Coelacanth

Coelacanth, 21 hours ago

Been a while since a game was this polarising I think, right? Some reviewers giving it perfect scores and some 5/10s. Like Stephens also seemed to hate it, though I didn’t watch the video since I haven’t played the game yet.

Very interesting and curious whether I’ll land in the love or hate camp. I really enjoyed the first game so I’m hopeful.

Coelacanth, 2 days ago

I do agree that a lot of the find-the-symbols puzzles felt like an afterthought, but overall they didn’t hinder my enjoyment of the game. The story and presentation were fantastic and I thought the blind trial was extremely well done and one of my favourite video game levels.

Coelacanth, 3 days ago

I think Paul Verlaine is my favourite in terms of working with rhyme, but it doesn’t really translate from the original french.

Coelacanth, 3 days ago

Who the hell eats undercooked-

A Florida man…

Oh right. Makes sense.

Coelacanth, 4 days ago

I have a question for any old head race fans around here: I often hear people proclaim their love for Imola as a track. Does this purely come from a technical standpoint, and/or from you guys enjoying driving it on simulators/racing games?

I can’t remember a single good dry race here from a spectator standpoint. It’s just so narrow and un-conducive to overtakes. If I wanted to go back and watch an old dry Imola race on F1TV to learn to love it, what are your recommendations?

As for today’s action, I’m encouraged by McLaren’s pace of course, and will go into the rest of the season a bit more hopeful. Miami wasn’t a fluke, and maybe (only maybe though) we can have genuine fights for the win this season. If it wasn’t so impossibly hard to overtake around here Norris would have had Max on pure pace for a second time. McLaren upgrades hit different.

Aston though, oof. Let’s hope the new wind tunnel this fall will address their correlation issues, because this is dreadful. 9 upgrades and the car performs worse, you just have to laugh through the tears. I have to highlight Stroll though, who had a really good race but nobody will give him credit for it. He’s wildly inconsistent and sometimes underperforms massively, but when he’s on it he can pull off a great race.

Yuki should be mentioned too, really solid race again and Perez must be under genuine pressure now. If both McLaren and Ferrari can keep this kind of gap to Max up RBR really can’t afford an underperforming 2nd driver or the constructors championship is actually under threat.

Coelacanth, 5 days ago

I haven’t played this since I was a kid but I used to have such a good time with it. I had almost forgotten about it so this was a great blast of nostalgia. I guess people are still playing it? Warms my heart.

Coelacanth, 6 days ago

I had a lot of good times and even more bad times with DotA over the years, until I finally freed myself from it years ago.

IceFrog being behind this backed by Valve bodes well, and I think the premise of an FPS/MOBA hybrid has promise, despite the market being insanely oversaturated already.

I’m not really interested in competitive games these days, but I hope it’ll be good to watch at least. Following The International was fun even after I quit DotA.

Coelacanth, 6 days ago

I could be mistaken, as I don’t really play competitive games anymore. I thought between Overwatch, Valorant, Apex, The Finals and what have you there was lots of stiff competition.

Coelacanth, 6 days ago

That headline was a trip, and the article didn’t disappoint. I want to know more about this “monk” to be honest. Surely this was a scam from the start?

Coelacanth, 7 days ago

I love this. The evolution of the slang is so interesting. I read somewhere else that Japan started to use the symbol for “grass” to mean great laughter because the initial abbreviation “www” looks like blades of grass.

Coelacanth, 6 days ago

It was definitely the go-to abbreviation during the early days of the internet, at least in my circles. Nowadays we’ve become so anglicised that everyone just uses English norms instead.

I remember using asg as a kid/young teen, and I remember people at the time were looking down on those using “lol” or “rofl” instead, calling them silly posers.

Coelacanth, 7 days ago

Interesting. So the side content is mostly uninteresting, I take it?

I still have only played DA:O, which I really liked. I still haven’t played the sequels, would you say they’re still worthwhile or is it for the best to leave the story at the end of Origins?

Coelacanth, 6 days ago

Thank you for the extremely comprehensive run-down! I don’t think I’ve ever had it laid out so clearly before.

I think I’ll keep them on my tentative “to-do” list, but maybe not at the highest priority. I loved Origins but with how it ends I don’t have a super pressing need to continue the story immediately. There are so many good games out there, and more keep being released. It’s hard to find time for all of them. I’m really looking forward to Hellblade 2 next.

I think I will get around to them at some point, though. Exporting my save through all three games and seeing callbacks and consequences does sound interesting, and I’ve heard that is something that does happen.

Coelacanth, 9 days ago

Love James Joyce. Might be a good time to re-read the whole of Dubliners, actually.

Coelacanth, 10 days ago

I think DS3 is great in its own way and has some awesome areas, but it’s hard to compare anything to the first half of Dark Souls. That level design is just something else.

What I like about DS3 compared to ER is there are a lot less delayed attacks and fakeouts. I get that FromSoft needs to constantly up the challenge but it makes it harder to get the same kind of enjoyable combat flow, at least for me. DS3 has some bosses that are just so enjoyable, even though they’re not super hard.

Oh and, don’t know if you’ve done them yet but the DLCs should be more challenging than the main game, if that’s what you’re after.

Coelacanth, 15 days ago

Sounds about right.

Coelacanth, 15 days ago

Wasn’t it only last year or so they announced they’re giving up on the REDengine and move to Unreal? Maybe that has something to do with it?

Coelacanth, 16 days ago

It’s not like Max was flying before the damage either. He was pulling away a little, sure, but nothing like usual. It’s clear the McLaren was just really fast here, just look at the relative laptimes of both Piastri and Norris before Max’s supposed damage.

I’m more inclined to think Max’s pace was lacking due to setup problems. It has happened before for Redbull, in particular on sprints. We’ll see in Imola just how well the new McLaren upgrades work. I suspect we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming, but I hope I’m wrong.

Coelacanth, 16 days ago

I think OWB is many people’s favourite, and Honest Hearts is certainly the weakest DLC. It does have some cool lore and story bits to it though, and the environmental storytelling with the survivalist is very neat. And I think Joshua Graham is a great character.

I hope you come back and do Lonesome Road too, I absolutely love it and think the level design and environments are outstanding.

Coelacanth, 16 days ago

Having the exact same experience, though I’ve only barely started the PL storyline. The rebalance and revamped perk tree has created so many cool builds and so many fun ways to play. The game is just a joy to play honestly.

Coelacanth, 18 days ago

Might not end up making Sony any money, but I’m sure an executive is getting a well-deserved bonus off the back of that nice-looking bump in PSN account numbers.

Coelacanth, 19 days ago

I’m so excited for this game. I thought the first game was really interesting and did really well with a limited budget, and really showed a lot of potential.

Hopefully a bigger budget, bigger scope and expanded combat can have this game really blossom.

Coelacanth, 19 days ago

Max LOL-ing after fucking up his lap and still getting pole, Yuki out because VCARB only sent him out once in O2, Norris time on the mediums being the fastest of the whole session, the softs being awful and catching everyone by surprise after nobody touched them in FP, Stroll above Alonso, Sergeant outqualifying Albon (with some track limits assistance)…

What a weird qualy.

Coelacanth, 21 days ago

This is the correct answer I think. They’re also not interested in releasing sub-par games, and again like you say they don’t need to release games at all to make money anymore. So if they’re not that interested and haven’t come up with anything conceptually/mechanically that reaches the high bar they’ve set for themselves, it makes more sense to scrap/postpone.

Their reputation is much more important, and they’re just not going to half-ass Half Life 3. It will come out when they feel they have something truly extraordinary, or it won’t come out at all.

Coelacanth, 21 days ago

I haven’t played since it released, but Stewie is basically a god of New Vegas modding and I doubt it would cause any issues.

Your GPU might or might not make a difference, most of the issues with performance are poor optimization and engine-level issues (that Stewie seem to have addressed). There are several more stability mods out there like Tick Fix and Heap Replacer that help, plus the 4GB patch for the executable of course.

The Viva New Vegas modding guide is a good place to look for more info, even if all you do is stick to the performance improvement stuff.