Keyrock

I'm (fashionably?) late to the party here, but Vampire Survivors just came out on Xbox and it's on Game Pass. This game is AWESOME. Now I understand why everyone went crazy for this when it first released on PC. This takes it back to the roots of video games. Games have evolved in all sorts of directions, encompassing all different types of experiences, and that's great. Once in a while, though, I just want to play something that's pure mindless fun and this is that. It's basically bullet hell, it's super simple, and it has roguelite elements. It's an absolute joy to play and it's helped by the terrific Castlevania-esque music. The quickest way to my heart is just make some music that sounds like it came out of a Castlevania game. Also, the enemies sound like popping corn when they die, which is an incredibly satisfying sound. If you've not played this yet and you have Game Pass, do yourself a favor and try it. It's a small download (by today's standards), it looks like it could run on a potato, so you probably don't need a beefy gaming PC for it, and it's super fun.

"You will own nothing and you will be happy." - Klaus Schwab

This forum lacks the proper emoji with which to properly react to this post, hence I am forced to react with this:

I "played" Immortality, the latest FMV "game" from Sam Barlow. As you can probably tell from my "clever" use of quotation marks, there's not really any gameplay here, it's sort of an interactive movie, several, in fact. You scrub through clips of 3 unreleased movies plus some interviews and such. If you click on somebody's face or an object that will lead you to another clip. Eventually something happens. Over time you essentially piece together and, for the most part, watch 3 movies and there is a sort of overarching story. It was definitely too artsy fartsy for my tastes, but I do appreciate developers trying something different with the medium. The performances were good too.

For no reason whatsoever, here's a possum eating a strawberry:

You don't need to convince me, I'm a registered libertarian.

I think both of the establishment political parties here in Murica are dumpster fires, they're just different types. The elephant one is an apartment complex type dumpster with the 2 sliding doors, one on each side, and the 2 plastic lids, now completely melted. There's a used mattress next to it that is now also on fire. The donkey one is the big 40 foot long open top dumpster that they drop off at a construction site. Someone threw some tires in there and thick black noxious fumes are coming off the top. So, take your pick as to which fire you'd rather warm your hands on.

https://youtu.be/MoUaxxIir_k?t=6 Sadly, the No Fun League won't allow this link to embed.

We have good old fashioned fill in the bubble paper ballots that then get scanned into a computer. Mind you, I live in a podunk town. When I lived in Charlotte, we voted on fancy shmancy touchscreen computers.

I performed my civic duty and voted today. Oddly enough, there were a bunch of Colorado Republicans on my North Carolina ballot. Naturally, I voted for them.

Here's a teardown of a GPU you can't buy:

Ugh, she's doing the presenting voice. It's not really a knock on her specifically, lots of hosts use that exact cadence, inflection, and manner of speaking and presumably it works on the majority of people, but it's so artificial, so phony. No person ever in history has spoken like that casually among friends. That's a "I'm trying to sell you something" voice. It's probably just a me thing, but that way of speaking bothers the **** out of me.

I'm voting tomorrow. I'll consult with Elon Musk before doing so.

Yesterday I took my sister and her fiancé to the shooting range. He did shockingly well for someone who's never fired a gun before, he was almost as accurate as I am, and I've put roughly 1000 rounds through the gun. My sister didn't fare as well, though, in her defense, my Glock 40 is much too big and heavy for her. It's literally the largest handgun Glock has ever produced. On the bright side, she handled the considerable recoil of 10mm Auto well. Next time we go we'll rent something smaller and easier to wield. With my membership, the rental is free, I'll just have to pay for ammo (unless I rent another pistol chambered in 10mm).

Man, that was an UGLY win by the Bucs, but they won and saved their season (for now). The defending cham... I can't even call the Rams that because they're not putting up much of a defense of their title. They're curled up in the fetal position while the rest of the league is kicking them.

I actually thought Toshiro Mifune gave a great performance as the bandit Tajomaru when you consider who's point of view the story is being told from.

I think the Jets have an overall good team, I just don't know about Zach Wilson. Is he the guy?

Up until today, I kept thinking that the Packers could still salvage this season. Now I think they're done. This is a rough (final?) season for Aaron Rodgers. In more positive news, holy $#+! Jets beat the Bills!

It's time for my biannual daylight savings rant, and this is the good one, the one where we get an extra hour of sleep. Can we get rid of this stupid time travel bull$#+!? This crap didn't make a whole lot of sense when it was first introduced and it certainly makes little sense now. There are some places in the world, I think Arizona is one of them, with people smart enough to not conform to this madness. I wish the rest of the world would follow suit.

@BartimaeusYou did realize that the first few versions of the story were subjective and not wholely the truth, right? Mifune was overacting because it was an embellished account of events. He maybe hammed it up a bit too hard, but that's par for the course for Japanese cinema. He's a lot more subdued in the final, true account. I still see that in current day media, specifically wrestling, because I watch my fair share of wrestling from Japan. Whenever they cut promos, they will sometimes speak normally... Mind you, I don't understand Japanese, I only understand what they are saying via subtitles. Anyway, when they say something emotionally charged they go super over the top with it with yelling, sobbing, pantomiming, the works. I'm no historian, but I'm guessing that it's something that has carried over from Kabuki theater.

@BartimaeusThey may well put out more videos with limiting power consumption in the future. The 105W Eco Mode definitely looked terrific in this video, especially if gaming is going to be the main use of 7950X. You lose negligible amounts of performance in exchange for a whole bunch of efficiency.

I finished Plague 2: Attack of the Rats. Overall it was a good game, but not without its problems. Let's start with the positives. This is a great looking game, on par with anything from a AAA studio. Sound design is equally great and the voice acting is terrific. Top notch production value all around, you'd have no idea this was made by a AA studio. I can only comment on the xXxBOxXx version of the game, but it ran nearly flawlessly. I had one hiccup about 2/3 of the way through where the game suddenly froze, although I could still hear dialogue. I thought for sure it was about to crash, but after about 5 seconds it started moving again and everything was fine. Outside of that one freeze there were no crashes, no stutters, everything ran buttery smooth. The vast majority of the gameplay was quite fun. It was mostly a stealth game with light puzzle elements and figuring out how to get through areas was a good time. I mostly took an approach where I tried to ghost areas and kill as few soldiers as possible, except one section with slavers, I went out of my way to kill them. The run for your life sections were always fun and the two turret sections decent enough. The parts where I got to walk around without any threats were also welcome changes of pace. I liked all the gameplay except... Well, let's get to the negatives. The game has forced combat sections where you are essentially locked in an arena and have to kill all the enemies. For most of the game, these are few and very far between, which is great. Early on, they're fairly short, but eventually they throw more and more waves of enemies at you. These were far and away the worst parts of the game IMHO. The combat wasn't bad, but it wasn't fun either, and it became a real slog when the combat just kept going and going. Eventually, I just dropped the difficulty down to narrative to get through the combat sections as quickly as possible, then I bumped it back to normal when done. Toward the last quarter of the game the frequency of forced combat increases drastically and that chunk of the game sucks. Also, I feel the game was a bit too long. This is, of course, going to be very subjective. Some people are of the opinion that more is always better, I disagree. This game definitely outstayed its welcome. Not massively so, but the last few hours I was definitely just wanting it to end, rather than looking forward to what happens next. Now, let's talk about the story. It was told well and the pacing was great, even if the story went on too long. However, the story itself... I have to go into major spoilers from here on. You have been warned.

Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero.