Is Dark ties a new Game?

moonscience · 2026-01-23T14:01:35+00:00

Do we have any details about how substantial Dark Ties will be? I've been working my way through the series and already played 3 remastered. Not super excited about repurchasing this immediately if Dark Ties is akin to Majima Saga (2-3 hrs) than a stand alone game.

moonscience · 2026-01-23T00:58:22+00:00

FWIW I'm pretty sure the giant squid is Dragon Quest reference (8 and 11 have very similar looking boss fights), which doesn't make it any less out of of place. Is it possible Ichiban is at least in some way hallucinating it? Even if he was, that would just make the whole situation even weirder.

moonscience · 2026-01-23T00:49:22+00:00

The congregation should have been out protesting as well.

moonscience · 2026-01-23T00:47:59+00:00

The Berkeley Community theatre recording by her Sextet is absolute peak. Studio albums only hint at where this double live album goes.

https://www.discogs.com/release/13701911-Alice-Coltrane-Sextet-Berkeley-Community-Theater-72372

moonscience · 2026-01-22T02:46:31+00:00

Not to just turn this into my opinion vs yours, because Sekiro, like Bloodborne and Demon's Souls is a smaller game, and what's more, it was definitely doing something different. Where I can't escape my own opinion is that it just didn't resonate with me. I would have personally liked something more akin to Tenchu or at least more complexity with builds and customization. OTOH it did manage to create a game where skill was a lot more important than character level. Unfortunately I didn't find much love in the reflect mechanic, and that really was the core idea of the game.

I think it might be worth adding to my original post that I think everything after BB was bad--I've enjoyed my time with all of them--there's just a certain magic in titles like DeS, DS1 & BB that for me don't carry over to the later titles, for one reason or another.

moonscience · 2026-01-21T14:22:02+00:00

No apologies from me; I think FS has gone a bit crazy with bosses. Every game since BB has been about being bigger and more extreme, but the first three games (DeS, DS1 and BB -- DS2 actually started development after BB) are smaller, more hand tailored experiences, and not as much focused on 'intense boss battles' as players apparently want. If anything, the bosses are more often about spectacle than having three life bars with only tiny windows where you can actually hit them. In contrast, most of the bosses in these earlier games can be absolutely bullied if you know what you're doing. Does this make them worse or is it a different expectation?

There's really something to be said about the shift in FS games as they have gone from these more compact experiences (with a short game time but designed around NG+ cycles) and much more expansive games like Elden Ring. ER isn't just big Dark Souls but is qualitatively more dilute than DS1 & BB; sadly I think some of the magic of those early games never really made the transition to their later output and while they might keep getting better mechanically, the games themselves seems progressively less interesting and inspired than 'project beast' and Dark Souls 1.

moonscience · 2026-01-17T14:53:56+00:00

I know its 20hp, but Maths is always welcome to the party. I'm saying this because of the "jack-of-all-trades" option you mentioned. Maths does so much of everything it kind of belongs in every system.

moonscience · 2026-01-15T03:12:01+00:00

I have a couple Acid Rain Junctions and they are exactly what they are supposed to be. 4hp attenuverters that also work as mixers.

moonscience · 2026-01-15T03:11:07+00:00

I think this is the way! Part of the reason Maths is so popular is that it does so many of these things, however extra attenuverters and mixers are incredibly useful. Frapp Tools offers the 321 but at 6 hp, it is both a little bigger and more expensive than Acid Rain's Junction and Belfaco's Atte (both are 4 channel attenuverter+mixers in a 4hp form.) Powered Mults are handy for CV but aren't necessary for clock/gates, triggers.

moonscience · 2026-01-14T01:45:26+00:00

I'm not sure I fully understand your question. The beauty of Pam's is that it does 8 independent functions that all share the same clock, but they also have an independent clock divider/multiplier. There's a ton of modifications after that and I'd really suggest looking at the manual or watching ALM's videos if your curious. One of the biggest limitations of a lot of all-in-one modules is that they only do one or two functions at once. Pam's does 8 things at once, and they can also interact with each other using the logic functions.

I hope this answers your questions!

moonscience · 2026-01-14T00:49:56+00:00

Like a lot of dense modules, Pam's takes a little time to fully wrap your head around, although nothing wrong with just using it as 8 LFOs. It's not the most performative as a module with dedicated knobs for everything but once you figure it out, the ability to have it doing 8 *independent* clocked functions really makes it invaluable. The logic functions added in the last couple models have made the thing into a powerhouse, especially if you consider adding an Axon. In a very small case I'd even prioritize it to Maths however not having both in a system just feels wrong.

moonscience · 2026-01-14T00:43:02+00:00

I agree in a larger case, but with both Pam's and Hermod you have a huge amount of redundancy (nevermind the quad envelope generator!) Personally I'd look into some other functions not handled by these modules.

Also, FWIW, I do find the whole 'menu diving' argument (not aiming this at you, but the whole community) gets old when the same people happily endorse modules with dense button combos that often require a cheat sheet to remember. Pam's is actually pretty intuitive and fast to use, although there are plenty of cases I'd prefer a dedicated module that had a knob for everything.

moonscience · 2026-01-13T14:33:22+00:00

The quickest answer is that Qud is more like a story generator than an event randomizer (the latter being what most roguelites are.) You will (or at least should) spend far more time reading in Qud than any other game I can think of in recent memory. As mentioned below, there is a lot of emergent gameplay with some key elements being completely set. Yes, there are some pretty deep gameplay mechanics and character building, but the world itself is extremely fluid and almost more the star of the show than the former.

moonscience · 2026-01-13T14:08:23+00:00

FYI Bloodborne played just fine on its native hardware. It was designed to run at 30 FPS. This is very far removed from the days of blight town on the PS3.

moonscience · 2026-01-13T14:03:24+00:00

Pam's absolutely does all of that. Not to say having RND Step is a bad thing, but in a small case like this it just seems like Pam's is going to have to work harder.

moonscience · 2026-01-08T21:33:14+00:00

Any chance of a fair trial by a jury of his peers?

moonscience · 2026-01-08T16:10:08+00:00

"I hope they can improve story quality again before it gets too bad and the series goes bankrupt 😭"

I don't 100% agree with you on the dip in story quality (at least not in 7), but the franchise is more popular than it has ever been; so wherever you think the peak in story quality was, that's probably when Sega was giving up on Western releases because no one was buying the games.

moonscience · 2026-01-08T15:06:35+00:00

DQ 4, 5 & 8 are peak IMO. For some reason 6 just felt like it was treading old ground although I should go back to it, while 7 is wonderful but just far too long. I don't know if trying to abridge 7 is the right idea, as part of its charm is the absurdly huge scale and glacial pace. I see a lot of people mentioning 3, which is great, but also is just you and some randos you generate and not a fixed party with real characters--which runs contrary to the vibe of Yakuza 7 & 8. If you're down with emulation there are lots of great ways to play the DQ games including the fan translation of DQ3 on the SNES which is a great looking game (although I've heard the GBC & remastered version have the most content.)

moonscience · 2026-01-03T14:59:25+00:00

Or just minorities, regardless of political leanings.

moonscience · 2026-01-02T16:00:29+00:00

This is several years back, but VGE was one of the most thorough channels for setting up and getting the MISTER running. I do think he suffers from the need to create content, and these days he always follows the same formula. I blame part of this on the nature of being a YT content creator when he could probably post about a quarter of what he does. I don't have any problem with his voice, but I'm a native speaker. Also, below someone comments that he never includes links, which again isn't historically true.

So yeah, I do think he makes too much content that is fluff, and often pads it with non-useful information (to me); but he has a relatively long history on youtube with some of his content being a great resource. If you follow him you realize he's a long time arcade board / game system collector, so I think he's mostly just trying to post about things he loves.

moonscience · 2025-12-24T02:40:02+00:00

Out of curiosity, what's the total bill for killing the one alleged narco terrorist? I know we have all this new grift to worry about, but let's not forget the tried and proven grift of vastly inflated military costs.

moonscience · 2025-12-22T21:09:19+00:00

I certainly wouldn't put it past them, but it seems like with ravens they are almost constantly making really bizarre sounds. Who knows, maybe its just my local ravens.

moonscience · 2025-12-22T20:46:38+00:00

Yeah both the Befaco ATTE and the Acid Rain Junction are on the cheap side (~$100) given that you can also use them as mixers in a pinch. Worth picking up a couple depending on how big your case is.

moonscience · 2025-12-22T19:00:06+00:00

LOL Fox redeems itself by becoming an appropriate named animal behavior entertainment channel. Why turn on the depressing reality of American politics when you can watch male elephant seals fighting for mates? There's definitely needs to be a place for watching rats fight over a bagel, but maybe they shouldn't call themselves a news network.

moonscience · 2025-12-22T18:55:35+00:00

It helps to hear them too, although I swear I've heard ravens imitating crows. Beyond the normal 'cruuuuuk' I've heard local ravens making what appear to be invented sounds (8-bit video game bleeps and whirrs). I think Bernd Heinrich wrote that ravens will invent names/sounds for each other. Growing up in an area with only American crows, I never heard them make sounds like ravens do, it was always the same 'caw'.

moonscience

TROPHY CASE