The Mind Of OverlordTomala
Gaming

I’m The Phantom Pain in everyone’s backside.

I don’t even.

Benn continuing to progress through The Phantom Pain, so far I haven’t been a complete failure at it, and I haven’t modded my game to cheat so there is that. In fact apart from stealth I’m really good at outrunning bears, horses and other animals, and depending on my mood punching my enemies into a bloody mist. What I’m NOT good at is smoking cigars.

Could never get the hang of smoking.

I should look up instructions for replacing the cigars with watermelons as I find those to be much more soothing. :melon:

I think I’ll take a break from it, now that I’m getting the hang of modding I feel like I can step back and look at something else to do.

Gaming2

Sunday Evening Open Thread

Every so often Yutram and I will gather together to watch the internet together in one place, our cinema. As per tradition once we’re done doing most if not all of our viewing duties we will wreck the place, and by that I mean I ragdoll myself and Yutram moves stuff around. Apparently I thought sitting on a watermelon would make it hatch into… something.

And every so often there is a random ritual that must be performed. In this case we wished good luck melons to the Enchantress Motifa.

Of course, before all of this I was having fun running around and creating fun sleepovers in MGSV, I had my R&D team get on some extremely important gear for my horse.

Look at my horse, my horse is amazing.

The Metal Gear Series is serious business yo. :melon:

Gaming

OMG METAL GEAR MODS

I’ve mainly been looking at mods for MGSV today. It’s been awhile since I last looked into the modding scene but browsing the Nexus gives me some fun results to play with, as well as useful. Like removing the parade of splash screens you have to skip through before getting to the menu. :zorak: Sadly I haven’t found any watermelon based mods yet, but I think I’m off to a good start. I also installed a really brutal CQC mod that causes your enemies to explode blood upon punching them, and of course a particular model swap.

This was brought to my attention by a certain someone (you know who you are :trollface: ) and of course by law I am required to install these types of mods. For the melons told me so. :melon: That said I’ve progressed a bit lately, already on my first mission after being re-introduced to Mother Base. My mission: Kill a guy. I’ve already done it a couple times, but I keep having to start over because I keep getting sighted and I want to do it as perfectly as I can. I did find a mod that lets you fulton recover basically every person you mark on a base, but that seems a bit overkill for my first playthrough. :v:

I’ve also found some mods for Metal Gear Rising, including a weaponless mod and a tweak to run the game above 1080p. So at some point I’ll have to replay it, I’ve contemplated it for awhile now. Considering MGR takes place in the year 2018 and features someone who wants to Make America Great Again I feel that I’m required to partake once again… eventually. :melon:

Gaming

I might have to consider the new Final Fantasy

As much as I like the game and character designs of the Final Fantasy games I can’t really say I’ve ever really been interested in them. This release of the new Final Fantasy XV for Windows though has me intrigued, they had me at mod support and Half Life 2 Cosplay, now THAT’S a Gorgeous Freeman. :trollface:

Are you fucking serious? / Gaming2

Are save slots a lucrative business?

I’ll admit, like I said the other night I didn’t get to experience much of Metal Gear Survive, though I did like it enough to consider buying it down the road perhaps during a sale… Mainly because of my scheduling preventing me from properly enjoying multiplayer matches and the microtransactions. Well, Konami has found another thing to charge people for, and it isn’t even a lootcrate? Want an extra save slot? It’ll cost ya.

Oh, Konami. We already knew that Metal Gear Survive would include microtransactions, but folks who picked up a copy the game yesterday have discovered Konami has come up with a creative new way to nickel-and-dime their customers. It seems Metal Gear Survive only comes with a single free save slot – if you want a second one you’ll have to pony up a significant chunk of extra cash.

I’ll probably buy it still in the future should the price be right and the planets align so that I can enjoy multiplayer sessions more often again, perhaps around that time the full game will come in its own pack… Kinda like a full game. :trollface: Besides, I still have a large collection of games to finish, with no microtransactions. :v:

On that note I have a hypothetical question: If I were to stream a particular Metal Gear game, what one would be the most interesting to start with and why? At this point I have access to all the games. :happy:

Gaming / Politics2

I need covfefe! 61!

This video pretty much nails what I’ve been thinking since 2017. The voice of Roy Campbell (The Colonel in the Metal Gear Solid series) read a snippet of the latest indictment provided by Robert Mueller, as if it were a mission briefing for good ol Solid Snake himself.

It’s kinda funny when you think about it. Metal Gear Solid 2 was a game about how people could easily be controlled by particular information sources and made to feel passionate no matter how right or wrong they are about it (it also had a president that grabbed your crotch because you looked a little too feminine), exactly what we’re going through right now. We have people chanting fake news and only accepting one source as gospel, and if you even so much as try to debunk anything they’ll either try to move the goalpost or retreat to their happy little safe spaces where they can continue to echo whatever they want to believe. This article is a fine example of such a person.

Florine Gruen Goldfarb loves America. She is a real, down-home patriot. So much so that she unwittingly promoted Russian-coordinated events on Facebook in support of Donald Trump. Goldfarb, who runs the Team Trump Broward County Facebook page, was one of the 53 percent of white women who backed Trump in 2016 and likely didn’t need Russia’s help to do it. But CNN reports that she did, in fact, promote pro-Trump events that were encouraged by Russian trolls on Facebook.

These people call themselves patriots, while not caring if the Russians were involved in the 2016 election… To me a real patriot is someone who serves their country. If you’re willing to die for your country, then to me you’re a true fucking patriot. People like her ruin the word patriot for the people who actually deserve to be called as such, and that sickens me to no end.

Anyways, in light of this are we all honorary Metal Gear characters now? O_o

Technology

How many licks does it take to get to the center of UWP?

Five, apparently there are five layers that protect a UWP (Universal Windows Platform) application from being tampered with, or that would be the case if it wasn’t finally hacked by a group calling themselves CODEX. In this case they cracked Zoo Tycoon Ultimate Animal Collection, with some interesting instructions and insight.

CODEX says it’s important that the game isn’t allowed to communicate with the Internet so the group advises users to block the game’s executable in their firewall.

While that’s not a particularly unusual instruction, CODEX did reveal that various layers of protection had to be bypassed to make the game work. They’re listed by the group as MSStore, UWP, EAppX, XBLive, and Arxan, the latter being an anti-tamper system

I remember when UWP was first launched… There were hardcore fanboys proclaiming that the days of the exe were numbered. Then the drawbacks were noted, like not being able to mod, run a framerate counter, etc Even if you don’t own all of your games on Steam you could still purchase them from other places and run them via Steam if you wanted to take screenshots or use your Steam Controller. UWP was only designed for the diehard Microsoft user, and it pretty much stayed that way.

Seeing how there are five layers running its no wonder you couldn’t inject overlays or anything into their programs. Their DRM is a fucking onion. I can understand companies wanting to protect their products from theft or tampering, but things like UWP consoltize gaming even moreso. If someone wants to use a frame counter, or their favorite video capture program, or run their favorite controller with a particular program they purchased they should have the right to do so (this excludes cheating of course :trollface: ). This overboard DRM does more harm than good for consumers IMO, and while I won’t pirate the game they mentioned I do hope to hear more about the UWP platform crumbling like bleu cheese. :zorak:

Gaming

Tomb Raider Barbie is best Barbie

My fellow Tomb Raiders! There is now a Tomb Raiding Barbie, much wow.

Look at that muscle definition, articulating arms and wrist, that look of blank focus. I never thought I’d see the day, if I were much younger I would have had this for my collection. Probably would have stacked all 47 of my other Barbie’s and 3 Ken’s into some tomb shape and let Lara fight it out with my other toys.

Yes, I had Barbies. I was one of those odd kids that played with actual toys when I wasn’t slaughtering demons on Phobos. :zorak: