SecretAsianMan

Having recently gotten my desktop working, I'm currently trying to catch up with some games and am now playing Bioshock Infinite. I haven't read any of this thread and have largely ignored any kind of Infinite related discussions, so forgive me if I repeat anything that's already been said, which I undoubtedly will. I'm not very far into it I suspect, the most recent thing I've done is confront Slate and get the good ol' Bioshock zappy lightning powers. One thing I'm turned off by is the violence. I can handle seeing it, but in general I don't care for excessive violence and the violence in this game sure is excessive. I'm not really seeing the reason for the executions other than to just have them, which is a poor excuse. The other Bioshock games aren't exactly pacifist either, but then again you're not cutting off a man's head with a spinning blade of death attached to your hand. If there's a message here, I'm not getting it. In a world full of strange, mutated creatures and bizarre devices, the violence just feels unnecessary. On the topic of the racism, which I hate to even mention but it can't really be avoided, I'm of mixed mind. I understand the idea of having it in this setting, at least in terms of history, but I really hope they're going somewhere with it. If it's simply a plot device, as I suspect it is, then I wish they had chosen something else. I'm not getting any kind of message out of it, nor do I expect to, which is disappointing. The one thing I did enjoy a bit was that Elizabeth, whose life thus far has been largely academic, doesn't understand the point of racism at all. In terms of the actual gameplay, I'm not impressed. I feel like I played the other Bioshocks with more tactics in mind. In this one I'm basically playing it as a normal shooter. The weapons alone feel like they're more than enough, to the point that the game itself is constantly reminding me to use my vigors. I've tried setting traps and using the powers more, but most of the time I end up just killing them with bullets before they get anywhere close to setting off a trap. Granted, I'm playing on medium because I mostly just want to get this game off my backlog, so the combat is probably a little too easy for me. I'm also not into the tear mechanic. It feels gimmicky. I don't get the point of needing to summon these things when simply placing them in the world would be just as effective given your abilities. Summoning a turret to shoot at guys costs me nothing, but using my possession power costs me half my meter. Using the possession power feels much more tactical to me because there's a choice I have to consider. Summoning the turret doesn't feel like a choice at all because there's no downside to doing it. So I'll do it without thinking because why the heck not. Overall I'm not nearly as impressed with the game as I was hoping I'd be. There seemed to be a lot of GOTY talk associated with it, but frankly I'm not seeing it. Maybe the majesty will reveal itself later, but for now it's actually making me question my admiration of the previous two games.

I'm actually in the midst of a first run myself. I'm playing on medium specifically because I'm not looking for a challenge from the game and would rather just have fun with it (although I will admit that medium does seem a little too easy). 1999 mode has no appeal to me at all.

I have a new problem now. As I previously posted, I finally got my desktop working again after putting it off for what is probably years now. It seems to be working fine, with one exception. I had to take the wireless dongle I was using with my laptop and use it on the desktop because my router is too far away to run a wired connection. The dongle worked great on my laptop. On the desktop, it works fine for a few minutes (maybe 5 or 10) then the speed will drop from 30-50 Mbps to about 0.44 Mbps. If I disconnect and reconnect, it's fine for another few minutes, then it drops again. I replaced the router with my old one to see if that was the problem, but it had no effect. No other devices on the same network are having this issue. My desktop is in the exact same place my laptop was, give or take a foot. I've run speed tests on my phone and tablet while sitting at my desk next to the desktop and they're getting the correct download speeds. My current thinking is that there's some weird setting in Windows that's causing this to happen. I'd like to try a wired connection to see if that makes a difference, but it's not really an option given the placement of my router. Another thing I'm considering is getting an ethernet powerline adaptor, but I have my doubts about those devices. Has anyone used one before?

I'm back with a special daily challenge. It's the first daily I've recorded on my newly fixed desktop. Some of the settings are still off (it didn't record my voice and the video isn't the right size) so I'll have to adjust that for next time. And because I've never played on this computer before, I was unlocking journal entries left and right. Also, I'm using the Metroid mod so everything looks totally different. My death was a direct result of being unfamiliar with the new look.

It was definitely my wireless card because I haven't had any problems since turning it off. In other news, I FINALLY got my desktop working again. I missed having giant monitors and the ability to play games on something besides the lowest setting.

The Metroid mod for Spelunky was officially released a couple weeks ago. I tried it out tonight. It's really well done. Everything scares me now because I have no idea what the enemies or items are since they've all been reskinned. It's like a weird Jason Bourne thing where I have these skills and general knowledge but no memory of my surroundings or enemies. It's quite fun. http://mossmouth.com/forums/index.php?PHPSESSID=dnci62cr7oilpck865h9jhdae5&topic=4342.0

I'm not gonna read it!

An elephant never forgets... to kill!

Avalanches are the new fire propagation. Far Cry 4 will be the Far Cry 2 of video games.

I'm not really a sandwich guy, but I could go for an Earth sandwich.

It's like Thrik said, this thread is about the wacky adventures of a cat named Zeus in Lucasarts Land. Pretty much anything he has yet to encounter is spoiler territory, even if it's not a puzzle solution.

I'm not completely comfortable with the idea of celebrating anyone's death. That said, fuck that guy.

I really liked the sign puzzle. For me it was similar to Jake and the puzzle where I had a sudden moment of insight and the world magically revealed how awesome it and I both were. Those are incredibly rare moments in any game, but I feel like Grim produced the best ones when they occured.

The Fullbright Company won Best Debut at GDC. Congrats guys! https://twitter.com/GoneHomeGame/status/446493927101587456

I was looking at my credit card statement last night when I noticed 3 charges I didn't make. They all occurred on the same day in Feb, and all 3 charges appear to be one year gift subscriptions to Hulu Plus. They're the only irregular activity on my card, so I'm hoping this is some weird clerical error and not a sign that my credit card info is in malicious hands. I contacted customer support to get it straightened out, hopefully I can get this resolved quickly.

Brief update on my networking problem. After ordering the dongle, my wireless card decided to behave and I didn't have any disconnects for 2 days. Then after that I had one or two. I was hoping one of the many fixes I tried worked, but over the last couple days it's come back along with a few other problems that didn't occur before. They seem to be hardware problems, which is strengthening the conclusion that my laptop is just getting old. I've switched over to the dongle now and so far it seems to be fine, but I've only used it for a few hours. Hopefully this will at least stabilize the situation until I can get my desktop running again, which I now have increased motivation to do.

That's got me thinking. I wonder if some time in the far distant future some alien historians will look at the evolution of language on this planet and wonder why we went from meaningful pictographic writing, to words and letters, then to silly pictograms and meaningless words and letters.

I'll also second Capcom beat 'em ups. I really liked Aliens vs Predator and Captain Commando because of the unique characters. Captain Commando in particular includes Mack the Knife (a knife wielding mummy), Ginzu the Ninja (a ninja of course), and Baby Head (a genius baby who pilots a mech of his own design).

Are you objectively excited?

OBEY I quickly skimmed the paper. Their sample size is too small to really be valid (14 for the human and 13 for the robot) but I enjoyed some of the reactions. In particular, this bit (the robot was named Jim in the paper) http://hci.cs.umanitoba.ca/publications/details/would-you-do-as-a-robot-commands-an-obedience-study-for-human-robot-interac

Bose-Einstein condensate.

I would enjoy that immensely.

I'm not going to go into my usual rant about how fortune cookies aren't actually Chinese since I imagine most people are aware of that by now. My personal favorite (and most accurate) fortune I've ever received in a cookie was "When you squeeze an orange, orange juice comes out, because that's what's inside" Such insight.

Italian Big Dog