TwinIon

He just can't help himself. He can't praise others without inserting himself. He just has to lie.

God I hope we see him on the stand some day.

If we're going to nitpick about stupid things that exist purely for gameplay reasons, I think the enemy AI while in stealth is right up there. It's bog standard for sure, but it's hard to believe in the actual stealthiness of my actions when I interrupt a conversation between two guys, lure one away, string one of them up to a floodlight that's not particularly high, and his buddy doesn't notice or care when he comes back to finish his thought. I can have a dozen men strung up 12 foot high light poles and no one will notice that all their buddies are MIA, "hidden" in plain sight. Still, like I said, this is in no way unusual, but it can sometimes be a little less immersive. While fighting, it's easy to believe Spider-man really is taking on all comers, but the stealth, while fun enough, lacks that mild believability.

Also, I mentioned this before, but it sucks that if you stealth takedown the entire first wave of guys, the second wave arrives and instantly knows where you are. I doubt I'd have the patience to regularly take out an entire base without being noticed, but I might have tried once if it was possible.

If there's something to pre-emptively be upset about with this round of iPhones, it's the names. Apparently we're getting an iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR. Yuck.

As usual I'm more interested in the iPads than the iPhones, and I doubt we'll see those today.

So they've lost their Superman, they've maybe lost their Batman, and we're about to see the stand alone Aquaman tank (we all agree on that, right?). 

There shouldn't be anything left of the DCU. Reboot it all, but make another Wonder Woman or two.

New Lara >>>>> Old Lara

I think these games have greatly benefited from having a character rather than a caricature. 

Thankfully, the Tomb Raider games have grown up with the times, and a lot of the platforming that was so core in the old titles just doesn't work as well anymore. At least I can't think of any good recent examples.

So Games revenue accounts for ~75% of mobile app revenue, and they seem to expect that not to change for at least the next three years.

I do think it's a somewhat unfair comparison however. When I look at what I personally have paid for on my phone, so many of those apps are services. I pay for my Google Music subscription and for Netflix and for Office 365. While Netflix and Office 365 are certainly not just apps as far as I'm concerned, Google Music pretty much is. I get about 98% of my usage from it on my phone (if you don't count the YouTube part of it). Also, I think there are people that primarily think of some of those types of services or things like Evernote primarily as apps. Still, I suppose it also works the other way, since the mobile game I've put by far the most time and money into is Hearthstone, and none of that money would count towards mobile gaming revenue, since I've always bought my packs on the PC.

I guess my only point is that as mobile becomes the default computing platform for so many, this might be overestimating the value of games as compared to other things because of the way that we consume productivity or other media services. Still, I think it's clear that games are certainly where the money is.

Also interesting, is that according to this same source, this is the first year that mobile gaming is bringing in more revenue than the PC and console markets combined.

They expect PC and console revenue to grow very slowly in absolute terms, but slowly shrink as a percentage of the overall game market.

J-E-T-S

Quote

Moreover, former Purdue employees told the FT that sales reps were incentivized not just to ruthlessly expand the sale of OxyContin but to also push generic opioids. Specifically, part of their bonuses was calculated based on the size of the overall opioid market. That unusual business move makes a lot more sense knowing that Purdue’s owners also owned a company that sells generic opioids.

Wow. That's pretty transparent.

I can only play one big single player game at a time. I'll play Hearthstone on the side, and if there's something else very different, I can play them concurrently. For example, I was playing Jurassic Park Evolution and now I'm playing a little bit of Two Point Hospital.

I used to have a multiplayer game in the rotation, but other than Hearthstone, there's not much I've played in a while.

21 minutes ago, Nokra said:

Getting upset about this comment by Trump seems to me to be about as stupid as getting upset at someone for kneeling at a football game.  

 

I didn't get the impression from the audio that he was making light of their deaths, and Trump routinely does some truly despicable shit. Is this really worth getting upset over?

What concerned me about that clip wasn't the joke, but pretty much everything else. I know none of this is a surprise, Trump is, if nothing else, entirely transparent. Still, he talks to his inner circle in the same way he talks at his rallies. He's baselessly boasting, he's rambling and nonsensical, he's factually incorrect (or at least greatly stretching the truth), and he's bringing up Hillary out of nowhere for no real purpose. Again, none of this is a surprise, but it reinforces just how little there is to this man and how dangerous he is as President. Making bad jokes is the least of it.

I just finished season 2 of In the Dark and it was excellent. It's another in the true crime genre, but I think this one does an excellent job of setting itself apart. There was real dedication, with reporters moving states and working for a year on the story. It's also a rare case where I finished it and felt some amount of closure. Not entirely, because the case is still ongoing, but I think there's a decent chance the reporting done here will help decide what happens. It centers around a man who has been convicted and sentenced to death six times for the same crime.

I'm also listening to Slow Burn. Season 1 examined Watergate and was really excellent. Season 2 is about the Clinton impeachment and still worthwhile, but not quite as mind blowing to me as the first. Still, they're short, well done episodes easily worth your time.

I listen to film reviews on the /filmcast, Fighting in the War Room, and The Treatment, and The Vergecast for tech news.

I also quite like Freakonomics and Intelligence Squared US, which has experts formally debate issues.

DaVinci Resolve. If you're not using it for commercial purposes it's free and it's as capable as anything out there. I used it to do some simple stuff for some vacation videos recently. It's not super easy to use, with a complexity much more like Premiere than Elements.

Was this game actually any good?

Wasn't it the one where you needed a bunch of GBAs to play with friends?

While playing Spider-man I keep thinking about the first Assassin's Creed.

The first reason I keep thinking about it is obvious. The last time I felt so excited by just getting around a game was 2007 with that first AC. Obviously there are significant differences, but as clunky as AC could be at times, was a revelation. It felt like I could really go anywhere, and be awesome while doing it. More than just the ability to go anywhere, I actually wanted to. I wanted to run seamlessly around the city and parkour up buildings, escaping from the hapless guards. It felt like a rare opportunity to be as cool as I wanted the character to be, to move as fluidly as they might in cutscenes, but to do so in real time.

The other reason that I keep thinking about Assassin's Creed is it has something that Spider-man really lacks: improvisation. Spider-man is very old school in its approach to completing goals and boss battles. There's a prescribed way to do things. In some encounters you can decide to take out a bunch of enemies in stealth or not, but even that has its limits. In one recurring circumstance you can clear out a whole wave of baddies stealthily, but the next wave will automatically appear and know exactly where you are. In other scenarios stealth is essential, and there's no salvaging the situation if you're seen at all, you just re-try the mission. When you're in a brawl, it's all good. There are a so many abilities, environmental elements, gadgets, and suit powers that you'll never use them all in one combat scenario. You can rely heavily on webbing or almost forego it entirely. Strip enemies of their weapons or turn them into projectiles. Outside the combat itself, the only real choices you make in Spider-man are the order to do missions in.

The game gets away with it because it's so fun to fight and fly around the city. Peter's always making jokes and running into familiar characters and the whole world does a wonderful job at feeling alive. It's an incredible game all told, but I hope that the sequel sees a bit more improvisation make its way in. Spider-man, of all characters, should be right at home salvaging a situation where things don't go according to plan, so I hope they go more in that direction now that they've nailed the fundamentals. It's an evolution we've seen from Solid Snake, so hopefully we'll see it here next.

The world works in mysterious ways.

Armando Iannucci is absolutely the filmmaker to make a movie about Trump, though I'm less sure about this particular pitch. The biting reality and comedy of Death of Stalin seems a natural fit for telling the story of Trump's presidency.

Les Moonves could make $120M if the investigations determine he was not fired for cause. If cause is not determined, he'll also stay on as an advisor for a year, a gig complete with an office and security for two years.

Now that he's out, I'm sure that board rooms in general and Hollywood specifically have finally been cleaned up. Certainly there aren't any more powerful, predatory men leading this country's top companies.

I don't know if this deserves it's own thread, but it's pretty funny that back in 2014, while trying to protect the blackout rule, many of the letters sent in support of the blackout rule appear to have been fake.

I loved Rise, so this was an easy pre-order purchase before Amazon's discounts went away. The only real question is if I'll be done with Spider-man before it arrives. Even at the rate I'm chewing through Spidey, that seems unlikely. Still, I'll have a month before RDR2 to finish them both.

I spent all weekend playing and there's a very good chance this is my GOTY, and it pretty much boils down to how freaking fun this game is. I think God of War felt like an evolution of open world game design. The story flowed much more naturally, as did the progression. They dramatically limited the amount of stuff to do, but in service of making a game where nothing felt out of place. Loading screens were carefully hidden and the camera felt like a physical object in the world.

Spider-Man didn't pay attention to any of those advances, instead falling into line with it's more direct predecessors. There are towers that unlock the map and a million side quests that add nothing to the lore of Spider-Man or NYC. A lot of these diversions are goofy, giving into the more slapstick and silly tendencies of the character. This is a game that borrows heavily and often from Batman and GTA and Ubisoft's lineup of open world games.

None of that means it's a step backward though, because it's all so much fun to do stuff. The highlight is obviously the web slinging. Traveling around the map in Spider-Man is an unparalleled joy. The density of missions is wonderful because you're always going somewhere, and it's so fitting with the character that he gets sidetracked to do something random to help out. I loved the feeling of going to another story mission and forgetting where I was going because I got distracted by a pigeon or a crime in progress. The traversal system is an astounding achievement, and if the game nailed nothing but that, it would be a must buy.

Thankfully, that's not all it got right. I love the combat. I'll admit that I'm generally not one to get deep into combat systems. I often end up doing some amount of button mashing in one of the Arkham or God of War games. I know there are combos, and I do some of them, but my combat style ends up being very repetitive and kind of boring. I found that not to be the case with Spider-Man. There aren't that many kinds of moves to master, and they all have such a unique purpose that I found that I was pretty much always doing exactly what I was trying to do. My skills in combat really evolved over my playtime, using more and more skills and gadgets, and generally finding myself well in control of the battlefield. I'm not sure if it's the move set, the mechanics, the relative simplicity, or what, but the end result is that I had more fun in combat in Spider-Man than any game since HZD, and it's easily my favorite brawler style combat ever.

There are little things to nit pick here and there. The game transitions to specific times of day for specific missions. So you might be late to see Aunt May that evening and stop to help out a stranger for a mission that takes place in the middle of the day or in the dead of night, only to have it transition back to sunset when you're done. There are too many loading screens and some of the mini games are not only easy, but boring. Speaking of boring, there are a few sequences where you're powerless that really broke up the pacing of the game and felt unnecessary. I also found it slightly annoying that you had to be looking at a baddie to trigger certain abilities. So I could swing over to a perch right over a bad guy and try and web him up, but even knowing he's there I'd have to get the camera right before I could do so. Sometimes when right above a guy it was difficult to get it exactly right.

Still, those are tiny issues in a game that is largely best in class. It's gorgeous and well written with great voice acting and superb animations. More than anything else though, it's just fun to be Spider-Man.

6 minutes ago, XxEvil AshxX said:

I don't see why the publishers would even have to "support" the feature. Wouldn't it just be a thing that the Switch does in the background whenever you're on the network? Isn't that how it works on the other consoles? When you boot up a game, the OS checks online to see if your local save is older than the cloud save?

Not all games save in the same way. I imagine that Blizzard will not support it for Diablo because they already keep their saves on their own cloud.

I think this is a fun little game that could use some tweaking. A copy room function would really be appreciated, and it can be quite frustrating when a patient is complaining loudly about stuff that is right next to them (food, drink, toilet, etc.).

Also, the number of GPs offices required is stupid. It's difficult if not impossible to really get the queues under control. As far as I can tell the only way to limit the number of patients you get is to have a lower level, but that level is a function of rooms and doctors, so if you build more GPs offices to account for the lines, you raise your level and end up with more patients. Even in a hospital where I tried my best to limit my level and train up every possible staff member it can still be frustrating.

Still, even though it's a bit repetitive and even though there are bits of frustration that I think could be tweaked, it's a fun little game. I certainly won't complain that it's not a game I'll spend a hundred hours on. I'll get my $20 worth.

If you're up for something minimal, I enjoyed Minit, which only takes about 2 hours.

"abortion inducing drugs"

Yeah, he's not interested in overturning Roe at all.