m76

You are not forced to do any of those things. Settlement building is optional apart from some very minimal tutorial tasks. And you can always ask vendors to repair your stuff for caps. Or simply throw away them and switch to another weapon. That's the best part of RPGs, that you can choose how you approach things.

If I was ever in the army or any tyrannical organization, I'm sure it would've ended with someone dying and it wouldn't have been the enemy. Injustice, nonsense and me are not compatible. I narrowly avoided being conscripted. I was borderline on the psychological aptitude test. They said I have a hightened sense of justice and unusually high intelligence. Like those are bad things. Well they are for the army. They want obedient little soldiers who don't think about orders just do them.
Anyhow, to be on topic. The only game that still can surprise me is DeusEx, even after 20 years, it has secrets and conspiracy theory references I had not uncovered yet.
 

I prefer plain looking cases, not overdesigned plastic RGB monsters. For me even a simple window is too much. I'd prefer not to have that either.
I like experimenting with cases so I've tried quite a few.
I currently use a Silverstone FT05, which I quite like and will probably keep for a long time for my primary PC.

Just finished book 1. It's a very brilliant book. Every sentence has purpose and very complex story which was done really well; great characters. I've got book 2 already and gonna buy the whole series, plus all the side novels from other authors. Got some great reading for a long while. Thanks again!

Again what gives you the idea that I wanted to suppress their rights by force?
 
And it is my right as a customer to express my distaste at it. Wouldn't that also fall in free speech?
I perceive it as an invasion of my personal space, for petty, political reasons, that affect maybe 1% of the world's population.
Americans often seem to forget that they are not the world, I'm not from the US, and I have no stake in their petty political bickering, and even if I had the time and place for it is not in entertainment media, as in videogames.
Believe me that's what I did immediately. And if they want to include politics in their games, they can forget me ever supporting a political campaign with my money.
It is an invasion, because I play games in my personal space, and them injecting politics into games is at the least unexpected and unwelcome.
What I mean is that they have no more moral right to lecture anyone on  politics, they are not arbiters of ultimate truths and what is right and wrong. And as such using the platform they have access to for personal politics is morally questionable.  And again: This is not the US, games are not only sold in Murica. They are equal in every part of the world. So they absolutely have no moral right to drag me into this fight, where both sides are questionable. 

Update on book
I've been reading it the past few days. It is definitely complex. More so than Lord of the Rings. It does bring a creepy fear factor from so many things happening especially when Gods are involved. Great characters. Plot is yet to be emphasized so I keep wondering, which could make or brake it for me. But the mystery just won't allow me to quit. It is very unique. 

What are you talking about? 33C is 91.4F  and 34C is 93.2F So what 4 numbers? Fahrenheit didn't make sense even at it's inception. It's based on a false reading of human temperature, and the freezing point of an ammonium chloride solution.  Which is just completely random. It's not a frame of reference to any normal human being.
And 0 is not an exact number, but 32 is? Whaat?
 

I hate the imperial system, it makes zero fcking sense. 180cm is a clear number, when someone says they are 5'11" that means less than nothing to me, they might well be talking in riddles. Same goes for stones, feet and yards. The only two things I can easily understand is miles because I've driven cars where the speedometer was also displaying miles. The other being pounds which I can roughly understand because weight plates usually have their weight embossed on them in both kgs and pounds.
The celsius scale is the simplest thing ever: 0= Water freezes 100 = Water boils over. The Fahrenheit? It's a completely arbitrary scale.
No, you order a 32cm Pizza, and an 5dl beer. Nobody orders in mililiters. Not even shots.

Games should have worlds so interesting that you don't even want to use fast travel most of the time.
Travelling from point A to point B should be part of the adventure and not a chore between two parts of the campaign.

Wow, that looks like a good series. I just bought book 1 Gardens of The Moon! 

I think where Fallout4 really shines are the sidequests and companion quests. The main storyline wasn't that interesting or even well executed, but exploration is pretty rewarding and taking on camps for loot.
Shooting mechanics are on a whole new level compared to  F3 and NV, this can actually be played as an FPS. For me that's a good thing, you have to decide if you like that or not. And it's the least gamebryo game of bethesda. Meaning the shortcomings of the engine are not as pronounced.
The settlement building bit is far too tedious for me, and without mods what you can build is pretty limited. I'd not play this game without mods. Or any bethesda game for that matter.

I don't think it's underrated it deserves to be rated lower as it is worse than Rise of the Tomb Raider, and The first reboot Tomb Raider as well. If you enjoyed Shadow of the Tomb Raider, you should play those too.

As far as games go that I played the most:
DeusEx (2000) - This game should be obligatory to know for every game developer, it lays down the rules of game design 101 that every game should adhere to (sadly most does not, or only to a few of them) despite finishing it dozens of times, it still has secrets I'm yet to uncover. Mass Effect 2 (2010)  - It is the most well rounded game I played, storytelling, gameplay, characters, it all comes together. XCOM2 (2016) - it's addictive, I've played it over 1100 hours and counting. With mods I can go on forever probably. Since most encounters are procedurally generated it never gets repetitive. Despite the fact that I've probably restarted the campaign over 100 times. Mafia: City of Lost Heaven (2002) - The game that brought together two of my favorite game genres, driving simulations and story driven action games. BeamNG Drive (? - Still Early Access) - Sure it's hard to call this a game yet, but for me as far as I can remember crashing cars in spectacular ways was always fun in of itself, and currently this has the best and most realistic damage model of all available driving games. Gran Turismo 4 (2004) - The best the series has ever been, sadly it's been all downhill since then, with sports being rock bottom But there is another category of favorites, that I might only have played once, but that 10-20 hours was such a ride that I'd not have wanted to miss them at any cost. 
The Last of Us Part II (2020) this is a very recent title but it quickly found its way to the top of my favorites. Beyond: Two Souls (2013) The game itself might have been dreadful, but the story and the sense of control you had over the fates of characters made this a thrill, I actually feared for the well being of fictional characters in a game. Alien Isolation (2014) - Fear itself, when it's not super scary, it's creepy, but danger always lurks around every corner, the atmosphere of this game is so ominous, that I think it beats the actual movie it is based on. Call of Duty Infinite Warfare (2016) - It's only fitting that the most universally hated instalment of the series would be my favorite. The contrarian in me rejoices. Peace to the fallen - the only time an end credits made me cry. Alpha Protocol (2010) - This is an objectively bad game, with serious flaws, but it gets some things right, that no other game did, it must be experienced at least once for this Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (2005) - This is more of an honourable mention, because this is to appreciate the whole Splinter Cell Franchise with all its lows and ups, but this is the best part of the  series so it gets on the list.

Crash helmets are mandatory in most countries for riding a bike, yet I don't see anyone complaining that helmets infringe on their basic human rights.
What most people fail to understand is that wearing a mask is not to protect the wearer. You you are putting  others at greater risk than necessary when you refuse to wear one, your chance of getting ill is not dependent on whether you wear a mask or not, it depends on whether everyone else does.
 

All of the Uncharted games (except for Golden Abyss on the Vita) are available on PS4, the first 3 as part of the Nathen Drake collection and Uncharted 4 as a stand-alone title.  So you can play from the start quite easily if you wanted to.
 
Not so much luck with God of War, only God of War III and God of War 2018 are on PS4.  So you would have to play God of War Saga and Ascension on the PS3 or PSNow if you wanted to cover everything.  If you can’t be bothered (and I wouldn’t blame you) I would just start with God of War 2018.  You'r not missing all that much since it's kind of a soft reboot anyway.

I think Sony will win this round too, despite being the weaker hardware on paper, and I suspect being more expensive. But consoles are not PCs, you can't sell them on hardware specs, you sell them on titles.

Exactly.
Yes, we need to do a better job enforcing this by moving topics posted to the incorrect forum. I will start cleaning up tonight.

Exactly, someone gets it. It presents a plausible situation, and lets the audience pass judgement on it.  It's kind of a precursor to the whole theme of the game. First it's Seth who is presented as a jerk, and the next morning it is Ellie who is presented as being a jerk. 

I can't believe I'm gonna say this but I actually think that @m76 is (at least particaly) right.  I've not played through the entire game yet but to the best of my knowledge, the only time when LQGTQ+ social/political themes come into play is the "bigot sandwich scene" and the flashback sequence that plays out the events that led up to this from the previous night.  Note that in the video it plays chronologically, which is the opposite way from how it's presented in the game.
 
 
I find these sequences interesting because it's obvious that it frames the Seth character as being in the wrong it doesn’t really frame Ellie as being entirely right either.  She's short-tempered, confrontational, and has a dismissive attitude especially towards Joel and later Seth when he is trying to apologize.  It presents itself from a certain perspective, in this case, an LBGTQ+ positive one but lets you make your own judgment about these characters handle the situation.  Which in my opinion the 100% right way to do it.

@m76 Actually, there has been. Merging threads.

I'm surprised there is no topic for this game yet. As the entire internet was up in buzz about it for a few weeks.
If you somehow missed it, here is the trailer:
I have to say I'm not as impressed as others about this. I seems like a generic take on hack and slash genre, and I'm not familiar with the myth it's based on so it can't earn points for that.
What really bugged me about the trailer is that if the character can turn into a bug at will, then why would you ever want to fight anyone? You could just fly past every encounter.
Also as someone familiar with software development I can't help but notice that there isn't much going on in this trailer. It seems to me that this is a tech demo, not a fleshed out game yet,
What do you think, does it deserve all the hype it gets?
 

Violence for it's own sake is not appealing at all.  What's appealing to me in games is the narrative, and the overcoming of evil. Violence is just  a means to get there, not the end itself.
What I find curious is that people often confuse violence with gore.  And age ratings go the same way. Like it's the gore that is the problem and not the violence itself.
I think killing is killing, whether the game shows blood and gore or not. Actually I Think the downplaying and removal of gore is more dangerous, as it trivializes the consequences of violence.  A gory game might shock a kid, which is good, violence should be shocking. On the other hand games that removes gore and makes your kills evaporate are normalizing violence.
Killing should be depicted in games with the full gory consequences, or not at all.

Train Simulator I spent close to $1000 on it for updates and DLCs betweem 2012 and 2016. I haven't really played it since 2017.

I used to be a first person is the only good way to play games type. Then I left that attitude behind. Nowadays I barely even notice the viewpoint in shooters. it is inconsequential to me. But when it comes down to it, I even prefer 3rd person. Why? Vanity. I want to see my character in action. What's the point of spending hours in character creators and searching for the best looking armor or outfit, if I'm never going to see it? That's why I'm kind of disappointed that CP2077 will be First person view locked.
But then there are games where fps view would not work at all, like Tomb Raider with a lot of jumping and climbing and having to be aware of the surroundings. You have zero situational awareness in first person view compared to reality. So I'd argue that TPS view can be more immersive, not less.

This topic needs revival.
I'll start off with one of my unpopular opinions, I have plenty.
Rockstar games can't write likeable, relatable characters. All of their characters are miserable self loathing burlap sacks of turds that are impossible to like or identify with. In GTAIV, GTAV, RDR2, all of their recent games. But the older titles weren't much better either, the only difference is that those games were less character heavy so I didn't care that much either way.
They even managed to make Max Payne an awful unlikeable character in Max Payne3 when they got their hands on the franchise, basically killing it in one stroke. 
The Max Payne of Max Payne 3, is as bad as the Luke Skywalker of the Last Jedi. It's antithetical to the established character, a caricature.