Zeusthecat

Lords Management more like *********

Lords Management Edit: What sorcery are you using?

Doesn't seem any more extreme than someone trying to just get decent at a LoMa/Lords Management/Whatever. Edit: So I guess I can't say M OBA on these forums.

They probably are and I just didn't notice. I'll check it out when I play this evening.

And is the only purpose for upgrading a gun to make it more reliable? If so, I might just take a pass on that and go with whatever guns I pick up from enemies. I like the element of uncertainty it adds to encounters.

I think one of my favorite things about this game is how guns sometimes just fall apart. I've had it happen a few times now and it is such an effective way to force me to improvise and take an approach that I wouldn't normally take. With most shooters, I more or less just stick to one or two guns through the entire game and I didn't realize how boring my usual approach was until this game started forcing me to switch up my tactics. One thing I don't quite get though is how weapon upgrades work. I've purchased a few but the computer just shows a gun with a number of diamonds next to it and I don't know if I'm upgrading that type of gun to just make it jam less or if I am ordering one of those guns to be delivered to a safe house and I have to re-purchase it if I drop it to pick up another gun.

Thanks for the response Gormongous! I definitely like it enough to keep going so we'll see if my opinion changes by the time I get to the end of the second season.

I don't think it's fair for any of us to be judging the quality of anyone's voice until we've heard all of them sing. That is the only way this raging debate will end: an Idle Thumbs Sing-off.

I get where people are coming from with not wanting to vote but damn, when you really look at some of the candidates, it is often more like choosing between a destructive pile of shit and a person who is kind of shitty but at least isn't trying to smash everything around them with a giant fecal hammer. I see a lot of this bullshit here in Arizona. We are something like 48th in the nation when it comes to education and yet our governor just cut another $200 million from K-12 education and $75 million from university education all in the name of lowering government spending. Then you have things like religious freedom bills, laws that attempt to restrict women's access to contraception, anti-voter laws, and a number of other completely regressive things that pretty much exclusively come out of one particular party. And I get that in practice, a lot of these things are all talk and once they are elected, they don't necessarily have the influence to do all these things they campaigned on but if I have any capability to tip the scales away from whatever dystopia some of these psychos are fighting to achieve, then I am going to check that box for every possible democratic candidate on any ballot I have access to. If it is true that liberals aren't as good at voting as conservatives then it is incredibly frustrating to think that a lot of the bullshit could be lessened if people would just make some kind of an effort to vote.

I finished the first 26 episodes of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (which is basically season 1 I guess?). By the end of it, I had warmed up to this series quite a bit but I still have mixed feelings about it overall. On the positive side, I think the lore is really solid and there are a lot of interesting and believable details about the world that are surprisingly well fleshed out. The various crimes they solve and the way they go about executing things and communicating with each other also feels very well thought out. Generally speaking, I don't really have any complaints about the premise or story and quite enjoyed that aspect of the show. However, there were a few problems I did have that I think kept me from being IGN.com'd by the show. Probably my two biggest complaints are that there was way too much talking and even with all that talking, there were still things that I felt weren't explained very well. I think for me it was a fundamental problem with how flat and monotonous the English voice actors were combined with the heavy dialog that made a lot of things very hard to follow. Whenever there was an extended conversation between two characters, it just seemed like they were talking so fast and with so little intonation that I regularly found my mind trailing off and then had to rewind it to watch again and try to catch the points that I missed. This was exacerbated by the fact that a lot of what they were talking about was often steeped in lore that I barely had a grasp on because it was explained earlier in another fast talking segment that I also had a hard time following. I didn't even really know what a Ghost was until I was over half way through because as far as I could tell, they never explained it and just assumed that anyone watching would automatically know what that was. From the context, it was fairly obvious but it is still not completely clear to me what they mean when they talk about the possibility of an AI attaining a Ghost. I assume Ghost is basically their word for soul and it may be obvious enough to most people but it kind of bothered me that with all that talking, they really didn't seem to go into it much (and maybe they actually did and I missed it because again, a lot of that dialog was hard to follow). Also, I think I have to echo a little bit of what syntheticgerbil said earlier. That ridiculous leotard outfit is gaudy and distracting and way out of place in this show. It didn't really bother me too much but it was enough of an annoyance to me that I figured it was worth mentioning. I mean, that strap in the front is barely wide enough to cover her thingy and with everything else being so serious and grounded in reality, I can only assume that this type of outfit was conceived purely for titillation. I also really liked the music in the intro but was a little disappointed that there wasn't a whole lot of other good tracks that stood out to me throughout the show. Gormongous, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on what it is about this show that you find really appealing and if you feel like my complaints are off base. I strongly suspect I would like the show much more on a second watch and probably even more so if I had a chance to watch the subbed version (I think having subtitles to read would make it much easier for some of these things to become cemented in my brain). I started season 2 last night and I'm already liking it quite a bit more than season 1. But that is probably also because at this point, I've put in enough time to at least have a basic understanding of a lot of these details.

I would love to join in on the conversation but I know I'd just end up being that dumb guy asking dumb questions and liking all the worst shows and hating all the best shows. And also I'd have no idea what anyone is talking about cause I've only seen like 15 anime. But I totally want to listen to this.

Oh hey! I may still be a noob when it comes to my exposure to anime but I think I've watched the entire Dragon Ball Z series and all of the movies enough times that I could totally go toe to toe with you. But you would probably still win. The Cell Games is still one of my favorite block of episodes of any show ever.

I've done a few missions now and feel like I've put enough time in to have some actual thoughts on this game. The two overwhelming feelings I have while playing this game are trepidation and excitement. Every time I leave a safe house or bus stop and start driving down those dirt roads, I find myself wondering how far I will get before murder starts raining down on me. And usually, before I even finish that thought, I hear an engine revving behind me followed by a rain of bullets that forces me to stop and get out before my car explodes. The first couple hours of playing I was wondering what the big deal was and why people complained about this game being too hard or too unforgiving. I had only died once because of some stupid mistake and the few times I came to a guard outpost, I was able to pick them all off pretty easily while maneuvering around some rocks and trees. Then last night, during an extended play session, everything just started literally falling apart. During one encounter, my rocket launcher fired a dud and then promptly fell apart in my hands, leaving me with no option but to chuck a couple grenades and then run back in the other direction as an exploding car started a brush fire that nearly surrounded me. In another encounter, I tried to stop my car a good distance away from an outpost to safely pick off the enemies but was spotted prematurely by some guys who immediately hopped into a car and charged me. I barely managed to take them out before my assault rifle fell apart in my hands at which point I heard another engine rev behind me, causing me to instinctively jump onto the hood of my car just in time to avoid being smashed. But at this point I had lost both my assault rifle and my rocket launcher and desperately started firing my pistol at the gunner, taking him and the driver out before either one could kill me. In the meantime, the rest of the guards at the outpost 50 yards away were still firing at me and the mess of cars I was taking cover behind was close to exploding. So I had no choice but to charge toward the outpost while throwing the few grenades I had and managed to find cover behind some rocks where I found another assault rifle near a dead body and finished clearing everyone out. It's amazing how many of these moments there are and how often they happen. I think it was in the same run as one of the other incidents mentioned above where I slowed down to admire some zebras and out of nowhere, 10-15 guys started opening fire on me from multiple directions. I panicked and tried to just drive through them as fast as I could but my vehicle couldn't take all the damage and it died right before I was viciously murdered by a lot of bullets. Luckily, my buddy rescued me and dragged me away right before my car exploded and started a brush fire that helped create a wall between us and the enemies. Then, I found a tree and healed while my buddy took out the rest of the guys that hadn't died in the fire. Sadly, when I went to examine all the carnage, I found that the majestic zebras that started this whole mess had also perished in the fire. It's weird. Coming down with malaria sucks. Having guns break and constantly jam sucks. Having my rocket launcher fire a dud when I'm counting on it to blow up a car that is speeding towards me also sucks. But all of that shit just makes everything that is usually so monotonous in a game like this super exciting. The missions and story are also nothing special. They are just there to drive me forward and get me into situations like these. I've played a lot of shooters before but this is one of those rare ones that I just can't help but sit here and think about all day while I'm supposed to be working.

Yeah, I think the music is perfectly fine. It's pretty subdued anyways and kind of just fades in and out. And I kind of like the tension it adds to fights.

Well shit, I am one of those completionist type people so maybe I need to rethink some of these life decisions.

Thanks for the heads up. I will take your advice and bump that down. My goal is to run through another few quick burn games after Far Cry 2 before jumping into another long one so I can maintain some steady progress. I'll move Stacking up to that slot instead.

So I take it there are no options to tweak signal timing at each intersection or anything like that? From what I've heard about the traffic flow problems, it seems like a big part of that could solved by just letting players adjust signal timing parameters, cycle lengths, and offsets to improve progression down corridors.

In the last 2-3 weeks, I've knocked 5 games off of my Steam backlog (thanks to LucasArts replays) bringing my current backlog to 11 games. I started Far Cry 2 last night and I figure when I'm done with that Binding of Isaac and FTL will be the next 2 games I knock out. I checked out that howlongtobeat website (which is awesome btw) and if I don't get too distracted with other games, I think I can get through the rest of these over the course of the next 4 months. Man it feels good to see this list getting steadily whittled down.

Okay, that makes more sense then. I use Installshield quite a bit at work to put together our installation packages and we typically just check for specific registry keys to determine if the installer needs to install any Visual Studio or DirectX components. So it's a pretty basic check in our case. I never realized having a version of DirectX installed didn't necessarily mean that you had all of the binaries for that version.

Ah I see, I think I'm fine with the music ramping up during combat. And speaking of the ambient sound, it is really good. I stealthed my way through that first hostage/prisoner rescue mission in the middle of night and all the ambient sound effects really set a fantastic atmosphere.

I started this last night. Music is pretty low key and seems fine to me so I think I'm going to leave that on unless it turns to crap later. As far as the saving goes, I see that there are designated save points and that I can also save in the game menu. Is there any point to using the save points since I can just save in the menu? And I can tell I'm gonna like this game. Seems like there are quite a few different game mechanics to keep track of and it seems pretty compelling so far (at least gameplay-wise, story seems pretty standard).

Why does Steam try to install DirectX and Visual Studio redistributables with every single new game I boot up? Is there something I need to do to get it to detect that I already have all of that installed?

For anyone who hasn't been reading the Monkey Island 2 thread, I am new to graphic adventures and have just recently played Secret of Monkey Island (my very first one) for the first time. Now that I am wrapping up Monkey Island 2 I have realized that I have an unquenchable thirst for these types of games. So I am going to play through all of the LucasArts graphic adventure games and post about my progress here so that I can share my experiences with others. From the recommendations I've received, I'm thinking of starting with Maniac Mansion and moving chronologically by release date from there. If anyone would like to join in, let me know. I would absolutely love to have someone else play through some of these with me. Some basic requests that I have regarding this thread: Please don't post solutions or hints unless they are in spoiler tags. I hope to solve most of these puzzles on my own but I fully expect to get stuck and ask for hints from time to time (especially with the older games). If I am about to start a game that has an un-winnable state, feel free to let me know. I would rather know ahead of time if it is possible for me to get permanently stuck and have to start over. Please join me. If anyone else ends up playing through one of these for the first time with me I will make sure to put my thoughts into spoiler tags so as not to influence anyone else trying to solve these puzzles. If it is just me though I will post what I am thinking for all to see. I am still open to recommendations too. If I see a consensus that I should skip a particular game or change the order up then I will adjust my course. Also, if anyone has any advice for how best to obtain these games (I'm using Scummvm and would prefer to play original versions if possible) please let me know. If not I will just google that shit. I'll post here again before I start the next game. UPDATE - Here is the list of games and the order I will be playing them: Maniac Mansion (Posts 69 - 122) https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8703-the-big-lucasarts-playthrough/?p=240247 Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (Posts 126 - 165) https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8703-the-big-lucasarts-playthrough/?p=241304 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Posts 169 - 205) https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8703-the-big-lucasarts-playthrough/?p=242419 Loom (263 - 273) https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8703-the-big-lucasarts-playthrough/?p=245471 Secret of Monkey Island (already completed) Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge (already completed) Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (Posts 285 - 337) https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8703-the-big-lucasarts-playthrough/?p=246568 Day of the Tentacle (Posts 357 - 436) https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8703-the-big-lucasarts-playthrough/?p=252218 Sam and Max Hit the Road (Posts 451 - 529) https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8703-the-big-lucasarts-playthrough/?p=256965 Full Throttle (Posts 542 - 584) https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8703-the-big-lucasarts-playthrough/?p=262536 The Dig (Posts 606 - 641) https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8703-the-big-lucasarts-playthrough/?p=265582 Curse of Monkey Island (Posts 645 - 760) https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8703-the-big-lucasarts-playthrough/?p=268882 Grim Fandango (Posts 797 - 946) https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8703-the-big-lucasarts-playthrough/?p=281308 Escape from Monkey Island (Posts 976 - 1048) https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8703-the-big-lucasarts-playthrough/?p=292662

I finished The Last Crusade last night with an IQ of 451. This time, since I was using a guide, I actually made notes of each of the hints I needed to determine which was the real grail and then read through the grail diary pdf (which Steam was kind enough to provide a link to right on the game's launch screen) to figure out which one was the correct grail based on the hints in the catacombs and the picture in the art room at Castle Brunwald. Having to go through that was really awesome and I wish more games did that (the cursive handwriting was a little tough to read in some spots though). I really like the whole idea of having a separate thing outside of a game that you have to do to figure out a puzzle in the game. It seems like a really cool way to actually make a game manual more meaningful beyond just having basic information on how to play the game. I miss game manuals.