n factor... I had been predicting a significant up-shoot in guys getting caught at the computer with their pants around their ankles, with their ability to detect someone getting home and entering the room being diminished with the headset on, -but at this price-point it won't be quite so dramatic, with far fewer teens and college kids able to get one...

Scheherazade wrote on Jan 4, 2016, 17:11:
DK2 (which is most of the rez of CV) is terrible for flight sims of 'modern' aircraft - because the hud is unreadable. None of the numbers are legible (unless you move your face significantly forward to get closer to them). Simply not enough dots across that wide of an FOV to resolve one or two pixel wide symbology. This is compounded by the image shifting/scaling that happens to realign chromatic aberration (work around needed to compensate for the simple single stage lens).

I posted a link to this before, take a look. The blurriness is not youtube compression - it's like that normally.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkMMEmXlcLk

-scheherazade

Well ain't that a kick in the head... =\

I've been jonesing for this to make my return to flight sims (Falcon 4.0 and MechWarrior 2 for the S3 Virge were the first Windows PC games I played way back as a kid) as I'm spending a fortune crashing my RC aircraft over and over, but reading about the 90 FPS it requires has me worried...

I'm still rocking a I-7 2600K @ 3.4GHZ (but smart-clocked or whatever to 4.4GHZ with the ASUS app) for years now, but with 8gb RAM and a GTX 970 I have yet to feel the need to upgrade my CPU... Is this going to be what requires it?

Will be pretty irritating if he starts changing BIG things in the books *simply because* they wouldn't be surprising to the show-watchers anymore. Like, ooooh... LS + RT = JS?
Though after all this time that theory has become pretty mainstream, so I've even wondered if he'd change it just because it wouldn't surprise *anyone* anymore, ha.

Nucas wrote on Dec 26, 2015, 22:59:
i think it makes sense. he's powerful but undisciplined, possibly untrained. snoke isn't a sith, and it seems apparent kylo ren hasn't been taught how to use or even maybe even make a lightsaber, because his looks like shit, and he hacks away amateurishly with it. star wars has never lacked for good choreography (in the last 15 years anyway), we have to assume they made it look that way on purpose, to convey a message.

I *hope* you're not giving them too much credit there... Star Wars has always been merchandising first, story second, -so I'm not entirely sure the primary villain's weapon was purposefully designed to be lame in appearance when they planned to sell a ton of Kylo Ren action figures and lightsabers (which I'm sure they have already).

I walked out of it feeling like I must have seen a different movie than everyone else before me, so much so that from where I sat I thought everyone else in the theater wouldn't have found me crazy to say, "Well, I guess it was better than The Phantom Menace..."

Not only does it repeat the beats of ANH, it repeats all the less-than-stellar aspects of it as well, such as awkward pacing and HEAVY reliance on coincidence (I know, I know, everything can be explained away with "the force") and then doubled-down on inexplicably perfect characters who can achieve amazing feats with zero applicable training/experience (oh, yeah, right, the force...). Rey out-does both Han Solo and then Luke Skywalker, within what felt like must have been a single day into her adventure.
Oh and then Finn goes from being traumatized by seeing one of his comrades get killed to being A-OK with (even gleefully cheering about) wasting all those same guys he spent his entire life growing up and training with in about an hour (then even less time to become life-long pals with Po and Rey). Hokay...
Kylo Ren... should not have been unmasked (literally and... emotionally?) that early. Now they have to do some SERIOUS work on his character to get anyone to fear/respect him as a real villain in the future. I would like to know how anyone who actually watched all the previous movies (for the first time) in chronological order felt about Darth Vader by his end vs those who knew him as Darth Vader first and Lil' Anni second...