Lurker > MrMallard

Maybe public education should get more funding, and shouldn't be zoned according to the wealth of the neighbourhood you live in. Or maybe with more funding, lower income neighbourhoods should get more funding than an upper income neighbourhood to put children from both environments on a more level playing field.

If you have a gifted kid in a neighbourhood that's in the bottom bracket of income, and they have shown they would be able to keep up with a school in the middle or upper bracket of income, they should be allowed to transfer to the upper bracket school. Zoning schools by income, and proceeding to spend the least amount of money on low income schools to deprive impoverished children of their own potential, is absolutely fucking criminal and it's one of the reasons I'm outwardly anti-American. It's fucked up and it should change.

Not that Australia is much better, with the lion's share of public education money going to private schools - which is also corrupt and wrong as far as I'm concerned. But there's something truly fucking disgusting about the way America does it. Either way, privatization is a shitty solution because it's a breeding place for further inequality and abject greed - just like for-profit prisons and privatised infrastructure that doesn't get fixed because companies don't want to foot the cost.

Have you guys played Smash TV? It was an arcade game, it has ports on the PS1 and PS2 but nowhere else. Had it on a PS1 disc called Arcade Party Pak.

God I miss that shit.

I disagree with that video title, I think GTAV is amazing and while it's beloved today, GTAIV didn't exactly launch with the most goodwill in the world y'know. Saying that, if you've been following video game news over the past decade, then yeah - it's easy to see how the gaming space is getting worse.

Whether you watch YongYea's news breakdown videos, or listen to podcasts like the old TOVG podcast with Super Bunnyhop and MattVisual, or pay attention to public reception around games that limit their availability to players for no good reason (Diablo 3, SimCity 2013, Asura's Wrath with its DLC final chapter) - you can see how games are getting more and more anti-consumer. First it was microtransactions, then it was unnecessary online-only requirements, then it was XP boosters, then it was live service gaming, now it's the nebulous and disingenuous shoehorning of NFTs and blockchain technology into video games.

Hell, even game development is becoming more hostile for people who work in that industry. Look at how studios like Visceral Games were dissolved. Look at any talented dev in the past 12 years who've joined the multi-billion dollar publishing side of gaming, folded into internal studios that make resources for "tentpole" releases like Call of Duty. Shit, not even the Kickstarter boom was great for most devs - Ken Levine has proven to be a dickhead to work with, Playtonic is barely treading water, Keiji Inafune was basically outed as a fraud, and the only people who seemed to have escaped either of those scenarios with some degree of autonomy and respect are Hideo Kojima and Koji Igarashi. Even Platinum has struggled due to their nature as an external studio that works for other companies, as well as stuff like Scalebound collapsing and The Wonderful 101 underperforming on all accounts, even on Switch.

The thing about the centralisation of game development under a single conglomerate, i.e. Microsoft buying Bethesda and Activision-Blizzard, is that all of those monetization trends initially began in the seventh generation of consoles. And what's important to note is that that's the generation where companies like EA, Activision and Ubisoft really began to ramp up that centralisation model - snapping up smaller studios to fold into a far larger game producing machine. All this stuff with Microsoft and Sony buying up other companies? It's a decades long story of a small fish getting eaten by a bigger fish being eaten by the biggest fish, before that fish is devoured whole by a megalodon.

So yeah, with game development turning into an industry that makes more money than the movie industry, we saw games go from "how do we develop immersive and fun gameplay in this new dimension of interactive entertainment" to "how do we appeal to as many people as possible and make the most money". That used to be accomplished with a distinctive artstyle and imaginative features. From the seventh generation on, we saw a focus on realism, particle effects and celebrity tie-ins, and the gameplay became tedious and unpleasant so you would feel incentivised to spend money for the game to skip over the tedious bullshit they programmed in. We traded in visual design and fun gameplay for Kevin Spacey in Call of Duty, and that's a result of game development becoming centralised under a handful of corporate conglomerates using people like fleshlights to shit out as many compromised corporate products as possible.

I think that's why "indie games" became such an essential part of the gaming ecosystem when they did. Independent development represents a more pure attempt at game creation, even if it tends to get clogged up with incompetent asset flips and derivative works. For every Vroom in the Night Sky or Windscapes, you have a Night in the Woods or A Hat in Time.

I dunno. Again, I disagree with the premise of the linked video because people gave GTA4 a mountain of shit when it came out, and to this day I still think GTA5 - while compromised, especially Online - is a masterpiece and one of the pinnacles of its generation. But there certainly is a lot to say about the state of the gaming industry today, and how if you pay attention for long enough, you can see and feel the soul of video games being sucked out through its own ass.

In a heartbeat. Every time you make a thread about this collection in regards to an upcoming game showcase or award show, I'm always in there hoping for this collection to finally drop.

5. Mel Gibson is Australian.

I've been making progress on my Minecraft flatworld project. I started it last May after some extremely shitty circumstances, and since then I go back to it and work on it when I need to take my mind off things.

I could post some older screenshots to add context - this was a big project, but this is only a snippet of the work I've done over the past year. I cut a swath of stairs into this sheer cliff face I had created, and now I'm lopping off about an eighth of the staircase and flattening all of the land behind it - which is a lot.

Let me show you what I mean. This is the most recent project I've been doing - partitioning off the section of stairs I want to wipe out, and subsequently partitioning the end of that block off to break down. I want to break this down into bite-sized pieces, with the goal of demolishing this entire partition by the end of the year.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/5/9/AAbh80AAC45v.jpg
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/6/0/AAbh80AAC45w.jpg https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/6/1/AAbh80AAC45x.jpg https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/6/2/AAbh80AAC45y.jpg

On its own, you can tell that progress has been made, but you don't really get the full scope of the work that went into it. But when you see it from an aerial view:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/6/3/AAbh80AAC45z.jpg

That section took me about a month of on-and-off play. And as you can see, there's still a lot more of this partition to go.

The next goal is to lop off the back of the partition to square it up, and from there I'm gonna break what's left down two layers at a time until this chunk of the map is completely flat.

My dad saw him live in like December 2019. He was telling me about it at my sister's wedding the following February, a friend of his gave him a little vial of acid and told him to take it before the show. He recorded some of it, there was a guy in this animatronic Frankenstein suit for the song Young Frankenstein or whatever - I don't follow Alice Cooper at all, but it was pretty fun listening to my dad talk about tripping balls at an Alice Cooper concert.

Apparently it was his first Alice Cooper concert. That, or his first time tripping on acid. Maybe both, I don't remember.

Cracker isn't a racial slur on the same level as ones leveled at minorities.

The non-gendered version of fanboy and fangirl is fanatic. That's what "fan" is a shortened version of.

Abe and Bart Simpson in the Curse of the Flying Hellfish episode

I still don't know what Vegy did, but I know he has a history of creep shit so I'm assuming it was that

Questionmarktarius posted...

12-hour coma. Still fucking tired.
I think the sudden cold snap kicked me into "hibernation" mode.

I feel that. It's been cooling down lately, I was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and shorts in the city yesterday and the cold got to me. Think I caught a chill.

Lebronwon posted...

Greenblatt appeared on The View on Tuesday after Goldberg came under fire for saying that the Holocaust wasnt about race during the shows Monday broadcast. The ADL head told Goldberg and her co-hosts on Tuesday that the Holocaust was a singular catastrophe that was motivated by a racialized anti-Semitism. Greenblatt also tweeted that Goldberg was a long-time ally of the Jewish community and that her apology is very much welcome.

If this guy has a good track record for this sort of take, and both the wider Jewish community and people of good standing within said community can talk it out and accept her apology, then I think AOC's comments here are perfectly appropriate.

With that being said, I don't have a read on this Greenblatt guy. I do recognise the Anti-Defamation League, who have a positive reputation as far as I know, but I fully admit I could be wrong on this.

I'm coming at this from the first post - have there been any statements in regards to the reputation of Johnathan Greenblatt that calls his acceptance of Whoopi Goldberg's apology into question? Is there still a significant furore in the Jewish community beyond this key figure of the ADL offering his thoughts on Whoopi Goldberg's apology?

Because I think ultimately, it does come down to the community affected to come to some kind of concensus on the issue or come to enough of an impasse to say "it's complicated and no singular right answer should probably be set in stone". There's allyship, and there's speaking over the community with which you claim allyship with.

Coming at this from the first post, that's.my opinion. I'm probably gonna read back from this post beyond to get more of a read on the situation.

Absolutely. That's one reason I took such umbrage with the Uyghur internment camps in China - I know my voice alone does nothing, but in discussing what's happening with them, I can at least try and keep that story alive in the hopes that something good will come of it. I can use my freedom of speech to keep asserting that the treatment Uyghurs face in China is wrong, and hope one day that the world will collectively agree that yeah, the unlawful detainment of the Uyghur people is wrong, and China should stop doing it (alongside pro-democracy academics or anyone else who've been called back to China to be arrested under false pretenses, frankly).

I come from a place of privilege, and that has some degree of power - even if my voice alone as a citizen working a low ranking job in the private sector has very little effect on the world in a way that actually matters. But with what little influence I might have, I can try to highlight when something shitty is happening in the vain hope that the world will stop being buttfuck backwards for just enough time to stop someone else from suffering. It probably won't mean a fucking thing in the long run, but I have to try.

Jak
Crash Bandicoot
idk, fuckin Bubsy the Bobcat

I started buying Inuyasha tankobons last May, and this visit to Canberra I picked up Volume 1 to go with the second volume I bought back then. I'm interested in reading through the entire manga.

But if I decide to commit to this, it will cost me $300 for all 18 volumes.

This was a poor decision on my part.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/2/8/AAbh80AAC4rM.jpg
Because these cropped photos are apparently like 3MB even after being cropped. I messed up the focus on the last panel too, he's eating the trotters that belonged to the lamb that Wal killed.

Here's some pictures I took from the book itself:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/2/6/AAbh80AAC4rK.jpg
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/2/7/AAbh80AAC4rL.jpg
There's also one that depicts a sheep giving birth, but I think I'll get modded for that one. After today, I think I'd better keep a low profile.

Footrot Flats was a NZ newspaper comic that ran from 1974 to 1994. Its creator, Murray Ball, died in 2017.

It had a movie and a theme park at the height of its popularity in the 80's. The theme song of the movie was No. 1 on the NZ charts for 8 weeks, and on the Australian charts for 4:

https://youtu.be/OWNLVogchpU

Here are some comic strips:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/8/7/AAbh80AAC4qj.jpg
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/8/8/AAbh80AAC4qk.jpg
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/8/9/AAbh80AAC4ql.jpg

I bought a coffee table book featuring comics and art from the comic today, and I felt like talking about it and sharing it with people. I grew up with these comics, even though it ended a year before I was born - my pop had a softcover compilation of the comics edited for landscape viewing, and from there I got a lot of the landscape-oriented collections, of which there are 27.

I thought it'd be interesting to post about a media property that was huge in this area of the world, but which I believe is virtually unknown in America. It's good shit.

I kinda want GameFAQs to be led by a team of eleven individuals, similar to the makeup of the Supreme Court

Anyway, now that the other guy is taken care of, lmao vegy

I just appreciate that Allen responded. That's wild.

He's probably not coming back to this thread, but I do want to give thanks for responding and listening to what we had to say.

...which imo should have been a ban, while Vegy did get banned for whatever he did?

Don't get me wrong, I think Vegy's gimmick is annoying and he's a pretty annoying user. He's posted some real creep shit. If he finally posted the last straw, that's fine.

But when another user calls a religious minority "it", calls them a disgrace to his species and says that several people of that religious minority he's met deserved multiple levels of genocide against them, and merely gets purged? I don't think the punishment is level.

You could argue that Vegy has been moderated more and that his ban is the logical conclusion of his total record of moderations, but despite his creep shit, I haven't seen him posting anything to the degree of inviting genocide against Jewish people. Kyoryu's post was targeted bigotry, and I don't think it's unfair to argue that the post was made to be as inflammatory as possible to get the biggest possible reaction - and yeah, I guess me making this topic plays into his trolling.

You can't tell me that his history of posting hasn't been inflammatory up to this point. Dude is a troll, and I get that some trolls slip through the cracks because shitposting and getting into arguments are engrained into CE's nature, but if we're arguing the context of this user's other posts, he probably shouldn't get a pass for those either.

I shit-talk users in their suspension threads, sure. I laugh when someone fucks up. I'm not above it all, and I'm not above watching someone get upset and melt down after being trolled. Still, I think KyoryuCyan's post crossed a line, and if nothing else I'd like to hear from the horse's mouth about why this particular action was taken. I think he should have been banned, but I'm open-minded enough to accept some sort of explanation that led to this result.

Seriously, anything. I'll take breadcrumbs at this point. I just want to understand what the thought process was.

@SBAllen

Holy shit, Vegy is dead!

KyoryuCyan only got a purg for posting explicit antisemitism and wishing genocide on other users, but Vegy is banned. Christ.

Glob posted...

Tom Clark

Another solid pick tbh.

Also,

Jagr_68 posted...

Love that Error is leading in a poll that graphically looks like a middle finger to everyone.

Error is my first choice, Shotgunnova is a close second.

He said he was leaving GameFAQs, but the OP said he was just joking

I saw the Fantano video about the news. Isaac Wood has apparently been going through some personal issues that makes it really tough to perform, and he and the band are still on good terms. The vibe I get from it is like Adam Duritz from Counting Crows or the first drummer from the Darkness - they'd like to keep playing music, but something is wrong and they have to put their health first, to the understanding of the band.

Wildly different examples, because Counting Crows just took a long hiatus while Adam dealt with his dissociative disorder and the Darkness drummer had physical health problems in his wrists that meant he physically couldn't play. But this feels similar in the sense that there's no ill will between the affected member and the band, just an irreconcilable issue that makes performing impossible for the individual.

Arezu deez nuts between your cheeks

Sexypwnstar posted...

How do I get into this series?

Sexypwnstar posted...

How do I get into this series?

Honestly - and this is obviously a little biased - but Ayesha is probably the best place to start.

Totori is another fan favorite, and it's more in line with the classic series apparently, but everything from the slow, VN-style cutscenes to the failable crafting system (you can end up making junk instead of what you want) holds it behind somewhat. Atelier Ayesha has in-engine cutscenes, you can't fail the crafting system (though you still need to understand the crafting system to truly master it, which you will need for some storyline bosses), and the whole game is more streamlined and slightly more lenient towards new players.

It's like going from a PS1 RPG to a PS2 RPG. Not to diminish Totori, I wanna play the Arland trilogy next, but Ayesha is probably the best starting point for a new player. If I had played Totori first, I probably wouldn't have gotten into Atelier - but since I played Ayesha first, I have fond memories and I'm planning to play more of the series from here.

All of the games have their charm, but I think starting with a more lenient game and backtracking into the more challenging ones might be a good way to go. That's just me though.

It really does lmao. Like I said, it's a great reward for getting to the end of the game.

Guidance is already the best song in the game, it's basically the story's motif. Whenever something significant happens, you hear that rainstick start and the low, moody flutes, and it fucks so hard. And then MARIA turns it into a bombastic choral orchestrated piece with a fucking ripping guitar solo? I haven't experienced a final boss song this good since this game.

Ah, okay. I read the character sheets on tv tropes and it seems like the most recurring characters are Wilbell, Nio and Keith. And Ayesha only shows up in the second game's remake, not even the base game.

The one thing I'm somewhat looking forward to is learning the truth about Linca.

MarthGoomba posted...

Ayesha was the best Dusk game

How are the other two games? Like is there anything that makes them outright bad to play rather than just worse?

I'll give this topic one bump and let it die

Fuck yeah, gender euphoria is the BEST

This isn't a blogfaqs talking about like personal issues, though I will say generally that I've been pretty up and down lately. My original plan was to buy the Dusk trilogy on Switch, but the whole collection is $135, or $60 per game - and I already had Atelier Ayesha on PS3.

The conceit of Atelier is fairly simple. You play as a girl who's tasked with fulfilling an objective within a set time limit - usually a couple of in-game years. Sometimes that's something like making the best shop in the world, sometimes it's solving the mystery of your family member's disappearance. Your protagonist is an alchemist of varying levels of skill or determination, and your goal is basically to teach the main character alchemy, level them up for combat encounters and complete the game's story within the assigned time limit.

In Atelier Ayesha, you play as Ayesha Altugle, a young apothecary whose sister Nio disappeared five years ago. Everyone assumed she was spirited away or otherwise died while out gathering medicinal herbs for the Altugle workshop.

One day some glowing flowers appear at her grave, and a projection of Nio appears. This is noticed by a passing alchemist who'd been investigating the local area for unstated reasons, and he gives Ayesha a push towards using alchemy to find her supposedly dead sister.

Look, the thing about Atelier games is that they're very cutesy. You're always playing as a very femme girl, they're often ditzy and scatterbrained, and most of the story is very lighthearted. That's not to say there are no stakes or that there's no gravitas to the situation - it's just that between a very personal, emotional story, you're gonna get a lot of fluff. But that's what makes Atelier Ayesha such a good comfort game.

The setting of the Atelier Dusk trilogy - of which Ayesha is the first - is within a dying world that struggles to replenish itself after a great calamity centuries ago. Plants are withering up, the ground is eroding and water sources are diminishing. Alongside your standard fantasy fare - wolves, fucked up weird bears, little elemental spirits - you have warped, gooey, slightly mechanical enemies named Slags. As far as you can tell, the world is going to continue to diminish until no-one is left.

So the tone of the game is underscored by a degree of melancholy. Its music gets really earthy and sad, and the seemingly cheerful world around you is constantly undercut by the alchemist who sets Ayesha out on her journey, teaching her about how the world was brought to the brink of ruin.

That doesn't stop the game from having a bunch of cheesecake scenes in it, most of which feel pretty inappropriate and don't add a whole lot to the experience. I'd characterise Atelier Ayesha as "fluff with texture" - you're getting a silly anime girl game, but if you get invested in the personal stakes of the game and in the gameplay systems, you're going to have a pretty robust experience. It helps that the game is very laidback and easy to enjoy despite the in-game time limit, and it has a laundry list of endings for completionists who get invested in the characters.

Also, the final boss music FUCKS HARD. I made a post about it a while back:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/9/4/AAbh80AAC4eK.jpg
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/9/5/AAbh80AAC4eL.jpg
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/9/6/AAbh80AAC4eM.jpg
Seriously, listen to the main motif of the storyline:

https://youtu.be/FcGCqjU1WwQ

It's earthy, it's melancholy, it sells the sad state of the world. I fucking love the way they use the rainstick in this song, it's always a treat to listen to. Try and get at least 30 seconds into the song so you get a feel for how the song goes.

This is the final boss theme:

https://youtu.be/EVcc16o0SaY

They took the best song in the game and did THAT with it. It is an absolute fucking treat for the senses, and it's a fantastic reward for being able to get to the final boss before you run out of time.

The worst part about games like these are when there are unnecessary cheesecake scenes, like "oh hey, this female character grabbed another female character's boobs and keeps saying she'll take the other character as her wife - for comedic effect, of course! This character is naked, and three people walked in on them! How embarrassing!" - like that shit is cringe. I dig the lighthearted anime vibe, but when you have characters comparing tit sizes out of nowhere it's really disappointing. It's inconsequential, and there's not much of it, but I don't like it. That's one downside to playing Atelier games.

But otherwise, Atelier Ayesha is a great mix of turn-based RPG gameplay, item crafting (synthesis takes up a lot of the game, but the system feels really well integrated into the game on account of the story's focus on alchemy rather than as a more impersonal form of busywork jam-packed into a game for the sake of having a crafting system), lighthearted anime hijinks and meaningful plot moments. It's not perfect, Atelier games I've played all seem to feel a bit flimsy, but when you're down and out Atelier Ayesha will probably put a smile on your face. It feels good to play, the tone of the primary storyline is pretty solid, and it's just a really pleasant time. The replayability helps too.

Sometimes you've gotta have a comfort game, or a guilty pleasure. Atelier Ayesha is mine.

Do people call you "foxy lady" now?

If you're burnt out, play something more lightweight. If you're interested in Tetris Effect, try that - the multiplayer is insane, and it's a total feast for the senses.

Don't push yourself to play Mass Effect 3, because it will feel worse than it is. It's like, you know when you're tired and burnt out and you can see the seams in any piece of media because you don't give a shit about it any more? I think ME3 will be one of those games where you see the seams.

I love the games, and Mass Effect 3 - without spoiling anything - culminates a lot of cool shit. But I think you should go in with fresh eyes and take the game at face value rather than risking seeing the seams.

I mean this is basically the way I live my life anyway

One last strum on the poop guitar

If a Neo-Nazi or Klan member was burning to death, I wouldn't cross the street to spit on them.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

- the Romans after Jesus returned from the dead

But seriously, total fuck-up on Sballen's part. Just looked up the post, and there really is no defending what he said. Dude dehumanized an entire persecuted religious minority by referring to them as "it" and called them an insult to his species, not to mention what he had to say about genocide against them - you can't get more bold-faced than that.

The best thing you could say about KyoryoCyan is that he didn't use any slurs, but considering what he did say, that shouldn't be a positive caveat that keeps him out of the fire. Legitimately, how did a statement like that get an extended time-out and a guarantee that he'll get to post here again? Nothing about it was ambiguous or accidental, it was targeted bigotry.

@SBAllen plz explain

Isn't this why Patreon took off so hard? Content creators realised that people were blocking the ads on their videos and hampering their income - a fair few of them totally understanding the situation, themselves being fed up with the increasing monetization of YouTube - and began using a third party service where they offered a look behind the curtain in exchange for a consistent revenue stream from interested subscribers.

LinusTechTips could start a Patreon and advertise it at the end of his videos. Unless he already has one, which would be pretty :/ of him

Sackgurl posted...

also the idea that the height of the pandemic was march 3 2020 is a real silly lie from a nazi piece of shit

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries#Election_day_postponements_and_cancellations

March 2020 is when it made fucking landfall in Australia, and we just hit our peak of daily infections this past month.

No, gamergate was the point thay the gaming space became as radicalised as it is today. That's not to say that there weren't controversies regarding censorship back then, look at Jack Thompson and the whole Hot Coffee situation, but gamergate was when you had your kekistan channer fuckwits infecting political discourse over a woman who was claimed by a disgruntled ex to have had sex for a positive review of her free Twine game.

Talk about playing a stanky riff

Probably Sally Acorn. You can see it happening with Dan Avidan in realtime

Not really, 12 of the main devs on Far Cry 6 left Ubisoft recently. A bunch of significant Assassin's Creed talent have left the studio, including lead developers on Origins and Valhalla and some employees who've been working there since Assassin's Creed 2. A combination of toxic workplace practices - their story broke before Activision-Blizzard, and barely anything has been done - and baffling executive decisions like the Quartz NFT scheme being foisted into Ghost Recon Breakpoint - a game that's already had to work to rehabilitate its reputation for the past few years - have eroded trust in Ubisoft from its key devs, and people are getting offboard like rats off a sinking ship because they think they can do better than whatever the fuck Ubisoft is doing.

Don't get caught in the NEET pipeline people