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  1. Szlia

    Awesome Games Done Quick 2016 - 2019

    As I write this post, PJ's run of Actraiser 2 is about to begin. A must watch for sure. Note he will play on hard, not on the totally insane glitched difficulty level that he has been routing and running the last few months (aka difficulty 202, a mode of just about everything instakills the player).
  2. Szlia

    1st 2019 Retro Game Of The Month! - Donkey Kong Country

    Yeah.... no. Dark Souls is not a shorthand to say "hard game where you die a lot" and even if it was it would not fit DKC, because that game is not hard, it's just poorly designed. When you die in Dark Souls, 90% of the time it's 100% your own damn fault (even Ron can see that). There lies some...
  3. Szlia

    Retro Gaming Thread

    Played some Hatris on PC-Engine (aka TurboGrafx-16) the other day. This is a game that is rather famous for two things 1) Being made by the creator of Tetris 2) Being pretty bad. It is part of the big family of "stuff falls from the top of the screen and you need to stack it properly for it to...
  4. Szlia

    1st 2019 Retro Game Of The Month! - Donkey Kong Country

    Garbage game beaten with a lame 47% but I am not going to try and find the missing percents which I assume are secret exits to levels that link to extra levels and things like that? This game is pretty extraordinary in that there is not one single good level in it and not an ounce of enjoyement...
  5. Szlia

    How much real money have MMOs made you?

    Back in the days in EQ we would do Beer Raids. Mostly Avatar of War raids with some "guests". The proceeds were turned into $$ to buy booze for the yearly get together. I was not privy to the bankers' business, but my understanding is that it bought a lot of booze + the rent for a big cabin for...
  6. Szlia

    VR Gaming - Oculus Rift, Playstation VR, HTC Vive

    Apparently there is no thread dedicated to Tetris Effect (PS4 & PSVR), so I guess I'll ask my question here as google fails me: does this game has an infinite spin mechanism or not? Like, on Tetris DS, everytime you spin a piece, it resets the timer for it to get locked, so you can spin a piece...
  7. Szlia

    A Ghost Story (2017)

    I must say it left me a bit frustrated. It does not lack elegance and it manages the impressive feat of making a very very silly idea work, but the resolution is weak and many times during the film there are hints at interesting themes it could explore, but does not. In the end it feels like...
  8. Szlia

    Elementary

    The bumping of this thread made me realize I missed season 6, so I watched it over the past couple days. Still a nice show with some clever writing , but it felt a little bit on rails as it did not try to do much with the formula they established. Also the season spanning story had an...
  9. Szlia

    God of War (2018)

    One of the problems I have with the game is that you have 76576 combat moves and armors and runes and talismans, but you use like 1% of it all. Maybe different players use a different 1%, maybe some players use a larger set of moves and items, maybe harder difficulties require you to (I played...
  10. Szlia

    Avengers: Endgame (2019)

    The accountants and theaters will not like that much, because, when you get past some duration, you basically lose one screening a day per screen. Obviously there is a Titanic counter-example and the mountain of money it made despite its 195 min run time, but it's considered an outlier in more...
  11. Szlia

    Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017)

    I don't totally agree, because both On Stranger Tides and this Dead Men Tell No Tales try to have a conventional hero in respectively Philip Swift and Henry Turner. I agree though that while they have the 'main character' archetype, they are not the actual main characters of their movies. That...
  12. Szlia

    Glass (2019)

    As far as pure film making goes, there are several scenes in Signs that are etched into my memory. There is one when they hold together and climb on a car to try and get some signal from a radio or something that is a stunning moment of pure cinema (it's all about space, the bodies of the...
  13. Szlia

    Twitch.tv

    Apparently, there is something like a chess stream boom, maybe related to the recent world championship. A lot of bona fide Grand Masters stream on Twitch their online tournaments or just regular online play against other GMs or viewers. One of the most impressive thing I have seen on Twitch...
  14. Szlia

    Poll January Retro Game of the Month - VOTE now!

    I beat Yoshi Island not that long ago and Metal Gear a few months back: these are out for me. So I voted to all the other games that I have and have not beaten and are not certified crap like DKC... I may give it another shot if it wins though, but... god... I thought it was crap then and still...
  15. Szlia

    The Shield

    Additional post for a side note: from my personal and hence very subjective history of television watching, I am tempted to say the first modern television show was Wiseguy (known to french tv viewers as Un flic dans la mafia - A Cop in the Mob!). Each new episode was the highlight of my...
  16. Szlia

    The Shield

    That's a hot take when you consider The Sopranos and The West Wing started 3 years priors! And you have early '90s stuff like Twin Peaks or Homicide: Life on the Streets. I guess the question to answer first though is... what is "modern television"? Heavy use of locations over sets? Single...
  17. Szlia

    Retro Gaming Thread

    Over the last few week I played through Shenmue with a friend with the recent PS4 remaster. If you try it, be sure to patch it, because without the patch the sound is totally messed up. The voices and music are totally drowned out by the sound effect so you have to aggressively correct the...
  18. Szlia

    The Shield

    I would say my biggest problem with the show is the first episode. I guess it was a pilot so it had to strike hard to make an impression, but then, through all seasons you compare the moral conundrums of the characters and the repercussions of their actions to the first episode and the more out...
  19. Szlia

    Fortnite - Epic Games - Team Survival/Strategy/Crafting/Combat

    In which of these games is the dance sold individually?
  20. Szlia

    Aladdin (2019)

    For a good moment of WTF I invite you to check the wikipedia page on Aladdin. The story is actually not part of the 1001 Nights, it was added to it by the french translator in the 18th century, based on a tale by a Syrian storyteller. The only sources in arabic that mention Aladdin have been...
  21. Szlia

    Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)

    Mmmmmmmmh.... did not hate it, but ecstatic I certainly was not. It felt like it's reusing the formula of the previous episode but sorta forgot the dosage of the ingredients.
  22. Szlia

    December Holiday Festivus Retro GOTM - - Final Fantasy

    @Therage Yeah someone tells you where to go, but that someone only tells you that after your get the levistone. Also, that someone is not really in a place that makes sense! More help? Even more help????
  23. Szlia

    Fortnite - Epic Games - Team Survival/Strategy/Crafting/Combat

    Epic's main problem is that they are selling the dances (directly or indirectly), so it will be difficult to claim fair use. They are clearly making money off the notoriety of the dance they digitally mimic. Something is not quite right, but lawyers will have some fun because it's all a bit murky.
  24. Szlia

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

    Well.... In my NES backlog I have Wrath of the Black Manta, A Boy and His Blob (puzzle platformer I guess?), Ghost n' Goblins (not easy), Batman: Return of the Joker and for a more well known choice: Super Mario Bros. 3. Technically I also have Super Mario Bros. 2 but the last time I tried to...
  25. 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!
  26. 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.
  27. 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...
  28. 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.
  29. 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...
  30. 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...
  31. 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...
  32. 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.
  33. 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...
  34. 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
  35. Szlia

    True Detective

    Does not look bad, but it does not look very original.
  36. 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!
  37. 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...
  38. 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...
  39. 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...
  40. 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...