[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Just looking through my HLTB at things I've done recently:

The Ace Attorney series Sucker for Love Coffee Talk Haven (good for co-op)

If you want a bit more gameplay, but still chill:

Paradise Killer Braid Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

More gameplay focused:

Control Portal Wargroove Cat Quest Knack (I know it's a meme, but the games are actually pretty fun)

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Seriously I'm not sure if you messed something up or if Lemmy is messing up but I can't read any of that text other than the title

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

I didn't realize Canadians measured things in 240p

[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Are you under the impression that Canada doesn't use imperial measurements for anything?

[-] [email protected] 14 points 3 weeks ago

The whole world uses both for various things. Even the countries that "officially" use metric. Specific global industries still use imperial. Canadian and British people are perhaps the most famous for combining the two, but most of Europe also mixes things in here and there.

And of course the whole conversation is Euro-centric and ignores the historical use of traditional measurement systems in Africa and Asia, but somehow that never gets brought up.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

I feel the same and I think I've narrowed it down to a handful of things, in no particular order.

  1. The environment design. Fallout is mostly wastelands, with just a few settlements scattered around. Everyone is fighting each other, plus the monsters that are encroaching on civilization. Everything is a shabby remnant of the past shoddily cobbled together. Even the entire settlement system in Fallout 4 is based on gathering scrap and taping it together. In Skyrim, you can mine and process the minerals to make the nails to put your house together. Skyrim has ruins and remnants of past civilizations, but a lot of the buildings and infrastructure are still in good condition, and there's fresh growth. The wilds of Skyrim are much more diverse than the wastes of Fallout. Fallout 3 in particular has the annoying green filter on everything unless you mod it out. It doesn't feel like there's really a world left to save- it seems like everything is doomed to chaos and anarchy.

  2. "Survival". I would not put Fallout in a list of survival games, but it does borrow a lot of elements from the genre. I understand what they're going for, but I don't like the resulting gameplay. Constantly scrounging for weapons, ammo, and resources getd really boring really fast for me. Managing health and Rads too. Every combat effectively takes twice as long when you factor in the time you spend to recover the resources you used.

  3. Guns. I know there's a schism in the Skyrim community between those who mod in guns and those who don't. I see a few problems with guns in Skyrim, and most apply to the vanilla Fallout games too. BGS just isn't great at gun play. The feel of the weapons, the environmental design, ammo distribution, enemy AI, physics engine, the sound design... BGS isn't particularly great at any of it. When the ranged combat is a supplemental element of the gameplay that's fine- Bioshock has 2 great games despite mediocre combat mechanics, and the Elder Scrolls games are similar with their bows and ranged magic. Fallout puts the ranged combat front and center, and it falls apart.

  4. Progression. I think this is why I love Skyrim, and the source of it's commercial success. I was no stranger to RPG's before Skyrim (both videogames and tabletop), but the ones I enjoyed were imusually in spite of the leveling systems. Usually a lot of grinding and overly complicated systems with points, skills, abilities, etc.

Fallout uses one of my least favorite systems- general experience gained (mostly through combat) that leads to an overall character level increase, which then grants points that can be used to improve specific skills. You want to get better at lockpicking? Go kill something. Barter, speech, science, repair, medicine... The answer is to kill something. Improve the Energy Weapons skill? You can kill something with Small Guns or Melle and it's just as effective. It completely disconnects the actions you take as a player from the development of the character.

Skyrim is the opposite. To get better at lockpicking, you pick locks. To get better with a shield you use a shield. It's both intuitive and satisfying. Other RPG's boast more complexity, flexibility, or realism, but I think Skyrim really hits the sweet spot between accessibility, realism, and customization.

This also ties back to the survival aspects I mentioned earlier, because I also felt like equipment was much more important in Fallout. Your damage there is often more about what gun you're able and willing to use than anything to do with your character. In Skyrim, a character with a high one-handed skill and perks can have pretty good damage with just about any one-handed weapon. There's variance of course- you can tell the difference between an iron sword and dragonbone. But the smithing and enchantments mitigate a lot of those differences. If you haven't focused on enchanting yet you might choose a lower-pedigree weapon with a better enchantment.

  1. Lore. This is subjective of course, but I think Skyrim and the rest of the Elder Scrolls just has better lore. The alt-history of Fallout isn't terrible, but it's hard to compete with thousands of years of over a dozen races, various factions, and pantheons of gods interacting with each other. I love reading the books, listening to the dialogue, finding carvings and paintings in the textures or on the item models. Fallout's lore is mostly either "where were you when the bombs fell?", "that asshole leading a group of roughians is being a real jerk", or "Wow Vault-Tex was really unethical ". My wife and I have spent dozens of hours watching YouTube videos breaking down ES lore- everything from speculation about the godhead and very nature of the universe to the one NPC who is vaguely connected to a faction thought extinct.
[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

You think most adults were 100lbs heavier than me at 18?

No. I never said that. I have no idea why you think I did?. According to Guinness, the heaviest baby ever birthed was 22lbs in 1879 (and only lived a few hours). I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess you were born weighing less than that, and spent a considerable portion of your early years weighing less than most adults.

I think you're construing this into specifically abusive and destructive people. Those do exist, but my comment was referring to a broader scope. Anger can be a valid emotion, and there are healthy and unhealthy ways of handling it.

Ultimately, my point is that the original comment I replied to was ridiculous.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

I straight up don't believe that you were never in a room with an angry adult as a child. Personally I was never sexually or physically abused, but I know plenty of people who have been. A lot of strides have been made over the last several decades to improve parenting, but no one can be perfect for 18 years. Plus you add in teachers, coaches, or other community leaders that might be trusted with children.

The most important part of my comment was just pointing out the absurdity of the comment I was replying to. I could also point out the extent of hyperbole they used- the average American adult male is ~30 lbs heavier than the average American adult female, per the CDC. Or... Well, I could dive deeper into it but ultimately this whole conversation is based in bigotry and isn't worth looking at much more closely than that.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

On the contrary I think you'll find close to 100% of them were indeed children at one point.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

And the question was designed to create this divide

It's literally just a classic page from the bigot's playbook, but since it's being used against cishet men for some reason that makes it okay?

If JK Rowling said she would rather go to a bathroom with a bear than a trans woman I think we would all rightfully call that hate speech.

If a white supremecist said this about black people it would be dismissed as racist nonsense. I've seen a lot of defenders saying that this is somehow different because violence by cishet men against women is real. How many years have racists loved to use the good ol' "did you know x% of crimes are committed by x% of the population" tactic for?

And I see the "not all men" getting tossed around. How is that any different from saying "I know not all Muslims are terrorists. The good ones know we aren't talking about them"? Change the conversation from cis men to anything else and it gets called out as hate speech. It does nothing to help solve any issues or lead to a better society.

[-] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago

Local pizza places are usually both cheaper and better than chains, at least in every neighborhood I've lived in. I think they are better than frozen pizzas, but also about 2x the cost. Both vary from place to place though.

Aldi's pizzas are my go-to for value. Usually around $6 a pop now (they were $3.29 pre-pandemic). I add extra cheese and toppings to remind myself I've made it in life.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

For what it's worth, I got into the series a bit late myself and didn't play AC1 until probably 2012 or 2013. I asked people at the time whether it was worth it to play AC1 or if I should just skip ahead, and everyone told me to skip ahead for a lot of the same reasons you said.

I'm not sure why I bothered asking because I decided to just play AC1 first anyways and still managed to enjoy it.

If you're new to the series, it's still fun just to run around and climb things and kill people. The story was actually interesting and the Animus was a really cool concept. The occasional shift to present day gameplay helped keep the historical stuff fresh. It doesn't have the overwhelming volume of useless collectibles strewn about everywhere like later games have.

I haven't played it since so maybe it's aged worse than I remember. It doesn't have dozens to hundreds of hours of gameplay and side quests in a huge open world. But for a dozen hours in a game focused on a linear main story it was pretty good. Like if you took down the walls of the hallways in Uncharted.

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paultimate14

joined 1 year ago