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Post by Wolfgang on Oct 29, 2019 14:14:57 GMT -5
He owns a lot of fantasy/sci-fi books ... My bookshelf is mostly literary (e.g., Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Charles Dickens) and history books. Wow. Unpacking some of the many wrong ideas here. 1) Science Fiction versus "literary": It can be just as "literary" as any other type of fiction. 2) Margaret Atwood: Um, Wolfgang, she's a science fiction writer. But due to people making statements like yours, she tends to not identify herself as such. 3) History: Many science fiction fans and writers are also history buffs. The predominant themes of science fiction are about history, politics and government, the military, and (of course) science and engineering. Yrah yeah, I know all this. Also, I knew you'd have a fit. I was speaking of literary genre vs fantasy/sci-fi genre, not that fantasy/sci-fi are not literary. I would not consider Atwood a sci-fi writer although she has written some sci-fi, e.g. Oryx and Crake trilogy. Her best works are not sci-fi, e.g. Blind Assassin, Alias Grace, Handmaid's Tale, Cat's Eye. Literary genre tends to be more character driven, while fantasy/sci-fi tends to be more about speculative ideas, and then the mass best-selling "popular" books tend to be more plot driven. Obviously, all the genres have all of the above but their strengths are different.
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Post by mikegarrison on Oct 29, 2019 14:29:14 GMT -5
Handmaid's Tale is clearly SF. Or at least, is considered as such if the exact same novel is published by a SF house. That fact the Atwood herself seems to buy into the idea that SF must mean ray guns in space does not make that correct.
I could name so many "character-driven" SF stories that the list would take me many days. That's clearly not what makes a story SF or not. In fact, "science" isn't really what makes a story SF or not.
Anyway, back to video games, I guess. And yes, they certainly can be addictive. By some definitions of addictive, anything that you seem to be compelled to do despite that it is causing you problems is an addiction. The physiological part of a video game addition is that videogames are designed to flood your brain with all the usual excitement and satisfaction and accomplishment hormones. Your own body drugging itself isn't all that different from externally popping pills.
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Post by Wolfgang on Oct 29, 2019 14:43:19 GMT -5
Handmaid's Tale is more dystopian literature than science fiction, although that begs the question whether dystopian literature comes under the umbrella of science fiction. I'm sure that issue has been debated. One could then argue that post-apocalyptic literature then is also science fiction because the setting is speculative much like dystopian society. I would not consider post-apocalptic literature as science fiction unless they had ray guns.
Also, I did not say that "science" is what makes a novel/story science fiction. You just sort of brought that up out of thin air.
Back to video games, unless it has ray guns in space, the video game is not sci-fi. Borderlands series would qualify as sci-fi, hence it is not character driven. All ray guns.
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Post by bigfan on Oct 29, 2019 14:46:58 GMT -5
Back home, he found an online questionnaire that assessed whether someone was an alcoholic. Wherever the quiz mentioned drinking, Bracke substituted gaming. He needed to answer yes to only a few of the questions to qualify as an addict; he affirmed almost all of them.
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Post by Wolfgang on Oct 29, 2019 14:49:07 GMT -5
Back home, he found an online questionnaire that assessed whether someone was an alcoholic. Wherever the quiz mentioned drinking, Bracke substituted gaming. He needed to answer yes to only a few of the questions to qualify as an addict; he affirmed almost all of them. I don't know what the rest of the house looks like but damn, that's a nice and comfortable looking interior.
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Post by mln59 on Oct 29, 2019 20:25:21 GMT -5
made it to another boss fight in nioh. gotta learn attack patterns and all that good stuff
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Post by netsetter on Oct 31, 2019 15:13:43 GMT -5
Speaking of Video Games.... the 2019 Classic Tetris World Championships took place recently at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo. Joseph Saelee, a 17 year-old from Visalia, CA repeated as champion. Last year he knocked off Jonah, the best to ever play the game. This year he beat Coryan.
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Post by Wolfgang on Nov 1, 2019 11:49:22 GMT -5
Shadow of Mordor
This is supposed to be a tough game per reviews, a GameStop clerk, video game forums, and my own personal experience with a couple of false start first playthrough. Now, I’m on my 3rd playthrough and I think it’s very easy. But I know why it was difficult in the beginning. There are several things that the game itself doesn’t teach you and you have to sort of figure it out for yourself.
For example, in stealth kills, you sneak up behind enemy soldiers in a crouch and kill them with your blade. The problem is that sometimes, the soldiers turn around or see you at the last minute and become startled. In the past, I would get startled too and stop my stealth kill move. That, I discovered, is a mistake. Even after the soldier sees you, you still have almost a full second to finish your stealth kill move because, I guess, the soldier’s reaction time is slower. So, now, I don’t even other to crouch at all. I just dash over to a soldier regardless of whether he’s looking at me or not, and then do the stealth move at the last second. Still works. No one tells you this. It’s something you learn from experience.
Another example, the combat execute move instantly kills enemy soldiers. In my first playthrough, I was always waiting for the combat execute prompt (triangle+circle) to show up on the screen before I actually performed the combat execute move. I thought that was what I had to do. No. The combat execute move is available at 8 consecutive hits and your hit streak will start flashing red at the edge of your screen. I just wasn’t paying attention. In other games, certain moves can only be performed when the prompt shows up. For the combat execute, you don’t have to wait for the prompt. This fact alone kept me in hand-to-hand combat against 10+ soldiers much longer than I needed to be. This also caused my death several times because instead of insta-killing these doofs, I just needlessly prolonged the fight.
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Post by mikegarrison on Nov 2, 2019 21:27:14 GMT -5
I am nearing the end of this Long War campaign I stared in early September, but I'm suddenly in real trouble. I have a base defense mission (which are always huge PITAs). One reason these missions are tough is that you must pick out and equip something a dozen soldiers (for which you usually don't have enough top-of-the-line-quality equipment) and then the game randomly picks six of them for you to use. It's very tough to win this if you get the wrong mix of soldiers.
And then the game sends a randomized mix of really tough enemies at you in waves. They come when they come, so you can't always have time to set up for them or even to be sure you have finished off those that came first.
So far I have tried to play this with several sets of soldiers but I never get the right mix. For instance, I either get two medics or no medics. Either way is bad (medics are necessary to survive wounds, but they tend to not deal a lot of damage by themselves). I'm actually getting somewhat tempted to quit this game. There's not much left of the campaign, and IMO the end game is not as fun as the middle. If I can't get through this base defense mission pretty soon, I may quit and move on.
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Post by mikegarrison on Nov 3, 2019 3:50:44 GMT -5
I am nearing the end of this Long War campaign I stared in early September, but I'm suddenly in real trouble. I have a base defense mission (which are always huge PITAs). One reason these missions are tough is that you must pick out and equip something a dozen soldiers (for which you usually don't have enough top-of-the-line-quality equipment) and then the game randomly picks six of them for you to use. It's very tough to win this if you get the wrong mix of soldiers. And then the game sends a randomized mix of really tough enemies at you in waves. They come when they come, so you can't always have time to set up for them or even to be sure you have finished off those that came first. So far I have tried to play this with several sets of soldiers but I never get the right mix. For instance, I either get two medics or no medics. Either way is bad. I'm actually getting somewhat tempted to quit this game. There's not much left of the campaign, and IMO the end game is not as fun as the middle. If I can't get through this base defense mission pretty soon, I may quit and move on. I decided to try this one more time. So far, by making use of my psychic soldier's ability to mind control enemies and get them to fight for me, plus a lot of trial and error with saves every turn, I may be able to get out of this mission alive. We'll see. I'm still strongly considering wrapping this up, but it would be a little more satisfying to do so by winning the game than just by quitting it.
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Post by mikegarrison on Nov 3, 2019 5:56:32 GMT -5
Well, I did manage to survive that mission, finally. But now the aliens have thrown two more difficult missions at me. I have to decide whether I want to fight them or skip them as I nurse my wounds. I'm not sure what to do, and I'm planning to meet my dad and go to the volleyball match tomorrow in just under 10 hours, so it's time for bed now.
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Post by mikegarrison on Nov 4, 2019 0:01:03 GMT -5
I fought one of those two difficult missions (the one where I had the most to gain) and skipped the other one. It cost me France, but I was probably going to lose France to panic anyway. I wasn't sure I should skip it, but now I've been assigned yet another mission. And my damaged equipment is starting to really get serious. So it was probably a wise move. C'est la vie.
My "MEC" cyborgs require these power armor suits in order to function, and two of my three suits are now out for repairs. That means even though I have healthy MEC troopers ready to fight for me, they don't have suits so they can't fight.
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Post by mln59 on Nov 4, 2019 21:24:05 GMT -5
made it to another boss fight in nioh. gotta learn attack patterns and all that good stuff beat her tonight. t'was a hard battle
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Post by Wolfgang on Nov 5, 2019 0:58:10 GMT -5
Shadow of Mordor
I've been doing a lot of Death Threats recently. A Death Threat is where you issue an actual death threat to a Captain or War Chief by grabbing hold of any random Uruk and interrogating him. That Uruk then runs off and delivers the death threat to said Captain or War Chief (which is not shown but implied). When you do that, said Captain or War Chief increases in power significantly and is protected by a large gang. However, if you manage to kill your target, you have a high chance of getting an Epic Rune, which is essentially the best of the best mods in the game. So far, they haven't been that difficult (mostly because I'm experienced in this game). The only thing different is that I usually try to dispatch the gang by killing them off one by one with my bow, or shooting explosive barrels. Once the gang has been thinned down to a reasonable number, I move in for my confrontation with said Captain or War Chief.
The thing is, to beat the game, I don't need the Epic Runes, but it makes things a bit easier. Also, the death threats by themselves are kind of fun.
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Post by mikegarrison on Nov 5, 2019 1:02:28 GMT -5
Agent 47 doesn't make threats. He makes promises.
Just sayin'.
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