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I'm officially on team red again, because I just bought a 7800 XT for $400. I figured that I'm going to need the 16 GB of VRAM in order to weather out the Trump administration, so I'd best get it now before prices go crazy. If it doesn't play Bloodborne, it's going straight into the nearest dumpster, I won't even return it. Though $400 is relatively 'cheap' for GPUs by today's standards, it is the most I've ever spent on a GPU even adjusted for inflation - it's just never been something I've spent all that much on, historically speaking*. And since the price-comparable nvidia offerings come with a much more paltry offering of VRAM, worse rasterization performance, and only offer 'better' AI upscaling and frame generation features that I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole anyways in return, there really wasn't that much reason to go with nvidia this time around...unless there are compatibility issues, which I will be checking thoroughly once again just like the last time I had an AMD card. That last AMD card (a Vega, I believe) was immediately launched into the sun, so let's hope this time goes a little better. *Even now, I still spent more on the CPU for my current build - at the time of purchase, anyways.

Are you suggesting to create a safe space for Joe Somebody the Slightly Conservative snowflake so they (*snicker*) don't get triggered by an option in a game? Sorry, but that makes no sense in the context of a silly toggle that lets you set your pronouns in the game. It already is a toggle, and everyone is free to keep the default pronouns for their picked character gender. In all the games I have played so far that have a pronoun option, it was pre-filled with the default for your picked gender, and it is entirely optional to switch between the usual sets, i.e. he/him, she/her, they/them. It changes nothing else about the dialogue because that really just puts your choice into placeholders in the dialogue files that already have to be there to account for your character's gender choice. No dialogue was hurt in making the feature.

Oh my god, guys. I finally did it. My weapon started to break down near the end, so I had to do the last couple attacks with barely dealing any damage. It was really damn close and I expected having to restart any second now. But for some reason Kos (or some say, Kosm...) kept missing me. Maybe my frantically dodging to the left broke the ai before it broke me. PS: Even after all those years, the spoiler function is still dog poop. Why can't I edit text inside a spoiler? Why is there no markup editor here? Terrible forum software.

My PC needs an upgrade (waiting for benchmarks of Kingdom Come II). So I started another, last time was on a GeForce 8600GT maybe a year or two after launch. So basically, first time maxed out details. Surprised what kind of images this old engine on occasion still produces... the foliage, textures, dynamic lighting, sky boxes and shadows on occasion still hold up. This is vanilla, without mods. The original release didn't have anti-aliasing though. (Also bought Call Of Pripyat on GOG, which I'd never played). Best thing, this remains far from a brain dead run and gun experience. In particularly in the beginning, where you've just got a weak pistol and no armor / gear, that's bloody tense. I shudder to think what where to happen if this IP would ever get into the hands of the usual suspects. "Boss you around" markers and "yellow paint" everywhere. Even with technical issues, I'd rather see twenty Stalker 2s being in production than but a single.. youknowwhatImean. Really sick and tired of M-rated games pushing you around more than anything ever done by Nintendo. (Or the biggest control freak of a boss in existence, for that matter). I'm here to ESCAPE life at its most mundane, not be reminded of it, thanks.

Stop over at Shanghai airport. Friend I am traveling with went for a smoke and missed boarding. Tried getting around Tokyo with two huge suitcases and both our carry on. People were quite amused. As one lady said: "You must have a lot of kids" probably thinking I was carrying presents for all of the little rascals. I knew passive smoking was bad.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 8, Due Out in 2025, Adds 12 New Subclasses and Loads More - IGN

Livegiver/Priest: high MIG and INT and DEX Ascendant/Priest: high INT, PER and DEX, decent MIG If you use official companions for the party, then I would use 16+ PER for the main character in any case, because finding secrets and traps is based on the party's highest PER value - and the official companions all don't have very high PER. It's annoying to step into traps and not be able to find many secret stashes, levers etc.

I refuse to waste my time with reading this kind of stuff. Gamers really have nothing better to do.

I get what you mean, but I don't think it's just Diablo where this comes from.

I had actually considered getting STALKER 2, but... my favourite game reviewer gave some damning feedback. Maybe in a year or two, after a dozen patches?

...and baby seal skins, wont anyone think of the baby seals???

the big problem is that deleterious alacrity of motion (which priest doesn't get) is a huuuge survivability boost for an up-close glass cannon that comes online much earlier. it requires some micromanagement, but it essentially means that you don't even need to rely on things like wizard's double or arcane veil for most protection (just for ranged) because you just constantly run out of range of melee attacks. (so you can spend those spell slots on other buffs or utility, like infuse with vital essence) eventually BDD + SoT is better than anything, but that also comes up against my general resistance to using cheese in my runs unless absolutely necessary

So I finally completed my run through the old Baldur's Gate games: BG1, SoD, BG2:SoA and ToB. I did a very thorough completionist run through them, doing all side quests and all companion quests, and even all the Unfinished Business mod restored quests. And on account of a mod, I even got to do all of the stronghold questlines, some of which I had never done before. As I'd mentioned previously, although I'd replayed these games many times in the distant past, this was my first playthrough since the EEs were released. As such I'm glad I did this, because I feel very certain this was my final time playing those games, the simple reason being that I just cannot stand playing 2e ADnD rules and mechanics anymore. The story and the characters still stand the test of time, and I don't mind the dated graphics but I cannot abide the gawd-awful 2e system, and so with a certain amount of sadness I've uninstalled all the Infinity Engine games from my Steam library.

Bloodborne update: I'm now level 130 or whatever, 50 hours in. Orphan of Kos (or some say, Kosm...) still beats my sorry ass to a pulp. Wish there would be an easier way to learn the attacks. The constant backtracking and especially having to farm blood echos to buy new vials and bolt paper is really draining me. Was already thinking of just skipping it, but I really, really, really want to finish the DLC. At least I look cool in my Yarnham hunters cap and Lady Maria outfit.

Sounds like it's a game to buy in a year or more when it's patched up and cheaper.

As someone not particularly familiar or up-to-date with ongoing modern web development, I actually did some searching a while back about it, and it turns out that posts are now natively written and rendered via HTML, i.e. it's not that we've been denied access to the old BBCode source mode, it's that it just doesn't exist at all anymore. The backend can try to parse and convert old bbcode tags and the like into HTML, of course, but it's basically just a one-way cheat and not particularly practical to reverse to and from on the fly. That being said, I've at least made basic HTML websites and pages before and have some passing familiarity with it, so I'd still like to have an HTML source mode so that I can fix crap when I really need to. Or at least try, because the only current option for when something really goes wrong with a post is that you just delete all of the broken parts and start over.

Damn, MW5: Clans is already on sale. Didn't it came out just recently?

Yeah, not sure it can easily be fixed, if at all. The review touches on one of the core problems: the game immerses you and then brutally shatters that immersion in quite a lot of ways. I've been going off the beaten path now that I'm out of the starting area, just sightseeing, finding, and revisiting areas from the previous games (mostly SoC, which I have easily the most hours in) and this Reddit thread kinda sums up the experience. Just to add a few stories of my own: Ended up in the Chemical Plant, walked right in without issues, no word from the guards, no hostility either, until I got to the other side, where the gate guard told me Stalkers weren't allowed in. Of course I already was "in" and wanted "out"... The game just didn't anticipate players coming from that direction (and both sides have roads, not like I jumped a wall or did anything else "weird", like jumping over a fence) Another one happened today. I found the Military Warehouses and started exploring. Got ambushed by what I believe is a Pseudodog (the one that create clones) and a few Snorks (at least they fought each-other as well). Deal with them and start exploring the otherwise entirely empty place. After checking for hostiles outside I start going inside buildings to start looting. I come across stuff that's clearly intended for later use (doors requiring keycards), so I loot what I can and go back outside. Only to find three bandits waiting for me that came out of nowhere. So I shoot them, only to get blasted by a bunch of other NPCs from some military faction that also suddenly appeared (presumably alongside the bandits, which they entirely ignored...). So after I deal with those, barely, and I start looting I get a bullet through the head. Turns out snipers had also magically spawned on top of the guard towers... So I re-load, take out the snipers, and get back to looting, only to get jumped by four Snorks... Kite them into an anomaly, and I finally get to loot without interruption, only to discover that one of the towers that had a sniper doesn't have a way to get up at all, just to shatter any illusion of them getting there organically somehow. (also: bye bye to that loot) When I did my 1.000 experiment and installed from DVD I couldn't turn everything all the way up without things stuttering (there's some additional sliders under "Advanced" that aren't maxed out even on the highest quality profile). Curious to know whether you managed to max those out without issues (always possible later patches fixed performance)

Jim Abrahams of Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker fame. Kentucky Fried Movie, Airplane!, Police Squad.

Ran across this trailer and started digging a bit. Looks like it could be fun (i.e. no guarantee it's any good, but at least it looks interesting). Basically a Japanese Fallout game set in 80's USA in a world where Japan successfully took over America Yes, full of 80's retro