33882 replies to this topic

[pokari]

99

I've owned AC2 for the better part of a decade. I quite like the AC series and would probably be a lot farther along in the series (I've bought more tham half the games when on sale) except that...

...*@#"@-ing c#@#!! that is Unisoft's launcher that they shim in between you and the game (even if buying from third parties like Steam). If you don't use it for a while it's always-needs-to-be-connected shiny anti-DRM ass inevitably breaks when it tries to update itself and needs to be carefully uninstalled and re-installed like the #@?!@ prima donna that it is. And whenever that happens I sit there and think, "but do I really want to re-install it? God knows what the #*@?& invasive monitoring software is included, as they obviously feel that they have full ownership over the dirty little peasants that give them money.

...I have feelings.

White-hot rage is not usually among them, come to think of it, but I guess I do have my occasional angry game nerd moments. I think in this case it's because it pertains to things touching the inside of my computer without my happy consent, which is my personal space that I'm very territorial and protective about.

I really like Assassin's Creed, though. It's very pretty and you can climb on things like a happy squirrel. A happy flying squirrel with a knack for collecting shiny things. (And killing people, but I guess everyone needs a day job.)

[PItiful Boar]

99 yeah but you just connect to the internet when you have to download the game...

afterwards you can just play w/o the internet on your desktop and re-connect to upload the save files to the cloud...

[pokari]

99

Alas, my experience has not been quite so as nice as that. It seems to get upset for some reason or another if I just leave the launcher alone for a long time (months or years). And I turn it to "offline" and disable cloud saves wherever I can, too. :/

[PItiful Boar]

99 so i got stuck yesterday

azio's' mom wanted him to fetch something from an artist but I couldn't pick up that piece of box - what kind of dumb game is this

now i'm literally stuck in mission but couldn't finish

no game for old man

[pokari]

99

All Assassin's Creed games are just a little bit buggy, presumably because of the fast development schedule they were made on. Usually one can workaround, but perhaps not always.

It's not Bethesda level or anything, just the usual amount you'd expect from a open-world game I suppose. But the lack of manual saves does make it a trifle more eyebrow-raising sometimes. Often quitting and/or restarting the current mission is the answer? But whosoever thought "autosave-only" was a good idea needs a good cold-water dousing.

They're damn pretty games, though.

[PItiful Boar]

99 meh going back to my trusty ds emulator

SMT strange journey

[pokari]

99

My latest gaming fascination is a decade-old browser game that I wasn't really aware of, which makes sense because I mostly stopped paying attention to such things after high school. #&@*, how the devil has that been a decade?

Like, it feels rather to be a hang-on from the era where there'd be a website and that whole site was just one big game. But a slightly more refined version. With better writing. And probably a hair darker than I would have appreciated in its heyday, actually, or at least I think I like pseudo-lovecraftian ambience more than I used to.

Edited by pokari, 19 April 2020 - 06:09 AM.

[penrosecat]

99

 ohhh i have been meaning to play one of the games in that series. too bad i missed this post though

[PItiful Boar]

99 smt strange journey has John Carpenter "Thing" vibes ~ like you're on a space shuttle exploring the outer planets and your teammates go crazy because of demons... It's got plot, to a certain extent. It does get a bit tedious because of the random combat after a while.

I've also started fire emblem dragon shadow , also on the DS. It's a really really hard game tbh, but it's true for all fire emblem games.

[pokari]

99

Other than "on a space shuttle exploring the outer planets", that sounds like a typical Megami Tensei game to the limited extent I have become familiar with the series...? Going full classic sci-fi on it like that does sound like a nicely different thing, though.

Oh hey, we're in the middle of page 1600. Fancy.

It's weird to watch my father playing Fallout 4 with mods to swap out a lot of characters models and shading with anime style stuff. Today's particular revelation was that it's interesting just how differently my brain parses, of all things, the voice acting.

ohhh i have been meaning to play one of the games in that series. too bad i missed this post though

AC2 (or even its direct sequel, AC Brotherhood) is also the ideal place to start, for most people. It may not look as drop-dead gorgeous as it used to, I guess, but everything AC does well was done well in 2—oodles of gratuitous free-form platforming, that badass asassin feel, a glut of historical architecture, (much of which forms fun platforming dungeons), likable characters and enjoyable sub-plots, and last but not least, really frilly historical period dress.

AC1 has a whiny, unlikable edgelord of a protagonist (comparatively speaking) and is generally a much slower game. AC3 kind of fails on some of the gameplay front, AC4 is good but 50% about sailing ships and the scenery is a bit sparse, comparatively speaking. I'm not sure past that. Also catching up with the main plot thread going on in the background is probably increasingly difficult past game 2... Though that plot is a giant farce so maybe that's okay. uwu

[penrosecat]

I've also started fire emblem dragon shadow , also on the DS. It's a really really hard game tbh, but it's true for all fire emblem games.

 

99

 

ohhh is it good? i should play that too. fire emblem is pretty hard on hard mode i guess. i started thinking of it as glorified chess when i was last playing it.

 

but there are good stories and characters. and anyway on emulator i have save states and all, so hard mode doesn't really matter.

 

i like how you can recruit people on the battlefield. like so many people don't want to fight for whatever reason, you can just speak to them and promise them a bright future and they tag along. that, or people really love having heroes to push their own burdens on.

 

 

AC2 (or even its direct sequel, AC Brotherhood) is also the ideal place to start

 

well thats why i got the recommendation. anyway that is postponed now ;(

[PItiful Boar]

99 It's pretty decent. In terms of story it's a lot like Hamlet - you get kicked out and your mother sister has to stay behind and hold down the fort (and of course, you have to rescue her!) 

Kidding kidding

 

It's suppose to tune your hero instincts like all these games. 

[pokari]

99

It's interesting for me to stop and think how sexist that particular trope still is. We've evolved to the point where the "damsel in distress" is often no fainting flower and Can Take Care of Herself. But it's still always a damsel.

Female protagonists exist well enough in the action genre but they're not really much ever given the primary motivation of going and rescuing a guy, unless the guy is a young child (preferably a younger family member).

And unless they're the littlest of tykes, or completely incapacitated, the boys aren't supposed to he happy about being rescued by a girl if that does happen. It feels like there's a lot of social pressure to at least say "you shouldn't have come, now you're in danger," never, "thanks for coming to rescue me," (and definitely never the old classic, "I knew you'd come for me.")

The whole message seemingly being, men aren't supposed to hope for rescue, women shouldn't aspire to rescue them. Like, I get the origins (in real-life division of efforts in, say, an emergency, this is broadly a more optimal approach given the effects of testosterone on physique) but how relevant is that in the modern world? Or in the fantasy/sci-fi settings I'm thinking about.

[PItiful Boar]

99 So I was continuing my playthrough in SMT strange journey and it feels like going through Dante's Inferno. It's a really cool story minus the gameplay elements which has you going through teleporters and mazes. You have the typical law vs chaos route setup where your dialogue choices show your alignment. For some reason why is chaos route always survival of the fittest? Survival of the fittest is actually not chaos but the most essential of order. I mean, we're the most adaptable creatures and mammals survived because they adapted to climate change caused by asteroids and dinosaurs couldn't and didn't. It's not all nature red in tooth. A better contrast would be freedom vs law which is has been an quintessential debate ever since we decided to abandon the freedom of hunting and gathering in exchange for security of farming and resource sharing (or resource wars).

Here's the dilemma - strength comes in collectivist actions. And you can't get collectivist actions from free will. Sure you can influence with culture, and get people to do more volunteer, but the sad fact is that nobody wants to do the grunt work, which sorely needs to be done. The success of the Nazis, later the Soviet Union, and finally China in revitalizing their economy shows that personal sacrifices do work, and work well. But does the end justify the mean? I was watching fox news (and reading the comments too) - guys like Tucker Carlson and their libertarian complaint against curtailing personal freedoms ( freedom of assembly in particular) issued by stay-at-home orders from the governor. At some point, you just have to say those orders are not up for dispute and thats final, because you'll never end up with an answer.

[pokari]

For some reason why is chaos route always survival of the fittest? Survival of the fittest is actually not chaos but the most essential of order. I mean, we're the most adaptable creatures and mammals survived because they adapted to climate change caused by asteroids and dinosaurs couldn't and didn't.

Sort of. From the perspective of the universe at large, both evolved life and advanced self-conscious sentient decision-making are both seemingly (not technically) entropy-defying processes—that is, self-ordering with increasing complexity.

A reasonably good argument (though subjective) can be made that conscious thought leading to self-aware self-organisation (reasoned ethics adhered to for abstract reasons is arguably this, even if the reality is more complicated) is more entropy-defying than evolution is. Thus a situation where animalistic vs socitalistic behaviours lie on a continuum, in which humans perceive themselves to be somewhere between the two.

Which is totally consistent with your freedom vs. law thing too. Whether you call the entropic side "chaos" or "freedom", and whether you refer to the ordered side as "law" or "order". D&D does it as chaos and law. A totally value-neutral comparison to modern Americans would probably be something like "freedom vs order", though that possibly oversells the merits of both and falsely implies that freedom and order are straightforwardly opposed concepts. "Freedom and law" has roughly the same conceptual problems (example: You cannot as a practical measure give everyone freedom by getting rid of all the laws. In a lawless anarchy, many—maybe most—people will not be free, because others will control them directly without the intermediary if law.) Chaos and order are thus, despite one of them being a loaded word, more accurate descriptions of a meaningful dichotomy (again, with all human behaviour being in a fairly narrow band of that continuum).

The success of the Nazis, later the Soviet Union, and finally China in revitalizing their economy shows that personal sacrifices do work, and work well.

Not really. For every dictator success story there's an armload of failed banana republics. The soviet dictatorship successfully dictator-ed for decades but its economy was a long string of disasters. The rise of Rome was on the laurels of its Republic (which was not freedom for everyone but had a decent amount if you were lucky enough to be a citizen); its fall happened after it ceased to be so.

Which is to say, those countries you site show that that can work, not that it does work. And some of the alternatives also work.

And having a competently governing dictatorship has got the problem of—just like when saying that the best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship—well, that's possibly true, but not really a useful observation, because that is not a confluence of circumstances that can be arranged for consistently.

But does the end justify the mean? I was watching fox news (and reading the comments too) - guys like Tucker Carlson and their libertarian complaint against curtailing personal freedoms ( freedom of assembly in particular) issued by stay-at-home orders from the governor. At some point, you just have to say those orders are not up for dispute and thats final, because you'll never end up with an answer.

I mean, at least half of the point of American-style democracy—the so-called constitutional democracy—is you try to isolate a set of both freedoms that the country can afford to allow at all times, and a set of burdens that can be imposed upon the people at all times, that are relatively agreeable to persons involved, while allowing for (though as presently demonstrated, not requiring) a functioning and effective state.

But they're written by people and of course not perfect. The circumstances right now really weren't on the mind of the people writing down "freedom of association"—it's always okay to hang out, right? Right—except when the very act of hanging out kills innocent bystanders.

I don't know what the case law says, but as written it's fairly clear that the government can't forbid us to meet up, and a lot of the lockdown laws do just that. The correct thing to do in this circumstance is, quite frankly, to completely ignore that part of the law because doing that would be dumb. That apparently is too difficult for us right now as a people, so instead we're doing the Dance: Pretending it's legal somehow, because it should be in this exact circumstance, but changing the law (even if it were possible) would invite abuse, so instead we make the best rationale we can and hope that good excuse doesn't set precedent and invite disaster down the road. It's a fairly tried and true method, although obviously also used for a lot of ill deeds (e.g. our WWII concentration internment camps). Which is I think still a better tack than throwing in the towel and declaring a dictatorship.

I mean, one only has to look at who would be dictator right now, to be reminded why.

[PItiful Boar]

 99 The temporary suspension of civil liberties has happened during national emergencies, most conspicusly over the post 911 days, ie the Patriot Act. What happened to illegal search and seizure? Or right to fair trial? Has those rights been restored? The latest Defense report no longer prioritize the combat of terrorism but turned to competition with China and Russia (what they call great power competition, or what Obama calls pivot to the Pacific). The trend has accelerated under Trump with the withdraw of troops from Afghanistan with the vague promise that they will not breed terrorists. Talk about letting the biggest drug dealers in the world off the hook. How much percentage of world's heroin comes from Afghanistan? Seventy percent? In any case, the rights once suspended may or may not return. The fox news guys are right but they don't seem to mention the Patriot Act or the FBI surveillance bill. However, Snowden already forced that discussion, on surveillance at least, and I think the general mood of the population is against him...

 

The game is near its end... I'm at the critical moment where I have to make the choice between law/chaos/neutral. The neutral route sucks because you have to fight BOTH law and chaos boss and they are your former comrades T_T I think I'll stop playing .... 

Which is to say, those countries you site show that that can work, not that it does work. And some of the alternatives also work.
 

The only alternative that I know of is our great multiparty liberal democracy where the vote is sanctified. Because everyone votes right???? 

No seriously the only country that has developed a working two party system (left vs right) with an industrialized economy is Korea. But they had to fight through military rule to get there. That was truly give me liberty or give me death struggle. If you were to make a comparison, I think it's closer to our civil war than our civil movement.  

Edited by Feishy Pit Boar, 25 April 2020 - 05:45 PM.

[pokari]

99

The game is near its end... I'm at the critical moment where I have to make the choice between law/chaos/neutral. The neutral route sucks because you have to fight BOTH law and chaos boss and they are your former comrades T_T I think I'll stop playing ....

Yeah, right, come to think of it, I think getting too heavy and depressing is I think what made me stop (with the intent to continue, but) playing the one megami tensei game I did play much of. That seems to be a hazard of the series from what I've seen—being interesting, but full of both nut-jobs and broad devastation in an un-fun way.

I don't regret playing as far as I did, though. It was interesting. I hope you feel the same (and if not I'm sorry). *headpats*

The only alternative that I know of is our great multiparty liberal democracy where the vote is sanctified. Because everyone votes right????

Not making it an outright obligation for those who can vote, to vote, was a mistake in my opinion. Well, I say "was"; in the US mass voting is totally not what they had in mind, so of course it wasn't mandatory: It was an elite privilege, just like in the old Roman Republic days.

I'm not saying people shouldn't be able to abstain, mind. Deliberately turning in a blank ballot seems fine to me. But I do think the countries with mandatory voting actually largely have the right of things in that regard. Otherwise, the people who vote are the people who have free time—and that is notably not an unbiased sample of the country.

No seriously the only country that has developed a working two party system (left vs right) with an industrialized economy is Korea. But they had to fight through military rule to get there. That was truly give me liberty or give me death struggle. If you were to make a comparison, I think it's closer to our civil war than our civil movement.

South Korea's recent history is indeed weird as heck. I'm not clear on the details. I do know it's part of why their internet situation is so strange—a lot of it is a hangover from the post-korean-war military dictatorship days, but the net effect is they've had a non-anonymous internet in a now-free country which is a fascinating social experiment compared to the western internet-anarchy approach. But I digress.

Why two-party specifically, though? Party coalitions seem to work just fine for some other countries.

[DarkPrince]

100!

Suck it staff. We win. Woo!

 

 

You 2 are like the last 2 survivors of a zombie apocalypse

[pokari]

1

So, you're one of the zombies, then, I take it? :'p

[PItiful Boar]

99


Yeah, right, come to think of it, I think getting too heavy and depressing is I think what made me stop (with the intent to continue, but) playing the one megami tensei game I did play much of. That seems to be a hazard of the series from what I've seen—being interesting, but full of both nut-jobs and broad devastation in an un-fun way.

I don't regret playing as far as I did, though. It was interesting. I hope you feel the same (and if not I'm sorry). *headpats*


Not making it an outright obligation for those who can vote, to vote, was a mistake in my opinion. Well, I say "was"; in the US mass voting is totally not what they had in mind, so of course it wasn't mandatory: It was an elite privilege, just like in the old Roman Republic days.

I'm not saying people shouldn't be able to abstain, mind. Deliberately turning in a blank ballot seems fine to me. But I do think the countries with mandatory voting actually largely have the right of things in that regard. Otherwise, the people who vote are the people who have free time—and that is notably not an unbiased sample of the country.


South Korea's recent history is indeed weird as heck. I'm not clear on the details. I do know it's part of why their internet situation is so strange—a lot of it is a hangover from the post-korean-war military dictatorship days, but the net effect is they've had a non-anonymous internet in a now-free country which is a fascinating social experiment compared to the western internet-anarchy approach. But I digress.

Why two-party specifically, though? Party coalitions seem to work just fine for some other countries.

 

Multiparty coalitions have their dysfunction. It's not clear that a coalition can be formed in the first place - and in the case they can't be formed you have to go through yet another round of general election. 

South Korea never managed to shake away the influences of the military dictatorship days. The last president in fact was the daughter of the military dictator. And she would have been still in power if it had not been for the whole scandal with her close aide who had ties with the large corporations (who got rich largely because of support from the military dictators). The left wing and the right wing pretty much have a even 50-50 balance and they were fighting a brutal internal war- the current President Wen thought he was done for, suffering drops in support to a low of about 40 percent. The right wing that they had a chance to take back the power, but thankfully for Wen his handling of the coronavirus was right on mark. So the 50-50 balance turned out to be a 60-40 victory for the left wing. Having defeated, the large family owned corporations are looking for ways to make peace. 

 

It's kinda odd how the right wing can have such a cozy relationship with the military dictatorship families and still have the support they do. Like do people from towns and unindustrialized parts of the country really like military dictatorships?