this is an older performance of theirs, but is one I frequently throw on while choring about the house. Perfect vibes.

You might like Burn Notice, depending on your tolerance for network television tropes of the mid-aughts. It’s a “monster of the week” format, rather than the serialized approach of Reacher, but it typically includes a scene or two referencing the season arc in any given episode, so you still feel like the narrative is advancing, even if the majority of the episode was a side quest.

The gist is that a US government spy gets “burned” and turned loose in Miami. He, and the few contacts he has who will still speak with him (which include his mother, an ex-gf with a bombastic personality, and Bruce Campbell at the height of his smarmy powers), attempt to figure out who burned him, while also getting wrapped up in “favors” for various folks about town that inevitably wind up more complicated than was initially let on. Antagonists run the gamut from international terrorists to con artists who target the geriatric (it is, after all, set in Florida).

It’s not high art, but it’s got a winning cast, decent action (for network television), and, on occasion, I think some pretty clever solutions for problems which leverage the “spycraft” gimmick. Worth a shot.

For what it is worth, I found it thrilling as a snot nosed teen who watched it in class for some reason or another. It suffers a little from its reputation as “the greatest film ever made”, but, it remains a very good character drama. Interest in the history of film and filmmaking will also go a long way towards making the movie compelling.

Demolition Man was such a treat for me when I finally got around to watching it during the pandemic. So much fun.

Absolutely horrifying illustration…I love it and crave sprite now. Can we get this in front of whatever ad agency Sony hired to produce this?

Good News sounds interesting. I am curious at how well I’d be able to read the comedy in the performances. I’m no stranger to Asian cinema, but typically more of the straight action variety.

I assume your tongue is fairly firmly in your cheek, but I can’t think of a better example for “mediocre movie” than Mortal Kombat. Lots of stuff to like about it (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Robin Shou’s hair, Goro, several of the sets, etc), mixed in with mostly underwhelming martial arts and cinematography, with characters whose depth reflects their origins. Don’t get me wrong, I like it, but I’m not crusading to convince people of Paul W.S. Anderson’s misunderstood genius lol

I checked out their FAQ, and it seems like the HoMM3 version of the fheroes2 project (or maybe vice versa, I’m not sure which came first).

I noticed that one of the features of VCMI was a totally reworked AI. Do you have insight into how that feels vs base game AI? A minor concern I have about these sort of fan projects is that the contributors tend to be among the most passionate and knowledgeable fans of the base game around, and their tweaks are balanced around that level of game knowledge.

Y’know, I’m sure the intent of the comment is in the vein of, “I persist because fuck them”, but there’s a reading of this that implies you’ve a list, and you’re checking it twice…

I agree. That’s why I felt compelled to write this post. The gameplay is far better than its wrapper makes it appear.

Was Xeen the M&M setting with the explicit science-fantasy inclination? I’ve never played any of the straight RPGs, but I’ve trundled through enough wikis to discover some bonkers concepts in those games. Like, one ends with your party fighting through a dungeon only to discover that the dungeon is actually a buried space ship or something like that?

I am certain that I would love HoMM3, but it’s just one of those games that I’ve never gotten around to sampling. As a kid, it was purely an access thing, but, as an adult, it’s a case of wanting that sweet nostalgia sauce drizzled over the meat and potatoes HoMM gameplay. Therefore, when the SRPG urge strikes, I find myself reaching for 2. I’ve heard nothing but good things about 3 though, so perhaps it’s high time to advance a little. Besides, I can only betray Roland for that sweet Archibussy so many times before it gets a little old.

My reservations about the art style aside, I think fans of the series would do well to check out the demo. I don’t pretend to be an expert, but, the price is right, and the gameplay feels very solid to me.

You just helped a mildly infuriating puzzle piece finally slide into place for me. For years, I’ve internalized xbow as shorthand for crossbow, but couldn’t for the life of me remember where I’d have picked that up. I played a lot of AoE2 back in the day, though, so that seems the likely origin.

You could put Daniel Day-Lewis in that role and I think it would still be a terrible film. A good actor cannot rescue a story that inept. They might be able to wring some pathos from otherwise inept dialog, but it’s not going to change the fundamental structural issues with the movie, and, as you allude to, it might strip it of what makes it entertaining in the first place.

I don’t think of that as a difficult problem. No, I am not interested in Teardown if I’m searching for that particular set of tags, and I don’t want Steam guessing at whether to show me a game or not. That’s fine on the home page, or in the discover queye, but If I search for 5 tags, and a game only has 4, the game doesn’t meet my criteria and ought to be hidden. I forget what the number cited in the article is, but there is a deluge of a games added to Steam every single day. Enough that there’s almost certainly a fair chunk of games which meet my hypothetical criteria exactly, so I don’t want to wade through games which “might interest me”. There are other section of the store dedicated to that concept, including on the pages of the 5 tag games I’m browsing for.

Full disclosure, the last time I studied chemistry was 20 years ago, and I was not a particularly good student, so take this with a heaping helping of NaCl.

It isn’t the direct reaction of Drano + PVC that causes the issue. Rather, it’s the heat given off from the reaction of the clog and the lye. Apparently it’s significant enough to be an issue. I tried looking up how much heat might be released by the reaction, but I went crosseyed reading the formula, so someone else will have to do the math on that one.

Also, I know you said caustic material doesn’t react with metal, but Google doubts you on that front, for whatever that’s worth. In fact, zinc is specifically called out as a metal with which sodium hydroxide reacts pretty strongly, which is important because many water lines are steel galvanized with, you guessed it, zinc.

Ignorant question here, but it relates to discovery issues I have on Steam, so maybe this is the thread for it. Is there a way to filter by multiple tags? It’s entirely possible I’m just dumb, but I find the tags system useless without that ability. I don’t want to see every FPS on Steam, I want to see specifically Singleplayer, Story-Rich FPS games with an emphasis on Weapon Customization and Environmental Destruction (for example). I’m on mobile at the moment and that query doesn’t seem possible via the app, but I’ve had similar issues with the desktop client as well. My experience is that I can only browse one tag, which is not especially useful most of the time.

Like I said, this seems like something that I’m just missing, and I’m willing to eat a big helping of humble pie if someone can set me straight.

I can’t speak to the applicability of the term as it applies to this particular game, but I’ve heard the term used for several years now. In my recollection, it started to come into vogue when Vampir Survivors blew up, but I wouldn’t swear on that. The concept seems to be that, in a bullet hell game, the screen is filled with projectiles that you are attempting to avoid for fear of death. In a bullet heaven game, the screen is filled enemies that you are actively pursuing to earn xp and loot. In fact, a screen full of enemies is sometimes desired, because that means more efficient levelling.

Idk, take from that what you will. As any punk rock or metal fan will tell you, genre descriptions are an imperfect science at best lol.

Mmos and arpgs are intrinsically linked by their gameplay loops. Admittedly, this can vary to a greater or lesser degree depending on the specific games being compared, but Diablo 2 was, in many ways, proto-WoW.