I’ve been trying to get through the first one after finding out about this site but… I really am struggling man. Is it actually worth it to persevere? The humour is alright at times and I do like the 60s spy theme and everything, but the gameplay is so ass. I’m in a stealth mission currently and I’m just not having fun at all. I kind of want to have finished it, as I know it’s a classic and was highly regarded and reviewed at the time. But I’m really not enjoying it, to be honest. Is the second game any better?

This would have been my suggestion as well. Cool instance, surely would be perfect for this.

Honestly? It’s been probably a decade-and-a-half since the last time I bought a physical game, and I don’t exactly miss it. I lived through the era of having cubic metres of space taken up by discs and boxes of games that you finished once but don’t really want to get rid of since you liked them and might want to revisit them. I lived through scratched discs and reading errors crashing the game mid session or preventing installation altogether. Having a digital games library is just magnitudes more convenient in practice, and I don’t mind paying for that. Especially since I buy 90% of my games on big GOG/Steam sales anyway.

The John Oliver bit about the sound of Trump vs Drumpf was an alright punchline to a show ten years ago, before even the first installment of this madness. Those were simpler times, though, and fundamentally I agree with you.

Great read, thank you for posting. People conflating spectrum and gradient is a really eloquent way to put it, actually.

With a title like that I was expecting something more than making some items weightless and giving you the ability to send stuff to camp and disassemble from anywhere. I mean it’s nice but, these are all features other games have already done are they not?

I think the confusion stems from some people assuming an implied “turn up [the temperature of] the AC”.

I do it with MSI Afterburner, then do stress tests in 3D Mark to make sure it’s stable. As long as you’re not over-volting you’re fairly safe to experiment. You can either do a flat undevolt, or you can set up a custom curve. Also like another commenter here said, changing the fan curve to actually engage the fans sooner helps keep the temps down, usually the default fan curve prioritizes silence to a disturbing degree.

Human relationships are so fucking complicated and irrational.

Surely at this point some diehard fan has put together an abridged version? If One Pace can exist surely Wheel of Time Saving can? I’d like to read that one to be honest.

This is well treaded ground and I agree with pretty much everything. I tried to get through RDR2 twice last year but whenever I was doing main story missions I would get frustrated. Partly because of your points, but also for another reason: how the hell can you maintain immersion in the story when the protagonist effectively commits genocide? Seriously the kill count in the missions is so ludicrously high I want to quit every time I do a couple of main story missions. Like I get it, you want to sprinkle some action sequences in there to keep up the tempo, but I can’t take killing a hundred lawmen in some town in a main mission and then have the world go on as if nothing happened.

Emily is definitely better for a low chaos attempt (that’s kind of how I think it was intended) but something about the high chaos play style in these games always felt more fun, more visceral and more satisfying. Maybe that’s just me.

One day I’ll get through this series. There is some really good stuff there but it’s not an easy read. At this point I feel like it might be too much effort but who knows. I’d like to finish it some day, but I don’t really want to re-read the first 6 books again just to re-orient myself in the story.

Reminds me of the classic Bill Hicks bit about Jesus and crosses.

That’s true, though even then I do think one of the few criticisms I could levy against the Dishonoured games is that there are so many more (and more cool) lethal powers and tools than there are non-lethal. Playing low chaos should maybe be more of a challenge yes, but it should be equally interesting and fun I think. And I’m not sure the series gets there.

I’m fairly certain I know which one you’re thinking of but even mentioning the name would give something away.

I finished Arcanum for the first time. It was… okay, I suppose. It really hasn’t aged super well, and has some pretty big flaws. The combat is atrocious, and the followers are extremely bare bones. The setting is really enjoyable though, and the character customization options are broad and fun (although the inventory management required to make a technologist work makes it ill advised in practice sadly). In the end I’m glad to have played it but I can’t really recommend it without some huge caveats.

For a change of pace I tackled Weird West, which I picked up for cheap on a GOG sale. I’m almost through with it - it’s not that long - and it’s been enjoyable. I really like the art style and the setting. It perhaps doesn’t clear the lofty bar its Dishonored and Prey pedigree sets for it but it’s got some pleasant twin-sticks shooter gameplay and some fun imsim elements and choices-matter type decisions. The stealth is pretty bad though. Not sure I’d want to pay full price for it, but definitely do recommend it if you want a shorter game and can find it on sale.

Dishonored 2 is at least as good as the first one, I would say. Some extremely good level designs.

I too grew up on machines that were mid-low range and was constantly asking more of them than they could handle, so I learned to stomach pretty miserable FPS. In the end though it’s highly context sensitive - the less movement (and in particular camera movement) the game has the lower the frame rate you can get away with.

As a general rule I would say 25 FPS is the absolute lower limit, but around 40 is probably more in line with your “this is fine and I’m going to have a great time” definition. However, for something like a fast paced shooter it’s more like 60 FPS minimum.

I swear I saw an “If I Like Blank” community around somewhere recently.