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Dread Delusion. So far so good - I have been mostly avoiding combat by running and closing the doors in front of NPC. The writing and the visual style are excellent, the soundtrack is present (I noticed it changing significantly only around the Hollowshire Castle). The RPG systems (as in numbers) are simple, but present and generally satisfactory, same for roleplay - some quests have options for the methods and outcomes. The equipment has been rather limited - I have found 1 piece of armour, bought a stat-increasing hat and another armour set, and upgraded the rusty sword I got in the tutorial. Also found a bow, which I have not yet used. Somehow, it is nice when the game does not vomit Legendary Fire Swords +99 on you. I am not quite fond of the checkpoint-based saving system, but it is not the first game where save file management performed in Windows Explorer. Reloaded once so far -

LOAD"*",8,1 SEARCHING FOR * LOADING READY. RUN What actually sealed the deal for me wasn't merely the Ultima/Goldbox aesthetics. But rather: This is a horror-themed RPG, in a sense? When did the last major one come out, really? Bloodlines some five football Eureopean Championships ago? You've gotta be sh*tting me!!!!1 Light sources can be switched out for improved stealth chance (that, is outside of the sun). Combat and character mechanics seem straight-forward enough. But then, a lot of oldies used to be pretty straight forward in that. And I needn't even gather my party before venturing forth.

I probably belong to the few who thought Venom 1 and 2 was ok and at least watchable once. Will watch the third movie for sure.

Bought both Ghoswire: Tokyo and HI Fi Rush from the PSN because I couldn't find physical copies and I simply had to jump in the 'Xbox closed down Tango Gameworks' bandwagon. Tried Ghostwire: Tokyo a bit on the PS5. The vsync is non-existent no matter which mode I choose. The game looks great regardless. Finished Alan Wake and now I am heading for Alan Wake: American Nightmare. I also started Batman: Arkham Origins on the Xbox. Still have to finish Control. Goddamn was this game big! Once I am done with all of these I'll head for Alan Wake 2 and Psychonauts 2.

Went to a birthday party yesterday. Nice and cozy, in an old brewery. We were (I think) about 11 people. Listening to the two Estonian girls talk to each other was a bit "weird", because even if the language is different, it reminded me a lot of the half day spent in the airport of Helsinki, while doing a stopover there (on my way from Australia to Copenhagen, 8 years ago). She "melody" and the sound of the language was just so similar to the local, Finnish conversations I listened to in the airport. edit: not understanding a word in either case, but the sound of the language was very similar

Man, I was just talking about this in the other thread, and my guy Nerrel comes out with a video to talk about it at the exact same time. Screw you, James Cameron (and David Lynch, and Peter Jackson, and all the other hack frauds using garbage upscaling processes like this for """4K remasters"""), and screw all this AI nonsense only used to cheap out on doing actual work to sell this crap. Technology advancements seem to always just be used to make everything worse than they already were. "Vasquez starts this shot as an amorphous blob before the AI starts to put a mouth on her cheek, then realizes 'no, that's not it' and then puts a cartoon butthole in, which would be a perfect fit for a little corn cob pipe by the way, and then it gives her Pennywise makeup to cap things off. Nailed it."

On one hand, I think it may be that this guy's films aren't for us and we should just stop trying. On the other hand, that's because they're incredibly dull and it's his fault for deliberately making them that way over and over. Overall, I blame him more than I blame us, .

Just noticed I seem to be missing "male_human_e" watercolor from my Deadfire portrait folder. Anyone happen to have them to hand? Watercolors of everyone's favourite blond fighter companion from PoE1. Calisca! I've really enjoyed making them! It's a good excuse to noodle around with some filters and settings in Photopea that I never used before. Though I'm a bit frustrated to realise that pale elves, by default, can't have black hair... Which is a pain, since I was pretty happy with how that looked after floundering to change that portrait's hair color to white. As for the Aloth PoE1 portrait, your right he does look a little sunburnt in hindsight! I tried to match his face to his ears and hand in the vanilla PoE1 portrait. Which are likely that way due to the light passing through his skin. Anyway it's a simple enough to change that sunburn into a subtle tan! I didn't make any changes to the watercolors version from my previous post, but figured I'd including them in this post as well to save people having to scroll. Ooh that is a cool one! Through together an edit of the original portrait's watercolor to match.

I know this is just a gag thread, but having done some cyber security courses for my job, the vendor had a video covering a study that says goatse, 'rickrolling' and other famous meme link gags - has not improved cybersecurity awareness across the world's population. Surprised me.

Dune: Part Two (2024) I was told to give it a chance so I did. As many of you know, @Bartimaeus and I have hated on Villeneuve a lot, frankly this film confirms it. Dune: Part Two has a stellar cast and it absolutely disrespects them. Florence Pugh is one of the greatest actresses of her generation and she is absolutely squandered here, relegated to wearing weird aesthetic outfits and delivering one of the most wooden lines I have ever heard. And it is constantly like this, all of that talent is wasted on horse**** lines or set pieces against barren fake scifi sets. Perhaps the closest the film gets to real acting is through Dave Bautista, whose background in wrestling primes him to be able to act without using the dialogue Villeneuve so despises, in the scenes where he is afraid or humiliated. Everything else is just ****ing bland as hell, if it wasn't for the lack of melted faces or unnatural numbers of fingers I could believe this film was completely AI generated. The cinematography feels like it just shot concept art. None of this **** feels like anyone actually lives here, none of it. Villeneuve's precision and set building captured nothing, even the closest "real world" shots of the desert feel much more like they dumped 9000 tons of sand into a studio lot, it doesn't feel like a desert with actual creatures that live in it. And to get a bit....woke, as some would say, Villeneuve ripped out the Arabic influences and attempted to sew it back together without filling in the gaping holes. This film actively attempts to de-Arabize the Fremen into generic sci-fi future humanity, grinding off the serial numbers so to speak. Perhaps it's political, given that a film about obivously arab stand-in desert people fighting comically cruel invaders occupying their home would not be a politically popular among the ruling class for entirety the 21st century, but substantially less so in 2024. Whatever the case may be, it is a cowardly move that makes me feel like I'm being insulted. This movie is a soulless piece of **** and I feel like I need to cleanse by watching a good film. So I'm going to buy tickets for I Saw The TV Glow (2024) and see it tonight or tomorrow, hell I'll probably watch the director's previous feature We're All Going To The World's Fair (2021) to boot, because that movie is ****ing great.