Spawn_of_Apathy

Im hoping for a bit of rain on the race. lol Not enough to red flag and not to start until after lights out so it doesn’t delay the start. Good qualifying for Perez and Noris. Sainz looking to continue raising his stock as teams look to who they will sign for next season. Suzuka showing that Ferrari and McLaren are 2nd fastest at different tracks again. This is going to allow Red Bull and Verstappen and Perez to run away from the pack in points. I hope McLaren and Ferrari can bring about upgrades to improve their deficiencies so the battle with Perez and each other gets much closer and more interesting.

Not I. I haven’t subscribed to a print magazine for near 20 years. Last time I subscribed to any gaming publication was being an IGN Insider, which was often more for the forums and E3 coverage access.

A large part of me feels like Im done with trailers and most media on the game. Unless shocking preview gameplay impressions or reviews say the game is just crap I think I know all I need to buy the game and I don’t want any more of the story or locations spoiled. I’ll see if I can control my hype.

This seems like the kind of thing that would get a channel banned on youtube and likely face litigation from youtube’s lawyers.

We are young at heart.

I request a swift ban to the OP for reminding me I’m old.

to be fair Nintendo doesn’t make new IP very often. And when they do it is more often using existing characters. They use their existing franchises and characters to explore new gameplay ideas. Which is still more than many big AAA developers and publishers allow for, where they make the gameplay more safe and just to add extra monetization.

maybe there is a separate deal in the works to sell them to likes of Amazon or a different equity firm.

yeah to try and discourage the over usage and exploitation of temp workers Washington passed legislation setting contract term limits with a cool down in between contract terms. Ive read/heard of groups at studios that below the leads are just temps. So it ends up being temps training temps who then have to leave so the past temp trains the next new temp. The experience and work that group does is done like a game of telephone, with no institutional knowledge and experience. maybe uncle Phil is more altruistic than most executives and all he needs is a promotion to MSFT CEO where he can bring about substantial change across all of Microsoft. But I doubt he could or would even if given the chance.

The lighting doesn’t seem as “natural”. Along with the higher saturation it makes the world look and feel like a video game world. It also doesn’t have that natural “warmth” you can often get with ray tracing in day time lighting. The game looks very good and very pretty, but still like a video game world.

Looking at the way MSFT first party releases have come out lately I cannot say their studios have good executives running the studios. Maybe these studios are amazing places to work, with great work life balance, more than fair compensation, and plenty of career growth opportunities. …but considering how much long time MSFT studios relies on temporary contract employees that can’t even finish their work on a game, I feel they are barely better than anywhere else. And what’s the final product? Something that took 5+ years to make, but feels like it was rushed out the door after 18 months. Phill is saying the quiet part out loud. Stuff we all know to be true. Which is why we can get far more creativity from smaller indy and AA studios who aren’t focused on profit margins and investor dividends. They’re only focused on getting the game they wanted to make finished. Whether it is a niche game or something that could blow up with millions of players. Yes, capitalism has been a growing problem for this industry. Nearly all the big players aren’t trying to execute on a creative vision or pushing an envelope creatively. They aren’t even really looking at growth. They’re looking at milking the industry and consumers as it is now by chasing trends. Sure Phil is in a position of power. There’s only so much he can get away with not doing to try to meet quarterly earnings numbers before MSFT replaces him with somebody worse, like a Jim Ryan or Bobby Kotick. But yeah he looks like a bit if a hypocrite, because he and other executives reporting to him are very much benefiting while all the pains of capitalism are affecting gamers, and more importantly the people who are losing their jobs. Like he KNEW after acquiring Bethesda there would be layoffs. Just as there will be after the merger of ABK. what I want to know is, what is Phill’s plan then? Do nothing but blame capitalism while people below him pay the price for the greed at the top?

A non-functional console? So it’s just a statue … of a series X? Why?

Apparently in the statement by the officials they do not even mention the impact of Alonso’s slow down on George Russell. Seemingly implying the crash was unrelated to the investigation and decision. Which seems kind of bullshit. It sounded like Alonso braked twice in a fast corner that can usually be taken nearly if not entirely flat out. Maybe if there was proper runoff and Russell didn’t crash there still would have been an investigation for unsafe driving by Alonso. I don’t think Russell was being overly dramatic or anything, like throwing his car off track and into the barrier on purpose. It looked like he was surprised and lost control of the car trying to break in time flying into the back of Alonso. It is likely the lack of downforce and reliance on the ground effects that played a large role in the car’s sudden loss of grip. I think the penalty is warranted. The speed differential was pretty substantial between the two. It was dangerous. That being said, that stunt isn’t as dangerous in today’s F1 cars compared to when a maneuver like that would have been perfectly legal and just deemed a racing move. It does sometimes feel like the FIA rules trying to make the sport safer is also causing the racing to feel “on rails”. Cars can barely defend. Most overtakes are in DRS zones where a car is practically defenseless. Australia is even worse with 2 DRS zones for just 1 detection zone. The penalties for taking a risk to race another driver makes some attempts more trouble than they are worth. Clip another car’s front wing and knock off a vertical pieces that clearly don’t aid in performance and you could get a 10 second penalty for causing a collision. In a way it feels like horse racing. At times it less feels like they are racing each other and just trying to get the most of their car. If their car is fast enough and they can harness enough of that performance then they will eventually get past other lesser powered cars.

Well Epic is bleeding money and all that cash they pumped into EGS exclusives didn’t move the needle. And MS has one of the largest stable of AAA franchises in the industry they can now load GamePass with, after spending nearly $80B in 3 years. An Indy title would have to be something pretty special and/or coming at just the right time to fill a void MS needs filling. so not surprising.

What does it mean “Bundle Not For Sale”? You can’t buy that console?

I have a bad habit with most games I get where I start off very excited and then just kind of stop playing well before the ending. Maybe it is burnout maybe it’s just a mechanic in the game that isn’t feeling as fun as I’d hoped. Sometimes it is where I just kind of get fed up with so many things that just feel lacking. The bar for which can vary by game for a number of a reasons. I fairly recently stopped playing Palworld because of the grind and nothing really new to explore. So I’m not really soured on it so long as more content comes out later. Otherwise I may never go back. The most recent example of a game that really soured on me though was Starfield. The more I played the more it felt like a game where artists were held back, and due to poor leadership the final product felt hastily thrown together. Before that probably Diablo IV. I at least beat this game, But the open world nature of the areas felt so much less creative and interesting just so they could be interconnected. And maybe the game was always going to be laid out this way, but I can’t help but feel that it and so many other decisions made in the making of the game was for the express purpose of it being easier to have a boring, monotonous, half as interesting live service game. Including the post release patching to make the game even more grindy. The arrogant assholes that making these decisions at Blizzard weren’t even the ones in the emergency podcast apologizing.

Im a little confused on the process here. So is the divested assets what Take-Two is getting and the retained assets what Embracer is keeping?

I mean Pedro Pascal emotes just fine with a Helmet on. Master Chief in Halo Infinite emotes just fine with a Helmet on. And there are ways you can convey emotion with cinematography like lighting, camera angles, camera moves. Then there’s the music too. Is it unorthodox to have a character who’s face you cannot see for an entire season? Sure. But they chose the franchise and character. to quote gamers: “skill issue”.

One characterization it sounded like the show changed that I am not too fond of is where they have chief out of armor so much again and now trying to come to terms with what happened to him as a child and whether he even wants to be MC. As if he’s Bruce Wayne looking at the Batman cowl wondering if he still wants to be Batman. long rant Dr Halsey is a more suitable character to be the lead because she was closely involved with all aspects of the Spartan II program and kept up with their deployments. Regarded by most if not all Spartan IIs as the closest thing they had to a mother. She had political enemies within the UNSC upper leadership who wanted their own super soldier program to be adopted and wanted to shut her down. She’s the character that can ask and asks of the audience to answer the questions; is it right to sacrifice your humanity to save human civilization? Can your prior sins be absolved by future needs for what you’ve done?

Ive always wanted a Band of Brothers style and inspired Halo show that shows the events from the Fall of Reach into Halo CE and Halo First Strike. Ive known for a long time that would never happen. I will admit part of my issue is also that I do not like where 343 took the Halo lore and this show seemingly wanted to jump right into incorporating that lore. Halo under 343 has always felt like bad fanfiction, because they so badly want to differentiate their Halo from Bungie’s Halo.

Everything Ive read and heard about the story and portrayals this season has made it clear to me I wouldn’t like this season. The show still doesn’t know what MC is nor care about the source material. They still want to do their own thing and this show is Halo in name only, because these talentless people (lead actor included) know that nobody would watch this shit if it was a new original IP made for Tv. The commercials to sell Halo games in the were more faithful and better crafted than this self servicing imitation.

Such a dumb, misleading video. Movies are typically filmed at 24fps, but nobody would argue we should go back to N64 frame rates. Also you're not controlling it, nor does have poor frame pacing that resembles hitching and stutters. If a movie was stuttering unintentionally people would complain. Also if a game isnt a steady 30fps, which DD2 isnt even relatively small dips in frame. Dropping 6fps from 30 feels much more noticeable than dropping 6fps from 90, because at 30fps that’s a sudden loss of 20%. But in general 30 fps just isnt as smooth. I haven’t played with it, but I also wonder if consoles and lower end PCs being stuck with Interlaced rendering just to get to 30fps. That’s some real 6th gen console stuff right there when some had to settle for 1080i as the highest console resolution with 720p better for fast motion. Kind of seems like cheating when they are also using checkerboarding.

ok yeah, they won’t record dialog for a bug. Unless the dialog was meant more as flavor and world building and then a bug came along that like catching Missing No. would fuck up your game like a rampant AI.

I only read like the first headline in case of story spoilers. Is this a bug or an intended game mechanic?