#frontier co-op

[pandora-flora-fauna]

Is anyone interested in playing Frontiers of Pandora together? I haven’t played in a week and really need to get back into it! I’m UK based so preferably someone with a matching timezone but I don’t mind.

[zrinathesarentu]

Photo dump of my best friends Sarentu!

[antirepurp]

i am soooo objective about video games haha i love forming my opinions on them based on things like the gameplay and performance and their cohesiveness as a piece of art and not stuff like how they finally let my favorite voice actor do real voice acting instead of soulless one-liners and how the fundamental vision behind the narrative was something captivating and interesting and how they tried to do a lot of cool and fun little things in the form of minigames and cute callbacks and how easily i can mod my own 3d models into the game and -

[skxawngonearth]

Thoughts on the game rn (spoilers)

To preface this, I generally love Frontiers with all of my heart. However, with the pink glasses being mostly gone, I'd like to voice my main "problems" with the game now.

It's been the first game since Horizon which made me actual feel for not only the characters, but the world you're in in general. I legit cried when the arches were destroyed, the fate of the Sarentu was revealed.

And I think that's what the game did extremely well: actually putting us (the player) in gut-wrenching scenarios, which most never experienced in RL. Sure, some cutscenes could've been fleshed out more (tbh I was a bit disappointed from the final battle). But in general, the cutscenes actually give us not only story input, but also emotional value (eg Zomey's death or the pouchers storage).

However, once you've finished the main story and all quests, it does feel, well, empty. Kukulope's shop/errands do help with that a bit, though while I understand why they reset her only once per week, her only offering 3 items per round isn't really helping with occupying yourself. (I know it's too early to complain about this since we're getting 2 DLCs this year which will might change the endgame experience once out)

Though the matter which frustrates me more at the moment (and others I'm sure), are the unattended bugs. The constant reset/change of gear, unable to complete/start quests, and more are just annoying at this point. It's been almost 8 weeks since the release, and aside from the first patch there's been no further support from Ubisoft as far as I'm aware.

And that's a major problem in my opinion. The initial hype starts to wear off, and although Ubisoft (hopefully) is focusing on the DLCs, they should do the least minimum of eliminating known bugs. Especially after they made pre-order exclusive material avaiable for everyone (I know, it's just skins, I know it's Ubisoft and I should've known better, but it still sucks for those affected).

This turned more into a rant but I'd love to hear your opinions on the matter!

[hummus-png]

[baudouinette]

was finally able to purchase Frontiers of Pandora, truly my dream game since I was a 10 year old kid in 2009!!! I’m so sad that I’m late to the party (I was biting my nails in frustration because I only had an Xbox one), but I first had to save up money for a PC that I couldn’t afford anyway and after buying it I was broke again.

If anyone else still plays and would like to co-op let me know!!! I’m shy but it’d be cool to try it with someone else :) and my brother can’t play with me because his PC isn’t powerful enough :(

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 5/21/2024

get a load of this cat

listening

one of my favorite bands, Joywave, dropped a new album last week! it is not my favorite album of theirs but so it goes. perhaps it needs more time to grow on me. Sleepytime Fantasy kicks off my favorite section of the album. video game enchanted ice cave dream sequence music.

i must stay true to my own rules for this series (not a rec series, genuinely what i've been into the most this week) and the song that's been on loop all week is a genshin impact character's theme music (punchy wolf-coded ice cop who is the duke of the prison he. runs? administers? don't worry about it). unfortunately a bop. the character music lately has been a lot more modern and experimental than i expected? this one has a police siren drop

-

reading

thank you mackintosh.

i really, really enjoyed Trouble And Her Friends by Melissa Scott (LAMBDA award winner 1995)! @delta-orionis and i frequently ask ourselves "what if neuromancer was good?" and this scratches that itch for me. it is often difficult for me to take neuromancer's protagonist henry seriously, but this book features a pair of extremely practical dykes. it opens on the passing of a new american law criminalizing big swathes of online activity, passed despite a presidential veto. description from amazon

Less than a hundred years from now, the forces of law and order crack down on the world of the computer nets. The hip, noir adventurers who get by on wit, bravado, and drugs, and haunt the virtual worlds of the Shadows of cyberspace, are up against the encroachments of civilization. It's time to adapt or die. India Carless, alias Trouble, got out ahead of the feds and settled down to run a small network for an artist's co-op. Now someone has taken her name and begun to use it for criminal hacking. So Trouble returns. Once the fastest gun on the electronic frontier, she had tried to retire-but has been called out for one last fight. And it's a killer.

this startled me by how fun and competent it is! i tried reading one of the author's books last year (Dreamships) and had a miserable time with the pacing and flow of information. there are echoes of the pacing issues i had with the last book-- this is a nearly four hundred page hardcover, we have a lot of Next Locations to go to, and we are going to take our fucking time getting there. a road trip book, rather than a destination book. Scott has gotten way way better at fleshing out those locations— an artists' co-op has their skylights set to amber to hide the wear and tear on everything in their central hangout space when the feds show up. i also connected with the inciting incident way more-- someone stealing a female hacker’s name and style is instantly relatable. i am riding shotgun with Trouble. i am ready to throw down with her.

it's a very physical book in many ways, bc it has three brief sex scenes, is very concerned with sensuality in both senses of the word, and overall it's like the background in an anime that’s full of dials and buttons and little blinky lights. written in 1994, fascjnating how much concepts of VR and sensory inputs have not changed, but everyone still has the equivalent of an enormous old school desktop and giant CRT monitors set up. everyone is constantly lugging around so much physical tech. the stuff that makes you better at hacking in the net is quick reactions to VR sensations, the only way to get that cutting edge sensation is to get a physical chip or “worm” in your head, and the only people who do that are the core outcasts and freaks of the internet (the gays, the women, the people of color, the all three, presumably the furries as well). from that day to this…

there's an interesting contrast between Trouble and her old partner Cerise stalking the virtual reality bazaars/being queens of the BBS undergrounds, and the danger they feel and face when moving about in the real world. some reviewers are very cranky about how negotiations on and offline feel the same but i did not feel this particular quibble. communication is communication. it is known both on and offline that they're 1) women and 2) lesbians. they're in less physical danger online but slurs can still happen no matter where they are. also, i am well used to the necessity of having to posture and peacock and be kind of a bitch to establish myself in order to get anything done in coding/hardware scenes, which is something i don't think any of the male reviewers of the day ever had to think about.

some cowboy shit goes down at the end that had me hooting and hollering, and Scott handled the hacking scenes in an interesting way-- a sort of abstracted duel? terrific "fight" scenes. very interesting at how she will move things around in order to treat scenes in ways she's good at-- like establishing very grounded locations that feel real, physical sensations, and fight scenes-- instead of just kind of slogging through a very surface level high-overview travelogue like in her last book. ive been stuck on a fic chapter for like four years and this is making me think about doing it the fun way instead of the way i thought it should be done. this may be obvious but i am an amateur and more importantly an idiot.

this was a $6/1 book special last year at one of my favorite thrift stores, a religious shop with the absolute worst vibes in the greater houston area but some of the best stuff

-

watching

Five Dolls For An August Moon (1970, dir. Brava). sometimes you see a cool title on kanopy and you don't have a better way to kill an hour and a half. plus it had some guys i know from cowboys. tw for a suicide's body in the first fucking ten seconds of the trailer, which is a weird trailer choice bc u don't actually see most of the murders in the movie.

ive watched a fuck of a lot of spaghetti westerns so i feel i am somewhat qualified to tell you this is one of the worst dubs ive ever seen. the lines actors are quarter-heartedly delivering do not always make a lot of sense and only occasionally match the subtitles. i am assuming this is the original dub, bc kino lorber generally does a pretty okay job restoring things?

this is not a good movie (extremely troubled production, director swap three days before filming, made on a shoestring budget, the actors mostly wore their own clothes, etc). it is not very good at maintaining tension, because it is a film that first and foremost Looks. beautiful fucking sets, beautifully decorated. the exterior is a matte painting, a sort of frothy dream-bubble of sixties architecture. most of the interiors are apparently a real house. incredible experimental burbling soundtrack full of Weird Sounds.

sorry about the tubi interface and our old friend the activate windows logo.

there are so many fun directorial flourishes and staging, but it does get a little wrapped up in itself. this made me think of The Secret of NIMH, a beautifully animated talking-animal film that gave me nightmares as a child, where the animation tricks and sparkles and moving parts sort of all get in each other's way to produce something less than the sum of its parts. this sort of happens here. i'm going to yoink this from a review:

Bava’s eye for exquisite compositions is equally evident. One scene in particular stands out in this regard: The filmmaker shoots an otherwise humdrum fistfight through wooden latticework that breaks the action up into an abstracted mosaic effect. The fight culminates with a table being upended, which in turn unleashes a myriad crystal spheres. The camera follows along as the spheres tumble and cascade down a spiral staircase and roll across a tiled floor before plopping like so many bath bubbles into a tub. The scene concludes with the revelation of a recently deceased character caught in what you’d have to call a tableau morte. It’s a dazzlingly orchestrated sequence, easily on par with more famous Bava set pieces.

it's gorgeous! there's also So Much going on. another lovely bit of business: as each person dies they get wrapped in plastic sheeting and put in the walkin freezer. next to slabs of beef. not a subtle film, and i don't mean it as a diss, bc where's the fuckin fun in that?

-

playing

i have not been doing much of anything here except listen to podcasts and work toward the two-thousand-fish-caught achievement in genshin. impatiently waiting for Clorinde to be released in several weeks. that one button needs a raise. it is So funny to see genshin characters with fucking guns. very sword and pike based societies so far

-

making

every time i have tried to make one of these samplers for Me it's gone horribly wrong or been somehow destroyed so i'm making this one for my brother's upcoming birthday, bc he will have off-campus housing next academic year, in an attempt to peacefully do some fucking cross stitch and get something out at the end of it. pattern here on etsy

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How cable monopolists tricked conservatives into shooting themselves in the face

No matter how hard conservative culture-war cannon-fodder love big business, it will never love them back. Take network policy, where rural turkeys in Red State America keep on voting for Christmas, then profess outrage when Old Farmer Comcast gets to sharpening his ax.

For two years, the FCC has been hamstrung because MAGA Senators refuse to confirm Gigi Sohn, leaving the Commission with only four commissioners. What do the GOP have against Sohn? Well, to hear them tell of it, she’s some kind of radical Marxist who will undermine free enterprise and replace the internet with tin cans and string.

The reality is that Sohn favors policies that will specifically and substantially benefit the rural Americans whose senators who refuse to confirm her. For example, Sohn favors municipal fiber provision, which low-information conservatives have been trained to reflexively reject: “Get your government out of my internet!”

Boy, are they ever wrong. The private sector sucks at providing network connectivity, especially in rural places. The cable companies and phone companies have divided up the USA like the Pope dividing up the “New World,” setting out exclusive, non-competing territories that get worse service than anyone else in the wealthy world. Americans pay some of the highest prices for the lowest speeds of any OECD nation.

For ISPs, bad service is a feature, not a bug. When Frontier went bankrupt in 2020, we got to look at its books, which is how we discovered that the company booked the one rural customers with no alternative as “assets” because they could be charged more for slower, less reliable service:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/frontiers-bankruptcy-reveals-cynical-choice-deny-profitable-fiber-millions

We also learned that Frontier had calculated that it could make an extra billion in profit by bringing fiber to three million households, but chose not to, because it would take a decade to realize those profits, and during that time, executives’ stock options would decline in value as analysts punished them for making long-term bets.

We can bring fiber to rural America, and when we do, amazing things happen. McKee, Kentucky — one of the poorest places in America — used federal grants and its New Deal era rural electrification co-op to bring fiber to every household, using a mule called Ole Bub to run it over difficult mountain passes, and the result was an economic miracle:

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-traffic-light-town-with-some-of-the-fastest-internet-in-the-us

The only Americans who consistently say they like their ISPs are people who live in the 700+ small towns that have run their own fiber, mostly in Red States:

https://muninetworks.org/communitymap

Small wonder that rural Americans prefer muni fiber to commercial ISPs’ offerings. When Trump’s FCC Chair Ajit Pai gave them billions in subsidies to improve rural connectivity, the monopolists spent it pulling new copper lines, not fiber — which would have been thousands of times faster.

Given all that, it takes a lot to convince rural Americans that municipal fiber is bad for them. Specifically, it takes disinformation. More specifically, it takes the lie that municipal fiber would result in “government interference” in users’ communications.

Boy, is this ever wrong. Private companies are free to set their own content moderation policies, and can discriminate against any viewpoint they wish. They can and do remove “lawful but awful” speech like racist diatribes, vaccine denial, election denial, and other conservative fever-dreams.

Contrast that with local governments, who are bound by the First Amendment, and prohibited from practicing “viewpoint discrimination.” This means that if a local government allows one viewpoint on a subject, they are generally required to allow all other viewpoints on that subject. This is how we get the Satanic Temple’s excellent stunts, like demanding that towns that display Christian icons on public lands also display statues of Baphomet right next to them.

https://www.npr.org/2018/08/17/639726472/satanic-temple-protests-ten-commandments-monument-with-goat-headed-statue

When your town government runs 100gb fiber into your basement or garage, it will have a much harder time blocking you from, say, running a Mastodon instance devoted to election denial or GhostGun production than your commercial ISP will. Convincing American conservatives to hate municipal broadband was a gigantic self-own:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/17/turner-diaries-fanfic/#1a-fiber

Even worse is what rural America has been sold instead of municipal fiber: Starlink, the My Pillow of broadband. Starlink sells itself as blazing-fast satellite broadband, but conspicuously fails to talk up the fact that every Starlink user in your neighborhood competes for the same wireless spectrum as you, so the service can only get slower and more expensive over time:

https://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/bad/starlink-nov-2022-data-caps.html

There’s been a concerted smear campaign against Sohn, and one of the major talking points is that Sohn is anti-cop because she sits on EFF’s board, and EFF wants to place limits on police access to commercial surveillance data. Which is wild, because one of EFF’s demands is limits on geofenced reverse warrants, where cops ask Google to reveal the identity of everyone who was in a specific place at a specific time. If you’ve heard about geofenced warrants lately, it was probably in the context of conservative outrage at their use in rounding up the January 6 insurrectionists.

Now, the primary use of these is to target Black Lives Matter demonstrators and other protestors, and EFF advocates for the normal Fourth Amendment rights that everyone is guaranteed in the Constitution. Conservative pundits didn’t give a damn about geofenced warrants until the J6 affair, and now they do — but they still insist that Sohn should be disqualified from sitting on the FCC because she shares their outrage at the abuse of private surveillance data by law enforcement.

All this raises the question: why have all these Red State senators made it their mission in life to block the appointment of an FCC commissioner who would deliver so many benefits to their constituents? It’s hard to say, of course, but Luke Goldstein has a suggestion in today’s American Prospect:

https://prospect.org/politics/democratic-majority-at-the-fcc-still-blocked/

“A torrent of lobbying money from the telecom industry has flooded Washington to block Sohn’s arrival at the FCC. AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and T-Mobile doled out over $23 million lobbying Washington this year.”

And why would these companies spend millions to block Sohn from sitting on the Commission? Because she would help the Democratic majority pass policies that make broadband cheaper and faster for America, especially rural America where costs are highest and service is worst, and this will limit the telco monopolists’ profits.

There’s a new Democratic senate majority that’ll sit in 2023, so perhaps Sohn will finally be seated and start delivering relief to all Americans, even the turkeys who can’t stop voting for Christmas.

[Image ID: A hunter in camo firing a rifle whose barrel has been bent back to point at his own face. A muzzle flash emerges from the barrel. The hunter wears a MAGA hat. Behind the hunter is a telephone pole with many radiating lines. In the bottom left corner of the image is a 1950s-style illustration of a broadly smiling salesman, pointing at a box that is emblazoned with the logo for ALEC.]

[juicyolpickle]

Decided to draw this screen shot I took from my co op gameplay of avatar frontiers of pandora (my navi on the left and my friends on the right) so uhhh… leave this here 💀

[tailschannel]

Sonic Frontiers and Sonic Superstars: a recap of all the major details from Gamescom 2023

During the latest Gamescom 2023 opening broadcast, two brand new trailers were published for Sonic Superstars and Sonic Frontiers. Here's what we know with all the information out so far.

Sonic Superstars

The highly anticipated platformer Sonic Superstars now has a confirmed launch date of 17 October, with the title available for pre-order physically and digitally for current consoles and Steam. The title is priced at $60.00 USD.

The newest trailer has a focus on the multiplayer experience the game will offer, showing off the local co-op and the Battle Mode. The main campaign can be played via a drop-in and drop-out local co-op, and for those interested, a Battle Mode for the game was also revealed, and with it, the player can either compete with three other players locally or challenge up to seven other players online.

Following the tradition of titles like Sonic Colours Ultimate and Sonic Origins, Sonic Superstars will also have a Digital Deluxe edition, which includes the base game, a LEGO Fun Pack with LEGO character skins for Amy, Tails and Knuckles and LEGO-themed levels for Battle Mode, as well as extra content including a special Sonic Rabbit inspired by Sonic's original character design, Mecha Sonic parts for Battle Mode, exclusive wallpapers, a digital artbook and a mini-OST for $69.99 USD.

Fans can pre-order the Physical and Digital Standard or Digital Deluxe editions of Sonic Superstars ahead of launch at the official website to receive an exclusive in-game LEGO Eggman character skin. It also was confirmed that every single version of Sonic Superstars will feature a free LEGO Sonic skin.

Sonic Frontiers: The Final Horizon

The highly successful Sonic Frontiers received a brand new trailer for Gamescom as well, teasing the upcoming third update for the game, named The Final Horizon. The update is coming later this year, 28 September. Players can look forward to new story content, new challenges and after years of wait, the ability to play as Tails, Amy and Knuckles in a 3D Sonic game.

According to the Japanese press release, in this new update, a new campaign set on Ouranos Island will be added, and Amy, Knuckles, and Tails will be available as playable characters. Taking advantage of their special moves, players can witness new gimmicks and missions, and experience a different ending from the main story.

Sonic Frontiers is available now for current consoles and Steam.

[cloud-ya]

GLaDOS canonically has pet birds who she is raising to be killers what do you think about this information?

absolutely sensational. I've only ever tried portal co-op once and never again, let alone ever reaching that part of co-op story, but I've seen enough material and videos to know it's a thing

every single game I play there are some birds, I love it. HSR's cycranes, Portal's crow, MHR Sunbreak's swallow symbol, In Stars And Time's interactable round birbs around the map, Sonic Frontiers' gulls lowering themselves midair to fly alongside sonic running as well as the wonderfully rendered pigeons whose only purpose is to fly away when you approach them. I haven't started Elden Ring yet but my friend is showing me a lot of bird content there too

[torukmaktoskxawng]

My friend and I finally got to play Co-op on Frontiers of Pandora, and here's my favorite pictures of us 💖

[tenma-the-mad]

Spoiler-Free Review of Destiny 2: The Final Shape from a 10-Year Veteran Player:

Despite the server issues that plagued release day, this expansion was absolutely fantastic.

The PvE experience of the legend campaign/raid had interesting plot line & character arc culminations and perfect difficulty levels (Those Hands Got Hands) even after Contest mode. The return of Cayde-6 and Zavala’s struggle had real weight to them, and Crow had some great development too.

The subsequent grinding of quests, fragments, and patterns post-campaign had many quality of life improvements to make the experience more enjoyable overall.

We got seamless transitions in quest missions, rewarding solo/co-op events (no more Two Tokens and a Blue), and some incredible exotic weapons and armor.

PvP still needs some work and we’ll see how it develops as people gain mastery over their Prismatic builds. I’ll probably be trying to grind my way back up to Ascendant this week or the next, but so far the new ammo system in Competitive feels much more natural than the terrible box-only system implemented midway through last season.

All in all, 9.5/10 the best Destiny 2 expansion and a worthy capstone on the Light & Darkness saga.

This has been your spoiler free review. See you starside Guardians, on whatever Frontier comes next.

[pandorafallz]

Alma reflects on what she has done. What she had been a part of in TAP, what she had done to… get the school going. The truth had come out into the open and everyone knows of what she had been a part of. 'Good' Alma, the Avatar was dead. Killed. She was the 'other' Alma, that they despised. Where does she stand now in the Resistance when no one wants her around?

Chapter 7 snippet

“This got sent to my terminal by mistake. Recommendations for new Resistance Leader.” It was a statement but there was a… undertone of a question.

“Oh, good.” Alma took the tablet, though four faces were on the screen; So’lek, Shanaya Levin, Alexander Tremayne and Kìoetey. Her nose wrinkled at the selection, crossing Levin and Kìoetey out immediately as viable options. Levin was new. Fresh out of the RDA and a military woman at heart. Sure, she had loyalty but it was untested and she had no firm connection with the Na’vi or have a…warm enough streak to be what the Resistance needed. Kìoetey would not be suited to lead the resistance. Not fully. So young, had a lot to learn and… she needed to develop outside of humans. She couldn’t do that as the leader of the humans here.

“Really?” Reeves tittered, “Why do you even have this as an option?”

“Because, Dr Reeves, I know that my position is in question. I need backup options and I’d rather be prepared.” Alma said, handing the tablet back. “So’lek will need to be asked but he and Alex could run a co-op leadership. Alex will need the support and the Na’vi respect So’lek.”

“He’s a biologist.”

“I don’t care. He’s got people skills, a wide knowledge of everyone, plants and has a good reputation with the rest of the people on base.” Alma said, turning her attention back to her paper pad and monitor.

“This change of leadership have anything to do with that fucked-up brain of yours, Cortez?” Reeves questioned folding her arms.

Alma gave her an unimpressed look at her phrasing. “Why do you want to know?”

[skxawngonearth]

Avatar Frontiers of Pandora (official Infos/spoilers)

What we know from Ubisoft: 

Release is on December 7th, 2023, it’ll be a single player ego game (though you have the option to play the story with 1 friend via online Co-Op), with customization options. 

Story (spoilers) We play as a Na’vi (so far probably female) who was abducted by the RDA and trained in combat to function as a soldier. The operation was dropped after the Hallelujah mountains, and the protagonist was put into cryo. 15 years later we awake as strangers to our own world, and set off to rediscover what it means to be Na’vi, to find our place among the people. But when the RDA returns, we must fight to protect our home.

Game Versions Pre-order is avaiable from now on through the official website or Ubisoft, and comes in 3 versions for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S:

Standard - includes the basic game and pre-order bonus “Child of two Worlds” pack [skin]

Gold -  includes the basic game, “Child of two Worlds”, and season pass with 2 DLCs, bonus missions, resistance banshee mount [skin], and resistance equipment pack [gear set + weapon

Ultimate - includes the basic game, “Child of two Worlds”, digital artbook, season pass, and pre-order bonus Sarentu inheritance cosmetic- and hunter pack [1 character/weapon/ikran skin + weapon arsenal & special weapon]

Pre-order games will show up in your Ubisoft library on release day, but can be downloaded in advance, DLC content will be automatically implemented upon release.

Under the cut are screenshots from the panel (12/06/2023)

[briannysey]

Hey friends, apparently getting a gaming pc soon, so I'll be able to play games for the first time in over a year.

I'm trying to quit competitive multiplayer games entirely (Like CS and Dota, fuck me I spent so many hours on those)

But I spent so long playing those in the past that I missed out on a bunch of really good RPGs, RTSs, strategy games, and just story rich games in general. Also missed out on fun co-op games

Any recs on stuff I def need to play?

So far on my list I've got

Outer Wilds

Disco Elysium (Need to actually finish it lmao)

Baldur's Gate 3 (and need to replay 1, 2, and Icewind Dale)

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous (as a lich)

Dragon Age 2 (When it comes out)

Elden Ring (Maybe)

Lethal Company

Helldivers 2 (Maybe)

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous (Different playthrough)

God of War

Crusader Kings 3 (Assuming Elder Kings and ASoIaF mods are ported)

Kentucky Route Zero

X4: Foundations

Cities Skylines 2

Nebuchadnezzar

Rogue Trader

Last Epoch

Farthest Frontier