Seattleite

Playing Dark Souls and wondering why people think this game is so incredibly hard. All I see if how incredibly deep, dark, melancholy and atmospheric it is. Three times now the game has made me feel genuinely sorry for something I had to do in order to progress. In other words, I see why people love it, but not why they hate it.

Awesome.

Can I choose to do neither?

Crowbar or knife?

They're still rifle rounds, and can kill with repeated hits, rather than just doing nothing like pistol bullets. It's not exactly realistic for soldiers to drop that quickly, but more so than soldiers in full body armor getting taken down by an MP5.

I didn't say it wasn't a step up, I just said it still wasn't realistic. Especially since the bullets are going to fail pretty spectacularly to penetrate into the chest because of the boron carbide trauma plates.

Plus, he typically shoots his enemies a lot, and isn't most hard body armor only designed to stop a few hits?

A few hits from something bigger, but from a 5.56, there just isn't enough damage being done. Especially since, believe it or not, the *shards* of broken boron carbide plates will stop a 5.56. It just isn't big enough, the bullet can't withstand the impact at all. A ten-second Google search will turn up civilian-legal plates that will hold up to a dozen hits.

Sometimes, but not always. Half-Life doesn't render specifically where the bullet hit, so for all we know Freeman can be getting some lucky hits in the FM-verse.

You can see the inexplicable tracers, and where his gun is generally pointing.

Why? They're alien hornets. We don't know how they work.

We know they'd have to pierce, chew or claw through kevlar and chainmail to penetrate the armour of the marines. At their speed and size that's simply not possible.

They don't specifically home in one the chest IIRC, they just home in anywhere. They might just home in on the arms or neck or legs. Also, even if they do that in-game, there's no guarantee that they always have to home in on the chest in-universe.

Except we do see them homing in specifically for the chest. Both in-game and in Freeman's Mind, they home in on the chest.

I know that the game classifies it as electrical damage, I'm just saying that in light of later games, it may have been retconned into something else.

And you're against accepting it as electricity and chocking the rest up to their religion? That's how I've been handling it. Besides, for all we know, the electricity is flowing out from the targets to them, which would explain everything you mentioned and still do plenty of damage.

Their tail strike is pretty disproportionately powerful as well. It can launch and gib people in game, so I guess bullsquids are really, really strong. I'll never know how the ones in On A Rail managed to slaughter so many troops alone though.

The gibbing is just a gameplay mechanic that wasn't handled right, you can gib somebody with pretty ridiculous weapons in-game and we can't use it as an example.

It should also be pointed out that it has more health than an Abrams tank in game...

You know, I didn't even know it was vulnerable until I started modding Half-Life.

I think it's very plausible that the thornets could do what they're shown to do when you take into account that we know so little about them. They're probably super durable and super poisonous. Not exactly an ideal weapon, but effective enough here.

Except it's just not physically possible for something that small and that light to penetrate layers of kevlar and chainmail.

Grunts and Vorts are also shown punching right through steel doors and concrete, so I have no doubt they could decapitate a human with a strike.

Okay, two flaws with this. One is that Black Mesa falls apart on its own so that's not as impressive as you think, two is that a human neck is pretty obscenely durable so that would take a lot more than you think. Granted, they are likely very strong and do plenty of damage, I certainly gave them a lot of power in my mod, but it seems unlikely they're *that* strong.

Interesting. I'll check it out. But again, I think you might be underestimating the thornets a bit in terms of pure damage.

For the record, I know it says it works in Source and it does partially, but the original Half-Life was better than the incredibly lazy remake (in terms of gameplay features, at least) because when they remade it the new version lacked GoldSrc-exclusive features and didn't add any new ones. It turned out to be much better for modding, so if you have the GoldSrc version use that. Or, better yet, play my mod of Black Mesa, which actually makes use of Source's new features.

Really, really old, I know, but...

 

I've found it easier to just assume that, in the "Freeman's Mind universe", the "MP5s" are actually HK53s, and Freeman just never noticed the difference since they look similar and he knows nothing about guns. That fixes the "why do the soldiers fold after only a few shots?" plot hole nicely enough.

Except now you're using a gun that could only stop a man who was sedated beforehand, and is still easily defeated by hard armour. The tiny 5.56mm bullets can, and will, be shattered into splinters by a hard armour plate without penetrating it. And there is hard plates of boron carbide in all military vests, protecting the chest and in particular the heart. Guess what the only part of the chest where a 5.56mm round can actually stop a man is? Oh, right, the heart. Also the only part of the chest where a medic can't do shit to save you if you get hit.

As for them being taken down by 9mm pistols and buckshot spewing shotguns... I dunno. I'll assume he's usually lucky enough to hit the face.

The footage says otherwise.

Are you saying you think the soldiers should be immune to the alien weaponry as well? Or at least Vortigaunt attacks?

Well, let's break it all down piece by piece.

At least the thornets can possibly penetrate their armor or just poison them via their unarmored parts.

To the former, "Not a hope in hell." and to the latter "It homes in on the chest, WHAT unarmored parts?"

The Vortigaunts may not even be throwing electricity at all now that I think about it. It's green, and Vorts in HL2 yell "Empower us!" or "Give us your essence!" in Half-Life 2, and the playable Vorts in Decay can heal themselves by damaging others. It might just be some pseudo-magical life draining beam that the HEV suit was specifically designed to protect against...

Unlikely, given that the game registers it as electrical damage. And electricity can totally be green, if the air contains the right chemicals and the bolt the right energy. (There's a right energy level for every chemical composition.) Basically, the more energetic the bolt the more blue-shifted the resultant light, though the centre of the bolt will always look white. All green means is it's more energetic than yellow electricity and less energetic than blue electricity.

As for the damage it does to targets, it should be one of only two weapons of the alien military capable of hurting human soldiers that isn't a melee weapon. (The vortigaunt claws and grunt melee could do it through blunt trauma.) An instant kill it likely is not, but the heat and blast from the electricity hitting their armour would likely stun them and cause considerable lung trauma, so a few consecutive shots would be fatal.

As for the others:

Headcrab:

Useless, no way a creature that size can bite hard enough to breach the helmet. Only the marines with berets are in any danger, and even then only if they let it get to their head. In fact, headcrabs in general should be useless. They'd never manage to latch on to somebody's head and if they did they'd be shifted off by the person's reflexes before they could bite, then killed barehanded in all of a second.

Houndeye:

Could injure them, possibly seriously, but it seems unlikely since the houndeye lets out that blast without hurting itself that it could have that kind of power and it's more likely to just knock the wind out of them then get shot a dozen times.

Bullsquid:

The bite could be harmful, maybe. But the poison spit would be unlikely to do anything since these troops are specifically meant to combat CBRN threats and their armour would likely be impermeable. Except for the idiots not wearing their helmets, they're just generally screwed.

Gargantua:

The marines are screwed if this thing attacks them. The fire might not kill them right away, it could easily take a while to bring them to a stop, but that just makes it an even more horrific way to go, and the melee attacks are so damned powerful there's no way they're surviving it.

Tentacle:

Ditto.

You know, I did make a mod that shows how I think it would work... Or at least is a rough approximation of it as well as the game can do it, and I put links up to it in the Valve games section of the site.

Ask BTG how he deals with it.

If you were in congress, and had to either serve the interests of the corporations at the expense of the people (often the expense of their lives) or never serve in congress ever again?

I am SO tired of people using me and treating me like shit. I get enough of that at work, I do NOT need it in my social life.

You've already got it.

I wish for a perfect singing voice, so people wouldn't mind me singing along to my headphones anymore.

Do it anyway. I am not incapable of self-sacrifice.

If you lost all channels that showed any show but 1980s sitcoms? (Different Strokes, Growing Pains, Golden Girls, etcetera.)

Freedom, is that even a question?

The inability to get angry, or the inability to ever calm down? (Remembering that anger is an essential emotion.)

Banned for dragging that crap into this game. I am aware of the hypocrisy.

No, because there has never been such a period.

Remember when Family Guy was good?

Banned because running gags still have to be funny and that one just isn't.

Banned for thinking that's funny.

Hair. I can live without my hair, need my teeth.

Caffeine or alcohol? (I'm having both. A cheaper Irish creamer than I usually have, but Irish coffee is fantastic.)

Nope. But do you remember when it was a completely stable dictatorship?

Recovering from yesterday. So, after I left the centre on my most generally successful day in years, I was thrilled. I immediately went to handle a minor errand instead of going straight home, following Apple Maps, mistake one, with a friend in tow, on foot, in order to utilize that blissful energy for a practical end. We got a bit lost, but I told him, frankly and honestly, that nothing was going to ruin my mood, mistake two. Mother nature then spent the next several hours trying to prove me wrong, as it started pouring less than an hour later. And I mean POURING. It sounded and looked like we were at the base of Niagara Falls in a thunderstorm. And did I mention I was presently fifty kilometres from home? I found the whole thing damned funny. So we hopped on a bus to the Kirkland TC, and then found out that none of the buses there went north and we were stuck. About this point I said, loud enough to get a response from some people we were passing, "I just had to tempt fate, didn't I? I said, nice and loud so mother nature could hear me, that nothing was going to ruin my mood. And dammit, I'm sticking to it." So, he called his dad (now taking shelter since we were both 100% thoroughly soaked), and got a no on being picked up because we were, quote, "an hour away". Alright, no buses taking us north towards home, I boldly declared we thus must go south! And south we went, to the Bellevue transit centre, to finally catch a bus north that said it went to Everett, just across a (10km long) trestle bridge (plus another 10km of roadways, half of which we'd have to walk while it was raining cats and dogs) from home. Then we got left in Lynwood because at that hour the 535 stops there apparently instead of going to Everett like it normally does. We finally got a ride home from there, but I tell you if we had to take the two busses and the long walk to get home it looked like we'd have to... It STILL wouldn't have ruined my mood.

Unpacking from an incredibly dull family gathering in bumfuck nowhere. The most interesting thing there was my brother playing Dark Souls and... Actually making progress, because it's NOT as hard as people say it is.

@ the Fox News reply: You obviously didn't understand what the implication was in my post... The government increased the minimum limit to what they said a single person could have and leave the poverty mark with, without having a second job... Problem was, that rate would've worked 15 years prior, but in modern times it doesn't even come close to pulling people past the poverty mark. The government tried to force companies to pay their employees more, but only 0.1% of companies were paying below that to begin with, so there really was no change. The post had absolutely nothing to do with trickle economics (which only works if the rich are willing to pay for more stuff, and not just trying to hoard money like most right now do) but everything to do with the government's total incompetence when it comes to doing anything to improve people's lives.

That actually sounded reasonable... But YOU said it. So either I'm going crazy or you're going... Un-Crazy. Except for one thing. You have still defended a news source that vehemently supports, as one of their primary talking points, something even you think is insane. So now I have to ask you: Why?

Anyway, OT: Why yes, I do remember that. That's why I'm still subscribed to some old-school youtubers like Nigahiga, who started for the comedy alone and haven't changed even though they're getting paid more.

Remember when the forum didn't see a huge post rate drop just because one member was gone for a few days?

Jehovah's Witnesses. At my door. Every day. These assholes just won't take "No" for an answer. Politely refusing just encouraged them, slamming the door in their face (and locking it) didn't work, and now I'm running out of clever ways to insult them. I even told one I had a number he can call... And it was the number for Dignitas. And yet, they're still coming. I'm considering mining my front lawn.

Is still one of only two moderators I have ever seen online, which I think is a good number. That, and I've never seen her abuse that position which in my experience is extraordinary and I like that. Also, pink font. Pink. Font. I can go on, but I think I was only supposed to do one.

Banned because... Well, fair enough, but fuck it. Banned anyway.

Sorry, I still don't like the new Star Trek movies. They abandoned the older series' philosophical and moral exploration, yes I'm aware that wasn't constant then either but at least it happened, in favour of "COOL SPACE ADVENTURE, YAY!" and reminding me of them just makes me want to go back and watch some TNG. So I'm rating it 4/10. That number will continue to sink.

Certainly keeps me entertained, whether he means to or not.

(I'll explain it. Fox News, which you have previously defended, claims that not paying workers jack shit is good for the economy, because allowing the tiny number of wealthy elitist oligarchs to hoard all their money will lead to it creating jobs as they buy things to serve their needs, despite they spending much less of the money they receive than would be spent if it was spread across a larger pool or people. It's called trickle-down economics, it's a retarded idea, and it's the primary economic talking-point of a news source you have defended and on every other issue has sided with. I was surprised to see you saying something that was not in line with their retarded way of thinking, because it hasn't happened before, and it's something quite major too.)

(Also, I'm not the one taking things out of context, or using straw-man arguments. YOU are.)

Oh, yes, I do. Except now they're still designed to be fun, just for a very dumb group of people with no intelligence or self-awareness that needs the game set in a hallway with dangling christmas lights overhead to direct them in case they get distracted by an overly decorative floor tile. Oh, and for propaganda, of course. It's pretty easy to see through crap like Warfighter and America's Army.

Hey, remember when propaganda in video games was a rarity?