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And there are at least some good outcomes of the Russian war against Ukraine. Armenia and Azerbaijan have recognized their borders.

It is much more interesting to me than running as an Aragorn-knockoff and slaughtering orcs in Shadow games. Gollum is an interesting character with a unique skill. With a strong vision and direction it could make for an interesting, narrative experience. Not an easy sell, even if pulled well, that’s for sure.

Watch out for the werewolf.

Malkavian on first playthrough doesn't sound like a good idea to me. I feel like it's best for the second. They make every dialog weight a lot different than before. You pretty much play a different game if I can remember it correctly (it's been many years since I last played it). That said, ignore guns and go all-in on melee. Stealth is also useful.

I don't want to give anything away but you're in for a treat.

Double posting here, but I got absolutely clobbered by the werewolf in the diner like five times before I realized yeah, okay, I just don't think I can fight this guy right now. Not that I really wanted to, because there's (currently) no reason to fight him in the first place, but he just straight up Wolverines me. Doesn't help that my combat stats are absolute trash, since I keep putting all my points into...well, non-combat stuff. It's a 'final death' speedrun trying to kill that guy, though.

I feel like Battletech could have been one of those "endless"-titles if the enemy ai would have been better. Every combat scenario felt the same and later they just increased difficulty with adding more hostile reinforces. Really loved the game, but once I figured out the pattern, it just started to blow.

I've been thinking of this for a while but i've been wondering how new unusual ants could be introduced into the yard and got an idea. There could be an ant farm somewhere in the yard maybe fallen out of the house window that could bring non-native ants to the yard. This could include bulldog ants, army ants, or maybe even bullet ants. Really I just wanted to submit this idea to get the thought out.

Why PS5? Just buy on PC instead. 😄 (it's not PS5 exclusive) I'm really interested in this, since MGS3 is awesome. But I'm scared of what they will do with it without Kojima around. /Edit: Also I can't unsee that angry bandana.

Momodora: Reverie under the Moonlight Replayed the game to defeat the bosses without taking damage and in the process I discovered several "surprising" things: 1- It's a lot easier than I expected. There are even some bosses that can be defeated by crouching in the corner or mostly staying right in front of them. 2- It'd have been even easier with the active items that I thought had limited charges but actually recharge every time you hit a save bell. It took me almost two playthroughs to find this out. Using these items at will would make the game ridiculously easy, though, so no real problem about that. 3- The items you get by defeating the bosses unharmed were all familiar to me, so I probably bought them in a shop later on when playing for the first time. The one exception seems to be the Heavy Arrows, which are pretty useful, btw. 4- I somehow defeated the last boss without taking damage the first time, because I had already gotten the achievement for the true ending.

You can also start fights stealthed, or alternatively lure away a weak enemy, then use this time to cast combat-only buffs, before going in and killing everyone. Sounds like it may not be necessary in your party on that difficulty. For the megaboss fights you're probably going to run out of useful spells even on "regular", but I'm unsure. Dorudugan has like 16k health on POTD upscaled, Hauni O Whe can split and regrow indefinitely, etc.

You're railroaded into some tought straight fights even as a non-combat clan but you get so powerful no matter what that it doesn't matter.

LotRO actually lets you play as gollum in sections and it is pretty well done as a story telling device.

Vampire: the Masquerade. So I started over as a Ventrue...and I made it a half hour before I realized that the insane Malkavian dialogue was actually way more interesting and certainly fun to read, so it just didn't really make sense to me not to go back to my schizophrenic cheerleader oracle. This game is unbelievably jank and silly, but...it's also somehow really fun, probably the most fun I've had playing something in a long time. Maybe modern games should try to be more janked, I don't know. I now have a sweet katana that I got from some Japanese(?) vampire that initially beat the crap outta me until I figured out that I needed to use Bloodbuff, and it's pretty dope. Also, most everyone that wasn't manic goth girl Jeanette says my lady sounds like a total whackjob, but for some reason, they suddenly don't seem to have much of an issue with it when I seduce them. Funny, that.

the action economy is looser in higher difficulties, because enemies will have higher defenses and health so you'll have more time to do stuff. but yes, even then there's still action economy concerns. adding on to something boeroer said, for this reason i generally stay away from most generic caster/caster multiclasses. really early on, the extra casting on a caster/caster can be a life saver, but by mid-game you just have so many spells and so little time, and if you made one caster double up on two roles you could be in an extreme pinch trying to decide between healing or debuffing, for example. Exceptions to that rule are generally setups where you can avoid action economy clashes. I've done a few wizard/caster multiclasses, and the wizard side focuses on fast-cast (near-instant) buffs and only occasionally other spells. this limits how much action economy constraints i have while still giving me the benefits of having add'l casting pool. psion/caster is another favorite multiclass, because with a psion you naturally have phases where you're not doing anything with the cipher because you're generating focus.

Styx, yes. Those are honestly one of the better stealthem-ups I played in many years, but they have their shortcomings. They are still a powerfantasy, and that's something a Gollum game should avoid I think. Probably the closest comparison to what I would want a Gollum game to be would be Hellblade - not in terms of individual systems but overall concept. A narratively driven adventure focusing on mind state of the protagonist, with gameplay elements serving as narrative medium, rather than entertaining game systems in themselves.

I agree, I think Gollum is a way more interesting character than any member of the fellowship. If done right, a Gollum game could be a great stealth game. @Hawke64I believe you're thinking of Styx.

Yes, absolutely. For example: just because of better action economy I sometimes think really hard about bringing two priests - so that I can get out a party-wide PER inspiration and Devotions for the Faithful (or any buff really) in less than half the time. Also why I like to have Priest and Druid in the same party and not use a Priest/Druid. Casting Devotions at the same time as Moonwell at the start of battle is way better than doing it one after the other. Class builds are often "self contained" so they can do some synergistic things one their own, which is cool - but in terms of action economy it's almost always better to achieve that synergy with different party members. That's also why good solo chars aren't necessarily very good in parties compared to a well composed party - an vice versa.

Desantis doesn't exactly have stormtroopers at his disposal. He's got quite a cult of personality going on in Florida, but he's facing off against both Trump and Mickey Mouse, and my guess is Disney will win out in the end. Book banning (and book burning) is also not a new thing in the US, but it's always been limited in scale. Getting anything like that done on a Federal level is a lot more complicated. There are always outlier states. Florida and Texas seem like crazy places to me, but they say the same thing about California.

I have found very interesting article by a independent Russian Journalist at Medusa from August 2022, who had to escape Russia with his family. It has links to other articles and also official Russian media. Writing about the message, Putin is trying to proudly present for all to see, which is still today being ignored by a lot of Western people and politicians. https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/08/12/russia-ukraine-war-crimes-genocide-appeasement-mearsheimer-putin/

It was very interesting playing as a Malkavian. I still have a score to settle with the stop sign. That being said, my second most favourite playthrough was Nosferatu. After the luxury or ordinary safe houses of the other clans (it was my fifth play through of the game), getting a sewer pipe as your new home was a bit of a downer 😂

Twisted Metal: Evil Sunz Edition?

I barely remember Ricketts name and can't recall the rest of the cast but

I loved the original. I 100%-ed the game and its Road To Gehenna expansion. There were a few star puzzles that took me hours to figure out. Good stuff. I'm super excited for this sequel or prequel, or whatever it is. On the other end of the spectrum... Not gonna lie, this looks so jank that I'm morbidly curious to play it. A Barad-dur life sim? I kinda want to play that. Not for $60, though.

It's a mix of two things mostly. First and most common is simply substituting dialogue with wackier sounding alternatives, where the NPC then comments on before proceeding with their usual response. So it's just flavour dialogue and functionally identical to a standard run. It's like games where if you play a low-INT character, the NPC will pretend to be exasperated by your stupidity but give you the same quest in the end. The other is bits of foreshadowing, which yes, will go over your head if it's the first playthrough, but also doesn't really harm the experience in my view. I wouldn't really count the writers basically just winking and saying "see what we did there?" as content I'm not counting uses of the Dementation usage in dialogue as it's more just a speech check thing, same as if you had Domination on a Ventrue or whatever.

Another W40k giveaway. Goodies includes this time the Final Liberation game as well. https://www.gog.com/en/news/warhammer_skulls_2023_dawn_of_war_and_warhammer_underworlds_release_giveaway_and_discounts_up_to_90

The Malkavian cheerleader was my first playthrough, didn't feel like I missed out on anything but not playing another clan first. Played mostly stealth. Dialogue wasn't *that* obtuse for someone reasonably genre-savvy. I remember doing a partial run as some clan with Celerity and guns afterwards. Don't remember much about it other than being able to take down a boss by simply entering bullet time and emptying multiple pistol clips into them with one blood use. Quintessential vampire combat that. Nothing wrong with the run but ultimately after Downtown I saw no reason to complete the game a second time.

I couldn't decide between a Ventrue and a Malkavian, the two of which seemed to have the best non-combat stats/skills, ended up flipping a coin and it landed Malkavian. My character looks like an insane cheerleader of very questionable moral fiber, but she does have nice hair, so...was that bad? I see now that it might have had some effect on the player dialogue, which might explain why it seems all my options were all written by a madman?

Don't expect to feel good about yourself while playing. Ventrue are scum. Tremere are scum who do blood magic. Do a Malkavian run on your second playthrough, so you can appreciate their insight. Feel free to go full combat. You don't get around fighting some boss fights anyway.

Prigozhin has also said lately, that Russia should go the way of North Korea. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/05/24/7403623/

I wish! Maybe with the forkcat art The feedback is silly positive. If I did have my own island, we'd be doing obsidianite lan-parties. Beach in the morning, Alpha Protocol Speed Run Tournament by night 😛

I think that was supposed to go in the unpopular opinion thread.

If people get a lot of unjustified, hateful flak and the product isn't too expensive and my finances are OK, then I may buy it, not to spite the haters, but to show some solidarity. But it is remarkable what some people will do out of a "sticking it to the man" gesture.

I wonder if all the reactionaries who bought Hogwarts Legacy to spite "the left" due to the call for a boycott ended up liking all the wokeness in the game. A transwoman as owner of the Three Broomsticks and her character arc one giant call for easier access to transitioning, male characters being able to walk into any of the girl's lavatories, every minority under the sun present in rural Scotland... that must have hurt.

I'd argue that sometimes any publicity is good publicity and stirring up a ****storm sometimes create even more interest for whatever they wanted to see buried. I.e. shooting yourself in the foot (regardless of intentions, good or bad).

The idea of running through one of those thin ant farms that have glass pane windows on both sides less than an inch apart, would be hella fun. I never had one of those as a kid, but when I was a kid, I used to get glass jars that people use for canning, and put a bunch of ants in it and let them create their tunnels so I could watch from the outside. You just unlocked a memory for me.

The Solasta DLC is releasing on the 25th. A good preview here:

Locations trailer: Cool to see Commoragh. Had Owlcat elected to put the game on Kickstarter and they needed a quick extra $100,000 put into the project then I'd wager a stretch goal of "Romance subplot with Dark Eldar Succubus" would do it.

some photos i tried watercoloring edward kenway ragnar lothbrok Corvo some random dude

Alanschu is right, of course.

I emphatically disagree. Fun is fun. Given the situation with the werewolf, it would have been much less exhilirating if I could just blast it with my current weapons and kill it. Whoop-dee-doo, good thing they sent me up there to meet Nines, time to head back down the mountain. The werewolf part is one of the few times in a game where I actually felt a bit of adrenaline flowing, as he smashed down walls chasing me, ambushing me when I thought I may have lost him. If a story writer can manipulate the arbitrary rules of a fictional universe to result in something that is actually more fun than if the the same situation stuck religiously to the rules, then I say go for it. The werewolf scene was one of the coolest parts of Bloodlines as far as I'm concerned. A break from the rest of the game.

The jankiness probably helped me. I can't play Valve/Source games because they give me motion sickness, but Bloodlines was generally fine. If they had launched with the finished, polished version of the Source engine, who knows if that would still be the case. I'm not even someone generally susceptible to motion sickness, I can't think of any other game that triggers it for me. Then again I don't play a lot of first-person games so the sample size isn't huge. It occurs to me that perhaps one big reason I liked the game is that there was no real faffing around with gear. A gun's a gun, a bat's a bat, and you get exactly one armour upgrade per chapter that's a linear upgrade over the previous set. Looting is the bane of roleplaying.

Noooooooo it was the biggest hopefull on my STEAM wishlist.

@Bartimaeusmay need to do some more stumping because the eastern conference finals just got spicy.

New chapter of Berserk is out.

Malks are all insane in one way or another. At the same time they see truths others do not. Your characters dialogue options give away details, but you have to know the information to spot it. That is why they have an added joy to play in a second playthrough when you "get it" when some information is sprung on you. I am Brujha, so I am glad you did not go ventrue. We'd have to stop being friends.

Every time you navigate menus with analogue sticks God kills a kitten. Do not kill kittens!

Did we ever had a good X-Files game?

Now that Obsidian is developing Avowed, Bethesda should start developing a 2.5D isometric turn-based Elders Scrolls game.