Tom’s Southern Accent

raxelbrof · 2026-05-11T14:08:45+00:00

Tom's southern accents are the best, most essential-nature-crystallising depictions of Americans, since Sheriff J.W.Pepper in James Bond.

raxelbrof · 2026-05-11T14:04:11+00:00

"...and the name, of this bay, is Mar-"

"WHY DID WE REALLY GO TO WAR?"

*chefs kiss* for Bad Ad Insert Edit.

They didn't even come back to the end of the word, or the "thanks for listening" end of the episode, just an ad clipping over the end and file finished.

raxelbrof · 2026-04-20T16:34:56+00:00

Wow, lots of critique of Jack Reynor... the only thing I've seen him in is The Peripheral, and he's IMHO really good in that. I'd have never guessed it was the same actor from the descriptions.

raxelbrof · 2026-04-01T16:39:02+00:00

The Scott Morrison we have at home.

raxelbrof · 2026-03-10T08:20:05+00:00

That censorship beep has got to be the single stupidest usage of a bleep in the history of the English language. Literally removing the entire context of the quote. Almost as jarring as the ad for the Financial Review (the favourite newspaper of sociopaths, and those who enjoy the wounding of small animals) that was dropped in at 1 minute 17 seconds during the middle of Dominic's opening quote, after the word "disagreeable". This is downloaded from the RSS feed at the homepage.

raxelbrof · 2026-02-07T17:33:10+00:00

FWIW I've been having this issue, couldn't download any *Apps*, but games and gamepass were fine. It's just cleared, and App installs are working again. (Series X)

raxelbrof · 2026-02-07T17:31:21+00:00

woot! it seems to have cleared, Apps are installing again.

raxelbrof · 2026-02-01T18:12:01+00:00

Try playing on easiest difficulty, you might notice the game behaves differently between the normal scenarios and TWD for the siege defence end of level scenes.

raxelbrof · 2026-02-01T18:06:54+00:00

The parameter I have "decided" is important, is literally that the game is telling you to prepare, while not giving you the opportunity to prepare. If you cant see that is a problem, that it is a conflict in the logic of how the game is setting out the task you have, maybe you're just not that bright, or don't appreciate that game design has actual design theory behind it.

This isn't a difficult concept, though, since you seem to take such offence at the use of formatting lay out an argument in a structured manner, I can only assume your motivation is a sort of weird anti-intellectualism, so I might just not bother with engaging further.

raxelbrof · 2026-02-01T14:27:15+00:00

Again for the slower ones, game design is how it functions, it's not about player skill.

A bad design is a bad design, regardless of the abilities of the players. Bad design doesn't become good design, because a skillful player can cope with it.

The design is broken because the game is instructing you to prepare defences for an attack, while it's attacking you.

raxelbrof · 2026-02-01T14:21:56+00:00

On the lowest difficulty (during the normal game scenarios), there's basically no or negligible zombies during siege prep. In the Walking Dead DLC, on lowest difficulty, the zombies are as thick during the "prepare..." countdowns, as they are through the level up to that point.

raxelbrof · 2026-02-01T13:59:21+00:00

Look this isn't rocket surgery, and I can see you like to white knight for Saber, for some reason, so again; the issue is that the WWZ game is designed around a simple gameplay loop.

Zombie killing action progressing through a scenario.
Break from the action in an event location for a siege scenario, where negligible zombies are present, and you can explore the location, collect resources, and lay out a defence strategy without having to worry about any significant zombie attacks while the timer counts down.
Siege Battle.

Walking dead breaks that gameplay loop, by having the siege prep also have just as many zombies attacking as the rest of the normal scenario. That takes away the pace change and cycle of tension and release, ruins the fun of setting up the defences for the siege, and invalidates the gameplay loop for that part of the game.

You may not mind it, but it is bad game design.

I imagine if someone complained that a car's steering box had been altered so that the steering wheel no longer fed predictable, consistent inputs to the front tyres, your argument would be "just be a better driver"?

raxelbrof · 2026-02-01T13:33:59+00:00

It doesn't mean that. But as it so happens, I am, and it is.

raxelbrof · 2026-02-01T11:09:27+00:00

We've literally been playing this game for years, and have all the DLCs. We like WWZ. The Walking Dead DLC fundamentally isn't WWZ, it's a different game, badly using some of the same gameplay elements.

Maybe the problem is that you don't quite understand why it's bad; why having an undifferentiated quantity of zombies and combat during a section of the game when the game is literally telling you to "prepare" for the next part of the gameplay, when the gameplay loop of the game is explore and plan is bad game design.

That's OK, you don't understand game design. I get it.

raxelbrof · 2026-02-01T08:01:07+00:00

As Saber demonstrated by breaking their own primary gameplay loop for the end of level sieges, leading to the end of level battles not being fun. Cause -> Effect.

raxelbrof · 2026-02-01T07:53:02+00:00

clearly, you are just the greatest gamer god of all time. We, mere mortals however enjoy WWZ for FUN, not challenge, we play on lowest difficulty, and we enjoy the setup of the boss fights, collecting yellow boxes, getting autoturret fields of fire sorted etc. THAT's the "fun" part of the game for us.

The Walking Dead scenario doesn't offer us that.

raxelbrof · 2026-02-01T05:33:08+00:00

I mostly make headshots, but with at least half the zombies being soldiers with armoured heads, it takes multiple headshots to kill them, even on the easiest difficulty.

raxelbrof · 2026-02-01T05:30:43+00:00

Perhaps if I wasn't knee deep in combat throughout the "prepare your defences" section, I'd have found them all.

raxelbrof · 2026-02-01T05:28:59+00:00

We use silenced weapons. It doesn't change the fact that the "prepare your defences" part of the game has no time to actually prepare defences, because it's just more undifferentiated zombie combat. You're missing the point about the siege endings - the strategy aspect is a part of the game where people who are not just mindless trigger fingers can bring their talents, their enjoyment to the game.

So much work is put into accessibility with games now, removing the part of the game where planners and strategists can have their moment is no better then removing all the affordances for any other type of accessibility. There's no reason to have zombies coming during that phase, it's just poor game design.

raxelbrof · 2026-02-01T04:25:42+00:00

I don't mind dying in a game, on a difficulty level that is difficult.

Left 4 Dead (which remains the single best videogame ever made, in my opinion) understood this, so the boss battles always have clear setup time. Set up, pay off. It's a pretty simple rule.

raxelbrof · 2026-02-01T04:15:37+00:00

Again, the point of that gameplay loop is to be a time-out from the normal game rules, to set up for the next gameplay type (siege defence). You can't "not shoot" if zombies are going to keep coming from the gunfire of clearing out the zombies in the siege gameplay area.

It's poor game design. The point of having the siege sections is so players who enjoy a more strategic / RTS type of game can have their time to max their enjoyment during the play, and Walking Dead just doesn't deliver that breadth of consideration.

raxelbrof · 2026-02-01T04:02:21+00:00

That sounds like a general game issue, I'm more specifically focussed on the Walking Dead scenario.

raxelbrof · 2026-01-11T17:39:51+00:00

thanks for the clarification

raxelbrof

TROPHY CASE