Agiel

With my newly arrived WinWing F-15EX throttle handles I've been getting deep into DCS: F-15E. While the work done is quite impressive, helped by real-life former F-15E aircrew Jeff "Notso" Bright, it makes me think back to one of my favourite flight sims Jane's F-15 which modeled the same aircraft and just how close the EA Baltimore team managed to get to the real thing. Pulling up the NAVFLIR HUD and A/G RDR and A/G PACS on the MFDs, compare and contrast:

Of note is that Cesar E. Chavez, nominally a liberal icon, took a hardline stance on immigration who didn't shy away from using pejoratives typically associated with the MAGA crowd for his brethren across the border. The reasons I feel are beautifully elucidated in this video from Evan Hadfield:

Devs have said that if you have <<Phantom Liberty>> installed it raises the level cap to 60, and if you raise your ability points past a certain point on the build planner you'll get a tooltip that says you won't be able to actually get them to that level unless you have the expansion. From pre-release footage of 2.0 and a cursory look at the build planner I was initially excited that CDPR might have done away with the TES-style "raise skill levels as you use them" system, though another observer informed me that it has sadly been retained, albeit in a little more broad form (i.e. condensed into archetypes of play such as "Shinobi," "Netrunner," "Solo," etc).

Rate my Barbie: Rocking the classic Karasawa+Moonlight cheese combo. I am rather attached to this AC set as I find that it cuts a similar figure to the Queadluun-Rau from Macross:

From what little I've read about the plot for BG3 and how Bhaal plays a bigger role than what one might have assumed from watching the Early Access footage, however improbable it would be something if we saw a cameo from our very own @Gromnir

From watching some streamers play the final version I gotta ask: Did Larian have the decency to include a gameplay option to dispense with the d20 roll animations for the skill/attribute checks that happen every 5ft? I enjoyed DOS 1 and 2 well enough, so surely they have the decency to recognise that most of us have yet to achieve immortality and thus have respect for our time.

My buds and I have been enjoying it too. Though we found a graphical bug where my player model becomes invisible to other players:

If you need a push to do the Barbieheimer double-feature:

Perhaps the most amusing thing to me about Elon Musk's efforts to rebrand Twitter was that it runs afoul of an existing trademark in Japan for the long-running progressive metal band X Japan: X Japan halt Twitter's rebrand in Japan, as band return with first music in eight years

Looked at the points, and together with Wargear not costing anything it seems like GW is trying to sneak 8th/9th edition Power Levels on us instead. Craftworld Eldar have apparently turned out to be so broken that they're being banned from some store tournaments. That said the big problem units (Support Weapon Platforms and War Walkers) are ones I don't actually have in my army.

Demo has been released. Despite some bugs I'm highly intrigued.

Cormac McCarthy.

Revamps to the melee combat and the gear system are what intrigue me most, as they remain my biggest sticking points with the game as it stands now. I hope how weapons are handled hew more towards what the BIS/Obsidian Fallout games had than to the Diablo/Borderlands formula. And as many fans observed the <<Escape from New York>> parallels of the expansion's plot are difficult to ignore. Next thing you know some of the new clothing items (which are apparently completely cosmetic now) include that weird zip-up tank-top and an eyepatch.

In case anyone missed it, OtaKing, who created the excellent TIE Fighter animation released a few years back is working on an Alien tribute: The clear throwbacks to 80's anime a la <<Bubblegum Crisis>> and <<Urusei Yatsura>> have my utmost approval, as does the soundtrack with shades of Chu Ishikawa.

For the benefit of those who have not found our talking about this game across six whole topics engaging enough:

@Wormerine

Of which Lord Worm, formerly of Cryptopsy fame, can attest:

Locations trailer: Cool to see Commoragh. Had Owlcat elected to put the game on Kickstarter and they needed a quick extra $100,000 put into the project then I'd wager a stretch goal of "Romance subplot with Dark Eldar Succubus" would do it.

Playing the Resident Evil 4 remake and finished my Professional Run. Some bemoaned the absence of the cheesiness that made the original memorable, particularly with Leon's interactions with the villains. But I would say my criticisms aren't so much that they are no longer present but the fact that besides the greatly expanded relationship with Krauser Leon _barely_ interacts at all with the villains until their respective boss fights, such as Salazar mostly having one-sided conversations with him throughout the Castle section. I rather missed Salazar slowly going insane with each successive failure to kill Leon, a dynamic that now seems to have been condensed into their boss fight. Speaking of Krauser it occurred to me that the apparently ret-conned Operation Javier is basically the plot of <<Clear and Present Danger>> one for one:

A Ukrainian pal had some family who remained for some years in Crimea following the annexation. They told him that much of the propaganda from the Kremlin-sponsored TV programming in years past has a pretty big focus on the "decay" of the West and the "decay" of European moral values, particularly in regards to transgender issues and gender roles*. Given the current Trumpian crusade against transgender rights it's hard for me to ignore the weird parallels in their values. *Can provide a Youtube link by PM on request, as the propaganda video he shared with me seems to me too skeevy for a PG13 board.

Still no firm release date beyond an estimated "a few months" but certainly by year's end: Brings to mind a certain Calvin and Hobbes strip that would certainly have caught a ton of flak if released today

The Combat Mission games are probably the most high-profile series using WeGo from what I've seen, though I'm told that the latest Battlestar Galactica also uses it. Hopefully we see more games using it going forwards.

1.0 and Steam release on February 28th. Played and highly enjoyed the demo*. Somewhat amusing to me that there's a segment of players who for whatever reason consider the WEGO as a personal insult and insist that it's not a "true" turn-based system. *Remember when those were a thing in PC gaming?

While Umberto Eco's Ur-fascism concept is often used as the starting point in recognising fascism, I would go further in recommending Roger Griffin's <<The Nature of Fascism>>, in which the term he uses to describe it, "palingenetic ultranationalism," probably does a better job in elaborating how uniquely dangerous fascism is even in comparison to run-of-the-mill populist far-right (and sometimes ethno-nationalist) regimes of Orban's Hungary and Putin's Russia.