Search results

  1. Szlia

    [CHESS] Carlsen vs Caruana - World Chess Championship match

    Carlsen is being a bit timid with white. He gets nothing out of the opening, plays lukewarm moves in the middle game, is happy to trade everything to reach the end game and it's only once there that, during a handful of moves, he makes a half-assed attempt at opening the position and playing...
  2. Szlia

    [CHESS] Carlsen vs Caruana - World Chess Championship match

    I am very bad at chess, but a mix of childhood memories and youTube, lead me the last few months to watch a lot of chess lessons, commented matches and chess live streams. Anyway... the reigning chess world champion, norvegian Magnus Carlsen is currently defending his crown against american...
  3. Szlia

    Retro Gaming Thread

    So.... I did a little sorting of the NES game I have still to play, put the sport games aside (sorry Bennett Foddy!) and removed some doubles.... still, almost 40 games are left. Some are pretty scary as they are notoriously hard (Ghost n' Goblins, Battletoads) and some are scary because they...
  4. Szlia

    The finer things - watch thread.

    A well known french publicist famously said "If you don't own a Rolex at age 50, you failed at life." As far as I am concerned, in 2018 a watch is a fashion accessory and/or a piece of jewelry and, as such, have absolutely zero value, like all other items of that nature... technically though I...
  5. Szlia

    Retro Gaming Thread

    Played and beat a very nice NES game the last few days: Solomon's Key 2 known in the US as Fire 'n Ice. It's an action-puzzle game of the "one screen puzzle", "grid based puzzle" and "control a character within the puzzle" type. 99% of it is also not time sensitive as, after any action that set...
  6. Szlia

    Retro Gaming Thread

    Since my last post I played several meh NES games that I did not beat. Isolated Warrior, a shm'up with an isometric view (think Paperboy) with a character than can jump. It's pretty original both in design and setting (some sort of futuristic war, with nice cut scenes between levels that make...
  7. Szlia

    The Big Bad Console Thread - Sway your Station with an Xboner !

    It is not a good game, but the setting and production design/value are certainly worth $5 and a bit of your time.
  8. Szlia

    The Sisters Brothers (2018)

    @Angerz Since I associate chinese in the USA with building the railroads which is a mid 19th century thing, I went and checked wikipedia. So, for reference, the first wave of chinese immigration was between 1852 and 1882 (there are a few hundreds before and more than 300,000 after). Then between...
  9. Szlia

    American Made (2017)

    The suitcase scene is one of the best comedy scene of 2017 for sure.
  10. Szlia

    Retro Gaming Thread

    Since I was not able to finish several of the games I tried recently (Star Wars, Ninja Gaiden, Kid Icarus, etc), I decided to play a nice relaxing game in DuckTales! Fun times for all the children with Scrooge McDuck using his cane as a pogo stick all around the world! Well... when I died in the...
  11. Szlia

    Retro Gaming Thread

    I gave it another shot today, but it's just too frustrating. There is a part of 6-2 that is such heinous bullshit (bats + birds + hammer brother on a tiny platform) that having to go through it once (out of a dozen attempts) for each and every attempt at the final bosses is just too much for me...
  12. Szlia

    Retro Gaming Thread

    For several of these games I was familiar or even very familiar with the speedrun and if I decide to get help while playing, speedrun.com is usually my first stop before GameFaqs. If I did not need help or decided to play without any, I also check some runs once I am done. For games that are...
  13. Szlia

    Retro Gaming Thread

    Because I have lost all sense and reason, I tried to play another game I hated back in the days: Kid Icarus. I fared better than my teen age self back in the days, but not by much. Before reaching the conclusion that everything in the game is poorly coded and/or poorly designed with an...
  14. Szlia

    The Sisters Brothers (2018)

    It's been out for a few weeks around here, probably because it's made by a french director Jacques Audiard. I am not huge fan of his work, but I would recommend The Beat That My Heart Skipped .
  15. Szlia

    Retro Gaming Thread

    Beat it! Just like the marvelous Batman: The Movie: The Video Game, the game ends with two bosses and it has the extreme courtesy to not bring the first boss back to life when you continue. The design of the last dungeon is a bit strange though. It is indeed very big, but like 80% of it is red...
  16. Szlia

    Retro Gaming Thread

    Ok ok there is hope. The dumb passage in palace 6 was short and the boss fight was easy (it's set in an arena with lava pits though... I was ready to rage if I fell into one of those). On top of that, reaching the final dungeon is a chore, but when you run out of lives there, continuing brings...
  17. Szlia

    Retro Gaming Thread

    Continuing through my NES archive, I played some Star Wars.... there is an idea that is somewhat intriguing in the way the story is told. The key scenes of the movie are in the game, but a lot of it is optional, so, apparently, you can end up with a version where R2-D2 is still with the desert...
  18. Szlia

    The Big Bad Console Thread - Sway your Station with an Xboner !

    Something is wrong with your numbers I think, unless there are non-square pixels in there.
  19. Szlia

    God of War (2018)

    There are design choices I find suspicious in the game, but that might be related to the way I played it. - You unlock 865654 fighting moves, but I used a couple at most (the shield bash to break the enemy defense, throwing projectiles back at enemies once in a while and.... throwing rocks when...
  20. Szlia

    Remakes you wouldn't mind

    Apparently, Full Metal Jacket was shot in 1.37, reframed in 1.66 for the theater release in Europe and reframed in 1.85 for theater release in the US. Kubrick wanted it in the most square format possible, so all releases for home consumption have been in 1.33. Usually that would mean a pan and...
  21. Szlia

    First Man (2018)

    I read a dual interview with the director and a french cosmonaut, the guy enjoyed the movie, but was like "I am not sure about Apollo, but the Soyuz I took to go to the ISS did not shake that much!" :D
  22. Szlia

    Playstation 5

    I did not mean to imply consoles would die (it would with the streaming scenario, but I don't believe in it), more like the endless race for increasingly marginal power gains could actually end, killing with it the idea of console 'generation'. You could still have increases in powers, but, just...
  23. Szlia

    Playstation 5

    The question is: will it be the last gen console? The thing will most probably deliver 60fps on 4k screens (two values that have no actual reason to ever need to go up) with all the bells and whistles and only super AAA games can afford to use all the bells and whistles anyway. I guess what...
  24. Szlia

    Retro Gaming Thread

    Hah! A third (fourth?) play session was delayed by finishing stuff in God of War and playing an indie Zelda 2 / metroidvania thing (Elliot Quest), but now the game is beaten! All in all it's not *that* difficult with the exception of several short but lethal passages in two or three levels. With...
  25. Szlia

    Smartphones

    Not sure if I should post it here or start a new thread, but I have a Smartphone question. I have a low end Samsung (Galaxy J3) on Android 5.1.1, never had a single issue with it, but yesterday it went nutty. Out of the blue, without me doing anything special (no new app, no setting change, but...
  26. Szlia

    Retro Gaming Thread

    This is not going well... with a little patience and a little farming you can basically have infinite continues (by killing a certain type of enemies in trivial replayable levels) and a sizable life bar (soldiers drop bullets that act as experience points basically and in many area they...
  27. Szlia

    Retro Gaming Thread

    Playing Bionic Commando.... that will take more than a day. If you asked me after 30 min I would have said that game is impossible. Now that I played a couple hours, cleared several levels, learned how to get continues, I would say I have the feeling it might be possible to beat the game.
  28. Szlia

    Retro Gaming Thread

    Another day, another NES game: Disney Adventures in the Magic Kingdom... A theme park attraction gave us a pretty neat movie franchise in Pirates of the Caribbeans, so maybe the whole theme park could allow Capcom to make a good NES game right? Not really. You are tasked to recover 6 keys in the...
  29. Szlia

    Retro Gaming Thread

    Played another NES game today: Kabuki Quantum Fighter. The american nuclear weapon program has been infected by a virus! Obviously the only solution is to digitize the mind of a 24 years old US Military colonel so he can fight the virus inside the computer! Don't ask questions ok! Especially not...
  30. Szlia

    Creed II (2018)

    Rocky Balboa >>>>>>>>>>>>> Creed. Creed is a pretty good movie though, and I will watch Creed 2 for sure, but Rocky Balboa is a masterpiece. Other than being a kind of time machine, the beauty of Rocky Balboa lies in the way the antagonist is written. Clichés after clichés are piled on, but he...
  31. Szlia

    A Star Is Born (2018)

    I am more worried about Bradley Cooper being a good director.
  32. Szlia

    NFL 2018 - 2019 -- Watch America's favorite sport wither away and die

    I know knees are weird, but I looked at a video and don't understand how he hurt himself nor why it's specifically trying to not land on the QB that caused the injury.
  33. Szlia

    Joker (2019)

    I think the difficult job for Phoenix will be to not mimic previous Jokers and find his own. He has the potential to deliver a very weird and unsettling performance, so , at the very least, seeing him wrestle with the character should not be boring. Hot take: it could also be interesting to...
  34. Szlia

    Rate Movies You've Recently Watched.

    Troy had its issues, but I remember the movie for two (well, three) things: the kinda Beowulf aspect of characters wanting to leave historical marks that was very strongly reinforced by just a mundane shot of a greek beach (something happened here more than 3000 years ago and we still talk about...
  35. Szlia

    PlayStation Classic: Sony does what Nintend-also-does

    I guess there is room for debate with the NES Classic and the PlayStation Classic (since even their original controllers were kinda meh), but for the SNES Classic, the thing was barely above the price of two good controllers, hardly making it overpriced. Also, mileage may vary, but I played...
  36. Szlia

    PlayStation Classic: Sony does what Nintend-also-does

    Well... if they also went the Raspberry Pi route, by December 5 you'll be able to upload all the games you want in it.
  37. Szlia

    PlayStation Classic: Sony does what Nintend-also-does

    I have two concerns: the first is that most PS1 games aged very poorly. I mean, good luck enjoying Jumping Flash as anything other than a piece of video game history. It’s not really a surprise too, since most are using a technology, polygonal 3D, that was in its teens back then and is all grown...
  38. Szlia

    PlayStation Classic: Sony does what Nintend-also-does

    December 3 (US, Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia), $100, 2 controllers (standard, not DualShock 1), USB powered (no AC adaptor). The game list is currently incomplete. The total number of games will be 20 (ish?) and we know of 5 for now: - Final Fantasy VII - Jumping Flash - Ridge Racer...
  39. Szlia

    Rambo V

    I guess it's easy to miss in the clip if you have never seen the whole film, but the big explosion is from a WWII era bomb that was dropped but, obviously, never exploded (a kind of "metaphore" for the problems the brits left behind that are bound to blow up at some point).
  40. Szlia

    Captain Marvel (2019)

    On a side note, I am not familiar with the character at all, but watching the trailer she kinda made me think about Haruhi Suzumiya, a character who can (unwillingly and unbeknownst to her in the case of Haruhi) change reality. Is something like that in her power set?