Gundato

@reversegamelan: Wizardry took that a few steps further by making you type in every spell name

MAHALITO, MALOR, and TILTOWAIT are further burned into my skull

@onemanarmyy: I forget just how big the option wheel was, but it was the same waypoints, select movement speed, and focus on a target/look in a direction.

Been years, but a common strategy I recall was to run, stop at a doorway/window, aim into the door and slowly strafe past, look forward, and run to the next door. All on the same turn.

@ilserpente: Keep listening. Alex eventually concedes that it may have been written to be ambiguous but it really wasn't.

While I don't feel quite that strongly (I think there is a decent amount of wiggle room), I do agree with the overall sentiment. Verhoeven wanted it to be ambiguous and left hints, but the movie itself takes them apart even faster than he can put them down. It is too much of a "stupid Ahnold action movie" to really keep the thread going and, as a result, things like ultraviolence make it seem more "real" than otherwise. With a different cast (and a different director) it would have worked a lot better, but also probably wouldn't have been as entertaining.

It reminds me a lot of one of Verhoeven's other films: Starship Troopers was supposed to be a huge satirical deconstruction of war movies and come across as blatant propaganda. Instead, it was a lot of cool action sequences, gratuitous nudity, Dougie Howser as a Nazi, and corny "memes". If you squint at it you can definitely see the satire but the movie works against itself and just feels like a generic action movie because of it.

@gridrunner2049:I think the "issue" is that this is widely accepted as "pubg with better console performance and a lot less jank"

So if you don't play on console and are mostly fine with/used to the jank, this doesn't bring that much to the table.

And while pubg definitely needs to evolve/fix itself, there is definitely something to be said about being the default.

The discussion of old consoles versus new consoles reminded me of an interesting moment:

We got a PS2 around launch. I loved it, but I mostly shifted to PC for the next few years. Eventually I bought a PS3 fairly late in its life cycle (but also just in time for the summer of security issues...).

I was expecting the normal plug and play experience and to finally play MGS4 and God of War 3. I was quite surprised (and vocal) to learn that consoles had reached the point of (mandatory) driver/firmware updates and game patches. And I am still amazed I didn't immediately drive back to Gamestop and return it after the MGS4 install screen appeared.

@undeadpool: Older with a MUCH better combat/aiming system, but take a look at Silent Storm and MAYBE the sequel Hummer & Sickle (it is "Hammer" but the font choice was really unfortunate)

Same basic premise, but set in WW2 (Cold war for H&S). You are either the Allies (mostly Brits) or Axis (mostly Germans) and you quickly realize there is a third faction (Thor's Hammer?) that has super tech and has infiltrated both sides. Hijinks ensue.

Much finer grain movement (explicit Action Points) and you don't have magic "if you stand here you are protected" cover with everything being based off line of sight and actual trajectories. And the majority of the environment is destructible to the point that a common mid-game strategy is to have your door kickers spot enemies that your snipers can nail by putting a large caliber bullet through the wall.

S2/S3 (Silent Storm/Silent Storm Sentinels) falls apart near endgame due to the addition of mech suits (which is frustrating as mech suits generally make everything better) but is amazing up until then. Never got past the tutorial for H&S because it had some REALLY nasty DRM, even for the era.

S2/S3 is available on GoG and probably Steam. H&S? I dunno.

Which is actually why I am still excited for this. By all accounts PD is a letdown. But it is the first time we have really seen games experiment with the underlying combat system since nu-XCOM came out. And as someone who positively hates nu-XCOM's combat that makes me happy. Because maybe we'll see a return to line of sight (hey, an excuse for the ray tracing cards) and meaningfully different builds.

@bicycle_repairman: While I agree in theory, in practice it is the same thing. Many regional teams are barely even in that region (players live all around the country, training facilities elsewhere, maybe not even a stadium) and boil down to a brand anyway. That is especially the case as people's mobility has drastically increased over the past century.

For example: I don't really like American Football, but I identify as being a scumbag from Philly even though I live far enough away that visiting family is an entire day in airports. My family identify as New Yorkers even though my mother is an immigrant and my father is from elsewhere: they just spent a decade or two there. So we were expected to cheer for the Jets growing up. The Jets, who are stationed in Jersey (along with the Giants).

So even regional teams boil down to being brands more than anything else.

That is kind of the thing. The bar is REALLY low these days

The playstation cross is kind of bad for fighting games but was ahead of its time for how modern d-pads are used (four extra face buttons). The Switch and xbone ones are pretty mushy, but are serviceable.

If you are primarily using the d-pad to switch guns/activate powers, all of the modern d-pads are fine and I actually prefer the cross on the PS4 and Switch Joycon.

If you are using them to play games like Celeste (barring the feather, which is analog) then I would say only the Switch joycon d-pad is unacceptable, and that is more ergonomics and the angle your thumb is at. Although I think the contacts underneath are also pretty crap which leads to false inputs. I would personally rank them XBONE>PS4>>>Switch Pro>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Switch Joycon

If you are playing fighting games with quarter circles and the like: Pretty much all the modern d-pads are garbage because they don't have good contacts underneath and they tend to be too recessed or have other issues that make "rolling your thumb" suck. I would probably rank them PS4>XBONE>Switch Pro>>>>>>>>>>Switch Joycon

@wemibelle: You need to inherently like the genre (procedurally generated castlevania-esque roguelite). If you don't, you won't like it.

If you do: Dead Cells has a lot of weapon variety (not really shown off in the video) and some of the tilesets do change a fair amount. And the controls are crisp, which helps a lot.

I would recommend not playing the way Jason did (clear every area 100%) and to instead rely on "the heart of the cards" to give you interesting weapon combinations. I haven't touched it in a few months as I was waiting for the 1.0 (and ended up getting it on Switch), but I had some fun runs where the game basically turned me in to a dagger wielding maniac who threw turrets and fire bombs everywhere. And others where I was basically post-Eclipse Guts.

@tredik: Interesting, but I would imagine in practice it doesn't make much of a difference.

Barring stuff like square/octagonal gates and what is on top of the stick, the main difference between sticks is durability. If your stick only has to last one day, then just make sure you drill the holes in the right spots.