SecretAsianMan

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Everything posted by SecretAsianMan

  1. Idle Thumbs 179: Shadow of Something

    I said this in the Shadow of Mordor thread, but the story reminds me a lot of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Its a weird side story that maybe seems like its supposed to fit into the canon but has a lot of crazy events that feel like they're taken out of a fan fiction. Ending spoilers for both games
  2. Feminism

    This is going to be a long, boring, mostly pointless post about me, so TL:DR that comic also spoke to me and made me think. Reading through this gave me some pause. I didn't have the same experience as her, even beyond the fact that I'm a guy. I've been playing games all my life but that wasn't even the thing that made me stand out, its the fact that I'm Asian and grew up in predominately White communities. But that's beside the point. What I really started thinking about while looking at that comic was how I would have perceived her when I was at that age. I didn't know any girls who played games and at the time I thought that was normal because games didn't seem like a thing that girls did unless they had a brother or something. But now I'm wondering if that was actually true. Do I really know that there weren't any girl gamers? Or was I just seeing what I wanted to see? The only girl that I can recall showing any interest in games was my high school girlfriend. She liked playing Mario 64 and Myst but usually handed me the controller when things got tricky and I'd end up finishing the level for her (I never took the controller from her, she always handed it to me of her own will). That was what I'd call casual playing. I never thought of her as a gamer and I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have described herself that way. Thinking about Elizabeth's comic I don't think I knew anyone like her, but in retrospect I also never made an attempt to either. I recall thinking at the time how cool it would be to find a girl who liked games as much as I did but now I question how I would have actually treated a girl gamer at that age. It did seem weird and uncommon to me. I like to think that I wouldn't have looked down at her but I suspect I would have found it strange and maybe a little unwelcome. While it wouldn't have been anywhere near a typical GamerGater level of reaction, I'm pretty disheartened to realize that there's a good chance I would have been dismissive and patronizing. Not because I was consciously misogynistic but because the norm was that "girls don't play games". Which is of course a bullshit thing, both then and now. I wish I could tell that to my younger self. I wish the past was such that it never would have occurred in the first place. I wish the PRESENT was like that. End of meaningless ramble. Please resume actual discussion.
  3. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

    Yeah that seemed weirdly out of place to me too. I mean, if people in real life want to do that then fine, I have no problem with that. But in this game it feels strange, like she should have been wearing a t-shirt and a pair of jeans with it. My problem with the story is it feels really disjointed. I'm not even sure when this game is supposed to be taking place. It has to be after The Hobbit and before The Fellowship of the Ring because of Gollum and Sauron but then I feel like some of the details seem to contradict that maybe? I'm not super familiar with TLotR mythos. I read and seen the trilogy (though not The Hobbit) and I started reading the Silmarillion but didn't get very far. I know a bit about the background (like who Celebrimbor is and who the two wizards various artifacts refer to likely are) but not enough to really have a good understanding of everything in the game. The whole thing feels like a fanfic to me.
  4. Twin Peaks Rewatch 0: The Pre-Episode

    From what I understand of the show, a weird disjointed post on a new page that seems to be a response to something and nothing at the same time is entirely appropriate for this thread.
  5. Twin Peaks Rewatch 0: The Pre-Episode

    I have also not seen Twin Peaks so I'll probably join in as well and finally get all the references to it I've seen in other shows. Looks like its available on Netflix and Hulu
  6. I Had A Random Thought...

    One of the guys at work here always plays music out loud on his phone while he's in the bathroom and it bugs the heck out of me. Not the actual music itself, which I don't care for but can ignore, just the fact that he's playing it at all. Like he's assuming I want to hear it too.
  7. Idle Thumbs 179: Shadow of Something

    You beat me to it again Gormongous. If these forums ran on the same nemesis system as Shadow of Mordor you'd be my rival. Also you would have killed me like a dozen times more than I've killed you. I totally agree with Chris and Danielle's impressions of Mordor. The story is pretty much nonsense but its not really a factor in how much fun the game is. The nemesis system really is the best part, without that it would be a competent but otherwise uninteresting game. One of my favorite emergent moments was when I was planning on sneaking up to a captain inside a stronghold surrounded by his men. As I approached I started to plan out how I wanted the encounter to go. When I got to the wall and was about to climb it, the camera suddenly zoomed in and showed me that the captain had a fear of caragors (the huge dog like beasts that you can ride). Apparently there was one in the area and the captain took off running. Except he ran straight into me. I quickly grabbed him and branded him so that he'd be under my control. It was completely unexpected because he was a rather high level with a lot of immunity to most of my moves so I planned for a much tougher encounter but it ended up being the easiest thing I had done in the game. Its the Far Cry 2 of fantasy games. Because I'm a pedant I can't help but clarify a few details. The wraith dude is Celebrimbor, the elf who was tricked by Sauron into forging the rings given to men, dwarves, and elves (Sauron himself forged the One Ring). I don't know the game's exact association with the movie series, but there has to have been some kind of collaboration because the movie's incarnation of Gollum appears several times and has an amazingly good Andy Serkis sound alike. Finally a thing for Danielle: Queen Marwen was voiced by Claudia Black, aka Aeryn Sun from Farscape.
  8. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

    I finished up the story tonight. It feels a lot to me like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed in that its a weird side story with lots of familiar characters featuring a plot that clearly never happened but is implied to have occurred anyway. Its a dumb story with characters that go nowhere and an unsatisfying ending, but its so much fun to play that none of that matters. A few things bugged me throughout. I wish there were more fast travel points (although you can get around pretty fast so its not a huge deal) and I wish there was an easier way to inspect the captains you encounter in the field. Its sometimes hard to select the right captain if they're all next to each other and entering wraith vision in the middle of combat is annoying at times. I also wish you could cycle through the captains in the vicinity instead of having to look at them one at a time. I kept forgetting what my survival and hunting challenges were so it would have been nice of those were on the main HUD instead of in the map. Those are all minor complaints though. Its definitely one of the best games I've played this year. I completed all the side missions too. I only have 5 achievements left so I'm going after those, then I might start over again.
  9. General Video Game Deals Thread

    The Room Two is currently on sale for $1 on both iOS and Android
  10. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

    To be fair, it is pretty easy to do. Its just time consuming to amass a large army and not a terribly efficient method if your only goal is to kill them. You're usually better off leaving controlled enemies alive. If you simply want to kill a lot of orcs there are much faster ways. One of my favorite methods for mass killing is an upgrade that lets you do two combo finishers in a row, a finisher that stuns all the enemies around you, followed up by a finisher that instantly kills stunned enemies. It sounds like a lot of work but by the time you can unlock the ability to kill your followers you've probably unlocked those abilities as well.
  11. The threat of Big Dog

    As an actual Dave, these scenarios are disturbing on multiple levels.
  12. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

    Branding (the mind control ability) is unlocked about halfway through the story missions. After that, there's another ability you can unlock that lets you instantly kill anyone being controlled (with a nice juicy head explosion too). Normal enemies are fairly easy to brand either in stealth or combat once you gain the combat brand ability which lets you instantly brand enemies once your combo meter is high enough. Captains can only be branded if they're in a weak enough state to be grabbed or killed and you have the time to finish the branding before getting hit. There are some slight variations to that such as the ones vulnerable to stealth finishers which can be stealth branded instantly or some warchiefs which will simply give you a prompt when they're weak enough. In general I think its fairly easy to do (I currently have every captain and warchief branded except one) but killing them isn't usually the best option because then you can't have them fight for you. The branding is permanent so there's no chance of them turning on you later if you leave them alive. Honestly I've stopped using the instant kill because I've accidentally killed captains I didn't realize were nearby. If you just want to kill them, branding is probably the least efficient way to do it.
  13. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

    I didn't actually poke around in the options. I might try that. I still mostly counter based on visual cues rather than the prompts. I'm not really sure what would make the game more challenging for me in a way that still makes it fun besides removing the prompts.
  14. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

    That's my situation as well. I replayed Arkham City less than a month before getting this. I did a bunch of the combat missions too so I got really familiar with the system. There are some slight differences to the system in Mordor but nothing especially significant. I would also like for there to be a hard mode like in Arkham City where it turns off the button prompts for the counters, kind of like how poison behaves in this game. Every captain I currently have is either dominated or I sent a death threat (in a few cases both) and I'm still finding it pretty easy. My goal at this point is to dominate all of Mordor then run around and make all their heads explode with a wave of my hand.
  15. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

    Doesn't seem to be a Warner Brothers thing because I definitely didn't sign up for that and Architecture was apparently able to see my stuff in his game.
  16. Windows 10: "It wouldn't be right to call it Windows 9."

    I'd say Windows 9 is HL3 since Windows 10 is probably going to come out. ...wait a second. What if HL3 was being made as a Windows 9 exclusive? It explains everything!
  17. Windows 10: "It wouldn't be right to call it Windows 9."

    They should scrap the Windows brand and move on to Doors.
  18. In the last day or so, both Steam and Twitch are making movements towards being more explicit about sponsorship in its user base. Steam will require curators who have received compensation for a review or recommendation to say so in their recommends. Twitch will label streams that have a deal between a sponsor, broadcaster, and Twitch itself. That rule only applies if Twitch is involved. If the deal is just between a sponsor and broadcaster, they can still sell it however they want.
  19. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

    Oh man, that's awesome. I forgot that was a thing that could happen. I'll have to keep an eye out for that now.
  20. Steam Curation!

    Steam updated their policy for curators. If you have been paid or otherwise compensated for a review or recommendation, you have to disclose that information in the recommendation.
  21. I Had a Random Thought (About Video Games)

    Here's my theory: Frog Fractions was secretly Desert Golfing 2, but in order to close the causality loop and prevent the destruction of the universe, Desert Golfing had to become Frog Fractions 2.
  22. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

    I started playing this last night and I immediately fell right back into the groove I had with Arkham City. I replayed that game a few weeks ago so picking up another with an almost identical combat system was a near seamless transition for me. Within a few hours of playing, I had identified all the captains I'm currently capable of (I've done very little of the story so the warchiefs are still unknown to me) including the intel on each. When I finished for the night, more than half of them were dead. I died maybe twice the entire time and very quickly got revenge so my killer wasn't able to climb the ranks. In one fight inside a stronghold, I had 3 new potential captains introduce themselves one after the other as I fought a group of about 10+. I then proceeded to kill the lot of them. I had to run away and wait for the crowd to disperse before I could pick up the runes. Then I slaughtered another large group just for kicks. It was stupidly fun. Right now my biggest problem I keep having is mixing up which button to push for a ground finisher. I instinctively try to use the one from Arkham. In the graphics department, my card only has 1.5GB of memory so some of the settings defaulted to low. It certainly doesn't look as sharp as it could but graphics are so low on the list of things I care about in a game that I'm not bothered in the least.
  23. Don't forget the Angry Birds movie which now includes voice talents such as Peter Dinklage, Jason Sudeikis, Maya Rudolph, Bill Hader, and Danny McBride.
  24. Feminism

    Can we call it bro mans land?
  25. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

    Against my better judgement, I bought the game. It's probably going to be my last purchase for the year, I hope it was worth it.