general gaming

[visual hill]

this was also a thing in 6th-gen consoles, but not really after

[slim thorn]

yeah, I had the same thought

[visual hill]

except Spider-Man 2 on PS5 where devs accidentally published a debug build 🙂

that was in late 2023

[slim thorn]

IME video game decompilation is focused primarily on 80s/90s stuff, for a bunch of reasons

[visual hill]

indeed, complexity is a big problem starting from 6th-gen

although it is feasible, as Mario Party 4 showed

[hushed onyx]

Well, I was just building off of Calinou's comment about compilation in debug mode...which I guess is decompilation-related, but I meant it as a more general comment and not specifically tied to decompilation.

[slim thorn]

and then if you get recent enough, more and more games are just on PC without needing emualtion, or built on popular engines, or in languages that preserve far more info, so there's little need to do any de/recomp

[visual hill]

the nice thing with Godot games is that you can replace their executable with your own (unless they were compiled with private custom C++ modules)

this could also be possible with Unity if it had source access

not UE though because most games use C++

[slim thorn]

I was wondering what Godot modding is like; both games I've worked on were Unity so I haven't learned the details of anything else yet

[visual hill]

like with Unity, people made universal modding frameworks, so you don't actually have to replace the executable anyway

[slim thorn]

So, in the modern era this is still a somewhat interesting question. These days you do almost always want the optimizater running, but you don't always want it maxed out. The "highest" optimizations are often inconsistent or situational, and games usually prefer having a consistent framerate over a higher average framerate. And sometimes trading speed for size can backfire if the larger version of a function no longer fits into a CPU cache line. The specific case of fast-math can also come back to bite you if your game cares about floating point determinism, typically because you want online multiplayer and/or efficient "replays".

[river veldt]

when do i get the lightsaber in Halo

[visual hill]

I build Godot with -O0 during development as it's a fair bit faster to build than -Og, but since it starts up slower, it can actually be a negative if I have to start it many times

[slim thorn]

in the original Halo, you only get to use the Energy Sword when it's dropped by an Elite, and not many Elites have them

[river veldt]

ive killed like, 10 elites with energy swords i think and none of them have dropped one :(

[slim thorn]

am I misremembering that part...

maybe they don't make it an actual weapon you can use until Halo 2

[river veldt]

The energy sword was first introduced in Halo: Combat Evolved, albeit unusable by players. It was then made available to players in Halo 2 and has become a mainstay weapon in series ever since.

from Halopedia

[slim thorn]

yeah I'm probably getting mixed up with some Halo 3 levels

[river veldt]

:(

the fuck is i love bees

[slim thorn]

an ARG they made to promote one of the later Halo games, I never looked into it since ARGs aren't my thing

[river veldt]

whaaaat

ARGs are awesome

[slim thorn]

I know you feel that way, which is part of why I answered that

[bronze abyss]

Hows my palworld automation setup

[cerulean herald]

what are you automating

[bronze abyss]

350 handgun ammo crafting

[river veldt]

the Flood are horrifying

[bronze abyss]

meowmere finally obtained

[arctic fern]

https://youtu.be/-v5vCLLsqbA

[quiet swift]

[hidden elbow]

Should i try medievil games ? i don't know much about it but i adore this character design

[proud warren]

I heard good things about it's spiritual successor Pumpkin Jack

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1186640/Pumpkin_Jack/

Steam

Pumpkin Jack

Pumpkin Jack is a spooky scary 3D platformer in which you embody Jack, the Mythical Pumpkin Lord! Dive into an epic adventure through otherworldly landscapes and help the Evil annihilate the Good!…

Price

$29.99

Recommendations

5751

Metacritic

71

▶ Play video

[cunning galleon]

On the final stretch!!

Then after the suspension... Side of armor goodness

[gaunt marten]

I played the original two games. They're okay. Kind of creative and interesting

[river veldt]

Halo CE shotgun is fucking awesome

[arctic fern]

ye

[fickle garnet]

Halo CE is awesome in general

[arctic fern]

ye

i gotta do halo cursed edition at some point
i think its co-op

[hidden elbow]

Yea , its so good its no wonder why its one of the last weapons they give to you

[slim thorn]

partly that, but also it's way better against flood than covenant (since covenant tend to hang back and shoot you first), so if they gave it to us in a covenant level we would've gotten a bad first impression of it

[gaunt marten]

Fuck https://i.imgur.com/VLqRptM.png

I had a seeress assigned to convert a province to my religion, but she was orthodox, not Norse

She was initially norse but flipped orthodox

[gaunt marten]

What the fuck is this realm

https://i.imgur.com/97gycGO.png

Irish Khazar nomads

[worthy rose]

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/the-elder-scrolls/oblivion-remastered-player-spends-55-000-years-in-jail-after-a-2-billion-bounty-crime-spree-breaking-the-in-game-calendar-in-the-process/

[green fulcrum]

There's the goofy Bethesda bugs we know and love

[rugged flax]

55,000 years dungeon

[velvet fiber]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_LS6CE2IwI&t=753s

woah my gta5 vid from 3 days ago got 500 views and 5 likes

[slim thorn]

REVENGE

I just had to do that with no upgrades to prove I could

[fickle garnet]

Apparently Divinity: Original Sin 2 is on the Ipad

[quiet swift]

😮

[fickle garnet]

$35 cad

You can actually use a KB&M, controller, or touch controls

[visual hill]

I played a bit of Jedi FO last year but didn't continue it, soulslikes don't draw me in that much

if your gaming day isn't going well, just remember it could always be worse. 👀
||I could probably have avoided all this by rolling as soon as I first grabbed the ledge||

[fresh bane]

did you ever play the Jedi Knight series? It's pretty good

I got Jedi Outcast and Academy at the last sale on Gog, I grew up with Academy but never played Outcast or Dark Forces before

The second Dark Forces looked really interesting to me, because the first one is a Doom like, then Jedi Outcast already has its own distinct feeling and it was already the Xbox-Gamecube era by then, but Dark Forces 2 is right in the middle where it looks more like a Quake-Half Life and that's really interesting to me

[visual hill]

yes, both Outcast and Academy but I finished neither because of gamebreaking bugs

although I was pretty close to finishing Jedi Outcast

I've never played their multiplayer though, which is the bread and butter of both games

[visual hill]

Dark Forces 2 is a hybrid between Doom, Quake and Hexen 2 to me

Doom's frantic movement speed, Quake's polygonal 3D graphics, Hexen 2's a-maze-ing level design (prepare walkthroughs...)

I finished that one, it's cool. You can use OpenJKDF2 to play it easily on modern systems

I haven't played Dark Forces Remastered yet, but I do have it on Steam

I remember when people complained about its launch price... 9 months after launch, I bought it as part of a 6-game bundle for 2/3rds of its launch price

which is how I got the Crysis Remastered trilogy too

I want to check a bunch of other Star Wars games too, I've never played all the flight ones

I have the modern Lego Star Wars too, Epic offered it a while ago

[fresh bane]

yeah I'll be honest I was also gonna get Dark Forces remastered but I thought the price was a little much, I was just getting a few Star War goodies on sale so I didn't want to make a super big purchase, don't remember why I didn't get the original Dark Forces, I did end up getting pretty much the rest of the Jedi Knight series and also the KOTOR games, because I do wanna go through them one day, I was also gonna get The Force Unleashed games but I didn't wanna get too greedy, I was also thinking of maybe getting Shadows of the Empire but I didn't end up going for it

There's a surprising amount of flight related Star Wars games, but the only flight stuff related things I've been interested in were just the space levels in Battlefront 2, the whole X Wing series and what not never quite interested me

[fresh bane]

It is, I used to play a bunch and I was even part of a clan in 2014

[fresh bane]

That's why I find it so interesting, maybe it's because I grew up with that era of games when I was very young and it made an impression on me so I have an affinity for those games, so playing a game like that but it's Star Wars just makes me really interested

[visual hill]

I have both KOTORs too, same for Battlefront classic and modern

(not the Battlefront remaster, the OG games)

[visual hill]

same, I love games with a Y2K aesthetic in general

[fresh bane]

I do have the classic version on Gog too, I was surprised I was able to actually find some servers with no extra messing around even if it was a little laggy

[visual hill]

Dethkarz, Messiah, Millenium Racers, MDK, and so on

[fresh bane]

Speaking of Doom likes I do also have Boltgun on Gog which I also got during a sale I should play that one sometime, I don't know the first thing about Warhammer but I like Doom likes and it looked really good

[river veldt]

Dark Forces is badass

[fresh bane]

I started playing Kotor once but I remember dropping it halfway through, so it's still on my list of things to get through eventually because I did like it I just never finished it and it's one of those games where it feels almost mandatory to play because of how good everyone says they are

[fresh bane]

also I'm not surprised about this, but it does remind me back when I was a kid I used to mess around with the command console in this game a lot

spawning a bunch of creatures and NPCs during missions and messing around with stuff like that

just seeing the kind of stuff I could get away with

[gaunt marten]

Is this person insane? https://i.imgur.com/FCPBBXU.png

I spent over 25k gold on this county and he wants it for 500

[plain harbor]

I found a temporary solution against camera hackers in Battlefront II (2017). I say temporary because it's not a permanent solution (and there never will be because EA stopped support of the game), but it does at the very least protect against camera hacks.

[quiet swift]

@slim thorn Bloody hell, the final part of the ||sirene fight. The swing, the snake attack jump, multiple times, and the massive scale....||

[sacred grove]

https://bsky.app/profile/expedition33.bsky.social/post/3lq5u7no5522n

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (@expedition33.bsky.social)

Thirty-three days ago, we released Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

Since then, we’ve sold 3.3 million copies.

Seriously. As of today.
We couldn’t make that up.

Another entry on the long list of surreal moments that your support has made real.

Thank you ALL.

Reposts

939

Likes

3221

Quotes

132

Replies

126

Bluesky · May 27, 2025, 2:04 PM

33 days since release, E33 sells 3.3M copies

That's gotta be some kind of cosmic intervention

[bitter stream]

jeez, wow

[quiet swift]

FRANCE! 🇫🇷 FRANCE! 🇫🇷 FRANCE! 🇫🇷

[toxic seal]

||"Alicia"|| is my favorite track

[quiet swift]

So far ||dualiste|| track has been just fuckin' epic

[wind stump]

"Fish"

"NORMAL"

[light gate]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-27/apple-to-debut-dedicated-gaming-app-within-days-of-switch-2-s-arrival?

Leader? Sure.

[slim thorn]

that feels like lazy writing from the news site, not Apple's fault lol

it's probably one of the reasons so many people only read the headline

[light gate]

Headline or not, the app will be pre-installed & the Mac variant will allow to do what Steam does.

I wonder if this will make Valve pull out entirely from Mac out of spite.

Their Mac client has been subpar, and that’s putting it nicely.

[slim thorn]

I don't think they're that short-sighted; forcing all Mac users to stop using Steam would just be guaranteeing iGames(?) gets a foothold in the market

[light gate]

I mean, I really doubt this will take off.

[gaunt marten]

I see no reason for Valve to pull out once there's competition

[light gate]

I feel like Valve could make a lawsuit over how Apple is preventing Valve from making their best store.

I mean, everyone is pressuring so might as well see what sticks.

Still, I doubt it.

[gaunt marten]

I feel like you're wildly speculating with no history to back it

[light gate]

That’s because I am.

lmao

I’m only seeing patterns.

[gaunt marten]

Patterns that don't really exist

[light gate]

Yeah, I’m in la la land.

We’ll see what happens.

[quiet swift]

I didn't know I needed this in my life until now

[wind stump]

i like this Unika chick

it's nice to have a DLC character that isn't bollocks hard to play (VENOM, DIZZY, GOLDLEWIS, HAPPY CHAOS)

(ah what am i complaining about, I'm a filthy Bridget/Ephelt main)

[fresh bane]

''happy chaos'' and ''hard to play'' shouldn't go together in a sentence ever

[cunning galleon]

Panza

As miho would say, Sensha zenshin!

[fresh bane]

I missed like 4 dlc characters already or something I really fell off from Strive I think the last dlc character I actually ever played against was Ky

[cunning galleon]

I mean

panzer vor!

[river veldt]

Halo CE is extremely fun but i don't like how it changes my weapons when i go to the next level

[toxic seal]

Panzer vor means panzer vor

[arctic fern]

All halo games do that
They're separate levels with separate designs and intentions for it's weapon choices
There's no point saving that rocket launcher for a tough enemy later

[slim thorn]

the flip side is you often start with a human weapon that's difficult to get ammo for otherwise, especially on higher difficulties where scrounging for covenant weapons is mandatory

[arctic fern]

I often prefer human weapons in CE
2's battle rifle is stupid powerful tho lol, even if I prefer the covenent carbine

[quiet swift]

Saw this in another channel and now I want cyberpunk 2077's next game to do this

[minor plover]

Darryl Baum be like "how could this POSSIBLY go wrong?"

[river veldt]

does cyberpunk have the internet

[quiet swift]

The internet itself is what's outside the blackwall, if I recall. They do have something different that's being used though

expedition 33: past it, but all these streamer reactions to the ||dualiste|| fight is making me want to play ||Dark souls 1, since apparently it's a very strong callback to one of the bosses there||

[cerulean herald]

Ive been playing E33 too, might as well jump on it today since its the 33rd day since it came out and it sold 3.3M copies too what better time than now

[quiet swift]

🫡

[toxic seal]

For those who come after

[sacred grove]

Should there be a dedicated Clair Obscur gaming thread (not from me, I haven't played yet)? I get the feeling it's going to expand beyond E33 in the future

[quiet swift]

I think most people who were all into it have already finished it by now. Just been extremely busy myself that I haven't been able to invest as much time as I wanted into it

[toxic seal]

I still have to finish Act III

[quiet swift]

I'm still on act 2

[plain harbor]

I'm on Act 0. I still need to buy it. And get an SSD.

[uneven epoch]

iiii. started a second attempt at playing bg3?

bounced off of it before

[hasty patio]

It isn't for everyone sadly.

[cerulean herald]

same

[forest shoal]

Today I found natural lesbians

Actually there are two of them in this image

[quiet swift]

[arctic fern]

Cyberpunk had the Internet, then the AI war happened
I think most of the real Internet got shut behind the Blackwall with the AI
What we see in cyberpunk now is more of a city wide intranet

[quiet swift]

Yes, that

[fresh bane]

I feel really bad that I have 100+ hours in Cyberpunk and yet I feel like I need to do a new playthrough to really grasp most of what actually happened in the story
I feel like playing the game with months long breaks at a time and also doing a lot of side quest stuff before doing any main story (and also jamming Phantom Liberty in the middle) probably didn't help me really follow the timeline of events

But from what I remembered the old internet just went down and rogue AIs started popping up, they tried to take back the internet because of course, didn't work, so they just said fuck it we'll put up a big wall to avoid the AIs from eating our brains and we'll try to have a more localized net or something of that sort

So I'm looking forward to that happening in our timeline sometime soon, I hope we at least start getting cool cybernetic body parts too

[quiet swift]

Not quite. One famous hacker created a bunch of the early AIs and let them loose on the internet, which pretty much shut it down as it cascaded into crazy stuff, on top of these AIs ever evolving

There's a fantastic youtube channel that did documentary-esque videos about it, lemme find it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cP8zlqhlW4

[fresh bane]

Yeah I was reading up on it to refresh my memory, it was that famous netrunner that was constantly fucking over corpos and wanted to make data free for all, but it all went wrong and caused AIs to mutate

[quiet swift]

Enjoy, these videos are fantastic

[fresh bane]

|| I seem to remember finding the fridge where his body was too ||

[arctic fern]

Hehe
I liked that bit

[fresh bane]

And then || you do that one quest where you try to break through the Blackwall with the voodoo gang right? ||

That one didn't go well

[quiet swift]

[arctic fern]

That one has multiple flavours of "didn't go well"
I pick the ||siding with netwatch one as the voodoo boys can suck it||

[quiet swift]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1tZ8P0aZHI oh, just saw this. Haven't seen it yet though

[fresh bane]

I think I did that one too, I specifically remember looking up people's choices for that one to see what people did
I know that is like spoiling the fun but that's how I have fun with my multiple choice games!

[fresh bane]

I might need to watch one of these videos just to get an idea of what the sequence of events actually goes down like in the game because I think I experienced it all jumbled up

[arctic fern]

I don't judge! Play however you like

I do that too, but I try to reserve that for second playthroughs
It doesn't always work mind

[fresh bane]

The talk of choices does remind me, during that one quest with || all the aspiring children athletes, you get the choice of offing her of getting her to do what you want, so I did that, and then when the game recognized the objective as finished I just emptied the mag, then I read some of her emails and I went back and did it again, and Johnny congratulates you ||

I remember another quest, I really can't remember which and it's bothering me I can't recall, but I remember it because at the end || you get confronted by two people I think, and you have to choose which to side with and which to kill, but both are kind of assholes, so I remember siding with one, and then just offing the other one immediately after ||

God I really wish I remembered the name of the quest, it was something about recovering data and there were two people involved that would confront you at the end

[hidden elbow]

Dead By Daylight had a peak of 83,252 concurrent players on Steam today during the Five Nights at Freddy’s PTB.

This is one of the highest peaks of all time, having a higher playercount than some of the most popular chapter RELEASES of all time.

They nailed Spingtrap in here

Voice lines , design, animations and abilities, simply wonderful

[fresh bane]

Oh my god I remembered, it's the side quest Shot by Both Sides
Hilariously fitting name ,and also really fun detail that || if you kill both || Mr Hands will have something to say about it

[cunning galleon]

I'm finished with the build!

Around 1000+ parts, beats my pb by twice as much

[lofty dove]

Hyped for the release!

[gaunt marten]

https://i.imgur.com/Fr5RD2B.png

https://i.imgur.com/peIn7SK.png

What?

Is he a murderer or is he not? Who did he kill?

[unreal idol]

Me

[random steppe]

Dark Souls 3 actually:
||https://tenor.com/view/pontiff-sullivan-gif-5538171517180692128||
Extremely bullshit boss fight, love him.

[quiet swift]

ah darn, the one i don't have

[quiet swift]

Also reminds me of ||Rellana in elden ring shadow of erdtree||

[river veldt]

he looks so good

[forest shoal]

https://github.com/Jayeaaaaa/JokeyPony

[fresh bane]

https://bsky.app/profile/yurilowenthal.bsky.social/post/3lqad6pjmrs2r

Yuri Lowenthal (@yurilowenthal.bsky.social)

And for those who keep asking, no, I will not be returning as Yosuke for the Persona 4 remake. I asked. Maybe I even begged, but they don’t want me to come back.

Reposts

355

Likes

1804

Quotes

461

Replies

166

Bluesky · May 28, 2025, 1:37 PM

Did he just leak the existence of a P4R?

[wind stump]

Yeah it's more or less confirmed

oh, me and a friend have basically been talking about it like it has been confirmed, but yeah, he pretty much just confirmed it

[fresh bane]

I don't know if to feel like it's funny or depressing that Persona 1 and 2 didn't get the same amount of love

[hushed onyx]

[worthy rose]

[hushed onyx]

Is this a good time to flog Paean to SMAC? https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/2015/02/17/introduction/

(Of course, all times are good times to flog Paean to SMAC)

[bitter stream]

Wait, what is this? I like SMAC, but i've never heard of Paean to SMAC before

[lofty dove]

You could try and upload it on gamebanana too, don't know if it's complicated to do but i bet some people over there would be interested and enjoy your work!

[forest shoal]

Most of the big Balatro mods do not release on GameBanana

[lofty dove]

Oh okay, i didn't look that much into Balatro modding yet mb (gonna install everything for yours)

[hushed onyx]

It’s a series of blog posts from almost ten years ago () that dissect the philosophical and worldbuilding aspects of the game to show how brilliant it truly is.

Brian Reynolds himself commented on a few posts.

(So did I but I bet you don’t care about that as much )

[bitter stream]

ooh interesting, I"ll take a look a bit later today

thanks for sharing

[wind stump]

Lady, I don't think most mascots should be getting into vehicular manslaughter...

[fresh bane]

https://youtu.be/H-XFIfmJ2T8?si=kpWq4lmaFc68CyX0

well this is just sad

[cerulean herald]

Expedition 33: Act II
hmm

[fresh bane]

Luckily, Dark Souls Remastered, 2 and 3 all received a 'fix' for Remote Code Execution hacking back when the hacking problems were getting so big in those games Bandai couldn't just ignore it, but of course, that's all they cared to fix and they didn't bother fixing anything else, just enough so that hackers couldn't access your computers and create massive security issues.
So now hackers are joining people's worlds and immediately killing all the NPCs in the area and fucking up your savefile, and of course they can also make themselves fully invincible and even possibly forcefully insert illegal items into your inventory, either causing crashes or banning you from online play, there's mods to circumvent these issues for DSR and DS2-3, but unfortunately PTDE was completely abandoned by Bandai and never received that fix, so PTDE is the most vulnerable version to play on PC as it still has the RCE exploit, coincidentally it's the only version of DS I own and the only one I play, so this video being recommended to me now that i was thinking of maybe starting a new character was pretty lucky for me, I just hope PTDE also has some sort of online overhaul anticheat mod

If anyone here is playing or thinking of playing any Dark Souls game online on PC look up PvP Overhaul/Crow's Mod for DSR, Blue Acolyte for DS2, and Blue Sentinel for DS3, they're all overall the same type of bugfixing, quality of life, anticheat type mods, the problem with hackers in DS games is pretty serious so don't run the unnecessary risk
(Of course, in the case where you absolutely do not care about any online features, nor any type of co-op or PVP, playing offline is always an option)

[worthy rose]

https://kotaku.com/black-panther-ea-cliffhanger-monolith-productions-1851782787

[rancid herald]

doubles down on the sims
doesn't give us a Wakanda expansion

for shame

[slim thorn]

you know how some games will have unmarked fake walls, with no in-game way of discovering them other than rubbing your character against every inch of the game world?

TIL that goes all the way back to Akalabeth (1979)

[rancid herald]

just like real life fr

[cerulean herald]

Expedition 33
🔥 this is fine 🔥

[green fulcrum]

[gaunt marten]

This guy https://i.imgur.com/cYotJW2.png

He hired ten ships and declared war on me

But he forgot to have any land or troops

So he instantly lost the war on the same day

I'm not sure how the game even allows that

[river veldt]

Springtrap was finally added to DBD !

he looks absolutely incredible too

[gaunt marten]

Normally we journey to the Byzantine Empire for this, https://i.imgur.com/k95ayki.png

But since the Byzantine Empire is gone I guess we go into a guy's house

[river veldt]

huh ! i didn't know Chris Meledandri was on the Nintendo board of directors

he's the founder and CEO of Illumination

[toxic seal]

Apparently people already have their hands on their Switch 2s, but the console requires an internet connection to get started and once it realizes it's not June 5 yet it won't let you continue.

[hasty patio]

lol

[cerulean herald]

But what if I just change the system's clock /s

[river veldt]

is that weird or something

[toxic seal]

Yeah, no other console has prevented you from using it if you happened to have it in your home before the official release date

There have been games like that, those that allow you to "pre-download" that won't actually let you get to the game until it is officially released, but never a console

[fresh bane]

''To prevent early leaks and possible exploits of our system, we've installed a small C4 charge within every Nintendo Switch 2 ™️ that will activate if the console detects being booted up before June 5th''

I gotta say, I wasn't expecting consoles themselves to become the ones that also require an internet connection to even function but here we are

Though, unless this is some guy that just snatched himself a Switch 2 somehow, if they're handing out early versions of them, why even do that if they literally can't even function before the release date?

[sacred grove]

The way retail works is that they have to prepare the stock in advance. Retailers aren't supposed to sell or give them away early, but naturally this happens sometimes. I'm not sure if that's what's happening in the case of the Switch 2, but that's what I would imagine

It's a hot item, so of course some of the behind-the-scenes people want to take advantage of the early arrival of Switch 2 stock

[fresh bane]

I know, I'm just wondering if that's the case, or if this is a case of some early release for review or something, for journalists and such, since I didn't really check who the source for this was

[fresh bane]

https://youtu.be/KRW-LQp4pbc?si=Rw752DyELUP5NSdM
what a great video recommendation this was
I knew this game still had an active community, but I had no idea they even had complete overhaul mods for the multiplayer and a bunch of cool conversion mods for extra features as well

[quiet swift]

||https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtrwpziEhOo|| Yahtzee reviewing expedition 33. Spoilery regarding act 1 so putting it behind a spoiler, fun watch though 😄

[visual hill]

Movie Duels is a highlight too

[cunning galleon]

Yall ever give a tankette wings

Realistically, i don't think it'll fly irl

[hasty patio]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/261550/announcements/detail/536603447519084798

[wind stump]

RussianBadger REPO vidya https://youtu.be/xIRMEfS5X4M

[green fulcrum]

That's certainly a title of all time, lol

[fickle garnet]

Glad to know that E33 doesn't lock you out of the area that the previous act took place in

[river veldt]

there are so many Flood here what the actual fuck

[fresh bane]

Movie Duels is incredible, I used to play the original Movie Duels 2 back when it was still pretty rudimentary, but now? They included so many more extra scenarios and features, and the entire UI looks extremely professional and well polished

Movie Battles II looks really fun too, seems like a really fun way to revitalize the game by making more of a Battlefront style experience of sorts, I'm personally looking into maybe setting up TaystJK and hit up some servers and see what's up, I'm very much fine with the whole multiplayer enviroment they got going on where it's less of a complete chaotic deathmatch thing and more of a place where each server has their own rules and probably has the same few people that join in every so often and all that, and you can even just sort of hang out and talk to people there and such, sounds cozy

[wind stump]

this is normal

[river veldt]

jeez louise level 9 in Halo CE was hard as hell

[slim thorn]

what difficulty are you playing on?

[river veldt]

normal

[slim thorn]

oh, I was gonna say the earlier Halos have some hilarious balance issues on Legendary

ah 9 is Keyes, yeah I can see that one being rough on a first playthrough

did you let the enemies fight each other?

[river veldt]

in the control room where Flood Keyes was at i did yeah

[slim thorn]

ok, I'm pretty sure there's a bunch of other encounters where it's an option

[arctic fern]

ooooor you can just git gud skrub

[slim thorn]

at least on legendary I remember one of the critical tactics was simply choosing when to join the fray; too early and there's too much shooting you, too late and the winning side can focus on you too easily

[river veldt]

i see

is the Flood overpowering Covenant pretty normal ? i feel like every time they've fought each other the Flood won

[slim thorn]

which is sort of true ever since the flood show up, but iirc it's most useful in Keyes because that has so many tight spaces and corners and ledges where you can feasibly participate in a firefight without immediately exposing yourself to all of the enemies involved

it's definitely normal in the sense that it happens a lot, though I think that's more of a design choice than something fundamental about how covenant and flood operate

[river veldt]

ah oke

the Flood are terrifying btw

[slim thorn]

mm-hmm

I still fondly remember 343 Guilty Spark (the level) as maybe my first encounter with the trope where a non-horror video game just decides to do horror for five minutes and it really really works

and of course narratively speaking, the Covenant had no fucking clue what they were unleashing; I want to say it's only by the last level of Halo CE that they've really recovered from the shock and are bringing their A-game to the Flood firefights

but it's been too long since I properly played Halos 1-3 to remember clearly if later games had more covenant vs flood fights ending in the covenant's favor

(well, AI-only ones; obviously Halo 2 has a ton where you're playing as Arby)

[river veldt]

what's the best Halo game in your opinion

[arctic fern]

5 obviously
(5 is the worst one)

thats a broad question, because campaign and multiplayer are different beasts

[river veldt]

yeah i mean in campaign sense

[arctic fern]

campaign i think i have to go with 2, tho the others are still great, 2 is just plain cheesy from start to finish and i love it

[fickle garnet]

Reach

[wind stump]

cat

[river veldt]

reach is the prequel right ?

[wind stump]

[river veldt]

wait is the first level the last level and the last level is the first level

i keep accidentally opening this terminal instead of reloading

[fresh bane]

Pffff, wow, I was just talking about Dark Forces the other day and I just happen to check on Gog and get a notification that it's 45% off what timing

I happened to actually play it right after I was talking about it since I actually do have it on my PSP, it was quite clunky and ran like hell, I thought it was just the PSP was weak but then I tried it on Duckstation and no, Dark Forces just kinda runs really badly

[slim thorn]

I bounce between 1, 3 and 5 personally. 1 is the simplest, and maybe this is just me but I often find shooters more engaging when there aren't too many choices to evaluate. 3 is definitely the most polished overall, especially for the covenant and flood enemies of the original trilogy; in many ways it's the "if you only play one Halo" Halo. 5 has the most unique gameplay, with squad commands and boost/hover movement options that I often find myself missing when I play any of the others.

[fresh bane]

Halo has always been a franchise I felt like digging into but never had the drive to actually sit down and say ''okay I'm gonna play through all these games now''
and since multiplayer is such a big part of it and I don't even know what the population of these games is that also kinda doesn't fully convince me either

my last experience with Halo was installing Infinite for like a couple of days to try out the multiplayer since that part of the game was free but I don't hear anyone talk about Infinite

[slim thorn]

multiplayer was never part of it for me

[fresh bane]

It dropped and people just kind of moved on

[arctic fern]

They are co-op if that helps
MCC is really all you need tho
The multiplayer is fun but I'm personally just done with multiplayer shooters

[slim thorn]

Pretty much. Speaking again only of campaigns: Halo Infinite is a perfectly fine game, but it has no advantages over any of 1-5. Especially since Infinite's good parts are also similar to earlier Halos but not quite as good. There's just no reason to revisit it specifically.

I probably should get the MCC one of these days. Odds are it'll happen when someone wants to do online co-op.

[river veldt]

this last level is so frustrating

[slim thorn]

huh, I remember The Maw only being a stumbling block on the higher difficulties

what's killing you?

[river veldt]

fall damage mostly

the enemies get all my shields down and then i fall when im trying to throw the grenades

[slim thorn]

...lol

[river veldt]

genuinely might just be a skill issue lmao

[slim thorn]

are you in the engine room? I feel like that's the only part of the level where you can even fall damage yourself

[river veldt]

yes

[slim thorn]

ok then yeah that's definitely the hardest part

usually I focus on wiping out "all" the enemies before trying to aim one of the grenades

at least I'm pretty sure on lower difficulties it takes a while for new ones to spawn and get up to you?

[arctic fern]

I'm always up for that

I'd love to do 4 player halo 3 coop

It's been over a decade since I was last able to

[slim thorn]

...oh, I do have it

must've caught it on a sale at some point

[visual hill]

IIRC, PSP's PS1 backwards compatibility runs games at more or less the same speed as a PS1

it's intended to be accurate for speed-sensitive games, same for DuckStation. In DuckStation, you can enable overclocking but speed-sensitive games will speed up

and yes, the PS1 port didn't run great, even though the PC version was well-optimized

[river veldt]

holy lord

[visual hill]

if you want to play Halo coop, hit me up, I find the game a bit boring solo

coop probably carries the campaign to an extent in this kind of game

[visual hill]

perform a web search operation using DuckDuckGo on the term "en passant"

[fresh bane]

Yeah, I know, and I've heard the MCC is really good too, I just don't really know if I'm into the franchise enough to justify buying it and just spending the time going through the games is all, but who knows, maybe if I happen to catch it on a really good sale sometime

[visual hill]

I got the MCC for €16 on Steam sale, it's six games so it's a reasonable price

[fresh bane]

I'll be honest I didn't even know the PS1 version was the port, I thought it was the original version, but of course this game had a PC version now that I think on it
and also, this runs quite smoothly and looks great, I changed the soundtrack to the original because I wasn't vibing with the midi, but I appreciate the option
even the cutscenes look really good, I was fearing they'd look like the usual AI-upscaled smudgy mess that a lot of remasters tend to look like, but it looks like they either got the original drawings and paintings and renders or someone did a REALLY good job touching them up because they look nice

[visual hill]

the multiplayer is in a sorry state for some of the earlier games though

[slim thorn]

yeah, recommending the MCC is less about "play them all" and more than it's by far the most cost-effective way to get most of them these days; on sale it's worth it even if you only play one actual game and stop there

[visual hill]

the item pickup sound in Dark Forces is nearly the same as Duke Nukem 3D's

this always throws me off when I hear a clip of it

[fresh bane]

the jump sound is the same ''oof'' as doom too

[visual hill]

the HD assets in Dark Forces Remaster are said to be redrawn by hand

I get a feeling AI was used to assist on sprites like weapons, but it's still solid. (Although if that's true, it means they lied... )

I speak from experience, having done AI upscales for Quake 2 before the remaster came out

[fresh bane]

I did play Halo CE a ton, and I think I know that game pretty alright, Halo 2 a little bit, after that, I don't know a single thing, but I guess that's less games to go through if I eventually do get it, and yeah, if I happen to get it at a really good price like 18 bucks I'd probably get it even if I don't immediately play them, it's a good deal

[slim thorn]

it's certainly worth at least playing 3

[visual hill]

on my end I'll continue playing Doom's re-release to get all achievements, especially on Legacy of Rust

[fresh bane]

If it was used, it seems like it was used sparingly. At least to my eye I can't really tell, but I wouldn't be surprised if they sneaked in some AI upscaling for things like minor background details, although for the most part it just seems like they either somehow still had access to the original drawings or they re-did them because not to sound rude, but they do have that sort of crappy early digital painting look that AI upscaling would completely remove and smoothen out

The 3D looks great though, I don't know if that's some sort of upscaling or if it's a Soul Reaver style thing where they just had the original files for the animations and simply re-rendered them in higher resolutions

[slim thorn]

you mean... a remaster

come to think of it I still haven't felt like trying Jedi Academy, that's just sitting in my library from some past sale

[fresh bane]

I hear it was quite a big thing, yeah a couple people liked that one! /s

[river veldt]

Star Wars games are hard for me to get into for whatever reason

[fresh bane]

Well, I may be biased here because that game was my entire life as a kid, but I highly recommend it

[river veldt]

i like Dark Forces but have only played the first two levels

[slim thorn]

was Dark Forces the Doom-like shooter?

[fresh bane]

It's a fantastic game, even if it's technically the third in the franchise (Dark Forces 2>Jedi Outcast>Jedi Academy) it's still a good point to start with regardless

Dark Forces 1 is the Doom like yeah, Dark Forces 2 is like a weird... Quake-ish style game, early 3D pc game

[river veldt]

ye

it's awesome

[fresh bane]

By Jedi Outcast the game already has its own sort of identity, still a little bit Quake-ish but not quite as much now

[slim thorn]

ok, personally I find the boomer/doom clone era of shooters doesn't hold my interest

[river veldt]

:c

[fresh bane]

It's okay, it's not necessary, it's just fun to see the beginnings of Kyle Katarn's journey, I happen to also enjoy boomer shooters so it's a win win, Dark Forces 2 is better anyways because you get the lightsaber in that one /s

[slim thorn]

for me being Star Wars was a minor benefit but mostly a non-issue compared to whether the gameplay was any good

[random steppe]

I generally agree, the only one I kinda got into it, even though it was already a modernisation of the genre was Shadow Warrior (2013)

Largely because the swordplay in it was incredibly fun

And of course Doom 2016

[visual hill]

I'd say the closest equivalent to Jedi Outcast is Rune, a third-person hack & slash running on Unreal Engine 1

(released in 2000, so 2 years before Jedi Outcast)

Heretic 2 from 1998 to an extent

Rune also had an active multiplayer community with fights similar to Jedi Outcast/Academy

[random steppe]

Every time I go back to the old pixel based shooters I get bored pretty fast sadly

[river veldt]

i have to finish Dark Ages still

Doom 2 is my favorite old shooter

i like Quake as well i suppose

[visual hill]

the lightsaber in DF2 is quite jank compared to what came after

[river veldt]

but only Quake 1 the others i dont really like

[visual hill]

most of the time, it's not worth using except to save ammo

it's the opposite of Jedi Outcast/Academy where the lightsaber will carry you through most of the game

that reminds me, I haven't played Mysteries of the Sith yet (the DF2 expansion)

[river veldt]

Mario boomer shooter

[fresh bane]

Yeah I can't ask much of a 1997 game, but it was a good try for the time, unfortunately Jedi Outcast/Academy did it so damn good afterwards that DF2 just looks actually clunky in comparison, but I bet it blew people's minds at the time though

I happened to get DF2 with the expansion, I think I wanna go through it even if I heard sort of divisive stuff about it?

It has Mara Jade in it, and I think that's a cool character

[slim thorn]

it is weird how "most games aren't worth playing because there's a similar but obviously better game" yet at the same time "there's a million must-play games and not enough hours in the day to play them all"

[fresh bane]

Oh yeah this was also during that era of gaming where FMVs were the rage so DF2 has real life actors with FMV cutscenes which looks really funky nowadays, but I love it for some reason
(also, Kyle Katarn's actor looks unironically cool)

[random steppe]

It's legit got to the point that when a game I might be into that's coming out gets mid reviews sometimes I'm kinda relieved

[fresh bane]

To be fair Dark Forces 2 is still worth playing I'd say, I just would completely understand if someone only played Outcast/Academy instead

[random steppe]

nightreing

[slim thorn]

I mean, even Halo 4 is worth playing, but I'd rather die on 5's hill

[fresh bane]

I would be completely fine if they just.... stopped, making games

for like a year

like everybody all at once

[random steppe]

Ok yes, I agree, can we shake on that next year tough?

This year Silksong might actually come out

[slim thorn]

man I can't even keep up with the mods for the few games I play mods of

(literally today one came out for Nine Sols, but if I try to play it now I know I'll be throwing out all the muscle memory from the level 0 practice I just did...)

[river veldt]

Halo 5 isn't even on steam

sad

[slim thorn]

yeah that's the one which never got a PC release

partly because it came out after MCC and partly because nobody but me liked it

I assume the multiplayer sucked

[fresh bane]

Speaking of multiplayer, if you do end up trying Jedi Academy, the multiplayer for that game is extremely fun, and I happened to link a pretty intuitive short video about current ways to play Jedi Academy MP and how it works

[visual hill]

lots of memeable FMVs in Dark Forces 2

he goes "delet this" in the first level's ending 😛

I finished Legacy of Rust!!

I'm still missing all those achivements

I keep reading "Incinerator" as "Incineroar"

[quiet swift]

Damnit, pc xbox app is having issues. I WANNA PLAY EXPEDITION 33 DANGIT

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

[cerulean herald]

speaking of, i just reached Act II

[quiet swift]

How was the end of act 1 (behind spoiler tags please)

[visual hill]

I'm trying the speedrun challenge and damn, E1M5 under par time on UV is hard

[sacred grove]

I'm so used to Doom without the accessibility fonts, lol

[river veldt]

oh my lord the font

[cerulean herald]

Expedition 33 ||I got spoiled by Gustav's death (no one to blame but myself tbf) but it was still a nerve wracking scene, I knew he'd have to die, but I still clung to some kind of miracle he would live anyway lol. I thought it was much further into the story but either way I've been really enjoying the other characters, and the Gestral NPCs are mad funny, game has been more humorous than I expected, which is nice bc everyone is dying ||

[toxic seal]

||I was looking forward to traveling with what I thought would be the roster of people we met before the expedition set off and then they land and it's like fucking D-Day.||

[quiet swift]

||same, a random reddit post which even had a spoiler tag spoiled it in the first few words, my own fault for clicking and if you like the humor, in act 2 if they talk about Monoco's Station, go straight there and explore afterwards 😉 ||

[toxic seal]

||I also kept calling Monoco Mococo because I am cursed and Hololive pilled.||

[quiet swift]

Dao don't read this one 😆 ||To be fair, the character is based on the studio's pet dog of the same name soooooo you're not far off||

[cerulean herald]

||It gave me Attack on Titan vibes, where everyone in the team just drops like flies right off the bat||

[quiet swift]

Sounds about right

[visual hill]

I did it!!
E1M8 counts as a proper level finish even though you (nearly) die on purpose in the end, and the par time given to it is very generous

(OG Doom does not have a visible par time for it, the source code sets it to 30 seconds which is impossible to achieve without OOB glitches)

[visual hill]

I wish they didn't pick Arial for the accessible font, it really makes it look like a 2000s Flash game. It perpetrates the idea that "accessible apps are ugly" 😦

but I can only take the Doom font for so long, I don't like when fonts have no difference between uppercase and lowercase

(even Quake has that, however subtle it is)

[river veldt]

Halo CE complete

no boss was kind of strange

[slim thorn]

makes sense; all the Halos have encounters that you could reasonably describe as boss fights, but it never does the big fancy health bar with a special name under it thing, nor do they show up in any specific pattern

[river veldt]

interesting

i liked it a lot, obv i got frustrated at some segments but overall it was pretty good

[green fulcrum]

Man, I miss maps like these from retro games. There's just something so...cool about them. The Commander Keen games had them too.

[river veldt]

i'll probably play Halo 2 soon

but idk if i want to take a break or not

[river veldt]

maps are cool

Doom 2016 had some like the classic games in between levels

[visual hill]

check the id Vault, they have concept arts and timelapses of all the episode end screens

[rancid herald]

the map is a poorly designed powerpoint slide

[visual hill]

there's also the bunny episode image without the bunny. It's ominous...

also check https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=67843 for fan-made 21:9 versions of all Doom engine pics

Strife: Veteran Edition includes WidePix out of the box now

but the Doom re-releases use different pics made by Scuba Steve, as they predate WidePix by a bit

[fresh bane]

Oh god The Eclipse is happening

[visual hill]

not sure what enemy I missed for this one, I finished Legacy of Rust including its secret levels and went to Doom 2 MAP31 and MAP32 too to take care of secret enemies

and Doom 2 MAP30 for Romero's head which is technically an enemy type

[fresh bane]

lol that actually worked

[river veldt]

so like

why does Guilty Spark wanna kill everybody ...?

[slim thorn]

in Halo 1?

[river veldt]

yeah

did i miss something

[slim thorn]

probably

how much did you get about the purpose of the halo itself?

[river veldt]

it's like the Death Star i think ? it kills a bunch of people and i think contains the Flood somehow ?

[slim thorn]

I think rewatching this cutscene will help. Specifically from this part where Cortana gets specific: https://youtu.be/uzhJWMv_BNw?t=125

[quiet swift]

ah, i can log in again. Back to E33!

[river veldt]

oooooh

ok that makes sense

wait it wipes out all life ?????? holy shit the Forerunners were scared of the Flood

[slim thorn]

yup

kinda reframes "The Great Journey" doesn't it

[arctic fern]

P much
They fucked up bad with flood containment

[slim thorn]

to be super precise:

...which means that any organism of sufficient mass and cognitive capability is a potential vector.

bacteria get to live

[river veldt]

fire

time to transform into a bacteria and

do whatever it is bacteria do

[slim thorn]

and for completeness, since this is a setting where AIs arguably qualify as "life", they're an exception due to being non-organic

[river veldt]

what if like

i transfer my brain into a robot

what happens then

[slim thorn]

I don't know how detailed the total lore of Halo canon has gotten on this precise question to date, buuuuuut

I would strongly suspect a whole human brain qualifies as "sufficient mass and cognitive capability"

[river veldt]

damn

it was worth a shot i suppose

[slim thorn]

if you could turn yourself into an AI, that would work

[gaunt marten]

Mine is petite and smooth so no risk there

[arctic fern]

So
Fun fact
All the AIs the humans nade are made this way, kinda
They're based on human brain scans as a base, the actual ai ends up being a different personality
Cortana was uniquely made from a brain of a still living human, they usually used extracted dead brains for the process

[slim thorn]

to my knowledge, the Halo canon does not contain any examples of the Flood attempting to infect an orange cat, so we don't know how that one would play out

[arctic fern]

If you think that's grim, don't ask how master chief was recruited

[quiet swift]

Expedition 33 chapter 2 minor spoilers - enemy type:

[river veldt]

o h

[quiet swift]

Jesus christ that will be an annoying fight

[river veldt]

who is Cortana's brain from is it ever said

[arctic fern]

It is, you meet them in reach

[gaunt marten]

Donald Duck

[slim thorn]

Cortana comes from Dr Halsey, the lead scientist behind the Spartans and a major character in the Reach game and the TV show and several of the novels

[arctic fern]

Oh I wasn't gonna mention that bit yet lol

[slim thorn]

lol, fair, but it's never like a twist reveal or anything, she's just not present in the first game

[arctic fern]

That's fair

[river veldt]

oh right i remember hearing about her and thinking of the singer

[visual hill]

we got GTA V with raytracing (and NaturalVision) before GTA 6

I remember playing it on 2016 on PC on a then-brand new GTX 1080 and thinking "this is as good as graphics are gonna get"

[fresh bane]

I remember when people said that about Witcher 3

[gaunt marten]

This greedy freak https://i.imgur.com/MGStx4a.png

[river veldt]

hold on

dog ?

[gaunt marten]

Bear

In CK2, merchant republics never ever give up titles for any reason

This guy has 46 vassals that he will not let go of. They are killing his economy and giving him nothing in return

But he doesn't want to let a single one of them go

I had to use my imperial administration to ask him to give me one of the vassals. He said no and declared war against me

So I put him in jail

[river veldt]

why is he a bear though

oh wait are you the bear

[gaunt marten]

No, I'm the one that is a bear

I'm a bear because my dad married a bear

[river veldt]

how is a bear doing all this political intrigue

[gaunt marten]

There's an event chain where someone in the court is secretly a bear

[river veldt]

how do you secretly be a bear i feel like if someone was secretly a bear i would figure it out pretty quick

THE LAST OPTION IS EVIL

[gaunt marten]

It's a reference to this 4chan post

[river veldt]

this is so good

playing a bear in DnD sounds fun

[gaunt marten]

As a bear in CK2, you get to do this to prisoners https://i.imgur.com/tIupze1.png

[arctic fern]

There are rules fir monster races
And druids have wildshape
So there's plenty of options

[gaunt marten]

If you do it, you get food poisoning

[arctic fern]

Lol

[gaunt marten]

BUT

If you do it to someone who's a genius, strong, or attractive, you have a chance to get their traits

You are what you eat

[arctic fern]

Lol

[river veldt]

that's amazing

[fresh bane]

https://youtu.be/TYSy9myRQv8?si=JZ2qZsDKlF3sEjCQ
The wrong mercs in the wrong place can make all the diff...erence in the world...

[gaunt marten]

https://i.imgur.com/KWe1CXh.png

I've been slowly sending him letters to revoke vassals one by one then assigning the vassal to their rightful duke

Since he's in jail he can't say no

This is like having a cat that won't eat medicine. He's so stupid

[gaunt marten]

The event is way less impressive for me specifically https://i.imgur.com/ghmpgHB.png

[quiet swift]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN7zNzBZMYE 100% accurate for some normal mobs, not even bosses...

[quiet swift]

I have the perfect emoji for this storyline

[river veldt]

NOOOOOOOO

bear on bear violence

fucked up

[toxic seal]

God yes, like that bouncing motherfucker who just bounces over and over and then just... dies.

[uneven epoch]

spoink?

[toxic seal]

Yes but not that one

There's a monster in E33 whose only attack is bouncing, and the amount of times it bounces increases each turn, making you need to dodge or parry a hand-numbingly amount of times, and then after a few turns it just dies and you win

[uneven epoch]

i am suddenly less interested in playing that gam-

a ghost of genryu materializes and stares me down i meaaan, um, thatll be interesting when i get to that game

[toxic seal]

It's a 100% optional enemy you only find if you look for it

[cunning galleon]

For years I've waited

I wanted Tirpitz because my old user was Tirpitz

[cerulean herald]

The bluffing and the 8450767x combos are too accurate
also I advanced to ||where I met Monaco and you are right, he is a riot ||

[cunning galleon]

https://youtu.be/zAX9yIaka18?si=tUSiyooJvvp-gfq8

Looks like the Big 3 are coming

IJN Yamato, KMS Bismarck and USS Iowa

Yamato sinking in a last ditch kamikaze attack, Bismarck sinking in a last ditch last stand attack and Iowa idk what happened to Iowa probably preserved

🇺🇸 🦅

[quiet swift]

I take it you've also encountered the ||Dualliste|| by now too

[peak berry]

ROAD RASH

[hushed onyx]

Iowa is a museum ship in Los Angeles.

[gaunt marten]

https://i.imgur.com/ZTenCED.png

Buddy, you're the only Yazidi left in the world

World map: https://i.imgur.com/YpddKWH.png

(Notice how all the muslim parts are now Italian)

[unreal idol]

Europe looking a little different

[hushed onyx]

Conquering Persia before Europe

[unreal idol]

Persia has oil

[hushed onyx]

Not in 1186 it doesn’t!

I mean, it does, but it’s not important yet.

[river veldt]

the little bear icon in the top left kills me it's so good

[gaunt marten]

I stopped conquering like three hundred years ago. It's all my vassals doing work for me

The goal for this game is to spend seven centuries as a Lombard monarch

[wind stump]

Apparently another VA has been decomfirned for P4 Remake, this time it's Yukiko...

First Yosuke, then Chie, now Yukiko...
needless to say that this is either a BIG coincidence or planned on ATLUS' part

also the fact that ATLUS aren't putting a big kiboosh on this is sus

[wind stump]

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

[slim thorn]

so I've been watching video essays about the Ultima games, and I think what strikes me the most is how much the ethos reminds me of the later Elder Scrolls series, down to things like "Ultima 6 was maybe the first game to let you pick up and carry around any random useless object in the world" and also "many Ultima games were infamously buggy on launch"

[wind stump]

-# always found it weird that the ultimate magic in FF games is named after Ultima

[slim thorn]

yeah, I never realized how much the formative JRPGs were inspired by specifically Ultima and Wizardry

[wind stump]

get paid 110k yen
100k yen goes to bills

bruh i'm playing Promise Mascot Agency as an escape

[slim thorn]

the real reason I still haven't played Citizen Sleeper /s

[wind stump]

and now i have a fucking ticking timer that i have to keep up with otherwise i game over

weeeee

one really cool thing about PMA is that at any time you can call up Pinky and go "Oi, I need X" and she's like "Alright, here's what you can do, I've marked it on your map."

and like, if you just want to naturally find everything you can just ignore the feature entirely!

[cerulean herald]

yup, I did

[random steppe]

You can also wait until you dramatically overlevel it and blast it away in two turns

(which is what I did)

[visual hill]

fun fact: did you know Steam sold movies at some point? here's proof: https://steamdb.info/app/728190/

I can't view the store page in France, but I can see the community hub

[gaunt marten]

It still does

https://store.steampowered.com/app/207080/Indie_Game_The_Movie/

Steam

Indie Game: The Movie

Follow the creation of the games Super Meat Boy, Braid and FEZ through this Sundance award-winning feature documentary. Critic’s Pick of the New York Times and declared a “Must See” by Ain’t It Cool News. Watch the full theatrical cut in 1080p HD.

After almost two years of painstaking work, designer Edmund McMillen and programmer Tommy…

Price

$9.99

Recommendations

1022

[river veldt]

is this the one with Jonathan Blow in the dark room upset about Soulja Boy

[toxic seal]

E33: ||Cool radar map showing the expeditions and how close they got to the Monolith, color-coding how each expedition ended by category.||

From this video: ||https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMOZ9p1wC_I||

[green fulcrum]

Man, 78, 64, 54, and especially 48 must've really sucked.

70 and 60 came DAMN close though.

[orchid sundial]

do steam keys of this still exist this would be so funny to have

also, i found out that the monsters inc video games on ps1 and ps2 are literally the exact same game fundamentally https://youtu.be/iuOr2HSiWJQ

and golly, these versions both look ugly in their own ways

[wind stump]

peaches peaches peachespeachespeaches

[wind stump]

Promise Mascot Agency is a game where trying to get across the map without getting distracted is impossible

i have spent like, 3 hours trying to recruit this one mascot but i keep getting side tracked

[cunning galleon]

They all look

[cerulean herald]

I recently found that miniboss, yeah fuck that guy

[river veldt]

does the redwoods still exist in Halo

[slim thorn]

the trees?

[river veldt]

yeah

[slim thorn]

uh... probably? not sure Halo ever spent time over there

[river veldt]

i guess i'm just wondering if Earth still has beautiful nature or if it's a Cyberpunk situation where Earth sucks

[slim thorn]

ah, okay, AFAIK Earth is doing totally fine in the Halo-verse

the humans were worried about a war making it to Earth (initially their own human v human nonsense, but then of course the Covenant War), and it's probably not a spoiler to say that there is in fact at least one Halo game where stuff happens on Earth , but at no point does the whole Earth get rendered uninhabitable

heck, there's even at least one canonically glassed colony planet that later gets re-settled by people excavating the glass to reach usable soil

[river veldt]

ok cool

[bitter stream]

"Strike the Earth! Wear your PPE and don your best gloves because working through glassed terrain is a hard days work" - Some colonist deciding that a glassed planet is a minor inconvenience

[river veldt]

the indomitable human spirit etc

[fresh bane]

|| pog, it's him!!! ||

[river veldt]

oh shit !

[river veldt]

maybe i'm too used to Doom where there's an ongoing energy crisis on earth but it's kind of refreshing having Earth just be normal

[bitter stream]

Earth's problem is ONI and it's colony wars... which then got replaced with Covenant wars RIP

[slim thorn]

I get what you mean

especially if you've spent a lot of time in cyberpunk, or the sci-fi shows that lean towards political drama (which tend to favor Earth v other parts of the solar system like Gundam or The Expanse do)

[river veldt]

i forgot to mention how i liked how one of the ships in CE was named Foehammer, which i believe was Gandalf's sword he gets in The Hobbit

either Gandalf or Thorin i can't remember

[hushed onyx]

Yeah, remember that a good chunk of Halo 2, Halo 3, and Reach take place in eastern Africa and it's, well, basically fine.

[slim thorn]

I was being non-specific about it because Cap only just played 1

[hushed onyx]

Oh, whoops.

[river veldt]

im about to start Halo 2

[hushed onyx]

[slim thorn]

you forgot the five seconds it shows up in 4

[hushed onyx]

I never played 4 😉

[river veldt]

don't worry about it, i already knew Reach took place on earth from cultural osmosis

[hushed onyx]

It's still "one of those new ones" to me.

[slim thorn]

Reach (mostly?) takes place on Reach

[hushed onyx]

Wait, not Reach, ODST.

[river veldt]

wait really

ok i guess cultural osmosis lied to me then >:c

[slim thorn]

it does that sometimes

[hushed onyx]

I don't think any of it doesn't take place on Reach ||except for the level in space||

[slim thorn]

I was hedging my bets since you sounded so sure and I haven't replayed it

[hushed onyx]

I was thinking of ODST but said Reach for some reason

[river veldt]

should i have played Reach first ? normally my rule with prequels is to watch/play/read them after the original

[slim thorn]

nah

[hushed onyx]

It wouldn't be bad to play Reach first, but you also wouldn't get as much I don't think.

[slim thorn]

so the exact ordering isn't super important here

[green fulcrum]

...I just realized something. ODSTs are Helldivers. They even have extremely similar designs.

They even have the in-universe nickname of Helljumpers, and they are deployed from orbital insertion vehicles/pods.

[slim thorn]

but irl Reach came out between 3 and 4 I think? and story-wise, Reach is its own self-contained thing, while 1-3 directly build on each other

[river veldt]

ooh ok

[slim thorn]

so in a lot of ways it just makes sense to play Reach after finishing "the original trilogy"

[river veldt]

ok good to know

[hushed onyx]

Sort of its own self-contained thing, it links back to 1 at the end.

[slim thorn]

especially since Reach works best as a contrast to the Master Chief's adventure; in Reach you play a different spartan and the tone is very different, which is one of the things people liked so much about it

[hushed onyx]

But it's a bit of a cameo situation, granted.

[river veldt]

IT KEEPS RESETTING MY RESOLUTION

please fix this 343

sorry

Halo Studios

[slim thorn]

to be clear, the lore/continuity connection is as tight as Rogue One going into A New Hope: at the end of Reach you literally watch the Pillar of Autumn warp away in the direction of what we now call Installation 04

[river veldt]

oh shit that's cool

[slim thorn]

but narratively/thematically/tonally, it's a self-contained thing best experienced as a prequel, after the mainquels

[river veldt]

what about ODST ?

[slim thorn]

in Halo 3: ODST you play as one of the ODSTs (basically elite marines, but not spartans) during the events of Halo 2 that take place on Earth

I don't have a strong opinion on when you should play that one, except that narratively it certainly is just a little side story, so it works best as a breather between some of the bigger installments

though gameplay-wise a lot of people feel ODST is just as peak as 3

(I personally never got around to playing ODST, oops)

[river veldt]

i'll just play it how it's listed on MCC (between 3 and 4)

[slim thorn]

sounds good

as far as overall franchise ordering goes I think the only big point is: once you start 1-3, you're gonna want to finish 1-3, since it is a cohesive trilogy

[river veldt]

omg i just rememebered i get energy swords now

[bitter stream]

yo nice

I think i'm part way through Halo 1 atm, (Playing through again with a friend)

[slim thorn]

Halo 2 is in some ways the most interesting one, because it adds a ton of new stuff on top of 1, and that new stuff can be a bit of a mixed bag overall

the energy sword is mostly win though, just keep in mind that it introduces a short-range lunge that other melee weapons don't have

(in fact Halo 2 has one of the best speedruns because you can abuse the lunge to, uh, "sword fly")

[river veldt]

people love Halo 3 so im excited for that one

[slim thorn]

indeed, but it's even better in contrast with 2; some of 3's best parts are things it was able to refine after 2 introduced a rougher form of them

and of course narratively 2 introduces the Arbiter

[river veldt]

yessss

Keith David 🔥🔥

[slim thorn]

is it just me or was there an era where game sequels liked to do the decoy/double protagonist thing? MGS 2 was around a similar time I think?

[river veldt]

MGS2 has a decoy protagonist ???

[slim thorn]

uh

you heard nothing

[river veldt]

oh is it Raiden

[fresh bane]

I really wasn't expecting this amount of mental power I'd need for a Doomlike, some levels have been a lot more puzzle heavy than I thought they would, this one took me two different 20-30 min tries to get through
(If it's not obvious, after going down two different elevators, very far away from the beginning area, the level just kinda doesn't go anywhere, so you have to: Get the elevator all the way to the bottom, exit, make it go up three levels, go all the way around to the other elevator, go all the way to the top, exit, make it go down as far as it goes, then go through a Red Key door on the beginning area and go through the vents using the elevators as flooring to keep going)

Really cool after the fact, but very unclear in the moment

[slim thorn]

but yes, MGS2 famously has you play as Solid Snake in the tutorial/prologue mission, then boom time skip and Raiden's the protagonist for the whole rest of the game; I'm told this infuriated many people back then

[fresh bane]

That's not the full story

[slim thorn]

well sure but none of the MGS stories fit in two sentences

[fresh bane]

Snake was also put in the place of Raiden in a lot of trailers too

It was a very.... brave choice by Kojima, I guess you could say

and yeah a lot of people are still angry about it, a lot of people never liked Raiden specifically because of that

[slim thorn]

so I just double-checked the TVTropes article and...

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty has quite possibly the most famous example of this. [...]
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, jokes with this: If the player chooses MGS2 as his favourite of the franchise when starting a game, the player characters starts the game wearing the Raiden mask... which he soon discards after the first cutscene.

[fresh bane]

I think they would also show like snippets of gameplay sections from the Plant chapter with Snake in them in magazines just to fool players even more

https://youtu.be/XYjikjUcmJA?si=0V2m54MPyUmd11st
in this trailer you can see Snake fighting Fortune instead of Raiden

[river veldt]

is Master Chief a cyborg ? one of the loading screens in CE called him a "one cyborg army"

[river veldt]

that's fucking hilarious and totally sounds like Kojima

[slim thorn]

yes

the novels and TV show go into more detail

[river veldt]

oh right i forgot about the show

[slim thorn]

but the SPARTAN II process involves various augmentations/surgeries on young children throughout their growth to enhance general strength/reflexes/etc, and the Mjolnir armor they wear is unusable by regular humans

[river veldt]

ah

so if i tried to get into the Mjolnir armor it would be like those clips in Iron Man 2 of the other countries trying to develop the suit

[slim thorn]

exactly

I specify II here because the later SPARTAN IV generation improved the tech enough to allow for adult volunteers to get the augs, thereby making it a morally squeaky clean process

(in Halo 5 you alternate between Master Chief's squad of Spartan IIs and a new squad of Spartan IVs)

[rancid herald]

I hope in a future halo game the pilot is genetically engineered to extrude armor plates and is in fact completely naked

[river veldt]

oh interesting

[rancid herald]

"It's like I'm wearing nothing at all" - Master Chief

[fresh bane]

Maybe they'll give Chief a Zero Suit style suit for the next game

[river veldt]

Master Chief is like always wearing his armor so i bet it does feel like he's not wearing anything most of the time

[river veldt]

finally

[fresh bane]

the high heels are entirely necessary I assure you Chief

[rancid herald]

at some point I probably should play halo

[fresh bane]

I would say the opposite imagine really wanting to scratch your neck or something but you can't

[slim thorn]

one of the nice things about the novels, Halo 5 and the TV show is that having Master Chief be in a squad of Spartans allows them to add female Spartans to the main cast

[fresh bane]

I do know that some of the games have custom spartans for multiplayer and give you the option to select female spartans

[rancid herald]

Fortunately, she was not hot due to the cooling system operating correctly

[river veldt]

is the Mjolnir suit like stillsuits from Dune where it recycles moisture so Chief doesn't get dehydrated

[slim thorn]

I'm not aware of it having any features like that

I don't think its intended for that kind of long-term survival situation

what it does have is enough armor and shielding to survive damn near anything the plot doesn't want you to die from

[fresh bane]

each game has a different one so I'm guessing he gets out of the armor every once in a while and upgrades it

[slim thorn]

yeah, I know Halo 2 explicitly starts with an armor upgrade

[slim thorn]

(mostly as an in-universe justification for the tutorial and the UI/control changes, but still)

[river veldt]

why did they take away his cuteness in between 3 and 4

[slim thorn]

is that what happened

[river veldt]

yeah he's bouba in 3 and kiki in 4

[slim thorn]

...okay, I kinda see it

[fresh bane]

I do like that the designs kind of go from relatively simple blocky design, to more segmented complex looking design, back to slightly blockier and simple, into even more segmented and complex and detailed, then even more, and now we're back to a relatively more blocky simpler design inbetween

[river veldt]

jesus christ

In its final phase, the Mjolnir battlesuit weighs half a short ton, or 1,000 pounds

[slim thorn]

also keep in mind that how good these designs look also depends on the entire game world around him, and this was an era where how good 3D game worlds could look was progressing rapidly

[river veldt]

true

[fresh bane]

I kinda wish he was more green though

Halo 3 is the last game where he really looks green

[river veldt]

oh yeah i should probably ask this now since youre here ix, is Halo 5 super important to the story ? cause im worried once i finish 4 im gonna wanna continue but 5 isn't on pc

[slim thorn]

I think he still looks perfectly green in-game, but we'd have to do a lot of footage comparison to really argue that

uh

ok how do I put this

you know how with Star Wars, the biggest problem of the sequel trilogy is that none of the 3 films could agree on what they were doing, so even though The Last Jedi has some really neat stuff in it, none of it is supported by TFA or followed-up on in RoS?

Halo 5's in that boat, story-wise

[river veldt]

oh i see

so it doesn't really matter at all

[slim thorn]

somewhat better since 4 and 5 connect pretty well, but 5 ended on the biggest possible cliffhanger and then Infinite just pretended that all got resolved off-screen to reset everything to a sort of status quo that was far less interesting and then kinda repeated a random mix of plot beats from 4 and 5??? Infinite was fucking baffling

[river veldt]

lol ok

i thought you liked Infinite ?

or is it a mixed situation

[slim thorn]

Ixrec — 5/29/25, 21:46
Speaking again only of campaigns: Halo Infinite is a perfectly fine game, but it has no advantages over any of 1-5. Especially since Infinite's good parts are also similar to earlier Halos but not quite as good. There's just no reason to revisit it specifically.

[river veldt]

ah

well i may as well play it when i get to it just for completions sake

[slim thorn]

I'm pretty sure it's not in the MCC, but yeah that's a decision for after you get that far

[river veldt]

yeah i meant when i finished MCC woops

[fresh bane]

the only thing I saw about Infinite is || don't click these cap || || that the new Cortana/The Weapon is really cute and is like a dorkier Cortana but that's about all I saw and since I don't really know these characters the fact that she ''came back'' didn't impact me as much obviously ||

[slim thorn]

backing up to the points about MC in a squad, and MC being not green enough

this is "Blue Team", Master Chief's squad introduced in the very first Halo novel, as they're depicted in Halo 5:

[river veldt]

the person in the back has no blue !

[slim thorn]

so that's probably part of the reason I never thought "he's not green enough" in 5; he's standing next to all these non-green spartans the whole game

I don't remember if there's any meaning behind the team name

[slim thorn]

there's a lot that could be said about this, but I think most of it boils down to a mix of "they did some arguably similar stuff in 4" and "this would've been way more interesting if it was properly set up/paid off/etc"

[river veldt]

are any of the books worth reading ? i watched the BDG video but didn't really get a clear cut answer

[slim thorn]

surprisingly, yes, my family's read several of the novels because they turned out to be actually straight-up good, not just "good for a video game tie-in"

[river veldt]

ooh

[slim thorn]

now, I haven't even pretended to try to keep up with the Halo books, I've only read a fraction of the earliest ones

[fresh bane]

Aren't there some books that established some stuff and then a game came out that completely ignored all that and people were mad about it?

[slim thorn]

but as long as we're doing all this lore talk

the one novel you should be aware of is "Halo: The Fall of Reach"

it's the first official Halo novel, it's a prequel to the first game, obviously parts of it were later adapted into the Halo: Reach prequel game, and it also added a ton of then-new lore about the Master Chief's past (including much of what I've been telling you about the Spartan 2 program and Blue Team and Dr Halsey) which has since been used in later games and the show

[river veldt]

noted

[green fulcrum]

Ngl, I can't stand the Halo 4 look. It's so ugly compared to Halo 3.

Halo 3 will always be the absolute best the Spartans have looked.

[slim thorn]

as long as I'm wiki'ing all this, did Ghosts of Onyx ever get a proper sequel...

[fresh bane]

listen, it was 2012, people were going crazy about their hyper realistic soldier dudes so I get it

me personally I like CE

[green fulcrum]

Halo 5 and Halo Infinite are actually a decent mix between the "realism" of 4 and the future sleekness of 3. But I still prefer 3 overall.

That said, I have a soft spot for CE's look because of RvB. As for 2... let's put it this way, I like it better than 4's look, but not by much. It's far too grungy.

[river veldt]

i still haven't watched RvB, is it worth watching

[green fulcrum]

Absolutely

[slim thorn]

it's not a style of humor that clicks for me, but it's certainly worth a shot

and you've already seen enough Halo to understand the context for the early episodes

[gaunt marten]

They should make a team fortress where you play as two competing office departments on opposite sides of the building. Your verbs are steal sensitive documents, take control of the only printer/coffee machine that works, place propaganda in the opposite department's section, escort the CEO to your manager instead of theirs.

And to remind people that it's basically the same game, don't change the name too much: ream fortress

[green fulcrum]

Seasons 1 through 13 are brilliant. Season 14 is a half canon, half non-canon anthology so that one is harder to gauge, but I liked it. S15 - S17 is hit or miss, depending on who you ask, but I think it's a great story arc overall and BY FAR a superior ending to the Restoration movie (which is hinted to be a simulation anyway).

Do not watch RvB Zero, it's absolute trash.

Ultimately, it's a show with three endings, each of them as valid as the next. S13 as an ending is brilliant in its ambiguity and heartwrenching writing. S17 as an ending is heartwrenching in its own right, but ends on a less ambiguous note and provides a ton of closure, if bittersweet at some points. Then there's the Restoration movie at the very end, officially the last RvB work ever made, and it is far more bittersweet than the either two endings. I did not like this one, and prefer to end things at S17, but you're free to make up your own mind should you choose to watch it.

[slim thorn]

huh, that is a lot more seasons than I thought there were

I have no idea how many I watched but it was not 13

[green fulcrum]

Yeah, there were 19 official seasons and the Restoration movie (but really only 17 seasons, because Zero and Zero: Family Shatters are absolute garbage that nobody liked, not even the original creators of the show, and they were declared hard non-canon in the Restoration movie).

[hushed onyx]

Meanwhile I looked at this and was like "Huh, I like the 4, I thought that the 3 suit looked more like that"

[green fulcrum]

It should be noted though, each season is only a few hours long in total.

[visual hill]

I was disappointed by this when I first played the game in 2023

the gameplay is nearly the same, but it doesn't feel as MGS-y without Snake

it's like Star Fox Adventures, I expected I would be replaying Krystal at some point in the story

[slim thorn]

it didn't bother me at all when I played MGS 1-4, though I no longer remember if I was spoiled on it in advance, and playing them all back to back certainly was a factor

[fickle garnet]

I love Raiden

[static bluff]

Got bored and watched the TAS for Earthbound again - https://youtu.be/g_vXk22Zke0?sans=ness

[river veldt]

poor Arbiter :(

this guy lecturing Master Chief on how expensive Mjolnir armor is 😭

wait now when i take damage with no shields i die ???

they nerfed the shotgun so much !!!

WHEN I LOOK DOWN I SEE MY LEGS WTF

[gaunt marten]

Are you high

That's where your legs should be

[river veldt]

in an fps ?????

[gaunt marten]

You don't lose your legs when you pick up a gun

[cunning galleon]

This thing is beautiful 😍

[slim thorn]

#NineSols: getting closer to a full clear of (Story Mode) Level 0 Eigong, best attempt this morning got ~3/4 into phase 3 before dying in the dumbest possible way: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2473361415

[wind stump]

you know i think i like this game

(There is an autosave system but I like to plonk a manual when i'm done with a session)

[cunning galleon]

Did a simple Cv33

P26/40 next

[wind stump]

HELL YE

[quiet swift]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nkDhVBDHFw a 20 minute carbot video, holy shit

[green fulcrum]

A Carbot movie!

[random steppe]

Same energy of the "I am afraid we are gonna have to this guy" meme

[wind stump]

damn

Oh yeah I forgot Paradise Killer was a game.

[uneven epoch]

uh oh, no major spoilers please! its on my to play list

oh wait its from ur pinky game

[quiet swift]

Just finished watching it. All I can say is

[slim thorn]

#NineSols: I FINALLY ACTUALLY DID IT (on story mode but who cares)

[bitter stream]

Let's gooo

Nice work Ixrec

[slim thorn]

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2473687390

enjoy the phase 3 that's about 50% textbook and 50% wtf am I even doing

[bitter stream]

ah I'd watch, but I might actually play Nine Sols one day

If I ever get through Hollow Knight lmao

[slim thorn]

np

[cerulean herald]

congrats! the "thx eigong for keeping me humble" was a highlight

[quiet swift]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1473350/the_Gnorp_Apologue/ anyone tried this? youtuber I watch regularly was recommended this by his editor and he quite liked it, and from watching him play it it actually looked quite good. A cookie clicker-esque game but it seems to have quite a lot of mechanical depth to it

Steam

(the) Gnorp Apologue

(the) Gnorp Apologue is a game where you help small beings called gnorps get rich. It is a unique incremental game with interesting upgrades, and visuals to match the numbers.

Hit the rock…

Price

$6.99

Recommendations

7816

▶ Play video

[fickle garnet]

I played the Sllitgate 2 beta, and I really enjoy it. I also really enjoyed the first game

[gaunt marten]

Waiting for a sale

[random steppe]

That doesn't sound like something I'd enjoy but I'd say it's hitting the mark for its audience, that's a score

[gaunt marten]

Don't eyeroll me, I'm really poor

[bitter stream]

A friend of mine really liked it, but they tend to like cookie clickers so idk how much to put towards that

The art is pretty too

[slim thorn]

yeah, I'm still surprised a silly moment like that made it into a run worth highlighting

[fresh bane]

''You need the blue key!''

the door is red

[slim thorn]

better get Rick the Door Technician to fix that

[fresh bane]

Too late, I already blew up the facility

and maybe Rick along with it

insert scene of Han running into the hangar full of stormtroopers here

[green fulcrum]

Ohohohooo, we're so back! The Skyrim Grandma is back in town! :D https://youtu.be/ZjXbDPzjJdc?feature=shared

[gaunt marten]

I have conquered every religion that can join the hermetics, so the only people in the world that remain in the hermetic society are me and my husband, whom I recruited as an assistant https://i.imgur.com/ZPneXG7.png

This makes it impossible for my papers to get peer reviewed so I always fail

[river veldt]

this is so cool. i know she said she was bored of Skyrim a while ago

[green fulcrum]

Yeah, she semi-retired from gaming, but it looks like she's back for Oblivion. :)

[fresh bane]

I might've been a little over-prepared for this... climactic final showdown

aaaand roll credits, alright
that's about as long as I thought this game was gonna be honestly

pretty short and sweet

[minor plover]

oh he deyead

[fresh bane]

now let's see if I care enough about the second game to set up all the mods required to make it even work at all on modern computers...

[fresh bane]

I killed him so fast I wasn't even looking at him when he died, I was strafing around the corner

didn't even look him in the eye

[river veldt]

who even is the final boss i can't tell

[fresh bane]

I don't know if you saw the Boba Fett clip I posted the other day but it's that old guy, he's supposedly a hero from the Clone Wars (back when they didn't even know wtf those were supposed to actually be), he's the guy in charge of the whole Dark Trooper project and he just hopped into one of the armors to fight you

Spoilers I guess but I don't think anyone cares honestly

[river veldt]

ooooh

i think they brought back the Dark Troopers in Mandalorian

[fresh bane]

also speaking of the Boba Fett fight was also super disappointing

the setup was cool with Jan warning you and the silent backtrack really psyches you up, and then you see him just waiting there, but the actual fight itself isn't that crazy but I don't think I could've expected much more

[fresh bane]

I think those are the phase three dark troopers so the much beefier ones, with the glossy black armor and the red eyes, you get to see all the different stages in this game and you fight each phase as you go along which is nice

[river veldt]

ahh

[river veldt]

Boba Fett and mildly disappointing fights name a better combo

[fresh bane]

I should probably watch Mandalorian it's kinda the only new Star Wars related thing I would kinda care to watch
I'd watch Ahsoka but I heard it was... okay

[fresh bane]

His fight is cool in Jedi Academy! sort of

he's at least kinda threatening in that game

[river veldt]

Mandalorian season 1 is universally regarded as amazing
season 2 is a little more mixed but i adore it
season 3 i really like but a lot of people don't

[fresh bane]

I'm sure even the worst Mandalorian has to offer will be better than most of what I saw from the sequels

also Boba Fett shows up in it I heard so I wanna get to see at least that if anything

[river veldt]

he's really cool in it

[gaunt marten]

Excuse me? https://i.imgur.com/5oR7mRK.png

This lady has 3 gold. Where is she able to give me like a year's worth of money?

[light gate]

What difficulty was it?

[fresh bane]

Medium, I tried hard for the first couple of missions, but got really stuck in like the third mission with all the robots and the sewers and I switched it to medium after, I probably could've done it in hard but some of the later levels get extremely confusing in terms of navigation and progress so I didn't really feel like adding onto that by making it too hard, but at least the first few levels weren't too bad on hard

[wind stump]

what did you think it was

[uneven epoch]

i dunno the game itself

(i dont actually know anything about paradise killer except for "detective game where you can accuse anyone at any point" which is enough to make me wanna play it)

and well, being able to recognize main character visually

[gaunt marten]

The judge is the killer

He's also the jury but that's irrelevant

[uneven epoch]

.... i really hope you're joking there

[gaunt marten]

Yes, I know nothing about the game, but it is a "judge, jury and executioner" joke

[random steppe]

Pretty sure it's a spin on "judge, jury and executioner"

[wind stump]

It helps that her card is very good. Both visually and like, in gameplay.

[random steppe]

Oh Jinx

[wind stump]

Also there was a whole sub-area containing decals for Paradise Killer characters that you can put on Pinky's nail.

Well "sub area"
really just an island slightly out of the way

Because if you couldn't tell
it's the same developer

and from what little of Paradise Killer I have played?
100% makes sense, lmao

[random steppe]

Oh, Summer Game Fest is in 5 days!
Time flies

[young creek]

theyre gonna have hollow knight 2

the final knight

[gaunt marten]

While waiting for the iron crown of lombardy achievement to trigger, I did a few things: https://i.imgur.com/f9Sd6F7.png

[slim thorn]

I liked Ahsoka but it's very much an unfinished story atm, and if you haven't seen the prequel-era stuff with her then there's a lot of missed connections

Mandalorian has no such caveats, everyone should try that

[cunning galleon]

Duce! Duce! Duce!

Hoping to recreate the family photo

[wind stump]

Blue blue...

[visual hill]

guess who did a Qobble Moment™️ again

I died 12 times, so my K/D isn't as good as last time (where I had 111 kills and 4 deaths), but still 😛

[quiet swift]

Expedition 33: chromatic glissando can go to hell

[visual hill]

playing a childhood game in 2025... it still gets updates somewhat often, and the demo version still features the same track/cars as it did around 2007 😛

it's a simracing game, definitely on the more realistic side but I'm used to driving it with a keyboard

the graphics have that mid-2000s "hyperrealistic" vibe that was pretty common in simracing

[visual hill]

bored? Here's a game from Neal, maker of Stimulation Clicker: https://neal.fun/infinite-craft/

[fresh bane]

hey if there's any computer nerds in here right now I'm thinking of upgrading my gpu on top of getting more storage pretty soon, I'm eyeing a particular gpu on a local store where I get all my parts, would anyone happen to know if there's any difference between an msi and gigabyte gpu at all or if I could just go for whichever one and it'd be fine?
just in case they're both the exact same price too

[gaunt marten]

It's not a big deal

[quiet swift]

Do you have a link? It might come down to how much VRam they have, what the clock speed is, etc etc. If they're the same price it might not be a significant enough difference to worry about, though more Vram in one is usually better

[gaunt marten]

They are usually slightly different

[quiet swift]

Yep, clock speeds and so on, but that's probably what, 2-5% performance difference at most if that's the main differences

[fresh bane]

They're both the RTX 3050 LP 6GB, they're the exact same price, I'm going for literally the cheapest thing they got since every other gpu they got is way more expensive and higher end than that

I'm not gonna do anything too crazy with it either, I just have a GTX 1650 right now and I could use an upgrade is all, so I don't care too much about any super minor advantages one might have over the other if you're doing a very intensive task or anything like that, I just wanted to make sure if maybe there's some important differences I should know about before getting one or the other

just doing good old regular gaming and art stuff, not even high/max settings gaming either

[quiet swift]

It's a decent enough upgrade yeah, though it certainly won't allow higher resolution on a lot of stuff. 30 series is a bit old at this point

[fresh bane]

Yeah that's perfectly fine, I don't mind that at all since I don't even game on super high resolutions at all and I'm looking for a relatively cheap upgrade here, even if it's an older gpu what I've come to realize is my current 1650 is even worse so I'm fine with that

[quiet swift]

Depends on what you wanna play, yeah. The 6gb of ram is rather weak though

[hasty patio]

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/the-elder-scrolls/after-10-years-iconic-streamer-skyrim-grandma-is-now-oblivion-remastered-grandma-sorry-guys-you-know-i-have-to-look-at-everything-ive-never-been-here-before/

[fresh bane]

That's alright, they do have the 8gb 3050 too, but they're about $90 more expensive, and as much as I could get it I don't wanna just blow through a lot of money just for one component especially if I'm not looking for a super crazy upgrade here, as long as I can play the same games I'm playing right now even at the same settings just without any meaningful stutters or low frames I'm perfectly good with that

also the 6gb version seems to have a lower power consumption so that's cool with me too

[drifting tendon]

What is the price range you are looking at right now?

[fresh bane]

I mean technically I have the money to get a higher end gpu, I just don't wanna go too far here since I'm not particularly looking for a crazy upgrade and anything that doesn't require a higher power consumption (or any gpu that may be too big for my computer for that matter), even if it isn't a super crazy improvement is more than completely fine with the purposes I'm gonna give it, both these 3050s are at $255 usd here, anything from the 8gb version (which is slightly bigger, has higher power consumption and requires a different cable I think) is $300 usd upwards

so these two are the cheapest thing they got

I'm also gonna get another 1tb ssd which is $80 so I also wanna spend as little as possible here too

[gaunt marten]

How many siblings does she even have? https://i.imgur.com/ua20hQC.png

[cunning galleon]

buns

[cunning galleon]

damn tank is mad at me

[visual hill]

the 3050 8 GB will age a lot better than the 3050 6 GB, I basically consider the 3050 6 GB ewaste-tier at this point

I would be surprised if the 3050 6 GB is still usable in AAA games at lowest settings in 3 years from now

it won't be a problem for older games, indies and emulation, but anything AAA or even AA and it will struggle due to VRAM usage

[little badger]

New James Bond game being revealed this week

[fickle garnet]

It's being developed by ioi, the same people that did the recent hitman games

[bitter stream]

ooh I hope they've nailed the feel of James Bond with it. They did a great job with Hitman

[wind stump]

[bitter stream]

oh, that's a clever mod re-skin

[wind stump]

yup

[fresh bane]

I understand this, but considering I currently am working with a GTX 1650 and I'm looking for any upgrade at all and it's the cheapest option I got right now I would be fine with not getting to play any modern game
I'm just looking for a quick relatively cheap upgrade for now, since even my 1650 has been perfectly fine for what I've used it for (even running games like Helldivers 2 pretty comfortably), but it would be nice to play the same games I'm playing in a more comfortable way, that's enough for me, especially since it's the cheapest option I got right now

Maybe later down the line in like a year or so I'll upgrade to something that will probably be much better, I know it's probably not the best sounding upgrade and all but it'll probably work for me and any other gpu that's better that I could get is also pricier

[river veldt]

the weapons in Halo 2 are a lot more satisfying to shoot than CE's

also i need to admit something, i thought Halo was around a planet, like Saturn's rings, and not the actual planet itself

[wind stump]

have you found the P L A S M A S W O R D yet

[river veldt]

not yet !

im on earth though that's cool

[wind stump]

ah well you'll find one sooner or later

[river veldt]

ye im excited

[slim thorn]

naming your droid Chonk just feels mean

[wind stump]

[chilly mural]

https://youtu.be/uHCVvoKzoJ0?si=ue2PBapix0TD5ZQH&t=827 finally, a video explaining why I love the intricates of crash team racing

[smoky sonnet]

all of them

[fickle garnet]

Oh, I didn't know they did all of them

I love Hitman Blood Money

Im stuck on the Cerberus boss in DMC3... It's the first boss

[light gate]

https://www.theverge.com/news/677944/nintendo-switch-2-screen-protector-anti-scattering-film-cover
When receiving your Switch 2, be sure to avoid removing the anti-scattering film.

[hushed onyx]

Technically (🤓) it is. Halos are artificial ringworlds that orbit a planet (actually they might be at a Lagrange point, but the difference is not that important in this context). This is unlike other artificial ringworlds that encircle a planet (for example in Stellaris), orbit a star (like Banksian orbitals), or encircle a star (like the ringworld in Ringworld)

[slim thorn]

yeah, "the" Halo is always shown orbiting a planet, even if that planet is not at the center of it (and in fact is far larger than the halo)

https://halo.wiki.gallery/images/thumb/5/50/H2A-AlphaHaloDiscovery.jpg/1200px-H2A-AlphaHaloDiscovery.jpg

[river veldt]

yeah but like

i thought i was on the planet not the Halo

[slim thorn]

are you telling me you never gazed at the skybox

admittedly skyboxes were a lot less impressive back then

[river veldt]

I DID !!!!

AND I THOUGHT IT WAS TRYING TO SUGGEST LIKE

the planet was in the Halo

idk

[slim thorn]

oh that you're standing on a thing in the center of the ring

[river veldt]

YEAH

[slim thorn]

yeah I can see that if you only get a few glimpses of it

well in that screenshot you can see how it spreads out so much at the horizon that the camera has to be on the ring

[river veldt]

ye

[slim thorn]

I also remember appreciating that at one point Cortana describes a location as some number of kilometers "upspin"

she just had enough spare bandwidth to solve the "how do we even do directions in this place" problem

[green fulcrum]

...It is. The Halos are artificial ring worlds. Mountains, biomes, weather, temperature, even animals.

[fresh bane]

I think what Cap is saying is they thought there was a planet in the middle of the ring and that's where you are standing on, rather than standing inside/on the ring and seeing the rest of the ring go around you

[arctic fern]

i guess cap thought that the forunners really liked that planet

[green fulcrum]

Ah

[hasty patio]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1757300/Jump_Ship/ Demo is live for it now.

Steam

Jump Ship

Jump Ship is a mission based co-op FPS for up to 4 players, where you are the crew of a spaceship. Transition seamlessly from crewing the ship to on-foot exploration and space walks. Engage in intense battles both on the ground and in space, and always keep your ship upgraded and intact. Teamwork is key for survival and victory.

We love co\…

Release Date

2025

▶ Play video

[hushed onyx]

Or she just likes classic science-fiction 😉

(I suspect Ringworld had similar language in it)

[fresh bane]

https://youtu.be/SZxofrgLmOQ?si=YJUYtHMIlWXelIZE

god I hope this means more costumes are in the works in the future, especially now that MH is out of the way, although I still don't even know if they got separate teams working on these or if they had to put more people working on Monster Hunter

it's a bit of an unfair comparison because of just how many costumes SFV has but still

[arctic fern]

Been playing it
It's very good honestly

[quiet swift]

I do understand your point, but I kinda agree with calinou here. GPU tends to have one of the more marked effects on a computer - you're not looking for the latest and greatest to play max everything, but splurging maybe a little more will extend the use of that GPU markedly. A lot of stuff these days even at lower graphics levels will still eat up a bunch of VRAM, so going to the lowest tier at the expense of VRAM is just a recipe for doom

[rancid herald]

it's frustrating that getting more vram is so expensive

[fresh bane]

I don't disagree with you guys at all btw you're both right, it's probably not the best choice, but I really was just throwing a slight gpu upgrade in here since I already wanted to get an extra ssd so this was more of an impromptu thing since I could get it for relatively cheap considering the prices for the other gpus at least right now where I'm from, and especially because regardless of what I chose it's still gonna be an upgrade from what I'm currently working with which is all I need
but the next time I upgrade, once I can be more comfortable with dumping a bit more money into only the gpu upgrade I'll probably ask over here again for any recommendations any of you might have, maybe in a year's time something else will come out or some current better gpus will (hopefully) have dropped in price

[quiet swift]

The top of the line 999999999 series, naturally~

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EKcZF65MYo8
Dangit, Gustave

[cerulean herald]

yeah I liked that, I think it also applies in cutscenes?

[worthy rose]

Yeah, and whatever clothes you decide to wear except for the fully prerendered scenes, which are fewer