Dosed

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Posts posted by Dosed

  1. Posted

    I just finished Gimlet's Crimetown series. I really enjoyed it and if anyone is into the Mafia and/or corruption cases then I think you'd like it too. It did a really good job of making me feel sympathy for the devil. It reminded me of being younger and hanging out with/knowing of the trouble makers, but only seeing the benefits of that and not having to face the fact they made life difficult for a lot of other people. It's a very weird side of the way we think. 

     

    It also reminded me a lot of Wild Wild Country in that way. Anybody been watching that? 

  2. Posted

    I was looking for an Overwatch replacement in my life and unfortunately this isn't it. The Switch basic controller just isn't made with competitive shooters in mind. My internet also apparently can't even support Paladins that well which doesn't help. 

  5. Posted

    I'm interested in getting this for the Switch and was wondering if anyone's had any experience with it? I really need something a bit more fast paced than Hearthstone to get my competitive fix. I'm thinking of it as my Overwatch replacement. 

     

     

  6. Posted

    @unimural thanks for reminding me about The Crate and Crowbar! I used to listen to it a long time a go. I think I gave up because one of the Chris' sense of humour wasn't for me and it just seemed super awkward at points. I'm really enjoying it at the moment. 

     

    I listened to a really good episode called "S.E.I.N.F.E.LD." of the Imaginary Advice podcast. It's a fictional episode of a writer programming his comedy writing AI replacement in the future. I really liked this episode, but haven't been a massive fan of the earlier stuff in the series. As the host, Ross Sutherland, describes it it's basically an audio sketchpad for a writer trying out different ideas. 

     

    I heard about it because the host of another good cast, The Allusionist, is ill and she put up an episode of Imaginary Advice as a replacement. If you like etymology this is a very good pop etymology episode. It doesn't get into the nitty gritty of stuff a lot of the time, but I'm sure I can have that itch scratched somewhere else. Speaking of which... anyone got any hardcore etymology podcasts?  

  7. Posted

    I kind of feel like at this point that if you want to get anywhere netdecking is the only way really. I mean sure there's these weird decks that surprise your opponents, but more often than not everyone else's deck is so optimised it's not even a competition. I've only ever netdecked and I don't really have the know how nor the creativity to do otherwise. Have you ever had any success with any homebrew decks in ladder? 

     

    I'm not really playing ladder this season so far as I just don't know what to play. I might try out some even Lock today. What do you think of the tag changes to Mountain Giant? People were saying it'll make elemental mage even better but it really seems like that deck is so weak at the moment that one tag can't make that much of a difference. I'm sure I'll be eating those words in no time. I'd be quite happy about that though as I crafted Jaina a long time a go and would be more than happy to put her to good use. 

     

    If you wanna have more success I'd recommend watching Kripp's latest arena video about getting the most out of Arena. I'm getting more and 5/6/7 runs recently and I think it's thanks to that video. I think the most useful tip for me was how to divide the draft up into 3 groups of 10 rather than just picking whatever Heartharena told me had a good rating. I also have not been taking many cards over 5 mana cost in the last 10 cards or so. 

     

    @Roderick I'd love to get into some sort of physical card game. I'm really craving some competition in my life recently. However! I don't really have the budget or the social scene to make it happen. It's funny because Hearthstone had a jungle themed expansion not long ago... it seems unlikely that Blizzard would ever lift any elements from other fantasy properties though...................

     

     

  8. Posted

    Anybody still playing? I've switched to arenas recently as ladder is just super boring for me. It's literally odd paladin or tempo/aggro rogue every single game. It's crazy. I managed to get a few 6-7 wins recently, but gave up again once my internet shit itself a few times. 

     

    I've been coming to a gaming cafe here in Hanoi to escape the heat so I can get some arenas done. It takes about 15 mins to download Hearthstone every time though and it's a bit annoying. Better than losing due to crappy internet. 

  9. Posted

    Since both of my favourite gaming podcasts, Thumbs and Besties, have stopped doing gaming stuff could anyone recommend some good gaming podcasts?

     

    I've tried out The Bombcasts in their various forms and they weren't for me. The Super Bunny Hop cast is a bit awkward for my likings. Although I do love his YouTube stuff. Has anyone got anything in the vein of Thumbs or Besties?

  10. Posted

    Yeah, I played a bit of odd rogue this month and I didn't realise how face orientated that deck is. I don't like playing aggro decks which have so few trading decisions. Are you playing just the old school tempo rogue? I was really hoping that deck would make a comeback coz I got Tess as my free legendary. 

     

    I havent been able to go above 3 or 4 wins in arena for a long time, but it breaks up the monotony. 

  11. Posted

    There's a bunch of nerfs coming up soon so I wonder what will happen there. It looks like they're interested in doom guards, which for me have never been a broken card until the other stuff enabled them to be. Glad they're looking into it after a relatively, for Blizzard, short period of time. 

     

    What have you been playing? I managed to get to rank 4 3 stars with Spiteful Druid because it ate Cubelocks and Paladins for breakfast, but all of a sudden I had a lot of trouble with paladins and as you might have noticed there's a few of those around...

  13. Posted

    So I got my Switch. I love it to pieces. I was suprised by a few things such as there being no in built browser. I didn't even bother googling it as I just assumed it would. Which according to my posts in this thread it's evident that I assume too much.

     

    I bought Super Mario Odyssey as I've never owned a console Zelda game. I really, really like it, but not as much as I thought I would considering how much I loved Super Mario Galaxy. So then I bought Zelda and I'm loving that. I imagine this is what a lot of people experienced when they first played 3D Zeldas as a kid, but now it's fully realised. 

     

    Has anyone played Xenoblade Chronicles 2? Could I get into it as a novice JRPG player or is it hopeless?

     

    Now where's that new Pokemon game... 

  14. Posted

    Oh I have no idea why I assumed Poland from your first post. Sorry! Yeah, I've had very similar situations in my classes. I had a 7 year old kid say "Oh my goodness!" as an exclamation. I never even say "oh my gosh" around the kids so you can definitely see he picks up stuff from videos/movies etc. And he's one of the brighter students in the class so it's obvious he's spending a lot of time with English outside of the class.

     

    Anecdotally I've heard some of the most fluent people, who literally sound like natives unless you know otherwise, say they picked up English from Cartoon Network, South Park, the internet etc. It makes me kind of jealous that a lot of the media needs to be accessed through English coz while I am taking Vietnamese lessons my desire to learn it is lower than any other language I've studied, and I don't feel the need other than not to feel like a complete moron here.  

    4 hours ago, Jutranjo said:

    The other is that younger people will very often just throw in English phrases in every day conversations. Do you sometimes hear your students throwing in some English phrases when they're talking to each other?

    I used to play Overwatch with a Spanish speaker and while they say things like "Tracer está super tocada" meaning "Tracer is super low on health", which doesn't translate literally and that's obviously Spanish gaming speak, they also blend English into stuff too. Like for example they say "Mainear" which is from English "to main" a character, as in play them as your main character, but just adding the "-ear" ending to a verb to make it sound Spanish. However, English words pop up in Spanish all the time, and often in ways that make no sense to English speakers.

     

    Also, They say things like "está super heavy" meaning "it's super heavy", as in any difficult or uncomfortable situation, but native speakers wouldn't use heavy like that unless something was very depressing. My favourite is "puenting" which means "bridging" literally, but they use it to mean bungee jumping because if you add "-ing" to anything it sounds English. I can't speak to other languages, but the Vietnamese kids/young adults often say common things like "oh my god" during Vietnamese conversations. 

     

    How does English get into Slovenian conversations? 

  15. Posted

    I'm an EFL teacher currently teaching in Vietnam, with 3 years of experience in Madrid, and I've noticed the same thing. It tends to be the teenage boys who pick up those kinds of things I guess due to the stereotypical idea of teenage boys spending far too much online. However, depending on the age  I think it's common for boys to be the brasher, louder ones even when the girls are often capable of producing really good language too. They often say super specific things to games such as "get wrecked" or "pentakill" in often kind of ridiculous situations, which I think is really funny, but probably not all that useful for them in general. 

     

    When you say proficient do you mean in the sense of the CEFR like completely fluent C2 level or just much better than their classmates and more competent? Coz I'm not sure about Poland but the level of English in Spain (don't know much about Vietnam just yet), particularly in terms of speaking, for younger people isn't crazy good yet. But I do think it helps them. It certainly exposes them more to the spoken language and it's even better since it's something they're clearly interested in. 

     

    When I was learning Spanish I found video games to be pretty useful in terms of listening to the language, but my level of Spanish at the time was good enough that anything I was learning was a bonus rather than it being confusing. I learned a lot of random stuff  that way. I also almost exclusively played games I'd already played before in English so that definitely helped. I actually found watching kids TV shows way more useful in terms of exposure. I think a lot of the kids pick stuff up from streamers too who tend to use English memes or expressions anyway. 

     

    How is teaching in Poland? Do you teach adults too? I was actually planning on moving to Poland for my first teaching job, but it never worked out. Have you tried any games to help you learn Polish? I've heard it's not the easiest language to learn... 

     

  17. Posted

    Heres a question people might not be able to answer but here it goes: I’m gonna buy a Nintendo Switch in Vietnam soon, but a colleague at work scared me a bit by saying that games here are region locked. That’s fine with me as I could sell it when I leave, but would there be any weird thing happening with languages in the games? Or should the language based on the language the console is in like the PS4. 

  19. Posted

    Anybody still playing? I've been getting to rank 5 each season and then just playing arena with the gold from quests. The meta seems to have changed a lot since the expansion from Cubelock and aggro Paladi...---- Oh oops. I think this might be the most similar meta I have ever seen in Hearthstone. There's ridiculous stats showing 5-6 viable Paladin decks which are all at the top of the meta. 

  20. Posted

    On 4/25/2018 at 12:40 PM, miffy495 said:

    Overcooked is good for multiplayer. Single player, I've really enjoyed Golf Story and am liking Human Fall Flat. Tried getting into Stardew Valley, but there may just be too much for me there. With how many things they put in that game I find myself pulled in all directions at once and don't reach a satisfying point in any of them.

     

    And yeah, Snipperclips is choice #1.

     

    I got a Labo. Built half a piano tonight. I enjoy constructing things. Looking forward to playing with it later!

    I sank many a day into Stardew Valley on the PC a while a go so I'm gonna avoid it so it doesn't happen again. I've also already played Overcooked. I think I'll give Human Fall Flat a try. What do you like about it? 

  21. Posted

    I've recently finished I Am Legend which I got through pretty quickly. I was surprised to see that it got so much flak when it was first released, but I think it's worth a read if you like dystopian stuff. I also connected to it pretty strongly as my girlfriend and I just moved to Vietnam and we were feeling pretty lonely considering the whole "we've got no friends and don't know anyone here" thing. 

     

    I also read The Wasp Factory which I liked it a lot. It's creepy, unsettling, quite funny and has a good pace to it. I think I would've loved it if I had read it in my teens as. Anyone else read 'em? 

  22. Posted

    I'm gonna buy a Nintendo Switch on payday which is in 14 days. Not that I'm counting. It'll mark my first ever Nintendo home console. I've had many a gameboy and I even bought a 3DS a couple of years ago. But I was a Playstation/Xbox kid through and through growing up. 

     

    I've just been playing Hearthstone on my iPad a lot recently and I feel the cravings for something "gamier". I'm gonna pick up a first party game and an indie game maybe too. Mario is probably more my thing right off the bad, but maybe I'll pick up BoTW in a month or two. 

     

    Have you guys got any recommendations for ridiculously good indie games I could get? If there multiplayer and I can play them with my girlfriend then even better.  

  23. Posted

    Well I'm surprised I'm the first person to reply to this especially given its similarity to things like Gone Home and Firewatch in terms of genre at least. 

     

    My overall impression of it was very impressive. I think the start of the game starts out much stronger than it ends, but I feel like I did the game a disservice by playing it in a few 45min to 1 hour chunks like I did. I feel like I would've enjoyed it much more if I had sat down and done it in 1 or 2 goes. I really liked the way each story felt super unique and some of them were more gameplay heavy and the others were more like watching a movie. 


    What was your favourite story?

     I think mine was the baby in the bath tub. It was so colourful and cheery and fun that I forgot about the inevitable grimness that was about to come. And then suddenly I became very sad after I remembered what the whole game is about. ç+



     

    How did you feel about the monuments to each character in terms of their rooms? I'm not sure how realistic it felt to me but I'm not sure I cared all that much. Also is it every explained why the rooms were sealed off? Or is it just a very mentally unhealthy way to deal with the passing of a loved one? 

     

    I'm not sure how much of a spoiler the previous paragraph is, but I thought I'd put a tag on there just in case.