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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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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

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...

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

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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

@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...

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

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 .

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...

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...

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...

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

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...

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...

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

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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...