Yes, how could I forget Deus Ex. Incredible story and again such a wonderful soundtrack, not surprising as it was also composed Alexander Brandon, Michiel van den Bos, and Dan Gardopee.
As for Half-Life, that game was also something else. But part of me resents that game a bit because it overshadowed Unreal. 😋
The original Unreal. For me it was a perfect combination of beautiful graphics (back in the days of course) and a soundtrack which complemented and elevated the atmosphere of that game. And the gunplay was nice, with a collection of somewhat unconventional weapons. A relic from a time where developers were not afraid to experiment a bit.
Time to install FreeSpace Open again. 😄 For those who have managed to miss that project: it’s a completely rebuilt engine for FS2. Together with the MediaVPs from The FreeSpace Upgrade Project it makes the game look pretty modern again. Take a look at https://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/Getting_started if you need instructions.
I believe even there is even a mod available which allows playing the first FreeSpace in FSO.
Yes, they can indeed be a problem for people with allergies. In my case dogs (and cats unfortunately) trigger respiratory issues. I had that issue at a workplace where dogs were allowed, not fun times. And unfortunately medication like antihistamines are not an option for everybody, personally I get extremely drowsy from them, even from the latest generation meds.
Shakespeare might have once been ahead of his time, but if he is still using SSL he has some catching up to do…
Yup, that went well for Van Moof owners in the Netherlands. Also hipster bikes, the latest model turned out to be of dubious quality and was built using all custom parts. They had fun times getting their ridiculously overpriced bikes repaired after the company went belly up.
I want to do my part!
Well, that takes ‘required reading’ to a whole new dystopian level. I’m sorry you had to go through that, that’s terrible and I just cannot see any other outcome than forging a severe resentment against reading. Hopefully you’ll one day find the motivation again, but I certainly wouldn’t blame you if you never want to read anything again after going through that.
I read so much in my youth, I could read cover to cover in one go thanks to the power of hyperfocus. Reading was fun and synergised greatly with my ADD-fueled daydreaming.
Unfortunately though high school came along and had to fuck up my intrinsic motivation by force feeding the boomer drivel that ‘everybody should have read in their lives’, and having to write book reports where you’d have to analyse those books to death. Assignments could vary from analysing all the different narrative arcs in the story to the relationship between each main character in the story and even more obscure stuff that I don’t even (want to) remember.
Anyway, this meant reading the ‘classic’ Dutch writers like Reve, Mullisch, Wolkers etc and then analysing a story you didn’t even care about. Fun fact: those writers seem to have an extremely limited repertoire: do you want to read about addiction, WWII, or sex? Ok ok, you had ‘het Gouden Ei’ by Krabbé, on which the movie ‘the Vanishing’ was based. Guess that was a breath of less stale air.
But in the end it sucked the enjoyment I felt when reading from my very soul and replaced it with the feeling that reading books is a chore. At times a slight shimmer of that old spark returns, but never for long. Depending on how often I feel like reading, getting through a book usually takes me months to years these days and rarely captures me like in the past. I’ll never forgive the sadistic bastards who came up with this part of our educational system.
Anyway, sorry for dumping this on you, turned out to be more of a rant than I initially intended. If anybody knows how to convince my brain to consider reading to be fun again, I welcome any insights.
Thanks, I know my way around the high seas should the need arise. But I can’t play every game out there anyway, so as long as I can get my gaming needs satisfied through non-shittified legal means I prefer that.
Well, another game I won’t be playing in that case. Fortunately my backlog is large enough to keep me busy for the next couple of years, so I feel no need to play every new title. But still: my wallet thanks Sony for making the choice for me.
Get the robber out, lock the door, call the cops.
For us it was ‘hit the silent alarm as soon as it is safe to do so’ instead of calling the cops ourselves. Hitting the alarm would trigger a whole chain of events, which included alerting the cops, region manager and an emotional support team and sending out a notification to our intranet that your office would not be reachable for the rest of that day and the day after. It would also immediately notify the correct police departments, which was another reason why we were instructed to not call the alarm number.
Our robber wrapped a plastic bag around his arm so probably didn’t have a firearm, but you simply do not take that risk. Although my colleague had to tell that nitwit that he walked into a branch office that didn’t handle money and had nothing on premises, which was clearly advertised at the door. It did have an ATM, but, as was also made very clear on the outside, we didn’t have access to that. Never seen somebody so confused, fortunately he 180’d out of there. We were lucky that it was probably just somebody who acted on an impulse, another office a few streets down had a real armed robbery, where one of my colleagues got a gun put to her head. Took her years to get her live back on track.
The studio behind it is called Slavic Magic.
Sorry, the bomb was running MacOS. Your command was not valid and you’ve doomed us all.
In my personal experience most games either work fine out of the box or after some tweaking, I’ve had a 49 inch 5120x1440 monitor for almost 4 years now. At times you’ll need to use Flawless Widescreen or Widescreen Fixer to get things working, or UI mods if the game supports that. But worst case you can always try a better supported widescreen ratio or 16:9 and live with some black bars, not ideal, but not the end of the world either.
The early Lenovo period W series were (imho) very good as well, still have my W500 series which is built like a tank. Survived years of college, years of lugging it around to customers and data centres and having somebody spill a full cup of coffee over it (yes, the drain holes do work!). It only required replacing of the monitor cable once, which was a pretty easy thing to do. Unfortunately the CCFL backlight has lost quite some luminance by now, but guess after 16 years that is to be expected. Can’t get myself to part from it though, so many memories attached to it.
Nah, I’m also fine with it. Fingerprint sensors hate me anyway, on every phone I owned I needed to rescan my prints every few weeks or so because they just won’t recognise me after a while. These days I just use passwords and pin codes.
Sony forced the studio behind Helldivers 2 to make a PSN account obligatory after the game launched. That’s a pretty crappy move because PSN is not available in roughly 120 177 countries, so if you live in one of those you can suddenly not play your game anymore. And Sony hasn’t got the best reputation when it comes to securing and selling their user’s data, so players are pretty upset and vocal about this.
But I would say that present day Sony’s dick moves do not really fit in a topic about PS2 nostalgia.
I’ve got a waterproof timer which I set when I need to shower within a set timeframe. Seeing a countdown helps keeping a sense of urgency and helps me with not getting lost in thought.When I’m not on a limit I’ll put it in clock mode so I can let my thoughts wander, while still having some sense of elapsed time.
Unreal only had a single Automag though, so either you are thinking of Unreal Tournament or you played on a modded server. Some servers did have dual automags (I’ve still got a mod and mutator lying around to get them in single player as well) and dual Automags (Enforcer in Unreal Tournament) did indeed dish out major punishment.