Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@Tyranexx Oh, it's not that I don't find it interesting, but I figured I'd mainly stop myself, before we get too deep into it and the mods interfere, because it's usually one of the more hairy topics, and it does involve politics, which as we all know, is a big no-no on here. And probably rightfully so...

You guys just reminded to preorder that RE Threemake. Only 41 days to go...

@Tyranexx Yeah that’s usually sign of a good game. The Zelda series does that for me also and those From Software games.

Tetris takes that phenomenon to whole new level though because you really do start seeing blocks everywhere and you start arranging stuff in your environment like that game. Not into Tetris now, but it was bad for a while 😆

@Tyranexx - Ladybugs smell weird, and I’ve seen them swarm. It’s a little unsettling. It seems like a lot of girls have a horse phase, but it’s neat that you actually did have access to one at your aunt’s place. Not sure what it is about pretending to make food that’s so thrilling to kids, but it obviously lands with a lot of kids. If they only knew. While cooking can be fun, it seems like it’s just a big chore a good part of the time.

@ThanosReXXX - I thought the term “gratuitous violence” was used in movie or game ratings at some point, but I did some Googling and didn’t see any results. Maybe it was used by a channel like HBO or Showtime, I’m not sure, but I distinctly remember being young and seeking things that were rated gratuitously violent.

@Anti-Matter - Ah, so no pecking even. Just pure bird kickboxing. I like the way you described the ring. I was thinking it would be square, and basically a really tall cage, but round with forcefield walls is cool. What about a top over the ring? Is there a top, or do the walls go up infinitely? You might be selling yourself a bit short with a 30,000 seat arena. People are going to want to see this. Almost 80,000 people packed the Pontiac Silverdome in Michigan to see Hulk vs Andre at Wrestlemania III.

@NintendoByNature - Glad you’re feeling a bit better. Dude, I can’t put down Golf Story to make any progress at all on Unravel 2. I’ve been having a blast playing it handheld at the table with a cold one. It’s almost like I’m really playing golf, but even better because I don’t play golf.

@bimmy-lee
The fighting area is like giant cylinder, covered by invisible shield including the top. (Diametre = 20 m, height = 20 m)
30,000 seats was too small ?
I didn't know if 80,000 seats was a standard for Wrestling stadium. 😅

@bimmy-lee Golf Story is one of the few newer games in a pixel art style that I can enjoy.

@HobbitGamer I have random game tunes bouncing around my head at times, too. I also tend to listen to extended video game music tracks on YouTube as it's easier to think with them vs. normal music with lyrics. I've been giving the original Xenoblade Chronicles soundtrack a listen recently.

@NintendoByNature I've brought my DS Lite to work a time or two but haven't brought my Switch yet; I hope to try that soon. I try to exercise during my longer lunches most of the time, so it's a bit difficult to devote my resources to safely walking while having my nose glued to a screen. XD It definitely depends on the game however.

I average 1-2 gaming hours most weeknights, usually longer on weekends. Whether or not I have anything going on definitely affects those numbers.

Last but not least: I'm glad you're starting to feel better!

@Heavyarms55 It's a "problem" that comes and goes depending on what I'm playing and how invested I am in my work. Part of the problem today was that I was stuck on an issue; often when I've been stuck for a long period of time, my mind tends to wander. I try mitigating that by moving on to a different work item (we have such a backlog that I won't run out for ages), but I'm only comfortable putting something off for a short period of time if it can even be put off to begin with.

It also depends on my interest in the subject matter. I work with a massive client/server application and like or dislike different areas. Reports are often tedious or mindless work. Conversely, I love messing around with our Google Maps API calls and how they can be formatted.

@ThanosReXXX No problem there, that was me agreeing with you. And I have seen how politics online can change certain atmospheres in an instant and have a habit of popping up in the most innocent of places....

@NotTelevision I can't say I've ever had to deal with seeing Tetris blocks everywhere - I like the game but have never spent copious amounts of time on it - but I do understand seeing random reminders of a game in the surrounding environment. Perhaps I should avoid Tetris 99 when I do finally subscribe to the NSO service....

I'd say the weirdest game-related experience in my book related to a delirious fever dream. I was pretty ill at the time and had just discovered the wonderful WarioWare: Touched, so I'm sure you can imagine. XD

@bimmy-lee "Smell weird" is an understatement. At their peak, you can smell the suckers almost everywhere. Due to a couple of unfortunate accidents, I can also attest that they taste exactly how they smell. Which is to say: very bad. Nature gave them their coloring for a reason.

Horses were probably one of the least tomboyish things I was into at one point. I still like them, but I definitely have no desire to own one now. One wouldn't be happy where I live.

Ah yes....If only making food was as easy as my pretend years....I don't dislike making food per se, but I also get no enjoyment from doing it. The big killer for me, at least when it comes to more elaborate dishes, is the cleanup.

@Tyranexx Xenoblade has such outstanding music. I listen to that soundtrack frequently.

I've always rationalized work (or school when I was younger) as something I need to do, in order to be able to do the things I want to do. I am lucky and blessed that I have had rather good jobs that have no demanded so much of my time that they prevent me from doing things I enjoy. But on the same token the fact that I see work as a means to an end is probably why I lack any real ambition beyond paying the bills and having enough leftover to support my hobbies. The people who have the most success usually either have much more expensive hobbies and goals, or actually enjoy working in and of itself.

I can totally sympathize with losing focus on a task that you've been stuck on for a long time. When I worked in an auto factory, shifts blurred together heavily because I was effectively doing the same thing every single day for hours and hours each day. At the same time, I consider that both a negative and a positive, as my current job often has me trying to come up with new ideas and has a lot of inconsistency with my days being sometimes super busy and other times mindbogglingly dull.

@bimmy-lee it's so good I can't even blame you. It was a day 1 for me when it launched and I can't wait to see where they take sports story. I love getting a nice solid chip in from a distance. Really satisfying. Thanks for the kind words too. Cant remember but can you play golf story online?

@Anti-Matter - Cool, so they’re fighting inside a cylinder. Seems about as safe as it’s going to get. No hard edges or corners. Assuming they don’t get electrified by the force field on contact. That wrestling match happened a long time ago, but it was at an NFL stadium. I wonder what the capacity is on an average Pokémon stadium? Seems like you could pull those types of numbers with avian kickboxing. I checked, and the Tokyo Dome seats 55,000, so that seems like a good starting point.

@HobbitGamer - It’s a great one. I’ve had it for quite a while and plucked it out of the backlog. I wasn’t aware that you aren’t in to modern pixel art. I’ll make a note. I think I recommended Crossing Souls to you, but I think you asked about it; so you must have been looking past the art style.

@Tyranexx - Wow, I have also accidentally chomped up a few ladybugs, and it sticks with you. To this day, every time I see a ladybug, there’s a faint voice in the back of my mind saying, “good lord, don’t let that thing near your mouth.” They do taste EXactly like they smell. I did some pretty detailed studies on their anatomy as a kid, and I can say definitively that the smell comes from brown liquid stuff inside them.

Since we’re here on the topic of bad ladybug smell, and I’m not sure if the conversation will circle back around this way any time soon; let me just say that I also hated it when my mom sucked them up in the vacuum because the smell would condense, heat up, and waft through the vacuum bag and stench up the whole house like some kind of bad ladybug smell atomizer.

@NintendoByNature - Those long distance, no shot chip ins are amazing. Seems like my control of the game is getting pretty decent, though it’s always possible to biff the timing. I’m not sure if it’s 2P online, I’ll look in a bit when get a few holes in.

@Tyranexx yea i hear you on that. thanks!

@Tyranexx Haha.

I’m just imagining someone waking up in a cold sweat after playing those microgames in their sleep. That game is already crazy without any help from the unconscious.

Wario probably created that game for this purpose. He draws you in for some zany fun, but he really has the same intentions as Freddy Krueger 😛

@Heavyarms55 what sort of computer game music have in your collection ?

@bimmy-lee
The shield inside the fighting arena is really safe, no electricity. Just like Blitzball shield.
Also, there is some wind blown inside the arena to support some soaring type birds to glide in the sky such as Eagle, Albatross, Crane, etc. They have difficulty to dodge fast or quick flapping their wing from the ground, so the wind blown to support their flight.

Before the fight begin, the hymn of Avian Kickboxing is being played and sung by all peoples inside the stadium. After the hymn, the fight will be started. The fight takes 3 minutes each round, same as normal kickboxing fight. During 30 seconds break, a small robo will get inside the ring and show the holographic number of the Round. The small robo is genderless due the policy to not put sexy female inside the ring.

Speaking about narrative story i put into Avian Kickboxing, so far i still have difficulty to develop more story from each characters. I have given some plot for Caleb the Dove, Russell the Crow, Arnold the Eagle and Tsurugi the Red Crown Crane. I still haven't decided the name of my anthro Swallow, Blue Jay, Red Cardinal but three of them have connection in the story. I gave the plot of Swallow got bullied by both Blue Jay and Red Cardinal. The Swallow is a teen bird in the same grade as Caleb (grade 10) but study in different school. He is very smart and very quick in flight but he's also very shy and oftenly got bullied by Red Cardinal and Blue Jay. The duo troublemaker Blue and Red birds are Senior High School students, also from the same school as Swallow but in higher grade (grade 11). They tend to intimidate and hit the Swallow after school since the Swallow can't fight. It drives the motivation for Swallow to join in Avian Kickboxing to protect himself with martial art. He got trained by Tsurugi who is focusing on speed and maneuvering in the sky. Swallow has good relationship with Caleb since from their first fight in Junior class.

I still haven't given the plot for Albatross. So far, he is one of Four Avian Kickboxing Legend (Legend 4 = Arnold the Eagle, Tsurugi the Red Crown Crane, Albatross, ???)
I will think which bird that will add as one of Legend.

@Ninfan Well computer game music, not much, but assuming you mean video games in general, I have the full soundtracks for all 3 Xenoblade titles, lots of Pokemon and Mario music, Octopath Traveller, various game theme songs like the opening theme for Tales of Vesperia in both Japanese and English. Off the top of my head. I know I've got more but I'd have to open my folders up and look through the list.

Oooh my cheap tablet randomly decided to update, and it's very much now up to date with the current version of Windows 10.

And it's just so much better, and I can also install quite a few new things now that the Microsoft Store is not stuck in 2015. Like the mobile versions Farming Simulator and Minecraft.

Talking about that, I was looking for a nice lightweight Sudoku game to have on it (the Microsoft Store has more touchscreen-friendly options than Steam), so I filtered by paid because I don't want rubbish, and found this interesting looking one and much to my surprise the description of the game had a code to redeem it for free. Like... That was... Convenient...

It's SudokuT in case anyone is interested. It's simple and to the point, very much what I wanted. And it comes with the option of generating puzzles ready to print on paper, how cool is that?

@bimmy-lee Yeah, some I can get past the art. For example, I love Video Kid and Slayaway Camp.

@bimmy-lee Well, I was already familiar with the term, and I've seen it being mentioned on here in articles quite a few times. I can imagine it's not a word for the every day vocabulary, because it's more of an embellished term, a word with flourish, so to speak.

Your younger self must have been quite a character, seeking out things which were labeled gratuitously violent...

P.S.

Some weird conversations going on here... Taste and smell of ladybugs? I've never smelled one, let alone ate one of them. And vacuuming them? Why on Earth? Over here, they remain outside, unless you've accidentally left all your windows open, in which case one will occasionally fly in. Guess ours are better trained to avoid humans than the US branch...

The only type of insect that I've ever (and quite accidentally) eaten, is those infinitely small flies that, regardless of the enormous amount of free air space that they have outside, always seem to either want to fly into your eye or in your mouth, when you're traveling along on your bike or any other kind of roofless vehicle...

@Tyranexx Yeah, politics is a touchy subject indeed, and conversations about it can turn sour within the blink of an eye. Personally, I'm not interested in politics at all, so subsequently, when there are other topics, which somehow involve politics, or politicians pushing an agenda, then I usually steer clear, especially because I already know that most of us clear-headed people who play games agree on what to think of it, and they just keep rehashing the same old tired song, so it becomes real boring real fast.

Sometimes I do wonder if there isn't another agenda behind the obvious one, though. I'd imagine that at least some of these protesters/anti-videogamers actually DO perform some kind of decent research into the topic, before flinging their brain farts into the ether, but that's a topic for another time...

@NotTelevision Well, the thing is, I don't WANT to talk about politics, and as such, it annoys me to no end that politics always find a way of insinuating themselves into what I see and simply WANT to see as an enjoyable pass time. I don't give a rat's you-know-what about their opinion on it. I know that both I and the people that I know that also like/love to play games, will never turn into gun-toting maniacs, no matter how many of these types of games they play.

And the thing I was wondering about, the final bit about the agenda behind the agenda, was more of a rhetorical one, not one I'd like to discuss or ponder any further.

EDIT:
Huh? Your comment is gone? What the heck happened?
Great, now it looks like I'm talking to myself...

@ThanosReXXX Sorry I edited my previous comment. But yeah it’s going to be debated what is and isn’t acceptable for some time, but there are always going to some crazy individuals who they caught playing some game at some point in their life. I encourage whatever unbiased studies are being published about the effects of video games on the psychology of players, but narrowing down the behavior of individuals based on one exclusive habit/hobby presents a lot of problems. I think everything a person does has some effect on them, but how it correlates to the complex web of experiences and interactions is going to be different for everyone.

So it is not something that is so easily isolated, I think.