And yes this is a real book

SOMEHOW IT'S BACK

A new patch is out today for Nidhogg 1 featuring lobbies, training mode, CPU battles, matchmaking the prioritizes ping, and ROLLBACK NETCODE

Gaming OST or not, what's the song you crank to 11, to drown out the voices/noise, and remind yourself that this too shall pass?

For reference, Mine is the Co-Optional Podcast Theme by Miracle of Sound. A minute and a half long of the feel goods to keep me on the straight and narrow, because I never got to thank John in person and shake his hand.

So recently the Starcraft tabletop miniatures wargame came out -its good and much better value for money than 40k, can recommend- and building up my Zerg and Terran armies in the starter box while listening to the OST's gave me a hankering to replay the games. Now i played the shit out of Starcraft 2 till the ending killed my friends interest and in general the whole ass IP for like 20 years, if that 2030 game was anything but a nice trailer to pad their portfolio for the shareholders, but i only played SC1 as a novelty visit that came on a USB with the SC2 collectors edition since i didn't play it as a kid and compared to the Warcraft 3 i grew up on it felt real dated. Love or hate WC3's rts additions like hero units i think its fare to say the actual story and production value of the story of the Scourge of Lordaeron just kind of made a lot of SC1 not hold up despite how unfair that comparison might be.

Replaying it now 16 years on -don't let it set in, too late it setting in- with the remastered stuff that real aged feel has not bothered me nearly as much but viewing it with a critical eye one thing stands out and its the title of this post. See in the Terran campaign that makes up the games first act we go from a backwater colony world seeing basic zerglings cross the headlights of a dudes truck as he rides across the highway and its quaint, almost RE2esque in its teasing. Folks dont know what a threat the Zerg will become and it rapidly snowballs into a "these Protoss dudes showed up and started glassing planets, this shit is BAD bad" by the end. One thing stuck with me though and its the fake out reveal. The protag stand in Jim Raynor is told by a temporary ally that "these zerg were a bioweapon created by the confederacy and son your little colony was a weapons testing ground that went out of control".

Now in the story this is kind of a false flag with that guy going on to be a heel turn of heel turns and is quite likely just lying to you to make Jim more open to helping him take down the Confederacy so he can start his terran empire bullshit. But the thing is the actual reveal kind of sucks by comparison. Just midway through the follow up Zerg middle act the hiveminds overmind persona just drops in a text box before a mission "we were actually created by ancient aliens called Xel'Naga" and thats it. Why? What for? who knows? who cares? theres ancient evil awakenings afoot!

Now i know its easy in retrospect to shit on Starcraft writing given the endings -and i'm going to be extremely kind here- *mixed* perception upon release but i don't know about you but "the government was making bioweapons, cared so little about your location to test it there and in the ultimate comeuppance lost control and its going to devour their entire colonial empire" is way more interesting a reveal than "ancient aliens made us and we are basically just gooey borg". I honestly wish it had been the other way around. You think its some ancient alien threat only to find out this is brand new and that makes its rapid spread and ascent to power all the more threatening because its like an invasive species of super predator that dominates and ultimately drives an ecosystem to collapse. It becomes a story of hubris and political inhumanity instead of rip roaring "well the gun toting heros need a no bad feels monster to blow away with impunity" villain.

But thats just me. Have you got any good examples of a twist reveal making you go "yeah actually i preferred the fakeout"?

I can't believe I made a whole ask about cool minibosses and forgot to include the Boss ass super vampires of the BloodCoven, probably the best part of the whole Blood Hunt event and one of my fave anti-Avengers enemy/villain teama(though it might not exactly count STORY/EVENT SPOILERS cuz the Coven is like the actual final boss fight of the event)

So, Canto X of Limbus Company just finished a few weeks ago. Because of it, over the last month, there has been so fucking Carmen discourse, and holy shit, the amount of Carmen apologizing I've seen has driven me absolutely up the wall. People doing everything they can to justify her, making so many excuses for her, believing her gaslighting despite the game itself calling it out, even trying to argue that she's a straight up benevolent force despite litteraly every. Single. Entry. In the series after Lobotomy trying to hammer into your head that her actions are ultimately self-destructive and a false hope for humanity. The entire meta-narative of the entire franchise has been focusing on how her philosophy is ultimately not the way to salvation, yet there are still tons of people out there determined to believe that she is ultimately in the right.

If the video game industry had something like an annual high school yearbook, the upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI would garner a lot of superlatives: Most Expensive Game Ever Made, Biggest Development Team of All Time, Most Likely to Shock TV Newscasters, Best Use of Hand-Holding While Committing Crimes, Most Varied Body Types, Angriest Pedestrians, Most Realistic Depiction of Sweat, Game That Required the Most “Research” Trips to Miami Beach.

To create the sprawling world of GTA VI, staff at development studio Rockstar Games went on a series of excursions to Miami, the real metropolis on which this game’s fictional Vice City is based. They rode with police to criminal hot spots, craned out of helicopters to snap aerial shots and weaved through crowds of scantily clad dancers at the hottest nightclubs in town — all so they could evaluate the lighting. Designing a club for a typical video game might mean generating a few nonplayable characters in different-colored shirts, says top artist Aaron Garbut. In GTA VI, though, it means animating and scripting each individual patron, creating drinks, adding music, crafting lighting, matching the music to that lighting and composing all the other “layers and layers and layers of detail” that make a virtual club feel as authentic as possible.

“And now you understand why it took so long,” says Jennifer Kolbe, Rockstar’s head of publishing, during a daylong, wide-ranging interview alongside several other top staffers at the company’s office in Edinburgh. It’s the first time Rockstar has openly talked about the development challenges behind the largest and perhaps most consequential video game it’s ever made.

Rockstar has a dozen offices around the world, but its power center, Rockstar North, is located in the Scottish capital, a small city full of ancient castles and cobblestone streets — about as stark a contrast to Miami as could be. Rockstar North occupies a sleek, three-floor office that used to be the headquarters of a newspaper called the Scotsman. Paneled screens across the atrium display character artwork from GTA VI, while the executive suites offer stunning views of nearby crags. On a sunny day in late September, the office is full of people working to squash bugs before the release. Monitors showcase their progress with a mosaic of green and red tiles. The green is outpacing the red, a promising sign. Perhaps the game won’t be delayed again.

Came across this when looking for AC8 music. Surprised they'd collab with Lindsay Sterling, but this is a great rendition!

Because I've gotten into Republic Commando. A Star Wars shooter videogame and Delta Squad is just awesome. Sure they're probably not the strongests, quite a few deal better with Super Battle Droids, but Boss, Sev, Scorch and Fixer are probably some of the most coordinated, brotherly and snarkiest clone troopers, well Commandos, around that deal with spacer horror movie scenarios like it's no big deal well except that one time.

They're probably the coolest soldier style team I've seen yet.

Poor, poor Grant Danasty. Castlevania III's worst character, a Pirate whose only claim to fame is a slightly better jump and climbing walls. While Trevor has the utility of the Belmonts, Sypha has powerful magic and Alucard has his unique bat attacks and transformation, Grant had just a stubby knife stab to balance out his better jumping and climbing walls- and it was not a good trade off.

Except in Japan. See, in Japan, his basic attack was throwing a knife. And he could do that infinitely, without spending Hearts, taking the weakest sub-weapon and making it more viable. In addition to his jumping and climbing Grant wasn't a letdown of the four, but stood among them as very viable, maybe even the best companion.

Also he isn't even intended to be a Pirate. He's just a thief. The Pirate thing was something that the US Manual writers created because they mistook Grant for a Pirate.

And this doomed poor Grant. Got him adapted out of Netflixvania out of spite for how he thought he was dumb as a concept and sucked as a playable character. And for a while the Japanese side seemed to keep giving him respect, but it just got more and more sad as time went on, to the point he didn't even get put in the Pachinko games. He just has a sprite cameo.

Grant suffers because the versions of CV III outside of Japan made him suck.

Mayhaps Belmont's Curse will reverse this, but it's a long shot.

Anywho, anyone else have any tales along these lines? What characters in media have suffered similar fates to Grant?

New archetype is a class with a very big hammer.

And you can play as Thor, it seems

The Zealot’s second, and arguably even more exciting, keystone ability is called the Zealous Throw:

The Zealot throws their weapon into the target cell, dealing weapon damage to the first creature in its path. All creatures around the target receive additional damage from Thunderous Echo. The weapon then returns to the Zealot’s hand. Works only with bludgeoning weapons.

This ability does not count towards the attack limit per turn and can be further enhanced by a number of talents, including the option to throw two one-handed weapons at once.

Who said hammers and maces were not ranged weapons, anyway?

In Dragon's Dogma 2, when you go to Bahkbathal and you enter the first inn to sleep, the guy will legitimately rip you off.

He'll overcharge you superhard to stay there, and it's your choice if you wish to do it or not.

However, if you go deeper into the city, you find a place that's actually much cheaper, the issue is that it's a bit out of the way, and the overcharging one is right by the entrance.

The game can legitimately tourist trap you, it's amazing.

it's inconvenient, but it's a fun tidbit of worldbuilding that's not necessarily focused on the player's convenience.

Relevant and useful links:

• FFXIV thread mentioning the news
• FFXI megathread with more info
• FFXI news page about these Free Trial changes
• *Square Enix Store FFXI Free Trial download page on PC

*It might seem strange, but there's a link to download the Free Trial at the bottom of the news section in the FFXI news page link and clicking on it leads to that page.

I haven't gone through the process yet of signing up and downloading the game due to being in the midst of playing other things, so unfortunately I can't provide any personal insight on the requirements involved to get everything going.

**General disclaimer that this is an MMORPG released around 2002 / 2006 that's had updates over many, many years. There's definitely going to be friction with parts of it and things that were designed at the time of release that may or may not have been improved, updated, or streamlined in any way.

Go ahead and give it a try if you want since the trial is free (the full game however requires a monthly subscription), but don't feel bad if it doesn't work out and don't feel obligated to struggle through something you're hating unless you really feel it's gonna be worth it.**

Two weeks late posting this, but here we go. For anyone who didn't already know and has been curious about it, they've finally fully expanded the Final Fantasy XI Free Trial.

Apparently it's only the base game so it lacks a lot of the QoL stuff that's unlocked in the expansions, things like buying items from other players is disabled and chat options are restricted, and of course any jobs released in any of the expansions are unavailable to use.

Also signing up for the game through PlayOnline is notoriously very difficult. With all that said, soloing is apparently entirely viable if finding people to party with is ever an issue and it's possible to do so through the entire story up until the end.

FFXI was also apparently very much designed with the intent of using controllers. For some people this'll be more comfortable than having to use keyboard and / or mouse.

For the people who prefer kb + m instead, I think there are mods or external tools to help make that more viable. FFXI has been around for decades at this point so there's gotta be lots of different types of customization mods, tools, etc. out there for it.

Checking and asking about it on the FFXI subreddit would undoubtedly be very helpful. For any questions or concerns about the Free Trial or FFXI in general I would strongly recommend either searching on or asking people on the FFXI subreddit.

In addition, I would highly encourage people to look through a full list of changes and requirements themselves though to see what's involved instead of relying entirely on my very brief descriptions to make final judgement calls about the game.

I don't have any personal experience to draw from about asking questions on the sub, but from some casual browsing around there it seems like a lot of people there are willing to help out anyone looking for info or anyone who's run into trouble with the game.

So overall this seems like a great opportunity to try out FFXI for anyone with an interest in the game or whoever's curious to see what's it's like for themselves (myself included when the time eventually comes).

Best of luck to everyone with your Free Trial experiences, and sorry to anyone who ends up getting (re)addicted or has a rough time through. I wish you all well.