Keyrock

I don't think it was intended as such, but I really love tipping that they added to DotA 2. A player tipping an opposing team player after making him look like a fool is next-level BM. I love it. Kinda sucks we had 2 SEA team go out of the tourney today. I always find them highly entertaining.

$1200?

In years past they were favorites entering The International, but after the roster changes I don't think many people expect them to go that far. With NoTail and JerAx still on the squad, I wouldn't put it past them to make a deep run. Edit: Damn, the defending champs just STEAMROLLED Optic.

I need more information. Are we talking dried fruit, Welch's Fruit Snacks, or Fruit By The Foot? These are important details. We need to know what manner of fruit snacks the aliens crave for the upcoming war.

I'm performing a bit of thread Necromancy now that the The International 8 main event has begun. GabeN brought out the memes for his intro. On a more serious note, that was a pretty great opening performance. For as much money as is on the line and that went into the production of this tourney, I suppose it better be. Anyway, I'm cheering on all the NA teams (Evil Geniuses, Optic Gaming, and VGJ Storm) and Mineski (because IceIceIce). I think VGJ Storm is a dark horse to win this all, that team is hitting its stride at just the right time. Virtus Pro are the favorites, though. They dominated this year.

Agreed on the music. It's too bad Grey Goo didn't become a bigger success, I could love to see the old Westwood folk rise back to prominence. As for World War 3, it's from Farm 51, a studio out of my native Poland. I didn't play their last game, Get Even, so I can't comment on that, but I did play both Deadfall Adventures and Painkiller: Hell and Damnation. Painkiller: H&D was good, but also completely unnecessary as it was essentially a remake of a game that didn't need remaking as it still runs perfectly fine and the remake doesn't really add much of anything. As for Deadfall Adventures, I think I'm one of the few people that really liked that game, so much so that I keep hoping they make a sequel some day.

In fairness to Lisa Su, AMD, at the time, was strapped for cash and simply couldn't afford to invest heavily into r & d on all fronts, she had to make some compromises somewhere and decided to sacrifice Radeon's high-end in favor of investing in design for Zen and upcoming PS5 chips. Given AMD's recent financial performance and the success of Zen, the consensus seems to be that she made the right call. It will be interesting to see what becomes of Intel's graphics division with Raja Kaduri at the helm, but whatever happens it's at least a couple of years away. Until then, and until at least whatever comes after Navi, we're stuck with Nvidia holding a monopoly in high-end gpus, which sucks. And I'm not even a Nvidia hater, I just hate a company, any company holding a monopoly over any segment of the market, because it's inherently bad for consumers. Edit: Anyway, my original plan was to build a new desktop rig in about a year or so targeting 4K, but that plan got scrapped when I changed career paths and became a trucker. No point in investing in a beefy desktop rig if I'm only going to get to use it a few days a year. Instead, I'm looking to buy a fairly powerful gaming laptop in the next few months. The plan is to get a laptop with a 17" screen that can max out pretty much any game out now and coming down the pipeline in the next couple years at 1080p. 4K or even 1440p seem like overkill for a 17" screen. At that screen size you get increasingly diminishing returns moving to 1440p, never mind 4K, at a steep increase in price for the hardware necessary to power it. I'm of the opinion that you need at least a 24" screen to justify 1440p and at least 30" to justify 4K. With that in mind, I'd be buying a laptop with a GTX 1060 if I had to buy one today, but I'll probably target something with a 2060, since that should future-proof that a bit better. Hopefully the mid-level cards from Team Green will be less outrageously overpriced than the high-end cards.

They're so damn expensive, though, if the leaks are to be believed. We've now entered a time where the xx80 Ti costs what a Titan used to cost. The problem is that in the high-end Nvidia is competing with itself. AMD has nothing to compete with this card, nor the 2080, and, if reports are to be believed, they won't for several years because their focus is currently on the chip that will power the PS5, so their aim is more at power efficiency than it is raw power. Because of this Nvidia can charge pretty much whatever they want for their high-end cards. I mean, those cards have traditionally always been overpriced, as are most high-end products, but this is ridiculous.

I finished chapter 2 in Phantom Doctrine. I was asking for a more difficult mission and they delivered for the chapter ending mission. Granted, I still stealthed it, or as much of it as is possible, but that's just because I am the God of Stealth. It's impossible to completely stealth that mission for reasons I won't reveal because spoilers, but I stealthed everything I could and finished the mission with zero damage taken AND I kidnapped an enemy agent for interrogation, followed by either brainwashing or a bullet in their head, I haven't decided yet. As for C&C I LOVE Red Alert 3. Sure, the gratuitous **** & ass was maybe unnecessary, not that I mind , but they also cranked the absurdity level up to 11 in the story and Tim Curry and George Takei ham it up so ****ing hard in the FMV scenes. It's a freakin' masterpiece of cheese. My biggest complaint about the game is the insane difficulty spike for the Empire of the Rising Sun campaign.

Same

Imagine a game with Jagged Alliance's tactical turn-based gameplay and Command & Conquer Red Alert level hilariously ludicrous alternate history and cheesetastic FMV scenes complete with B list actors and celebs next level overacting. That would be so amazing.

Hopefully the missions in Phantom Doctrine get more difficult later because I'm finding them too easy. I'm playing on normal difficulty BTW. Particularly, disguises are so powerful, especially if you have an agent with the actor perk. Granted, you can only disguise an agent if you manage to recon an area before launching the assault and you can only disguise one agent (maybe you can expand this later?), but having an agent with the actor perk disguised for a mission is tantamount to God Mode. I very rarely get into firefights in the game, I just stealth everything, which is fine with me since stealth is my jam. I'm already looking forward to replaying this game on a harder difficulty, especially since completing the game opens up another faction to start as (MI6? Gladio? Mossad? Triads?) and a "more in depth playthrough.

I'm almost disappointed that Twilight 2000 is not a game about emo vampires and werewolves trying to find love in the near future as envisioned in the 1980s.

No, but that sounds intriguing. Was it any good?

^ So, a Bethesda version of this? Edit: I'd like to imagine a Bethesda seal of quality first glitching out when you look at it, then falling apart, before the pieces finally hilariously fly off into space in an apparent physics bug.

Basically, the bottom line for anyone curious about Phantom Doctrine is are you interested in playing a MUCH more stealth focused XCOM? Because, in simplest terms, that's what this game is. I went through another mission where I had to assault an enemy hideout and eliminate 10 of its agents and I completely stealthed that mission. I'm so proud of myself for pulling it off. It took some meticulous planning, timing, and teamwork, but I made it happen. Of course, you don't HAVE TO use stealth, you can go guns blazing, but it's generally beneficial to stealth missions as much as you can.

It works both ways, your team shoots through walls too. It's not super egregious, like if you're standing on one side of a free standing wall and the enemy is on the other side of the wall you can't shoot them and they can't shoot you. It mostly has to do with the way the game calculates angles not lining up with the attack animation, so you're in cover at the corner of a building next to a window and there's an enemy you have an angle on through that window and the window on another wall of the building. In the shooting animation your character steps out of cover and fires on the target and sometimes that's through the wall next to the window because, while there is an angle for a shot there that doesn't hit walls, because the animation has you take 2 steps to the left you are now shooting through walls. Firaxis XCOM had the same exact problem. I'm not far enough in to comment on the story, but the vibe is terrific. I legit feel like I'm in a spy thriller.

I finished chapter 1 in Phantom Doctrine. So far so good. In chapter 1, all my operations were in the Soviet Union, but I'm pretty sure I'm about to go global.

Trying to watch it, anyway.

I did a big, 6 person mission in Phantom Doctrine. I did some recon before the mission allowing me some tactical advantages, namely a spotter and the ability to disguise one of my agents. I used my disguised agent to move inside the compound and collect extra intel, items, and get strategic information. I still had to be careful because the place was crawling with enemy agents and while disguises fool civilians and regular guards, enemy agents see right through them unless you have a perk that makes them foolproof (which I didn't at the time, but I do have that perk on one of my agents now). I collected all the intel, disabled cameras, and looted all manner of safes and cabinets with Indigo, my disguised agent, all while I spread the other 5 agents out to surround the main building while still staying far enough away to stay in the unrestricted zone. After collecting everything, I had Indigo begin to silently eliminate enemy agents with takedowns. It helped that, at the time, Indigo was my highest HP agent and the way takedowns work in the game is that you have to have higher HP than the victim for a takedown to work. I eliminated about half the agents, but then I got a bit sloppy and a civilian noticed me taking out an agent, blowing my cover and initiating combat. At this point, though, I had the building surrounded with agents in great tactical locations and I burst in and just gunned fools down left and right making this a fairly easy battle. I escaped with no casualties and only minor wounds on 2 agents. It was great to see all the recon work I put in earlier and proper strategic preparation pay off. Good times.

Oh my goodness, they have cardigans! I'm going to have the most fashionable group of agents ever.

More on Phantom Doctrine. Like in XCOM you have a world map where you can send your agents on missions. These missions generally start out as recon and may or may not lead to other things. While you are doing this the enemy is working against you, so you need to send your agents to suspicious locations to find out if anything is going on there or not. What I really like is that when you do discover enemy agents in a location working against you that doesn't have to mean going into an isometric turn-based encounter. You can, if you chose to, go directly into that (it's called Assault), but that tends to be a last resort. You generally have other options for diffusing the situation, ranging from sabotaging the operation, to tailing the enemy agents, and so on. All these things have time limits, though, and it takes time to fly your agents to the location if you don't happen to have any close by (that's why it's good to spread your agents out over the map a bit). If you take too long then assault may be your only option to stop the enemy. Alternatively, you can do nothing and allow the enemy to finish their mission, but that comes with consequences, such as the danger level of your HQ rising as the enemy gets closer to discovering and infiltrating your HQ. You can always move your HQ to a different location, resetting the danger meter, provided you have discovered a suitable location, but that costs a lot of money. Like in XCOM, you simply don't have the resources and manpower to do everything and you have to strategically let some things go. Also, you can get ambushed on the way to locations which immediately forces you into turn-based combat where you try to fight or escape the ambush, or you can let those agents get captured.This game has a good bit of depth to it and there's a good bit of tension, which is obviously critical for any good spy thriller.

Started Phantom Doctrine. Early going, but I'm having a blast so far. It's very much Firaxis XCOM, but in a cold war setting. There's less RNG, or different RNG. There is no RNG in chance to hit, the RNG is in how much damage is dealt. There is also a stat called Awareness, which works sort of like stamina. Awareness is used for certain actions and for things like dodging attacks (which makes them deal minimum damage). It's a stat which can be depleted and replenished (either through time or abilities). Like XCOM 2 and Hard West, there in an infiltration phase where enemies are not aware of you and combat has not yet initiated. In XCOM 2 and Hard West you can use this phase to position your team before combat begins. In Phantom Doctrine, if you're really careful, you can go through an entire mission in the infiltration phase and never enter combat. Like in XCOM you have a base where you can research, send agents out to gather intel, heal up injured agents, etc. My favorite part of the base is the information analysis where you go through dossiers full of recovered intel, find keywords, and use a corkboard to connect pieces of intel with string to form connections and reveal information. Fun fact: One of the available female portraits (there are like 100 for each gender) is the actress who plays Nina Struthers (her name is Mahria Zook), Devolver Digital's Chief Synergy Officer in Devolver's amazing E3 presentations.