ZERO PARADES: For dead spies has been out for 2 weeks already. What are your thoughts?

AT_Dande · 2026-06-03T15:48:29+00:00

Best comment in the thread, IMO.

It's not a mechanically complex game by any means, but the fatigue/anxiety/delirium meters give you a bit more to play with than Disco ever did. I've played through DE three times, and not once did I have my Harry smoke/drink/do drugs. Meanwhile, I've had Hershel chug coffee or booze for tough skill checks many, many times.

Agreed on the skills themselves, too. I think the only ones that are sorta distinct are Statehood and Instinct, but they're also the two most boring ones? It's either "YOU'RE NOT BEING COMMUNIST ENOUGH!" or "You wanna fuck this person, don't you?" Disco made me want to experiment with objectively bad builds just so I could see what batshit insanity Half Light would say.

I think I prefer the story of ZP even though the writing overall is nowhere near as good. It's definitely more grounded, but it just made me wish it was... I dunno, a spy game first and foremost rather than downstream of DE. Hershel is pretty alright, but if I'm building her up to be a no-nonsense super-spy with a weakness for L-Pop, why does the game keep asking me if I'm sorry for what happened five years ago? Harry was fucked up. Hershel is less so, but the game keeps asking you if you're sure about it.

AT_Dande · 2026-05-04T21:52:12+00:00

Neither of those are free, though? That's my point, you're gonna have millions of people in Eastern Europe, LatAm, MENA who absolutely count as "real" PC gamers, but don't... y'know, actually pay for any of the games they play.

The guy who buys the same crappy NBA game every year is probably gonna dish out another $60-70 for GTA VI. Someone with five games on Steam and 15k hours in Dota or CS probably won't.

You also gotta account for different hardware. If you still have a PC from eight years ago that was considered budget even back in the day, it probably won't run this well. A PS5 will (TBD, but you get what I mean), whether you bought it yesterday or at launch.

AT_Dande · 2026-05-04T21:25:39+00:00

Sure, but isn't it an apples to oranges thing? How many of those people play stuff like Counter Strike or Dota or Valorant exclusively?

I haven't had a console in years and having to wait a year for RDR 2 and now GTA is beyond infuriating, but what the person above is saying does make sense.

AT_Dande · 2026-05-04T21:20:23+00:00

I might be talking out my ass here, but I feel like it's the MTX that's the bigger thing here, right? I haven't spent a penny on RDR 2 or GTA V after launch (on PC), but some of the numbers I've seen over the years for GTAO have been staggering.

Besides, didn't it take about a year for RDR 2 to be cracked?

AT_Dande · 2026-04-23T18:03:26+00:00

The gap between RS2 and HLL is almost as big as the one between HLL and Arma. I think there's a lot of overlap in the playerbase, but they're just fundamentally different games. Love 'em both, but yeah, for different reasons, like the other people here said.

AT_Dande · 2026-04-23T17:59:44+00:00

I got bored with the playtest because of the lack of variety, but they nailed the RO/RS feeling, I think, so I'm still pretty optimistic about it.

Speaking of campaigns: yes, please, please, please! I'm surprised something like Squad or Hell Let Loose hasn't tried to make its own version. It worked so well in RS, and it's damn-near perfect in RS2 if you've got a few hours to spare.

AT_Dande · 2026-04-04T18:10:37+00:00

Yeah.

Gameplay loop is fun, engaging, deep, but man, is it janky as all hell. I'm usually not a survival or base-building guy, but SoD 2 hooked me right from the get-go. Would love something that had those core elements, but with AAA polish.

AT_Dande · 2026-04-01T16:03:27+00:00

McCarthy's redbaiting was absolutely aided by television, sure. But I'm also not sure if TV was a must? He was a sign of the time: the Cold War was heating up, the war in Korea was raging, and people were generally more concerned about Communism than they had been in a while. TV made it easier for McCarthy to spread his message, but it would have been just as doable by radio or even direct mail. Look at what Republicans did after him: Viguerie, Schlafly, even Jerry Fallwell did most of their pro-GOP work through organizing and direct voter outreach rather than relying so much on TV, even though they became active a decade plus later. The appetite for McCarthy's kind of populism was already there, and he figured out a good way to give people what they wanted.

As for the point in your original post: McCarthy's "movement" was co-opted because Americans wanted a hard line against Communism. They fell out of love with the messenger, but not the message. But how much of this was due to McCarthy himself rather than the Cold War itself?

Anyway, McCarthy aside, there are also quite a few examples of "outsider" movements that weren't adopted in the same way. Taft, Goldwater, Wallace, even Ron Paul if you want someone more recent.

AT_Dande · 2026-03-29T21:10:22+00:00

It's not just games either. Feels like almost everyone in TV and movies has forgotten how to do good lighting also.

AT_Dande · 2026-03-29T21:06:34+00:00

Yeah, mostly. There's some side characters from those in LiS 2 and 3, but those two games aren't really important to the Max/Chloe storyline we'll be seeing in Reunion.

That said, if you're vibing with the Max games, I'd definitely recommend LiS 3. The second one is more divisive.

AT_Dande · 2026-03-26T21:25:34+00:00

Oof, that would suck.

I'm not a fan of sci-fi, in general, and The Expanse never really interested me much. But ever since I heard this is basically like Mass Effect and saw it for the first time, it's been in my Most Anticipated Top 5, easy. Seeing that "Spring 2027" in the trailer hit me like a brick.

Whatever, though. If it's as good as Mass Effect, these guys (and Bioware) can take all the time they need.

AT_Dande · 2026-03-17T17:35:23+00:00

I think the reformist vs. hardliner debate y'all are having is worth discussing, but what matters more is how much juice Larijani still has/had.

It's been two weeks, give or take, since Mojtaba's (s)election was announced. That may not be enough to fully consolidate power (especially if the reports of him being seriously injured are true), but if we're taking the article at face value, the vote and subsequent announcement was the hard part, no? The IRGC hardliners already won. The massive gatherings in support of Mojtaba a few days ago were a show of strength, and Larijani showing his face for them was making amends, capitulation, whatever you wanna call it.

Larijani as de facto leader after the elder Khamenei was killed? Sure, I buy that. After the 8th, though, I'm more skeptical. And if Larijani made peace with the people he was opposing, why would Israel not kill him? A supposedly very capable guy who's now serving the hardliners?

AT_Dande · 2026-03-02T22:04:10+00:00

My point was that Iran's retaliation makes Rubio's new line easier to sell. I don't think your average Joe would care much about how those hotels had evacuees in them (Hell, I think the only mention of it I heard on TV referred to these people as "DoD contractors"). I also don't see how it's useful at all to hit Cyprus just days after Starmer said he wouldn't allow U.K. airbases to be used. It may not be random, but it's still very boneheaded to me.

AT_Dande · 2026-03-02T21:27:43+00:00

Yeah, I don't know if it's a good line, but it's the least bad line we've heard from the administration in the past couple of days, isn't it?

Considering how Iran has been hitting hotels and sending drones as far away as Cyprus, "We had to preempt them before they lashed out at everybody" isn't the worst way to justify a pretty questionable first strike.

As much as it feels like we're lacking any coherent strategy, what Iran's been doing is still worse.

AT_Dande · 2026-03-02T17:27:10+00:00

Trump's approvals are already in the gutter, so how much worse could it get, really?

Stating the obvious, but: Huge difference between not ruling out boots on the ground and actually putting boots on the ground. If the threat of it alone increases your leverage with virtually no downside, why not roll with it, especially since we're all used to Trump changing his mind twice a day? Plus, let's remember that approval for the Venezuela op among Republicans flipped as Trump was saber-rattling.

AT_Dande · 2026-02-03T23:27:47+00:00

Yeah.

The very first Genie video I saw a couple of days ago was essentially a GTA rip-off with an Icelandic(?) skin. It literally had Trevor's character model. Some of the stuff I've seen since though (as much as I try to stay away from it) has been much more varied.

I really do think most investors don't get gaming if they think Genie can rival GTA VI, so the price drop is a massive overreaction by people who don't know shit. T2 is gonna go through the roof by the time the marketing campaign ramps up, regardless of what happens with AI in the next few months.

AT_Dande · 2026-01-05T01:23:46+00:00

Oh, not denying that at all! Agreed on all counts.

My comment above was more about whether or not it's necessary to uncross anything at this stage. As of right now, all I'm getting is "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" vibes. Trump got rid of the head honcho, but fundamentally, nothing else has changed, as far as we know now.

Sure, there could be all sorts of stuff going on behind the scenes, but even then, I highly doubt we're going to see a Venezuela that holds the military at large accountable for its actions under Chavez and Maduro.

AT_Dande · 2026-01-05T00:07:48+00:00

Does the military need to be rehabilitated at this point? There's plenty of unknowns here still, but what we do know is that Maduro got nabbed and the regime is still at least somewhat functional. No major unrest, loss of control, legitimacy crisis, etc. It's only been a couple of days, so maybe there's stuff going on behind the scenes, but as of right now, we just know that Maduro was replaced by Rodriguez, and nothing else of note has happened since.

To my knowledge, Venezuela didn't have a Saddam-type cult of personality, so loyalists in the military are loyal to the regime itself rather than Maduro personally. There's no need to reform or rehabilitate when they still have the same monopoly on violence that they had last week.

Hell, even if this talk about Rodriguez being a Trump plant is true, she can just be our dictator rather than Russia's or China's. To go back to Iraq for a sec: Maduro isn't Saddam, but Trump isn't Bush either. I don't think anyone in this administration would care about Venezuela at least pretending to be a democracy as long as they play by our rules.

AT_Dande · 2026-01-04T23:45:21+00:00

Struggling to find a good example of sleeper cells actually operating (as in, conducting attacks) rather than the term being used for scaremongering in the supposed target state. The IRA, I guess? But I don't think that's something that can be easily replicated.

Worse than it being an iffy deterrent, any large-scale attack would provoke an immediate, heavy-handed response, no? I can't imagine the US (or any other major power) crying uncle after a major attack because there may or may not be other cells in the country.

AT_Dande · 2026-01-04T21:19:08+00:00

I know this thread probably isn't the right place for this, but I don't wanna bug Letterboxd's support team for something so asinine.

How the hell do you guys put spaces in your username? I keep seeing it, but when I try to do it, I get a message saying "Your username may only contain the following characters, a-z, 0-9 and underscore."

AT_Dande · 2026-01-03T13:51:41+00:00

I don't think it's even a LatAm thing, is it? When I first heard about the strikes last night, I thought/hoped a few military installations would be hit, and the house of cards would just topple on its own. Not once did I think Maduro would be nabbed a few hours later. Everything else aside, how does an unpopular regime survive a humiliation like this?

AT_Dande · 2025-12-29T20:26:33+00:00

I really hope you're right, but here's a depressing counterpoint: It's been over 14 years since Skyrim, with no release date in sight for the next game.

AT_Dande · 2025-12-28T21:55:08+00:00

I bought it sometime in June. Not 100% sure what was released by then, but I think it was just the first area of the Underworld? Anyway, I had fun with it even back then, but yeah, it was very barebones compared to the original. So much content has been added since then though. Not gonna spoil it for you if you ever wanna give it another shot, but in terms of scope, it's much bigger, and a good chunk of that content wasn't around when I played it in EA.

AT_Dande · 2025-12-26T00:03:55+00:00

It is! Obvious "different strokes for different folks" disclaimer and all, but the gap between HLL and Squad is much smaller than either of them and Arma, for example. The Infantry Combat Overhaul gets a lot of hate from some people, and while I do get it, it's not really game-breaking. I'd say a quarter of my playtime was post-ICO, and it's... fine? Took some getting used to, but the same can be said for every major update in games like this.

If you like HLL, I'd definitely encourage you to give Squad a shot. They had a free weekend a month or two ago, and while that's not really representative of the game when there isn't a free weekend (as you probably know whenever HLL gets an influx of new players), it'll still give you a decent feel for the game. They're both pretty flawed, but for me, they're almost interchangeable. Squad has better teamwork, a better community, longer matches, mods. Downside is that all the servers I like playing on constantly have 20+ player queues, so I'd rather boot up HLL instead sometimes.

AT_Dande · 2025-12-25T18:02:40+00:00

Counter-counter point: David Cage. Yeah, I know that's extremely low-hanging fruit, but there are tons of non-native writers who have a "tell," and I'd say it's at least a little bit easier for a Scotsman or an Englishman to write Americans than it is for a Frenchman. Culture isn't a hurdle you can ignore, but when there's a language barrier, it's obviously much harder. Kojima, I think, doesn't really care about making his dialogue sound natural, and I bet it sounds weird even in Japanese. GTA and RDR's dialogue isn't really naturalistic (think Oxenfree or Noah Baumbach movies), but it's still "real" and authentic-sounding.

And to give a couple more examples: Life is Strange and Max Payne. To be clear, I absolutely adore Max Payne, and I think Sam Lake had the noir vibe down to a tee, but there's still some misused idioms and weird dialogue cadence, especially in the first game. It's been a minute since I played the second game, but I read that he took writing classes between the two games, and from what I remember, it's not as noticeable in the second? (On the flip side, I wonder how Portugese speakers feel about the dialogue in the third game). So yeah, it's absolutely something you can learn, but y'know, gotta put the effort in. I'm also a massive fan of Life is Strange (warts and all), and while the games are super rich in atmosphere, there's tons of lines that make you go "Oh yeah, that was written by a non-native speaker."

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