Video Games!

[JD]

I ended up following someone on Twitter doing pinball table reviews in Pinball Arcade, so I got interested in playing pinball, and got Pinball FX3 and some tables. And I have to agree with the consensus that Medieval Madness is possibly the best pinball machine. It is so much fun. Trolls, dragons, castle, multiball after multiball, rescuing damsels, destroying the castle, peasant uprisings. Just lots of fun.

I'm going to have to see if I can find a physical example of that somewhere around here. I've been playing a lot of Elvira's House of Horrors at the local bar, partly because it's a really good table with a lot going on, humor, and a forgiving tilt sensor, and partly because cleavage.

[Warren]

I ended up following someone on Twitter doing pinball table reviews in Pinball Arcade, so I got interested in playing pinball, and got Pinball FX3 and some tables. And I have to agree with the consensus that Medieval Madness is possibly the best pinball machine. It is so much fun. Trolls, dragons, castle, multiball after multiball, rescuing damsels, destroying the castle, peasant uprisings. Just lots of fun.

I'm going to have to see if I can find a physical example of that somewhere around here. I've been playing a lot of Elvira's House of Horrors at the local bar, partly because it's a really good table with a lot going on, humor, and a forgiving tilt sensor, and partly because cleavage.

In 2020? C'mon. Even in the 80's I was unimpressed with Elvira's cleavage. I bet while you're playing there's a tranny at the bar with better cleavage.

[JD]

In 2020? C'mon. Even in the 80's I was unimpressed with Elvira's cleavage. I bet while you're playing there's a tranny at the bar with better cleavage.

I'm at work, so I can't exactly go looking for pictures, but uh, OK, sure, whatever, Jadawarren.

[Highway]

I ended up following someone on Twitter doing pinball table reviews in Pinball Arcade, so I got interested in playing pinball, and got Pinball FX3 and some tables. And I have to agree with the consensus that Medieval Madness is possibly the best pinball machine. It is so much fun. Trolls, dragons, castle, multiball after multiball, rescuing damsels, destroying the castle, peasant uprisings. Just lots of fun.

I'm going to have to see if I can find a physical example of that somewhere around here. I've been playing a lot of Elvira's House of Horrors at the local bar, partly because it's a really good table with a lot going on, humor, and a forgiving tilt sensor, and partly because cleavage.

Good luck finding it, but it might be really tough. It's a super popular table, and they only made about 4000 of them (late 90s decline in pinball popularity). And they're one of the holy grail tables to buy and own for collectors, so they go for a lot of money. They even sell new replicas of them for $8500.00, for a table that cost about $3000.00 new. But it does look like there are 5 places you can play it in Brooklyn: https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/med ... ess/owners

[JD]

I repeat: yeah, whatever, Warren.

IMG_20200210_200213.jpg (1.4 MiB) Viewed 5366 times

[JD]

But it does look like there are 5 places you can play it in Brooklyn: https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/med ... ess/owners

Oh shit, one of those places is Skylark, which is almost around the corner from me. I almost never go in there because it's not really my kind of crowd, but I definitely will now. Thanks!

[Warren]

JD,
You're seeing almost all her breast. Her costume was a proto-wonderbra. Everything is pushed together.
But now I'm thinking you don't care about that though.

[Mo]

JD,
You're seeing almost all her breast. Her costume was a proto-wonderbra. Everything is pushed together.
But now I'm thinking you don't care about that though.

Now I'm curious how Warren defines cleavage.

[JD]

IMG_20200211_194932_01.jpg (441.23 KiB) Viewed 5326 times

Not bad, but when you can get the "skill" shot nine times out of ten with your eyes closed, you have to wonder about the design...

[Shem]

It's designed to suck quarters out of your pocket. A forgiving learning curve is a necessity for that in the days where you can just pull out your phone and play for free.

[D.A. Ridgely]

There was a bowling alley within walking distance of my childhood home and a neighborhood kid my age spent most of his adolescence there either bowling or playing pinball. Thing is, he'd get good enough that he'd rack up dozens of free games and could play on a pinball machine for hours on end. Became a pretty good bowler, too, fwiw.

I saw him a few years ago when I drove through Myrtle Beach. He's a stark raving paranoid paleo-conservative who lives by himself in a small house with too many cats and the overpowering smell of cat urine. Pity. He wasn't a bad guy back in the day but even then he had below zero social skills.

Anyway, the pic of the pinball machine brought him to mind.

[Taktix®]

Oh my god if Breath of the Wild were to morph into some humanoid form like in Naked Lunch I would totally let it have its way with me...

[Jasper]

"LOL - look at all these losers eagerly awaiting the release of Final Fantasy 7 Remake. They put it right in the title! Remake! Same game with gussied-up graphics. Suckers will buy anything."

(Says guy who dropped $45 and 45 hours (so far) for early access Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord.)

[Pham Nuwen]

I bought some DLC's for Stellaris last week. Finally getting into the late game with some of the new stuff. But I'm disappointed a bit. I read the forums about the Grey Tempest. About how it's incredibly hard to destroy and other star nations are just waiting for the fleet losses to move in.

But ....

When you bring two titans along .... it's almost to easy.

[Painboy]

How is Stellaris as compared to Masters of Orion 1 and 2?

Every space 4X game that I've played since then just never really gets the formula right. They seem to just pile more stuff in it with little regard if it makes the game better. Usually it just makes it more tedious. Granted all 4X games, even MOO, have issues there, especially late game. But all the ones I've tried since just seem to think more is always better.

[Pham Nuwen]

I haven't played Orion 2 but .... pretty much the same. It's like Civilization. You can add a bunch of layers and graphics but it's still Civ all the same. For the record, I enjoy Stellaris. Much more with some of these DLCs. It's the same formula more or less though for these games. More stuff beats less stuff. Better stuff beats not so good stuff. There are interesting .... layers. I play on Ironman mode so I might have made a strategic error about 10 years back but can't just save repeat like with other games or modes.

Good example would be what I'm doing currently. I'm taking a different route and simply invading my neighbors and forcing them to switch to my ethics and civics. Beats trying to manage the unruly types with a level of micromanagement I just can't muster for the most part. Another part of it was opening the L-gates for the Grey Tempest but switching my nation to refugees welcome. I have the power(just barely) to beat the Nanite Swarms but others can't. So I take in their refugees and just send spend money to ship them to my ring world. And ring worlds need a lot of population. Building a dyson sphere as well.

It's hard to beat cool shit like that.

[Pham Nuwen]

So new game I started a few days ago in Stellaris.

Defensive wars only. Just buildup the navy so no one fucks with me and concentrate on maxing out my planets. It's a little dull but i'm right up against 2 machine empires. I can beat one but not both. And if I go to war with one the other is going to jump in. But I've gotten myself to the cool shit way faster. Dyson sphere being built for energy. Mass thingie over a blackhole for minerals. Ring world for food and consumer goods. I'm depopulating my lower tier worlds to send to the ring world. And I've managed to take down some of the galactic terrors. The fortress and dreadnought have been eradicated with the dreadnought captured and turned into a psuedo-titan. Heading over to take down the dimensional horror. I'm going to activate the L-Gates soon and smash the Grey Tempest.

Thinking about just heading up to the L-cluster and building a few ring worlds and orbital habitats. Then depopulating my worlds and giving up my empire in the galaxy proper. I'll just be a Fallen Empire up there. Then at some point sweep down and become my own end game crisis.

[JasonL]

So I caught Control on sale for $20. My first ray tracing game I'm pretty sure. It's beautiful. Not sure about gameplay overall. Still early, but it a fantastic environment and a fun weird concept - there's a government agency that monitors paranormal activity and prevents outbreaks by collecting Objects of Power which are jungian archetypes that actually exist. You go to the astral plane and bond with The Service Weapon, The Floppy Disk, The Phone, etc and unlock your fancy skills. Telekinesis is super fun in the early going and looks amazing. Button once and you grab pieces of environment to you. Some stuff is laying around but you can also grab pieces of walls and such. You walk around with the object floating in front of you and other stuff starts rising off the ground in that "i have telekinesis" comic book way. Button again and you launch the object. Bad guy and environment effects depend on material and size of the thing you threw. So like one fight is in a mail room and you are slinging metal mail tubes that really hurt but sometimes you grab a bag of letters and that just hits a dude and goes poof and they get annoyed. Desktop monitors explode with ray trace particles.

It's pretty dope. Environment very cool. May get repetetive too early to tell.

[JasonL]

Civ VI was (may still be) completely free on the Epic Games portal. I've never been a Civ person, and I'm not sure I'm all in on it, but I will say the theme music gets me fired up.

[dbcooper]

Civ VI was (may still be) completely free on the Epic Games portal. I've never been a Civ person, and I'm not sure I'm all in on it, but I will say the theme music gets me fired up.

I downloaded it and played it for 8 hours straight. Time to get into 4x space games.

[Pham Nuwen]

Civ VI was (may still be) completely free on the Epic Games portal. I've never been a Civ person, and I'm not sure I'm all in on it, but I will say the theme music gets me fired up.

I downloaded it and played it for 8 hours straight. Time to get into 4x space games.

Stellaris!!!!!!!!!!

[Eric the .5b]

Civ VI was (may still be) completely free on the Epic Games portal. I've never been a Civ person, and I'm not sure I'm all in on it, but I will say the theme music gets me fired up.

I downloaded it and played it for 8 hours straight. Time to get into 4x space games.

Stellaris!!!!!!!!!!

Yesses.

Though also the game where you can get the GTA temptation at gigascale. I play peaceful-ish societies that like to make everyone friendly with them most of the time... But I haven't used one of the cute avatars for a Devouring Swarm in the current mechanics, yet...

[Pham Nuwen]

Civ VI was (may still be) completely free on the Epic Games portal. I've never been a Civ person, and I'm not sure I'm all in on it, but I will say the theme music gets me fired up.

I downloaded it and played it for 8 hours straight. Time to get into 4x space games.

Stellaris!!!!!!!!!!

Yesses.

Though also the game where you can get the GTA temptation at gigascale. I play peaceful-ish societies that like to make everyone friendly with them most of the time... But I haven't used one of the cute avatars for a Devouring Swarm in the current mechanics, yet...

Yet ...

[JasonL]

The "how to lay out your city" aspect of civ 6 which I gather is different from previous iterations is kind of fun frustrating. There are things that don't happen until the industrial age that oops you need that exactly one hex to build but your library is there so lose all your research and so on. It's hyper specified with Wonders and areas of the city that can completely dictate your play. I'm not sure if it's a good lesson in path dependence or just a nuance only civ mavens have figured out because they know all the things they will eventually build in which order, but it's tough on a novice.

I basically wound up as a merchant empire with a megachurch (Buddhism which as we all know came from greece), because the only way I could get horses or iron in early game was to envoy the crap out of religious city states. They also stuffed me at the far northern corner of the globe with just me, city states and Germany on my continent and it was very late before I had enough navy to even see the rest of the world. All focused on city states hedging against the frisky germans.

It's fun. I like it better than Stellaris.

[Eric the .5b]

Though also the game where you can get the GTA temptation at gigascale. I play peaceful-ish societies that like to make everyone friendly with them most of the time... But I haven't used one of the cute avatars for a Devouring Swarm in the current mechanics, yet...

Yet ...

I'm actually going to try not-Devouring Swarm. I lose some bonuses, but I can still engage in diplomacy...and keep other species as livestock!