Sledgstone

Until we get solid info from Sony, theres only speculation so far about the final list of features, prices, etc. The latest rumor I just read was this:

https://bgr.com/2020/01/13/ps5-release-date-price-announcement-and-preorder-details-leaked/

If true the price will be $499 and be available for preorder early February. And there will be full backwards compatibility with digitally owned games. And ps4 controllers will be forward compatible, which would explain that new extra back button attachment that was announced.

Well I'm pleased so far with the new host. *knocks on wood* I just need to make another account and transfer my other sites to it and I can shut down the old server. The total bill for the server fees is almost nothing in comparison to the old VPS account I was on. VPS was complete overkill now especially since the price got jacked up on it. The new server is shared hosting so I'm not expecting 100% reliability and speed at all times like the old server, but now it'll cost me literally 1/10th of the price per month than the VPS. And I'll no longer have to spend time doing server maintenance. Once I get the other sites moved over, the time and money I spend on AC can now be spent keeping the forum and theme software current at all times. Another couple years from now though I'll probably have to do some major work on Death by Gundam, Windscar and ancientclan.org archive to keep them functioning because they currently require a different version of php to operate correctly. Ehh... I'll worry about that in a year or so. The newest version of PHP installed on servers straight up break those 2 sites because of outdated php functions I used on those pages. I'll have to convert every single page to basically old school html to ensure they'll keep working. ehhhhhhh. It make sense why people will retire a website when faced with having to manually update thousands of individual files.

If you are seeing this post, this is the new server and everything went smoothly. Feel free to resume using the site as normal. 

We're going to move to a different host. If things go smoothly, it shouldn't take long. I'll update this topic with more info when available. Anything posted at this point on most likely won't transfer over.

Edit. 

Server move is done. Welcome to the new server.

I picked this up during the a black friday sale and I'm sure as hell glad I didn't drop the full retail price on this. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a complete downgrade from the previous two games in the trilogy. Its very unfortunate. The graphics took a hit, Lara's skin looks like shes made of plastic and her hair often looks bland and in some scenarios her hair almost looks like shes standing in front of a blue/green screen. Maybe thats an issue with the HDR setting, I'm not sure. I loved hunting and crafting upgrades for my weapons and accessories in the first two games.  Thats all gone now because hunting is pointless except for getting some pelts for some vestige gear.. and the vestige gear seems pointless to me because I seem to be locked into two outfits for 30% of the game so far because of blending in with the inhabitants of a city that I'm in. Hunting is nothing like it was in the first two games. Before you could shoot a boar or a deer, see it run away if you didn't get a clean shot, see the blood trail it left while you track after it in the woods.. In Shadow, as soon as you take a shot at an animal, that animal and any others in the area all make a quick b-line exit straight to what I call a "wall burrow" Every animal goes in the burrows and disappear. wtf. It completely negates hunting. Instead, Lara is now a gatherer. She has to gather every resource node.. plants, wood, dead animal pelts, random coins and cloth and even drying pelts and arrows from villagers. And when I got to the main city of the game, I realized I could "gather" from the city and sell everything to the merchants. And when I say "gather" I mean "steal". When you can literally walk up to a merchant, walk behind them, loot some cloth and oil off the floor/shelf that is behind them, walk right back up to them and sell it.. thats called theft. wtf where the developers thinking. And its not just that, I'm walking into people's houses, taking anything I see, sometimes gold, their bundles of wood next to their doors or fire pits.. and then I sell it to the merchants in the city. wtf. And then the merchants sell me all the upgrade stuff. Need a bigger quiver, go steal shit, sell stolen items and then buy that quiver. wtf. This is nothing like the first 2 games. In the other games you had to go kill a bear, harvest it's hide, gather more resources and then craft the new quiver at a camp site. I think the developer of this game gave up on all of that.

I'm 50% through the game now and I'm quite disappointed. The combat took a serious hit too. As in theres hardly any.  Halfway through the game and I've had only a handful of enemy encounters. I'd say a good 10 hours of this game so far has been wandering around these two shit villages/cities, gathering things, selling things and talking to people to unlock side quests to find tombs and to get more skill points. Even that is annoying because these cities are dirty. The first city has literal garbage all over the place and the second city, all the people are so dirty they're mostly wearing burlap sacks.  I'm hoping the plot gets better as a the game progresses, because so far this doesn't feel like a tomb raider game at all except for the climbing and navigating the maps. The only positive thing I can say is that the tombs are challenging puzzles and have been decent although lately it feels like a rip off of Legend of Zelda, because I've already done a water temple, fire temple and wind temple..

The DLC Frozen Wilds was enjoyable although a bit frustrating with some of the new enemy units. As the story progresses it becomes more clear how to defeat them, but over all... f*ck Scorchers.  The story was good and some of the details of the plot from the main game are fleshed out more. It also leads into the sequel as well.

I beat Horizon Zero Dawn yesterday and I'm about 1/4 through the Frozen Wilds DLC. Without getting into too much detail I gotta say this game was really good. Everything is explained.. Literally just about everything (robots, humanity, culture, technology, etc.) and the plot is amazing. With this plot, it could be made into a movie. I focused way too much on the side quests initially. I did so many side quests that once I started playing the main mission again I kind of steamrolled the enemies because I was so leveled up.  The only real negatives to the game is the lack of direction. Without spoiling anything, what the game should have done was force you to play the initial hunting grounds instead of skipping them. The game doesn't say it but all the hunting grounds are basically tutorials for how to destroy the different robots. It would have been extremely useful knowledge if I didn't skip them entirely, get frustrated on some enemies, watched a few youtube videos on how to kill them, when I could have jumped into the hunting grounds and actually learned in the game. The same applies to cauldrons and bandit camps, aside from the initial two, you don't have to do anymore and the game doesn't direct you to any. You stumble across them on the map and the map is so huge and filled with icons I didn't realize thats what the icons stood for until I got to a point in the game where I had to fast travel everywhere because quests make you travel hundreds of miles all over the place. This game alone made my wish I upgraded my PS4 to a SSD hard drive. Halfway through the game I found myself fast traveling all over the place to save time traveling, but that meant loading screens constantly.

Ropecaster is the the best weapon in the game. I wish the game would have emphasized this. Every enemy in this game will leap 40 feet directly into your face destroying half your life bar. Not too difficult when its just one or two small robots, but you get some big ass ones in there and you try to run away, draw your bow, get slapped to the ground and then the next one hits you right after and then a third enemy spews fire at you.. it becomes straight up infuriating. But then you bust out the ropecaster that does no damage.. shoot 3-5 binding ropes at an enemy and they get anchored to the ground... and they'll stay anchored to the ground for like a solid minute unless they take a good chunk of damage. And theres no limitation to how many enemies can be ropecasted.. Got 3 enemies? Ropecaster them in different spots then run up to one and focus your attacks on it. As long as you have enough wire in your inventory to keep making ammo for it, you can keep almost every enemy in the game locked down. And the ropecaster is one of the very first weapons you can buy in the game. You just have to buy stronger versions of it as the game progresses.

Also, there is an unlimited fast travel pack you can buy for incredibly cheap, like an animal skin and a few shards. No more having to make fast travel packs. But the game doesn't emphasize that its a thing, its simply sold by merchants near a specific city at the bottom of the same generic list of stuff every merchant in the game sells.

Mounts are fun, but it can be annoying as they give away your location to enemies, but they are also great for not caring about that and just running past everything to open up more of the map.

Theres alot of skills that seem pointless to unlock, but the best ones are shooting additional arrows, tinker, initial mount skills, hoarder and increased slow down time while aiming weapons.

Modifications are amazing and the game doesn't even have a tutorial for them. Equip mods. Don't worry about using them you will be swimming in them by the end of the game. Except for purples. Got a bow, and the damage feels weak.. equip a mod that does +38% damage. Thats significant and the game doesn't even emphasize it. wtf. By the end game all my weapons had 3 mod slots each and all had things like like "+48 damage" +42 damage +15% fire damage" "+41 damage +15 tear".. It makes the weapons significantly stronger.

Anyway, its a great game. A bit too many side quests, but props for the developer for having every character fully voiced considering the large amount of characters in every side quest introduced.

The DLC is interesting so far, but god damn these enemies are ridiculous. Its like every other enemy is as strong as a major boss fight from the initial game. wtf.

Overall I've had a fun time but I was eventually getting bored with the sidequests. Like I said before I focused too much on doing those, my OCD kicked in whenever I saw them on the map. lol. I forgot to say, the sidequests are basically for leveling up. You could technically run through the entire main quest line, but as the main quest line continues it'll show the recommended level to continue. Basically thats where the sidequests come into play. You're only level 15 and the next main quest is recommended 20, do some side quests. I think theres as many side quests as there are but to give the game more diversity and fill in the map. The map is huge and its really interesting to explore.

I had a great time and the plot was amazing. I'm looking forward to a sequel.

I think it'll be Biden/Sanders and Trump will win re-election. Democrats seem to hate old white men unless its someone who is running on their values. Warren is too nuts to actually get the primary but she'll probably run with Biden as VP. I'm a democrat and I have no enthusiasm for either of them. Trump will win because of the same singular reason as last time. Television and endless free publicity. Ever since he ran for office, MSNBC, Fox News and CNN have all become "Trump TV". He has 3 dedicated channels reporting on everything about him and constantly broadcasting sound bites of him every 5-8 minutes 24 hours a day. MSNBC will have everyone hate watching him because they are pro democrat, Fox News will have everyone love watching him because they are pro republican, CNN gets all the viewers from both sides because MSNBC people want to see what CNN has to say about it, and Fox News people will hate watch CNN because Trump labels it as "fake news". Regardless, its 24/7 media coverage on 3 channels. Put any one of those channels on right now and within 5-8 minutes you will see Trump talk. And these 3 stations alone will want him to be president again because it gives them ratings.

Meanwhile democrats running for president are pandering to the ultra minority and want to focus on stupid crap like give illegal immigrants health insurance or make sure LGBT groups get bathroom rights or some shit. Focusing on things like that will never get them elected. And when they lose they'll blame the electoral college because they won the popular vote from hugely democratic states like NY and CA. Its just excuses. The electoral college has been in existence before we were even born. Its what needs to be won to become president and democrats are unwilling to go to swing states and actually reach across the aisle and compensate on their actual running points. Democrats need to run on making jobs, improving infrastructure, reducing medical expenses, reducing health care costs (health care and prescription costs was an issue for me before and after Obama care). And if democrats really want to win they could run on legalizing marijuana and classify it like alcohol. I personally don't care for marijuana, but if the states can sell it and tax the hell out of it to reduce the tax burden on property taxes then hell yes. The people already using are going to keep using regardless, might as well let the states take a chunk out of those profits. "Oh but its a gateway drug!" But oxycotin is given away for free by the federal government through medicare and medicaid prescriptions and then resold on the street for $50 a pill, but marijuana is the bad drug.

Bernie Sanders needs to stop already. Hes never going to be president and he needs to stop taking up everyone's time.

The US deficit will soar past the nearly 1.5 trillion it peaked at during the Obama years (its heading there now but never talked about in the news because it doesn't give them ratings). Republicans still wont care because its a republican in the office. But if a democrat wins, we'll hear nothing but the deficit and the need to reduce spending drastically for 4 years and that will be the entire legacy of a democrat president.

And onto other things..

I think the PS5 will sell huge if it has digital backwards compatibility and a 4k bluray player.

Xbox Series X will be a big contender because of its game pass & backwards compatibility.

Nintendo will announce a Switch 2.

Death Stranding 2 will be announced and will star some more Walking Dead cast. lmao.

5 hours ago, Myk JL said:

Also should I go back to #FF0000? Try #CC0000? Or is #990000 the best red?

I dunno.. maybe. I woke up not too long ago, but I switched over to the light theme to read your post easier. Or maybe I just need some eye drops.

I watched this over the weekend and I didn't know what to expect going into this since I still haven't played any of the games. It was a great series though. Alot of fantasy, action, some monsters. It was all enjoyable. The only thing that threw me off initially is the storytelling. Its all over the place at first with time lines, jumping forward and back like Lost.. until I realized everytime the show focused on a specific character its their specific timeline they are referencing. As the show goes back and forth some events are repeated except in the perspective of a different character leading up to the end of season 1 where all the character's stories converge. Season 2 shouldn't be as convoluted and should be more straight forward. Overall its basically every character's origin story all told simultaneously. And it worked well because of how the different characters overlap with each other's stories at different points in time. I thought it was extremely well done.

Lmao! I thought this season was slow and almost pointless.  It was like a repeat of the first season. Ship stranded on a planet, gotta find a way back into space, finally get back only to find out everyone is still stranded, now find a way to leave the solar system, showing the robinsons constantly getting into some life or death situation that usually they themselves created and somehow making it all work. Its basically the same overall plot of season 1 except with more robots and still no robot lore.

The only thing they accomplished was setting up season 3 and having a crap load of kids which is dumb because netflix probably wont start filming the next season for another year and all those kids will now be teenagers in season 3.  Like how they had to time skip 7 months because the 3 robinson kids all grew up, especially Will growing an extra 2 feet in height.  

I loved this show. Its everything I want out of a star wars series. Action, adventure, good plot, acting, cast, scifi, great CG, etc. It really emphasizes that Star Wars is a massive property and a series focused on a random unknown new character, thats not a jedi, can completely captivate an audience. Well done Disney!

I loved that last ep with the stormtroopers shooting.  

I watched this yesterday. I was expecting a hot mess, but honestly this movie was much better than I thought it would be. Sure it had alot of its own issues, but it was significantly better than TLJ.

5 years since I made this post I finally got around to watching Star Wars Rebels on Disney+. I only watched the first 3-4 episodes of season 1 when it first came out and I lost interest at the time. Turns out I needed to stick with it. This show is solid. I'm on season 4 now. This is honestly a must watch for Star Wars Fans and is easily on par with the Clone Wars series. Its basically a sequel to Clone Wars. The first season is a bit kiddish, especially the first handful of eps which is why I must have dropped it initially, but it grew up fast. The multiple plot lines fill in alot of gaps created by the prequel movies and the clone wars series. Maul is in this too and we get to see what happens with him after the events of the clone wars series. Hell.. everyone is in this show at some point. Season 2 had a Vader battle that was epic. If you haven't watched Clone Wars you'll be at a disadvantage because of the characters that are referenced in it, or are straight up in this series... Like Ashoka and Rex from the 501st. Leia, Mon Mothma, and others all show up at some point. Saul from the Rogue Squadron movie is in this. And all the voice acting is great with many celebrity voices and VAs from clone wars reprising their roles. And the best part.. Thrawn is in this. And interdictor cruisers are cannon. Why the f*ck didn't the first order have these in the movie? It would have completely prevented the Holdo suicide attack.

I could go on about this series, I'm that impressed. This show is great. Alot of mandalorian content too since quite a few eps take place on Mandalor. If you have Disney+ watch Clone Wars first and then Rebels.. amazing series. Both start off slow, but become epic.

Thats a nice piece of hardware. I hope that screen goes into hibernation or that battery will get sucked way too fast. But yeah.. why now? All these years later. The only thing I can think is the PS5 will have backwards compatability with PS4 controllers, and the PS5 controllers will have this feature by default? It could be sony's way of letting people upgrade their existing controllers for the new console so they're not missing out on features exclusive to the PS5 controllers.

😂😂😂

I think its a load of crap that PSNow streaming service from Sony offers streaming games from PS2, PS3 & PS4 and its all playable on PS4 or PC, but I can't play my own digitally purchased PS3 games on my PS4 unless I buy a monthly subscription to PSNow because its the only way to access those titles on the PS4. Even if Sony doesn't have backwards compatibility available thru hardware, the digital library aspect of it is already in place. They could enable the digitally purchased games for our accounts via PSNow instead of blocking them via hardware and yet another subscription service but I doubt they'll do that either. I could care less about physical disk backwards compatibility tho. I definitely understand the hardware limitations that can come with having a specific laser for PS2 games in a disk drive, but digital games should be a standard carryover at this point imo.

I'm planning on buying a PS5 but not at launch. I love PC gaming, but my ps4 has been more stable over the last year. I get better quality on my PC, but the convenience of turning a game on and playing without ever having to worry about a crash and instantly playing with friends and family is great for me. Ps4 already has some keyboard and mouse support for some games and I bet ps5 will also which will be a nice bonus. I just need to buy a lap desk to have my wireless keyboard and mouse to sit on while I recline on my couch and I'll be set. Ps4 should also be a 4k blu ray player which I still need so instead of buying one of those separate I'll put that money towards the ps5.

That Xbox series X is a dumb name. Lol. The design doesn't bother me. It could be another dongle hanging off the tv for all I care. It has sparked a few funny memes tho.

One thing I really like about the new xbox series x is the backwards compatibility with all previous console releases. All consoles need this going forward, period. I want the ps5 announcement to say full backwards compatibility with all consoles and digital purchases. I think it's utter bullshit that I can log on to my sony account online, see every digital purchase I've ever made, but I'm locked out from playing all these games because they're only available on a specific piece of hardware that is registered to my account. Imagine if steam locked your PC game purchases to the specific PC you purchased then to initially play on. You can play this game only on your main PC, but not my laptop. I don't think so. Fuck that. But meanwhile sony has been doing that for years. ps5 needs to let me play my digital ps3 and ps4 games. There is no reason why that cannot be possible.

It looks ok, but it's all kids. Ehhhhhhhhh.

I don't know what is going on in this movie, but I'm intrigued.

Wonder Woman looks bad ass.  I wonder how the hell they got Steve Trevor back from the dead..

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/cbs-viacom-merger-finalized-star-trek

All the star trek rights will now belong to a single company again. After the TNG movies, the rights were split for some reason when the company broke apart. It meant all movies could no longer be considered canon for what was established. That's why the movie reboot years ago had to be a reboot in an altered time line. Now it'll all be one company again. We might be getting new star trek movies again in a few years.

After a long time, I finally put the themes back up. There was a black friday sale and I got the themes renewed at 50% off which was a nice bonus. I'll update the background images at some point.

Me too. I've heard nothing but good things about it.

I'm surprised a new Half Life is going to be VR only. I'd be upset about that, but I still haven't even finished Half-Life 2. XD Maybe by the time I finish it, this new Half-Life will have a non-VR port available.

I noticed the majority of the reviews are like... "this game isn't for everyone." Jim Sterling and Angry Joe seem to have reviews that seem more honest about the gameplay than die hard Kojima fans. Based on their reviews I'll pass on playing this. To the people that enjoy it, go for it and have fun.

Oh, and I thought the Conan O'Brien bit was literally a joke for his show. I had no idea he was actually in this game as a NPC. wtf.