coaxmetal

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Posts posted by coaxmetal

  1. Posted

    I guess I lied. I had a lot more to say. But... despite all that, I fucking loved the game. I'm just better at complaining than I am at praising, I guess.

     

    Me too. I've mostly just complained but I am loving the game. Also you need to play Baldur's Gate 2 now. 

     

    Also I mostly agree with your complaints. Clicking on the model sucks, ive made mistakes because of that. I didnt' realize the patch added more skill bars though, thats great.

  2. Posted

    I felt the same way until I read an RPS (I think?) article that compared the inconsistency in the game's writing to playing D&D with a group of friends whose sense of humor undermines the seriousness of the game. I do feel like some of the goofier moments make it harder to take the game seriously, but that sort of has made me enjoy it more (because really, who cares about the big ultimate evil threatening the land when you can talk to dogs and find out why those statues are convincing people that they can fly?).

     

    My problem isn't' with it being goofy, its more that it doesn't commit to its tone, but instead tries to tell a serious fantasy story and at the same time be goofy. That can be done, I think, but for me I don't think this game succeeds, so it's tone just feels confused. Some of it is genuinely funny, but the overall tone just feels like there were 2+ conflicting goals in the writing that were never really reconsiled.

     

    I didn't' consider the analog to real life D&D, but in this case I am not looking for that experience, especially as I am playing this single player. I think were I playing it multiplayer/coop it would likely work better. Perhaps some people do like that aspect, but I think it detracts from the game. Which I still really like, regardless.

  3. Posted

    I don't watch much F1, but I occasionally catch part of a race, and a close friend and ex-flatmate is heavily into it. Mainly I listen to and enjoy the Alt+F1 podcast on Giant Bomb. I do find the ever-changing nature of the sport pretty fascinating.

     

    Yeah, I also listen to Alt+F1. thats why I started watching it in the first place, actually. I think I ended up getting deeper into it than Drew and Danny though. The changing nature of the sport is really cool, and I also really enjoy the sorts of strategy that are largely unique to it (or at least to motorsports), like tires and fuel strategy.

     

     

    I used to be into Formula 1 a bit when I was younger. Around '97 I believe, when my favourite driver Jaques Villeneuve won the championship. A year or so later my interest waned (largely because they stopped broadcasting the races on the public channels here). I've tried watching it a few times since but have had a hard time getting back into it though, not really gotten hooked again.

     

    Working at a studio that makes motorsport games have however gotten me into other series such as the german "DTM" series, where I constantly get upset that Timo Glock never can keep his high positions on the final lap.

     

    The fact that it is so hard to view the races is pretty annoying. I end up either waking up early and catching a stream, sometimes using a VPN to watch on BBC, but BBC only has some of the races. The other way is torrents, there are a couple of private trackers that just have motorsport stuff. I wish the FIA or maybe just Bernie and F1 would look to the WWE for inspiration and launch a WWE network style service. A lot of people would pay for that. I guess F1 isn't really about making money though, and I think they are locked up pretty tight with TV contracts. Still dumb.

  4. Posted

    I'm thinking of picking up Dark Souls again after putting it down about 6 months ago.

     

    I'm wondering if I should start over or pick up the character that I left off with.

     I have a fighter who beat the following bosses:

    • Asylum Demon
    • Taurus Demon
    • Capra Demon
    • Bell Gargoyles
    • Moonlight Butterfly
    • Gaping Dragon

    I started down the path to Blight Town after beating the Gaper and got my ass handed to me repeatedly, to the point where I put the game down. 

     

    I'm not sure if I've built my dude wrong or if I've just hit an elbow in the difficulty curve, or I'm just heading in the wrong direction.

     

    Halp?

     

    You are going the right direction (there are other places you can go to, but blight town is generally where you go next from there). 

  6. Posted

    Formula 1: What is it, and why does it matter to me?

    according to Wikipedia, formula 1 is " the highest class of single-seater auto racing sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA)."

     

    But what does mean? Wikipedia will be no help, so I turned to my old friend Webster:

    formula 1

     

    The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary. Click on a spelling suggestion below or try again using the search bar above.

     

    so there you have it. As to why it matters, it probably doesn't.

     

     

    It does matter to me though, inasmuch as I quite enjoy it, so I figured i'd make a thread to see if any other forum goers were interested.

     

    I started watching for the first time this year, and have ended up getting really into it ( enough to buy tickets to see the American Grand Prix in Austin). That's notable, as it is really the only sport that I can say that about. Now I understand what people like about sports though! Anyway, I started at the first race of this season, the Australian Grand Prix in March, which I enjoyed, but I wasn't sold on the sport until the 2nd race in Malaysia, and the 3rd, the Bahrain Grand Prix, was an incredible race as well. So I wanted to talk about motorsports, mostly just F1 though because I don't follow any others.

     

    How do I watch it, you ask? Well if you are in the united states, not easily. If you wake up at 5 am pacific time to watch the races live in europe, you can stream it from some of those rather illicit sports streaming sites. I use squirrelstreams usually. Alternatively, you can acquire coverage of it after the fact if you know where to look. Or you can pay for NBC sports, but that is only for watching it live as well and requires a hefty cable package.

     

    Here's a picture of a car and a jet and Daniel Ricciardo, the smilingest man in F1:

    i95YI6almMsLH.jpg

     

    Here's a picture of my cat:

    kPkYuFe.jpg?1

  8. Posted

    That one, The Silver Spike, is a spinoff and doesn't actually have any bearing on the plots of the other books, so you could have skipped it. Me, I like Glen Cook. He has a very distinct feel and knows how to make a viewpoint character fun to ride along with.

     

    I actually got pretty close to finishing it, but didn't quite make it through. Not bad, just not what I wanted and it came in the kindle 3 book collection called the books of the south, but was out of place and killed the momentum. I'll probably pick the series up again at some point.

  9. Posted

    Glenn Cook's The Black Company series (which I think Erikson said was an influence on Malazan) is pretty good for that, though I never finished that one. I got mostly through the Books of the South, but then there was a book that starred all the characters and events I didn't care about and stopped reading.

  11. Posted

    I've also been playing this game. I am a big fan of oldschool crpgs, and this sure is one of those, all the way. A crpg-ass crpg. I am really enjoying it, I like the combat a lot, and there is enough there in the setting and dialogue to keep me going. So to be clear, I like it and think it is a good game. With that out of the way I am going to proceed to talk about the parts I don't like, or at least think could be better.


     


    The biggest (and really, only but its big) complaint I have is about the writing. The setting and main story is just standard fantasy stuff, nothing to see there. That is fine -- being different with that stuff, say like, Planescape Torment (my favorite game) would be better, but a generic fantasy crpg will work just fine -- baldur's gate (2) is pretty generic, and is also one of my favorite games. Where BG2 excelled, and I think Divinity: OS falls flat, is the character writing. I don't like how the main characters are written at all, especially in situations where they are talking to each other. The dialogue options are things no person would ever say, and I have to choose one. The tone of their writing is inconsistent, sometimes they are written as just regular adventurers, sometimes they are written as sappy romantic stories, sometimes as comedy. If it were just some characters that picked one of those and stuck with it, I would have less of a problem, but between the main character's writing not being great, and the tonal inconsistencies, I am not getting anything out of their characters.


     


    Anyway this game is pretty great.


     


    e: for some reason, this entire post is indented, and it appears that other posts are not. very strange.


  12. Posted

    Of course the advantage is that I find it relatively easy to slip into most other regional American dialects, something someone with a thick Bronx accent can't do.  Like hearing someone from New York try to do a Texas accent is hilarious.  I tend to pick up little bits of other people's accents within a few minutes of a conversation, not even meaning to.  It also makes it really easy to pass as a Canadian when I've traveled internationally, which has been convenient sometimes. 

     

    True. I also have a tendency to unintentionally pick up bits of an accent when I am around people speaking with one, which is a bit strange

  14. Posted

    Technically true, but a particular kind of Midwest accent is viewed as the most neutral of the American accents and the one that people are mostly likely to describe as being "not an accent".  It skews closest to the dictionary defined pronunciation for a lot of words, and so many accents are really defined by breaking the correct pronunciation in some ways.

     

    Exactly, this is what I was referring to when I said I don't have an accent. The accent is called Generic American, and is the closest thing to no accent since it is closest to dictionary phonetics and lacks regional characteristics. It is a standard accent, if any can be called that. It is also uninteresting. 

  15. Posted

    A google search for "dicks in video games" was not nearly as entertaining as I had hoped.  Although it did result in finding this quote (no link, it's funnier just by itself):

     

     

    I was thinking I had played one game that had a demon with a giant schlong, but then I realized I was remembering the movie "This is the End".

     

    Has there even been a mainstream game with full frontal nudity on a dude?  This probably deserves its own thread. 

     

    well there is that one Persona/Demon that is in the Persona/SMT games. http://megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/Mara

     

    also searching for that (I did't remember the name so I searched for "persona dick chariot") also yielded http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/eirikr/lists/top-ten-genital-demons-in-shin-megami-tensei/15347/

  17. Posted

    There's definitely a fan contingent that believes she is a female.  We could wage a wiki war and start fixing all the wikis.  My default assumption was male for a long time until I saw someone point out origin of the Sif name and that she's never given a gender in game.  As that's the case, I lean towards female.

     

    Oh gawd, I'm refreshing my memory about some of the stuff I read about this a couple of years ago and this is hilarious and expectedly awful.  People complaining about how gross it would be to have a giant dog dick flopping around in that fight.  There's also a lovely, "I don't know how much you know about wolves, but I'm an expert and you would never call a female wolf Great" poster. 

     

    I'm sad I missed all this amazing drama now. It sounds great, for sure. Very good stuff.

  18. Posted

    I just realized that Sif the great grey wolf is probably a lady, just going by the name, since Sif is a norse goddess. Which was interesting, not because the fact itself is meaningful, but because I was surprised that I was surprised that sif might not be male, that was just my default assumption. That is a detail of no import at all to the game, and the game, so far as I can tell, never even uses a pronoun to refer to Sif, but I found it interesting just because of how it made me question my assumptions.

     

    Anyway, I now have a strong Sif Is a girl agenda. Please help spread the word.

  19. Posted

    I wouldn't mind just meaninglessly increasing a number on my profile, but it (intentionally, of course) is impossible/very difficult to get a complete set of any cards without trading or buying, and that part of it I have no interest in, so my inventory just collects cards that just sit there, because I don't want to go through the motions to sell them (and most of them would net me only $0.01 anyway). It would be neat to have an opt-out of trading cards, or something to automatically put them up on the market at whatever the last selling price was. 

     

    Actually I suppose I could make something to do that. Maybe I will.

  20. Posted

    I read all 10 of the books, and enjoyed them, but found them inconsistent -- the character switching sometimes resulted in long sequences, sometimes most of books, focusing on characters and plot-lines I didn't really care about. The other problem I had with the series is one that I think any series of this style and scope runs into, and that is it introduced many more plot threads that it could keep track of or resolve, leaving most of them unresolved at the series' conclusion. I probably could have not read the last half or so of the books and gotten just as much out of it, though that isn't to say I wasn't entertained. I've heard Erikson has written other books set in the same universe, and that some of them address things left unresolved by the series, and also that books by Esselmont address some of those, so perhaps had I read those as well I would have gotten more closure.

  21. Posted

    I just finished my 2nd playthrough (ending B). I enjoyed it the first time through, but the way they change NG+ was very impressive. They do explicitly tell you it will be different after you bet it for the first time, which is good, because you wouldn't want to miss that content. It recontextualizes a lot of the game, and just adds some additional narrative that is mostly quite good. I don't think i've seen another game do anything like that. Dark Souls 2 has some very limited additional narrative in NG+, but not in the way Nier did it.

     

    I'm still enjoying it, so I may go as far as to get ending C/D, after collecting all the weapons.

  22. Posted

    I just reread The Last Wish and Blood Of Elves, those are good books. Last Wish is the best though, it is just a series of vignettes with a framing story. The sequel to blood of elves has also been translated to english, I think I will read it as well. It does prominently feature Ciri (Blood of Elves does, I mean, I can't speak for the sequel yet).

     

    I'm going to replay 2 as well (I have a playthrough started) but I want to even more after rereading the books.