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Sturgeon's House

Brick Fight

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Everything posted by Brick Fight

  1. I got to fire a Springfield XD recently and I'm wondering why they have the gall to charge money for those.
  2. Yeah, my hands ensured that I had to drop guitar, pick up bass, look forever for a comfortable handgun, and mourn the loss of the Xbox Duke controller.
  3. It's more of a thematic issue than a technical one in my warped brain. In general I have issues with Dark Souls 2 and 3 over 1. The biggest is that DS1 appealed to me because it really gave a feeling for Medieval combat like no other game. Weapons and characters had real weight and force. It felt like I was dueling with the humanoids, and amplified the feeling of really just being a Guy versus a Monster when I fought bosses. This fueled the satisfaction of overcoming obstacles for me, because I was just a guy, and I was getting better while still feeling like I was just a guy. The level design felt great. The environments felt natural in a way that where I was crawling through castles that were designed to be hard to assault, but there were also places that felt so organic, created by the people in-world with no real concern about how someone would fight a duel in certain places. It was a strange concept of intentionally poor level design being actually intentionally good level design, which I'm sure makes no sense because I'm putting it in a really bad way. The sequels, saying nothing of how I felt overall about them, just never recaptured that magic for me.
  4. My mom's knees are toast after 40 years of being a hairdresser then a hotel banquet manager. She's taken advantage of free room policies at the hotel on nights where she just couldn't take walking out to her car and driving home.
  5. I can agree with a lot of this. TW originally made a good choice with the diet grand strategy in that it lets you play the massive battles without forcing you into structured campaign missions. The problem is that the grand strategy is a diversion at best and a boring, frustraing slog at worst. Warhammer is incredibly refreshing to me because at most I can spend maybe five minutes clicking around on the map before I decide to have a battle. Attila was atrocious in that you were required to micro-manage a bunch of little features (turns could take up to an hour in late game Attila), and the AI did everything it could to avoid getting into giant RTS fights. I'm torn on anticipating For Honor. Playing so much TW lately has given me an itch to be in a massive battle between ancient factions, but Dark Souls 1 spoiled me on medieval combat. After that all games, even Dark Souls 2 and 3 make that kind of combat look like a bunch of flailing hitboxes.
  6. Yeah, I mean it's such an unknown capacity. No side would be dumb enough to pursue the other on it, because it's not like there's not serious dirt on either of the parties. The only serious inquiries I've seen have been over things like the Azerbaijan deal, which didn't affect too many well-known individuals. IF if if anything were to be made of it and I 99% doubt it ever would, it'd at most be political maneuvering to bog down his campaign, and I don't think there'd be any opposition by the Republicans at this point. Any real effect it would have would be him making a lot of enemies, and while casual observers might say "Good, he'll shake things up" or something folksy, you'd be surprised at how easily someone can be stymied when they push away as far as he is (I've heard rumors that this is what happened to Carter and several prominent Congressmen over the years, but nothing to back it up). Again, I love me some Gay Black Hitler over this kind of stuff, so take it more as me musing to ifs and maybes.
  7. Yeah, agreed. No extra commentary. A problem, a specific reason why it occurs, and links to relevant information and fixes.
  8. 1) Because you and I have no stake in it, if at least relatively. A comment about him admiring Putin, touting Putin's 80% approval rating, or seen schmoozing with the man has little bearing on us, but it will get a lot more attention in places where it matters (either in country or in political systems), for whatever it's worth. Kind of like how nobody in the West really cared about Bush's "crusade" remark, but it was supposedly frequently featured in Al Qaeda recruiting outlets. 2) I didn't mean to sound like he'd be put up for charges, but his staff would most likely see visits and inquiries from related parties and get a "seriously, don't do that another time." 3) I won't get into the case if it's positive for him or not, but it doesn't change the fact that it is potentially a serious issue. See the Azerbaijan oil visit scandal, and the Iranian deal memo controversy as recent examples. Interference with foreign policy is a serious issue.
  9. If you ever wonder why politicians tend to give milquetoast non-answers on things like this, building and re-building foreign and domestic policy is an almighty fucker of a task. It's very underappreciated, but international politics is one of the most difficult functions of the government. You need the right military, the right military moves, you need to bolster one ally while not pissing off anyone around them. You need to find the best and brightest human beings alive with almost supernatural diplomatic and political skills, with knowledge of every inch of the land they're involved in, and what it means to the rest of the world. You need the full cooperation of military and political infrastructure working like a ballet to get little jobs here and there done of the course of decades. If I could put it in better terms, imagine if we had Patton and Monty running SHAEF instead of Eisenhower and Tedder, and you'll understand why people who actually have a chance of being president are usually more tight-lipped on this sort of thing. On topic, it is openly insulting to Poland, Romania, Estonia, Finland, and other Central and Eastern European allies who've been diligently building up to join NATO and depending on not having a few tens of thousands of "AWOL volunteers" or whatever flooding through their eastern borders. Yeah, he made this country look awful with his talking points meant to flame up the far right, but he is now actively undermining international politics by acting as a self-declared diplomat, which is potentially illegal. Congress gets in trouble with this every so often, but no charges are ever filed, since it's serious stuff that could result in heavy punishments. Since it's mostly for political points from politicians ignorant of the law, offenders usually kind of disappear off the spectrum or are relegated to being party votes until their career is over. It's sort of why Hillary refused the Meixco invitation that Trump accepted, Congress will usually only go on low-key official visits, and why Presidents don't do international tours until after their election. My guess is these trips are going to become rarer as stern men in black suits start showing up at his headquarters.
  10. So I've been practicing editing and such lately to try to get a Youtube thing off the ground. One project I'm working on is putting together a review of the Total War series, and so far I guess I'll put a condensed version here for kicks: Rome 1: This one tends to age poorly and well at the same time for me. The battles have aged surprisingly-well, and even outdo modern TW battles in some ways. My favorite feature in particular is how when a unit that's beating another unit will keep advancing, they slowly push the frontline backwards and envelope the enemy. It both looks really cool and creates tactical situations that allow for satsifying encirclements. The campaign map is so much more simple than later games. You can build any building, anywhere, so less fucking around waiting forever to replenish units and build armies that becomes really obnoxious starting with Napoleon. Medieval 2: Kind of torn on this game. The battles can be clunky, as the intentionally slow moving speed of units can make it unclear if your orders went through, and the pathfinding (especially in towns) is absolute garbo. But they absolutely nailed the feel of armored units just wailing on each other. Like Rome 1, the grand strategy component is something I've grown to like very recently, as it is simple and just serves to get into big battles. Empire: I got this one surprisingly late, and I wished I hadn't. I understand a lot of the issues people have with this game, but I'm enjoying just how crazy is it is in terms of unique units and how cartoonishly weird the campaign map can get when you take a turn and just noticed that Prussia just gifted Poland to the Iroquois Nations. This is a personal gripe, but I hate how this started naval battles in the series. As a campaign thing, it's just more time I have to spend building and recruiting. It would be fine if the naval battles weren't like watching twenty blind sloths trying to mate in a pool of molasses. They're plodding, buggy, and I never understood why I won or lost a single one of these in terms of mechanics. Napoleon: It's alright. The musket gameplay of Empire is really refined and expanded-upon here, and is really fun to engage in. Unfortunately, something about the presentation is just very dull. It's all well put-together and gets you into lots of battles and all that, but I feel like they made Empire and felt like they had to make this game. This is kind of where I started to have gripes about the campaign map, too. It becomes very time restrictive while also forcing you to spend much more time planning and clicking and planning and clicking, rather than getting into massive battles. Shogun 2: Probably the most well-presented TW game. The music, art, graphics, and design just show that this was a passion project for the entire team. Unfortunately for me, this one upped the game in terms of piddling around on the campaign map, as you had to carefully plan cities to get you the right types of units. This results in certain moments of the campaign forcing me to spend about a 1:10 ratio of time in favor of carefully planning cities and building armies versus actually fighting in battles. This is a shame, because the battles are beautiful, with some unique units that are fun to utilize in creative ways. Unfortunately, this game highlighted issues with the engine for me. As the first melee-focused game in the series to use Empire's engine, the battles are locked into these animated 1v1 duels that look like a bunch of inflatable punching clowns trying to have an orgy. The units will only fight on a pre-determined frontline. None of the push-back in Rome 1 and Medieval 2, and it just looks alien in certain situations. I overall do have a very positive opinion on this game, but there are a few things in retrospect that I wish it did better. Rome II: I wasn't around for the release of this game after seeing how awful of a reception it got, but I bought it recently, and was pleasantly surprised with how much I like it. The campaign map is thankfully simplified again, and the game actually gives people nice tutorials. The UI is also very well laid-out for both battles and the campaign map. The battles are a mixed bag. They apparently had a massive problem with the "duel" system from Shogun 2 in this game that basically busted as the battles were hurt both in terms of look and function by some AI features and the fact that units were hardlocked into 1v1 duels only. This is apparent in new builds of the game by the fact that each unit has maybe one or two slow "attack" animations of them awkwardly jabbing their weapons, but you no longer have the issue of a unit of five spearmen holding out against a thousand surrounding swordsmen because none of the swordsmen can use numbers to gang up on them. This was improved, but the look of the battles is very disappointing. The static nature just means two units fight, one wins. Flanking is only really helpful for morale shocks, and doesn't give you as much of a noticeable killing edge as Rome 1/Medieval 2. Also, what were once passive abilities like heavier charges for cavalry, are now special activated abilities, that you have to switch on each time you want to use them. So unlike earlier games where a cavalry unit's charges were more powerful the faster they moved, you now have to charge, then activate a special ability one by one for each cavalry unit. A really dumb system. Overall, I really do like the game. I just wished that the battles didn't look so bleh. Attila: God, I wish I could like this game. They did some really neat things with the battles here, but it feels like the developers just didn't want us to play them this time. No, most of the time you will be on the campaign map, fussing over politics, building farms that piss people off more than empty lots, and trying to predict how the AI will cheat next. The AI has been pumped up to ridiculous levels, only engaging you if they have the auto-resolve completely in their favor. This results in enemies using pixel-perfect cheats and bullshit to sneak 5,000 huns through a 1 mile space, torch your settlement, and move 4 times normal distance to be out of reach of anyone. There's a reason why this is the only TW whose gameplay I've extensively modded. It's a shame, because the battles have interesting pace, ranged units are much more interesting/useful, and the changes to morale and exertion are really cool. That, and there are different types of factions to play that all play differently, like the nomadic tribes that can liberate or dominate factions as they tear west across Rome to find permanent settlements. It's just that the map is flat and shitty, and the enemy is given a plethora of cheats that make it unplayable unless you have them removed. Probably the game in the series with the most unrealized potential. There's a reason why so many TW playing channels have like 10 campaigns from all the other games, but like handful of unfinished ones for this. It just feels like they forgot the battles existed, and got too swept up in the post-Dark Souls "Please stomp my balls" wave. Warhammer: Brought my faith back to the series. There's so much love and polish here. The battles once again have weight and clash to them, the map is strategic yet barebones and I spend much more time fighting battles than I did with S2/R2/Attila. Factions play differently and units all have some kind of interesting use. The flat map returns from Attila which kind of blows, but it's the one thing I really think of that I greatly dislike.
  11. They'd do it to anyone really. One of the biggest out of many, many reasons that nobody points out to dumbass baby boomers why Trump's wall is a stupid idea is that we already built a border fence during the Bush administration. Despite it not working like at all, the ding-dongs who supported it didn't realize we had to build it on American soil, so anyone who didn't sell land to have it built got eminent domained.
  12. I do think the presidential election fervor's gonna hit an apex one of these cycles. I think in two years, when the news media wants to get the election cycle up and running again, people are going to wonder why they got so worked the h*ck up last time. Not to mention the Republicans are going to keep as much of a lid on their weirdos as they can to cut down on the circus and just get the guy they want in as smoothly as possible.
  13. Yeah, but that was also a glitch that was patched out. I'm just saying there's literally no point in locking out such an important piece of kit. Well that was very unimpressive. While I still enjoy CoD 4's campaign, that game pissed me off because it caused the death of immersion in shooters with its "hit marker +100 points +25 bonus pointsyou ranked up master seargeant shooter person bloody screen you unlocked this gun and this scope" etc. route to HUDs that even infect single-player shooters these days.
  14. Was born in Wharton, and moved to Pennsylvania when I was 10. Looking at pictures now, they've cleaned up the town a bit. It was always a little run-down looking but it got bad shortly after we left.
  15. Anyone with a brain saw that coming. Economists like Krugman were warning of it for years, but it got dismissed as "liberal media bias" or whatever. Even the average dipshit could watch HGTV and wonder why throwing a single piece of track lighting in a kitchen added $25,000 to a house price. When I go to back to my hometown in Jersey, every year more houses look like crap; they need paint, the yard is uncut and full of weeds, the windows are dirty, etc. It's fairly obvious the entire town is renting because anything within an hour of NYC costs ten million dollars because realtors said it was worth that much. A guy whose probably most reliable source of income was property, and most likely inherited a certain amount of his property would understand what was going on and how he could work it. And considering how crooked the system behind the crash was, I don't mind that he made money off of it. There's plenty of other shit to find reprehensible about him.
  16. Trump's campaign is an absolute mess right now. The guy he tapped to be his campaign CEO is a former Breitbart contributor whose ex-wife once filed domestic abuse charges and accused him of anti-semitic ramblings. Then he picked up David Bossie of Citizens United to be deputy campaign manager. I called this months ago. Once he got into the main election, you'd see him do anything he could to tank it while still collecting his speaking money. The more I hear about the way Trump runs things like his businesses and campaigns, the more it reminds me of stories that older chefs told me about the restaurant booms of the '70s and '80s. Some guy got some money working for dad, or being born for dad, and for this reason or that, a lot of people know his name. He pays everyone to do the work, take the blame, and forgo credit. He spares no expense in building a beautiful dining room while the kitchen is stocked with a CRAY array of microwaves pushing out Stouffer's-quality with Le Pyramide presentation. The people running the sham spots are the types who could robbing Wall Street if they actually used shampoo once in a while. The ventures make money on name recognition. All the way for the guy who started it, the game is "fuck you got mine" until the venture inevitably crashes when while the police are investigating claims of ink leaking off cash register money, a rat the size of a Possum drags a ziploc bag of Rohypnol across the floor in front of them. Then he's nowhere to be seen, but people remember that big, beautiful dining room and the guy who came by comping checks for them, and as long as he's got money, they remember his name. I'm very tired rightnow
  17. Every time someone: -Complains about trigger discipline in every photo or video -Calls people "kid" to sound like they're laying down some old wisdom on you -"Man card." -Spazzes out when he sees someone not wielding dual Kimber 1911s as CC -Curses everyone out... with lots of random... ellipses in his sentence... because he's trying to express being dumbfounded at how stupid people who disagree with him can be -"Lol about bitching that the gun is 'heavy.' Kid, maybe you should man up and not puss out over a gun being 'heavy.'" It's that guy.
  18. Yes to both I guess? They did some things I like with the game: -Guns are no longer pinpoint accurate to the sights. They were in BF4 and it was a mess. People could nail you full-auto from hundred meters away with an SMG and it created mass dead zones in the giant maps. It also created a gameplay meta really similar to Call of Duty, but more on that later. Now, semi-autos and SMGs disperse from center the more/faster you fire while LMGs get more accurate the longer you hold down the trigger. It results in being able to use more of the map than before because of more misses. -Every little escaping carbon vapor on your character doesn't mark you on the mini-map. People will only show up on the mini-map if they're manually spotted or spotted by a sniper's flare gun. This was the other thing that turned BF3 and especially BF4 into a CoD-like, where people were staring at their mini-map 90% of the time and shooting around corners because they knew where everyone was. I was wondering why I hated 4 so much and a friend of mine who loves watching BF streamers linked me to some of their videos and they were just sprinting and bunny hopping and it looked CoD as hell and I didn't pick the game back up. Now, you and your team have to use actual effort and eyeballs to spot enemies. -Vehicles are more self-contained. There's no longer a class that has a repair tool that you can just pick. You can spawn on tanks, horses or planes from the spawn menu only (cars just spawn at points around the map and you jump into one after spawning. You can also get into any abandoned tank/plane/horse), and when you do so, you spawn as a "pilot" class that gives you a C96 carbine (assuming more options in full release), a repair tool, and some AT grenades. This results in less people vehicle wasting by using a plane as a personal taxi to go get infantry kills since the Carbine is kind of poopy. The pilot of a vehicle can also fix their vehicle by holding X to repair chunks of about 20 HP at a time. You can only look around at this time, and any damage at all interrupts this and you have to restart the process. Some people don't like it, but I prefer it to the old way of praying that there's an engineer nearby and that he spawned with a repair tool, or risking jumping out of your vehicle to do it yourself and some fucking dillhole jumps into it and runs off. -A few other vehicle things. For one, you have a sort of "ready rack" feature for tanks. For cannons, you can hold about 5-7 rounds before you reach zero and have to start reloading to get another shot (loading to your "rack" takes more time than if you just had a fresh round waiting). Other thing is that it doesn't look like they're doing that stupid thing like in 4 where you could customize each chunk of the vehicle and locking you out of really useful stuff. There's pre-determined loadouts to do different things, now. -Melee is good and useful. The times I've played as a scout (sniper) class, I've been able to help my team in close quarters by using melee or bayonet charges. -Some people hate that the new Conquest scoring system doesn't take kills into account, but I like it. Too many matches were lost because teams I was on that played the objectives lost to campers (most notably in 3 and 4) -The armored train is neat. In case anyone didn't know there are certain factors that determine that once a round, each team will get a "behemoth," essentially something like a zeppelin or armored train that has lots of little killing stations on it. These vehicles are destructible and usually issued to a team that's not doing well. The train can park at three different cap zones to capture them while dealing out crazy damage, but that still leaves something like 4 other cap zones that the enemy team can still cap without trouble, so it's not an "easy win" button, but more of a "chance to play catch-up" button. Some bad things: -I wlll breathe a sweet sigh of fucking relief when multiplayer gaming is rid of locking essential weapons and items behind progression. Tanks are unbalanced as hell right now because the only long-range personal AT weapon is locked behind a progression system (that is bugged in the beta so it takes forever to get), and the other is a special pickup that's way out in the desert. It's one thing to say "Well that's the skinner box" (it actually isn't), but it's another to have a hamster demand to be given the Skinner Box over any other option at all. -They put a 20 minute timer on all rounds, so there are no comebacks or any idea of how long Conquest rounds will last. -Rush game mode is really dull because it's down to 12 v 12 and they give each side tanks, so you can have both of the entire teams sitting in tanks not doing anything. -When DICE says "beta" they give you a fucking beta. It's bugged to hell and my early purchase is really hinging on seeing how many of these they fix. -This can be a pro or can, but tanks are really hard to kill, and it's exacerbated by the AT weapon progression thing. It's hard to get an idea of the balance when an essential balancing tool is almost non-existent in the game right now. -The map's kind of boring. It's not bad, but the alpha got this really cool-looking French countryside map and we got a desert map.
  19. Yeah, I'm gonna sit in the thinking chair about that one. Decision might be easier if it was that proper Russian red.
  20. The top 5 only guns that can make you a man: -Glock -French Gun -Another French Gun -'nother Glock -Small caliber, low capacity carry pistol
  21. It's early to say if the movement that put Donald and a few Teabaggers forward is a net pro or con positive. In the numerical sense for a presidential election, it's almost all good. When it comes to a media movement, it could be a short-term bad long-term good "Fox News" situation. When it comes to things like the Freedom Caucus and less aisle-crossing in Congress, it could be definitely bad for them. There are a lot of consequences of such a condensed political opposition depending on media, political, and voting presence.
  22. You guys know Krieg from Borderlands 2? I like to imagine these people are like that, with a sane voice in their head going "Just tell them that you love the 1911 because it looks cool and has an interesting history, and there's just something you enjoy about it despite its faults, and for God's sake, don't yell the word 'poop' at the top of your lungs."
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