SecretAsianMan

What I enjoyed about it was being chased. Seeing bullets go whizzing by is a good reminder that I'm running for a reason besides getting to the end of the level. It's hard to get that perfect moment, but when you hit a good flow and you can see the path before you get there it's a pretty great feeling to climb some boxes, slide under a pipe, run along a wall, then leap off of a platform over a gap while turning around mid-air and giving the guys behind you the finger. Granted you can do all that without some AI chasing you but the time trials didn't quite give me the same sense of enjoyment as executing a perfect series of moves to escape.

The way disarming should work is that you disarm them in a way such that neither person has the gun (ie kicking it away instead of taking it). Automatically discarding it would be a needless extra step, especially for the few people that actually would want to use the weapon. Instead make it a conscious decision to go over to the gun and pick it up. I ended up firing a gun once or twice because it was in my hands after a disarm and it was easier to just shoot a dude than drop the gun and run, but I probably wouldn't have gone out of my way to pick one up. I'm with Twig, I think the weapons should exist but they should definitely get rid of the part where you're stuck in a room full of guys with guns that you can't escape until they're all dead or unconscious.. If the goal is a pure traversal experience, they should just make Mirror's Edge: Tony Hawk.

I would agree with that.

Uwe Boll's latest attempt to crowdfund another terrible movie is most likely going to fail like the others did, so he released a video entitled "Fuck You All".

The thing I never really loved about the Fallout universe was the mix of serious, bleak setting and goofy, almost 4th wall breaking silliness. I like both of those things, but they're so present in the game that I never knew how I was supposed to be interpreting things. Am I supposed to take this serious? Is this a huge joke? If they were random one offs that I encountered very infrequently than it would be fine, but I feel like every other step lead a joke, followed by something serious, followed by another joke, then more seriousness, then... The end result for me was not taking anything seriously because it all felt like a joke.

It's supposed to be an extra display for games. The examples they gave were health and ammo for shooters. There are also a few other widgets that it came with like a clock, RAM usage, music controls, etc. In reality, it's entirely useless because who ever looks down at their keyboard when playing a game? The model I have is one of the first in a line of gaming keyboards produced by Logitech. It's a mistake I made in my youth and won't be making again, but I haven't gotten rid of it yet because it still works as a keyboard. I use the keypad to the left for actually playing games.

I'm interested in the controller and will probably end up pre-ordering it, but I'm on the fence about Steam Link. I like the idea but I'm pretty sure I won't use it very much. I mostly play games that are better played (to me at least) with a keyboard and mouse, something I wouldn't use on a couch. The games I do use the controller for tend to be smaller games that demand less of my attention. I usually play them windowed so that I can do other stuff at the same time, such as watch a video on my second monitor. I don't think I'd really like to play them in full screen on my TV. Perhaps the controller will change that if I find it good enough to use for more games, but I can always pick up a Steam Link later if I decide I want to go that route. Edit: Controller pre-ordered!

Roland definitely rings a bell. I think I always mentally called you Bjorn cause I had added you on some friends list for Steam/XBL/PSN but at some point I forgot what the association was. I remember once when they said they were looking for writers and I submitted a couple articles. One was a review (I think for L4D2 which was new at the time) and another was a serious piece about... something. I can't remember what. It might have been the basis for my Talking Points blog. I never heard anything back, not even a polite "thank you but go away now".

They got rid of their forums? That's a shame. I haven't been back in years but I still have several people from there on my friends list (including justabaldguy who I still game with on occasion). When they started up their user blog section, I made a series of entries about my first PAX. I later started a series I called Talking Points which was focused on gaming analysis, starting with the various types of co-op and how it affected game design. I made a couple more in the series and had a bunch planned but I never did finish it. I liked that place a lot too but you're right about the population. It was never really big enough that you got a lot of involvement, which is a shame because I'm a sucker for co-op games and its so hard to find partners.

I rather like Fallout's hacking and lockpicking. I think it's one of the better implementations of that sort of thing.

This is the second internet forum I've gotten regularly involved with, the first being Co-optimus. I was a regular there for about a year but then I got busy with work and just never managed to get back to it. I'm almost certain I found out about Idle Thumbs through there but for the life of me I can't remember exactly how. Actually I've been meaning to message you and ask if you were ever on there because I thought I remembered some Bjorn/dwarf combination from there.

I guess I'll explain my origin story as well. In high school, I was one of two Asian people in my grade (and one of 5 non-white total). The other person was a girl named Michelle. We shared several classes, including AP Government. I was constantly trying to raise my hand to answer questions but our teacher insisted on calling on her instead, even though she never wanted to answer. Then, during the parent teacher conference, my parents went to talk to him. Before they could introduce themselves, he said "Oh, you must be Michelle's parents". When they said no, his reply was "Then whose parents are you?". After that, my friends and I joked that I was a "secret Asian". That eventually became SecretAsianMan after getting Secret Agent Man stuck in my head one day while taking a shower and goofing up the words.

The only thing I know about the music group Da Vinci's Notebook is they have a song called "Secret Asian Man", which I only learned about because people used to ask if that's where I got the name. (It's not if anyone was wondering)

I've gone ahead with my plan and changed my Steam name to S.A.M. I feel a bit better already.

I don't use voice chat either unless I'm playing with people I know, which these days is far too rare. It doesn't really help that the games I play the most are FPS games where these sorts of attitudes are rampant. It's ironic how games rated M for mature attract the least mature people.

In a way I'm glad that (at least for the moment) being Asian on the internet is a somewhat positive thing due to the internet's obsession with Anime and the aforementioned stereotypes such as being good at video games or math. That doesn't make any of that shit right or pleasant to hear, but I do count myself lucky knowing that other groups have it WAAAAAY worse.

China does have a love of unusually shaped buildings.

Count me in on the "interesting idea but flawed execution" group on VATS. I can appreciate that it was useful for people who don't play FPS games very often but didn't want to entirely skip combat. But as a combat system it seemed pretty broken to me. My experience with VATS was usually to queue up headshots then watch a head explode into bits. Once I got tired of doing that, I mostly used VATS as a way of quickly locating enemy positions. Once I saw on the compass that someone was nearby, I'd initiate VATS and the camera would zoom to their position, instantly telling me where everyone is. Then I'd cancel out of it and shoot them all. Really the only thing I'd consistently use VATS for was explosives, just to make sure I was getting it in the area.

Lately I've been thinking about changing my name on Steam. I've been going by SecretAsianMan since high school when the joke first occurred to me. For most of the time since then, the worst thing I had to endure about it was people frequently singing "Secret Aaaaaasian Man!" which I quickly learned to ignore. But lately, I've been increasingly annoyed by people saying stuff about me. While I haven't had any racial slurs thrown at me quite yet (some have come pretty close though), I do hear a lot of racially insensitive stuff. One of the worst was probably last night when some random asshole decided that my name was Ching Jin and kept calling me that, saying stuff like "Go Ching Jin!" in the most sarcastic voice or just randomly yelling it out when I do something. I've been playing games pretty much my whole life and I'd say my skill level is above average in almost any given game. Plus when I play a game I tend to get a little obsessed by it and do research on how to play it better. So when I do well or do something that seems amazing but really isn't if you know how to do it, I tend to see/hear a lot of people attributing it to my being Asian. Most are in a joking manner, some aren't. It's a stereotype I'm really starting to get tired of. I am Asian. I am good at video games. ONE OF THOSE THINGS IS NOT THE CAUSE OF THE OTHER. The jokes are really wearing on me. I know it's supposed to be seen as a "compliment", but I can assure you, assuming I am good at something because of my race isn't the compliment you think it is. I realize that it flat out says Asian in my name and for a while I had the mentality of "well, I guess I'm asking for it". But then I decided fuck that. I am Asian. I'm proud of what I am. I'm not asking for people make fun of me or assume things about me, but this being the internet of course they will. I'm not going to hide or deny my ethnicity, but I am getting increasingly pissed off that actively displaying it leads to shit like this. I'm thinking about just shortening it to S.A.M. I'm more than ok with the full joke only being understood by those in the know. I'll keep my name on the forums but in a public place like Steam it's becoming more trouble than its worth. Sorry for the rant. None of those things are directed at anyone here. I just had to get that off my chest.

That is great

As someone who enjoyed both Fallout 3 and NV but never played any of the rest, Fallout 4 is going to have to work pretty hard to make me want to play it. Don't get me wrong, that trailer looked very good, but mostly it just looked like more Fallout to me. I had fun in 3 and NV but I also got my fill. If Fallout 4 is the same game in a different location, I'm honestly not super excited by it. It'll probably end up being one of those games that I wait for the GOTY edition where I can get all the DLC.

It's official now: Fallout 4 for PS4, Xbox One, PC.

I finally got around to cleaning out the basement last weekend so here's what it looks like now. Still need to setup stuff under the TV.

I think it's pretty cool that DLC can also be refunded. I've regretted some DLC purchases in the past.

I'm so fucking pissed off about the movie Aloha. I haven't seen it. I know almost nothing about the plot and didn't even know it existed until this week, but I've seen some stories about it and it makes me so mad. If you're not familiar with what I'm talking about, this pretty much sums up how I feel. The gist of it is, Emma Stone plays a woman named Allison Ng who's supposed to be 1/4 Hawaiian and 1/4 Chinese, alongside a white cast in a movie set in Hawaii, the only state where the majority of the population is Asian (a little under 40%, compared to 25% white). I'm so sick of this shit. My only solace is that the movie is doing terrible, both critically and commercially.