Baldurs Gate was really good, but I think people give it too much credit. Fallout 1$2 and Planescape Torment showed what really is a narrative-driven RPG game, they deserve more attention.
It's a good game and lord knows I played it enough to know it like the back of my hand, but people keep bringing it up like it is the Monolith from 2001 bringing us gamer-apes into the modern world.
It's still a first person shooter. A well-made one, but not revolutionary. Unreal came out six months before it and it also had story-driven gameplay and used environmental effects like lighting too.
The Fallout series isn't exactly obscure and Fallout 1 in particular is terrible. I got a game over 5 minutes into the game because I walked too far and the arbitrary timer ran out.
That's not an "arbitrary" timer, it's your character's core motivation. Why would somebody wander aimlessly about the desert searching for side quests when their friends and family are dying of thirst? You're supposed to be searching for the water chip, and if you pay attention to the clues you should find it in time. And it's possible to extend the time limit with no consequences in the patched version.
The secondary timer is harder to justify, which is why it was extended to 13 years in the patched version (more than enough time to do everything).
In all the many play-throughs I did on that game I don't think I ever hit the time limit. I always thought it was generous enough to enjoy the game fully.
If you really want to explore [sort of] unhindered Fallout 2 takes care of that, even letting you continue to play after you finish the game.
Yeah, I think it kind of is. I was 10 when BG2 came out, and that’s when I first played it too. It would have taken me far longer to understand what to do in all the quests, and how to be effective in combat, than any adult. I loved that I could just enjoy playing it slowly.
I remember loving the original Fallout, until it basically said “you didn’t find the water chip in time! Goodbye!”
Exactly the same story with Commandos 2 vs Commandos 3.
I've been going through Google Analytica courses a bit recently, just because I'm interested. It is frightening how many techniques Google uses to gather meta-data and how much you can make out of it all. Thanks for sharing this, I use ProtonMail myself but avoid google all the time, one more reason to do it.
It's nice how data analysis can lead to new conclusions, maybe baby-naming put through hard critical analysis, can reveal more, than just an actress starting her career that year. Now I just need to acquire myself a baby... :)
A great read, thanks for sharing. I've been a junior front-ender for two and a half months now, it's not much but I've been working extra hours daily and on weekends and already had to taste some stressful situations. A lot of us juniors are writing bad code and it helps a lot not to put the blame on one person but look for ways how to help each other and fix the problems. I didn't think teamwork is so important in coding.
So it's even worse than I expected. First I thought that, obviously, GDPR can increase government censorship, but this example shows that it can be exploited by simple scammers. It's been since forever that new political regulations come out raw and need to be fixed many times before becoming something solid. Makes one wonder if politics can for once release a product of high quality.
Leave it to John Oliver to explain contemporary reality. More often than not I do agree with him, he's a classical liberal, but bothers to gather some facts about what he's talking about. This facebook-Myanmar scandal really didn't get enough media attention, at least I didn't see a lot of it. But it's a good example to see how "neutral" technology can be used for wrong purposes. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg remained calm throughout all the hearing, Cambridge Analytica or not, looks like he's doing whatever he wants. Thanks for sharing this.
