Coelacanth

I can’t believe I blanked on them in my own reply, but to piggyback off your Restoration Project nomination: the Talking Heads Addon and Talking Heads Actually Talk Mod for Fallout 2 Restoration Project (updated) are both absolutely insane, and breath some new life into the game while seamlessly slotting in next to the existing art and voice acting.

After being reminded of it by suggesting it to someone else on Lemmy I’ve been re-watching Kieślowski’s Dekalog. Been doing an episode a day and have seen four so far. They really are just masterpieces. I’d almost forgotten how uncomfortable episode 4 was (in a good way), but it’s impossible to forget just how much humanity Kieślowski is able to capture and put on display. Some really gorgeous shots and visual symbolism too, mixed into the fascinating stories that always pose questions and never provide any answers. For a series about the ten commandments there is a complete lack of moralising, he only ever presents you with dilemmas and lets you draw your own conclusions. Phenomenal series.

Does this really belong in Internet Funeral? I come here for surrealism and absurdist art, not life coaching.

Splinter Cell was primarily an Xbox franchise, so if you’ve got an Xbox of any kind that’s probably your best bet, assuming they’re still for sale. I believe they were all developed for Xbox and ported to other platforms. For Chaos Theory in specific though the PC port was pretty good, so if you don’t it’s not a big problem. Possibly some controller issues that need a fan fix? Though on the plus side you can find a wide-screen fix mod for modern resolutions. The first two games had worse ports, if I remember right. And the Playstation and GameCube ports were pretty universally bad I think, for all the games.

The one where the console version is really important is Double Agent, but that is a whole other can of complicated worms, because then it wasn’t just the matter of bad ports - they released two completely different games with different mechanics, levels and story executions (albeit the same overall plot).

I want to highlight two mod makers, instead of single mods. lStewieAl and WallSoGB for their efforts unfucking New Vegas. Being forced to pick a single effort, the engine optimizations is probably the most impressive. Honorable mention to all the various script extenders that make so many fantastic mods possible in the first place.

This would have been my suggestion as well. Cool instance, surely would be perfect for this.

The first couple games are really good stealth games, highly recommended. There is not really an overarching story between games, so if you’re just looking to dip your toes into the series I’d start with Chaos Theory. Honestly, if you’re into stealth games you should really play it like, right now. I consider it an all-time great.

After Double Agent the series started going into a more bland action style as Ubisoft felt stealth games were too niche I guess. Never played Conviction or Blacklist but as I said, I heard good things about the co-op in the latter so it’s on my list to try. I don’t really have a good candidate to play co-op with at the moment though, so it’s on indefinite hold.

The John Oliver bit about the sound of Trump vs Drumpf was an alright punchline to a show ten years ago, before even the first installment of this madness. Those were simpler times, though, and fundamentally I agree with you.

Cooperative stealth is an interesting genre, not that well represented either. Did you ever play a Splinter Cell game with your friend? The earlier games had wholesale co-op campaigns, and I’ve heard really good things about the co-op in Blacklist too, though I never played that one myself.

I can vouch for that, Belgian fries are by far the superior kind. In a way I’m glad I don’t live there or I’d have the circumference of a small planet by now.

I think the confusion stems from some people assuming an implied “turn up [the temperature of] the AC”.

I have no idea how AC2 holds up, honestly. I’ve never replayed it and it was my first game in the series - I didn’t own a Playstation when the first one came out so I only experienced it through being over at a friend’s house and watching him play it, occasionally taking turns for missions. Playing AC2 was an incredible experience back when it released and I’m full of fond memories, but I don’t know how well it’s aged. It’s probably a less impactful experience now than it was 15 years ago.

It’s mostly a holdover from the early days of the internet I think. I remember in the olden days when Wikipedia was fairly new, and the amount of contributors back then were much smaller and the rigorousness with which sources was provided was also completely different. I was in what, middle school back then, and every teacher would remind us for every assignment: “remember that Wikipedia is not an admissible source”. I think the reputation remains from those days, basically. In today’s day and age I consider Wikipedia a fairly reliable source, honestly.

I really like Unity. I’ll always have a special nostalgic feeling about the Ezio saga that makes me hold them in especially high regard, but even so Unity is probably my favourite to play. Revolutionary Paris is an amazing setting and it’s so beautifully realised too, and the parkour system with free run up/down and all the myriad animations lets you do some of the most slick things in the entire AC series if you get good at it. I’ve linked AC Unity choreography before, but just look at what people can do when they’re good at this game.

I’m so torn on the subject of a VI remake. On the one hand, it tickles my brain to think of what it would be like if given the full treatment à la VII Remake, but on the other hand I consider the game pretty much perfect as-is and don’t want it sullied.

That was my biggest gripe watching the Luke Stephens video on it as well. The announcement trailer looked great, why the hard pivot into an oversaturated mushroom kingdom aesthetic? Especially since it sounds like the actual game is pretty solid, beyond technical issues (that may or maybe fixed by now with a day 1 patch).