BruceVC

The one game that I have played that truly provides an evil path is the Czech RPG Inquisitor You can decide to align with the demonic forces, end up fighting the Archangel Gabriel as the end boss and plunging the entire world into eternal darkness Of course I didnt follow that path but there are various dialogue options that align with the evil path you can follow That game had the darkest narrative of any game I have ever played. Its really worth playing, you just need to accept the terrible combat mechanics

Thats always my problem, I just cant make the evil choices. I always feel guilty So I generally stick to my favorite RPG archetype, a Conan personality Never say no to a damsel in distress, chase money and wealth but I have a sense of honor and a moral code of things I wont do

Im about 15 hours into Atomfall and its time for my first review Its a great game, really fun with some excellent design mechanics It doesn't have the vast narrative choices, game world size or factions of Fallout or the horror and survival excitement of STALKER or METRO but it delivers in other ways. It obviously had a limited budget so the developers worked with what they could which is fine The best part of the game is the exploration mechanics, you find notes and general advice around quests and then you have to explore which I love I have avoided using almost any gaming guides or tips because the maps are not that vast where you cant put the effort in So for example one quest was about finding a missing soldier and you end up tracking his notes between 3 maps and you find him because they mention a location, like " he was heading to this Manor X" The combat is simple but fun, you cant block or dodge in melee but you can kick to stun enemies Guns are well done and the physics work, you cant just blast every enemy because ammunition is scarce . So I have ended up using a bow and cricket bat as much as possible. There are only a few enemy types but its fine because combat is always strategic and engaging so you never get bored by "quick wins " I have fought 2 robots and it requires a specific strategy to defeat them which is never easy And then they have implemented a very good skill system, you need to find books\manuals to learn skills and to advance skills so you always motivated to explore or you can buy certain skills but they very expensive The barter system is also clever and unusual, you dont have money but you trade goods and the merchant has a scale so you can see when they will accept your offer. So again you have to explore and find things if you want to trade You also have limited space in your inventory so Im constantly aware of what I need to keep, drop or trade. You cant hoard items Overall, a really positive experience and the game definitely delivers on no quest hand holding and open world design. You can go anywhere on any map you want I will do another review after 30 hours or so

Yes, thats my point Israel knows that killing leaders of these groups wont change the ideological views of these groups Thats not why they do it So I doubt they would now think killing the Iranian leadership is going to suddenly change things in Iran like in Venezuela

You could be right but it wouldn't be a very good assessment of Iran and Israel is typically aware of how these things unfold Irans anti-US sentiment is decades long, the hardliners have created an entire culture and ideology that is deeply influenced by resistance to " US imperialism", And they dislike Israel even more By killing the Iranian leadership it doesnt seem likely they would now end up like Venezuela by immediately starting to reverse Maduros failed policies The ME and its various fundamentalist and extremist groups don't generally operate or think like that. How many times has Israel killed Hamas or Hezbollah top leaders and they still have the same views? So if the US and Israel did believe that it doesn't support the reality and history

Yes, some GOP politicians do think a ground invasion makes sense. But thats normal in the US, politicians have different opinions Thats not going to happen because that would mean the US becomes involved in a protracted war and Trump wants to avoid that, this latest military campaign is already deeply unpopular and he wants a "quick win " using airstrikes And I definitely dont believe the US would sink one of its own carriers to try to justify conventional war But if Iran does that it would be a different story

Because if they sink a US Carrier then the US would be "justified " to unleash its full military might Imagine the headlines " thousands of US sailors killed ", even the Dems would back full military action\declaration of war after this and the Iranian hardliners want to survive Its safer for Iran to continue to target Israel and Gulf States that dont have proper defenses because the objective is you create enough chaos, interruption and global economic harm with the hope that this will put pressure on the US to end its military campaign Its a much better strategy than a conventional war with the USA

Interesting clarification from Rubio, the US military objectives are not about regime change but that would be ideal if the Iranians themselves could do that ( not sure how they could but anyway ) The US military objectives are about destroying Irans ability to launch missiles, drones and get nukes. I'm also not sure how you can achieve this, I assume by bombing every Iranian military site? Rubio says US launched strikes against Iran because of pl...Top diplomat says US understood its assets would be hit by Iran in retaliation for a preemptive Israeli strike, even though Jerusalem seen as unlikely to have acted without Trump's blessing "Asked whether regime change was a goal in Iran, as US President Donald Trump has indicated in the past, Rubio said the US would love to see it happen, but it is not among the aims of the current military operation. “Our mission and our focus is the destruction of missiles and the ability to manufacture them, as well as their naval capabilities,” Rubio said. The remarks caused further confusion, as Trump earlier Monday listed two other aims for Operation Epic Fury: ensuring Iran cannot support proxy militia groups or obtain a nuclear weapon. “That said, we hope that the Iranian people can overthrow this government,” Rubio said. “Whoever runs the regime, the goal is to ensure that they don’t have missiles and drones to threaten us,” he said, seemingly adding another war aim — neutralizing the Iranian drone threat."

https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2026/03/us-strikes-destroy-irans-main-naval-assets/ The US has destroyed much of Iran's navy, this is relevant because it will limit Irans ability to close the Straits of Hormuz and launch drones and missiles " U.S. Central Command confirmed the destruction of the Shahid Bagheri, Iran’s recently commissioned drone and helicopter carrier, during strikes on March 2. The vessel, which had only entered service with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy on February 6, 2025, represented a major investment in Iran’s naval power projection capabilities. Converted from a 240-meter container ship over two years, the 40,000-ton carrier featured a 180-meter ski-jump runway and could operate for up to a year at sea without refuelling, according to Iranian naval officials."

Interesting, I wasn't aware of that history of Iran

It would be hard to imagine regime change in Iran in the same way it happened in Venezuela, remove the leader and the new government falls in line and starts reversing all the authoritarian policies and the country starts on a journey of becoming a real Democracy again Iran has never been a real Democracy and its spent the last 45 years creating a mindset that is opposed to the US and its " imperialist influence " Anti-American sentiment is ingrained into the psyche of most of the hardliners in Iran, its all they have ever known And anti-Israeli sentiment is even worse There are lots of Iranians who would love to see a better relationship with the US and the West and the country to just be a normal member of the international community But they not in power I would assume the US and Israeli objective is if you kill the Iranian leadership and keep bombing them then the new government would be more favorable to all the demands and objectives Its difficult to predict what will happen because we haven't seen this before with the Supreme Leader being killed I dont think we will see the political change we are hoping for with the new leadership but you never know ?

What concerns me is the military objectives have changed from ending Iran's nuclear program to a rant about regime change That's Israeli influence for sure And this was 10 hours after Iran had apparently agreed to the nuclear terms in Oman So now its about an impossible demand, how would you ever achieve regime change in Iran without an invasion and a massive ground offensive and then long-term US commitment like Afghanistan or Iraq Iran is not anything like Venezuela where it was easy to accomplish Al JazeeraPeace ‘within reach’ as Iran agrees no nuclear material s...Oman's Foreign Minister says most recent indirect talks between US, Iran 'really advanced, substantially'."Iran agreed during indirect talks with the United States never to stockpile enriched uranium, said Oman’s top diplomat, who described the development as a major breakthrough. Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi also said on Friday that he believed all issues in a deal between Iran and the US could be resolved “amicably and comprehensively” within a few months. "If the ultimate objective is to ensure forever that Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb, I think we have cracked that problem through these negotiations by agreeing [on] a very important breakthrough that has never been achieved any time before,” Al Busaidi said. “The single most important achievement, I believe, is the agreement that Iran will never ever have nuclear material that will create a bomb,” he said. “Now we are talking about zero stockpiling, and that is very, very important because if you cannot stockpile material that is enriched, then there is no way that you can actually create a bomb,” he added. '

Yeah, I know you were joking I know you know Trump exaggerates these types of events Its all part of his hubris, insecurity and constant need for adulation and praise

You mean you still believe everything Trump says on geopolitical events especially when he is notorious around how he sensationalizes and exaggerate things ? Come on, I thought we stopped doing that after his first presidency years ago They damaged the Iranian sites, they didnt destroy them completely. How would anyone even know what that means if even the IAEA didnt have access to inspect them?

Here is Trump's justification for attacking Iran, its only 8 minutes long It's a combination of legitimate reasons like the nuclear program and then he talks about regime change and destroying Iran's navy It's not very convincing unless you planning on a protracted war which is exactly what his supporters were told the US under Trump wouldn't do Regime change in Iran is also impossible to imagine how it could realistically happen https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116147082884192486

Here is an interesting story about the differences in the price of games on Steam depending on where you live Atomfall Complete Edition cost me R730 which is £33 if you convert to British Pound And its on a 12% discount I was chatting to someone on Codex who says for him on Steam its £68 which is R1470, he lives in the UK And thats for today I never thought Steam would have such vast price differences for any game with the difference being where you live ?

That looks excellent, its been a while since I have a watched a good mermaid series

The greatest horror\supernatural series of all time is returning From S4, April 19

I decided to buy Atomfall with all the DLC and Im going to play it next I have heard good things about this game 🤖

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/02/20/mamdani-nyc-budget-affordability-crisis/ Fareed Zakaria has written an article highlighting serious concerns around Mamdani's budget and plans to deliver on his promises to make NY " affordable " This is almost always the case with socialist promises, they end up with a massive tax bill because how do you pay for it? He also raises a trend around financial mismanagement seen in several Dem controlled cities I have included the full article below and I would encourage everyone to read it who is following Mamdani and his plans going forward "Zohran Mamdani ran on a promise to make New York City affordable. This week, he unveiled a budget that is, in a word, unaffordable. New York has been fiscally profligate for so long that the headline number — $127 billion — produces little shock. But for perspective, these are similar to the annual expenditures of a midsize nation (with all the expenses a country requires) — like Greece or Thailand — devoted to governing one city. New York City’s budget has ballooned in recent years. Mike Bloomberg’s last budget, adopted for fiscal 2014, totaled about $70 billion. In little more than a decade, the budget has nearly doubled, growing faster than inflation and faster than the city’s economic growth. And much of it has happened as the city has been losing the one thing that makes big government easier to finance: people. New York City’s population fell sharply amid the pandemic, with a 5.3 percent decline from April 2020 to July 2022. More recent reports show a rebound, but the city remained below its 2020 baseline as of 2024. The arithmetic is brutal: A larger bill is divided among fewer payers. Per person, the imbalance is stark. Using the Lincoln Institute’s fiscally standardized numbers, New York’s general spending in 2023 was more than 30 percent higher per capita than Los Angeles’s — and more than double Houston’s. And what do New Yorkers get for this? Look at New York City schools, the largest district in the country. The city’s education budget has climbed while enrollment has shrunk. It has risen from roughly $34 billion in 2019 to more than $40 billion, with per-student spending projected to reach nearly $35,000 in fiscal 2026 — among the highest in the nation. The outputs — graduation numbers, test scores and reading levels — are at best middling, often comparable to places that spend a fraction of what New York does. Now come the taxes — because every political argument in New York eventually ends up at the same curbside: Who will pay? New York City already sits at the extreme end of the American tax spectrum. For high earners, the combined state and city income tax rate reaches 14.776 percent. Add federal taxes, and the combined marginal rate can exceed 50 percent, reaching roughly 55 percent on certain investment income. New Yorkers pay tax rates comparable to those in European countries that provide, in return, universal health care, free college education and amazing infrastructure. New Yorkers get some 300 miles of sidewalk sheds and construction fences. On business taxation, the city is also off the charts. The Citizens Budget Commission reports that New York City business activity faces the country’s highest combined marginal corporate tax rate — 17.44 percent once state, city and regional layers are stacked. Mamdani wants to hike income and corporate rates even further, or else he says he will raise property taxes by almost 10 percent. Property taxes already made up more than 27 percent of the costs of homeownership in the city as of 2022, above the national average. New York is really the prime example of a problem Democrats seem unwilling to confront. Blue cities are out of control, promising more, spending more, delivering less and pushing off the fiscal problems to some future day. Take Los Angeles — another one-party metropolis wrestling with affordability and disorder. The city’s homelessness budget for fiscal 2025-2026 totals about $950 million. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority reported that in 2023 homelessness was up 9 percent countywide and 10 percent in the city, and a 2024 Associated Press account noted that homelessness has surged 70 percent countywide since 2015 (and 80 percent in the city) amid public frustration “despite billions spent.” An audit reviewed $2.4 billion in city homelessness funding and found that officials could not reliably track where it went or what it achieved. Or take Chicago, with a mayor whose approval rating is deep underwater and where the pension promises are so large that they will surely bankrupt the city at some point. What is the theory of good government here? If the answer is “keep adding programs,” the city will keep producing unaffordability — because unaffordability is what happens when government becomes a machine that grows faster than the society it governs. Mamdani’s basic instinct is right. Focus on affordability, especially housing. But not by providing government subsidies — these only seem to have driven up the cost of rent, as subsidies naturally do. (The city’s rental-assistance spending rose from $263 million in fiscal 2020 to $1.34 billion in the most recent reported fiscal year. That is a fivefold increase in a handful of years — and housing costs only got worse.) Matt Yglesias persuasively argues that the city should make it easy — and routine — to build abundant market-rate housing. That will bring in more people, expand the tax base, fill the schools and increase local GDP. And that will make the budget affordable. Democrats in city halls can make the right choice: stop governing as if the goal is to announce new entitlements, and instead make government work — safer streets, functioning schools, predictable sanitation and, above all, enough housing that the middle class can find places to live. New York does not need more soaring rhetoric. It needs more homes."

Yes, we call it the Government of National Unity There was this initial criticism from the parties not part of it that they cant call it a GNU for some obscure technical political reason but it was more about semantics Anyway that was ignored and we call it that One of the opposition parties even took the state owned broadcaster, SABC , to court to stop them referring to it as the GNU but they lost that case TimesLIVECourt dismisses application by MK Party to stop SABC from...The Johannesburg high court on Friday dismissed with costs an application by the MK Party and its leader Jacob Zuma which sought to prevent the SABC from using the term “government of national unity”"The Johannesburg high court on Friday dismissed with costs an application by the MK Party and its leader Jacob Zuma which sought to prevent the SABC from using the term “government of national unity” or “GNU” when describing the coalition government. Arguments on the application were heard on Monday. Counsel for the MK Party Dali Mpofu argued that the SABC, as a public broadcaster, had a responsibility to provide impartial reporting and that the use of the term was inaccurate. He said the SABC should refer to the current administration as an “ANC-DA coalition”. The SABC opposed the application and said the public broadcaster had not breached its editorial code by using the term."

Coalitions can bring stability and legitimacy to a country because they seen as a fair representation of voting outcomes, especially with a 50% majority required But they can also fail if the terms of the coalition are not clear and if its members dont put the country first and understand they now working with other parties to govern In South Africa's example we seeing real maturity with the GNU and success around several economic metrics and the running of public sector SOE since we created a GNU after our last election The GNU was formed in June 2024 and for at least the first 3-4 months the local media would run a weekly story about irreconcilable problems between the ANC and the DA and how the GNU would never last because of " ideological differences " And this was almost entirely geopolitical differences which as expected get sensationalized and exaggerated around there importance The GNU partners agree on the most significant things which are about our many domestic problems and they all respect the Constitution and they all realize we need a stable government even if it is a coalition Thats why our GNU has maintained and seen real success

I want to have this debate around "does voting matter " because it comes up often in many countries that have free and fair elections including South Africa where we have high levels of voting apathy and low levels of voter turnout compared to previous elections And lets use the US as an example because that's most of the focus on this thread But I just want to clarify that our foundational view is the same and the reason you need to vote in any Democracy Do you think there is a difference between the Dems and the GOP around many policies and also a difference in the presidential candidate around geopolitics? This might seem like an obvious answer and you would assume the response is " yes, of course" But many people believe it doesn't matter who wins US elections, the parties will act in the same way end of the day around policy outcomes and geopolitics but its done surreptitiously I obviously believe there are clear differences around the 2 parties Yes they have some common views but several stark ideological differences and what policies they will implement or try to implement This is the same as almost all Democracies where you find leadership change through free and fair elections

So how would you suggest political leadership gets decided in any country? Or are you only talking about the USA?

Sure but my point is there are people who question the importance of government accountability that only exists in Democracies where courts are independent Its not just in Russia or China where courts would never reverse this type of decision by the president or leadership In South Africa I sometimes hear support for more autocratic countries because there leaders are seen as "strong " but people dont realize what freedoms they lose under those same governments