Izuno

My friend in his 40s in Los Angeles is finally on the mend. He got a covid19 test after the fact and it came out negative but his doctor (over Skype) said he does not think the tests are as accurate as they should be in that he believes they overreport negative by a lot. It is also possible that it has been enough days since he recovered when he got tested that it should actually show up as negative. Meanwhile, this same friend also got a covid19 antibody test, but he was told the results would take longer by a few days to get an answer. It is possible he may indeed test negative for covid19 but positive for the antibodies, which would obviously imply he did indeed have it and has gotten over it...and hopefully immune to future infection but (again obvious) we are still early in the science on understanding all that for sure.

Hey long time Mapcorians...I come back here regularly to read...much less regularly to post. I think now warrants a post: 1) I have several people in my circle who have had this. (a) My long time JKD/Kali/Silat/BJJ instructor got it. He's in his 50s in Los Angeles suburbs and had heart valve surgery four years ago. He recovered after being on oxygen at home for 6 days. (He's got connections to people in medicine/emergency care...lucky him for not having to go into the ER). His lungs still hurt despite being designated recovered. (b) My close friend in his 40s in Los Angeles with two kids under 10 has it right now and they are debating if they should take him to the ER. He has no underlying conditions, was never a smoker. (c) Another instructor I've trained with over recent years has his own MMA and film stunts school in Vancouver got it. No underlying conditions...in his 30 and TEACHES BJJ and was a pro fighter for a while and is the toughest, healthiest person I know. He "home cared" and thought he was going to die and after 3 weeks is now mostly functional again despite still feeling very weak. 2) My parents are old...pre-diabetic and have other conditions. I am terrified of them getting it. I ain't getting this. What if I need to help them or buy them groceries and deliver to their house? Don't want to risk infecting them. 3) There is so little incentive to get this because you just don't know how it will affect you. Even if the death rate is 1% and heavily skews towards elderly, already sick, etc. think about the odds of needing hospitalization. Is that a 5% chance? If the odds of young, healthy person getting it and becoming a serious case is 5%...or even 2%...that does not sound that appealing. 4) Seems like China did not fully report how serious it was and how many people died there. 5) Shutting everything down is going to crush the economy. Not shutting everything down will cause mass infections and hospitalizations an order of magnitude(s) worse...and would then break our economy. The way to save the economy is to kill this virus. That's gonna take a while and it's going to suck. However bad you think it realistically is going to suck, there's a strong chance one way or another this is going to suck worse. ....not sure what else to say. I hope no one I know dies. I hope no one I know suffers...but some already have. I hope all of you stay safe and healthy and are able to work and maintain a living. Being in the games industry is a lot better than working in event planning or restaurants or etc etc. Count your blessings if you can.

I actually watched it not stoned yet still thoroughly enjoyed. Perhaps I should watch the second one.

Very happy about this. Too bad all forms of VR make me want to puke. Gameplay looks great otherwise. Bravo!

Latest:

https://www.polygon.com/2019/9/4/20850148/star-wars-jedi-knight-2-jedi-outcast-nintendo-switch-nintendo-direct ...and you can read more details in the article. OMG SO PUMPED!!!

Thanks for sharing!

Sorta on topic, I recently bought Doom II on Switch for $5 because WTF I am in the mood for Doom while taking a dump. Pure rubbish. Game is constantly disconnecting from Bethesda.net and is un-fucking-playable. Pure shit. ..........and then they patched it. All is well.

https://www.pcgamer.com/gabe-newell-drops-a-half-life-3-joke-into-his-valve-index-launch-party-speech/ Gabe talking about Index...read on from article quote below:

Yeah the demo in the booth showed ~ 35 minutes of playtime.

I got to sit through the demo presentation, at the end everyone got this Dying Light 2 figurine that came in this black box. Very cool. Anyway...from watching them play the demo I'm convinced they will make the player choice thing work. As for whether players actually like that feature is speculative, but it seems pretty cool. The parkour looks like a big upgrade from DL1 such as using a zombie to break your fall when you ride it off the side of a building...vaulting off zombies to a higher ledge or something (was that in DL1) and the wallrunning worked great. The grappling hook plus paraglider gave it elements of Batman and Zelda BotW in a great way. tl;dr: I'm sold on the parkour and combat from what I have seen. As for the levels and art direction, I am very happy to say that the game isn't all brown/gray post-apocalypse-y. There is a lot of color and polish on the presentation and it feels like a very convincing world. While not as flashy as what CDPR showed with Cyberpunk 2077 (which was in the meeting room right next door to Techland) I'm more jazzed about the gameplay and world you play in with DL2. Both games did great at the show so keep it up Poland.

I'm holding my cards on the console hw announcements but I'm expecting roughly 1 total big announcement with a standard deviation of 1.5. ? As for software what I would love: - more BotW yes please - DL 2 also on my list... - ...but I really want to see more in the Horizon Zero Dawn franchise. Not sure if a sequel is really called for but I'd take it if we got one. Meanwhile...if anyone is at the show we should find a time to meet up. I'll be there all week.

So....this was not caught by a lot of people to make it on screen last night. ?

Yeah no kidding expected. Been sitting on this news for a year. I think the big question for Valve is if it is still interested in getting up in the morning and printing money.

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/announcing-the-epic-games-store Maybe Valve will now feel some heat? <sigh>

20 years ago today HL was released. I have no other words.

Funny...I was never a Nintendo guy. That is until Switch and Zelda BotW. Given the art style in Zelda and how it is easily now one of my favorite games of all time, I have become anime-curious. Hence when I saw this One Piece trailer I thought I'd share it here.

In short, it's an open world One Piece game. I don't follow anime much, but color me intrigued here.

Man...playing Doom II while high back in the day. Replacement underwear was not optional.

I played the first game all the way through to the end. I agree with your assessment Zarsky, however I still enjoyed the story and characters despite the tropes and cliches. The world as a whole was convincing and the looting/crafting/surviving was a joy, allowing you to take on challenges in many different ways. In fact, it has some of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. destroyed world vibe which gave it a big plus in my book. I'd say it was my game of the year of 2016, in fact. From what I can observe about Techland is that it seems to take this branching narrative design very seriously, sober to past faulted attempts that resulted in more marketing hype than anything else. I just don't see Techland promising this and not delivering given my discussions with them at E3. Hope they pull it off!!

Basically this. And @nikkoship I can respect if TLOU combat did not put the cream in your ringdings. (Some guy in a giant duck outfit was tossing them out in the corridor between South and West halls at E3 this week. ) That said, I recall very similar combat demos at E3 before TLOU launched in...whatever year that was...and at Naughty dog itself later that summer at an analyst day. They didn't let us play it hands on but they let us ask questions in the middle of the demo and interrupt the flow so it was clear the E3 gameplay (that year) was not heavily scripted. So....for TLOU 2 I really do not believe the demo was goosed up ...however....you never know. It would really DevilDog me up if they pulled some YankeeDoodles on us. Personally, I loved the combat in TLOU as "stealth lite-ish" and if the sequel brings it back, I'm sold.

Yeah the Cyberpunk demo floored a lot of people tho I did not catch that easter egg. Forgot to mention Jump Force, the latest mashup from Bandai in the Dragonball, Naruto, One Piece, Death Note universes. I'm sure nerd boners went up all over the theater. (Edit by Izuno: Did I fucking say it was just a Dragonball mashup and leave out those other 3? So sorry. It is obviously more than just Dragonball. It was late. I must have been Ambien tweeting or something...anyway...corrected.) Today I"m likely going to the Ubisoft and Sony conferences. FYI...if you are going to E3 and have not been down there, be aware security is a little beefed up this year with checkpoints and metal detectors to get in and way more security personnel. If you have an Exhibitor or Media badge, you can get in early to the show each day so do so to beat the lines. They are checking bags for real this year...at least they were yesterday but I'm sure once the conference really gets going starting Tuesday it will be a slow slog to just get in.

I was at the Microsoft conference today. The fanboys they brought in were pumped as shit. They announced or showed a total of 50 games, plus acquisition of 5 studios including Ninja Theory. They are clearly making a no bullshit effort to restore a strong 1st party development system. Good for them. I am no fanboy of any platform so I hope it goes well for Microsoft. Halo Infinite ... didn't show much yet. Gears 5...sorry but it felt very trope-y despite still having fans who may like this Devil May Cry 5...fans were getting nerd boners it seems... Shadow of the Tomb Raider....I love the series so take my money on this one. Some new PUBG related stuff... Kingdom Hearts III....had Elsa and Anna from Frozen in it. "WTF WHO CARES?" you say. Well the crowd went nuts at that and shit my young daughters were pumped to hear about that when I told them and they started asking me about Kingdom Hearts and now think "wait...maybe this RPG and Zelda thing daddy likes could be cool." So fucking bravo, Square Enix, bravo to you. While you are at it, throw in Sofia the First and Elena of Avalor (especially Elena cause she is good with a sword and can fight) cause my kids love them too. Dying Light 2...oh man I am pumped for this. I loved the first game. Fallout 76 looked very pretty and I suppose if you love Fallout you may love this. I'm supposed to see it up close this week so looking forward to that. They are working on "some kind of thing that could eventually be a new console" ...big eyeroll as of course they are and have been working on a new hardware iteration of some kind. Call me with some real news, pls. At the end they had a cool Cyberpunk 2077 showing that you should read about in the other thread, Finally, this was pretty cool: https://news.microsoft.com/stories/xbox-adaptive-controller/ I got to try it out up close. By itself it is not revolutionary and it seems resourceful gamers (and/or those who care about gamers with special controller needs) have been hacking their way to gerry-rigged solutions for a while...so Microsoft just decided to make it a little easier for them. As an industry analyst I have no idea how much this will sell, but hey, if it helps people who love gaming but can't use a regular controller due to an injury, brain-injury, degenerative disease or some other reason, good on Microsoft. I also think that they would be fun to mess around with the way people were interested in with the Kinect years back.