Keyrock

For what it's worth, Reshade is used in mods for most games, so you will encounter needing it again in the future, most likely.

Condolences on your loss, @ShadySands

In the vast majority of games where stealth is an option I try to ghost the game as much as possible, but in Hogwarts Legacy I like to go in guns wand blazing. Freezing an enemy then hitting them with diffindo does so much damage. I'm sad I haven't gotten any unforgivable curses yet.

Looking sharp with some new threads: Finally got beasties:

I installed the Silence Deek mod, it does exactly what it says. I also installed better broom control. The devs made the utterly bizarre design decision to split the directional controls between the two thumbsticks on a gamepad, left stick controls left and right and right stick controls up and down. This mod puts all directional controls on the left thumbstick, where they should have been all along. The one downside of the mod is that up and down on the left thumbstick used to be forward and back and that's now replaced by down and up (it's inverted by default because the modder is likely a flight/space sim player like me) so there's no way to slowly fly forward or backward, pressing the right trigger to fly fast makes you go forward, though, like it always did, and who wants to fly slowly?

Mike and Rich sound so hopeful. It's going to be delicious schadenfreude watching that hopefulness get beaten out of them.

Crank 2: High Voltage (2009) - This follows the standard sequel formula to a tee, make essentially the same movie as the first just make it bigger. If you liked Crank, and why wouldn't you, then you'll almost certainly like Crank 2. This movie is even more over the top and ridiculous than the first. It's basically live action Wile E Coyote. I might actually like this better than the first. It's just a really fun ridiculous action schlock romp with slick cinematography and that distinct late 90s to late 00s style. To think of it, Crank 2 is one of the best examples of the late 90s to late 00s style, the only movie I can think of that exemplifies that style better is Run Lola Run.

I had my first death in Hogwarts Legacy. I jumped off a cliff with the intention of getting on my broom mid-fall, for style points, and flying off. My less than dexterous fingers fumbled on the controller and SPLAT. Still no combat deaths, though. Despite lacking challenge, combat is always fun. The possibilities for entertaining combos continues to expand as I learn new spells. I'm currently doing the broom upgrade quests to get maximum broom. The broom races are a good time, I hope they add more tracks in the future. As an aside, these are the mods I'm currently running: Someone needs to make a mod changing the balloons you can pop in the game while flying into Chinese spy balloons.

You can't imagine how inconvenient travel was before I invented floo powder might become the new I used to be an adventurer like you, then I took an arrow to the knee. I'll give the mod a try, hopefully they make a mod to silence Deek too. It's too bad he's not voiced by Wil Wheaton, then the mod could be called "Shut Up Wesley".

Steam is having a Spike Chunsoft sale so I scooped up AI: The Somnium Files: nirvanA Initiative. I played the first game last year and thoroughly enjoyed it; I like almost everything Spike Chunsoft develops, largely due to how dark and twisted they like to get. It wasn't quite as good as the Zero Escape games, but very few things are as good as the Zero Escape games.

I'm inclined to agree with you. I consider the best movie Statham had a major role in to be Snatch, but that movie was great because of a big cast of colorful characters, whereas he is absolutely the driving force of Crank. I'm watching the sequel next.

You can't imagine how inconvenient travel was before I invented floo powder.

Crank (2006) - Jason Statham is a hitman, he got injected with a poison and the only way to slow the poison down is to keep adrenaline pumping. Completely over the top wonderful action schlock. This movie is so cartoonishly ridiculous that it goes from great to going too far but then keeps going and comes all the way back around to being awesome. It's 86 minutes of madness and it's fantastic.

Jerry Jarrett, long time wrestling promoter, age 80.

It's easy to stay on a keto diet when I eat polędwica: This is for all intents and purposes what we strangely call Canadian bacon here in Murica, except the absolute highest quality Canadian bacon from a deli, not the mediocre stuff you can get from any ol' supermarket anywhere.

Professor Ersatz Keanu: Finally got a broom: First thing I did during the flying tutorial is invert the flying controls. In my mind inverted should be default, but I guess not everyone grew up on flight/space sims.

I'm debating switching to hard difficulty in Hogwarts Legacy. I've been playing on normal the whole time so far and I'm still at zero deaths. I've come close a few times, mainly when I've gotten sloppy or there's just an overwhelming number of enemies, but most of the time I'm straight up stylin' on enemies. I particularly like pulling enemies close then lighting them up with incendio. Good times. I'm looking forward to getting unforgivable curses. With the CTDs fixed and the small stutters previously taken care of, the game runs great. It could still stand to get some optimizations, but I've got settings I'm happy with where FPS dips into the mid 40s once in a long while but mostly nice and smooth at around 80ish. All while looking absolutely spectacular. There's the occasional bit of dithering from upscaling but I only notice it if I'm really looking for it.

Fit is not going to be an issue for KD in Phoenix. KD's game is so well rounded and his basketball IQ so high that you can plug him into practically any system and he'll fit right in. Remember, when he was on the Dubs he was often a jack of all trades, doing whatever was required to help the team win. It's all about health. The Suns will be a terrifying team to play if fully healthy. Will they be fully healthy in May?

There's a fix for the CTDs in Hogwarts Legacy, though it will be of little use to some in this form as it's Linux specific. I run this command from a terminal before launching the game: I've played for several hours and fast traveled a bunch of times to test it out and haven't had a single CTD since. It's been so long since I used Windows as my primary OS that I couldn't tell you how to translate that to a command you could run in a DOS shell on Windows, but I'm sure it's possible to get the same effect somehow. There's probably also a way to make this permanent in one of the .ini files. I'm contemplating making a simple shell script to run that command then launch the game binary, but then I'd have to mess with Steam to have it run said script instead of the binary directly. It's probably not worth the trouble, running that command from a terminal is quick and easy enough.

The Eagles defense sure picked a good game to no-show. Meanwhile, Ayahuasca Enthusiast Aaron Rodgers is somewhere in a pitch black room.

Hogwarts Legacy continues to deliver the goods. I still get CTDs here and there; with a lesser game I would probably set this aside for a few months (and possibly never return), but this game is enjoyable enough and the world is just so incredibly great to explore that I'm happily willing to put up with the growing pains of a brand new game to keep at it. This is the first legit GotY contender of 2023; it doesn't do anything new or innovative, but it does a lot of things really really really well. It's just fun; almost everything you do in this game feels good and the world is just such a joy to explore. The attention to detail continues to impress me (with the exception that if you swim when you get back on land you are instantly dry, there is no wet texture. I guess they had to cut corners somewhere) wherever I go. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, since Avalanche was responsible for the excellent and criminally underrated Mad Max game.

I don't think it was in the game initially but it's in the game now. I started Cyberpunk after patch 1.6, so they added that at some point 1.6 or before. The implementation is different, but the result is the same. In the wardrobe in any of your apartments you can set outfits and there are 5 or 6 outfit sets you can create for quick change of style. You can create outfits from any pieces of clothing that have ever been in your inventory, even if you couldn't equip them because of level restrictions. This has no effect on stats. As long as you have one of the outfit sets active changing a clothing item in your inventory doesn't change your appearance, just your stats. Like you, I just sell all my unused clothing in Hogwarts, except legendaries, unless I have a legendary for that slot that is superior. I sell all common, superb, and extraordinary clothing items.

I agree. I've written about this before, separating appearance and stats should be the standard in every 3rd person view game. Cyberpunk 2077 has this exact same system, and that's a 1st person view game. For all the (deserved) criticism that CDPR got for Cyberpunk, I have to praise them for implementing separation of appearance and stats in a game where 98% of the time you don't even see your character model. Honestly, going forward, any AAA or AA studio that makes a 3rd person view game that doesn't separate appearance and stats should be ashamed. I can give tiny indie teams working on a shoestring budget a pass, but any sizeable studio filled with experienced programmers and designers worth their salt should be able to implement separate appearance and stat clothing slots quickly and easily.

Yeah, I've been avoiding fast traveling since it means an area load, which in turn means chance of CTD. That doesn't bother me too much since Hogwarts and the surrounding lands are weird and interesting enough that I don't particularly want to use fast travel. Unfortunately, area loads can't be avoided entirely as they are part of main missions and also any time you want to go from Hogwarts to the countryside, or vice versa, you have to go through an area load and thus a chance of CTD. Hopefully they get that sorted in the near future as it's an annoyance in an otherwise really fun game.

Got some sweet new threads: Challenge accepted.