site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2188 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 27, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Video game thread

What are you playing this week?

I'm 14 hours into MENACE. It's still fun, though it's even more apparent how unfinished the game is. I won't say I regret that they released it so early into early access, because I've enjoyed it a lot. It's a very solid start and I look forward to the final release.

I bring two vehicles to every mission. One of my three pilots, Rewa, has by far the least professional and most embarrassing voice performance, so she's the backup for whenever one of the other pilots gets the Weary status. One of my vehicles uses the heavy machine gun, and the other uses the autolaser, in order to deal with enemy vehicles/walkers. I prefer fighting the pirates. Some of the 'rogue army' and alien operations have been somewhat difficult due to all their armor, even tho I'm only on Normal difficulty.

YouTube's recommendation algorithm just informed me of the existence of The End Is Nigh, a pseudo-sequel to the infamously difficult platforming game Super Meat Boy. I'm not too interested in the game itself (currently on sale for four dollars). But the game's soundtrack is composed entirely of remixes of classical music—and it's currently on sale for just one dollar!

Other video-game soundtracks that I have purchased:

Note that all these soundtracks are DRM-free. (I've seen people complain that at least one soundtrack sold on Steam actually does have DRM, in that it's playable only through an executable file. I don't remember which game it was for.)

Some older Paradox Development Studio games also have soundtracks of classical music (licensed from Naxos), which you can copy out of the installed files.

I've been putting way too many goddamn hours into Vintage Story, as of late.

...but soon, winter will break. My canals have been built. I shall sail from my castle on the lake into the sea to go on an adventure to a lost ruin to fight against eldritch horrors. And then sail back, triumphant, with my salvaged gains of a time lost to the apocalypse.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1670780/Out_of_Action/

Out of Action, an early access PvP FPS. It's kinda old-school with its straightforward server browser, complete absence of matchmaking, simple game modes, and its expectation that the players will just have to learn how to play the hard way. But it also has a fairly broad range of mechanics and the deepest loadout customization system I've ever seen in this genre. I haven't really dug deep into this kind of game since...Titanfall 2? Maybe Hunt: Showdown? Titanfall is the better comparison I guess, with both it and OoA being movement shooters. In any event, I was never good at PvP. At my best, I was solidly mediocre. Now I'm far past my prime. Slow to react, no aim, low APM, no map sense, no interest in the meta, I don't ADADADAADAD to dodge and I can't land a headshot even if the other guy stands still. And yet, I'm having fun. There are so many options, and it's all very well-balanced, so the game is 50% play and 50% buildcrafting for me.

By default, you have a "shell", which is effectively your base character type out of five options - gets-stronger-when-damaged, aggressive regenerator, can fly, really tanky, and goes-insivible. You get a medkit by default. And a wallhack. And a slow-motion ability. And a pair of fists. Then comes optional equipment, starting with the usual selection of guns (all of which have a point-blank TTK ranging from 0.5 to 1 second, depending on the target). Then a slew of modifications for the guns, each of which comes with distinct drawbacks. Then a dozen different throwables and consumables, which regenerate passively. Then 2 to 4 "augments", which modify your characters' abilities in a very wide array of ways, most of them with drawbacks. Then a melee weapon to replace your fists with, if you so choose. Also, each piece of equipment weighs something, so the more you carry the slower you move the more you get shot. And that's just your loadout. On top of that, you also have all the movement options ever devised by video game designers - jump, double-jump, vault, roll, dive, slide, wallrun, wall-jump, somersault, teleport, tele-frag, straight-up fly, crouch-walk, lie down and take a nap...everything except for running. You can't press shift to run faster in this game. Oh, and bumping into people at high speed deals damage. And might knock them over. Or disarm them. And obviously melee weapons have at least four different attack modes, plus a parry. And there's a progression system that lets you put points into various passive bonuses at first, and later on into specializations. And so on, and so on. So much to tinker with.

I don't play a ton, but I find myself doing about one game per day (so around 15 minutes) just to test my latest ideas.

As for MENACE - I also finished the EA content. And I disagree in the strongest terms. Rewa is the only character I enjoyed hearing. That said, yeah, I also went with a heavily mechanized strategy; often bringing up to three vehicles so long as the enemy didn't have too many ATGMs. Vehicles are just naturally tanky (duh) and their turrets pack a punch, and infantry never lacks for cover when they can huddle behind an IFV.

I won't tolerate Rewa slander. Who doesn't love a strong independent woman with untreated PTSD attempting to self-medicate by running over stray dogs?

Keep your eyes peeled for vehicle autocannons. Once you've got two and a medium mech to mount them on, oh boy...

It's a twelve year old's version of bloodthirst. Maximum intensity, no matter what. One note. Like cRaZy Trevor in GTA V but worse, and with an annoying accent.

A sand colored tank showed up briefly in the blackmarket but I didn't have enough credits at the time. It cost over 1700. Now I've got enough stuff to put up around 2500, but nothing particularly interesting is available. There was a minigun with 30 rate of fire available briefly too, but I don't think that's what you are advising to buy. I'll stay patient and save up my money.

I am on a holy quest given by the Lady of the Lake to rid not Africa of the undead menace (really to get rid of the Joan de Arc character who didn't have the good sense to be burned at the stake be the foreign for and was destabilizing the peasants) in total war Warhammer 3.

We're embroiled in a war with the strongest but least popular Tomb King but on the last turn but we finally broken their back and are on to mopping up their settlements and the last army that decided to bolt into the sea.

The Joan of Arc stand in is absurdly strong she's basically immune to melee combat except for with the strongest combatants. Next will probably be a few more easy tomb, and onto a fight with a true enemy whose land rejects us and who will have enormous armies and very very strong combatants due to their worship of the violence god in universe (Khorne).

It should be a good fight, but usually marks a transition as the land isn't good for her faction and she doesn't have any natural directions to expand.

That's Battle Brothers in Space, right? I've heard complaints that it's always an optimization problem/puzzle, rather than a progression RPG where your characters get stronger. Yeah, they get stronger, but that just bumps against the handicap limit, so your team stays the same strength.

I'm intrigued, but I like getting more powerful, and being rewarded for growing, rather than being limited.

Hm well the graphics alone makes it pretty different from battle brothers. You're right that it's not an rpg. More of a turn based tactics game that's pretty puzzly sometimes. But I don't agree that your most used characters don't get stronger. There's a 'supply limit' (for you and the ai) in each mission. But the semi random nature of the skill trees offered and your choices in those + semi random loot and how to use it, makes it so that you're definitely stronger in some ways if you play your cards right and progress from the start.

It was a couple weeks ago but I tried out Pathologic 3 and I am... not a fan. The Pathologic series is known for being brutal and unforgiving, trying to cure a plague and slowly losing as you have to make hard decisions with limited resources. Very much not my thing. But someone left a review of Pathologic 3 that was like "it's a time loop! The developers saw all the people saving and loading and saving and loading and trying to optimize their runs on the previous games, and decided to bake that into the mechanics."

And that sounded like fun to me. I really like time loop stories where the character is up against overwhelming odds but manages to win anyway by exploiting the ability to try over and over again and learn and cheat using future knowledge. Even if the game is super hard, I can tinker and optimize stuff and fix any of my mistakes by rewinding.

What the review failed to mention is that even though the plot revolves around a time loop, the mechanics are still based around finite resources and brutal hard mechanics. Every consumable you use to restore your statuses permanently reduces the effectiveness of future uses of that type of consumable. Every time you rewind it consumes a non-renewable resource. It's not a true time loop, because even if the plot allows you to redo decisions and change the consequences of your choices, your vital resources don't respawn and you can only do it a finite number of times. Every time you mess up in an encounter and die it forcibly rewinds to the last time you saved, which uses up the time resource. And if you do it too many times and run out of the resource the game deletes your save and you have to start the entire game over again. This is more harsh than a normal game that lets you save and load at will, not less.

This didn't even happen to me. As soon as I discovered that the time rewinding used up resources I googled to see if it was renewable, saw that it was not, and stopped playing. I do not play games that threaten me with permadeath. Not unless it's a roguelite where each character only exists for like an hour (and even then I usually only play if there's meta-progression that persists). If there's a realistic chance of me having to reset or backtrack more than 5 hours of gameplay and have to do it all over again, I'm just not going to play in the first place. It's bad game design, it's not fun. The Pathologic people are trying to be hardcore and brutal and catering to a masochistic audience that likes that sort of thing. You're allowed to have a niche. And I knew that about the first two games which is why I never played them. I'm just kind of annoyed that this one was presented differently and then wasn't.

The Pathologic series always struck me as games it's far more enjoyable to watch others suffer play through instead of trying them myself. Mandalore Gaming has excellent reviews for the first 2, but I'll be damned if I'm going to play them.

Playing through Lies of P for my second time. Partially because I got the itch after watching some of Joseph Anderson's stream of it, and partially because I accidentally selected the dialogue option to skip the final boss on my first playthrough.

It's really surprising to me how much more I've enjoyed it this time through. I think a large part of it is just how much easier it's been for me this time around, meaning I've been able to enjoy the combat mechanics and boss fights rather than finding the whole process mostly stressful the first time through. This has other benefits: taking the time to beat the tougher non-boss enemies rather than running past them means I've picked up more upgrade materials, in turn making my character stronger and the boss fights less punishing. The whole time period and setting has also really grown on me, probably because having played Soulsborne games for ~13 years now I'm just tired of the whole medieval fantasy aesthetic. Simon Manus is still an infuriating fight though

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats