Yay !

Though Half Life 2 being still unfinished/discontinued is a shameful disregard for loyal gamers.

---------------------------
Also 25 years ago, Bethesda published a game I loved but is forgotten and ugly now:
The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard, 1998.

To commemorate that ugliness, Starfield has, as of today, a 69% global score on Steam, entering proudly its full brown "Mixed" stage.

Yeah, I remember a story (I think on NPR) about holiday mishaps. And one of them was a guy who was super excited to use his newly installed garbage disposal while fixing Thanksgiving dinner. He just peeled the potatoes into the sink and used the disposal. The pipe filled with the material, clogging and effectively turning into potato concrete. He ended up having to replace a couple feet of drain piping....

D'oh!

My dog, much like myself, is a hermit. The only other dogs she sees are my parents' dogs, who are also hermits.

I'm glad of that. I'd lose my mind if I lost her.

RIP Rosalynn Carter 96

Kind of sudden seeing as it was Jimmy who was taken to care first.
A pair of worthy lives.
So many fake barely humans burdening the world.

Both my dogs got that respiratory thing. Not fun. The 1 year old Airedale caught it while at the vet to get neutered. Came home and a few days later started coughing. A week later he was at the pet ER (on a weekend of course, when the regular vets were closed) after he was struggling to breathe. They took a x-ray of his lungs and found a significant case of pneumonia. They wanted to keep him over the weekend with IV's for a grand total of ~$6k. Nope. I love the dog but we'll take him home and do what we can... We did keep him there for a few more hours with a IV dose of antibiotics and fluids. That was about $1k for the day... They told us there was something going around that had not been figured out yet but they had several dogs pass away from it. We brought the good-boy home and with a strong antibiotic regiment he started getting better.

Then our other dog (Goldendoodle) got it. Thankfully our regular vet was open and we got him on the same antibiotic and he recovered OK as well.

Not fun watching your dogs struggle to breathe and trying to keep them comfortable.

Happy Anniversary to the 2nd best game ever made! (the 1st being Quake, of course)

Happy 25 Half-Life!

Thank you Blue for your OotB posts, the jokes always give me a chuckle.

Of all the horrible shit I read about what's going on in the world, that article on the mysterious dog virus scared me more than anything I have heard in the last 15 years.

WannaLogAlready wrote on Nov 19, 2023, 12:09:
Yay !

Though Half Life 2 being still unfinished/discontinued is a shameful disregard for loyal gamers.

---------------------------
Also 25 years ago, Bethesda published a game I loved but is forgotten and ugly now:
The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard, 1998.

To commemorate that ugliness, Starfield has, as of today, a 69% global score on Steam, entering proudly its full brown "Mixed" stage.

I hear you have a new president? 😲

The first Half-Life is still one of my absolute favorite game. How Valve told the story in game was great. Then the shocking moment when I found out about the warring factions (military vs Xen vs scientists/guards)... Wow. One of the big Wow moments in gaming I had. Thx to all the people that worked on that game, you gave me a great memory for the rest of my life.

jdreyer wrote on Nov 20, 2023, 03:36:
... ... ...
I hear you have a new president? 😲

Out of desperation, our ever ignorant people chose Milei, a histrionic, deranged, dangerous clown wielding a chainsaw in rallies (wish it was a joke, google it).

A populist and rabble rouser, loves Trump and admires Margaret Tatcher.
Hates Brazil's Lula and Pope Francis, and had recent warm contacts with the ultra right in Spain which is falsely contesting the legality of the actual Spanish government.
Insurrectionist Brazil's Bolsonaro supports our Milei, Tucker Carlson came to interview him.

Wants to dollarize the economy with an absurd debt in dollars, I suppose will start printing our own U.S. dollars as no one will give real ones to us.
Announced he will shut down the Central Bank, but has to change the constitution for that, with a minimal presence in Congress.

Supports free sale of guns (not a thing here, we are Japan-like in that regard, till now).
Opposes abortion.

But at least people didn't elect as president the actual corrupt Economy Minister who sunk the peso and generated between 3 or 4 millions poor during his management.

I'm so ... happy ?

This comment was edited on Nov 20, 2023, 05:00.

But is his recommended rating greater than 69%? What about in the last 30 days?

I look at the world today and cannot help but see some parallels with the world that existed in the early 1930s.

I remember the day my cousin was playing Half Life on his PC back when I didn't have one. Just watching him play, I thought it was some cinematic experience for the time. That the game must of cost a fortune to purchase and that only a select few had access to it, lol.

Fast forward a year later and I finally had access to my own PC. I recall doing whatever it took to get Half Life on it, so much that I ended up learning about pirating and had to do it. I mean, at 13 years old, I didn't have much $$$ on me, lol. It was quite an experience despite not having good PC gaming skills yet. My mouse/keyboard skills weren't there yet and I recall the marines being difficult to deal with. I believe back then I made it as far as the garbage compactor situation and think I stopped there.

Nowadays, after playing tons of FPS games and then full playing through Black Mesa 3 times, I'd say, it is definitely one of the greatest single player FPS games ever made.

WannaLogAlready wrote on Nov 20, 2023, 04:45:

jdreyer wrote on Nov 20, 2023, 03:36:
... ... ...
I hear you have a new president? 😲

Out of desperation, our ever ignorant people chose Milei, a histrionic, deranged, dangerous clown wielding a chainsaw in rallies (wish it was a joke, google it).

A populist and rabble rouser, loves Trump and admires Margaret Tatcher.
Hates Brazil's Lula and Pope Francis, and had recent warm contacts with the ultra right in Spain which is falsely contesting the legality of the actual Spanish government.
Insurrectionist Brazil's Bolsonaro supports our Milei, Tucker Carlson came to interview him.

Wants to dollarize the economy with an absurd debt in dollars, I suppose will start printing our own U.S. dollars as no one will give real ones to us.
Announced he will shut down the Central Bank, but has to change the constitution for that, with a minimal presence in Congress.

Supports free sale of guns (not a thing here, we are Japan-like in that regard, till now).
Opposes abortion.

But at least people didn't elect as president the actual corrupt Economy Minister who sunk the peso and generated between 3 or 4 millions poor during his management.

I'm so ... happy ?

Yeah, it sounded like a choice between awful and terrible. 😔

Best moment in my first HL playthrough, was freaking out when I first ran into the enemy soldiers. Their AI was like nothing we'd seen at the time. Heck, even Quake, which I love, had some pretty simple enemy AI that usually just blundered into your line of fire.

HL enemies reacted to your tactics. They ran away if you charged, tried to flank you if you camped, and even reacted to you throwing grenades. This was ground breaking at the time.

There was a wonderful moment, burned in my memory, when I approached a manhole and was just getting ready to climb down the ladder, but I heard some soldiers talking down at the bottom, but couldn't see them. So I tossed a grenade down and was amazed to hear one of them yell "Grenade!". Boom! Climbed down to find both of them blow to bits. So satisfying.

Prez wrote on Nov 20, 2023, 08:28:
But is his recommended rating greater than 69%? What about in the last 30 days?

I hate you.