Brett E

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Posts posted by Brett E

  1. Posted

    Yeah, touch controls are, most of the time, The Worst . It's definitely a usability downgrade on the Kindle and I seethe impotently with rage at the design decision most phone companies have made to phase out physical keyboards on mid-to-high-end smartphones. (And of course, iPhones have never had them.) Ultimately I feel like some of the other improvements are too important to go back to my button-based devices but I'd really love it if I could have both the better tech -and- functional UI.

     

    Yep, I guess we're stuck with them for the foreseeable future. Likely until non-physical interaction becomes viable.

     

    Strangely though there's an attachment for the new Galaxy Note phone that puts a physical keyboard over the lower part of the screen.

  2. Posted

    Well now I've installed Windows 7 to the new drive and I again downloaded Windows 10 and tried to install but I guess either because I downloaded it manually without prompting it didn't like it and demanded a product key so I had to cancel. Now I'm just going to get this install of 7 up to speed with the necessary programs and install Windows 10 as an upgrade whenever because I cannot be bothered with it any more.

  3. Posted

    Ok cool.

    I spoke to a friend last night that said I can't fresh install to 10 so I'd have to do a fresh install of 7 onto the new drive and then upgrade that to 10. I think I'll see how the upgrade and clone goes, if it's good then I'll leave the fresh install for now.

     

    Edit:

    It turns out you can do a clean install, I was misinformed so I have a lot of installing to look forward to.

     

    Double Edit:

    It failed, back to plan B.

  4. Posted

    I'm downloading Windows 10 at the moment and my new HDD arrived today, I need to replace the old one (6 years old) and I was thinking that I'd do a clean install on my current drive then clone it to the new one. Does that sound like the best way of doing it? 

     

    I'd prefer to just put Win 10 on a usb or something, boot and install fresh but apparently you need a product key if you do it that way. Which does make me wonder about future issues...

  5. Posted

    I'm very much looking forward to this. I really much enjoyed the first game which had a surprising about of effort put into the campaign (remember all those expensive cinematics?) and a pretty good online.

    It was one of those rare games where it came out in the UK first, I played it with some friends online all weekend and we had loads of fun. Then it was released in the US and the user base skyrocketed, people figured out the cheapest/easiest tactic and all did it constantly, then the game stopped being fun and we stopped playing but I still have fond memories :)

  7. Posted

    I thought the exact opposite. In fact, I almost commented yesterday that films have about 4 months to stop putting 80s influenced synth in their adverts before I start ignoring them completely (like when every film had the Inception clang in it).

     

    Well it's a phase sure and it'll pass but that seems a bit dramatic.

  9. Posted

    Hmm, well there's a certain degree of plausibility to it but I think that the Marc Laidlaw e-mails make a good point, valve have never been that worried about being unpopular or taking risks. Steam is so established at this point that it would take a lot more than a disappointing game to significantly impact that.

     

    Ah I've thought this for years. HL3 will never live up to expectations and so they shouldn't bother making and releasing it. It really isn't worth the backlash.

    Although, it is a shame that they aren't instead making a new different single player IP :( with that amount of money and talent it's absolutely criminal. In these past ten years we could be on the third instalment of a franchise to rival halo and uncharted by now. Fuck half Life 3!

     

    Yeah, I'm ok with there not being a HL3 but it's a damn shame that Valve aren't making single player or story driven games at the moment.

  10. Posted

    Yep I want to like, favourite and retweet this:

     

    conmulligan:

    I haven't dug through his timeline so I don't know what exactly people were saying to him, but the article doesn't say he was harassed off Twitter, just that he quit. It's certainly possible — likely, even, given the platform — that he was getting abuse, but neither he nor the article suggests that.
     
    Anyway, that joke was kind of shitty, so I can understand why people might have been upset. Obviously that's not license to abuse someone, but people have a right to their feelings. On that note, can we please stop saying people "choose" to be offended? You can't choose to be offended, any more than you can choose to be irritated or upset. Besides, half the time what people perceive to be outrage isn't even that. Like, I get annoyed every time I hear a lousy Irish accent on American television, but that doesn't mean I'm offended by it. There's a whole spectrum of emotions and reactions that one can have to shitty behaviour, and we should learn to better parse that before, ironically, frothing at the mouth in outrage over "outrage culture".

     

    I agree that the staff could take a slightly tougher stance on the subject but I think it's part of the culture of the site, to be a place where it's just some people having fun, not worrying about the more 'serious' parts of games press like reviews and stuff, just goofing around. Which it's hard to fault them for and to be fair when it's come up they have always said how totally unacceptable the harassment and all that stuff of recent years is.

  11. Posted

    I also really enjoyed The League while like you having no interest in the sport.

     

    I'm not expecting great things from Suicide Squad but I'm on the fence about Batman vs Superman, I expect it won't be very good but was pleasantly surprised to see Wonder Woman in the trailer. Although that does make me wonder if they're screwing her over a bit there, like Marvel did to Black Widow in the second Captain America movie because it's clearly not just Batman vs Superman if she's in it, unless she doesn't take a side, I guess... maybe.

  13. Posted

    EDbUK7N.png

    Like two Adonis-es

     

    Wow, such an abundance of hair that some was even spared for the chin!

     

     

    Ugh, I'm playing Act 2 right now and I want so badly to like it, because I really enjoyed Act 1, but I'm just finding it unendingly frustrating. Each bit of progress is won by bashing my head against a wall, only to quickly encounter another wall that needs bashing. I can clearly see what my goals are, but have no clue how to accomplish them, so I end up walking in loops, hearing the same dialogue bits over and over again. I like the writing, I like the characters, I like the world - I just hate feeling so goddamn lost all of the time.

     

    Broken Age, why do you work so hard to make me not like you?

     
    I know exactly how you feel, I was the same. I used walkthroughs for a significant part of the second act and I'm glad I did, I doubt i'd ever have finished it otherwise because some of the puzzles are rather obtuse, others are heavy on trial and error and I don't have much time for either. 

  16. Posted

    I read some of the thoughts about Alex and gaming mice on here before hearing that episode and I was surprised. It seemed pretty reasonable and he didn't seem totally dismissive of the idea, just that he thought they were pretty much unnecessary and I kinda agree with him.

     

    Alex used to annoy me a lot a few years ago and while he's still often a bit too cynical for my tastes I don't find him annoying anymore. Maybe he matured, maybe I did, maybe both.

  17. Posted

    Awesome, I hadn't heard this so had a google and woo! new album :)

     

    There's no mistaking "Leave A Trace" for the work of any other band. The first single from Chvrches' just-announced sophomore album Every Open Eye is built on the same clean beats, deep synths and infectious vocal melodies that helped make its debut, The Bones Of What You Believe, so invigorating.

     
    Every Open Eye is due out Sept. 25 via Glassnote Records.

    http://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2015/07/16/423489841/chvrches-tease-new-album-with-leave-a-trace

  19. Posted

    I've been mostly enjoying Alphabear, I much prefer the non-timed levels, just making a word longer than three letters is enough of a challenge for me :)

     

    Unfortunately it quite regularly checks that the phone clock matches the internet so that you're not trying to get around the free to play timers and finds some discrepancy and closes itself. Which means it complains if you're not connected to the net too, plus occasionally it just says sorry something went wrong and dies anyway, so I dunno if I'll stick with it. Also it murders my battery.

  21. Posted

    Well for starters I was introduced to it through friends in closed beta and while it wasn't something I spent lots of time with I was kind of prepped to enjoy it more as the beta opened.

    I think a large amount of the reason is that it relies so heavily on tracking aim which is something I've developed through playing NS2. In DB players have more health and also move faster than other realistic gun style fps like say CSGO so being able to follow their strafe and maintain a consistent aim is a lot more valuable than say keeping your xhair at head height and waiting for that clutch head shot (which is still a rewarded skill since headshots crit).

    Movement is also similar to NS although I think I prefer NS' more since DB's movement range kind of fell short of my hopes (I wish the parkour let you have the kind of range you can get in TF2 than a [still valuable set of trick jumps]).

    There's also a few similarities to TF2 as a class based shooter with a higher than average movement range and TF2 is a game I used to enjoy a lot while part of me wondered what it'd be like to have a couple of regular conventional weapons.

     

    Finally well with the Oceanic casual and competitive Natural Selection 2 community reduced to a single 18 slot server with no support for higher skilled scrims or leagues (we just wrapped up our fourth and likely final season) it's nice to be playing a game that rewards the skillset I'm most invested in (and I find the most enjoyment in) with people/friends (we were a tight knit bunch) I've come to know well. I've never really had the patience for Counter Strike or the consistency to enjoy it and I tend to focus on one shooter at a time.

     

    Plus after spending so much time invested in multiplayer fps to not have one just feels off. It's also hurt my enjoyment of regular single player fps although that might change with a quasi old school resurrection that games like Doom could bring.

     

    Thanks for the response. I've not played Natural Selection but I think I follow you. One thing I do like is the health, I never got on with CS and similar games, I like to have a moment to think about how I'm gonna react to a situation. So maybe I'll give Dirty Bomb another shot at some point, I think one crucial point is that you are playing with friends and I wasn't. I don't remember there being much in the way of teamwork but it always helps to have people you know in the match regardless.

  24. Posted

    Osborne delivered the 100% tory budget. £12 billion in cuts for the poor and disabled, tax breaks for corporations and a whole lot of double speak.