sucks2Bme

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Posts posted by sucks2Bme


  1. GJ Laco! 

     

    81 - not Jazzpunk, it is a soda dispenser in the starting area from a free to play short game on steam, which humour does play a big part 

     

    82 - not Ascendancy or Master of Orion. It is an old space game, maybe one of the worst high budget games (at least at the time) think more along the lines of a space city builder


  2. hello! I also teach english but in central europe. Most of my students though are older (univ. and up) and my classes nowadays are mostly conversational either as a perk for employees or for students to maintain their English. I have had a few classes though with late teens and some of them were avid Video game players. 

     

    Myself learned a lot of english from playing video games as a child, mostly vocabulary through context (some of which was wrong and I had to lookup the actual definitions of the words much later) by playing old infocom games - the text ones with the parser. My dad is American though so I had a foundation for the language and in sweden most things were not dubbed so access to english was pretty easy. Here in czech where i live and teach now, most things are subtitled but my girlfriend is basically fluent in english and she learned it mostly from watching the simpsons as a child, which i think she pirated or somehow got "illegally" since it wasn't dubbed. 

     

    I do still have one student who used to play a lot of games growing up and we have talked about how it helped him learn english.   

     

    The gamification of language learning is probably best realized at the moment by Duolingo and similar apps and isnt necessarily new, a friend of mine successfully uses RPG elements in her classroom and students get to "level" up and specialize in their "class" of choice (i use quotes because i do not remember exactly what that means in this context!)  Using games for education as they are though does have some pitfalls. My aforementioned student has no problem explaining the newest Hearthstone expansion to me but when it comes to explaining details of his job, which requires a completely different vocabulary, sometimes it gets difficult. 

     

    I also found some relevant links on this topics , but I haven't explored them really so i can't comment on the content but they might be itneresting:

     

    https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2421&context=oa_dissertations  (Using Video Games To Increase Motivation Of Saudi Students Learning English)

    https://www.wired.com/2014/10/video-game-literacy/ (HOW video gameS LIKE MINECRAFT ACTUALLY HELP KIDS LEARN TO READ)

    https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/bitstream/handle/123456789/38299/URN%3ANBN%3Afi%3Ajyu-201208182168.pdf  (APPLYING VIDEO GAMES IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING)

     

    as far as using english phrases in sentences, it doesnt really happen here that i have noticed, partly due to there being a huge variety in english language level even at the younger age bracket. However, most multi-national companies which have a presence here use english as their official office language so sometimes words like "meeting room" will be used. There is a lot of internet slang/words that originate from english and its usually easier to incorporate the english words somehow than to invent new ones, like tvitovat - to tweet, or download and upload although those also have czech equivalents

     

     

     


  3. A lot of great recommendations already. I don't know if they have been mentioned yet so apologies if my recommendations have already been posted,  but I would recommend Kikujiro, it is Beat Takeshi's take on comedy, and it is very special. Not sure if it is for everyone, but it is one of my favorite movies. 

    Also, there is a full version of youtube at the moment:

     

     

    The John Woo/Yun-Fat Chow films like A Better Tomorrow, the Killer and the (imo) best one Hard Boiled are pretty good too. I remember Bullet in the Head was alright as well but haven't seen it in a long time. 

     

    Infernal Affairs, which was remade as The Departed, is in a lot of ways superior to the US version. 

     

    To Live is a great movie about a Chinese family living through the changes of Chinese society before and during Communism. 

     

    Somewhere Only We Know is a Chinese romcom set in Prague. I have seen about half of it so far and it looks like a decent one. It was one of the highest grossing movies in China the year it came out and kind of started a small movement of wealthy Chinese going to Prague just to get married. 


  4.  

    On 2/18/2018 at 4:08 PM, Gatazhk said:

    The more I hear about this game, the less interested in I am in playing it.  That said,  I haven't seen anything particularly compelling that shows how the game is  "bad history."  It actually seems that the historical details in the game are quite firm, if stilted in its representation of women.

     

    The core of the historical criticism seems to be aimed at the lack of people of color depicted in the game.  Yet KC:D reportedly features the Cumans, who were a Turkic group displaced to Hungary during the Mongol invasions.  If some are clamoring for Africans (specifically sub-Saharan Africans) to be featured in the game, that would not be historically accurate for 15th Century rural Bohemia.  This is an odd basis for criticism because it seems to demand skewed history in order to get even with someone who's got Alt right sympathies etc.    Find something genuinely alt-right in the game to make this case .  For example, how are the Cumans depicted in the game?  Is that depiction historically accurate, given the time and setting?

     

     

     

    I haven't heard anyone say if there are Romani in the game nor heard critique of the lack of Romani in the game (cause i doubt they are there). The non-inclusion of sub-Saharan Africans might be hand-waved away with the excuse that there is no definite proof, or that it doesn't fit into the small slice of life the game depicts, but the absence of Romani directly ties into the current and long-tine marginalization in Czech Republic. That is a lot more telling and damning of Vávra than the inclusion of a trader or whatever i see people talk about. I am sure a lot of historical details in the game world are precise and considerate, but they aren't are when it comes to diversity and representation. 


  5. Prey

     

    Prey is maybe one of my favorite games ever. it had everything i needed

     

    the following are also very good:

    PUBG - goto online social game, always kind of fun even when the initial thrill has worn off

    Tacoma - short and sweet story that moved me twice in less than 30 mins

    What Remains of Edith Finch - interesting stories told creatively, probably better for how it told stories than the stories themselves. 

     

    These were also good:

    Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor - chill game of 2017 and THEDAY is the best

    Heat Signature - still havent spent a lot of time on it but strange progression ideas made me take a break 

     

    games from this year (that i remember) that i havent had a chance yet to play but really want to:

    Dishonored: Death of the Outsider

    Nier

    Pyre

    Hellblade

    Tooth and Tail

     

    Games I wont ever play cause i dont and wont buy console but i wish i could:

    HZD 


  6. I'm watching season 2 in chunks, and I feel the writing gets worse and worse every episode, still kind of like it even if its bad tho. There are enough mysterious drama threads to keep me going, but at a slower pace. 


  7. I dunno, when I duo with my friend (who is usually the only person i duo with) we almost always end in/near the top 10 unless we die in the first 2-3 minutes. 

     

    One thing I have noticed though, is the low amount of players after the first 5 minutes. It seems normal now that there are around 30 players left before the first circle has even finished. Not sure what is up with that (on EU server) 


  8. i'm a garbage person and i really like this garbage show. started this weekend and haven't really stopped. 

    Jughead is my fav character, along with V. Juggie comes into his own bout halfway into the first season.

     

    the show also drops hints here and there about how its aware of what it is, which is fun. Anyway, i just finished S1 and starting S2, did anyone stick with it? 

     


  9. I think the biggest choice in BS1 was softened in BS2 by allowing you to choose which character to start with. I know there is at least one character that almost always dies in BS1 but if you start fresh in BS2 I think he is alive. Im sure choices matter but I do not think there are many significant ones besides these and I do not remember any such dramatic choices in BS2.

     

    Can't wait for BS3! 


  10. i really like this game but i have the "melting buildings" issue at the start of every game, so it takes me between 2-5 minutes to be able to loot anything. hoping that will be worked on during EA so I do not have to upgrade to a better computer soon to really enjoy the game. 

     

    Squads make it more fun for me, because my friends loot everything and protect me while I am on look-out duty, but it does dampen the whole experience quite a bit. Especially cause even in squads, dropping into a hot zone with good loot or near another squad/person is not viable.


  11. Haha, it's more that I groan every time someone mentions The Witness on Waypoint Radio because I know Danielle's going to have to get in one jab, at least, about how it's a mean game for snobs. Sometimes she holds out for a couple minutes, but I'm in the forties in my listen-through and she hasn't managed to let it pass once yet.

     

    I had a similar thing with Patrick on Match 3 whenever Life is Strange was brought up. He would always go into how it "swung for the fences but missed" but he was happy that it at least tried to do many things. I couldn't help but think Fuck your selfie, Patrick. It was good. 

     

    Also, on Waypoint, i am starting to groan every time Austin says "the notion" and I keep a running tally during listens to see how many times he uses that phrase. I think the average is around 3 or 4 times an episode, and it is rubbing off on Danielle and Rob as well. 

     

    5 hours ago, Latrine said:

    And if you haven't watched them I strongly recommend watching the videos on the previous page if you want to understand what values The Witness actually has. There's a lot in those videos that I didn't know until watching them even after playing through The Witness in its entirety and they cleared up a lot of things I only half understood.

     

     

    Definitely. I don't agree that Blow didn't have respect for player's time, and I even listened to the full hour speech (loved it) to get one of the puzzle solutions. It is a very meditative game, and a story would ruin it. Also, I don't remember a story being a highlight in any of the marketing leading up to release, but most of the marketing I cam across was just people chatting about it on pods, so I might have missed it.