DdCno1 @ DdCno1 @beehaw.org

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963

Joined

2 yr. ago

I'm one of those commenters and here's why I disagree: Americans tend to vote against their own interests. His policies are popular in isolation, but outside of a subset of the predominantly young, male, white college-educated demographic, he has never been able to associate himself with these policies and capture the rest of the public, especially those who actually vote.

Yeah, no. He has a legitimate history as a political activist going back to the Civil Rights movement. As flawed as he is, it's deeply dishonest to call him a mere puppet.

Large corporations, just like any large organization, have significant institutional momentum. I would bet good money that this move was planned for months, if not longer, and was not a reaction to Veilguard underperforming.

I would strongly suggest downloading the standalone installer and the install files (on a different github, you can see the address when using the web installer), in case this gets taken down, which isn't exactly unlikely, now that the game isn't abandonware anymore.

I'm well aware. How does them re-releasing older games make this worse?

How are these things even related?

Begun the Water Wars have.

There was no breaking needed. Contrary to what some people continue to believe, he never had any chance of winning the presidential election.

This model would not exist without the work done by OpenAI though, given that the Chinese company secretly used ChatGPT to train it.

Not really, given the media frenzy surrounding this model.

Unlikely. I tried it with all expansions a few years ago (back when EA released it for free) and loading times were "only" a few minutes.

Did you have a bazillion mods installed? What kind of hardware were you using?

I was looking at 4 and 8TB Seagate drives at various German online retailers a few months ago and there were indeed a few suspiciously cheap ones that could have only been disguised used drives. It irritated me so much, it made me postpone a server expansion.

I've never played a Commandos game for some reason, so I couldn't tell, but I would say it's about on par with Desperados 1 in terms of gameplay, if perhaps a bit less punishing. Cutscenes and voice acting (at least with the German version I played) are considerably worse however and I have no idea why.

I can confirm that these looked magnificent on a high quality CRT. This was a transitional period, when 3D graphics were not able to deliver the same amount of detail as the best 2D isometric graphics just yet. That said, everyone knew that the clock was ticking, since the advantages of fully 3D graphics were obvious and, unlike today, technological progress happened at breakneck speeds.

I was particularly fond of isometric RTS games back then. I spent the most amount of time with Age of Empires II (of course), but there were many others, like Cossacks (2001) from GSC Gameworld (who would later develop S.T.A.L.K.E.R.), which didn't look as good as the inspiration, but boasted far larger maps and enormous numbers of units on screen. With American Conquest (2002), they refined the concept and overtook the original version of AoK in terms of visuals, with huge and detailed sprite work, as well as even more insane unit counts that pushed CPUs of the time to their limits. The gameplay was almost on par as well, with quite a bit more depth. It's ridiculous just how much more sophisticated it is compared to Cossacks, despite there being only 1.5 years between the two. America (2000) is a more obscure title from this era, essentially a Wild West clone of Age of Empires. It's quite solid, but unremarkable compared to the other games mentioned here.

Another Eastern European series I was fond of was Sudden Strike, set in WW2, as well as its sequel and countless spin-offs and expansions. There's a model train charm to the detailed visuals, despite the not exactly charming setting. Fiendishly hard and realistic, but for all of its realism, it unfortunately decides to ignore the context of many battles, especially the war crimes that happened around them, which is troubling, since you can also play from the German perspective. Blitzkrieg (2005) is quite similar in terms of gameplay, although with a more sophisticated engine that blends 2D and 3D elements. However, when the groundbreaking Codename Panzers with its amazing fully 3D graphics and tight (if unrealistic) gameplay and mission design came out in 2004, all of these more technologically conservative WW2 RTS games instantly felt outdated, even though it came out right in the middle of them. They still had their value though, since Codename Panzers wasn't trying to replace them in terms of gameplay, focusing on decision making instead of simulation.

Similarly, Desperados 2 (2006) made the first game feel a century old. From the same camera distance as the first game, it both looked far better than the original and had the advantage of dynamic lighting, more fluidity and a freely rotatable camera. Up close it was a bit blocky, but this was to be expected back then.

Many of the titles mentioned above can be rather troublesome on modern systems, so I highly recommend checking out their pages on the PCGamingWiki, which is a truly invaluable resource.

I didn't have this impression, but maybe the dry German dialogue doesn't translate well into English.

Because it's designed by a genocidal imperialist regime and intended to increase its global influence. It's a heavily censored model that spreads Chinese government propaganda and distorts the truth.

Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive

Have you heard of Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood from the same developers? A very similar game in many ways, with some of the most beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds I've ever seen in an isometric game. And yes, the AI can also be played around with at will, although it feels a bit more sophisticated compared to Desperados.

Sorry, must have missed this.

Year and average review score across all available platforms in brackets. I played all of these on PC.

• Trespasser (1998, 57): First person shooter based on Jurassic Park. Noteworthy for huge open areas, detailed dinosaurs with procedural animations and a physics engine that would only be surpassed by Half-Life 2 six years later. It is clunky, difficult to control and buggy, a challenge to get running both on contemporary and current PCs, but the atmosphere, the level design and the sheer awe at what they were able to pull off in the '90s is just unbelievable. I first played it many years after its release and it still blew me away.
• Elex (2017, 62): Open World RPG from the creators of Gothic and Risen. It's the definition of 'Eurojank', with controls that a bit of time getting used to, high difficulty and dated animations. I really enjoyed my time with it though, because it has a gorgeous, well-designed post-apocalyptic open world, clever quests that frequently allow for multiple approaches, factions that are truly different from one another, rewarding combat and interesting progression with tons of player choice. Just like previous games from this developer, it follows the formula of placing strong gatekeeper enemies at choke points, which serve to guide progression - but there's nothing stopping a skilled and/or determined player from circumventing or outsmarting them. The inclusion of a jet pack makes this more fun than in any other game I've played. This device isn't easy to use, but very early on, at the first location the first companion takes the player to, there's a transmission tower with a reward at the top. Figure out how to climb it with the jet pack - which may take a few attempts - and you'll have learned how to use this jet pack. This is a bit frustrating and can take 20 minutes to half an hour, but once you've done this, you'll notice that the entire game was designed with this mode of transportation in mind. Watching other people play this game is incredibly frustrating to me, because they rarely if ever look up, rarely if ever use it to climb structures and natural obstacles to get to items or gain an advantage in combat. Maybe the developers should have created a more in-depth tutorial on this thing, but I think this is one of the main reasons why people aren't getting this game.
• Homefront: The Revolution (2016, 50): Semi-open world first person shooter. Set in a USA that was somehow defeated and is occupied by a hyper-advanced North Korea that is certainly not a clumsy stand-in for China, you're playing a brave American resistance fighter against the occupation. Spec Ops: The Line, this ain't - don't expect any subtlety or finesse to the narration here, but it works as a scenario. The gameplay is where it's truly interesting. It's kind of like the opening hours of Far Cry 3, except that you're not fighting against a few pirates, but a vastly technologically and numerically superior enemy that will hunt you down mercilessly in a half-destroyed American city. The feeling of powerlessness, yet determination, the thrill of pulling off a successful ambush and then scrambling away as the enemy throws everything they have at you is quite something. It's not without its flaws, mind you. More linear story missions are hit and miss, even after many patches there are still bugs and glitches, it is slightly generic in terms of gameplay, but when everything comes together, it's a really solid experience.
• AquaNox 2: Revelation (2003, 59): Underwater first-person shooter masquerading as a submarine game. This is actually the third game in the series, after Archimedean Dynasty (also known under its original German title of Schleichfahrt) and AquaNox 1. The setting is a post-apocalyptic irradiated Earth where the remnants of humanity have fled to the bottom of the oceans to survive. Naturally, the fight for power and resources continue there. I've never actually played the predecessors, but this game is one of my favorites from the early 2000s. It looks stunning for the time (no wonder they created a benchmark, AquaMark, using engine and assets from the game) and gameplay is a really interesting 3dof that blends stealth and action in bleak, but varied enough underwater environments. Story and characters are charming, the universe is interesting and it's just a blast from start to finish. It did receive really high review scores in Europe and especially Germany (lots of 85), so perhaps it's just a case of international audiences/reviewers not getting it, similar to how Gothic and Risen were far more popular there.
• Damnation (2009, 38): Probably the worst game on this list. Damnation is a third person shooter set in an alternate-history US Civil War with advanced steampunk technology. The story is extremely poorly presented, controls are clunky, enemy AI is braindead, there are glitches galore, but somehow, I still had fun with it. While the graphics are nothing to write home about and perhaps the epitome of the brownness of this era of gaming, there is a sense of scale that is rare in games like these, with huge levels and impressive vistas. It's not truly open world, but the sense of scale, the feeling of traversing large environments (an aspect that Elex also nails, but with a true open worlds) is something to behold. As poor as the narration is, the setting is also interesting enough to deal with the below-average cover shooting gameplay. If screenshots and videos appeal to you, then it might be worth checking out.
• Velvet Assassin (2009, 59): Dreamy third person stealth game set in WW2. It's a Splinter Cell clone at heart, but far more challenging. This is an unusually bleak and dark take on WW2 that, unlike most other games with this setting, doesn't shy away from topics like mass murder and trauma - but it's also willing to experiment: Most of the game is essentially the protagonist suffering through a fever dream, recalling her exploits as a British commando in her hospital bed. This leads to the surreal gameplay elements: The protagonist is heavily wounded, but if she injects morphine on her hospital bed, she can prance around the levels in a white nightgown, murdering Nazis in slow motion.The difficult, slightly unpolished gameplay is the main reason for the relatively low review scores, but fans of stealth games who want to explore a more unusual WW2 setting might want to give it a go.
• Legend Hand of God (2007, 57): A Diablo-clone with a constantly talking and rather snarky fairy as your mouse pointer. German voice acting is good, English localization not so much. There's nothing exceptional about it, except for its presentation: Instead of disconnected animations, there are custom ones for each weapon and enemy type, a unique feature in this genre. It just looks so much more immersive. The dynamic lighting and, for the time, very detailed environments are also quite a visual treat. The world is relatively compact, making it a nice hack and slash snack.

Did you play it with the mod that fixes the Alien AI?

I can't be the only one who wants to see both of them losing this fight.