Lexx

Why is it so hard to find out if a big boat is still over water level.

We call her Flinten-Uschi, because she was defense minister for no god damn reason (was family minister before that, maybe they thought it's pretty much the same thing?). Guess they pushed her to the EU just to get rid of her. I have no idea why germany can't appoint a defense minister who knows what s/he is doing.

Eh, I really don't know. There's many what-if's if you go back the years. Fact is, personally I think the other parties surely would have been worse. Also keep in mind that nobody would have changed the gas deal with russia anyways (to get partly back on topic). I just wish certain policies would have been handled better, such as same-sex marriage etc. There was absolutely no reason to stall on this, except that they were scared of losing their 60+ years old voters. Also there was always hypocrisis about arms deals. Stopping the delivery of tanks now and 1 month later, once everything has cooled down, secretly start exporting again, etc. This is nothing new, always happened.

After all the years, people voted for her simply because she was the status quo. Not the best, certainly not the worst. At least you knew what to expect, which couldn't be said of the competition. The lack of progress in many areas was very nerve wrecking and annoying, and I do blame a resurgency of the right wing on it, but at the same time nothing really got much worse for most of the time. I guess this shows the lack of trust of the population into our politicians. Can't really trust anyone, so better to not move at all.

Btw. even my mother is pissed and feels insulted about it, which is kinda a big thing. This tells me that many, many people in germany will have reacted the same way. Probably the reason why Ukraine moved back a little on it since the incident. They probably realized this wasn't a that good thing to do.

Dunno, after reading on reddit for a while it sure seems a lot like it. Of course there is the occasional defender, but they seem more like germans to me, which imo doesn't really help it.

Feels weird seeing the whole world hating on Germany again. Personally I believe collapsing our economy / industry will help Russia more than Ukraine, but maybe I'm just biased.

I think for me the games really ended once I realized that all of them will only have the skirmish-map singleplayer campaigns from now on. The plain obvious multiplayer design just took me out of it so hard.

Good old days of DoW. Played them so much, all the addons and whatever there was. Was so disappointed when the campaigns slowly transformed into the skirmish map simulator ... I actually liked DoW2 a lot as well. Didn't even know there was a DoW3.

It would be so cool to have a (real) RPG where you play as an Inquisitor. I don't mean another 3rd-person shooter thingy with some character stats to increase for good measure, but a *true* RPG. Imagine ... I don't know, Disco Elysium, but in the 40k universe. The Eisenhorn / Ravenor vs Eisenhorn books are very popular, there is no reason to believe gamers wouldn't want to play something like that.

Let's be honest, if it were a video game, it'd probably just be the same-same shlog as it usually is.

Looks like this is a trailer for a tabletop game. Kinda sad, wouldn't mind a movie like that.

Not on this computer here for sure.

Because I'm not home right now, I started playing some original Splinter Cell again. Man did the controls age bad. It feels very clunky and unprecise, and I didn't remember it like that at all. So weird, because I played the game a lot back in the days. After that I've booted up Chaos Theory. This one looks and feel a lot better, but still has the clunky controls. Especially grabbing enemy soldiers is still very hit and miss. You either do it right from the correct angle, or it won't work. And if the enemy sees or hears you, there is no melee to take them down last-second. Visually it still looks pretty nice, though. Will try to play it some more. What's weird is that even though the sequels were received really well, they all sold less than the very first game. Considering this, I now understand why the mechanics got so streamlined and stuff in later titles ... it just really didn't help the game and I guess people were kinda tired of it.

How big is the actual difference between being a generic POW and anything else in russia? Not a bait question, I'm genuinely curious.

It's not as if nobody ever critizised what the USA did in the middle east. People pretend now that we were always ok with it and never said anything.

I mean, it's probably a good deal for the few people at the top of the food chain. Who really cares about anyone else?

For me, the dungeons in ER are really just chalice dungeons 2.0 ... they pretty much feel the same in all the ways, except that now they aren't randomized. And yeah, there are some that I really don't want to ever do again ... worst is, the one with the best armor in the game is also the worst dungeon But then again.. there has yet to be a souls game that I actually actively replayed. Usually I sink ~150 hours into them and then they release the next game and I move on.

The Elden Ring open world is pretty much just the usual souls game world, but every room is scaled up x10. As I've just recently played Bloodborne again, the similarities are extreme to me. You leave one room (walk through a tunnel) in Bloodborne and enter the next, now the scenery changed and it feels like a completely different place --- it's exactly the same in Elden Ring, just bigger. Because it's bigger, they gave you a horse to travel faster. This is also the point where I have some issues with it... because technically the bigger world really wasn't necessary. That said, I'm not hating on the world building. As usual they did a fantastic job with the vistas and panorama locations. I'm just questioning if it was really necessary to make everything big. Especially since now combat balance goes haywire even faster than before... first it's way too hard, then it gets way too easy, and then everything kills you in 1 hit unless you pump vitality > 45 at least.

Maybe they misidentified it with something else?

Russia is only ok with war crimes that aren't recorded on video.

tbh I never saw souls games as "RPGs". Save&Load would also ruin a lot of what makes those games good.

That's just how their games work. You are supposed to farm souls anyways, and usually you gain more faster than you can spend on items. That said, I think Elden Ring is the first one where you are able to respec your character. Hell, can even change the face of the character for the first time ever. Really wish I could do that in Bloodborne.

Actually apparently some Wagner mercs were in Chernobyl and got the radz.

Would be nice if, but I don't think it's the type of game they usually work on.