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Well, at least they finally took a decently big city in this war.

In the meanwhile, Commander of the Ukrainian drone fleet on the front.

I mean, it would be a good way to see who sticks their head up at the sniff of rebellion but if this is a work Putin and Prigozhin should retire from politics and start up a wrestling promotion.

you used to be able to CARRY cats and dogs back in 2006 (Twilight Princess), we've only gone backwards really

Chechen troops going in to Russia to fight against Russian separatist. We have come full circle. If this whole sordid affair wasn't sad it would be funny...

I feel like pet the dog is pretty much industry standard now, I'm no longer giving a game points for letting me pet the dog, however I will subtract points for not allowing me to pet the dog. My new standard for 10/10 is scratch the kitty under the chin. I'm not giving points for standard running your hand along the top of the cat, that's same as the dog petting, in fact they could probably repurpose the dog petting animation into cat petting. However, if the dev takes the time to put in an animation to scratch the cat under the chin that's instant 10/10. Put a capybara in the game and let me scratch it under the chin and that's Game of the Year.

Got a work outing to TankFest 2023 at the Tank Museum. Established in 1947, with nearly 300 vehicles from across 26 odd countries. A chunk of which are in working condition, including such as the German Tiger 1, and the British WWI Mark I. Technically it was started in 1923, so it's been around for a century, but the 1947 date is when it was opened to the public.

What a disappointing rebellion.

DMC is amazing though - Relative lack of gameplay is what would worry me more. FF were always story heavy, but if the story is as dry as Skillup claims it might not be the greatest of times. I also doubt that FF16 combat has a depth of DMC. I am not terribly fond of jRPG combat, so I would be all for FF but with different combat system - it seems while they were at it they carved out more than just the combat.

And during the chaos, two noteworthy things happened. Belarusian rebels want to use this opportunity as well, now that the Russian army is to busy. And Russian army started to solve this issue the typical Russian way. Blowing up random civilians...

Prigozhin claims to have two Airfields under full control. Milerovo and Rostov on Don. At Voronezh 300 Russian border guards allegedly surrendered to Wagner. Putin has spoken in Russian TV, speaking that he will not allow 1917 to repeat

From the videos from Rostov, it looks like a lot of local soldiers joined him and there was almost no resistance against him, while taking over. Allegedly, some helicopters destroyed some vehicles in the column on their way to Voronezh (more than 70 counted in the column) and Wagners shot down two helicopters. FSB is raiding Wagner’s HQ in St. Peterburg and Moscow has implemented anti-terrorist measures. Rostov city is allegedly fully under Prigozhin’s control now.

wtf is going on

Those both sound pretty fun. I'll probably end up doing one of those two or FF/SG depending on what whim strikes me when I get to Deadfire lol. I am enjoying being a jerk. I normally play a diplomatic/benevolent type character so this Bleakwalker in Poe1 is so far about as far from my normal character as possible.

I mentioned our Hollywood sign hike, but we also visited the new Mario World, went to the Academy of Motion Pictures Museum, and went to a extremely good Crab house is Korea Town while we were in LA this last week. Here are some pics:

Trickster/Steel Garrote uses Riposte + Offensive Parry and all the deflection bonuses you can find. Offensive Parry causes the dazed affliction automatically so the Steel Garrote passive unlocks kind of automatically, a well as Sneak Attack. So you dish out quite nice melee damage even when you are not actively striking. You can of course apply DoTs in a cone, too. And yes, pretty tanky but also good dmg output esp. against common (melee) mobs. Assassin/Bleak Walker is great solo but is also nice in a party for alpha strikes and "part time solo fights". You can take on a lot of way overleveled enemy groups with that one guy and whittle down the enemy before you party steps in, too. Strike from stealth with single handed Lover's Embrace + Gouging Strike (+42 ACC altogether, it's hard to miss), follow up with Brand Enemy (auto-hit), then vanish and wait in hiding until the enemy dies (pretty quickly from 3 unending DoTs). Once you feel comfortable you bring in the party, too. For normal fighting you can use Pukestabber+Lover's Embrace with high speed and nice FoD+Ring of Focused Flame accuracy and also stack Ring the Bell + Gouging Strike + Brand Enemy - and later also Toxic Strike. But the true potential is the ability to take down very tough enemies with a strike and hide tactic.

I played an evil Assassin/Bleak Walker (focus on True Love's Kiss + Gouging Strike + Brand Enemy) and enjoyed it very much. Might as well have been Assassin/Steel Garrote. Trickster/Steel Garrote also isn't bad imo. Did that with Whispers of the Endless Paths (Offensive Parry). How about an evil Herald with Steel Garrote/Skald or Troubadour or so? Combining Steel Garrote passive + Old Siec maybe?

6D chess.

Apparently Prigozhin accepted some deal negotiated by Lukashenko. That would mean he either badly overplayed his hand or actually believes amnesty is possilbe after a stunt like this. If he actually can get away with it that's quite a blow to Putin's authority.

Only if pro-The Good Guys. Someone will post someone (I predict Galeev) saying Russia will break up in 3 days. Chechens I guess. Edit : nope, I guess, apparently it was some guy shooting at a door?

planet of lana cheat engine's speedhack doesn't work on this game for reason, so it got uninstalled pretty promptly after I had to slowly crouch walk under something for the umpteenth time in the intro billiam shakesman once said that brevity is the soul of wit, which is just a fancy way of saying QUIT WASTING MY TIME also, why can't 2d platformers that are trying to be pretty have gameplay just a little closer to Donkey Kong Country and a little farther away from clunky walkathon Limbo, it'd do them a whole lot of good to have some kind of gameplay that isn't only "hold right" and "stop holding right until you can hold right again"

No. But then again that goes for 90% of stuff posted here.

now you are sudden worried about russian nukes? rich. HA! Good Fun!

Saint's Row isn't a bad game. It just isn't Saint's Row. The boss is still a fun, homicidal maniac. The rest of the gang still is dull. Shaundy was no more special than Kev in the remake.

Godlikes suck IMO. Only reason to take one is death godlike if you have a character that can stay near death with barring death's door or potions of final stand. But even then you're probably better off with a human. Moon godlikes are undoubtedly the worst. Nature godlike and fire godlike are "meh" but have rare use cases. They're all much better balanced with BPM. What is the idea behind ancient/helwalker? High damage druid spells I guess? The thing is the best druid spells are tier 8+. Avenging Storm and Great Maelstrom especially. Furies are the best damage dealers but Ancients are probably sufficiently good. I did a recent run with SC Fury in ultimate-like conditions, and IIRC my stats were MIG/CON/DEX/PER/INT/RES 18/9/11/19/18/3, or somethng like that. But druids have meh accuracy so you're better off taking a different race (humans are nice) and wearing helmet acina's tricorn IMO.

FF/Steel garrote is extremely powerful indeed, and more appropriate for woedica since steel garrote is woedica's group. Another good choice for evil runs is a blood mage / soul blade, particularly if you use cheese to extend your max focus buff. You're greatly encouraged to murder everything in sight so you have insane amounts of focus and can blow up groups with soul annihilation + citzal's spirit lance. I think of it as collecting souls to make you grow more powerful.

^ I think the folks who think FF16 is the bees knees are more likely action/combat fans vs lengthy rpg fans. By that I mean, the Devil May Cry side, so to speak. You're a solo, move-busting badarse. Main story/cutscenes are "great" (and probably much better than XV's piecemeal story, haha!) but sidequests are mostly stupid (MMO sort). They were clear they were making an action game and that's what they delivered. eg, if you want more depth to your mainline FF and were hoping 16 might at least bring at little of that back in some way, I don't think so. Fully modern era. But remember - you can pet the dog! That makes it 10/10 right there. ...honestly, the more I see/watch of it (asmongold has been running thru it), the less I want to play it myself. The combat may be fun and sure the story bits are visually astounding, but the rest seems kinda boring.

Putin does that with potential enemies. He never referred to Navalny by his name either.

I think this fits nicely at least thematically, and is a very strong build

@Lexx anyway, when looking at the information from Russia it is always required to be sceptical at least. In the end, considering the Russian history, this still could be a perverse Ukraine Exit Strategy, during which, every officer, politician and oligarch joining Wagner will be sooner or later eliminated, then after few months Prigozhin “flees” to Africa, and then Putin victoriously announces another “free and democratic” presidential elections

Not worried at all because its almost impossible to believe either side would use Nukes within Russia and its not like Wagner has any access to them

In the meanwhile, Russian MoD released this statement about situation in Bakhmut.

Wasn’t the Wagner boss the one who kept whinging about the Russian army never sending any ammunition his way?

It does seem to be legitimate anger from Prigozhin but I doubt he will be able to implement any kind of military coup, there are literally tens of thousands of loyal Russian forces within the country and Wagner numbers maybe 30k or so? But its nice to hear the truth from Prigozhin about the false narrative for the invasion. I wonder if his comments on this will have any public influence within Russia? https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/prigozhin-says-putin-s-reason-for-invading-ukraine-was-a-lie/ar-AA1cWydW#:~:text=W agner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin on Friday,fed to him by the Kremlin's top brass.

In the next hours/days, we will see more lies than ever coming out of Russia, although statements like this give it some kind of weight In the meanwhile a lot of Prigozhin channels have been blocked on some Russian social medias, and his former ally General Surovikin was making an appeal to him, while holding the automatic weapon, to stop. Girkin is talking about coup already, Lukashenko allegedly have left at midnight Minsk by plane. All that is missing now, is Kadyrov

Report from Bakhmut.

This worked for me too. Physically disconnect your internet and wait a while, then restart your computer, reconnect your internet, and try again.

A petition to make Starfield a PS5 exclusive hilariously fails

Ukraine is largely demilitarized, says Peskov -- as in, it is using fewer and fewer of its own weapons and more those new ones its got from West.

My favorite ABBA song

Whenever I read something about peace solution, something like this immediately jumps up my mind PS. Speaking of Crimea being a compromise, everyone ”for some reason” forgets about the way, how Crimea became “Russian”. Since Stalin laid his hands on Crimea, after conquering it, he started to deport and murder indigenous Crimean Tatar people since day one and then repopulating the area with loyal Russians to communist party and him. The latter continues up until today (just exchange Stalin with Putin). As a result, the number of Crimean Tatars dropped from 90% of local population to 5% of local population. Most of people are simply not able to grasp, that the what happened in Africa and Middle East after WW2, is slowly happening at ex soviet republics. Decolonization, and restoration of their cultural heritage. And Crimean Tatars would definitely love to end decolonized as well. Leaving them back in Russia as an appeasement for peace deal, would destroy this ambition for many decades again…

okay, that one made us chuckle. HA! Good Fun!

Stylised graphics, including pixel art, is significantly easier to read, it looks good longer, and provides lower system requirements. On the other hand, highly detailed, including "realistic", styles age rather quickly and are much harder to process. The mitigation usually includes various forms of "eagle vision" (Assassin's Creed) or "Witcher's senses" (The Witcher 3). I think, one of the Tomb Raider reboot games (haven't finished any of them) had the option to disable the paint on climbable walls. Curious how it mixed when the initial design was based on the not-subtle "hints". I suppose, if it was possible to completely disable visual junk (grass, foliage, non-interactive items that look similar to interactive ones), it would be preferable. The closest I can think of (again, haven't played) is The Last of Us 2.

Difficulty modes in games directly reflect your mental health. Easy = Happy Normal = Normal Hard = Using games to get over trauma Nightmare = Criminally disturbed

Guardian - Human Rights Campaign ; LGBTQ+ Americans living in state of emergency, human rights group warns

Kinzie Kensington was the best 3rd Street Saint. Yes, better than Johnny Gat.

Never underestimate the trouble that could arise from replacing an incompetent overall army command with an at least semi-competent one.