Zoraptor

I have to admit I set the difficulty to easy for the final battle in Elex, though then it was easy enough. I'm not sure PB has ever done a good end game battle, they'd be criticised more for it if their games didn't also tend to be so massive that most people never complete them.

Ryzen 3000 series (and Navi) rumours... Only a few things I can see there that look a bit suspicious. It seems unlikely AMD would go for both 6 and 8 core ccxs since the beauty of their current design is that basically everything from Epyc to Ryzen 3 uses the same 4 core/ ccx design which makes it both incredibly efficient in terms of (lack of) wastage while being the epitome of KISS design. Then again two complex types makes things more flexible as well, so maybe. Also the integrated graphics would be likely to hit performance limits from using system RAM under current designs though maybe cache can ameliorate it enough. And the supposed Navi improvements are at the top end of expectations. OTOH, calling their Navi cards RX 3060, RX 3070 etc is 100% the sort of thing AMD would do after their chipset namings for Ryzen, and up to 16c/32t 5+ Ghz Ryzen 3850X at 500USD with IPC advantage over Intel is exactly the sort of thing I absolutely want to be true.

In South Africa there would be two problems with that model: firstly money from utility levies would probably end up being used on critical projects like renovating Jacob Zuma's private residence to Buckingham Palace level instead of actual infrastructure and secondly, a lot of people there are absolute poor so no matter how low utility bills are set they could not afford them. Not that things have improved without Zuma, go on strike at one of President Cyril's mines and he might just send the po po around to machine gun you... Cape Province, where the water shortage is really biting, is also being shafted in numerous ways by the national government as well as having an actual and real drought- things like their trains being 'mysteriously' sabotaged causing traffic chaos- because they had the temerity to elect someone other than the ANC to power, and the ANC believes they will be back if they can make things bad enough there so long as people blame the local government rather than them.

Yeah, that's a 100% temporary solution that ensures Erdogan has leverage for the forseeable future. It's also again the bare minimum they could get away with, anything less and Greece would have been forced by simple reality to ignore the EU rules as they are economically- and physically- incapable of dealing with every refugee so would have been forced to let them through no matter what the law says. In truth that 'generosity' has made the EU semi permanently beholden to a despot who can threaten to tear up the agreement whenever he wants something from them. They'd have been better off investing the money into Syria directly and getting people to actually go home rather than feathering Erdogan's nest. No they didn't, which is irrelevant since sure as anything took advantage of said rules and applied them selectively, depending on what was best for them at the time. They issued the invite, took the refugees they wanted to try and fix their demographic problems, then decided that the rules about initial entry had to be enforced, and used collective responsibility to get other countries to accept the excess they'd ended up with. All rules applied as and when politically expedient for Merkel and not done either consistently or fairly. The problems were caused by her invitation. It's like issuing a public statement about squatter's rights laws then being surprised and amazed when suddenly you get a load of squatters moving in who all know the law and want to take advantage of it. If you issue a statement saying that you'll treat each and every migrant as a refugee then you will get an inundation of refugees and an even bigger inundation of 'refugees' who are simple economic migrants. Reminder again, the 2nd largest number of refugees in the crisis were Kosovan, nearly as many as Iraq and Afghanistan combined. How many of them could reasonably be considered refugees rather than economic migrants in a 'country' that is basically a NATO protectorate, and if they are what exactly does that say about NATO and Europe? I'd exclude Serbs worried about being carved up for spare parts by the Kosovan Prime Minister or forced out of their homes at gunpoint while NATO ran interference from that list, but then they were all sent to Serbia rather than Germany.

What does he plan to do, give the moffs direct command of the outlying sectors? She didn't open any borders and she didn't change any rules about immigration or how EU or Germany treats refugees, she only publicly said that Germany will accept refugees according to their laws, laws which have existed over 60 years. Please, she 100% issued an invitation knowing exactly what it would mean practically. Whether she already had her fall back positions formulated at that time is an open question, it seems more likely she was just plain stupid but maybe she was actively malicious as well, who knows. She may not have changed the rules at that time, but she definitely took and has taken advantage of them to the detriment of just about everyone else in the EU and to her and Germany's benefit. Which is what is the fundamental problem with the EU as it always happens with the EU- Germany collectivises her problems while nationalising everyone else's. Merkel's idiotic invitation results in too many refugees? Collectivise the problem by sending them off to other countries to bail her out. But, too many refugees still arriving? Well they have to stay in Greece and Italy since that's where they landed, why can't those countries take responsibility and follow the rules? German banks lent idiotically to Greece? Bail them out collectively via the European Bank, then make the Greeks pay for it! Plus bonus, tons of leverage against Greece when you want the refugee spigot turned off, after all surely refugees love extended holidays on Greek Islands as much as anyone so it's win win. Euro massively overvalued for Italy, Greece etc? Tough noogies, it's wonderfully undervalued for Germany and that's what is important. That's the fundamental flaw of the EU, and it will never be fixed. Every country from Italy down in importance will be treated as vassals, and any benefits to them from the EU are incidental and not the core aim of the organisation. It's also why Britain is better with a hard Brexit no matter what, there's no chance of EU reform and the laughable 'concessions' they gave Cameron to try and stave off the referendum showed it- and, frankly, those pathetic concessions was likely a contributing factor to the referendum loss for remain. While meant to be a sop to get just enough votes to win they were actually an insult and extraordinarily tone deaf, symptomatic of the EU's technocratic rule from the top mentality.

Obviously it will be headed by Louis XX, beloved of the people and legitimate King of France, we do know that much. Shame the Brits dropped their claim to the throne, otherwise we could almost manage a super union of France/ Spain/ Britain.

When will the world wake up to the brutal suppression the Macron Regime is visiting upon its populace? La Shabiha has already injured more than 100 peaceful protesters and the security apparatus has detained nearly 400 yellow jacket activists as well as using chemical agents and armoured vehicles on protesting groups. We need a no fly zone and a UN resolution demanding Macron step down, and if this does not happen I hope the East will step up to the plate with appropriate support for select vetted peaceful moderate groups- AKs, Kornet's, Konkurs, SA-7, Fagots, Malyutka and maybe a Buk-M2 and T72B3 or so. I'm sure the vetting will be so good so we won't end up with L'Etat Islamique Fraternique de France beheading people including foreign nationals publicly in slickly produced videos (albeit that's not as classy as having David do propaganda paintings for you like OG LEFF), or alternatively spending hundreds of millions to have 6 vetted individuals left after the rest immediately defect to Le Front Supportif, a subsidiary group of Le Network. Seriously though, it is kind of amusing watching the Macron Narrative fall apart. Who would have thought that labeling a completely orthodox centre-right economic policy as a startling and new paradigm shift wouldn't work long term? Pas de merde that massively regressive fuel taxes are horribly unpopular, especially in a country with a tradition of protest like France, they're unpopular enough here where we have a tradition of being merely mildly miffed. Just buy an electric car guys, I'm sure you've got the 25k Euro hidden down the back of your sofa, much as you had the 15k Euro a few years ago everyone was recommending the diesels they now want to get rid of. Yeah, nah, of course the people who end up paying the taxes are precisely those who can't afford to just buy an electric car while subsidising people with said spare 25k Euro to boot. At least Paris has a decent public transport system when it's actually running and not on strike, and so long as you don't mind les gamins going through the stuff they're pickpocketed off other travelers in the seats next to you (this literally happened last time I was in Paris going to the Bois de Vincennes, along with them riding a bike up and down the aisle. It was, at least, a memorable trip).

Immersive sims require the two things in the name- immersiveness and simulation. RPG elements aren't really needed at all, though by their nature RPGs tend to have a lot of the same elements that immersive sims have as well. While it mostly has the immediate elements of immersiveness Bioshock's attempts at simulation are basic. There's no real emergent gameplay, enemies and the environment don't behave with much realism, stealth doesn't work well (largely due to the engine used, to be fair) and, critically, it's pretty much impossible to suspend disbelief of Rapture being a Real Place existing outside of the narrow confines of being a game. That's not because it's set at the bottom of the ocean, it's because it fails in terms of verisimilitude- internal consistency/ realism such that even if you start out accepting that Rapture, plasmids, Big Daddies/ Little Sisters exist they do not make consistent internal sense except as part of a game system. In terms of any Obsidian game being an immersive sim, who knows. FONV was probably closest of their current lot, and from Troika both Arcanum and VtMB had elements of immersive sims. I'd suspect not, immersive sims take a lot of effort for not much reward.

Anyone with kids probably would, it will have a massive back catalogue of recognisable brands. Anyone outside the US (at launch at least) or who is interested in a more rounded portfolio or mature content, probably not. Would also depend on price too, of course. Disney+ won't be available here so I didn't pay much attention to it, but I would have thought pro entertainment journos would at least know about it having a PG13 restriction which would obviously mean none of the Netflix series would end up there. Took me literally 2 minutes* when I bothered to look to find that out, and that if they were to go anywhere it would be to Hulu who Disney now mostly own and who already have, for example, Marvel's Runaways there already. *and that included finding out when the Netflix/ Marvel contract expired too (2019), which basically no professionals seem to have bothered checking.

Not Disney+ due to the age restriction. Maybe Hulu now that Disney owns most of it via the Fox purchase, but in any case the Marvel-Netflix contract was running out in 2019 and there's no way it would be renewed.

I wouldn't be surprised if Shield's renewal was influenced by how well Discovery did for CBS. Cult shows- even back catalogue of cult shows- drive subscriptions. I'm unconvinced that any of the cancelled Netflix Marvel shows were cancelled in the conventional sense. The popularity of Daredevil is such that it will be on Disney+ as a headline item once the contract with Netflix ran out, so the option for Netflix is to continue building recognition and audience for what will be a competitor's product, or to stop. Disney has been pulling content from Netflix for well over a year. It's also not like Disney hasn't been known to put pressure on those who hold contracts with them once those contracts become inconvenient and they want them to return to the mothership.

Far from unbelievable, it's pretty clear that all the Marvel shows are done on Netflix now that Disney is doing a streaming service as that needs content and Netflix is its biggest direct competitor by far.

There's a lot of stuff that doesn't fit the other categories. For example Catch 22 (and most other fictional comedy), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or Animal Farm would not fit any category except General Fiction. Pretty much all historical fiction wouldn't either- the Sharpe novels might fit the Thriller/ Suspense category at a pinch (or maybe Action/ Adventure) for example, but something like 'I, Claudius' or many of Cornwell's other non Sharpe historical novels wouldn't. I'd imagine there's a lot of real life/ 'soap opera' type stuff as well that doesn't fit either romance or suspense in there. (not really current releases there, but I guess that's where the General Fiction stuff comes from. If we wanted to go full classic then Charles Di_kens near entire catalogue would be General Fiction)

Their acquired studios aren't doing all that well financially despite generally having well regarded games. BGS may be a terrible mess QA wise and their PR may be economical with the truth but (1) they're financially successful and that's what counts most plus (2) their games have been bug ridden messes with 'inaccurate' promotion since at least Daggerfall and that hasn't hindered them up until now.

The later V64 Nitro+ model only has two 8 pins, earlier ones and the LE has 3. The 3x8 Sapphires were very popular for water cooling and extreme overclocking, iirc. Wish they had the V64 Nitro+ here, but for the last 6 months it was Strix only and now even that is sold out.

Yes, but if you haven't already got cancer then you can't prove you will get it from smoking, people smoke and live to a 100 so there's compelling evidence smoking prolongs life. And if you did get it, it might not have been from smoking anyway. People get cancer all the time whether they smoke or not. So, you can't prove global warming until it's already happened*, and if it does happen it might be due to... volcanoes! instead of us. The planet warms up all the time, it's natural and you cannot prove it's happening or that we cause it so it isn't happening and we didn't cause it. Quod Erat Demonstrandum, Science lady dogs! etc etc. *well, you can of course since CO2, Dihydrogen Monoxide, methane etc emitting in the IR range is 100% scientific provable so increases in their concentration will increase insulation, but we're not really dealing with logic anywayh. Russia has been going to obliterate Ukraine every second month for the past 4+ years, if you listen to Ukraine.

F4 got bad user reviews though nowhere near as bad as F76's obviously. IIRC F4 ended up with almost exactly the same pro review aggregate as FONV, so no bonus for BGS but still good review scores. And yeah, it sold well. There's no chance of Bethesda shutting down any time soon.

There's some possibility of escalation beyond what has already happened, but I'd expect a declaration of Martial Law in Ukraine, lots of rhetoric and not much else. Poroshenko was going to lose the elections in Ukraine and per normal procedure, get jailed by his successor as President. If he can get martial law declared he can both suspend the elections and get a bump in the polls for when they are eventually held (or not). Status quo suits Russia fine so they don't want anything other than maintaining control of the situation, Ukraine would like to control the situation more but knows they'd lose in any escalation (as they did here)- and that's been the situation since 2015.

She's fine, perhaps a bit derivative of previous nu Doctors as she seems to be trying to impersonate Tennant half the time. I'd imagine the plot and scripting often being SJW bingo annoys some people, but most of the episodes have been OK overall. But she has too many companions and no episodes are near being classic picks so far- then again, also no farting green Mr Blobby aliens doing Benny Hill chases either. It's also 100% rumour that she's leaving, there's nothing concrete- but I wouldn't be overly surprised if she did leave since Doctor Who definitely is a disproportionately big commitment, and not for everyone.

It wasn't a phone app thing, it was well before smartphones. There's a bit of information floating around the internets about it, eg here or with more detail, here. IIRC there may have been more than one attempt at a Witcher game prior to CDPR, but that's the one that got vaguely off the ground. There were also a couple of cancelled CDPR Witcher projects like Rise of the White Wolf (W1 for xbox) and a Witcher 1 expansion from some guys who did NWN modules. LOL good summary of the term. Not really, butthurt comes from (depending on source) a child being spanked or haemorhoids (piles). Doesn't have anything to do with homosexuality.

If it actually gets made, which doesn't sound too likely. And really, who could they get to play Khan after Montalban? Not like Rinkydink Pumpkinpatch worked out too well, albeit that was largely the script and JJ wanting to make Star Wars fault instead of his but following on from such an iconic performance certainly didn't help. I can't think of anyone who I'd be confident in doing it well.

OTOH, it's likely that a lot of people who disliked PoE never even tried Deadfire which would depress its numbers, though not relative to the original. To be honest I've barely seen anyone saying that PoE is superior to Deadfire except those who didn't like the change in style (pirates/ world map etc) or starting from level 1 again. I'm not going to vote personally as my answers would change week to week. K2, FONV, AP and MoTB would be difficult to choose between, and Deadfire would be very close as well despite some annoyances like hitting the level cap with a quarter of the game to go. Obsidian's last game had b00bies. Indeed, it had rather more than just b00bies.

It's not like Robert Kotick esquire has any rep to lose with gamers, indeed he seems to enjoy being disliked by them. No one is going to remove management just because gamers hate them or there wouldn't be any management. In which case everyone would be Valve and we'd get tremendous non monetised deep SP games with all the features people want like Artifact instead. The people whose opinion of Bobby K does count care about the share price and dividends, they couldn't care less about any backlash so long as sales hold up, and they read wsj/ ft etc instead of Kotaku or Polygon.

Given the Kosovan response to getting caught trading organs of kidnapped Serbs- literally literally, and high up government officials implicated not Mohammed ibn Random- they shouldn't be anywhere near Interpol membership for the forseeable future. Then again, given the NATO response to Kosovan organ trading, kidnapping, ethnic cleansing and murder was running interference for it and covering it up the monumental butthurt from the west about the possibility of a Russian becoming Interpol's head was also monumentally hypocritical; as if the stupidity of using force to break up countries wasn't enough of a moronic and hypocritical precedent to set. But muh ethnic cleansing, in which 3x as many Serbs died proportionately as Kosovans. Gotta have that one intervention 'success' story though to mitigate all the other times it's been a complete unmitigated disaster though. Favourite fun Kosovo fact: during the refugee crisis the 2nd most refugees didn't come from Iraq or Afghanistan, Kosovo had nearly as many as those two countries, combined. Indeed, they were only just behind fricking Syria. Great success, the best success etc etc. The trend towards weaponising international institutions* is stupid, hypocritical yet hilarious when it doesn't go the way we in the west want even with procedural tricks. *Reminder: the impartial OPCW literally literally (ok, figuratively) buried 40% of the Khan Skeikhoun chemical weapons victims turning up to hospital before the supposed bomb was dropped (and it's still clearly rocket debris) in their appendices, yet- well, as a consequence, since from the west's pov that is Working As Intended- we want them to be able to blame people without UN involvement. That is, literally literally, ignoring causality and if you do that you can blame anyone for anything.

They're doing OK, though as Keyrock said their APU graphics while very good for integrated graphics (eg the 2400G's Vega11 is better than a discrete 1030 when even the best Intel integrated is a joke for gaming) is well below a decent discrete card especially since laptops tend to have bad configurations for Ryzen's design like slow, single channel RAM. Zen 2 and 'proper' chiplet design ought to help with that a fair bit though when low margin laptop chips will get to 7nm will be a bit of a question. In theory chiplet design could mean 580/ 1060 level integrated graphics, but at the moment that's very much in theory. Mobile is also a pretty high inertia market, and Intel has dominated it for ages.