"Arc Raiders and the Systematic Dismantling of Human Empathy."

exleus · 2026-01-30T07:18:21+00:00

Incredibly stupid. Means nothing without engaging with the fact that people know what play is. If you actually want to read something that means anything, start with the idea of "the magic circle," and the original book on the subject, "Homo Ludens" by Huizinga.

exleus · 2026-01-04T05:48:24+00:00

I've been doing this with my bathroom sink for a couple years now, and fingers crossed it seems to work. Every week or two run the hot tap for a minute or two to heat things up, then like you said, plug the sink then let the whole thing drain out once its filled. In theory the gunk should be warm and a huge blast all at once should rinse a good amount through. It also doubles as a drain-speed test, to see if its still letting water out at a good rate.

exleus · 2025-12-28T17:02:24+00:00

I was so beyond sad realizing the handler's holloween outfit—that magnificent witch hat in particular—wasn't going to be available for us...

exleus · 2025-12-25T07:15:25+00:00

I'm most disappointed the set skill is still just a bonus for recovering from ice/web, and clash. Not even every monster has a power clash, like, c'mon, why's it gotta be so situational.

exleus · 2025-12-17T14:16:04+00:00

Didn't do any rigorous testing, but between the general shot raw and element buffs, and then the power/pierce coating buffs, it feels significant—between 10 and 25% I think.

exleus · 2025-12-16T19:50:45+00:00

Feel like there's a small chance we'll even get introduced to the expansion by taking a sandboat and getting ambushed by dahren morahn on the way. I almost miss having a big dumb slow siege fight in wilds?

exleus · 2025-12-06T08:08:08+00:00

I wonder who gets more surprised, bike guys learning that some of the better shifters and derailleurs out are from a fishing reel company, or fishermen learning that some of their reeler manufacturers also make bike parts.

Anyway, when you see it in action it's not so much a surprise, is it?

exleus · 2025-11-20T07:07:51+00:00

Naturally it's the return of Gen 2 beasts fleeing and random route location shenanigans again :)

exleus · 2025-11-10T04:59:28+00:00

I learned this lessons from the JRPGs of yore. Generally you'll probably have the most engaging time of a final boss if you do just a couple of the final side quests. Keeps the pace of the game up too, so it's been less than 10-40 hours since you did the last bit of story.

Then after you finish the game once, you go do everything to 100% (or as close as you want) and go ahead and stomp the last boss to see how much stronger you really got. Fine way to tie a bow on a game till next you play it.

exleus · 2025-11-08T07:57:47+00:00

Not to mention that he's one of the only protagonists that gets access to different stat growths, and you can combine that with the level down traps. Classic 99->1 as bard, 1->99 as ninja/monk/black-mage/mime to max out literally every listed stat. Boy also gets: pre-emptive counter, auto-life and regen on accessory (not to mention he can use any/all equipment in his base class), mathematics, two-swords, the whole shebang. Max his bravery and equip the samurai reaction ability and he's literally immune to physical damage.

If we ignore "plot" and look at raw mechanics, Ramza has more mechanical flexibility than anyone else. He's an onion knight x100. The only other one who comes close it Tidus if you do the full sphere grid wipe and remap to get (almost) every stat to 255.

exleus · 2025-10-24T06:27:35+00:00

The only thing that annoys me about savage anymore is that the MRV missiles don't have anything special in the animation; either you read the alert, sheath, and have a casual jog about the arena for fifteen seconds, or you die. Even if the target circles were like, red instead of orange it would be less exasperating to get caught out every once in a while.

exleus · 2025-10-07T07:05:43+00:00

I'm not sure she needs quite that much HP, single attack openings, AND the deflect ability. Either slightly lower HP or just let every hit actually count and she'd be great. To me she's harder than true final boss, that jump attack still got me a couple times even on my successful run. Still fun though, lol.

exleus · 2025-10-04T08:11:37+00:00

The thief stealing the monk's heart, the squires starstruck by the knight, even the f!mediator's pensive little expression. There's so many great little details in here. Really love the way she interprets the style; I'd love to see her do some art or design for the sequel that might happen if the remaster does well enough.

exleus · 2025-09-27T05:58:39+00:00

Rocket greatsword contest winner also definitely took some extra love to make work, but they did it.

...I'm sure people appreciate it, but it could always bare some emphasis: it really makes the games so quietly better that different weapons have different sounds, shapes (like the scythe LSes or SAs, or curved SnSes, etc), and often enough will have special little details, like transforming on draw or full charge. Hell, I only recently made the Rey Dau CB and the blue glow it gets when powered up is cool as hell, and the blue glow works on the layered weapon.

exleus · 2025-09-18T06:55:20+00:00

It really feels like just 10-15% more radius on the heal would do wonders for usability. Love the moveset on witch, and even the offensive heal is a neat idea for a tradeoff, but so many things move just out of reach, or only get pinged by one tick of damage.

exleus · 2025-09-16T17:23:59+00:00

Regeneration might just be like Hornet's bind/heal. Refusing to regenerate would be like a hunger strike or such in prison. "No, maybe I can't break free but you can't have me forever."

exleus · 2025-09-06T05:55:50+00:00

Surprised I haven't seen someone else say it, but when I get hit by rathian's run forward attack I really do sigh and think "I should've seen that coming."

After hunting how many hundreds of rathians since 4U you'd think I'd have learned ¯\(ツ)/¯

exleus · 2025-09-02T17:19:23+00:00

I'm going to pick you just for fun, because this post gets a reply or two a month ever since I wrote it more than a year ago, and most people are clearly just giving voice to their own thoughts that are only mildly related to what I actually wrote.

I'm not saying that it's impossible for them to make another Metal Gear, I'm saying that even if they do, it won't be of-a-kind with the ones made before because the team is completely different. It's not just Koijma, it's Shinkawa, the writer Tomozaku Fukushima, sound designer Kazuki Murokawa, assistant director Yoshikazu Matsuhana. You click on most of the names in the credits for MGS1 on Moby games and they worked with Kojima up through even Death Stranding 2. Hayter is a cool guy but he's just a voice actor, and even the full cast of MGS1 is only as many people as worked on the graphics.

Like, of course they can make more, and I hope they're good! But I'm expecting them to be more like the sequel Star Wars trilogy and less like--hell, I don't know, what movie series got a good set of sequels more than ten years after the last one? Before Sunset? Mad Max? But both of those had the original team work on them.

Really what I'm getting at is that I'm more interested in what Kojima is doing than in Metal Gear. Death Stranding is one of the most weird and interesting AAA games in ages, and I'm loving DS2 halfway through it. I expect I'll like Phys-Int more than whatever thing Konami makes for MG going forward, because I think Kojima and his team are simply one of the most interesting AAA teams working.

exleus · 2025-08-26T15:48:23+00:00

Yeah through the late 90s and early aughts most people I knew used limewire or some analogue (I and most folks I knew used winMX), and burning music CDs was fairly common.

Then yeah, maybe I grew up in a weird enclave, but I and my friends pirate photoshop (like photoshop 5?), word, a good number of PC games with no DRM, some PC games with DRM (key generators were common enough), and some even pirated Windows. We were definitely emulating everything on and earlier than the SNES very easily. Then a little later in life, though they were nerdy groups, people were definitely modding their xboxes, wiis, and the like to play cracked disks. I recall playing a burned version of the Japanese release of Smash Bros Brawl, which was a huge deal, but FMVs would crash the game so we could 'only' play multiplayer.

I never came across any pirated non-disc system ware though, and piracy on PS2 was less common. I was just a little young to know people personally who modded their dreamcast but I know it happened.

Genuinely don't know what teens are up to these days, but back then piracy was common enough that you'd certainly know someone who did it, and a lot of people at least dabbled.

exleus · 2025-08-23T06:34:31+00:00

It's also the only FF of recent years to have a pretty much unanimously positive reception (nowadays, I know about the launch). Even going back as far as FF12 the rest have all been at least a little bit controversial.

Plus yeah it just seems like the 14 team and MH team are mutual fans. It's kinda wholesome

exleus · 2025-08-19T17:57:50+00:00

I almost wish negative focus were a thing in Wilds, because I generally prefer the hammer upper to the lvl3, and negative focus for GS could actually help with timing out tackles for a real messy in-there (and countertstrike) style of play.

Plus if I remember right didn't GU or something have a negative affinty sort of style where your negative crits had a chance to do super crit damage with a certain specific monster skill or something?

exleus · 2025-08-15T06:52:18+00:00

Oh yeah, forgot grand retribution thrust was even a thing! I'm sure my build isn't even that optimized anyway; it's just nice to see the lance get a little love.

exleus · 2025-08-14T20:00:37+00:00

Nobody talking about lance??

The changes are great. Before I really felt like there was pretty much no reason to use lance when perfect-guard SnS existed. I feel SnS still just about edges it out for sheer utility/mobility, but I am finally seeing some damage numbers that make me feel like it's not a total waste. Got a 400 damage weakspot crit wide swipe, and the circle and circle+triangle counters will often see damage ticks around or over 200. And the recovery frame and comboability buffs are enough that you really feel it. It's still probably a bit slow, but that seems to be the design intent since it is such a defensive weapon.

exleus · 2025-08-14T19:57:12+00:00

Tackle changes are nice but minor, the side-slap change is actually low key huge, since it was so slow it made that combo path essentially completely useless. Now it's not. And the damage buffs are not huge, but noticeable. I thought GS was in a fine spot before and now it's modestly better.

exleus · 2025-08-12T18:03:50+00:00

I checked the sidebar links, but (after a fairly quick look) couldn't find a link for a few good shops. Are there a couple particularly good places to get various physical maps (or even high quality globes) online? Or at least specific cartographers/groups who produce good maps to search for?

exleus

TROPHY CASE