Thomas-C's recent activity
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
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Comment on James Bond shocker! Amazon MGM Studios takes creative control of spy franchise as producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli step back. in ~movies
Thomas-C LinkJAMES X BAT in which our heroes James bond and Bruce Wayne team up to defend Gotham from a city-destroying blue laser beam, thwart the convoluted schemes of Vegeta and the Ginyu Force, and...- Exemplary
JAMES X BAT
in which our heroes James bond and Bruce Wayne team up to defend Gotham from a city-destroying blue laser beam, thwart the convoluted schemes of Vegeta and the Ginyu Force, and discover the power of true friendship. Glup Shitto guest appearance. "EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED"(tm) - be the first to see Bond as you've never seen him before.
Season 1 part 1 teaser preview trailer begins NOW for prime subscribers, who receive 5% less ads per minute watch time on average (per data analyzed by the Amazon Foundation for Responsible Ad Consumption - user experience may vary). Subscribe NOW to the bi-weekly plan and SAVE $0.06 per episode, save EVEN MORE when you submit your sequenced genome on MyAmazon ID+ and allow your first Predictive Purchase!
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Comment on Have you altered the way you write to avoid being perceived as AI? in ~tech
Thomas-C LinkNot at all. I just do what I do and let my mind churn out what it does, if someone wants to question it I'll probably just say "in conclusion I'm actually chatgpt" and see what happens. If...Not at all. I just do what I do and let my mind churn out what it does, if someone wants to question it I'll probably just say "in conclusion I'm actually chatgpt" and see what happens. If anything the proliferation of generated text has emboldened me to just put out the stream of consciousness more directly, be less of an editor about it, because if a model can match that the next step of my life will fall into place. I will have to set forth on a journey, to locate the source of the model and destroy it. There can be only one!
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Comment on A young man used AI to build a nuclear fusor and now I must weep in ~tech
Thomas-C LinkIf he's got voice input going for most of what his machine does, count me jealous. I want my Star Trek computer and he's closer to it than me lol On that note, using AI as a book reading assistant...If he's got voice input going for most of what his machine does, count me jealous. I want my Star Trek computer and he's closer to it than me lol
On that note, using AI as a book reading assistant is an interesting and often very productive experience. The more I've done it the more it feels like being able to both, read the book and talk to the book. At least with what I can run locally, sometimes the material is just sort of beyond it but a lot of the time the model functions like a perpetually available conversational partner, who won't get weird over my odd questioning or annoyed with how often I engage in my odd questioning. When I read something non-fiction I try to think of it like a conversation with the work, I'll think over stuff it says and have a sort of internal back and forth. The model lets me bring that into the real - I can speculate and get feedback, argue and be argued with, stuff like that and come out with deeper memories of the content I was consuming. It's not really about whether the model gets stuff right or is accurate all the time, the value comes from being able to talk about the material with a more or less competent partner. Makes total sense to me that HudZah could develop a comprehensive sort of workflow since he's got the time and exists in an environment where other folks are going to be engaging with the same/similar tools.
As a practical example, I have an archive of a bunch of field manuals and guide material around a big variety of subjects. I was reading one, a work by a guy named David Werner called "Where There is No Doctor", which is the nuts and bolts of doing healthcare in a remote village sort of context. While I was reading, I could ask the models things like "what did the author say before about why [thing] shouldn't be done?", it would provide an answer, and I'd verify every once in a while to understand the degree to which those answers were accurate/acceptable/whatever. I could ask a followup question, like "does this come up again later? Are there further details about why the author recommends this?" and on the whole the model performed great with that (again per my amateur sort of testing/comparing sources). When I would talk to folks about the book, those moments meant having a better command of the material - I remembered not just the book's content but also the experience of having discussed it already.
Honestly it was a profound sort of experience and I've greatly enjoyed continuing with it. With subjects I've got more expertise in, it's often helpful to be able to have the model attempt to summarize and pick apart the flaws in the summary. You can go as hard in the paint as you like when it gets stuff wrong and argue things out to their conclusions without having to worry about offense or insecurity. You can ask the same questions over and over, remind yourself of things, basically just drop all your emotional considerations and learn like hell, so to speak. The article's framing, that HudZah is an "ai native" racing toward a profoundly different way of using the machine, feels pretty on point to me.
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Comment on You can change ONE thing about a game. What do you change? in ~games
Thomas-C Link"Bushido mode", applicable to any action game - either you hit them and they die, or they hit you and you die."Bushido mode", applicable to any action game - either you hit them and they die, or they hit you and you die.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Thomas-C LinkI tried out Dynasty Warriors Origins, and was hugely impressed. It's a complete mechanical overhaul, with great production value and a whole lot of content. The combat feels great, looks amazing,...I tried out Dynasty Warriors Origins, and was hugely impressed. It's a complete mechanical overhaul, with great production value and a whole lot of content. The combat feels great, looks amazing, and they did a great job of making your tactical decisions matter. It demands your attention in ways the old games kinda looked like they did, but didn't. Officer duels are awesome, with parrying and dodges along with a skill palette and the big special moves. Instead of an enormous roster, it's one character with 11 weapons, that have their own growth trees along with character building stuff. While the gameplay is action focused, it all proceeds like a jrpg, with a big world map, small optional encounters, and a more mystical story surrounding their original character.
The soundtrack is as awesome as ever. Outside of battle, it's very orchestral and martial. In battle, driving metal/rock, lots of widdly guitar shit and power chords. The animations are really fun to watch and there's a certain physicality to it that feels kinda like a comedy show, or an anime. The camera does a lot of small cinematic moves to emphasize what's going on as well as give you a quick idea of the space you're in. In the best way, it's like someone looked at DW and decided they would do the most serious attempt they could with it, keep its gimmicks and spirit but otherwise elevate it as far as they could
I really hope this is the new direction for these games because it's a gigantic step up. Dw9 was terrible and before that, while I liked the huge rosters and different game modes, the production value and simplicity of the gameplay never escaped "mid" for me. I rarely recommended them to folks because they're just something you come to yourself, your "long day at work turn my brain off" game. You either love em or hate em, at least that's what I've seen. But Origins I think I'd recommend to anyone who likes action games. There's a demo, and they even did some special stuff to accommodate the steam deck.
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Comment on Buying a game from a director that you really have problems with (Kingdom Come) in ~games
Thomas-C LinkMost of the time I just don't buy it/play it, plenty of other stuff is worth my time. As well, buying a game years later at a deep discount on a platform taking 30% or whatever is not exactly a...Most of the time I just don't buy it/play it, plenty of other stuff is worth my time. As well, buying a game years later at a deep discount on a platform taking 30% or whatever is not exactly a grand betrayal of principle nor a validation of much of anything. I don't think it's really anything more than personal satisfaction in the first place if there's not an organized effort to make sure the creator knows folks are avoiding them on purpose for specific issues.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Thomas-C Link ParentImo S2 is awesome if you haven't seen all of it. If you have though and prefer the free roaming/faction wars kind of stuff, Anomaly has so much available and such depth to it that it just can't be...Imo S2 is awesome if you haven't seen all of it. If you have though and prefer the free roaming/faction wars kind of stuff, Anomaly has so much available and such depth to it that it just can't be beat. S2 has some solid options for making it a deeper/more engaging experience but still needs some time to evolve.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Thomas-C LinkI went back to STALKER Anomaly again, I just don't get tired of it. In between the many posts about it I've been cobbling together a modpack similar to what I did with Morrowind - a "definitive"...I went back to STALKER Anomaly again, I just don't get tired of it. In between the many posts about it I've been cobbling together a modpack similar to what I did with Morrowind - a "definitive" pack, the one I will archive/keep updated instead of continuously building loadouts when I get the itch. I think I'm there, so after getting it going on my PC I set to work making a deck port, so to speak.
Here are some shots from that portable version. My target was to keep it around 40fps, and prioritize graphical fidelity/immersion on top of adding a few additional survivalist mechanics. I like some survivalist stuff but not quite to the extent a pack like GAMMA goes - cooking food and having to tend to location based wounds is just too much tedium for my taste. Instead I focused on doing stuff with the guns and having animations for everything.
This time around I played as Sin, a cult of halfway zombified dudes just about everyone hates, to see how difficult it would be. Every faction besides Monolith hates you, so you're limited on stuff like merchants and repair services, and have to engage more with scavenging/repairing stuff yourself. I included a mod that gives guns magazines, so there is no ammo counter/you have to stop occasionally to manually reload. At first I was iffy on it but over time came to really enjoy how it changed up the rhythm of the game. I have to plan out where I'm going to go, and when I take a location I usually need to stop, prep a bit, then make a new plan, because just running around it's easy to get caught without good means of fighting back. The faction situation means I have to engage more with the mechanics for gun/armor repair, as well as doing upgrades with stuff I scavenge instead of purchasing anything.
Yesterday I had probably the best experience yet. I was taking a squad of 7 into a map called the Army Warehouses. When we got there, we spawned into a situation where three different factions, all hostile to us, were fighting each other, and while we tried to run through to a safe spot a pack of dogs came rushing in to maul everybody. We tried running for a water tower, but by the time I got there my whole squad had been wiped. I made my way up the tower and into a covered space, then sniped folks from there until I was, best I could tell, alone.
As I descended the tower, I heard some folks, one of the factions had sent a squad after me and were taking the village surrounding the water tower. I snuck through the village with a silenced assault rifle, slowly picking off dudes unawares until I again thought I was alone. I camped inside an old house and called up a squad from home base for support, because there was no way id make it back the way I came based on the gunfire still going on from that direction. The squad was going to take a while, so I decided to try something - I took one of the corpses, put some loot on it, and dragged it out into the road running through the village. As folks from the other factions came close, they'd go for the body to loot it, and Id pick them off with my sniper rifle. For about ten minutes I just sat in a house, occasionally sniping some dipshit and eating crackers.
One guy in an exosuit managed to get to cover, so I had this incredibly tense exchange, each of us running between different parts of the village and taking shots at each other. He nearly got me more than once, I ran out of medical supplies and managed to pop him with all of about 1/4 of my health left. THEN I got a message, an emission was coming, so I ran back to the old house and smoked a cigarette while an apocalyptic wall of fire blew through the village. My backup squad died in that, so I was again alone while three hostile factions continued to make moves in the surrounding area. Out of medical supplies, low on food, and with only one magazine and my revolver left, I decided to make a break for it and charged a checkpoint down the road I knew only two dudes were manning. I managed to get em with the revolver, found some food and medicine, repaired what I could and then got back to home base, exhausted. Fuckin amazing tbh, could not ask for a better STALKER experience lol.
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Comment on What side-gigs or passive income methods have you found helpful for earning a small amount of extra money? in ~finance
Thomas-C LinkI make around the amount you're looking for (4k/year, maybe a little more/little less) through an eBay store, selling preconfigured computers and modded game consoles, been at it at that level for...I make around the amount you're looking for (4k/year, maybe a little more/little less) through an eBay store, selling preconfigured computers and modded game consoles, been at it at that level for about six or seven years. I also trade collectibles on there, but they're not as consistent/take longer to sell - I did more of that early on to just build good ratings/reviews.
With the machines, beyond cleaning and fixing I will image them for specific use cases/types of users, basically selling convenience more than anything else. Some good examples are private/anonymous browsing boxes, low end gaming machines (think "kid's first X Y Z" sort of configs), simple/locked down setups for elderly folk/students, office machines for small businesses, etc. With game consoles, eBay doesn't really give a shit about stuff like mods and custom firmware. With those, I'll usually find loose special editions, stuff that folks might want but aren't the top end of a collector market. In the listings I am upfront about it being more about convenience than some special skill on my part, you're paying me to avoid blowing away a weekend on it and I usually include some additional info/guide material for the user in the box.
As my store rep got better I found I could sell more stuff on the back of that reputation, too. When I do hobbies/crafts I can usually sell the results. I don't do that consistently because it undermines the point of doing them imo, but if you don't care you might have a hobby or two you can scale into being a regular source of spare cash.
Point being, if there's stuff you can do that you can translate into a physical product like that, you probably can build out an online shop and accomplish your goal with it. If you have any niche interests and know what folks value within those interests, that too is an avenue worth exploring on a place like eBay. Folks pay for more than just products, they'll also pay for convenience, beauty, time, etc, it's just a matter of figuring out how to get them to see it in the stuff you have on offer.
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Comment on Is anyone else kind of scared by the internet? in ~talk
Thomas-C LinkI can understand the feeling, but I guess whatever fomo I used to experience disappeared as I made my way through the layers of the machine. While sure, new stuff happens all the time, there's an...I can understand the feeling, but I guess whatever fomo I used to experience disappeared as I made my way through the layers of the machine. While sure, new stuff happens all the time, there's an element of sameness because it's all people, in the end. The bots do weird shit but they are derived from People Things, there's a knowable sort of intent somewhere in them. Even in the deepest reaches of the non-indexed parts you'll find the same old shit - this guy thinks this other guy sucks so he's screwing with him, this guy is addicted to attention and melting down, another state actor is compiling info and going after folks, people made a market out of stuff and got too competitive/it's booming and busting, so on and so forth. It's silly to say "it's always been like this" but there's some bits and pieces where that's just true. The Internet is a social space, a realm where people do people things and while the tech enables expressions and activities we've not seen before, underneath that layer are feelings and ideas that are often very old/played out. Because there is a sort of permanence to everything that happens there, the same ideas can go through cycles like the boom and bust of markets (some deep shit in that lol), they cycle and change over spans of time and there isn't necessarily a sense of that continuity on the part of the participants. What's new and fresh to you might to me (or someone else) be just another ride in an old car. Imo, it's a used car lot, none of them are new, not really, but that's a whole other thing to talk about.
The more I roam around and see what I can see, the more I see the internet like a train going faster at another train, like Crash at Crush but we're all on the trains instead of spectators, it takes years for the crash to actually complete, and if you try to leave one train you just end up being on the other train. Even if you get yourself out of the network you are forced to deal with a world where the network is an integral piece of its functioning, the panopticon can see you even if you aren't in its direct view (and there never was a warden, just a committee that fights with itself). So whether you want it or not your destiny is in some way tied to what happens with the internet. Could be as simple as having to talk to folks immersed in memes and bullshit, could be as complex as having to outcompete a robot to make a living, it's not really your choice and that I suppose is where my fears of it begin. Even the folks positioned to leverage its power are constrained by the network's structure, movements, etc. We can disconnect, create distance, but the network is too large and too entwined to be wholly escaped. It's with us and of us and we will have to live through the ramifications. Lots of ramifications, big ones, gnarly shit.
I'm verging on rambles so I'll cut it there. I can't say I get much FOMO out of what's out there, because I try to keep up only engaging with intent and otherwise disconnecting. My worries come from how that act of disconnecting has seemed to mean less over time, and the collisions between zeitgeists formed in realms that aren't totally compatible with each other, if that makes any sense. Appreciate the topic, got my gears turning while I finished off the coffee.
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Comment on What have you been listening to this week? in ~music
Thomas-C LinkWhen I was playing STALKER 2 I heard some tracks I liked on the bar radios, so I went looking and ended up making a playlist. I think everybody in it is Ukrainian but I can't really be sure. I'm...When I was playing STALKER 2 I heard some tracks I liked on the bar radios, so I went looking and ended up making a playlist.
I think everybody in it is Ukrainian but I can't really be sure. I'm on my phone and Spotify won't let me copy text, so I'm just gonna do a short list of links to the folks I particularly liked (all of these are spotify links fyi).
One
Two
Three - I really enjoy this woman's voice
Four - I noticed, SadSvit does a lot of collaborations, just about all of them were really goodThe playlist starts off with some tracks featured in the game, but quickly just goes in whatever direction the radio thing took me. I know nothing of the language and can't read any of the titles, I just recently put it together/intend to look into folks more later in the week. Pretty good for hunting mutants lol, I turned the music off in the game and just listened to the playlist for a good while.
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Comment on What creative projects have you been working on? in ~creative
Thomas-C LinkIt's not a thing I can work on as consistently as I'd like, but I've been slowly reworking the lighting/color grading in Dark Souls 2 as I play through it. There's a tool, DS2 lighting engine,...It's not a thing I can work on as consistently as I'd like, but I've been slowly reworking the lighting/color grading in Dark Souls 2 as I play through it. There's a tool, DS2 lighting engine, that lets you make adjustments in-game to just about everything to do with light, effects, and colors.
At first, I was trying to just mimic the original game's colors/lights and make it look nicer, but as I explored the tool I ended up deciding I'd just let creativity be the guide and preserve the basic color palettes. The tool lets you do stuff like add and position suns, adjust the quality and color of shadowing, volumetric fog, it's nuts how powerful it is. And the ability to just open the menu and adjust on the fly makes for a really fun experience, of getting to a new place, clearing the area, and then adjusting every little thing until it seems good to me. I'm about 1/3 of the way through the game, when I finish it I'll see if I can share it as a mod/preset for folks.
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Comment on What is wrong with our thoughts? A neo-positivist credo. in ~humanities
Thomas-C LinkThis reminded me of someone. When I was doing my degree (a BS in Philosophy, because it's fun to say and I liked neurosciencey things), I had a classmate a year ahead of me who wrote/talked like...This reminded me of someone. When I was doing my degree (a BS in Philosophy, because it's fun to say and I liked neurosciencey things), I had a classmate a year ahead of me who wrote/talked like this. He wore a beret and round glasses, talked incessantly, never finished books, got in some shit over quaaludes and ended up doing some sort of self help cult. His website is still up so I assume that must have worked out ok. I won't link it because I don't need him getting a whiff of me remembering. I bring it up because of that paragraph about "powerful minds" choosing philosophers over religion, I swear that could have been written by him.
I had the most fun with philosophy when we stopped reading the ancients/western stuff and got into where it intersects with things/problem solving. Neuroscience, psychology, the big problems of broad things like politics and superstructures, shit is endlessly interesting because human beings just don't stop, and what's a solution today might tomorrow become a new problem. Epistemology was always my favorite slice, because it pretty much shatters a lot of the enlightenment-era attachment to stuff like "knowledge", "reason", "truth", etc. Folks don't all think the same about that, they don't all define the words the same way, and knowing some of the differences means being able to communicate in rare and special ways about difficult stuff with folks you might not think you could reach. Being able to crunch some absurd set of ideas and extrude them out into a simpler, more easily communicated shape is a skill, at least that's how my professors approached what we were doing. It wasn't about who was right, it was about just taking what was out there, making some sense of it, and seeing if/how it could apply to anything, with a broader aim of "find and fix a problem somewhere". Sometimes folks need words for things, a problem needs to be identified/broken down, a situation needs to be understood, before work can be done. You can work the ability to do stuff like that by trudging through what some beleaguered nerd of the past tried to say, but it comes with a challenge, don't take them too seriously. Nobody gets it 100%, and between the politics and our own psychology, some real good thoughts are probably getting left out. You're on your own there, try to avoid having those book purchases show up on anything. You'll have to steal some depending how deep you wanna go.
I'll be real I'm not sure I had a huge point to make, I just wanted to provide a bit of a counterweight to the arrogance/disdain Stove displays talking the way he does, as someone who probably investigated a bunch of the same things. He is doing beret wearer shit in my view. Trying to proclaim all human thought is madness is like telling me the sky is blue or that water is wet - no shit, my guy, we're human, take off the beret, have two beers. Ignoring other parts of the world and calling folks primitive is just being shitty at the job, too. The job is to embrace the madness - understand its forms, speak its tongues, know the way it travels, so that perhaps while it unfolds we can contribute in a good way toward making life a little nicer. At least, that's been my opinion for a while with respect to what philosophy is for/about.
Sorry to ramble, I guess I can't stop myself when the beret sensor tingles a bit. I got annoyed and skimmed too, just to be honest with you. I really enjoyed the stuff I studied, and this sort of argumentation about the absolute state of something like "human thought" feels akin to an argument about whether Goku can defeat a Gundam. I certainly am guilty of trying to talk about stuff that's too big for me, but I try to maintain a certain humility and openness to critique that feels completely absent in the way Stove expresses himself, just like my old classmate.
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Comment on Elden Ring Nightreign | Reveal gameplay trailer in ~games
Thomas-C LinkSo, probably like many, watching the trailer I was excited but the more I learned about it the less enthused I got. Some folks played a build in Japan. My takeaway was that it's like a sort of...So, probably like many, watching the trailer I was excited but the more I learned about it the less enthused I got. Some folks played a build in Japan. My takeaway was that it's like a sort of b-tier, almost mod project type thing. Pick a hero (no builds), plop down on a map, the night thing is a barrier that pushes you toward a boss, you run fast, pick up loot (with colored rarities), raise some stats/gain levels in a simplified way, fight a boss, do it again. The combat is way sped up, with those new features like mantling to help speed up navigation. The map is supposed to be fixed (as in, basic layout is static, with layers of procedural elements/constraints), but it is nothing like wandering around in the original title. 3 player coop, no pvp.
Gonna be real it comes off like a mod project to me, and at least personally I'd probably put a few mods well above it with respect to the concepts being put together. I am never a fan of smashing together a bunch of stuff across a franchise, imo it's dull as hell when folks do that. The whole thing comes off dull in a way I just did not expect from this studio. Just gotta hope it's a weird small team project and not a signal for what's in store.
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Comment on Your partner asks for your phone, you refuse over privacy, they tell you they don't trust you. How do you respond? in ~talk
Thomas-C Link"Then have fun with someone else" I'm not gonna stick with someone who makes a demand like that and doesn't explain anything. It's not about what's on my phone, it's about you trying to pry into..."Then have fun with someone else"
I'm not gonna stick with someone who makes a demand like that and doesn't explain anything. It's not about what's on my phone, it's about you trying to pry into my life like you're entitled to it in order to be able to trust me, when you're a "partner" and not my spouse. My hope would be that I've done enough to earn that trust without stuff like that, because I want to respect your privacy too and let you have your own slice of life to yourself. Be my spouse and things get a little more flexible, but be ready because I'm gonna want to know what in the world got you to the point of feeling like you needed to look through my stuff. I've dealt with enough people covering for their own shady shit and getting out of sorts with it, I don't need that in my life again.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Thomas-C (edited )Link ParentYou might like the book! Roadside Picnic is easy to find and doesn't take very long to read, I think I finished it in a couple of afternoons. The Tarkovsky film is also really good, but imo you do...You might like the book! Roadside Picnic is easy to find and doesn't take very long to read, I think I finished it in a couple of afternoons. The Tarkovsky film is also really good, but imo you do need to go into it with a certain mindset/expectations - it's trying to deliver on a sense of place and be contemplative. It's slow moving, has practically no action, it's mostly dudes talking in a kinda allegorical way while they trek through a weird place.
The original games imo sit somewhere near Deus Ex, they're kinda like "immersive sims" with some horror and military flavoring. At least the way I like to play, you're often scouting at range and trying to pick folks off, until they get the jump on you and then it's pretty wild. The mutants are legit pretty scary even when you know about them, because they behave differently and often gang up on you out of nowhere. A lot of your time is spent exploring, foraging, and putting together mini plans for your next outing. The firefights can be really fun, because the AI will do stuff like flank you and work their way around your position, sometimes with stuff like suppressive fire and grenades. There is some milsim/tactical shooter stuff going on, but it's mostly the mods/modpacks that lean heavily into it. The games on their own have more of an emphasis on storytelling/roleplaying.
The games dont directly deal with politics but they do have some interesting connections. There's a faction in the game, Monolith, that at least to me appears to be a stand-in for Russian imperialism - they're a group of cultists, completely hostile, controlled by a singular will that demands they take up as much of the Zone as possible while it presents to them a different picture of reality. The original games involve confronting them and ultimately the source of that singular will, itself the result of Soviet experimentation, and the sequel carries forward the consequences of what happened when you did that in some interesting ways. At least from my perspective it seems loosely allegorical - folks don't talk about the world at large in-game much at all, it's like the Zone is a microcosm of a world of ideologies playing themselves out that mirrors some of what the developers are familiar with. I'm of course absurdly biased but if they seem at all interesting, highly recommend giving them a shot.
Edit: I have a thought on the off-chance anyone more familiar with the country/region is out there/reading these. If the other factions in the game line up with real-world ideological tendencies, it would be interesting to tie that all together in an essay about the game being an allegory. I know about the game, but I don't know much about politics in Ukraine.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Thomas-C Link ParentYou got it, it's the Ukrainian way of spelling it, and the first game had the Russian way of spelling it. The plot doesn't talk about it, it just rolls with that spelling as though it was always...You got it, it's the Ukrainian way of spelling it, and the first game had the Russian way of spelling it. The plot doesn't talk about it, it just rolls with that spelling as though it was always the case. They did make a few changes to drive home its origin as a Ukrainian game, without directly commenting on the war as far as I can tell.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Thomas-C (edited )LinkSince it released I've been playing STALKER 2. The original game, Shadow of Chernobyl, was probably one of the most important pieces of media I've ever encountered, and the sequel has allowed me...- Exemplary
Since it released I've been playing STALKER 2. The original game, Shadow of Chernobyl, was probably one of the most important pieces of media I've ever encountered, and the sequel has allowed me to relive an experience that meant a ton to me.
Back in 2007, I was gifted a laptop. Prior to that, I hadn't done much PC gaming besides Doom, Quake, and Baldur's Gate, because what I had was an eight year old desktop. I didn't know anything about system requirements, PC hardware, etc (I grew up mostly with portables). If I remember right, the laptop was an Inspiron with some sort of integrated ATI chip in it. Since the computer was new I figured, hey cool, I'll go get a few of those games I was interested in. At the store, I picked up Morrowind, Neverwinter Nights, Doom 3, and then I saw the box for Shadow of Chernobyl. Something about it was just too intriguing. Nothing else looked like that, a shooter that was clearly also trying to do horror in a bit of a deeper way than other stuff I'd played. I grabbed it, got home, installed it, and while i was blown away by how it looked, it did not run very well at all. The game had a dx8 mode that ran a lot better, but you lost out on all the cool lighting effects. I couldn't return the game, so instead I decided I would figure out whatever I needed to figure out to make that game work, because I just couldn't live without seeing a game with such cool lighting and weird stuff in it.
I spent many, many hours, upgrading what I could in my computer, learning about Windows so I could trim it into being as efficient as possible, and learned what every graphics option did in the game. I even did something I barely remember to mess with my graphics drivers to squeeze like 2 more frames. I learned that patches were a thing, and that mods were also a thing. Over time, it meant I learned a ton about the machine, to the point I kinda crash coursed myself into being able to do basic tech support. After tweaking just about every single thing I could, I played that game to the end in dx9 mode, at 24 fps, 1024x768, four times, on a trackpad. That's how much I adored it lol. As I was going through college, I introduced my friends to the game and we all got way into it, following the later releases and upgrading our hardware to keep up. It was an awesome experience, and years later the work of learning about the computer positioned me to get jobs doing technical support.
STALKER 2 has been like reliving that first year. The game is kinda finnicky, and there's a ton of stuff you can change. My hardware is much better (3070ti + 5900HX), so instead of fumbling with it to get it to work, it's been more about getting a clearer image and nicer effects. This time around, the modding community is just pumping out new stuff too, so I learned a bit about how you can tweak UE5 and figured out a bunch of stuff that got me where I wanted to be with it. I tried running the game on my steam deck, knowing it probably wouldn't work, and almost exactly like 2007, it worked just enough that I felt maybe I could make it perform, and spent much time trying all sorts of things (I think I was mostly successful, and have been playing on both devices for a while now).
Outside the technical end, the game itself delivers in some ways I just find phenomenal. The Zone has changed, but it's still the same place. What you did in the original games about ten years ago had consequences, and you're jumping in after all of that. It's amazing the extent to which the developers tried to bring together just about everything those games had, from the remade locations, to the music, to the way the factions have changed. Old characters return, having lived through a bunch of stuff we didn't see, and it gives the place a sense of history that I just don't get from a lot of other franchises. It feels like the Zone was there the whole time, just going along, doing Zone things, and I came back after being gone for about ten years.
The remade locations are super cool to return to. The way they've been redesigned, they communicate how people moved around and repurposed different spots as different situations unfolded. The characters talk about how the Zone has changed, and a bit about how the events of the prior games affected it. There's tons of little easter eggs, spots and stuff to find that show the developers really, really cared about the sense of place and time. While the gameplay sometimes does some funky stuff, that too is kinda part of the whole relived experience for me - I played Shadow of Chernobyl unpatched for a long time, folks don't know the horror lol. The longer I spend in it the more I come to think of the sequel's name, "Heart of Chornobyl" as having a bit of a dual meaning. There's clearly some in-game stuff that makes that make sense, but too I think it's that the sequel is a heartfelt attempt at really taking us back to something folks loved.
I'm super excited for the future too. Despite the bugginess, there's been folks rooting through files and figuring out what all is there, and it looks pretty promising to me. If the devs come through with mod tools, I think we'll see some unbelievably good stuff out of the modding community. The developers are, best I can tell, dedicated to improving it and listening to what folks have to say, it doesn't strike me at all like a product meant to just capitalize on nostalgia. It's like all the magic of a 2000's Bethesda title, a beautiful place to explore with all kinds of new things happening you can add to it. Really amazing way to cap off the year for me, the game releasing at all is pretty much a miracle and what's in it is really something special.
Edit: Just for the sake of it, here's two albums: Laptop and Steam Deck. My goal with the deck was to first get it to perform acceptably and then get back as much of the intended look as I could. It's in a state where, if I told you everything I did you'd be deeply skeptical, but if I just handed the thing to you you'd be pretty surprised/impressed. I also tried playing through Remote Play - I'd say it's about equal to native with respect to latency, like using a good bluetooth controller. Seeing the game on higher settings though on the OLED's screen is something else, it's astounding how good that looks.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Thomas-C Link ParentThere's all kinds of things in the map that give away how much the developers were into it. I found one, a spot you can sit in that comes together into the original game's title screen when you...There's all kinds of things in the map that give away how much the developers were into it. I found one, a spot you can sit in that comes together into the original game's title screen when you look straight ahead. I noticed too, when you're in the redesigned locations you can sometimes hear flourishes of the old games' OST's in the music. The sense of place is off the charts, if folks get to the point of having stuff like a warfare mode it's going to be crazy good.
I've just about finished Monster Hunter Wilds, or at least did what I'd like to do while they bring on more content. Overall I had a fantastic time. I think the changes they've made to combat have made an already pretty phenomenal setup even better. I like the ways they've stepped up some aspects of the visual design, and despite its technical shortcomings I was able to work out, yet again, a halfway playable steam deck experience.
I don't care to write much about the technical end, it is what it is and it's on Capcom to fix it up. With respect to the game itself, imo it is a fantastic step forward. The player has been empowered in a major way, both with new movesets and the addition of Focus Mode. I completely forgot Focus Mode existed until I was nearly done with it, because I was just that into the standard combat. I mainly play Sword and Shield, and sometimes Long Sword, and both are just phenomenal. Sword and Shield in particular is everything I've wanted out of it - you can reposition constantly, in multiple ways and change orientation just as easily. With most large monsters I can maintain constant attacking, like a fighting game with an infinite combo, to a much greater extent than I could in World. Long Sword is similar, with new moves that allow near-instant turning and counters that allow you to just never stop attacking. With these two it's almost like playing Doom 2016/Doom Eternal - I can just sort of trance-state it and before I know it, monster dead, carve em up lol.
The big feature with Wilds was the interconnected maps, and it's actually with that I think it misses the mark. It just doesn't add much to the experience to be able to seamlessly transition - it looks cool, but there's hardly a use for it and most of the game is spent more or less exactly the same as prior entries. That said, each map is beautiful, absolutely stuffed with detail, endemic life, secret spots, and fantastical things. Especially toward the later parts of the game, they veer a little into a fantasy-horror sort of look that I thought looked awesome. The lighting and visual effects bring about a sort of cinematic quality that suits Monster Hunter perfectly. You feel at times like you are doing an action movie, like you are the action movie, and it fuckin rocks. I genuinely cannot wait to see what else is added to the game, because the design of stuff is just so cool to see.
Character building is as complex as ever, yet also as approachable as it's ever been, to me at least. It's tough to judge because I've been playing Monster Hunter for...twenty years...but I would assume a new player would figure Wilds out a lot faster with how everything is structured. You are given a lot of options, and the ability to carry two weapons changes in a good way how you go about planning a character. This time around I decided to specialize in critical hits and paralysis, using decorations and armor skills to make that as potent as I could, and it's just awesome how completely you can smash shit up doing that. Master Rank, when it comes I anticipate will be some of the best shit I've seen these games do, the combat is that good to me.
Easy 10/10 in my view. Monster Hunter always delivers to some extent or another, but Wilds really delivered and I'm left eager for more. Can't ask for better. I'm gonna have to teach myself to remember Focus Mode but beyond that I really don't have any complaints. I like where it's gone, I hope it goes further. I look forward to getting even more sick armor and cool weapons, and fighting crazy shit in crazy places.
Edit: Music. Omg the music. It's great. The same composer did Wilds who did Monster Hunter 4, and they drop some cool shit in there. Nu Udra is my favorite example. When I first got to this, two minutes in I got it mad and it started to rear back, jerk around and spit out big explosive fireballs. My character is zigzagging through this and dodging as the music is swelling, I rush forward and smack that bastard right at the biggest moment, just awesome. I have always enjoyed the music in these games but damn if they didn't nail it with this one. Later on, when you meet with who was the flagship monster of MH4, not only is the monster's theme remade but it recalls that game's main theme in a kind of corrupted, frenzied way, stuff like that is always nice to hear. Even the more generic themes are good too - Iceshard Cliffs reminded me hard of Final Fantasy, I did tons of excursions out there purely because I loved that battle theme.