Keyrock

I love me some unhinged Roddy Piper... I suppose I could have written just Roddy Piper, unhinged is implied.

Remember the Mad Max game Avalanche made some years back? I freakin' love that game. I remember it getting kind of savaged in reviews which left me scratching my head, wondering what game the reviewers played. I'm getting off-track here, sorry. The point I was trying to make is that Mad Max absolutely nailed travel, it was so much fun driving around. It seems like developers often times don't put enough time and/or resources into making getting from point A to point B fun in these types of games, which makes no sense given that the player is going to be spending a very sizable chunk of the game doing exactly that. I can measure how good a game's traversal is by how likely I am to use fast travel. If, once fast travel becomes available, I always use it when it's an option, your game's traversal systems, quite frankly, suck. In Mad Max I almost never used fast travel. Why would I when driving around in my car and ramming bondage gear wearing nut jobs driving buggies was so much fun? Plus, you had that awesome weirdo that worshipped car engines in the back of your car. I should play Mad Max again, that game was freakin' awesome.

The Ultimate Warrior's most famous and easily best promo ever: While his delivery was different, he seemed to often try to tap into the same psychological, creepy, disturbing vibe that Jake "The Snake" Roberts tapped into on a regular basis. 99 out of 100 times he failed and the promo, which was nevertheless often entertaining for pure insanity reasons, was basically gibberish. This was the 1 out of 100 times that he actually succeeded. More rasslin' promo madness: I kind of miss these shouty promos filled with pure distilled insanity. They were utter bollocks, but they were entertaining.

I've written about this extensively before, I'm not going to do it again. I could link you to my previous posts but I'm lazy so the onus is on you if you want to read that. I will leave you with this: At this point we're up to a handful of states, and counting, that have removed every candidate except Joe Biden for the democratic primary, despite the fact that there are other candidates (namely Marianne Williamson). What they are telling us is "you can vote for anyone you want, so long as that 'anyone' is Joe Biden." Maybe that sounds like a democratic process to you, it sure doesn't to me. In fact, it sounds an awful lot like the "free and democratic" "elections" some obviously autocratic nations hold. Granted, it's just a handful of states out of fifty and just the primary that Biden would still win regardless (which brings up the question, why even do this?), but it's a worrying trend, at least to me it is.

You're likely correct, that's why in the short term the simplest solution is to make the jetpacks better. Currently, jetpacks only provide vertical thrust, you maintain the horizontal velocity you had when you left the ground. My suggestion is to add horizontal thrust, make it rank 4 of the jetpack skill. As it stands, at rank 2 you use less fuel when thrusting and at rank 3 the fuel regenerates more quickly, both of these are fairly underwhelming upgrades. At rank 4 the bonuses double and become actually meaningful, but that only lets you stay in the air longer, it doesn't do anything to your horizontal velocity. What I would do is build the current rank 4 into rank 2 & 3, doubling each bonus separately, then I would make the new rank 4 into "the jetpack can now have horizontal thrust equal to the vertical thrust". That could probably be worded better, but you get the picture. They'd need to add a button to switch from the current only vertical thrust to vertical AND horizontal thrust (sometimes you want to go straight up). On m&kb that's trivial because you have roughly 100 buttons to work with. On a gamepad... I don't play with a gamepad, but I imagine they'd need to go with a multiple button combination, something like both bumpers or a bumper and a face button or whatever. I'm sure they could figure it out. In the long run, I'm all for adding planetary vehicles, but that will likely take some time to work through issues, such as the ones you mentioned.

I completely agree about JA3 being the best revival of a series, not just last year, but since Mimimi revived the real-time stealth tactics genre with Shadow Tactics (ok that was a genre revival rather than a series revival, but close enough). Especially given that there have been several previous attempts in the 20+ years since JA2 to revive the series and nobody ever talks about them, which should tell you all you need to know about how good they were.

That's a fair point. With awards given by journos or those in the industry, I have no control over that, I don't see the point in stressing over something that I can't do anything about. With Steam awards I at least have some input, even if I'm just one of thousands or millions. I only voted in like 3 categories, though, because the other categories either were types of games I flat out don't play (can't very well play VR games without a VR headset) or every choice offered to me was a game I didn't play. I guess awards may have some impact on how publishers fund games, but we're living in a time when we're, quite honestly, spoiled for choice. There's such a massive amount of games coming out all the time that even if a decent percentage of them are shovelware, that still leaves a lot of quality games of all types arriving regularly. So even if some publishers pass on a game that I would have likely enjoyed because it didn't receive accolades, or whatever, I'm quite confident someone else will make that type of game for me to enjoy, so I don't bother worrying. Time and again my apathy has been rewarded, so I'm sticking with it. I might maybe have a different opinion if I were a RTS fan, that seems to be the most underserved part of the market. However, I don't play RTSs because they don't appeal to me, and also because I'm terrible at them. What I'm trying to say is that I'm having a hard time remembering a time in the relatively near past when I didn't have anything to play. In fact... /looks at backlog Furthermore, all those other awards are just lame also-rans, the one award that actually matters is the prestigious, world renown Keyrock's Game of the Year 2023 which I am awarding to The Talos Principle 2, because it's awesome.

No. I've written about this before, it's an oligarchy with a democracy veneer that's cracked and peeling.

Wait, are you seriously trying to convince me that a vote for Biden is a vote for democracy?

These rulings in Colorado and now Maine will go to the Supreme Court and my guess is they will be struck down, but even if they're not, most likely The Donald will STILL win the primary and be the republican candidate in the general election, that's how strong his cult of personality and his lead in the republican primary are. He's a despicable egotistical megalomaniac, but he's also very charismatic with legitimately good comedic timing. I hate the guy, but I also have to admit that he's a great manipulator. Contrast that with Biden who can barely string together a coherent sentence at this point.

The ethnic cleansing going on in Gaza, let's just call it what it clearly is, is certainly doing Biden no favors. It's not just muslims either, he's completely lost young people. At this point his support is mainly those 50+, he's lost a lot of people under 50 and the vast majority of people under 40. There's a lot of time between now and November and things can change, but things are headed in the wrong direction for Genocide Joe right now, which, by the way, Bibi is totally fine with, since The Donald is likely to be an even better ally for his purposes. Looking beyond the scope of just the upcoming presidential election here in Murica, much of the world is turning against Murica, and rightfully so. Kind of hard to claim to be peacekeepers when you repeatedly block ceasefire attempts that the vast majority of other countries are on board with. I mean, you can make the claim, but no one is going to believe you. This is an English speaking forum and most English speaking countries are US allies and likely have similar propaganda, so it can seem like everybody still likes Murica, but there's quite a bit of world outside of English speaking nations and they ain't happy with our recent actions.

Fair point, if for no other reason than as a contrast to awards voted on by journalists and/or industry professionals. Awards and accolades have zero impact on my purchasing habits, so I don't care who is awarded what and how little or much they gloat about it. It goes back to when I saw Two Worlds: Game of the Year Edition. Having played the game previously, the phrase "Game of the Year" lost all meaning at that instant.

That's certainly a possibility, especially given how poorly optimized the game is (it's better now than at launch, that's for sure, but still not great), but there's also the fact that this game is not actually open world, even the planets on their own are not open world. There's essentially a bubble with your landing point as the center, you reach the edge of the bubble and that's as far as you can go. It's a pretty large bubble, but letting you move faster would make it that much more likely that casual players would encounter the edge of the bubble and the illusion of open world would be shattered. There is a mod that disables the bubble boundaries and, from what I've heard and read, it sort of works, but it introduces a whole host of problems. The way I've been told, and I'm not a programmer so forgive my ignorance, is that the game uses floating point to keep track of where everything is with your landing site as the point everything is measured from. What I was told is that floating point simplifies some programming as compared to integer, but it also loses accuracy with distance, unlike integer. Supposedly this is baked deep into the engine and it would require a significant engine overhaul to switch to integer, not to mention that the switch would undoubtedly introduce its own host of issues that would need to be solved or worked around. The dream of making the planets open world might be dead because modders don't believe it's feasible and if you're counting on Bethesda to do a major engine overhaul for this, good luck with that. I don't particularly care if I run into a boundary and the illusion of open world is shattered, I just want to be able to move around much faster, but it's not my decision to make.

No one should take any media awards seriously, they're all shameless circle jerks. Here's a slightly less shameless but significantly more snarky circle jerk:

When are we going to get the Peter Jackson high frame rate version of the thread title?

@BruceVCMy theory as to the unusually high undecided percentage is that the choices that people perceive to have are so spectacularly awful. If you subscribe to the view that you only have 2 choices, obviously I don't (look at my sig, I mean the link not the gif of Suzu Suzuki performing a Sky Twister Press), then you are presented with 2 downright despicable candidates. I mean, the term "lesser of 2 evils" gets used a lot but it's especially apt this election. You couldn't get me to vote for either Biden or The Donald unless it was at gunpoint, and even then I might seriously consider saying "pull the trigger, ***hole."

The biggest thing I take away from that Gallup poll is the impact of Super PACs. There used to be a $2500 limit for any single individual to contribute to a PAC (Political Action Committee), in 2010 the courts struck that limit down and the Super PAC was born. Now ludicrously wealthy individuals, your George Soros types, could have MUCH larger impacts on elections because career politicians will appeal to those that are most responsible for funding their election campaigns. That's why I believe there is such a stark difference in approval ratings pre-2010 and post-2010, because post-2010 career politicians focused on satisfying their ultra wealthy Super PAC donors, rather than the population as a whole. The Trump approval rating is a bit misleading because that poll happened before COVID and COVID, obviously, changed everything.

Joe Biden has the lowest year end approval rating of any incumbent first term president heading into an election year ever. Make of that what you will.

It's kind of crazy how dull exploration can be in Starfield. I mean, we're talking about Bethesda, exploration has been this company's bread and butter for decades. Plus, you have a freakin' jetpack. A Bethesda game with a jetpack? That sounds like a slam dunk in terms of exploration. And yet, here were are. According to Bethesda, they have things coming down the pipe that supposedly will address peoples' complaints about travel and exploration. What form said things coming down the pipe will take and whether they will actually happen is a mystery. Remember, this is a company that has time and again relied on modders to fix their broken games in the past. I don't know what they can do to make the planets less dull, given that the vast majority of them are procedurally generated, but at the very least they need to ungimp the jetpack. You can do that to some degree with skills and crafting, but at best you can make the jetpack less $#!+, you can't make it good. It doesn't have nearly enough forward thrust. On a planet with low enough gravity you can use the jetpack to essentially sprint forever, regaining stamina while in midair, but it doesn't make you move from point a to point b any faster, except that you don't have to stop sprinting. Either give the jetpack enough horizontal thrust that it significantly speeds up your travel or give us a vehicle to traverse these boring ass planet, and one that doesn't require a loading screen to get in and out of. Even the jetpack in Elex, which is lame, is better than the jetpack in Starfield.

Happy 2024 ya scalawags.

3 time NASCAR Cup champion Cale Yarborough, age 84.

Placki ziemniaczane Simple Polish comfort food, essentially the best possible version of hash browns. You can top them one of two ways: Sweet, typically with powdered sugar, occasionally apple sauce, or what I do, sour cream and chives.

Holy ****, this just keeps getting better. First muh Boys win, granted not without controversy (and also because Mike McCarthy is incapable of managing the clock), but a win is a win. I got to make a beating Goff joke and it was for an important game as an extra bonus. And now the Iggles slipped on a banana peel and lost to the Cards, putting muh Boys in prime position to win the NFC East, all we have to do is beat the Commies next week. I didn't even have to use my AK, I gotta say it was a good day.

We did it, muh Boys beat Goff. It wasn't pretty, downright ugly at times. You know, sometimes you don't have the means to properly lubricate the situation, to make everything work smoothly, but you just have to grit your teeth, knuckle down; it might get a little rough, you might even see some blood, but you don't stop, you keep beating Goff until the finish, and that's what muh Boys did. Side-note: I've been waiting all season since I saw the schedule for this game, hoping Jared would be healthy, just so that I could make that childish, immature joke. Worth.

I didn't like Indy5 as much as @InsaneCommanderbut it's definitely better than Indy4.