>>50621
What game is the first image from?

>>50623
I think this is diablo 2.

>>50625
yup,
second Chapter, City and entrance to the secod half of The second chapter

Played more Halo with brick today. Was fun as fug. Got this action shot to share. Absolute unit completely kitted out with power weapons going to town on some enemies.

Venom - Codename:Outbreak in 4k.
This game sadly has wierd mipmapping, where textures pop out very close to the player, like the grass texture detalisation changes 5cm from the player and some textures has no detailed version at all. And in 4k you can see some seams you will probably not see even in 1080. But for me this kind of visuals is fine anyway, together with bleak-ruined-empty-scifi mixed atmosphere an designs they used later in the original stalker.

I like the way Diablo 2 still looks great two decades later. Really something should be said for not trying to go full hyper realism. I've yet to see a game that ended up looking good many years later after being marketed on its realism, which only gets funnier the further back you go until it becomes easy to forget that digital slop pile was once marketed as muh grafix muh realism. Really the transition from sprites and hand painted things to 3D was one of the worst periods aesthetically speaking.

>>50625
Okay, I guess I should finally play this game. Thanks.

>>50633
Indeed, I would have never guessed this was D2.

>>50634
You can tell from some of the character models. Usually the characters in iso games looked poorer because you had to independently render their model's movements as opposed to just a high res static image that never changes. Come to think of it Fallout Tactics was the same way, and the real artistry comes from still making the models look real enough to not clash too harshly with the static isometric environment. A good example to where the models were absolute garbage but still somehow meshed with the environment was the first two Fallout games. They barely looked better or different from Arcanum of Steamworks Magick Obscurait was literally done by same people iirc and you can actually tell just looking at them but due to also stylistic choices the horrendously cartoonish pixel people still blended in perfectly with the gorgeously crafted environments. It's probably a lot easier to pull off with how zoomed out some isometric games are so you can't tell how garbage the models all look in comparison to the background they're moving across. I mean keep in mind we're talking late 90s hardware here. It's partly why you could have such gorgeous hand painted stuff but actually rendering in realtime was fairly limited.

>>50630
I like how in this game in Russian you sometimes see little pronunciation and little mistakes clearly showing that game was done by Ukrainians ("Електрическое оружие" instead of "Электрическое оружие")

Mipmapping mistake not presented on ground textures at least on the second level, or my change of options did something.

Oh yes, I guess this is soft-lock - here should be the corpse that I need to get a keycard from but nothing hered.

Generally a funny janky game with a lot of good semi-tactical semi-RPG ideas.

>>50642

>Ivan has achieved full-4K gaming

Are you an oligarch?

Playing Rise to Ruins.
Had a nice colony going, with defenses that withheld corruption nicely until the last two nights... last night I already had some monsters swarming my town and I was only able to survive by tossing them back over the wall by hand.
Somehow they even started to attack a fire pit, don't know why, they never do that even if it's in the lane. Would it have been one of the 2 to the right of it, corruption would have teared down my walls and bypassed most of my defenses... so I got a design flaw I need to take care the next time. I may try and shift the mobile golem defense deeper into my defense grid, so they are covered by the close defense towers, but any monster escaping the onslaught and my watchful god eye, will fuck shit up for sure.

Permanent defense perimeter breach likely, loss of colony expected within the next 2 nights, switching from containment to emergency evacuation.

All citizen of young and healthy age not working on critical jobs are requested to register at the closest migration center to depart into the 2 neighboring regions in an orderly fashion.

Any and all possible dying by monsters in your vicinity needs to be ignored, this is the new normal!
Supplies were already sent and you will find plentiful food, materials and very little corruption in the next region! For now.

>>50662
Wait how is this different to rimworld?

>>50625
Btw there's this new mod called Project Diablo 2, it has some decent QoL and balance changes, so there's quite a lot of people playing online rn.
I played it a bit too excessively though and I'm burned out now. But if anybody wants to get rushed or needs some free loot, I'd be down to log on again :D

>>50669
It's a still very undiscovered gem.
Under development by one guy and still going strong. Grabbed it for 5 bucks on New Years Eve and got 137 hours of playtime on it.

Basically you play a god with an overmap, in which you choose your first settlement from about 20-30 maps in which you start out with 10 villagers. After the first night, corruption spawns on the map and starts to claim more and more of the land and attack you at night.
That's when the comfy settlement management changes to survival on LV-426.
If you corner the corruption too much, it will fill a red rage bar on top of the HUD and make them stronger by level much faster then usual. But with more land you can also power a much larger war machine, yet the travel times at the beginning are a pain in the ass.
You can even purge corruption from the map completely by repelling all their land, but during the last few nights the remaining patches of corruption will spawn endless streams of high level monsters, so survival like this is highly unlikely. I only managed that on easy difficulty.
You build your maze, towers and defense golems to protect yourself against those nightly raids, while feeding your villagers and building an industry that keeps everything going. Ballistas need bolts carved from wood, rock pebble miniguns need stones processed in a rock tumbler and magic towers require you to harvest the magic that fills the air in the form of essence with essence pools, but the crystal industry can also toss in refined crystals to give essence generation a boost.
Goal of each map is to survive at least a year and send migrants and supplies into neighboring regions, to start there from scratch, yet with better starting conditions, depending on how much you were able to send.
Loosing a region makes winning the world map impossible, but you can reset it and keep any god perks your earned during your gameplay.
I played a few maps on easy difficulty to get a grasp of some game mechanics and everything just fits so nicely together, also yes, I'm a huge fan of Rimworld and turtling in general.

Turns out my maze design was good it was just one of those nights high on flame elementals, yet survival right now is on the brink of collapse.
I don't employ lumberjacks and miners anymore, as harvesting by god powers is the only way to keep up with ammo production. I even have to turn of my ballista bombardment during the day, to safe ammo for the night.
But I was able to migrate 50 people into both neighboring regions together with an ample supply of goods and food, so that will let me kickstart golem production there when I want to play again.
But all those missing people slowly start to leave a dent in water and food production, also general maintenance of roads and trash is neglected.
One thing or another will cost me the colony...

All is lost.
The stream of fire elementals just would break off and me tossing them back over the wall into that little pool to chill off would only delay the inevitable while it starves me from soaking up the essence to use other god powers...

120 people migrated into safety.
I guess I settle in the middle upper half to force corruption into the lower map, then wall them off at the 1/3 point, where the mountains and woods split for a moment.
Give them more land for the time being and see how this affects spawning.
Also, this time I'll dig a moat, so I'll only have to deal with fire elementals during the first winter when everything is frozen.
Even if this gives the map a hard time limit for when the second winter arrives...

>>50674
How is cheating?
Modded D2 uses the open Battle.net if I remember correctly, doesn't it?
D2 really shows how important a coherent and thought out art style is, this makes those graphics appear timelessly good, while D3 already looks just so bland and like any other China MOBA.
Would love to play it again and I bet I still have the CDs & keys in my basement somewhere.

Sorry for double and triple posting, but this game gets my urge to talk about it going and tomorrow I'll have to be back at work anyway... then I'll promise to turn it back a little.

Already settled a new map and like I strategized, corruption had a nice start on the lower half.

Better use of god magic allows me to swim in raw resources, so I was able to dedicate a large part of my work force to dig the moat that should protect me against those pesky fire elementals, except for Winter...

This time I let corruption have 1/3 of the map, so I'll see how this influences monster strength too. I'll probably waste a lot less ammunition without my defensive line picking off the endless amounts of worker drones.

Also, I got a bunch of really helpful perks that increase the range of my elemental towers, now I can place them easily into a killbox in larger numbers without having to fear return fire by fire elementals. God those are shitty enemies, but a maze design without them would be without challenge.

>>50692

>How is cheating?

It's taken pretty seriously, to the point that they used to shut their servers off whenever an explot was discovered. So yeah, it's not open Bnet if I understand that correctly, they have their own servers.

>D2 really shows how important a coherent and thought out art style is

For sure, mb I'm a bit too nostalgic about it, but I feel like all elements of the game work toegether really well to create a very immersive atmosphere with the art style, music, sound design etc. And you hit the nail on the head with you description of D3, it just too much "Klickibunti" and not really coherent design-wise, even if it might be decent gameplaywise.

>>50707
Oh wow, that sounds actually interesting if there is even a trading economy going without cheats.
Always loved trading in D2, the auction house streamlined it so much in D3, that trading lost all personality and effort.
I might as well give it a try once I look for a new game, wanted to play D2 again for ages as nothing really compares.

For now, I discovered that you can do full map dumps and made a lovely night and morning map.
Sadly, particles are turned off for the shot, with them it looks even more lovely.

As a god, you either design your defenses with style or nothing of value was lost once your creation gets overrun.

>>50716

>if there is even a trading economy going without cheats.

It's very active. There's a trade channel on their discord server and now they apparently also texting an extra site where you can paste the item stats directly from the game and put them up for sale.

It was the first time I tried trading in D2 actually and it definitely adds a whole different layer to the experience, but it soon became kinda tiresome to keep track of all items with the muling and whatnot, but also the thrill of trading made me spend more time on that than I was comfortable with.
It does feel more personal even with the short interactions when you hop into someone's game to trade, check whether it's the right item etc., I don't remember using the auction house in D3 much.

>I might as well give it a try once I look for a new game,

Yeah, feel free to drop a post in here if u do

Watching the speedrun at AGDQ made me want to replay Metroid Prime.
Runs rather well on Dolphin and it's as comfy as it was almost 20 years ago. Around ten hours in, I am again almost at the end, but getting my ass kicked by Ridley and control issues which I don't know are problems of the game itself or on the emulator side.
Anyway, it's great fun.

>>50746
Sounds comfy, are SoJs and Ist runes still the go to currency?
How the times have passed, I remember how I had the Diablo clone spawn in my cheap ass beginner Mephisto run game no. xxx, then I panicked and summoned my whole smol friendlist into the game and even together we didn't had the strength beating that big ol' fucker.
One of them logged out and asked around in the chatroom for additional high level help and brought back some fully kitted sorceress who was able to slowly chip away health from the bar while all of us low levels threw ourselfs against the foe to take the hardest hits.
Fun was had and the sorceress even left me with the Vernichtikus charm for beating the clone, man was I proud about that lil' imaginary stone :3

Also, I finished winter on map 3 and with that the main goal.
The big southern wall is completed and the maze and armaments are in place. I still got a lot of free building slots to establish even stronger defenses, but without aggressivly cornering the corruption the rage bar is still barely filled and monsters only spawn at level 20-25. They hardly ever make it through the initial meat grinder... Next time I'll grant corruption a little less land for the challenge.
Also made nice full maps of the last 2 maps that are in progress of being overrun. I got the year and migrated, so those are still a win unless I let them fully play out... which I don't. Corruption may bite my shiny essence ass.

>>50655

>full 4k gaming

I would not describe this as "full", honestly. Doom 2016 on maximum graphics in 4k already goes in unstable 30 FPS on my video card. Like, the arena with the Cyberdemon was fine, this scene after is already kind of uncomfortable. So, I fear, newer and resource-consuming games will work worse, so no 4k for me here, at least for now. Maybe if I disable Anti-aliasing it'll help, not that you really need it that much in such high resolutions. Doom 3 works more than fine even on a sourceport, so can't complain here.
Original Stalker also runs perfect, the only issue with this game in 4k is that fons don't scale after 1024 resolution so all menus and dialogues have tiny text. I don't mind because the screen is big and I have good eyes, it just looks weird. And the mouse cursor is ultra-slow in menus and dialogue windows and you can't really do anything with it.

Another thing with ultra-high resolution in older games is that developers had more low standards for UV on textures and texture consistency, since, if we take STALKER, in 1280x1024 or 1366x768 most of it not really clash or that visible, but in 4k you can see places where the texture detail of one object is the 5 times more than the other. And more black in time we are going, more loose these standards are.

>>50749

>Ridley

I got absolutely everything in this game but could never beat Ridley. I gave up trying for some reason and never finished it (my memory is hazy but there may have been a girl involved).

Continuation from my last post in the old thread.

Tried Shadow Warrior 2 again now that I got the 2013 game out of my system some more. It still doesn't hit quite like that last game did, but it's not terrible. I have a few issues with it despite there being some very tangible improvements to the game.

I'll start with the good. Movement feels a lot better. You've got more speed, extra jump height, and so on. You're able to move around the map far more effectively and combined with no fall damage, means you can do some pretty impressive stunts which is fun. The idea of having more open maps compared to the first game is a decent one, though the execution is average. Combat itself has some mechanical improvements in terms of fluidity but the actual flow has taken a step back. It's fun but the shortcomings are very visible.

That leads into the negatives. First up, I'm really not a fan of genre shifting in a sequel. Do a spinoff game instead. The first was a very fun, charming linear action shooter, channeling the spirit of old school FPS games with modernised mechanics. The sequel is a an okay looter-shooter. Problem one is that if you're a fan of the first game (it's probably on my list) then the sequel may not actually be your cup of tea. In my case, I don't mind the looter-shooter genre but the problem is that this genre has already got Borderlands, and it executes it far more effectively. Having already played Borderlands, the execution here doesn't feel satisfying. I've just got loads of trash to go through, and a bunch of weapons that aren't really exciting.

Secondly, environment design. I've said that the more open environments are interesting. They are a pretty promising concept (give the player more open areas to learn and then use with various missions received from the hub area) but they're just so empty and boring because they're randomly generated. With a linear level, I blast through enemies and can have a more visually impressive spectacle because the designers can set up cool shit. The sequel uses open areas generated using blocks of arenas, but the randomness just means that you recognise the same areas and they all merge together a bit. The visual design is also jarringly different. The first game had a kind of near future corporate Japan crossed with the trappings of Feudal Japan. It was pretty cool, subdued and very stylised (easy to recognise things at a glance). You had things like Japanese castles on mountain peaks, secret labs, sewers and graveyards. Now it's much more conventional 'slap neon on everything and turn it into visual sludge', or 'swamp with some randomly placed japanese walls and buildings'.

Finally the writing is not as good. The story in the 2013 game was nothing to write home about but it was good, and I genuinely wanted to see it through. It had a simple premise, and then added some charismatic one liners from Lo Wang and Hoji to spice it up. This one starts in a situation that I don't really get. Having stopped the demon invasion in the first game, the world is now infested by more demons? And why is there suddenly demonic shit all over the skylines? None of this is explained and kills engagement pretty quickly. They also tried to recapture the brilliance of Hoji as a sidekick but the replacement doesn't have the same charisma and is just annoying.

Overall I'd say that the game is fun, and I'll finish it, but I'm also really glad that the devs have gone on record as saying that they're going back towards the linear style of Shadow Warrior 2013 with the upcoming Shadow Warrior 3.

>>50804
Oh, and a comparison to give you an idea of what I mean by stylised aesthetic vs visual sludge thanks to oversaturation.

>>50770

>are SoJs and Ist runes still the go to currency?

Most things are priced in HR (high runes), there's a rough conversion chart starting from ~Lem, also there's a new item which is also used for trading. It's called World Stone Shard and can be used to "corrupt" items in the cube, which either gives it a random new suffix, a random amount of sockets or bricks it and turns it into a random yellow item.

>Vernichtikus charm

Haha, never heard the German translation before, it sounds kinda cute compared to "Annihilus" in English. Also that's a nice story, I never managed to kill DClone myself cause I mostly play solo and it's too hard without really good gear

>>50816
A nice, currency used for crafting is always nice against inflation. GGG understood that very well tbh.
I was just too lazy to look up the englisch name of the Vernichtikus, back then I still ran every game in German and D2 was a major turning point in enabling me to have my English Matura without any learning whatsoever.
But yes, Vernichtikus sounds a lot cuter then Annihilus. That sounds more like, you know, licking someones chocolate starfish :3

Playing Mud Runner after some exercise, burning all that fuel innawoods gets the testosterone flowing and is the perfect opportunity to mainly listen to some nice music, Japanese DnB for now.

>>50845
I guess it's the kind of thing that could be really relaxing while drunk but I just don't get the fascination people have got with certain things, but then again I'm assuming y'all haven't gone mudding irl either so I can see the appeal. Oh and mudding is a legitimate real life hubby too though you better use junkers if you're poor.

>>50848
Yes, pretty much.
Tonight I'm going to get a bottle of nice red wine, stuff the last crumbs of homegrown herbs into my vape and enjoy doing my duty delivering lumber.
Here you have another village or hamlet that caters to tourists every few kilometers of road, deep up the mountains and thanks to ebikes even formerly hardly visited areas, like where we used to play airsoft a few years ago, are now overrun to the point that you don't get a parking space at the start of the trail on weekends.
I wish we would have large stretches of uninhabited and wild land like those huge ass American national parks in which people still seem to get lost and die. Ain't got no more bliss in solitude here, sadly.

Well shit, The Frontier actually came out. Impressive for a mod of its scale (bigger than the actual game, and in development for 7 years). Might try it next week. Will have to put together a from scratch modlist though, it's apparently got problems with what was my preferred core mod, Project Nevada. Pain in the arse, but the art direction is pretty cool, so I'll put up with it.
https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/68009

>>50850
It's not just the national parks honestly, in fact you are more likely to deal with hordes of retarded tourists there than elsewhere in the country although every year that becomes less true. This is a big place. States people think of as giant suburbs like NY, TX, CA, FL are basically just some cities and lots of wildnerness, although you guys too apparently have some wild areas left. I found it interesting whole towns destroyed by the plague spent centuries getting overgrown and only rediscovered because of WWII aerial reconnaissance.

>>50858
Care to give an example of such a village? Never heard of those.
Even if it, of course, puts me to shame to take local history lessens by an American :3

Maybe I should retreat into the Ukrainian woods and buy a used BMP, once I saved up enough money.
It seems to me, this would be time spent in vain, holiday is of course spent where it's warm and cozy. I saw those babies go for about 10-20k€ demilitarized.

>>50868
That's a BTR. BMP is the tracked one.

>>50869
Why yes, of course. BTR-80, my fault.
Also, giving yourself military vehicles by modding may break the game a little, but damn boy, look at that pulling action going on!
That's 3 middle log carts in one go to finish the map!

Dragonstar from Project Tamriel is released, after years of work, so if you want to try it you may do it. There is more content than in both official addons combined, so it is probably the biggest RPG-related thing in this year yet lol. On the latest OpenMW nightly runs excellent in 4k, tho I not installed many shaders or fancy graphics tweaks.

>decide to finally pickup Total War Warhammer 2
>end up getting TWH1 too
>also end up pissing away like an additional $50 or something after that on almost all DLC afterwards for both games
>end up just playing Manfred Van Carstein on Mortal Empires anyway

Such cases, oh well. I need to find a manual. Shit like this is part of exactly why I complain endlessly about no hardcopy manuals bundled with game CDs anymore. It's not so much I don't know what I'm doing as idk what a ton of stuff does and am clearly missing certain nuances to stratevy and tactics as I've also never played a Total War game before, so I don't actually know if doing shit like flanking does anything to some kind of stats, although I finally got my ass handed to me so badly by that evil deranged purple tree spirit I can't even tell how to win anymore. She wiped out both of my main armies on like turn 9 or 17 or whatever it was. Also it's a fun game but I'm realizing the extent to which this is not just a real 4x game, but one where each battle takes forever so it's a drag knowing I've got such a fuckhuge library now but just finishing one game to the end is hard. Maybe I should go back and beat Alien Isolation. Or start a Vortex campaign with one of the three factions I wanted to play most, the pirate vampires, not-Necrons, or said deranged evil tree spirit. Or finally beat my old Vodyani campaign, since I never even played any of the ES2 DLC yet. Or just see if I can get close to finishing up The Division since I'm pretty close to the last handful of storyline missions like 2-3 left.

I'm starting to see why some people don't pan new games for being so short. I mean yeah it was expected to have like 40 hour games and you'd call a game you can beat in 10 hours a ripoff 15, twenty years ago, but you also didn't actually have a lot of them to beat. It's also frustrating how much time I waste online that nowadays more often than not I need the internet to play it The Division and Inquisitor Martyr are both technically MMO oriented I think and by the time I get home from work all I want to do is watch YT videos and shitpost.

Man. At least Notch probably just gets to laze about and do fuckall. If I got hundreds of millions of dollars I'm not sure how long I could force myself to isolate and play down my vidya library, versus feeling compelled to do shit IRL but I definitely can see how and why certain people with lives just want a short game that's half cutscenes after work or before putting the kids to bedwhich come to think of it makes me question how that one lad even had time to game that much.

Think I'll switch between The Division and trying to get past the TWH2 Van Carstein roadblock, although I am out of my pineforest incense.

Oh speaking of which, because I've wanted to do do this for awhile I actually started burning incense while gaming over the summer just because I knew scent is deeply tied to memory and I wanted to see if I could actually program my memory to deeper nostalgias over videogaming which has actually somewhat worked so far. The idea being to only burn a specific flavor of incense for focusing on one specific game, like the scent of a woman or childhood memories, and thus far I've already gotten two heavily associated to Pathfinder Kingmaker and Beautiful Desolation. I've tried to avoid burning them since mostly, and anytime I smell it makes me think of those games vividly. The problem is trying to only do it when actively playing only one game and having it a game where it's actually worth the bother. It's probably a turbo autist experiment but whatever it works.

Decided to tidy up a bit my cupboard and stumbled upon some (pirated) vidya CDs and DVDs I bought back when I was in middle and high school. Gonna be throwing them all away, but before that I thought I'll go for a little nostalgia trip in this threda.

>>51038

1. Commandos 2 — the very first game I bought for my PC. It's a bit of an odd one since it's only in English (pirates usually included some sort of a translation to Russian, however awful it was), but nonetheless it worked perfectly and nothing was cut out of it, which often wasn't the case with other pirated games here.
2. C&C Generals — pretty decent RTS, although not really a C&C game, because it shifted to Warcraft/Starcraft-like building and economy. It also had those early ugly 3D models for infantry which looked like rough wooden dolls. Still, a decent game overall. Also, GLA is pretty much ISIS.
3. Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War — no need to talk about it much, I guess? It was the game that got me interested in Waha universe, despite not being very accurate itself.
4. Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast — one of my favorite Star Wars games. Very solid shooter/slasher/action with nice looking graphics (Q3 engine) and cool level design.

>>51039

5. Код доступа: РАЙ, known in the West as Paradise: Cracked — a cyberpunk turn-based tactics. It was pretty nice for its time, with good (albeit quite tedious) gameplay and interesting characters. Me and my buddy used a lot of the characters' lines as some sort of local memes. Also, the MC was voiced by Boris "Bonus" Repetur — on of the hosts of the gaming TV show of Eastern Slavlands in the nineties: "От винта!".

6. The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind — no need to talk much about this one either, right? It impressed me a lot with its world back then, and the shader-drawn water looked gorgeous (my GeForce 3 Ti 200 totally justified itself). Also the system requirements are total bullshit: like hell it's gonna work on a 500 MHz Pentium III. And the Russian version was infamous because you couldn't complete it — Caius Cosades didn't give the first quest. People who wanted the Russian version bypassed this bug by playing the English version first, taking the quest and switching back to Russian.

7. Deus Ex — this one included a Russian dub made by a one male "actor". I tried it for five minutes out of curiosity and switched to the English version in total horror.

8. Painkiller — my favorite FPS of 2004. Cool levels, fast-paced old-school gameplay and a kickass soundtrack.

>>51041

9. Thief: Deadly Shadows — the third game of the Thief series, and Ion Storm's saving throw after the failure of Deus Ex: Invisible War. I never actually completed it, but I'm gonna do it sometimes, because I want to play through all the Thief games eventually. I also remember being thoroughly spooked by the orphanage/asylum level.

10. Arx Fatalis — liked this one much more than Morrowind. The version here was really bug-ridden, it often crashed on loadscreens and a several times corrupted my savegames. Didn't complete it back then, but still enjoyed it a lot.

11. Mafia: the City of Lost Heaven — really liked the plot in this one, and the ending left me in tears. Also facial models and animations looked really great for the time.

12. Unreal Tournament 2004 — my favorite UT game. I played the first UT in computer clubs, and UT2003 was the second game I have installed on my own PC (the first one was Disciples II), and UT2004 didn't disappoint me either. Naturally, I didn't have fast enough Internets to play it online, but it was really fun even with bots. It also brought back some of the things from the first UT which were missing in UT2003, like the Assault mode and some of the classic maps (Face, Deck17), and it featured the Onslaught mode which used the popular back then gimmick of driving vehicles.

>>51042

13. A compilation of Quake 4, Serious Sam 2, Black & White 2 and Age of Empires 3 — bought it mostly for Serious Sam 2 (the screenshots on the back are wrong, they're from Serious Sam: the Second Encounter; pirates often fucked up like that), which turned up to be a huge disappointment with its cartoonish style, dumb jokes and boring gameplay. I tried other games too: Quake 4 barely worked on my PC which was getting old and wasn't very interesting in the first place, B&W2 got me bored fast, and Age of Empires 3 somehow managed to work even worse than Q4 to the point of being totally unplayable.

14. A compilation of The Suffering, Hellforces, Fallen Lords: Condemnation and WarPath — bought it because I've heard that Fallen Lords: Condemnation was a fantasy Dynasty Warriors (I loved Dynasty Warriors 4, so naturally it got me interested). It kinda was, but it still was ugly, unoptimized and boring. The Suffering was an okayish horror about the prison island (I didn't go very far because I wasn't into horrors much), Hellforces was a mediocre shootan, and I didn't bother installing WarPath at all.

15. Trine — a fun puzzle platformer reminding of Lost Vikings somewhat.

16. Prince of Persia compilation — the screenshots on the back for the first Prince of Persia are wrong: the compilation included the very first Prince of Persia for DOS, but the screenshots are for Prince of Persia 3D, which was a total failure. Sands of Time was a really atmospheric Middle Eastern styled slasher/platformer, while Warrior Within turned all dark and edgy and became very actionized. I need to revisit these games sometimes, they were pretty good as I remember.

>>51043

17. Heroes of Might and Magic compilation — probably the best compilation I had. All games worked perfectly and it also included a lot of user maps and campaigns if you get bored with regular ones. The screenshots are all for some reason from HoMMIV: why no respect for older games?

18. Baldur's Gate 2, Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy 8 compilation — bought it for BG2. It made me realize that I didn't really like party-based RPGs with active pause combat. Still, I think I will get back to Baldur's Gate series someday. As for Final Fantasy games, I played 7 quite a bit but got disinterested (I think it was the first JRPG I ever played, so I guess my dislike for them may be blamed on it XDDDDDDD), and 8 kinda threw me off right from the beginning. And I don't think that weeb-looking dude and chick on the front cover have anything to do with the games on the DVD.

19. Compilation of Silent Hill 4, Obscure, Fahrenheit, Shady Brook, Nibiru and Tom Yum Goong — bought it because of Fahrenheit, which was praised to hell and back back then for its "innovations". It turned to be simply an interactive movie, and a precursor to all those modern "adventures" with barely any gameplay like Heavy Rain and all the Telltale shit. Also, launching it was a game in itself, because it was protected by the infamous SecuROM, and the crack worked in mysterious ways, only starting the game whenever it felt like. As for the rest, Silent Hill 4 was okay, although wasn't really fitting with other Silent Hill games (I didn't complete it, because, again, I wasn't into horrors), Obscure was fairly decent survival horror about kids in school, Shady Brook was an archaic point-and-click adventure which failed to interest me, Nibiru was a point-and-click adventure too, but a surprisingly decent one this time, and Tom Yum Goong was a crappy 3D beat 'em up about an Asian dude which didn't really fit the rest of the compilation, IMO.

20. Petka and Vasily Ivanovich compilation — a series of fairly popular Russian point-and-click adventures starring Civil War division commander Vasily Ivanovich Chapayev and his batman Pyotr Isayev who turned into folk characters. Chapayev and Petka in the games resemble the characters from Russian jokes more than their real-life counterparts, of course, and they get involved in some wacky plots, like fighting off an alien invasion in the first game or dealing with Chapayev being turned into Terminator in the second. I replayed the first two games not so long ago, and, as I expected, I didn't enjoy them as much as I did back then: the jokes weren't really funny, the parodies felt stale and illogical, but it still was nice to revisit the games simply for nostalgia's sake.

Well, that's all of them. Now, into the trash they go! :-DDDDDDDD

Take all, take one, take none. I don't care.
Just be so nice and leave a message about what you took so others don't have to test all the keys without getting anything from them.

KW0TN-BG23T-L8TZE

GAPAV-8JYEI-22T4K

L29EP-GN92F-9Z7LK

N36ZY-5YW9L-J6H8V

MND22-TIVGE-8CWQK

LGRDJ-JV8AN-5QQ5C

L2IT0-CEBTE-AA3Z6

L5Z0X-TAN82-BZQGB

KN62I-FWMVK-8WRBA

I am just now realizing why exactly I seldom finish any video games. I simply do not gain the kind of empty gratification from completing a task le trve cvlt gaemers claim playing shit on nightmare difficulty so it always just ends up being a tedious run through the motions towards the end when really about 95% of the time I'm playing it more for the story, it's just that I don't want an unrealistic Fallout 1 walking tank experience either because that becomes immersion breaking on top of being boring.

I'm so deep into The Division but I'm a PC level below one of the last missions which is going to make it a chore to finish the game. I just want to tick off the "beat games 2020" box at this point. Had a similar problem with Alien Isolation where it got hard enough that also like with it being too easy, it becomes too immersion breaking on hard because you only reload. Over. And over. And over. Which at that point is identical to scumsaving. I dunno. It's become a real goal of mine at least to finish The Division before I take my potted Christmas tree decorations down which is already sending out green shoots but I know I won't have the game completed until February unless I try really really hard, and I'm too self aware to not be cognizant of the level of fake accomplishments and time wasting any vidya ultimately is that doesnt hit you right in the feels.

The sole exception to this I guess is if you're either brain damaged from a disease/injury trying to heal itself or very young and learning the basics of strategy or budgeting and cost/benefit analysis say, and not a grown man who should be captaining a ship or planning real cities or something. Then again maybe the same reason I seldom beat my games is why I'm not a real city planner either right now.

Ah well. Maybe I should use it for a real legitimate purpose, namely retraining myself to deal with frustration, alongside delayed gratification, patience, tenacity, whatever. It makes me feel like I accomplished nothing at this point, not even something virtual, although I guess gravitating towards sandbox or spiralling complex long ass things doesn't help. Maybe I should just will myself to beat this and Alien Isolation rather than letting my mind drift to whatever other game is shiny and new.

I'm playing some Xcom2 again because it's like my comfort game to unwind with after the worst fucking year of my life

>>50868
did you play spintires? it was a sore disappointment after playing mudrunner. People on steam get real mad too when you give it a negative review for being shit compared to mudrunner.

>>50914

>Such cases, oh well. I need to find a manual

Zerkovich and Legendoftotalwar on youtube has a lot of good videos on how to play different factions. Vamp Counts are pretty hard because they have no ranged units but what they do have is ass kicking immortal lords.

>>51044
I remember getting a load of pirated games and shit when I went to Ukraine, half of it was in Russian with dodgy exe files and ther other half didn't even read in my CD ROM drive

>>51073
Thanks black santa, I took the bottom two for my kids steam account, it was two point and click adventure games

>>51038
Oh wow, a pirate discs collection! I think I throwed mine into the garbage long ago. I think I still have FIFA99 and some Fargus Medal of Honor, but this is all. Rest is what I have in my apartment is a dozen of actual official jewels.

Never forget comilations where some games not worked. Never forget pirated King's Bounty Armored Princess where starforce security asked for Stalker Clear Sky disc and inserting pirate stalker disc worked.

>>51074
I can't play the fucking things anymore. I feel a guilty when i do, like i should be spending my time better. Funnily enough if im playing split screen or with friends this feeling isnt present.

>>51041
I lol'd irl at #7. Honestly half the joy of playing the original Deus Ex to begin with was the unintentionally hilarious dialogue due to the English speaking JC.

>what a shame

I don't get this about much of our American voice actors. Why do they always sound so flat? It is so common I think they actually do it on purpose for some reason. I'd think perhaps it is to be less jarring to the player hearing "your" voice so you can self insert but then why bother even using a voice actor at all? They are consistently dead pan. I think that unvoiced protagonists of early 2000s was one of the better ways to go.

>>51075
There really is something to be said for great gameplay over story. XCOMEU is what got me really back into gaming after mostly taking a 5 year hiatus, and XCOM2 was one of the few games I waited for and maybe only one I bought full price on release. Sorry to hear last year was such shit.

>>51075

>half of it was in Russian with dodgy exe files and ther other half didn't even read in my CD ROM drive

Well, usually (not always) those discs offered a choice between installing either a Russian or an English version, but you still had to navigate the Russian-language installation menu to do that. The main problem of those Russian versions was that they often were horrible in quality, sometimes falling so low as being machine translations (most infamous translator was probably PROMT; its name have become a common label for shitty translations) without any editing done (I remember Maze from the first Fable introducing himself as Labyrinth (Stable); yes, the pirates left both variants of the machine translation in the game). Awful translation of GTA: Vice City was what prompted me to only play English versions, even if I didn't understand everything back then. And yes, reading problems were very common, and even if it did read properly, it didn't necessarily mean that it would work properly, since pirates often cut a lot of content like movies and music, and sometimes that tinkering caused some nasty bugs in the game.

>>51087

>starforce

Ha, it was a real mess, even without any pirate intervention. A buddy of mine bought a licensed Zlatogorye 2, and after a while the game just stopped recognizing its own CD. Meanwhile I played it without any problems with Alcohol 120% + MDF image + Starfuck :-DDDDDDDDD. Good thing that publishers dropped that piece of shit eventually.

>>51090
You think that English JC sounded flat, heh? The Russian one sounded bored, sleepy, tired and with a stuffy nose at the same time, plus he was recorded on some sort of very shitty mic. That "dub" reminded me of pirated VHS tapes from the nineties, and in all honesty the only people I can think of who would want to play a "dubbed" game like that are the ones with severe reading difficulties. Oh, and IMO, when it comes to bad acting, underacting is still better than overacting. But yeah, I would agree that unvoiced protagonists are generally better.

This was my era of gaming. Its time to give it up all up and move on. I get no joy from the modern stuff and i lose quick interest if i take the boomer gaming route. Rest in piss.

>>51095
Brick and me still play ODST and Reach firefight on steam fairly regularly. You're welcome to join us if you want, the more the merrier.

security>hayabusa

>>51095
Somehow same for me, in 2007/8 I had my first self-built computer, with a 8800GTS/320MB. Bioshock, Crysis and COD4 where games I played, COD4 on servers for the cracked game.
The first computer and games has been in the household since 1999, I stopped gaming around 2013/14 or so. Can't remember when it was really over, But it has been a few years already. I sometimes get informed by new games via friends consoles and their computers. A quick game in between is ok for me, but I would never ever buy a gamer pc again, never had a console.
If it doesn't take you, move on, what is the problem? You can get nostalgic just like I do now, but to be clear, I wouldn't return any moment.

>>51075

>I took the bottom two for my kids steam account, it was two point and click adventure games

Hope he likes them.
No one seems interested (or they took them without telling), so take the other codes too before they're lost forever.

>>51073

>L29EP-GN92F-9Z7LK

>>51095
Man that reminds me I don't think I even had my first discrete graphics card until like 2012, and 2007 was right in the middle of my long gaming hiatus due to work, school, relationships. The very last game I'd played was partway through Half Life 2 in 2005 and I never touched it or any other new game again until roughly 2012 which also was when I got a new PC with a 1gb GPU, and it wasn't a "gaming desktop" either just some prebuilt. Up until that time the only thing I even played was Plants vs Zombies on a shitty old HP laptop. I vaguely recall ATI sticker on one of my old laptops but otherwise everything until 2012 was running off integrated graphics.

I was thinking about it lastnight too how in the mid 2000s they first started coming out with "60 fps!" videos and we were supposed to be amazed but it just looked weird and unnatural to me back then, and it was usually in context of Hollywood movies. I wonder how many people playing games now even remember when no one thought about fps in gaming and everything was standard locked at 30 and we just called dropped frames "lag" so yes that clearly means what it implies that laggy" games having trouble running on our hardware was so choppy it was well below 30fps. Imagine trying to play a game like HL2 in 2005 and being only mildly annoyed when you finally got it to run an acceptable 20fps at 480 or 600p or whatever it was back then by turning the graphical options down, and a game simply being capable of running 60fps was considered mindblowing by techies and filmfags.

It's still probably going to completely fucking suck
https://www.ign.com/articles/star-wars-knights-of-the-old-republic-kotor-ea-bioware-remake

>There have been previous rumors of a Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Remake being in the works at EA, and that it would take elements of the first KOTOR and Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords and retool the two stories to make them fit in current canon. It is unclear whether this is the discussed project that has since been taken away from EA or if it is an entirely new story.

It's just going to fucking suck. EA not being involved is just one sliver of hope but because it's still the garbage that is Disney I guarantee you that it is absolutely going to fucking suck. There's some poll on there which indicates to me they're going to ignore everything about the story and soulfulness which is why those games were great to begin with.

The only other solace I can take in watching something I loved get deformed and sodomized by vile MBA major suits is that it may have more involvement from Ubisoft, and just solely because of The Division I do not hate them as a triple A company. But man. It's probably going to fucking suck.

I don't get why they can't just make a great game with a great story and atmosphere and branching questlines, and instead focus on how to milk retards of as much money as they can while being under IP.

That really is what started turning me off so hard politically. Art is a sacred thing. By turning it into just another commodity ran by those grubby little money counting fingers and making everything about IP ruins it. It's taught me the central importance of authorship. The original author is what matters. You can't just give some bumbling money hungry retard an easel and some paint and then try to pass it off to me as a Picasso just because the jackass loosely used some similar techniques and tell me pay out the ass because it's "reinvented" "a refresh" "made to conform with canonthat is now entirely decided by executive suits for the purposes of IP rights" and "remake" no, it's a completely different shit and that's why I will always consider Wasteland 2 to be the true Fallout 3, not Morrowind with guns and supermutants aka "Fallout 3."

I wouldn't even mind if they actually did something completely different with it provided what different thing is good. You don't have to try to mimick the original artist, in point of fact you can't. You're always going to be a cover band playing someone else's beat on different instruments with a different singer, so own it. I've heard plenty of cover songs I enjoyed hell there's a bunch I liked more than the original artist, just don't try and pass it off on me like different hands are making the same thing. It's why nothing is real Star Wars movies beyond Episodes I-VI. I liked Rogue something? There was one grimdark movie I enjoyed. I've seen zero of the other Disneyfied craps, which ironically Rebel One or what's it called was more grimdark and I liked it for that.

I can only hope that 2021 doesn't just bring more disappointment to be butthurt about evil things done to things I loved, but somehow suspect VTMB2 won't be too hot either. Again, I can put up with it if it's designed by the people that made The Division. I can put up with different artists than Bioware or Troika. Just don't try and tell me I'm buying a Rembrandt made by Todd Howard and don't fuck up what you're doing.

I think 40K is a good example in a sense. I've never liked the universe a whole lot, and only got into it because it's so prolific, with the most ironic damn thing being that StarCraft--one of my top ten of all time--was originally meant to be a 40K and had they gotten that game license it might've sucked. It's fine it was different entirely. It's not fine what nuBlizzard did and I didn't bother even pirating after HotSdemanding my government ID to get in my own account on its own will forever have them on my shitlist.

In fact most 40K is outright fucking cringe to me, particularly anything that focuses on the Imperiumalthough part of that is super low IQ neofascists don't get the whole thing is over the top parody of itself, right down to in universe le god emprah HATED religion and purged the fuck out of people worshiping him, and the Word Bearers turned to Chaos and all that jazz so it's like parody on top of parody that so many devs take it all at face value and said tile painter gaymers in turn think it's some hymn to neofascism thus becoming the IRL grimdark of some of why everything is so shit in the Imperium but I digress which is sadly the bulk of it. I actually only even like Tyranids and Chaos as factions and some background lore ultimately, and am glad dumb shit like Squats are gone.

In spite of all that, I have seen a number of really well done 40K games by a divers array of studios, and many games going in very different directions. I still do wish there was an Endless Space 2 WH40K that mystifies me there is not and the closest I've gotten is Gladius and Battlefleet Gothic Armada. But all that stated, it can be worked with and not turning out a cringey piece of shit.

With all that being said, I think it's the finest point here that expanded universe Star Wars ended up itself being as if not more interesting than the original in-universe canon, partly by awesome writers and going way back in time. I have likewise seen some unspeakably godawful EU shit you can likewise but not always tell what cringe it will be in 40K just by naming alone; there is some cringe shit in 40K. Exar Kun, Naga Sadow? Great names. Names like General Grievous, or names that sound like Darth Malevolent? Not so much. 40K pulls the same shit sometimes. Point being, that the expanded universe had some gems in there, and that while being totally separated by authorship and even philosophy, a game like KOTOR II managed to be its own totally separate classic that had little to do with the original Star Wars universe of Lucas while still being just as awesome and still ultimately being Star Wars. I can only hope that a similar thing could happen with a new KOTOR game, where it may not be Avellone writing it, and it may not be the original developers, or have anything to do with BioWare and LucasArts, but that it still can be awesome.

Man 2021 doesn't feel off to as great a start to me...
...maybe I should just stop kvetching about everything

>>51117

>retool the two stories to make them fit in current canon

I haven't seen new entries of the Star Wars franchise after Disney acquisition, but do they even touch KotOR games' stories which take place, IIRC, about five thousand years before the original trilogy? Or do they mean some sort of universe mechanics which differ between the EU and Disney's Star Wars?

>>51123
To me it sounds like cleaning it up. Haven't played in over a decade so can't say how prevalent it was, but maybe things like pruning stuff that's there for reference's sake, and making it more self contained. That also fits their direction as I see it. Good enough high concept ruined by incompetent management.

>>51123
New Disney canon is a bunch of garbage where mostly they take some random popular EU stuff and doing from it their tier crap, mostly to adopt it for kids/something alongside their movies and marvel shit to milk it more. Not that I give a shit about KOTORs because they were rape of source material as well. And same way KOTORs fucked the original old republic into another prequel-style adventure, Disney will fuck it another time. Will normies be happy with it or dislike it is totally random because normies have no real opinion.

>>51137

>source material

Also, btw, Disney can fuck as they want, but the original old republic will live in "canon"

>>51139
Also also, this is the current "High republic project" nu star wars writers.

>>51137
>>51139
What works from the EU are worth checking out, BTW? I mean for a "normie" like myself, who is not too deep in SW lore, so I don't masturbate furiously to every little geeky reference and allusion to the movies and whatnot, and just want to enjoy a nice adventure in a familiar universe (like, for example, Ciaphas Cain books would be pretty fun to read for any battle-scifi fan, not just wahafags). I've heard nice thing about Thrawn trilogy, is it good?

>>51141
wow black people and women, very scary

>>51184
There a lot of problems with the EU honestly. This is a giant pile of different interconnected tales and books and comics and games from different creators. Some were close to each other, some not so much. Some are great read but contain something meh for overall universe logic, some are mediocre but safer and don't have out of place stuff. And answering this question is hard because there is something popular and great, for example, KOTORs, games that are good by themselves, however, they turned lore direction in a very meh direction and added a lot of bullshit and retcons that I not happy with, but to explain why and where you need to play/read all that crap to see the overall picture. In addition, there were after-retcons. Encyclopedia books, big official articles, tabletop stuff that tried to summarise, add and fix timeline which by themselves add to perception how you observing information in a new context. Most of the EU-assburgers are just constantly creating their headcanons and argue about everything on the internet. So this is what the EU is in reality: a giant half-organized pile of information where you creating your favorite universe. You can imagine it as Star Trek - classic shows are great, but they have crap and unconnected episodes.

So well, where to start... there are a bunch of great places. For example, something close to the movies, which would be nice without context.

Star Wars Empire - there was a bunch of comic series in the "main timeline" - from the old days of the republic to the far future, however, they came out in different times and there is no need to start from 35000years before. I like the "empire" series (not long before and sometime after Episode 4). Some of its arcs, like Darklighter, add to Episode 4 so much, that without this parallel story I can't imagine this movie at all, it feels unfinished without the story of Luke's best friend.

Star Wars X-Wing Rogue Leader - there was an actual X-wing Rogue Squadron comic series and books, but comic books are not the newest things and their stories contain a bunch of weird stuff. It is a fun read overall, but you may like to start from this prequel-mini series, set right after Episode 4. Short solid story connected to the movie makes a sort of introduction to the whole post-Endor situation, which in this universe ended in the fall of uni-galactic state and actual constant galactic civil war for years.

Star Wars TIE Fighter - 1994 videogame, part of the X-wing simulator series. This series of games is stuck between actual complex serious simulators and more arcade stuff, being more complex than wing commanders but not as complex as an actual flight sim, these series actually based on LucasArt's WW2 simulators. X-wing being the first game, TF was the second one and the best in the series. These games, using actual sources and existing at the time board games and EU tried to create a more serious, technologically depth approach to starfighters, ships, space combat, and tactics. TIE Fighter combining it with a deep political plot, showing galactic empire and its political and economical problems from inside. Set between episodes 5 and 6, it shows that this state was kind of doomed and without the rebels. The full CD version came out in 1995, in 1998 came out Windows hardware-accelerated textured version. The Windows version is broken as fuck, but you can fix it with wrappers, mods, and tweaking and it makes it the best version until the XWVM team will finish their remakes (not soon). If you are interested, I might post a guide.

Star Wars Shadows of the Empire - SotE was a multimedia project, created in times when Lucas came back to SW and was kind of part of "Special Editions" projects, expanding the story between Episode 5 and 6. Unlike mentioned above TIE Fighter, it focused on the main characters and main plot of the movies, in addition to a bunch of new heroes. The multimedia project consisted of a Book, a Comic series, and Videogame which add to each other. What I want to recommend the most here is the comic. I think, it is self-contained enough and you'll understand everything without additional sources and there is the most content that related to the movies and connects them. Game... well, I was not sold on the new character and its presentation and this is an N64 game. Meaning that story is just out of context chunks with quite primitive gameplay. 64MB limitation is quite hard for a 3d adventure plot-driven game, you may try it if you want. There was a PC version with creepy pre-rendered cutscenes instead of static art images from N64.

Star Wars Clone Wars - not 3d The Clone Wars, with is childish teenager cartoon where marry sue teenager girl and "funny droids" fight in 9000 boring seasons and which is now in Disney Canon so I dismissed it from EU because it was inconsistent with it anyway. I not a fan of prequels in general, their concept and presentation, however, this 2003 Tartakovsky's cartoon is what elevates them to a new, enjoyable level, where clone wars shown as epic galactic wars. From short original series, was compressed 2 complete movies, that will follow you right from episode 2 to episode 3 opening scene. This is one of the rare reasons why I tolerate Prequels' existence. They are available on youtube https://youtu.be/g6-yclEOgR4 https://youtu.be/t1LK-JwKt2I Some scenes from here are pure platinum, real Jedi fights, real space army fights, highly recommended.

Star Wars The Thrawn Trilogy - sigh Well, this is the book trilogy most of us started from, a long time ago when EU was a mainstream, before dark, Disney times. And they actually nice adventures, with great scenes, great new additions to the universe, and a nice read overall. This is the sort of safe sequels many people wanted to, and I'm not surprised it still one of the most known and beloved Star Wars media pieces. Of course, I'll recommend reading it to a new person. However, this is one of the things I mentioned above, about where I think some stuff might be overrated, I have questions for a lot of characters and ideas on a universe level. Seeing that Thrawn's character was used by Disney for their morning cartoons and it incorporates everything worst I have complaints about for original books, making him some sort of caricature on himself. But more about it later, if you'll be really interested in all that crap, I'll make my giant wall of text especially for you, after you'll read all things mentioned below and above lol.

Star Wars Republic Commando - another star wars game set between 2 and 3 episodes, in clone wars. It is a nice atmospheric shooter where you are controlling the squad of Republic Commando clones in multiple missions. One of the nice and still known Star Wars games. There are RC books but.. eeh... even I didn't read them :\

Star Wars Empire At War - the best RTS in a Star Wars series, have a campaign and galactic conquest modes, with a kind of total-war style galactic map. Standalone addon Forces of Corruption is much better in my opinion - it adds 3rd side to galactic civil war, adds a lot of mechanics that make this game more deep and interesting to play. This game using a lot of EU stuff and addon elevates it to a new level. This game is from petroglyph, former Westwood developers. Zann Consortium music for addon was composed by Frank Klepacki.

You can ask me about any comic, or in general, things I mentioned. I have the great English scans of Omnibuses and what was translated on Russian for the most part if you need this also.

>>51190
I not against black people, not against women, but I know what these people from pictures will write, and this is will be "as predicted". I don't want to be preconceived, but we don't live in a bright world of the future and I saw the previews.

>>51197
Okay, down into a Rabbit hole. If you want more, I moved it to the next post to avoid creating a too big wall of text and mark what secondary.

Star Wars Dark Empire - comic trilogy, one of the things that founded EU as we know it. From here starts the history of Dark Horse Comic as owners of SW license for the next 20 years. Created more on enthusiasm and ideas than for money, this comic is one of the things that resurrected star wars, abandoned by its creator after Episode 6. This thing for me, written by Tom Veitch and illustrated by Cam Kennedy is the best piece of the Star Wars media as a whole. Unlike the Thrawn trilogy that was written alongside it, this is in my opinion is the true sequel trilogy. So why I have not put it right in the first list of recommendations? Because it is something, that puts people off, a comic that not trying to explain itself, and often the careless reader will see it more as random junk with questionable plot and ugly style. Its main premise "the Palpatine returns!" sounds silly and a lot of its elements look weird. However, this is one of the best stories, that in reality created actual lore - about force, about siths, and universal balance. In this dark style, it actually changing the movie's story about son-father into the end of a 1000 year arc. In this short review, I can't explain everything, but this comic first created Old Republic lore and most of the lore about the force and the Palpatine, not original movies which actually not explained or showed much in this regard. Everything great in Star Wars was created here, and its designs, concepts, scenes, ideas are perfect for an actual movie adoption.

Star Wars Tales of the Jedi - comic series that go full nuts into actual Old republic. Some of the creators of Dark Empire alongside some other names made actually full-featured comic books about days of the Old Republic. 5000 and 4000 years before the battle of Yavin. Inspired by Dark Empire lore, weird french science fiction, and fantasy, Sword&Sorsery, expanded the universe for thousands of years. Showing far past, long times with spaceships with sails, with primitive blasters alongside animals and steel blades, when the force was a mysticism, galaxy unexplored place of wonders and adventures. All this lore actually Lucas borrowed to create prequels, however, Lucas failed to properly understand what this and Dark Empire and other EU at the date created. So everything great and backstory, lore, and concepts of prequels is actually dumbed down content from TotJ.

Star Wars Darth Plagueis - another thing that elevates prequels in a non-direct way. This is the story of Palpatine's master, and Palpatine himself. Something what prequels actually should've been about, but failed to deliver and spent their time on random shit. This thing already bases itself on Dark Empire and Darth Bane stuff, explaining what is Darth Bane line, what is the rule of two, and what was Palpatine's role in it. I recommend reading it after everything above, it is another great EU piece that constructs logic and a big story from the mistakes of Lucas.

Star Wars Dark Forces-Jedi Knight series - this is one of the most famous star wars series of games and 3 books about Kyle Katarn. First Dark Forces is a great example of early plot-driven adventure FPS games, which made what build engine games did in the next years. Star Wars Dark Forces II Jedi Knight is one of the most ambitious games of the time. Full 3d plot-driven FPS game that marked very high standard. It is this game that ended the era of Doom clones and started the era of more modern, adventure-FPS games which will follow with games from Raven Software, Half-Life, Unreal, etc, but was in many ways above them. It also had one of the biggest in production live-action cutscenes at the time and 3 illustrated books alongside it. This game in story and presentation trying to follow the style set by TotJ, Dark Empire, and Jedi Academy Trilogy books. And the same time, while featuring stuff wat above anything Disney did in the terms of atmosphere, ideas, style, also has some floats because of lacks of the budget for the idea, silly moments and usual 90s FMV cutscenes problems, and some gameplay jank, being a 3d hardware accelerated FPS with abilities made in the mid-1997 by LucasArts on their custom engine. Later games, especially the last in the series, Jedi Academy, is the EU rollercoaster, basically very quality fan service for fans not more of movies, but everything I mentioned in this and previous list, this why I placed these games down in 2nd list.

There a lot more stuff, of course. Adventures, mediocre stories with good moments, great stories with a very specific context, weird stuff, basically 40 years of all kinds of content that formed this into the universe I loved in my teenage years and still have very warm feelings towards. But I think, I can continue like that to infinity and I need to put a stop switch somwhere.

>>51105
meh you could run these games on decent enough hardware with decent enough frame rate, it's worth noting that CRT's despite their lower resolution had much less ghosting and screen tearing. What I hate the 2005 era of gayming most for would be the 30ms delay cheap lcd's. Only then did everyone started investing themselves in muh framerates because it was unbearable on these early flat screens with let's say 15 fps.

>>51197
>>51201
Thanks. Empire, Dark Empire and Tales of the Jedi comics seem interesting, so I'll probably look into them, despite that I don't like comics as a medium much, and I guess I gotta read the Thrawn trilogy after all. As for vidya, I heard of pretty much most (if not all) of them, and played quite a lot: Republic Commando was a very solid shootan, and the interactions between clones were fun, although I personally didn't like it much because it was more of a modernized "slow" FPS with that "tactics light" gimmick popular at the time (Freedom Fighters, America's Army, Brothers in Arms); Empire at War was a pretty big deal back in the days, because it was made by Petroglyph founded by former Westwood employees, so I installed it but didn't play it much, as I recall, probably because my PC was shit then; Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy are among my favorite SW games (along with both KotORs), so I think I gotta try earlier games in the series someday; as for X-Wing/TIE Fighter sims, I never was interested in them, because simulators are among my least favorite vidya genres, but fans usually praise it to the skies (including a buddy of mine, who bought a joystick just to play it), so I might try them eventually (TIE Fighter in particular, because the eponymous fighter is probably my favorite SW ship design and also because the Empire is cool).

>>51205

>despite that I don't like comics as a medium much

Well, it seriously depends. The absolute majority of the Marvel and DC is just garbage, but it is not mean that graphic novels end here. Look at Metabarons or some other Mobeious or Jodorovsky stuff. There are a lot of gems in European graphic novellas.

Here you go:
https://dropmefiles.com/rfyrC - Dark Empire trilogy with bonus material. It is actually a Marvel re-release after Disney, but they have not changed Dark Horse re-release except adding their logo.

https://dropmefiles.com/7gjBZ - two omnibuses with all Tales of the Jedi volumes. Funny that originally "Knights of the old republic" was the name of one of the TotJ editions, before the games. CBR and CRZ if you don't have a CBR reader, It can be opened by 7z just as archives.

>thrawn trilogy

There was an actual Thrawn Trilogy comicbook. You may read it alongside the books, to get illustrations. Some things a bit off, like Gilad Pellaeon, has no mustache, but generally will be a nice addition.

>I never was interested in them, because simulators are among my least favorite vidya genres

I honestly was never a sims fan, but this series combined a lot of stuff I really love - music, best sides of star wars EU, plot, and presentation. I love how these games added meaning and purpose to all random star wars tech, so I closely following XWVM progress to make it "modern", retaining everything great about them. And without XWVM games have quite a modding community, mostly for the last game, X-Wing Alliance which I have mixed opinion on tho.

>>51209

>There are a lot of gems in European graphic novellas.

Yeah, I know, and I plan to make a closer acquaintance with Franco-Belgian comics (so far I've only read Nikopol). Anglo comics are mostly capeshit which bores me to death, but there is some goodies among them too. I liked Neil Gaiman's Sandman and Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan was absolutely great. On the other hand, some of the universally acclaimed comics like V for Vendetta or Preacher didn't impress me at all. I also have 1800+ progs of 2000AD on my drive, but considering the speed with which I read them, I'll be finished around the age of sixty. XDDDDDDDDDDD

>>51210
Yea, Transmetropolitan is great. Нщг ьфн 2000AD is a mixed bag also since there were a lot of different authors. Actually, Cam Kennedy, Dark Empire artist, worked in 2000AD also, so the world is small lol. Which style I now pathetically trying to emulate in my art
You may try The Carnival of Immortals, Luietenant/Marshall/etc. Blueberry, Lone Sloane, Hardboiled, Black Moon Chronicles, Requiem: Vampire Knight, Blacksad, Valerian, Borgia
I opened for myself all this stuff after these old star wars comic stuff, it surely expanded the range of my imagination and perspective on science fiction, fantasy, and art. Usually tho, they often push away casual readers, so a capeshit is the mainstream, together with most boring and save calculated kids adventure Disney movies and stuff like that in more in a niche.

I found a video of this game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOv2AjnxG3Q&feature=emb_title

Basically something like Transport Tycoon but you play it on the real world map. Very assburger.

Oh my god, there is my region in Snowrunner!

Ah shid it's almost time for wörktime so I haven't got much time but oh well maybe I can be more concise and speedy
So I finally finished The Division and I can say that man, is it a great game, on par with Fallout New Vegas easily. I say this totally unironically and even with The Division not having any kind of dialogue options or quest tree, but then again I was never that impressed by it in FNV anyway and mostly enjoyed it for the open world wandering aspect, of which this game reminds me.

It really did even give me almost the exact same feels as FNV, albeit even more gloriously on a downer ending than the hopeful and upbeat way I ended FNV.

There was no real ending. I even spent a day trying to figure out if I had truly ended the game, because I had a couple of unfound dossier items from some side quests, but the main story is truly ended. The denoument was great. By the end as I headed to what I thought might be my one last mission I blithely popped off a couple of rioters on my way there. I felt it. I even felt that complete callousness towards human life and the very people I was allegedly "saving" I'd developed by the end.

It's hard to talk about without totally spoiling the ending too, but suffice it to say nothing was solved. The world was never saved. There was no carefully delineated "the game ends here" point. Even better, as I stood there looking at the guy's dead body, just thinking why, what was the point? For some reason the whole game I kept thinking I'd find this one guy one of probably the two main guys and have some confrontation, maybe seeking some answers, and just there he was. Dead on the floor. Alone. Killed by his own plague. Just another meaningless casualty of the plague, just like anybody else. I felt the temptation of Keener, even without ever having met the guy. The despair, the nihilism, the absolute pointlessness of it all. Within the last hours of the game I couldn' t help but keep thinking am I really the good guy? Am I even better than a looter? I see all these JTF cops, and can't help but sympathize with LMB and the Rikers prisoners sometimes, and look down in contempt at these despicable cowards of the JTF. I couldn't help but think I'd turned into just another bad guy.

It was truly amazing. It was a truly amazing game that gave me genuine >kermit_when_you_finish_a_truly_great_game.png feels. Even at the end, that very last cut scene with Hell spelled in fire, which was bizarre because within the last couple hours of playing it I had indeed kept thinking about mortality and my damnation without any prompting from the game, so it even felt strangely out of place and almost synchronized with me and my inner monologue in a way few games have outside of KOTOR or somesuch.

I would highly recommend this game, even with the annoying cover controls, even with that game being just about every single thing I fucking hate in a game. It is an OtS triple A FPS game with (admittedly unobtrusive) microtransactions. It was everything I hated in modern gaming and I loved every minute of it. 9/10. 1 point taken off solely because of the awkward cover/jump over console control feeling in gameplay.

I would especially rate this HIGHLY for playing during the IRL plague on the USA, especially in the winter around the holidays. I would also recommend it strongly to foreigners to try, because minus people shooting each other in the streets it's a great COVID on the USA simulator. Truly stupendous.

>>51211
Many 2000AD artists crossed the pond. Steve Dillon, as an example

(off-topic)
>>51365
Wow, that's literally a cool place, also dark. How do people even survive there, it's too close to the North Pole. Good luck.

>>51395
It is okay. Gulfstream soften the climmate. Polar night is dark but not extreme level. Summer is bright full day and okay by temperature. So we are not Noril'sk or something lol.
I live north 200km from Imandra lake from the game.

>>51397
>>51365
I hope it comes out on steam some time soon, I don't want to give China my credit card details

Warhammer 3 was announced

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAr7yUlM0Po&feature=youtu.be

Since I had a bit of time left on my hands I decided to re-play Fallout New Vegas.
Apparently it's been a good 5-6 years since I last played it, judging by the achievements.
It was a very different experience now compared to then.

First off, my English is so much better now, I'm much more effective at playing the game and enjoying the story. I was able to better allocate skills, special points and use items better, and it made a big difference.
Essentially I was really fucking stupid when I was 14.

The only mods I had installed were ones that added more guns into the loot table, the biggest of which was Classic Fallout Weapons. Essentially just a bunch of guns from the first two games + BoS. Most of them are fun to use.
They also feel slightly overpowered, but since most are drops, you actually have to survive a raider or some faction member try to kill you with it before you can get your hands on it.
But because of the mod progression ended like it did in Fallout 2, as in, the moment I got my hands on a Gauss Rifle nothing could touch me. For some reason the FO2 Gauss rifle's rate of fire is moderately higher than the one in the base game, so it essentially becomes a 160DPS way of saying "fuck you for bullying me when I was level 2". (That is if you can find ammo for the fucking thing. I somehow stockpiled up 200 before I got one, but after that I never saw any ammo for it.)

Decided to create a 10 int character because before I was creating jack of all trades characters if I remember correctly, so this time I went all in on intelligence and charisma, and it paid off, because I had so many skill points, I was able to up not only my Speech, Barter and Guns, but also my Science, Lockpick and Repair, so a lot of quests that required me to run back and forth between places were instead cut short, because I could circumvent getting parts for repairs or doing errands for a crucial item to be crafted. Made the game a lot smoother.
Especially during the casino missions I found routes and options that I didn't even know existed before. It was really refreshing and proved there was a lot of thought put into the game.

Then again, despite the better skill allocation I don't remember the game being this fucking hard. I wanted to play it on hard, but decided to switch back to normal because it just wasn't fun. Basically the hard difficulty level just makes everything have a fuckload of health and do a fuckload of damage. The issue is that even if I could survive the 6-7 raiders that decide to ambush me, I still couldn't kill them because there's just not enough ammo at the start of the game as you are going to Vegas.
Got down to the southern corner of the map and I switched back after a radscoprion took a beating of two magazines from a service rifle. Fuck that.
After that it was smooth sailing until the last two-three quests.

The questline for the boomers was okay, I got plenty done with science and repair. Then came raising the bomber out of the lake, and I just don't remember the road being this dangerous.
I was looking at a figure in the distance, taking potshots at it with my rifle thinking it was a gecko, but as it turns out, it was a fucking deathclaw. Of course it was a bit too late by the time I noticed.
And once you sneak past the deathclaws you run into Cazadores, and that's even before you see the lake. So once I reach the lake I encounter Lakelurks that basically fuck your shit up.
It was a pain in the ass basically, but only this part.

The second big hurdle was wiping out the brotherhood. (I had to wipe them out since I was going for the House ending.)
At first I thought I'll just take them on head-on with armour piercing rounds, but as it turns out, they have power armour. And guns. And they shoot back. So I was forced to do a quest for them, but after that I just stole the key cards needed for the self destruct of the bunker and just simply walked out after setting it off. They didn't even try to stop me with force. They just disappeared.

Otherwise it was piss easy.
But even after 5-6 years it's a good game. Hard to believe it turned 10 last year.

>>51421
I'd totally forgotten how hard that game was with difficulty notched up. Yeah, that's right, the normal to hard slide really did make the difference between die almost immediately and easy going. Actually come to think of it I could either be mixing up multiple games, or I've unduly given that game way too much shit for not being a real or good enough rpg, because I'm also reminded immediately of Wasteland 2 and Pillars of Eternity, either of which was bordering on unplayable with the difficulty set just one notch up. In fact I took forever to clear one room and spent hours on what in real time would've been about 45 seconds worth of fighting across a handful of rooms in PoE, and likewise in WL2 just ticking difficulty up one notch made their guns fucking HURT which killed me trying to play ironman-like because my characters always died every battle and I had to either savescum or turn it back to normal which was easy. So, maybe FNV was a real rpg afterall.

And yeah also that is why I took so damn long to finish it, because I refused to fast travel anywhere which made it a lot more realistic because like hell am I walking to the other side of the map to get some jackass his trinkets, because first of all it's not like I feel like spending that long in game walking all the way there to begin with even irl, but second of all how likley am I to die on the way. I remember eventually putting up my sneak skill way higher and having to deal with companions being dipshits so I just didn't bother with them a lot or told them to stay there instead of going in guns blazing. I spent a LOT of time sneaking around people and things and it's mostly what made that game fun because it became a real survival simulator where I had to think very carefully "do I actualy want to go up that ridge and take the risk of popping out above some Legion cunts? Do I really want to take the short way around that sharp bend without knowing what's around that corner?" I'd probably be really into the idea of a game like Green Hell which is a shame because I'm sure most of those "survival and crafting" games I just think would suck.

My one gripe about all that is they made water and food not just ridiculously easy to come by, but also made it to where thirst was infrequent, easy to cure, and didn't really do much damage nor did radiation when in fact these would be horrific dangers to any real world survival situation. FNV just made all that trivial and therefore retarded. Even in normal real world survival situations a supply of clean water is the most critical component of the rule of threes: you can survive 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food. Or something like that. I think it's more like 5 minutes to brain death >3 min brain damage can start, an hour exposure depending how cold/hot it is, 2-3 weeks without food unless you're fat or real skinny, 72 hours without water, but you get pretty delerious and fucked up before that point. Meanwhile radiation basically doesn't affect you and thirst barely hurts you when you'd be hallucinating and weakened out in the middle of an irradiated desert.

But even still, I maintain that the survival simulator part is the real reason that game was so fun. Of course, the part that made me so paranoid was the death claws--if you can see them, they're probably about to see you.

One last thing, is I'd like to say Tactics never gets enough love. It got ridiculed by the autistic fanboys at nomutantsallowed, which it rightly should have for the dramatic shift from the real Fallout games, however it was on its own something I'd consider a great real time tactics game even if it lacked much of what made Fallout as Fallout, and that especially includes the deathclaws. The first time I encountered baby deathclaws thinking what the hell is that thing it scared the shit out of me.

>brotherhood of steel

Do you mean tactics? Because there was a real crappy game made for console called BoS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ozpyX0QlzU

>>51421

>Gauss Rifle

Agh, I hated it in F:NV. Yeah, it did one-shot pretty much everything, but it also ate through ammo faster than a Gatling laser and took a century to reload. Tesla cannon was even worse, though, because it had the same problems, but also could only be repaired with weapon repair kits even if you had Jury Rigging. Plasma caster is the most optimal energy gun to use in unmodded F:NV. By the way, did they move Gauss rifle to "Guns" category in the mod, instead of "Energy weapons"? It belonged to "Small guns" in F2, and it kicked serious ass (it was the best Small gun in the game and among the most effective weapons overall to use without perks, together with Pulse rifle and Turbo plasma rifle).

>I don't remember the game being this fucking hard

By my observatoons, most difficult situations are solved by leveling-up some more plus knowing creatures' weak points (like Cazadores' wings or Deathclaws' legs). I played on Very Hard (in unmodded game; I imagine that there are some mods which crank up the difficulty more), and most frustrating things for me were assassin squads and that fucking elevator in the Lonesome Road DLC (granted, I was playing as a squishy gunslinger girl; I suppose it would be much easier if I played as sturdy melee fighter).

Another thing is that during the playtrough I didn't use the radio at all. The ambiance and the soundtrack really add to the atmosphere, especially with the re-used classic music from the first two fallout games. It's also more realistic to listen to the news at an outpost where someone left the radio on, instead of hearing the same two-three newsflashes over and over.
The only part of the new soundtrack I didn't like was the piece that plays at Hoover Dam, because it's full of trumpets and violins and it sounds like it was made only for the final battle, but it plays even if you just wander around the dam.

>>51430
The one in the Classic Fallout Weapons Mod is classified as a gun and not an energy weapon, just like in Fallout 2.
The one in the base game is in the Energy Weapons category for whatever reason like you said. (It also uses microfusion cells instead of very small bullets like the Fallout 2 version, which has a 2mm projectile I think. Makes no sense since the point of a gauss gun is that it uses an extremely fast, extremely small projectile to pierce very thick armour at long distances. A microfusion cell would only be used for powering it, not as ammunition.)
If I remember correctly in F2 the easiest way of obtaining a Gauss Rifle was by heading straight to SF and then savescumming it off one of the named vagrant NPCs. (Then of course you also savescummed your way to Navarro to get the Power Armour MK2.)

>knowing creatures' weak points (like Cazadores' wings or Deathclaws' legs)

That's good to know. Really, I assumed the best targer for a deathclaw is its head and not its legs. (At least in Fallout 1 and 2 the best target was the eyes. You "cripple" their eyes and then they can't reliably hit you every turn any more.)
I really miss the possibility of targeting the eye from the FNV VATS system. (But I guess it makes no sense in a real time combat game)
The few deathclaws I encountered I took care of with just tanking the damage with stimpaks and soft drinks.
Cazadores I just simply avoided because for some reason I couldn't reliably hit them with any gun I had on me.

>>51427
Yeah I meant Tactics. Really, most of the guns the mod adds are from Tactics. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I just don't feel any connection towards them because I just couldn't get into Tactics.

I played Hardcore mode once. Really, I didn't feel like it made the game any better or worse, and once you're out of the more bumfuck nowhere parts of the game it makes sense that buying food and water will become easier. (Now, getting clean water in Fallout 3 would be a challenge.)
New Vegas takes place centuries after the war, so it makes sense that things are "bad but not that bad".
The only reason why Vegas isn't as developed as it could be because as I gathered from the lore House woke up from the coma less than a decade ago, so he had no time or resources to fully renovate the place yet.
Even in F2 the NCR already had newly built houses and a manufacturing sector for guns and stuff.
It's a developing world, not a surviving world.

I played FNV with Project Nevada and a "headshots actually kill" mod, and it was a much better combat experience than you describe. Basically, it felt like a clunky-but-reasonable FPS game, instead of an exercise in frustration with bullet sponges.

I wish I could return to it and complete the DLC arcs, but I'm kept away by OCD collecting impulses and the uniquely offputting graphics (I can play N64 games with no problem, but FNV-era Gamebryo is unbearable). It's a real shame. FNV captures peak feels of American melancholia, and now is a better time than ever to contemplate the tragedy of a beautiful idea failed.

Does anyone know any good video channels or reviewers?

Because people like markiplier, septiceye, angryjoe, and pewdiepie are exactly the attention whoring obnoxious dumbasses who ruined youtube and I can't stand them. I have no idea why anyone thinks it's acceptable to have most of the video being your ugly ass face rather than reviewing the actual video game. Even worse are the "people reacting to my reaction" videos which clearly are the bottom cesspit of the internet hovering around Qanon and top ten clickbait videos.

The only channels I ever found that are good or at least watchable are mandalore, ssethtzeentach, theRadBrad for let's plays, and worthabuy although I don't necessarily trust mac and think he can be kind of a twat sometimes. Those are the only ones I even watch except maybe fextralife or some random ones for 4x games and crpgs because those are apparently more niche or something.

I also need to find out what's wrong with my computer. It's been fucked up for weeks now and I never bothered fixing it because I think it might take a complete reinstall of windows. It bluescreens when I try to shutdown or restart and then does that "windows encountered a problem and needs to restart" and when I hit sleep or hibernate it turns off display and peripherals then whirs up the CPU fan and just hangs, cycling through the same 5 error codes without turning off the hardware itself thus forcing me to hold the power button down in that state because I feel like it is less potentially damaging than holding it down while it's booted into windows. I don't know what to do now. It started acting like this after some shitty windows update and I'm really starting to think I should just backup my data and install the OS to my other, faster NVMe drive even if it's going to be a lengthy nightmare just trying to reinstall fucking everything onto the system again and trying to manually redo all my settings. It goes to what looks like 480p too when I try to power down and in split screen mode so I can't actually see what error it is although when it finally gets extra borked sometimes I can see it saying whea_uncorrectable_error but I don't know if that's the same problem. I half suspect it's display driver related but I have no clue why that would solely impact me trying to shut down/sleep/hibernate/restart. Fuck. I am way too lazy to make this into a project today.

>>51469
Vinesauce is still as good as ever. Just a normal chill guy playing video games, although his funny-moment-compilation videos may give you the wrong impression.

>>51471

>Diablo 2
>2 hours and 13 minutes
>part 1

Oh God
Is there anything where he or anyone else actually reviews the videos in 15 minutes or less? OH and I forgot to say ACG. His running commnetary shtick and fast paced talking gets tiring if I'm not in the right mood for it but he's also a good reviewer. The only two people I can listen to for more than 15 minutes straight are radbrad because he's kinda chill, and Mandalore because of same reasons. I've actually watched his hour long videos more than once but if all his videos were hours long I probably wouldn't have clicked on it.

Does vinesauce do any shorter reviews? Or is he just lets plays? Thanks though.

>>51455
I didn't have much of an issue with the graphics personally, but generally speaking I never drop a game because of the graphics. (The GUI is a different thing alltogether, but I don't think NV's UI aged badly.)

My biggest issue with NV is that the engine is incredibly fucking janky, especially during firefights. It just felt like for some reason that most of my shots didn't land for no apparent reason. There's no feedback at all as to whether or not you actually hit something, which is especially frustrating if you're sniping and shooting at a big target like a deathclaw from far away.
But that's just gamebyro being a pile of shit that was never meant to simulate gunfights.
I also hate how the rocky places are full of invisible walls. I'd like to climb the mountain sides to take potshots or sneak around, but I can't because they're blocked off.

It also seems to crash a lot, because it was made for WinXP/7 and we're on binbows10 now.

If I ever do another playtrough then I'd probably use mods. (Probably ones that restore/expand Legion content and maybe bugfixes, but besides 3-4 crashes during my 20 hour playrtrough I haven't run into any bugs besides ragdols spinning randomly in the air sometimes.)

>>51471
He is a turbo manchild marioboy, no?
>>51469
Try tehsnakerer and grim beard.

>>51469
XTRG is okay for when I want to look at a wargame. Mostly because he's not incredible at the games, so I get a more realistic look at how it plays for me rather than the gameplay of an iq200 wargaming gigachad, plus it's all unfiltered stream replays, so I can be sure that it's not edited to look good.

I don't really go for the 'reviews as entertainment' style of video though, so probably not your cup of tea.

>>51482

>He is a turbo manchild marioboy, no?

He was more mature than 99% of streamers when I was watching him 8 years ago. Still is. He's trained his reactions to somewhat above a natural level as a result of streaming for so long, but he still feels like a normal human instead of a typical streamer NPC.

>>51488
I watched vargskelethor for a while but this dude was kind of... cringe, when he attempts to play anything out of games that he knows or trying to drop his knowledge. Maybe if you compare it to pewdipie or how he was called, but I never watched trash like that.

>>51421

>Decided to create a 10 int character because before I was creating jack of all trades characters if I remember correctly, so this time I went all in on intelligence and charisma, and it paid off

You know one of the most fun playthroughs I had in NV was a luck 10 character for the gambling achievments, playing caravan as I went, doing the casinos. I was so rich by the end it was unreal

>The second big hurdle was wiping out the brotherhood. (I had to wipe them out since I was going for the House ending

I always modded in a peaceful solution for that, it makes no sense that house wants the brotherhood destroyed (to me at least)
>>51427
>>51421
What guns from tactics were added? I loved tactics I played through it probably 5-6 times over the years, I liked how there was so many unique weapons in it, like a single p90, a single mp38 and a single britbong bullpup, a single Bren gun and a single BAR in the whole game. Made each gun feel unique.

I'm actually really wanting to play either a Tale of Two Wastelands or another go at Fallout 4 lately, I got that Fallout itch again.

>>51552
Luck 10 with shotguns was absurd as well because the game counted each pellet as a chance to proc a critical. You could do some absurd burst damage with high agility and luck and things like Better Criticals and Shotgun Surgeon.

>>51421
Conside a melee build. It's extremely strong while you can hoard money with the weapons and ammo you find.
Also the RP-implications are just fun. I normally have a high IQ girl with a super sledge which is just ridiculous.

>>51552
I think I only ever considered luck an interesting SPECIAL option in Fallout 2, because there gambling is a skill, so once you reached something like 120% skill in gambling it was impossible to lose any smaller bets you mad (Think ~50NCR$ at the tables or 100NCR$ at the slots), which basically meant that you'd never run out of money and you could actually get your hands on good equipment relatively easily, if you just played cookie clicker for 15-20 minutes.)
Never gambled in New Vegas, and the luck skill felt pretty weightless to me. Like I didn't feel like me having 4 luck influenced anything in either direction. (Probably because the combat is real time. In the first two games it actually influenced shit noticeably because the combat system was suited for it.)

House disliking the BoS kinda makes sense. He even justifies it to you if you say you don't want to get rid of them.
BoS is kind of a weird faction.
They kept the torch of civilisation burning, but they were always selfish bastards and even in the first game the mission they gave you where you have to go to the glow is essentially just them giving you the middle finger with extra steps, since they don't actually expect you to return.
It's Bethesda's fallouts that turned them into knights in shining power armour for whatever reason.
FNV takes place more than two centuries after the Great War. There are actual nations now, there's manufacturing, construction, politics. The BoS is a giant anachronism what refuses to die, and House is right that a group of people who seek to amass every piece of tech they can find for themselves isn't going to be too happy about him having a high tech army and an R&D sector in the future, so getting rid of them is not optional, it's a necessity.
For Caesar it kinda makes sense to have them on his side, at least temporarily, so that they can stage an attack on Helios One during the second battle for the dam, and after the casualties they suffered in retaking the powerplant will make them easy pickings for the Legion. (Keeping in line with Divide et Impera, where you help a weak faction crush a stronger one, only to then turn on the weak yourself.)

>What guns from tactics were added?

A lot of stuff, nearly anything I'd say, though I never played tactics myself.
I saw the P90 for sale, and also came across the MP-38 at multiple vendors throughout the wastes.
It's a well put together mod, most of the guns are part of the drop table or can be purchased, none of them are dumped in Goodsprings or Doc Mitch's house for you to pick up.
Essentially it makes for a good bit of flavour, especially if you like the design of the guns from previous entries, though for some, ammo is hard to come by.
(I actually found 2mm gauss ammo, but it's only sold at Hoover Dam and the Mojave Outpost for whatever reason. You'd expect the gun runners to sell it.)
I haven't found any of the guns OP or too easy to access, none of them break the flow of the game. (Except for the Fallout 2 Gauss Rifle. That shit's 6k caps and fucks shit up. Still no match up close against a deatchlaw though.)

>>51578
Interesting thing I found out only because of youtube, is that only three models of the Jackhammer ever even exists. Fallout and Fallout Tactics iirc are two of the few games which made them feel like a real weapon, as opposed some 17 pound (or was it kilo?) monstrosity that was unwieldy, impossible to field strip, and entirely impractical. Fallout games in general kinda had a habit of doing that, with the very interesting Heckler & Koch caseless guns being one of the best, strongest non-energy/big guns in the games despite also pretty much just being unwieldy concept guns which in their case never really got off the ground partly because the Cold War had just ended and their massive budget cuts on top of it shelved that concept altogether, not to mention the fact that caseless had a pretty not-0% chance of igniting the rest of the ammunition and exploding in your hands in skme earlier models so the Bundeswehr or whoever it was just developed and fielded the G36 instead. Speaking of which, although it's infinitely superior to full metal mags for certain practical purposes I fucking HATE the way plastic see through mags look particularly on that gun.

>BoS weren't knights in shining armor

I mean yeah that's kind of true in the lore but they're kinda more reminscent of the Hammerites or whatever they're called in Thief than anything else. They weren't some cringey do gooder lawful good ultramarine Mary Sues, but they weren't out and out bad guys either and in terms of the overall morality of the wastelands they tended to lean much more to the good side of things in the original Fallouts, sending you to die in the Glow notsithstanding.

That changed drastically however in Tactics which was one of the big criticisms of that game which is how much they were jarring to deal with in F:T. It wasn't they were "good guys" in Fallout so much as the original games did a poor job at portraying them accurately sometimes, which is why other than the Glow they tended to feel like "the good guys" after playing those games, which they definitively were not in Fallout Tactics and which that game came much closer to portraying what the Brotherhood actually is albeit they went far more into the opposite direction of lawful evil.

This was actually my one big problem with the game other than they made it into a linear not-rpg which mechanically was radically different from real Fallout games, which is that they made you a drafted recruit into a borderline slaver army of "we will impose order or kill every wastelander trying" mentality, which itself was better than the other faction that at least you coould recruit ghouls mutants and other things into your BoS whereas the main faction you schismed from would've probably just killed abhumans outright and acted bordering on like the Enclave. I suppose it's ultimately more a sign of the times and one of necessity in unifying and rebuilding in ways the NCR might have as a conquering army but in Tactics the BoS was completely shit.

>>51578

>It's Bethesda's fallouts that turned them into knights in shining power armour for whatever reason

You not actually read in dialogues in fallout 3 what happened with brotherhood here? Of course, the whole section of the game with outcasts looks like as it was entirely cut but still.

>>51587
I never played "Fallout 3" beyond the first couple hours. So, no.

>>51591
Well, so why shitting on something you do not know?

>>51587
That's a in-universe explanation for a criticism of a creative decision.

A questionable decision can be explained in lore, but it still would be a questionable decision. Like, you could have supermutants outside the west coast even though it makes no sense, then make up a lore reason for how the FEV got into the east coast before it was invented, but it still be a bad decision. Oh, wait.

I did enjoy FO3, but only when I was wandering around on the map randomly and stumbling on things. I didn't like things being shoved down my throat through the main story. That's why I liked FO1, you just stumble upon the brotherhood, rather than being introduced to them.

>>51610
As I said, I don't think it was a questionable decision. What I have a problem with is that is the premise was not properly done. The Brotherhood branch moved across the country, they survived a lot and lost a lot on their path, which we can discover in the Pitt add-on. They moved to Pentagon and discovered new problems and threats here, more than that, they lost connection with the main Brotherhood and now on their own. Before New Vegas, it was even more intriguing, like what happened to the main Brotherhood, maybe it was wiped out or something. So you directly multiple times mentioned what happened later in many dialogues, after the Supermutants disaster and lost connections: one of the leaders decided to change the organization and take actual controls of surroundings, get out from bunkers and get some influence in the region, which almost completely devastated anyway. The majority supported it, but a good chunk of people was against such a decision and become outcasts. They organized themselves as a more old-style brotherhood and avoiding full-scale war with now "main" brotherhood and now trying to establish a connection with other coast brotherhood. Being more traditional in their ways, they mostly hid inside their bases and don't want to be any kind of major player around the local territory.

The problem with all that is not background and not the premise, not the lore and partially execution. The problem is how underdeveloped outcasts are. While, especially with add-on Broken steel "main" brotherhood forced as main quest linear faction you basically fighting for, all other possibly important fractions in F3 and its add-ons out of the scope of mainquest as the potential protagonists. There is no way in the game to go and properly contact outcasts instead, there is no way to solve the mainquest by removing leaders of the main brotherhood, restore the rule of the old-minded brotherhood traditionalists, and, for example, retake water cleaning station and rivet station as technology and get ending where new-old brotherhood restored to old ways, taking control of the all technological objects in capital wasteland and closed themselves off from the world in their newly acquired fortresses and continue trying to restor connection with the west coast.

https://youtu.be/RnyIQkJru3o
Somebody did a SHotN overview. Guy did not get some lore things, but overall nice review if you are interested in what the hell is this and how it compares to TES5 but too lazy to install it yet.

Replayed Honest Hearts.
Man, it has great atmosphere, though I remember it being larger and longer. (Though my character was definitely overleveled for it.)
It really feels like you're far away from civilisation having to utilise the supplies you brought with yourself on this adventure. (Because if your super special death spitting rifle breaks, you're going to have to join the savages with a club and that's not really to your advantage.)

Also found the theme of the tribes developing different identities and languages, with that got developed on a bit more besides a single intelligence check where you decipher something vaguely German.

Took the wild wasteland perk and it gave me an extra mission for the DLC where I had to hunt down a flaming mutant bear after downing a jug of datura-tea. It was fun.
Still my favourite DLC after all these years.

Currently replaying Old World Blues and it's a fucking chore for some reason. Everything hits very hard, no idea why. Maybe I chose the wrong weapons to bring with me.
And the writing is kinda irritating too. I remember the twist, so I know why the writing is the way it is, but it's still very irksome.
The loot is cool though.

>>51744
Old World Blues is kind of cringe. It is and its endings are "rick and morty the game".

Y'know, it's not even that new of a game, but I really am starting to get what kind of graphical limitations there are and the degree to stagnation from playing some games like the much vaunted Deus Ex Mankind Divided. I mean sure, it's from 2016. I'll grant you that. But it is still something that's considered a huge graphical hog which tests systems to this very day, but I'm beginning to think all this stuff is just terribly optimized, and not that it is actually impressive like you're running the new Crysis. I know it's not quite to the same level, but DXMD really does just end up looking and feeling almost KOTOR-like in a sense, or virtually indinstinguishable from Vampyr whose horrible graphical limitations were hidden by that post processing film grain, and all of which really doesn't actually look all that different to Mass Effect to me. This is complete right down to the horribly shitty borderline late 90s tier textures on like vines and bricks and walls and stuff.

Yet in spite of all this it still somehow manages to be the kind of game which taxes even a literal 1080ti at ultra settings at 1440p. Seriously it takes an $1,100 flagship graphics card just to try and get stable 60fps, if that. I just don't get it. It looks nowhere near as good or graphically complex enough to warrant that or like The Division which amusingly enough is one of the most visually stunning games I've ever played in terms of fidelity.

I kind of feel the same way about Ashes of the Singularity. Yet another game from roughly 2016 which taxes high end graphics cards to play on ultra settings and it just doesn't even look that good. I mean seriously it doesn't. You could try to argue it's all the shit going on but the maps are literally barren and the units themselves are only in the same quantities as Total Warhammer which works just fine, in fact Total Warhammer probably has a lot more units and shit that's going on.

Is this really what it all just boils down to? Complete stagnation with a massive pissing and dick waving contest between dweebs with overpriced $1400 cards on how big their framerates are on 16gb of VRAM just to play the same looking shit as a 2009 game, which invariably the devs themselves just use that higher speed and VRAM as an excuse to optimize their shit even less? I'm just so completely not impressed with a great number of these games.

The stagnation is real.

I'm not even saying high fidelity matters that much I mean hell just look at Borderlands, Hard West, Seven, or any number other highly stylized games which work perfectly for their own style but come on; when it takes an expensive as all shit piece of hardware to run something that looks like it should be at home on a PS3, yes that actually does matter. When it becomes a ballooning cost just to play the game yes it matters, especially when it really doesn't look any different, especially when you've got those awful early 2010s/late 00s textures.

Sorry I just had to take a break from the game to say this. And I mean sure, it's really nice like I said before when devs actually ignore shitty consolization and just push it to the limit, but I don't even see that limit. It doesn't like amazing like everyone says. It looks fairly good, but what it does is just run like shit. Maybe that's part of why The Division impressed me because it was 5 years old and ran so damn smooth while looking impressive in 2021, but meanwhile there's all these games out there that got touted as GPU busters like DXMD and Vampyr which basically just comes off as they couldn't optimize the game for shit so it becomes a pissing match over framerates on badly optimized games. It felt similar when storage suddenly became cheap and plentiful and high speed internet became the rule then suddenly every game ballooned to like 70gb installs.

The strange thing though is it also was alleged to run on something like a i5 2500 with 8gb RAM and some shitty 1-2gb GPU like HD 7870 or GTX 660, with "recommended" being nothing special, so I'm really confused what exactly they meant by "recommended" being 3770k and a GTX 970 or whatever it was because this game runs like shit. I think this is the first game that truly falls below my GPU performance I tried playing all year.

>>51833
Yes, the story is kinda meh, especially how it's basically not spread out evenly at all and instead just dumps exposition at your for half an hour at the beginning and at the end.
The loot and some of the challenges are cool though.

Also, enemies seem to scale with the player so the robot scorpions were hilariously overpowered and tanky for my level 35 character. Basically I ran out of ammo for most of my guns by the end of the game. Not having a proper vendor doesn't help. (You can't buy any ammo at all, though it does help with amassing caps, since most drops from the enemies go for 600 to 2k caps.)

So it's poorly balanced and there's nothing to it besides the plot twist at the end and the somewhat cool weapons and armour you can get.

Replaying Super Mario All-Stars in order after only playing it as one of my earliest video game encounters. I've played most of the included games separately before, but not for a while in themselves.

Beat SMB1 today (thank dog for the save feature in the newer version), and I got through about half of world 1 of The Lost Levels (Japanese SMB2) before deciding that it was enough for today. Especially since the levels are kind of unfun in comparison to the first game's. In SMB1 the game's levels are put together in such a way that you want to go fast and it lets you do so, until you fuck up slightly and then you take the hit. Lost Levels is a lot less up front with its options, and plays a lot slower. It's not kaizo, but it is to traditional level design what bad kaizo is to kaizo hacks, it just lacks that smoothness which makes it fun.

Would No Man's Sky be worth it?

Finally got around to play Bloodborne on a friend's PS4, it's great ofc, just spent the whole evening dying until we reached the first boss.

>>51996
Only played it a bit at a friend's but it's rather dull I think, everything just looks very same-y and all you do is just farm shit to build your base & get new ships.
Maybe I'm just really not a fan of the genre, but I also played Subnautica at his place & kinda enjoyed that.

Does anyone know where to find scientific and government data simulators to download, not necessarily available on Steam, GOG, or whatever mobile install?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vdo8sX19_I
I guess things like metereorology, wargames, disaster preparedness such as Dark Winter, asteroid impacts, GRBs and so on would be the most obvious but any gov/scientific simulation would be neat.

Holy shit it's been a good month for Combat Mission. Fire & Rubble is nearing release (final stages of the Eastern Front expansion for Red Thunder, the mid-late Eastern Front entry).

Then this shit has its announcement drop. It's not the Final Blitzkrieg expansion I was hoping for, but god damn it's a pretty cool release nonetheless. I won't be getting it at release though, I've already got Armored Brigade which keeps me plenty entertained for the Cold War era.
https://www.battlefront.com/cold-war/cmcw-base-game/

>>52021
https://www.matrixgames.com/game/command-modern-operations

It's used by multiple government organisations (Pentagon, ADF and Luftwaffe from memory) as a training aid. That said, as it's as much software as it is a game, you're going to want to be pretty invested in the subject because there's a lot to learn.

Man I just don't get why everybody was hyped for Cyberpunk but I don't even care enough to talk about that and never did, though it's perpetually in every PC hardware ad and on GOG's frontpage.

But anyway talking about hype, I really just don't get why everyone hyped themselves about No Man's Sky. I haven't even played it nor bought it, but decided even on sale half off that is a pricey impulse buy and just the oversaturated pallete alone is enough to put me off from blindly buying it. Then I read reviews and even newer ones are complaining about online content being needed. As said ITT so far as I can tell it's pretty much just a combination of another Bethesdaware 76 or Bethesdaware 4 or whichever shitty game they made that's basically just a crafting and base building microtransactionfest with a loosely Fallout inspired aesthetic, which come to think of it even that they did the same with the pallette.

Is this what these bunch of shitty Western developers now all think is the thing to do? Outer Worlds has got literally the exact same problem. Does garish colors that would make even Slaanesh cringe somehow appeal to stupid zoomers or something? Because I keep seeing it and it just looks so freaking godawful.

My additional problems with NMS has got a lot more to do with gameplay and me realizing it's basically just some kind of clone of Elite Dangerous except it looks way less fun and I'd rather spend my thirty bucks on getting E:D Odyssey this spring at full price than paying for that. Seriously why was this game so hyped? It just looks like a version of Elite Dangerous for children and casuals on consoles and that while it has more to do right now now than E:D apparently took years of updates to get there. But, again, that pallette.

Maybe it's not fully as prevalent as I think it is, but it just feels like that thing especially AAA devs seem to sometimes do where each gen has a certain aesthetic approach, usually an awful one. I remember for FNV and Deus Ex HR it was that piss yellow tint over everything, and right before that was godawful bloom everywhere so idk if it's that, or it is a problem with the engine they're all using, or some convention or what but the biggest turn off to No Man's Sky is how everything look's like children's toy. Well, that, and grinding, crafting, and basebuilding. Like the fuck? If I wanted to play that or Subnautica it's because I cannot physically waltz around the ocean floor on alien planets and likely never will get to see what the surface of an alien world looks like, on camera or IRL with a probe.

>>51999
So in other words like much of what you have said.
Oh fuck it sorry for double post but way too long a shitpost for just one

I've been trying to keep playing Deus Ex MD but it's completely obnoxious what they've done with the story and perverting cyberpunk themes into a metacommentary on how our world is more cyberpunk dystopia than when Deus Ex came out. I can (and have) rant about it all damn day. It's not just the abundant stupidity of twisting poverty in a cyberpunk dystopia to being about "racism" against people getting completely unneccessary surgery to have corporate IP protected prosthetics and making the whole thing literally about just access to consumer goods, which itself is a metacommentary on the depravity of corporate owned cyberpunk dystopias that this of all things is the message Eidos is pushing. It truly makes me feel like I am playing some sort of Consumer propaganda that is outright mocking me for buying into it. I think literally selling Praxis kits useable only once per playthrough is a nice crooked touch to that meta commentary. It's literally paying $1 to give your character an extra perk in an RPG. It's sleazy and insane, and only drives deeper that point that Darrow did a wonderful thing and I'd like to persecute the shit out of the augs until every last man and woman on Earth realizes chopping your limbs off to be literally owned by a megacorp is maybe a bad idea.

Now for some good.
I think the fact I don't particularly care much for cyberpunk stuff in general coupled with my complete and utter lack of sympathy for the message of the game is wearing me down so I'm dragging me feet. The only thing keeping e going is a) it's interesting on the same meta level as The Division and FNV was because as an aug the nonstop calling me a clank is starting to actually piss me off, coupled with and accentuated by b) I am trying to play a peaceful run this time. Last time I just capped everybody in HR so I'm playing it nonlethal now, which work great in head canon and integrates flawlessly with game canon because like I just got seen shooting tranq darts at cops and said eh whatever and then got chewed out by my supervisor for looking like a deranged aug terrorist.
In spite of the fact I didn't kill anyone.

Now I can appreciate that fact because it's realistic and surprisingly responsive, and I'd been trying really hard to actually roleplay the game like I would be thinking in real life. Do I actually want to tranq dart that mobster who can see my face? Fuck no, I don't want him to be capable of remembering and IDing me, and while I only was trying not to get seen by cops for roleplay headcanon purposes was a bit shocked to discover it was actually responsive enough I think it altered my mission dialogue and such. Honestly I wasn't even thinking about the fact I was an aug running around neutralizing every single person at an alleged aug crime scene at the time. I likewise discovered through some reloads that yes indeed, if you swipe someone's credit chips off their table in front of them they will point a gun at you.

I truly like and appreciate that sort of stuff. KOTOR was one of the only other games I ever played where a character actually confronts you about walking into people's homes and stealing their shit, because it's become a bit of shitty game convention where "loot" is hidden everywhere as peoples' belongings and you're just traipsing around rifling through their shit like some kind of kleptomaniacal psychopath because it's become unspoken agreement, and thus breaks the fourth wall while damaging any RPG ethics because you steal people's shit not because it's their shit but because you know that a literal human being wrote that code and put that shit there specifically for you to "steal."

So it becomes an interesting psychological and ethics experiment in vidya where a person with undamaged morality still runs around stealing things because he isn't stealing from NPCs, but rather collecting his own unspoken property from around the game that another person gave to them. This is distracting in a game an a hard addiction to break because realistically who the hell spends his time rifling through every cabinet in a person's home like that? So it is something that is there in DX MD. Thief did something similar where you encounter what turns out to be a child's beloved pet spider, because devs expected you to thoughtlessly follow gaming conventions and kill it. It's superb when devs counterprogram that instinct.

However some of the fun ends there.

I've said it before that I don't care if you level up in a game punching pregnant women to abort fetuses, and the game is called The Puncher, provided that the game itself is actually good. I really don't even give a shit what the message of the game itself is provided that the storywriting itself is good because I tend to view games separately as works of art, and as art while I can like something if it's well done I am going to utterly be merciless to it even if I agree with it if it's done poorly.

Deus Ex HR was unfortunately one of those cases. While MD does it a hell of a lot better because ultimately augs is really just a stand in for social commentary on things like race and class, it's still such a poorly conceived and executed ploy by Eidos I just cannot get past it. Like first of all, who the FUCK has the kind of money to not only buy that much in cybernetics, but the grossly expensive and complicated surgeries attendant to it? I really, really don't want to go there, but...transhumanists...trannies. Like, not even going into my personal IRL issues with why this is retarded to have you leg part of the patented Internet of Things™, but just the premise itself is so incredibly stupid. There's ultimately little evidence ever really provided of why having augs isn't inferior to just buying the damn equipment. Better vision? Just get goggles. Need a circular saw? Just carry a battery powered one. Not one single person in either game so far other than Jensen shows any reason why augs would be beneficial, nor am I provided with any evidence that it's affordable enough to not be some upperclass thing.

They try to also make it like race, except you don't choose to be born black or latino or whatever; you DO directly choose to get augs. So on top of it not working as a class thing, the writing also falls so flat on its face for race commentary I can't help but wonder what sort of person wrote that.

This is all incredibly unfortunate because otherwise the writing is actually quite good, it's just that the premise is mindblowingly stupid, and not only utterly idiotic in its conception but also in execution. Like, if augs are so great, then why the fuck can some non-augmented street cop easily beat the shit out of them like that? So it's an added visual dissonance in seeing someone supposed to be stronger and faster having their shit pushed in by some bully with a nightstick.

I think this is an unfortunate issue where it's the same as why lots of Christian rock sucks, which is that the writing often feels like it takes a backseat to the agenda being pushed, and that agenda here being the utterly bizarre fetishization of cybernetic limbs. It makes the whole thing feel like how I see zoomers that don't get what cyberpunk is about as a genre, and think "haha cool cybernetic limbs and neon lights." It's sadder still that Eidos not only had the original Deus Ex to take inspiration but even has it baked right into the game, and not only that, but the very problems of cybernetics is directly addressed in HR by The Incident and yet writers still keep pushing this "cut your limb off and replace with prosthetics bro it's Evolution™ bro"

This last part is also something profoundly irritating. Anyone with basic knowledge of evolutionary biology understands the mouse test where you chop off a mouse's tail every generation and after a hundred generations it still isn't going to be born tailless or with shorter tails. It doesn't work like that and yet by focusing on cybernetic limbs in particular I can't help but think of the severed tails every single time I see it. It tries to pull of what basically the X-Men did, except with an extremely stupid and badly executed premise and it fails thusly.

I think it's even more hilarious that--and I swear this is unintentional while looking intentional--a lot of character portraits like Sarif have drawings with huge heads and badly proportioned bodies which calls attention to the fact these are like cripples with replaced limbs. It makes them visually[/b] look like people missing parts of their bodies, which is apt. It makes the whole H+ movement look almost like mentally ill people who hate themselves, hate their bodies, and hate being human, and who instead of becoming more than human simply become less so.

So like I said, I can forgive the falcon punching abortions storyline so long as it is well done. And it still is not. It's a horrible premise for a story all around and it never got better in Mankind Divided. It's sloppily done without the barest hint of even trying to make it work.

But even beyond all that, I think that which makes the premise the final ultimate failure is the fact this is a cyberpunk conspiracy game--and the global elites would absolutely want to push augmentation.

That's the final nail in the coffin of this franchise and what makes it unforgivable to me. It's clearly something to where the global elites in their shadowy cabals would WANT to push cybernetics. The cabals would WANT people to become augs, because guess who can own the patents to your limbs? But not only that, not only corporate IP ownership over your literal body, not only the dehumanization, hell not even the idea of remote mind control or body control that HR itself was even aware of and likewise executed in the sloppiest manner ever, but for fuck's sake the PEDOT cluster and neuropozyne. Neuropozyne! Why the fucking hell would an Illuminati group be against you replacing your body parts in a way that makes you physically dependent on a big pharma drug for life?!

Now I'll grant you I'm only partway through MD so this can change, but thus far it's absolutely more of the same, it's absolutely Picus pushing a corrupt anti-aug message, it's absolutely a conspiracy of shadowy cabals to thwart muh H+™ movement. There is no logical consistency here at all with any of it and were I in charge I'd ripped out the entire storylines of both Human Revolution and Mankind Divided and make it a more nuanced take on what it means to be human and to have human agency, and the position of class and ownership and dependence in an advanced technological Capitalist society for example. Those are all very good themes to address and Eidos accomplishes absolutely fuckall for it while selling you Praxis kits.

All of which like I said is an unbearable shame because the game and story that actually is there is otherwise good. Like, really good. It's an incredibly good story and gameworld otherwise, even down to the fact I can manually crouch instead of using snap cover which is option LIKE EVERY GAME WITH COVER SHOULD BE.

In just the first few minutes of being in Golem city it's incredibly scary encountering the fascism there. The whole game world is in fact extremely well done for precisely what it must feel like in the early stages of a Nazi or fascist takeover or some police state coming down on everyone, complete with deportations, augs only lines and fountains and being hassled for my papers when getting off the train in the natural human only stop. The chatter on the city streets, the commentary of passing civilians and cops, random beat downs as you walk by, barbed wire and an omnipresent authoritarian atmosphere, it's just great.

It's almost like there were two totally separate writing teams, which the one was holdovers of like scraping the bottom of 4krebs tier retards mixed in with actual writers who clearly went to school for professional writing and worked directly with the game designers. It's an extremely odd and jarring albeit subtle experience in that regard, because like if you can just pretend the people getting beaten don't have arms and legs from The Terminator when you're walking around that shit as part of the normal world there it is truly immersive, and provides a real sense of the fact there's seemingly the writer(s) pushing their pet Transhumanist™ message with no regard for the story or basic logic, mixed with people who have some progressivist agenda but unlike the first actually care about the story and world itself being well done with real artistry.

This all helps make it a lot easier when you're running around to not swipe some poor homeless aug's credits right in front of him while he's sleeping in a box, or just randomly breaking into people's apartments and stealing their beer. It truly does offer some elements of being able to play a JC Denton in that regard because you really can be a total dick, and while it's more infrequent than I'd like the game world does go out of its way to remind you you're being a dick sometimes and man I just can't get past the fact I got chewed out by my boss because that one fucking cop in an exo suit saw me and shot at me before I tranqed his ass too.

I suppose it would be frustrating for a lot of people playing nonlethal to have that happen, but I personally greatly enjoyed the fact because, hey, you're an aug stun gunning a bunch of crime scene investigators and cops at the site of a terrorist bombing allegedly by an aug because you're trying to steal evidence. Of course it fucking looks bad, which again in my case has been great because my headcanon is how many guys I plugged last game whenever I felt the need to defend myself with deadly force, and so now my Denton is just trying to live with that fact of the monster he's become who swore off ever having to kill again, and being reminded that even if I'm not killing the guy I'm still putting some of these people in the hospital.

I imagine myself getting chewed out by Miller "they're just mallcops and three of them have brain hematomas. Who's going to pay for all that huh? You think staying in the ICU is cheap? And you shocked a forensics tech until she was unconscious for chrisake!" I think that what really amplifies this is the fact unlike HR, MD is a truly open world game. Like, there are technically levels cut off from other places, but in HR it very much felt like you "were supposed to" shoot these guys, and in places like Rifleman Bank Station the game went out of its way to justify shooting these people, and it wasn't hard to do so. In MD you'll be passing by cops and their drones and really get the urge to beat them senseless, but you can't, because it's like walking real streets and not a level, with all kinds of mechanical and plot consequences for flipping out.

Hell the very first intro to the game has your unit commander straight up asking if you're going to get all wonky mentally because of The Incident that happened with HR so it really behooves you narratively to not just go full psycho and start shooting and beating people. Keep in mind I am also saying all this as being politically anti-aug in real life as it were, but the game is so well written in that sense that I feel compelled not to make all augs look like shit by chimping out on everybody and looking like some kind of deranged aug terrorist. So in that regard, yes it is very well done.

All in all I'd say that so far MD is vastly superior to HR, but it carries so many of the same problems in taking everything Deus Ex to shitty directions with dumb decisions and slimy microtransactions from Eidos that it's been incredibly difficult for me to force myself to keep playing this game sometimes. Naturally cyberpunk isn't necessarily my genre but I'll take any game not fantasy if done well enough, but frankly a game like Satellite Reign is a good cyberpunk game--this one is not. It is, but it's not. Which is a tragedy because underneath it all I can see a truly great cyberpunk dystopia game but so much is so haphazardly, sloppily, negligently, and just downright stupidly slapped together that's it's hard not to instantly criticize it or focus on all the good when there's so much shit attached to it.

All in all playing Deus Ex Mankind Divided has just kept me thinking "why am I not playing a space game."
I suppose that in that regard, it's not far off from the first game, which I also didn't really like, while improving every other thing from Deus Ex I thought was tedious or shitty only to make the one redeeming feature of the first game--its writing--the fundamentally shittiest part of the last two Eidos games. I think what's even worse is the fact you really could strip out anything good about MD and put it in a totally separate world, even a fantasy world, and it would still be just as good if not better, whereas the cyberpunk is a total afterthought purely for aesthetics and excuses to use magic abilities or superpowers. I mean hell, just have the police drones and cops scanning me for my aug's firmware or MAC address attached to cybernetics, but like everything else that would make sense in a cyberpunk game, it doesn't.

Got the itch to play Hotline Miami again.
It is as good as I remembered it, although I didn't quite managed to break my highscores from years ago (also got all cheevos) except in one level.
And apart from Assault with some window bullshit, and Hot&Heavy with the nine room segment, it was great fun. I just love running around with Tony punching dudes to mush.

Then I got the itch to replay Hotline Miami 2.
And it is also still as I remembered it. Some good levels, and lots of absolute fucking bullshit with windows and getting shot from way out of my own range. Spent half an hour on Stronghold. Seriously, fuck that level. And fuck all the military levels, I distinctly recall having them in bad memory. Everything else was more-less bearable, apart from the zebra's bullshit roll dodge getting me killed many times.
I can appreciate the story more than the first time, although I still believe that storyfags are worst kind of gaming "fans".
It's really crazy how they took the worst parts from one and made them main features. I just watched an A+ run of Stronghold and it was all peekaboo, baiting and taking potshots. And that is not why I play Hotline Miami.
Also, 1 had better music, fight me.

>>52048

>Also, 1 had better music, fight me.

I dunno, mang. Sure, the first one had Perturbator, but the second has Perturbator and Carpenter Brut. My favorite track from both games is probably Inner Animal, though. Is the synthwave craze over yet, BTW? Can I enjoy the music being my usual no-life basement-dwelling self and not looking as if I went along with Yet Another Normie Fad?

>>52050
How about you stop caring about how you are perceived by people who don't care about you?
Just listen to what you like and stop caring.
Let's test this:
Carpenter Brut is fucking gay

>>52051
It's not about how others perceive myself, it's about how I perceive myself. My problem with normies (keins, extraverts, sociowhores, whatever) is that for them a game, a piece of music, a film, a meme etc. is often just a passing trend, a conversation topic for a short time, and it will be forgotten by them after a year or two (I call it YANF — Yet Another Normie Fad). The nature of the work in question doesn't matter (I like a lot of mainstream shit and not ashamed of it), the opinions of other people about my preferences don't matter (it's unlikely that people will find out about them anyway), what matters is that I will keep holding the work dear when normies have already forgotten about it: it will mean that I didn't fall down to normies' level, and I don't have to be ashamed of myself for treating the work lightly. Sounds kinda hipster, but I can't help it.

>>52051
Also, all synthwave is fucking gay. XDDDDDDDDD

>>52054
But that doesn't compute with

>and not looking as if I went along with Yet Another Normie Fad?

If you perceive yourself a certain way, that's one thing, but here you clearly state LOOKING AS IF, which means your outwards appearance. And even if you hadn't said that, I still don't understand your problem-
You don't care how "normies" perceive you, but only how you perceive yourself, yet you are afraid of what exactly?
Also, hipsters are the epitome of "defining yourself through the reactions of your environment", because you can't be cool before it was cool without an external consensus on cool.
Get your story straight.

>>52050
If the design of graphics cards is any indicator, not very likely. To this day I am mystified why anyone still likes the Western 1980s. It was awful. We got horror movies and some scifi out of it and that was just about it. It isn't just the zoomers though. I knew some people who liked the 80s when I was in school well over a decade ago, although it was fairly niche then. I mention this because it's clearly all part of the same idolization of the 80s that's making synthwave and such popular, which strikes me as just glorification of mindless nihilistic consumerism.
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/305594
I can only imagine this is part of why all these bydlo embraced it and turned it into a fad.

>>52095

>When neuroscientists ran MRI tests on Apple fans, images of Apple gadgets triggered the same parts of the brain that fire when religious people see images of their gods.

lmao the Consoomer meme is absolutely true

>>52095
I think people look back on the 80s as a time when the promise of capitalism was actually delivered. And I mean the hedonistic parts of it, not the lofty ideals about human progress and shit.
The appeal of it is hankering back for a time when you COULD actually be a mindless consumer living in pop-culture bliss, rather than a miserable drone that works himself to the bone to afford a few crumbs of escape through consumption every now and then.

It's also interesting how some parts of 80s nostalgia and synthwave in particular got adopted by crypto-fascists. I guess both fans of capitalism and fascism ultimately want the same thing: a return to the garden of Eden. They just disagree about the means.

>>52100
It absolutely is not about a return to the garden of Eden; I think that is true more of starry eyed naive Socialists and anarcho-primitivists (or any form of anarchists really). I think it's more a craving for power over their fellow man than any kind of romanticism. Fascist romanticism itself usually just consists of some idealized time when they felt like they could be masters of the world, and both fascist movements and Capitalism both promise something like that in their own ways, complete with it seemingly never occurring to their drones that a drone is all most of them are ever going to be.

In terms of Garden of Eden ideologies I think that the main difference between anarchists and mutualists or whatever and Communists is whether you want to go backwards or forwards in time to create muh perfekt utopia. Communists seem to keep dreaming if only we could do x y and z some day we will achieve full technologically advanced Communism, whereas the anarchists view technology more with a cyberpunk dystopia tier level of suspicion and want to go backwards in time towards an age of small villages and shamans. Fascists and Capitalists don't seem to care at what technological level they are be it medieval Europe or muh perfekt Objectivist galactic trade federation so long as it gives them an opportunity to be on top of everyone else, with many fascists and neofascists prefering to go backwards in time against the present and Capitalists prefering to go forwards with wealth growth but I think that ultimately if a Capitalist could live as a feudal baron and a fascist could rule over a planet of untermensch slaves they'd both be satisfied, and I think that the main difference between the two clusters has to do with how they view hierarchies. If you believe the idealized state is rigid class stratification and hierarchies you tend to become a reactionary of one sort or another, be it those or religious or whomever, and the others wanting to eschew concepts of social hierarchy altogether.

Which is really what it all boils down to, power and hierarchy. What confuses me are the monarchists because it consists of not just you but your children and children's children licking the boots of some global elite into perpetuity. Thankfully most of those retards died out by now.

>>52103
I tend to disregard the aesthetics of a political philosophy and what it actually promises, even if not directly stated.

Fascism presents itself as a choice for "spiritual aristocrats" who believe in will to power and shit, but for the average schmuck, the real promise that that he'll be given lebensraum, the state will take care of everything, he will be free to coom and consoom with his big titted blonde aryan wife, and make 12 children.

Capitalism likes to dress itself in the aesthetics of technological progress and expansion, a choice for quasi social darwinist "self made men", but what it really promises for the average guy is the same thing. He will have a big suburban house with a white picket fence, le invisible hand will sort everything out so he won't have to worry about anything again, his small family business will afford him a comfortable income for cooming and consooming, and a hot bimbo wife on a red sports car. And also make 12 children I guess.

Both are similar in that you're supposed to live by-proxy through the "top dogs" of the hierarchy (the warrior philosopher ubermensch or the self made tech bajillionaire), and be weirdly proud of their accomplishments, while you yourself are "taken care of". They want "everything to be in its right place". That's my analogy with the garden of Eden. Returning to the state of a satisfied, bipedal animal.

Leftism, I don't think it necessarily promises comfort. It feels like what leftism promises is more like "justice" or "fairness", sometimes at the expense of personal comfort, for good or for ill.

>>52103

>whereas the anarchists view technology more with a cyberpunk dystopia tier level of suspicion and want to go backwards in time towards an age of small villages and shamans

Yeah, let's just ignore the fact that the vast majority of Anarchists are pro-technology, and see tools like the internet as means of organising international solidarity between free workers. Damn Anarchists, they hate technology and the wider world as a concept.

>>52111
A lot of the anarchists I knew were more the crunchy types. I dunno. I am well aware of what you're saying but factored that in, because it always struck me as more they were using it as a means to an end, if not outright turning the master's own tools against him like a sort of hacker ethos.

>>52117
But how does turning the tools of the oppressor against them imply wanting villages and shamans? I'm sure that fire wasn't invented by a socialist. Doesn't mean I don't get to use it. By the same measure, many of the labour rights that we've got today come from a socialist root, despite the liberal order claiming ownership. The point of anarchy is not to regress and redo. The past is rife with failure to learn from, not ideals to go back to. The commune is not desired for social simplicity but for social responsiveness, and technology leads only to benefits for us. Whether that's easing global solidarity or enabling the means of production to be more efficient, enabling the proletariat more and more time to pursue arts and leisure.

An old style village has rulers, be they the local government, the clergy, or even the mob. An anarchist commune instead wants to have people running the collectively held means collectively, be that through direct democracy, workers councils or whatever. Thereby eliminating rulership (the literal definition of anarchy, no rulers).

>>52108
There are also dissident right thinkers who are very much of the mindset that technology makes you gay, a favorite meme among certain people in that sphere. It's not an accident Pentti Linkola was a fan of Theodore Kaczynski (not right-wing, but whatever) as are most people affiliated with the loose collective of radical ecologists called Pine Tree Gang:
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/unabomber-netflix-tv-series-ted-kaczynski
http://www.penttilinkola.com/pentti_linkola/ecofascism/

Not every Fascist is a futurist, m8. Not sure if that's what you were implying, but just wanted to testify.

>>52120
I was implying the opposite, that fascists are more prone to technological regressivism and romanticism of the primitive man as are a fair number of reactionaries and conservatives by their nature.

I would like to point out however that technological progressivism is not always good, and reminds me of that comic lemme see if I can find it

Eh I can't find the one I was looking for but there's a whole series of these, and ironically each of them correlates somehow to an advanced technology that ends up fucking up the planet, like fracking creating earthquakes in Oklahoma, fire leading to CO2 emissions causing runaway climate change, stuff like that. It's a dumb tautology I've seen used that extending their same argumentum ad absurdum bs clearly shows how you indeed can go too far, which is a most frequent theme of science fiction. They too are utopianists who'd love to convince you that any fears about splitting the atom are nonsense and how splitting the atom will lead to a golden age of free energy and medical breakthroughs, while conveniently ignoring precisely why Teddy K came to the regressivist conclusions that they did. I have never and likely will never trust the optimists.

Meanwhile I think that is actually what ultimately makes science fiction so compelling usually which is precisely because it often does take into account the horrible nature of man either as an incompetent or as malevolent, and the cold uncaring brutality of the universe when confronted with the naive and arrogant optimisms of Man. I simply think too many people like to detach from the logical part and descend to tribalism or some pet ideological point, which in other cases leads to undue hate for technical innovation, and in either direction from any camp creates dystopias. I just think it's sad we are not ruled by scientists and poets instead of businessmen, lawyers, and bureaucrats, who themselves are just barely a step up from monarchs, and none of whom are going to gibe me my ebin space programs.

Seriously we have like two nice things in the country, the postal service and NASA. I'd imagine watching the Red Army choir go down in flames felt like watching USPS get destroyed.

I'm playing Fallout: A Tale of Two Wastelands at the moment, which is basically Fallout 3 + NV both within the NV game engine.

It's probably the only way to actually play a stable version of Fallout 3 these days on the PC

I started in DC and after about level 15 I made my way to the DC train station and had to do an autistic as fuck quest to activate the train to Vegas. DC just bored me to tears tbh, it's so soulless compared to the Mojave, but I reckon I'll go back to do some of the F3 DLC I never played. Only one I really played was that Alien one and it's the 2nd worse DLC I ever played and it even gave me motion sickness

Was kinda novel running around the Mojave with Lincoln's repeater and a .32 rifle though, I'll be heading back to DC with That Gun and Ratslayer.

>>52169
I dunno how the DC integration is since I never used TTW, but the dev team for Project Nevada also did Wanderer's Edition for Fallout 3 which is fun as fug, with a much darker tone than PN. If the TTW version keeps the Wanderer's Edition vibes for DC, then that'd be a good way to spice it up.

>>52169
I actually really wanted to like running around the open world ruins of Washington D.C. but in the end I just felt like it was some bland elder scrolls with guns Bethesda walking simulator.

I've ranted about this too much before but just wanted to say that I found the actual environment and setting itself far more compelling, but then again I am far more used to temperate forests and basically Winter's Bone or Darkwood settis irl which is probably why I have such a fascination with places like urban environments. It should also be noted though I have actually been to NYC and DC, LA, and flown over/through Las Vegas so I can actually picture the real life equivalent and man, I have to tell you NYC is by far the eeriest place in the world I've ever been to. DC itself just has these like black lines in its aura of gray and granite, this strange sense of an older evil and occult with prestige deeply ingrained. I am not sure how to describe it. But the actual place is neat to wander about and check out the museums plus it's the most ebin metro so I would strongly encourage to check it out once. Vegas basically just looks like a bunch of half finished houses surrounding a bunch of hotels that themselves surround like one bright neon road in the middle of the fucking desert. It's a ridiculous place, like West Hollywood is a ridiculous place but boring and sadder somehow. As for New York it has this most compelling aura where the sky itself glows like hell at night and blots out the very stars and moon itself, to where it feels like a simulation within a simulation that isn't even real filled with all these people watching shadows in Plato's cave seemingly oblivious to the fact it's like wandering around Rome--or Pompei. You get this very distinct metaphysical read on it where you can tell it once didn't even exist not long ago, and quite soon will be nothing but these ruins and how famous it will be across the centuries. You can literally feel the impending doom and the ruins of that city in the air, with a green aura that flashed then dimmed at the turn of this century, a place whose existence will be nearly immortalized by man long after half is destroyed by fire and the rest partly sunk beneath the sea. So I'd say to try visiting NYC too at some point.

This is really a big part of why I adored The Division so much, because it's a very faithful recreation of the experience of being in that city the day after the traffic stopped and the guns flowed in. I hope to play Division 2 at some point but frankly while it might be cool it wasnt as impressive looking and believe me the place is a humid fucking swamp in the summer, and likewise a tiny island of the most rich and powerful people in the country and arguably the planet surrounded by a sea of poverty. Sadly the few hours that I played of Fallout 3 didn't feel so much as DC as it was just any generic art deco ruined cities. Yeah. I think it was still a pretty interesting environment.

>>52121

>Eh I can't find the one I was looking for but there's a whole series of these,

I am almost done with HM2 on Hard, I just have to get through one of the worst levels (Release), but HM2 has lots of those.
The amount of absolute bullshit getting thrown at you is just astounding. I have actually started watching youtube videos for pro strats and even the dudes finishing those bullshit levels with an S rank use peekaboo and cheesing.
I have really come to appreciate the different characters (not story-wise, but gameplay-wise), but holy shit fuck the level design. When 80% of all walls are glass, it's really fucked up.
And I still stand by my opinion that the music in 1 was better. Why? Because the music in the first game really got you pumping, ready to go berserk and fuck shit up, whereas here it's often more atmospheric stuff that exactly fits the gameplay. Lame gameplay - lame music.
I read posts from people who were happy that "you are finally not penalized for using guns anymore", which is bullshit, because you were never penalized for using in HM1, but in HM2 you are penalized for using melee. For example the final Tony level, on Hard there were two guys with guns in a room constisting of windows, with a whole other room inbetween. How are you supposed to get to them in time before they shoot you? I went in and out of the entrance until one of them took the bait. And that takes the whole speed out of the gameplay. The S rank dude baited them from the other side of the room, but it's an extremely risky strategy too, because you need RNG so they don't snipe you immediately.
Or in Dead Ahead when entering the second floor and you're hunted by 4 dudes while simultaneously getting shot at from half a screen away. If you don't have a gun at that point, you will also take pretty long taking them out one by one, especially with fatguys walking around, so getting a gun is absolute imperative.
Also, I noticed that I got stuck on corners or "slid" too far when peeking, which got me killed numerous times. The controls in HM1 were definitely crisper.

It's really a shame because 2 has so many good ideas, but they're all immediately alleviated by the focus on guns and story.

>>52179
Oh Hotline Miami. Maybe my brain sometimes flips orientations along vertical and horizontal axis because it took me over a paragraph to realize you weren't bitching about HW2 and I just kept thinking "ya, ya it really does like to throw lots of bullshit at you in some levels like multiple dreadnought groups from multiple angles within the first two minutes of the mission."

>>52169
Speaking of guns, I don't remember F3 having any worthwhile weaponry.
Once you got hold of a hunting rifle and a shotgun with a drum barrel the combat progression stopped dead in its tracks, for one, because the shotgun was owerpowered, and because the enemies scale with you 90% of the time, so the hunting rifle suffices.
I remember that in the originals I usually made the transition from small arms to energy weapons by the late-mid game, I don't recall such a thing happening in Fallout 3.

>>52190
I remember the Plasma Rifle was a pretty mean piece of kit if you could maintain it (late game), but yeah a lot of the weapons were pretty sub-par.

Last post concerning Hotline Miami 2. Finished it on Hard yesterday. Ironically, it's not really hard, but just fucking annoying. In fact, getting good scores is easier than in Normal because more enemies means less time between combo links (although the game is already extremely lenient concerning combo chains).
And because I have some obsessive character traits, I am now trying to A+ every level on Normal. Getting shot from beyond the FOV is still 100% infuriating. The constant need to look ahead as far as possible is really annoying and at this point I am wondering why they didn't just make the Shift-look standard, because I have to hold Shift down all the time anyway. The controls still fuck me over often, also fuck doors. I made a macro on that topic.

>>52190
I think you generally were fine after getting a .32 rifle and if you wanted the best you could go for Lincoln's Repeater (which uses .44 magnum)

The Chinese Assault Rifle (ak47 basically) is also pretty good but most of the rest of the guns were shite.

In TTW you start with some DLC shit from New Vegas, so I had the Weathered 10mm Pistol and Caravan Shotgun which I mostly used until I could get some decent(er) Fallout 3 weapons.

>>52242
You know how the DLC loads special weapons and stuff into your inventory? Is that just per one save file, so like if I loaded a save, stuff went into my inventory, then exited the game without saving, is it just going to disappear?

Does anyone here, or has anyone here, play or played SWAT 4?
If so, is anyone interested in doing some missions together? It's pretty cheap on GOG, but since the devs won't see any money anymore it's also ethical to pirate. Make sure to get the Gold version, though.

>>52288
I've been playing a bit recently. Dunno what latency would look like from Australia though.

>>52290
Would it even matter than much in cooperative play? I am concerned about the time difference, since I am usually only free on MET evenings, especially on workdays.

Played quite a bit of Blasphemous this weekend.
It's a pretty good metroidvania in a dark setting inspired by Catholic imagery.
The atmosphere, i.e. graphics & music are very cool, but gameplay wise it's pretty average.

Depends on the netcode. Playing Halo with brick can go from playable to unplayable depending on game mode because campaigns still use old netcode that means whoever isn't hosting runs at 5fps at best, and assuming no stutterig, you're probably looking at well over a second to respond to anything, while in firefight, you just have a third of a second or so of lag between hitting an enemy, and it registering.

SWAT 4 being of its age, makes me think that it may be closer to the former than the latter.

Timezones is a fair thing, didn't think of that. Can make late evenings work (9:30+) since that comes to fairly civilised morning hours here. That said, SWAT 4 was still active a few years back, so I don't see why it wouldn't still be populated with local players if there are no other Ernsts about. Chances are it'll be better latency wise too.
https://swat4stats.com/

>>52304
I must admit, I know basically nothing about netcode since we didn't get fast internet until 2006 and by then I had basically missed out on the whole multiplayer stuff outside of LAN parties.
I know there are pubs, but the few times I have played multiplayer games in the last ten years, I had almost only bad experiences with pubs and the one time I played ArmA with /int/ was pretty fun.

>>52304
>>52305
I could act as a host to be a bridge between wect and eact if we ever decide to play multiplayer video games.
So far me and aussie do fine, since ping between us is 200, and less if there's a server in between, but EU to AU would be brutal, so it's better to have someone in the middle.

>>52300
Had pretty much the same impression. It looks cool, and I'm gonna complete it someday, but it doesn't offer much compared to other Metroidvanias, even older ones.

Replayed Lonesome Road too.
It was a lot shorter than I remembered. It's also piss easy if your character is close to level 50.
The story itself was kinda meh. Most of the dialogue seems to be written for a character that's NCR or Legion aligned, so there's little relevance of Ulysses shittalking you. (Though he shittalks you for siding with House too.)

The scenery was kinda cool. I didn't like how fragmented the lore and Ulysses' dialogue was. Kinda made the whole thing feel like it's just pseudo-deep memery for the sake of it, instead of something deep and symbolic like it wanted to be.

Don't know if I'm going to try playing Dead Money. I never finished it because it was such a fucking awful experience. But my character now actually has melee skills, so it might not be as hard as it was when I didn't know what I was doing.

>>52242
It's kinda weird since the hunting rifle in 3 is a weapon you acquire very early into the game, and since everyone and their mother carries it, it's your standard issue rifle for most of the game, though I don't remember how effective it was against Enclave troops. (Not like it matters, since if I remember correctly BoS knights and Liberty Prime do most of the fighting for you in set pieces.)

In New Vegas it'd be comparable to the varmint rifle, though it's not nearly as common as the hunting rifle in 3.
(And in NV the Hunting Rifle is a .308 rifle that's more like a budget version of the sniper rifle for mid-game if you get a scope for it.)
You won't get far with the varmint rifle, and you forget it even exists by the time you're taking Hoover Dam for the faction of your choice, which is why I find it weird that F3's progression stops dead in its tracks with the hunting rifle and you can use it without much issue during the assault on the purifier.

It probably stems for the fact that F3's content is centred around the player being able to do most stuff whenever he wants, so instead of having set threat levels, the strength of enemies is rubberbanded to the player's abilities, which is very different to New Vegas's approach, where you have de-facto dangerous areas that will fuck you up until you return later with better skills and equipment. (Like the deathclaws in the quarry or any area with cazadores or BoS troops that you've angered.)

>>52307
Whoa, a ping of 200 is already pretty brutal. Unless ping matters less in Halo than in other FPS.

When playing quake or UT the max ping I can tolerate is around 50ms. Beyond that there is a nauseating feeling of disconnect between my hand and my eyes.

>>52318
Depends on netcode and type of game.
I think I can tolerate up to 150.
After a while my brain just gets used to the delay and I start leading my shots and stuff.

There's not many servers in kazakhstan, I refuse to play on russian ones, and asia has a language barrier, so I play on EU servers most of the time.
But not the french ones because they ban anyone with a ping above 70

At this point I think it behooves me to just start some dumb blog and actually proofread and edit and tighten what I write rather than just shitposting textwalls here.

I think I could end up getting hits probably just because so many of my sincere views would be regarded as trolls apparently that it'll become controversial, and the sad thing is most content gets attention because it of being controversial than anything else, which is the downfall of newmedia, old media, and internet. I'm still dumbfounded a game that sincerely awful as Mass Effect 2 had people assuming I was writing "bait" and trolling for calling out how blatantly shitty it was.

Maybe it's the capeshit effect. Maybe it's because so much modern game writing is awful it makes turds look good in comparison. In any case I discovered that even Human Revolution was universally praised for its writing. Some of the writing for the two newest Deus Ex games was genuinely pretty good but as I said before the overall plot is so awful and retarded for both it's unfathomable to me they get this much praise. It makes me think about how susceptible the modern audience is to any kind of bullshit you tell to them, and how critical thinking when down the tubes for generations. It's almost like as critical thinking and knowledge failed, and bydlo became more susceptible to propaganda, our storytelling also failed. Or maybe it was the other way around.

Jesus Christ Dead Money is so fucking shit.

I played... well, I watched how my boyfriend played Evil Within. He was enthusiastic about this game, even tho he knew this is not a 10 out of 10 masterpieces, and I personally quite cold for a "Japanese survival horror" genre in general quite honestly, especially when it is a more linear game instead of an exploration of the mansion or something like that.
And well, I can say that this game has a number of interesting elements in it: usage of "dream logic" in some sequences, some city effects Inception-stole, how the hub of the game is changing depending on the chapter you in. Part of the Asylum with invisible enemies (really invisible, not partially) was scary and interesting from a game design perspective. But in general, honestly, the game overall was not that interesting for me on plot and creativity sides. 99% of enemies are just "zombies". The majority of locations are sewer-catacomb-ruins-tunnels etc. The overall concept of the "dream world" not utilized, there nothing in this game which will distinct it visually from any generic horror game. The main plot is mediocre and pretty generic, the main villain before the end looks like a cringe assassin's creed shadow the hedgehog. There is a number of lame boss battles, most annoying of which repeats twice.
On the gameplay side yea, it is sort of "survival horror" I guess but for me, it felt just as crappy 3rd person shooter with brick mechanics and movement and nothing more. There not much puzzles, well maybe 2-3 Skyrim tier ones which a 3yo child will pass in a second. Late into the game, it becomes, even more, some sort of parody on itself with Humvee turret sections, giant spider boss, and big arenas full of zombies. The last boss is sort of funny, there no horror or survival in it. I know the game was made by formed Resident evil development and it does feel like someone's attempt to cross old REs and like RE5-6. The problem with that is that the market was already full of blandly forgettable horrors and 3rd person shooters with zombies.
Ehhh/10

>>52329
Dunno. It was (and still is) my favorite of F:NV DLCs. Lonesome Road was more tedious for me.

Okay, so we're three people right now theoretically in for SWAT 4. If we get two more we could try it.
Today I was in the serial killer house with the obstinate granny. Maced her right in her dumb face, that dumb cunt.
And I still find it hilarious how you STILL have to shout at and handcuff an emaciated girl in some basement rape dungeon because the game tells you THAT YOU NEVER KNOW FOR SURE WHO IS FRIEND OR FOE.

Wasting my time on the Tomorrow Never Ends James Bond game for the PS1 (turned on resolution and texture filtering enhancements in the emulator). When I get used to its controls it is actually a fun game for what it is - console 3rd person shooter of its generation. I can see traces of the Golden Eye even tho this is a different game by a different studio. Yet the similar concept of short missions, multiple "tasks" and gadgets. In some ways, it plays even more smoothly tho you need to get used to combat. Jank is all over the place but it was normal for console shooters of the time.

>>52333

>And I still find it hilarious how you STILL have to shout at and handcuff an emaciated girl in some basement rape dungeon because the game tells you THAT YOU NEVER KNOW FOR SURE WHO IS FRIEND OR FOE.

[insert burger joke]

>>52334

>Tomorrow Never Ends

*never dies
fix. I actually not seen 90s bond movies yet

>>52335
I mean I understand it's a gameplay mechanic, but still. Even an actual burger SWAT guy made fun of that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wbqjoTx_Tc

Please ignore the editing, I also hope the person responsible for it burns in hell.

>>52332
I got to the casino, which is farther than I've ever come before playing it.
But the sound design and the enemies are awful.
Every single area has some monotonous, loud environmental sound that drives me crazy.
Combat is just poking the retarded damage sponge enemies to death with the cosmic knife.
Like, fuck, send out 12 enemies with 100HP each instead of 2 with 600, because it's fucking unbearable.

I also find the map very hard to navigate, and the collar-triggering and poison-cloud zones don't help either.

>>52340
Bro there's a BAR in one of the siderooms, 3 minutes into the DLC where you get Dog/God, just sitting on a shelf

Problems weren't (except for the beeping shit and collar shit, of course). I've just started it myself in TTW and I remember it being tough, but I always went through it becaus BAR is my favourite gun.

>>52243
I don't know actually, but you can select what DLC to load when you boot up TTW, I should have unchecked all the free weapons because they do kinda ruin things

>>52316
Yeah that's true, but there's plenty of deadly things in DC too until you get something decent like the Chinese Assault Rifle, you don't want to be wandering around the ruins of DC until you're at least level 15 or something because there's mutants running around with miniguns n' shit

>>52335

>STOP RESISTING!

>>52341
Too late for that m8 so I sure hope not. Too busy with DXMD. It's really been starting to grow on me.

>>52342
The game is grim as fuck in terms of absurd police brutality but damn if it isn't fun regardless. If only we could contain the real thing to harmless video games.

>>52341

>there's a BAR in one of the siderooms

I completed about 90% of the DLC with the police pistol because I approached it like some Silent Hill game and thought that I gotta save stronger ammo for later, more difficult areas. The pistol actually worked fine, and when I completed the DLC the second time with a melee character, I found it being harder somewhat.

>>52341
I have the BAR. And also 100 points in guns.
Still feels like it does fuck all against the ghosts. And even if I killed one with the BAR, I'd still need to whip out my knife and mutilate the fuckers before they get up.
Even if I kill one with a shotgun or a pistol their heads or other limbs rarely seem to explode.

Or maybe I'm just unfit to play this DLC.
Probably my issue is that unlike the other DLCs, it's completely different to the base game, focusing more on combat in close quarters with limited supplies than with doing tasks and skill-checks.
(But then again, the casino itself seems cool with that roaring 20s aesthetic, hopefully there's a way to turn off the holograms and it's not just an infinitely long sneaking section.)

>>52354

>hopefully there's a way to turn off the holograms

There is. Each hologram has an emitter (round blue convex thingy) which can be either turned off with high enough repair skill or destroyed with weapons. They are somewhat hidden, but not that hard to find. Didn't you see one in the hospital, by the way?

>>52355
No, I just ran like an idiot in the hospital and set the hologram to patrol the second floor so I can avoid it entirely.

>>52354
You know, I'm playing it myself at the moment and the BAR seems to do fuck all to them too. I found the best bet is to weaken them with shotgun (I have the 2 shotgun perks to blow them back and do extra damage) then I take out the police pistol and do VATS headshots.

If I can get a single shot rifle that might be better, because I think I have a perk to increase aim for single shot rifles

>>52356
The hologram emitter is in the hallway of the medical clinic in plain sight. Same deal with the radios and stuff btw, you can switch them off / shoot them to stop the beeping most of the time, unless they are shielded

I always do that DLC just for the BAR though, it's my favourite gun in all games

>>52356
Yeah, it's not much of a threat in the hospital, since there is only one. I turned it off myself the first time I went through it simply because I accidentally stumbled upon the emitter, otherwise I wouldn't be bothered to look for it, because the hologram in the hospital is easily avoided. There are way more in the casino itself plus tons of Vera's holograms in the casino's suites; they probably can be avoided too, but it's much easier to turn them off. The ones at the very end of the DLC are indestructible, though, I think.

>>52357
They don't take extra damage from headshots, which is extra infuriating. I wouldn't complain if they took headshot damage, but without limb damage they're damage sponges.
For context they have 300-600 HP depending on type. A normal deathclaw has ~500. (Though at least their DT is 0, so your 50DPS knives do their max damage allowed by the melee ability and strength you have.)

>>52358
>>52357
Well, it's nice to know at least that I will not have to sneak around the holograms eternally.
I never bothered with sneaking in New Vegas except for upgrading the stealth suit. I don't think any of the missions are really made for it, except for a few where you can "hide" in plain sight and steal evidence or documents.

Also Irelad who are you giving Vegas to?

Never knew your character could get addicted to whiskey. My courier is now a practising alcoholic :D
And I have no fixers, so my only option is hauling bottles of whiskey around.

The casino part is definitely better than the villa.
It'd be so much better if ghost people didn't spawn every time I return to the fucking lobby. It doesn't add tension, it just wastes my stims, chems, ammo and equipment.
BAR is actually pretty good against them, the issue is that I can see the madre chips leave my pockets real time whenever I fire a burst into a crowd of these fuckwits. (60 chips for a 20-box of .306 is criminal.)

>>52362
What do you mean?

I expected the final confrontation to be a little harder.
Two bursts to the head and it was over. Only carried out 4 gold bars, which is still good money all in all.

The final two areas where a shitshow though. It bugged out on me multiple times, and it was basically just trial and error until I said fuck it and consulted a guide on how to disable the holograms.
I'm never replaying this again.

The BAR is an okay rifle. Probably the strongest thing you can find in the entire DLC. Did a little trolling on the powdergangers and it does well if you have ammo for it.
Not as good as the light machinegun, but it's still useful. And cool. It's unique. More of a trophy for getting through this mess than a game changing firearm.

>>52425
Which enging are you going for in your playtrough? House, NCR, Legion or independent Vegas?

>>52435
I'm just finishing up with Dead Money too now and I've had my fill of it, the worst part is I did that DLC just for the BAR and in TTW they changed the model so the bipod dangles down and it looks fucking stupid

I think the BAR is the highest DPS gun in the game, but as you say its ammo is rare, there's a quartermaster in the back of McCarran Airport who has shitloads of .308, but he's kind of hidden back there - don't think I found him until my 3rd playthrough of the game

>Which enging are you going for in your playtrough? House, NCR, Legion or independent Vegas?

I usually choose between NCR and House. I know NCR from playing Fallout 1 and 2 so I feel like I have a history with them and Shady Sands. They may be a bad parody of the old world but at least they try to build based on the rule of law

House would be my number 1 choice only for he wants you to blow up the BOS, which is a waste if you ask me. House is probably the best option because the dude has actual plans to rebuild shit and get into space and spread humanity out among the stars, and he's got the expertise to actually do it.

>>52439
No, the BAR is outdone by the Light Machine Gun in nearly every regard, though it's also more expensive to purchase initially (by like 2k caps, which isn't really an issue imho, since you can just get a few snowglobes and keep selling valuable rifles that are of no use to you). It has a larger ammo capacity, more common ammo (5.56 instead of the .308) and it also does more damage at around ~200DPS instead of ~130.
Though I wouldn't consider .308 ammo a rarity. You can buy it from the Gun Runners or the dude at Hoover Dam if you have good relations with the NCR. (Which you should if you're going for the House ending or the NCR victory.)

>>52439
That feel when based on just raw instinct I went in there, gained their trust, hacked their systems, and deliberately turned their turrets against them specifically because I wanted to make sure all the chaos and bloodshed would make it that much harder for them to even figure out I was self destructing the base let alone get past automated security to do anything about it. I overloaded the reactors after switching on the automated defense FF and ran like hell, only to stand outside the entrance and gun down the last two or three BoS who managed to escape.

I don't remember why I even did it. House never asked me to. I never even actually joined up with House. I thought he was a megalomaniacal relic of the old world and exactly the sort of reason why our world was an irradiated shithole to begin with and made sure he died along with everyone else from his generation like they deserved to. I did that because by the end, after the Wasteland stripped away my naivete, and I was so jaded and cold hearted, I realized the only person or faction that was actually even trustworthy to rebuild anything was myself.

But I still don't know why actually I bombed out the Brotherhood. I would've just reloaded a save if I truly didn't want to kill them all, which was rather a lot of effort to begin with not to mention how premeditated I was so I just can't fathom what they had to have done to piss me off so much that I actually went out of my way to murder them off. or actually maybe I was even more premeditated, cold hearted, and crueler and ruthless earlier in the game than I thought which would then likely mean I simply saw them as the one main power standing in my way between me taking control and some shitty other power maintaining the corrupt vicious status quo if not making it worse.

Seriously did the BoS attack you or do anything particularly vicious or dickish in that game? Because it just seems so strange to me that I'd execute such a plan so coldly and take so much time on it without reloading a save, particularly when I vaguely recall meeting some NPC who largely struck me as nice and an innocent. Yeah I'm pretty sure she's dead now too. That woman in the robe. Or maybe I left her on a bridge I can't remember.

>>52441
Well, wiping the Brotherhood out is an option for the NCR and Yes Man playtroughs and mandatory for Caesar and House playtroughs.
You really don't meet them at all outside hidden valley, and nothing happens unless the quest is active I think. They're dicks if you meet them, but they don't outright wrong you if you don't count putting an explosive collar on you until you talk to the NCR ranger out of staying there.
I don't think they deserve to be exterminated but they refuse to evolve or cooperate with anyone, thinking they have the right to hoard whatever tech they can get their hands on.
The wasteland isn't what it was in Fallout 1 where keeping the flame burning is a commendable achievement. They should be developing tech instead of just scavenging and maintaining it. (Elijah was considered an unorthodox scribe because he was interested in developing new weapons and tech instead of just putting old weapons together.) They're an army without a country to back them up and they suffer for it.

Last post about the BAR.
Despite the lower DPS it feels pretty good to use. Went over the battle of Hoover dam with it and it was music to my ears as it shot everything down.

>>52440
I always pissed through my .308 with the BAR so I always considered it rare, also Paciencia used it which was my go-to rifle for most of the game

>>52441
Basically everyone wants you to kill BOS so you were probably on a mission. I always like BOS, no so much because of Fallout 1 and 2 but because of Fallout Tactics, the midwest brotherhood were fairly badass

>>52444
Also last post about the BAR. It's pissed me off that TTW supermod has fucked up my favourite gun. In the vanilla game the bipod is folded up (first screenshot), in TTW it looks fucking stupid with the BAR held at all kinds of weird angles on your back and the bipod unfolded. Why would they make a mod like this then fuck with weapon textures for the laff? I bet they're Germans or something, only Germans do things like this

>>52443
Ohh actually you know what something about that description of the explosive collar sounds vaguely familiar. How does that quest get triggered? You know what if the fuckers did that to me and then acted like rude xenophobes while I was in there maybe that was it, but still the thing is I know for a fact I never got my quest from House who I played along with in later game to get to killing him but other than that I never sided with any factions. I just don't recall the circumstances or even how I got into their BoS bunker to begin with, unless me poking around got me gassed and triggered that collar quest. But then still why would I be allowed to walk freely inside.

And yeah despite being a bunch of dicks Fargo did make them come off as the neutral good faction of the Wasteland, which I explicitly remember as being why Tactics was so jarring because they got depicted as straight up evil imperialist and no better really than the worst slaver factions.

>>52445
Realistically the BAR shouldn't even have a bipod. Assuming that these aren't factory fresh, the bipod was often pretty quick to be ditched by soldiers because it wasn't very well designed and added even more weight to an already hefty piece, while also serving it only in a role that the weapon was not really suited for in the first place.

>>52452

>while also serving it only in a role that the weapon was not really suited for in the first place.

Like the role that it actually had and any role really?

>>52454
Not at all. It was not really used as a light machine gun despite it often being said as much. US formations at the time used a Weapons Squad inside the platoon, and a Weapons Platoon inside the company. These were where the machine guns were located. These were the base of fire, while the BARs were parts of various maneuver elements.

In fact, the BAR had a very limited capability to serve as a base of fire because it could not be crew served effectively (thus making automatic fire far more intermittent) and its barrel was both thin and not replaceable under battle conditions (so even assuming constant automatic fire, you couldn't maintain it because of the barrel overheating). It could do 'some' lifting as a base of fire on a squad level but was not classified as a machine gun. In fact, the M1919A6 was designed to fill a gap in the US TO&E which existed between the BAR and the tripod-mounted .30s, particularly for the purposes of giving airmobile forces access to a proper base of fire.

Considering that it was primarily used as a weapon in the maneuver element of a formation, dropping a few pounds and just resting it on the terrain was almost always more valued than the bipod, because unlike a video game or reading a book, you got to haul the damn thing around all day.

>>52455
The BAR actually filled the same role doctrinally as the Bren and the MG34/42(a large part of the US squad doctrine was based on or written by Germans anyway), it was the US LMG. People get hung up on the term 'automatic rifle' far too much when it's just semantics. After all, what even does that mean really? A machine gun is an Automatic rifle to begin with. It's not even that unusual of a temanology, after all what do the Germans call the MG? A Mashinengewher. And the French? A Fusil mitrailleur. It's semantics.

To expand on this a bit.

The Bren and MG42 were both section level LMGs for their respective army, they lay down fire and the rest of the section moves. However, the Germans had company level and above machine gun assets as well, it was the same gun but using a tripod and filling an MMG or HMG role. The US did the exact same thing only using the BAR as the section(or squad in this case) level LMG but other machine-guns as the MMG and HMG. The doctrine for the Bren, MG42 and BAR within the section was the same.

>>52456
The Bren was classified as a machine gun, and despite being box-fed also had many traits that made it applicable to the role of a machine gun. For example, top loading not only makes it more reliable (it still wasn't the most reliable thing but eh), but it also means that it can be crew served to increase sustainability of fire. It also has a barrel that can be changed in battle conditions.

Also, I would disagree that the organisational structure of the US Army and German army were all that similar beyond the broadest strokes of learning the lessons of the Great War. Let's look at a tactical scenario, the wheelhouse of the company. The first is a German Rifle Company and the second is the US Equivalent.

The first thing to notice is the inclusion of a weapons platoon in the US Company. This is a smaller scale of what happens as you go further up the US order of battle, and is indicative of the biggest difference between the understanding of battle between the two. The Germans however have a much higher number of automatic weapons distributed throughout the company, but do not have the same number of company support assets. The US emphasised concentration of support, and giving a commander access to that concentrated support at each level, giving a commander a lot of firepower to use before needing to kick the ball up the chain of command. It's important to note here that the belt-fed machine guns, the only sources of a sustained base of fire were concentrated in the weapons platoon, which would be assigned to the other platoons as required, or held back as a company base of fire for platoon manoeuvres. This was considered the light machine gun. The heavy machine guns were water cooled and were actually often used in an indirect fire role.

The BAR was intended to do the job on a very small scale, and usually with the assistance of regular riflemen. The Germans did not do this, and instead integrated the machine gun into the squads (and in higher numbers, alongside SMGs). The squad was to do its own heavy lifting. The roles are superficially similar but when put into the context of their surrounding elements are pretty obviously treated differently.

>>52457
A squad/section cannot be examined in a vacuum because they do not operate within a vacuum. The Company is the first point at which a formation takes care of its own supply and admin affairs. Beneath that are purely subordinate formations with no standalone combat capability. It's important because the squad or platoon is intended to do slightly different things, but those roles are only apparent within their context.

Italian platoons for example were Binary, having a command squad that also served as base of fire, and a large manoeuvre squad that was entirely rifles. And the Soviet army at this scale had very little autonomy and thus had far less support, instead acting in parallel usually with battalion assets or higher. So to understand the role of various weapons within these squads, you need to understand what the squads were doing, and what they were doing is determined by what the first autonomous level of the OOB they're in is doing.

>>52458

Yes, the Bren was the British LMG and was better at it than the US LMG(the BAR)

>Also, I would disagree that the organisational structure of the US Army and German army were all that similar beyond the broadest strokes of learning the lessons of the Great War. Let's look at a tactical scenario, the wheelhouse of the company. The first is a German Rifle Company and the second is the US Equivalent.

It's a complex issue but different German units at different times had different structures. Panzergrenadiers had an MG platoon within the company and later on standard German companies would have one as well. You must remember that the US entered the war in 1941, it was the biggest industrial power on earth and the divisions they sent were motorised.

>concentrated in the weapons platoon, which would be assigned to the other platoons as required, or held back as a company base of fire for platoon manoeuvres. This was considered the light machine gun.

That's an MMG.

>The BAR was intended to do the job on a very small scale, and usually with the assistance of regular riflemen.

Yes, that's an LMG.

The doctrine for use within the section/squad was the same.

>>52460
I don't know why I posted that second image, ignore it, it is irrelevant...