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  1. Szlia

    December Holiday Festivus Retro GOTM - - Final Fantasy

    There is a spot in a later town where I got locked by a wandering NPC for about 10 hours! Ok... maybe 1 min, but that sure felt like 10 hours!
  2. Szlia

    Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)

    I guess the good solution would be to be able to choose between the iMax version, with its different ratios through the movie, and the regular theater version, with some cropped sequences but with a constant ratio.
  3. Szlia

    December Holiday Festivus Retro GOTM - - Final Fantasy

    I don't think the devs realized that making a "death trap" area with tough encounters on every tile was really making a "grind fast" area since it removes both the wait time between random encounters and the possibility to have lame encounters. When you discover the area it's pretty neat though...
  4. Szlia

    December Holiday Festivus Retro GOTM - - Final Fantasy

    @Therage I think mechanically, at least for melee characters, the important levels are 11, 21 and 31 as their max number of hits per attack increases.
  5. Szlia

    Mortal Engines (2018)

    Same composer: Junkie XL Also, you (and probably others) need to realize that when a big name director has his name attached to a movie he is not directing, it's futile to presume the movie will explore similar themes or have the level or even type of direction you come to expect from said big...
  6. Szlia

    New Year - old game! 2019's 1st RGOTM let' start!

    If I have it and have not already beaten it somewhat recently, I'll play it. So at this point only The Sword of Hope (despite its extremely extremely familiar cover art) and The Sword of Hope II are out. Against my better judgement I kinda want to vote for Wario Land as I never played it and...
  7. Szlia

    Glass (2019)

    In your lists you guys are forgetting the somewhat recent The Visit (2015). Not a great film, but at least a decent one, unlike The Last Airbender (2010). I guess it can be considered the starting point of Shyamalan's return to form. Also missing from the lists, probably because it's better to...
  8. Szlia

    Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)

    Gamera is with Batman in the next Avengers movie.... Again, it was made by a competing studio (Daiei) that went bankrupt and got bought by another studio (Kadokawa Pictures). The studio that owns Godzilla (Toho) is still around and kicking.
  9. Szlia

    December Holiday Festivus Retro GOTM - - Final Fantasy

    Wuwu! Beat the game! The final fight was dangerously close. He started spamming these super cinematic versions of hit all elemental magic and there is just no way to out-heal that, so it turned into a dps race I barely won. I probably got a little lucky though because he is supposed to have a...
  10. Szlia

    Le Football 2018/2019

    I expected at least 10 posts and a 3000 words essay by the resident Young Boys fan on their victory against Juve... and there is nothing? I guess he's too drunk to post or something :p
  11. Szlia

    True Detective

    Does not look bad, but it does not look very original.
  12. Szlia

    December Holiday Festivus Retro GOTM - - Final Fantasy

    @Xadion scared me! My party being level 29, the notion that I might have to grind to 60 to beat the game was not a pleasant one!
  13. Szlia

    December Holiday Festivus Retro GOTM - - Final Fantasy

    Rainy Sunday. Planned to go to the movies, but the rain made me stay home and grind through more of FF.... so... I have all 4 Crystals now! I am glad I did not try to play this game back in the days. Going through it blind must be extremely annoying considering how disjointed the progression...
  14. Szlia

    December Holiday Festivus Retro GOTM - - Final Fantasy

    You did not painted the game as a pioneer of the genre, but as a pioneer of party system, using this as a reason why the balance between the classes is a bit iffy. I am just pointing out that a party system was not such a new thing in 87. To be fair though, it's very likely the balance between...
  15. Szlia

    December Holiday Festivus Retro GOTM - - Final Fantasy

    Objection! :p Final Fantasy was released in December of 1987. The three main video game influences for it where Dragon Quest and transitively Ultima and Wizardry. As you mentioned, Dragon Quest II featured a party of characters and was also released in 87 (January). BUT Ultima 3, the first of...
  16. Szlia

    December Holiday Festivus Retro GOTM - - Final Fantasy

    Got through the earth cave and the castle of ordeals, team is at 19 now. It's interesting how the game tries to have a different flavor for each dungeon or even different areas of a same dungeon, like in the earth cave that loop that serves no purpose but which has encounter on every tile...
  17. Szlia

    December Holiday Festivus Retro GOTM - - Final Fantasy

    There is an odd design idea in the march cave: there seemed to be linked chests. For example, you can find a steel armor (or whatever it is called in english) in a number of different chests, but once you grab it, all these chests become opened. I guess the idea is that you want to the player to...
  18. Szlia

    December Holiday Festivus Retro GOTM - - Final Fantasy

    The WonderSwan Color version has some quality of life improvements: auto retarget, party based item pool (instead of character based), buying in bulks, forgeting memorized spells to make room for others, but it still has the stupid Dungeon & Dragon inspired magic system. On a side note, these...
  19. Szlia

    Boxing

    I have posted the full scorecard, so let me tell you you would lose that bet :P
  20. Szlia

    Epic Games Storefront - A Good Incentive for Piracy

    Just to put things into perspective: Star Citizen currently has gathered $200 millions in more than 6 years of crowdfunding, Fortnite reached $1 billion in less than a year and that was back in June. We are probably at more than $2 billions now considering May alone was $318 millions. This is...
  21. Szlia

    The Game Awards 2018

    On the whole list I think I played only 3 of the games: God of War (beat it with some extra), Celeste (platinum'ed + some extra) and A Way Out (beat it and tried some variations). If nothing has been better this year, it's a bit of a sad year. I suspect Dragon Quest 11 and Return of the Obra...
  22. Szlia

    December Holiday Festivus Retro GOTM - - Final Fantasy

    Everything is in working order... that allowed me to discover my 10 min play time estimate was in fact 6 hours... but with a warrior - white mage - black mage - monk party I probably went just about nowhere in the game (I am at an elf town with levels at 13 9 7 7), so I'll restart with some more...
  23. Szlia

    December Holiday Festivus Retro GOTM - - Final Fantasy

    Well... I have never played the game for more than 10 min and I have it on WonderSwan Color. So I guess I'll dig that out, see if it works properly (I fear dead pixels and dead cartridge battery) and give it a go.
  24. Szlia

    Boxing

    On a side note, it felt to me that the round 9 knockdown was more of a trip than anything else. But maybe I have not seen a good angle for it.
  25. Szlia

    Boxing

    If, like me, you were wondering how the scoring system works exactly, HowStuffWorks by way of Google says this: So, to get 115-111 in favor of Wilder, you need to give him 10-8 for the two rounds with knockdowns, which leaves 95-95 for the other 10 rounds and that can only be reasonably reached...
  26. Szlia

    Boxing

    It's difficult to take boxing seriously when it feels like the accountants are filling the score cards...
  27. Szlia

    Boxing

    Why is Fury fighting Lady Gaga?
  28. Szlia

    [CHESS] Carlsen vs Caruana - World Chess Championship match

    This is a poorly educated guess, but I would suspect people running online chess sites are interested in having as few cheaters as possible and it sounds reasonably trivial to randomly sample games and check what the winner did against the top move choices of the most popular engines and if you...
  29. Szlia

    [CHESS] Carlsen vs Caruana - World Chess Championship match

    That game 1 of rapid though had ups and downs for both sides. It felt like white had a crushing position, but suddenly the best option became trading everything to find yourself in a rook and pawn endgame. The computer was all "white wins that no problem", but for humans it required extremely...
  30. Szlia

    [CHESS] Carlsen vs Caruana - World Chess Championship match

    It should be noted though that the format of the World Championship changed several times. We currently play in a "best of 12" format, but for the longest time it was a "first to 6 wins" format. The obvious advantage of the latter is that you need to win to win (with the current format all the...
  31. Szlia

    [CHESS] Carlsen vs Caruana - World Chess Championship match

    You know that if that position had been reached in game 3, Carlsen would have played on. But in a game 12, it would be foolish for the champion to take risks when a draw would lead to a tie-break in which he is the favorite. Engines, commentators and even the players agreed that black was...
  32. Szlia

    [CHESS] Carlsen vs Caruana - World Chess Championship match

    While some of these draws have been pretty exciting, today's game was pretty lame. Carlsen apparently found himself quickly out of prep' even if what was played by Caruana was one of the main lines of a classic opening. To avoid bad surprises, Carlsen tried to trade everything and Caruana...
  33. Szlia

    [CHESS] Carlsen vs Caruana - World Chess Championship match

    These guys play so well and, because of the circumstances, so conservatively, that it feels very difficult for games to not end in a draw. @Gankak , you characterize Kd4 as a blunder, but again, the engines thought it was a draw before that and did not like the move, but it's a move played for...
  34. Szlia

    Retro Gaming Thread

    We are pleased to report the iranian space shuttle has been destroyed.... wait what? You see, in Top Gun the film, Maverick actually downs 3 MIG fighters in the only actual combat mission of the story. In Top Gun the NES video game, you do that within the first 10 seconds of gameplay so...
  35. Szlia

    Retro Gaming Thread

    I am not sure for Afterburner, but it's almost a yes for Top Gun. That 'almost' makes all the difference: nothing like getting bored to tears for five minutes only to die anyway! More on that later....
  36. Szlia

    Retro Gaming Thread

    So, Ice Climber. This is one of the "black box" game released by Nintendo alongside the NES in Europe and the US. The game is a lot more known in Europe, because, for a while, it was bundled with the console and, during that period, in just about every toy stores and department stores it was the...
  37. Szlia

    [CHESS] Carlsen vs Caruana - World Chess Championship match

    Characterizing h3 as a blunder is a bit much! We have the computer estimation and we see it going from 2ish to 0ish, but the way it evaluate things is not very human like. Caruana in the position can feel he has an advantage, but capitalizing on it without facing counter-play is far from...
  38. Szlia

    [CHESS] Carlsen vs Caruana - World Chess Championship match

    The game currently going on looks a lot less draw'ish than the previous ones. Pretty exciting.
  39. Szlia

    Retro Gaming Thread

    To be fair, somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered reading a comment or watching a video about these landing sequences and the critical hint was: ignore what you see, just follow the instructions! We'll see tomorrow if that was beginner's luck or if I can do it somewhat consistently.... I...
  40. Szlia

    Retro Gaming Thread

    I played all 32 levels of Ice Climber (certainly not in one credit though) and will write something about it later, but I just wanted to brag because I landed the plane in Top Gun on my 2nd attempt and don't get what the fuzz was all about :p