majestic

Looks like SonicMage117 is the BruceVC of the gaming forum.

Finished Season 4 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., in the end it was better than I expected. It's just a bit of a letdown after Season 3, but... what wouldn't have been. S3 was pretty much perfect except for some pacing issues near the end.

Not surprising given that MCA stated he's read through much (if not all) of the EU novels to prepare for writing a Star Wars game. The New Jedi Order series also has a scene early on where Anakin Solo travels with Mara Jade Skywalker to a planet for some R&R and she chews him out after using the force to set up camp because Jedi often forget to train other skills in favor of the force - and has him do everything withot aid from the force. Kreia's skills rant is pretty much the same. Except it was always misplaced because every time I play Kotor 2 I end up with an INT 16 Sentinel and loads and loads of skill points. *shrug*

What a disappointment. I mean, the title alone, Operation Reinhard. Hosted by Red Ice. Narrated by Reinhard Wolf. I didn't really expect a five minute diatribe on how Bill Nye corrupts the moral values of our youth with animated ice cream cones. That could have come straight outta the 80ies, just substitute Bill Nye randomly with video games or Dungeons & Dragons.

That's not weird, that's the way class abilities and gear synergizes with critical strike/heal chance (or other stats). WoW and a lot of other game systems (not necessarily only in MMORPGs) activate special abilities, buffs or debuffs on critical hits. When you have a case of increased critical strike chance being demonstrably superior to pure increased critical effect on the same scale then you're going to notice it much more. Especially if the game in question gives you interesting feedback about it. If you have a cool ability that can only be used every third critical strike you'd probably notice more crits rather than larger ones in a much more satisfying manner. If you don't and all crits really are is bigger numbers on the screen a few of them being much bigger will be much more memorable than a few more being smaller.

*Hides all Hammerfall T-shirts* Heh. Without Hammerfall as gateway to power metal I would never have found gems like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kymf6m4sVWM

Thanks everyone.

Nah, don't worry. I'd argue that most music is pretty pedestrian, just because it's from a niche genre doesn't automatically make it more sophisticated. I generally don't mind if it's simple. I mean... I do have a full set of Hammerfall albums here that I enjoy(d) a lot, and they're the Katy Perry of power metal.

A couple months ago the wife of one of my uncles was hospitalized after coughing up blood. Turned out that she had esophageal variceal bleeding and she barely survived. The docs told her in no uncertain terms that she can either sober up fast or the next time'll be the last time. She didn't, and now it's that next... and well, last time. The liver's too badly damaged, her renal system all but shut down - dialysis can't keep up and complete organ failure is imminent. I feel bad - for my uncle. He's going to lose his wife and it's going to be hard for him. Honestly I just hope he doesn't end up blaming himself for what happened.

Might get flamed for this a bit but I don't think Babylon 5 aged that gracefully and I find myself disagreeing with a few points - those "realistic" space physics were dropped soon in favor of more traditional space battles and calling the cast a set of good actors when said cast includes (and features prominently, even) Bruce Boxleitner and Mira Furlan is stretching it. Actually... I'd argue that with the exception of Andreas Katsulas most of the supporting cast easily outshines the main cast and he was stuck in a rather limiting rubber head all the time. Don't get me wrong I love B5 for its character development, storyline and the general mystery that instills a sense of not being able to wait for the next episode and these elements are more than enough to carry the show - except maybe in season 5. But once the mystery is over it's noticable that there are some rusty spots below the shiny coat of paint.

I like how everyone who isn't a Trump zealot is a libtard in your universe. And any- and everything that isn't Breitbart is fake news.

You could poke around the data collected by the OECD. http://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/waiting-times.htm It's comparing waiting times for three specific elective surgical procedures. It's by no means perfect but much better than simply gathering a couple of anecdotes here and there. Doesn't say anything about the quality of emergency procedures though.

So question for the moderators, seeing how ****tails is filtered because the filter is dumb, does that mean the picture violates the rule of showing words that are censored? And yeah, ****tails are for women and girly men Arnie

Aaaand to contribute something to the thread that isn't depressing, here's a piece of my secret love affair with Eurodance/Europop trash: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuJPviMC43o

Well that's perfectly fine. I don't like Mark Shelton either, as I said, and to be honest I don't expect people to like Sirenia when I link it. Extremely distorted guitars, black metal rasps, death metal growls and a french choir against a gothic metal backdrop is not very compatible in my experience - and certainly not for anyone that isn't a fan of the genre to begin with. If anyone's interested Leaves' Eyes would serve as a much better introduction. Many of the typical gothic metal elements are present but they're arranged in a way that is much easier to get into. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbfnrxM3svs Captain Beefheart is aural torture for me. But that's not only beause of his vocals, some instruments featured in his music (and alas, much of Jazz in general) have the nails on chalkboard effect on me. Yeah, talking about that brass here. One of the more interesting female vocalists I happened across was Carmen Elise Espenæs - younger sister of Liv Kristine Espenæs, vocalist in the above linked Leaves' Eyes piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sBglB6vQRw

I have to admit that I sometimes wish my musical preference was this varied. Alas, it's not, and in addition to that I have this somewhat annoying fixation on vocals. I can live with the worst hacks on the guitar or drums if the vocalist is good enough, but vice versa... for me a vocalist can carry a band but there's no way a band can carry a vocalist. Point in case would be Manilla Road. The only track of theirs where I like Mark Shelton is Cage of Mirros: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKog5u9dX-8 Which I consider pretty sad. Cage of Mirrors is if course awesome but they made a lot of tracks that I can objectively recognize as musically excellent but subjectively can't stand at all. Anyway, time for some Morten Veland goodness to chase away the Eurovision Song Contest that I just watched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWq27WOSzVE

Huh, entirely different genre. This is going to be strategy, not an action shooter. Like the board game.

Playing games before going to bed sometimes gives me the weirdest dreams. TTON was especially good at this what with those overextensive descriptions of the damndest things.

Unless you happen to be a country that Germany conveniently uses to devaluate the Euro in order to maximize their exports. In which case you're pretty much scewed for years to come. It also really put a dent to the entire "union" part of the union. Because instead of helping and punishing the real culprit of the entire mess it's time to kick someone who is already on their last leg for fun and profit. Oh, and you're one of the biggest defenders of that. But that's okay I guess, I mean, it comes with the turf and all.

Strange, from my experience people that complain about diverse societies are either close-minded (general fear of anything different and lack actual historical context for how constant change and diversity is in human society) or have a degree of hatred towards others. Oh the irony. Oh the naivety. Oh the hubris. Oh the perpetuation of quote blocks. I wonder if there's a limit to the quote block, anyone care to help me test it? seeing as it is the most compelling question heretofore birthed by the thread... Do we have any black members in this forum, anyway ? yes Okay, was just trying to recall that. Would have been funny if there weren't, then this thread'd have no point. The real question is do people get banned for extensive quote pyramids here like they used to be back at BIS/Interplay?

If I were GRRM I'd call you a sweet summer child, but really, you've been around for almost a year now. Wakey wakey.

So according to your own insane troll logic France should have voted for the actual Nazis to stop the imaginary Nazis in the European Union? That probably only makes sense in Canada.

So question for everyone playing Expedition: Vikings at the moment, how bad is the time limit really? I thought about giving the game a try but I've read some user reviews about how the time limit is really crippling the experience and I really don't like overall time limits in RPGs or games about exploration.

That reminds me of something I came across while doing some late night zapping. Skip to 3m 47s to avoid the intro. https://youtu.be/tp3APlrfr1Q Now Rieu is a... mediocre violinist at best but he sure knows how to put on a show. Oh and this features 300 bagpipe players so if you don't like bagpipes, uhm, skip it.

Binged BoJack Horseman. Loved the storyline(s), dialogue and voice acting, didn't really like the animation, but that's a problem I have with a lot of western animation.