Mister Jack

I hate to say it but there's a new conspiracy theory spreading on Twitter now that the virus itself is a hoax because they're filming the outside of hospitals and HURR DURR IT'S QUIET OUTSIDE WHERE'S ALL THE SICK PEOPLE?! This crisis is really shining a spotlight on the depths of human stupidity. Speaking of which, hey Dean, has this whole coronavirus thing changed any attitudes about Brexit from what you've observed? I can only observe from the outside and I definitely don't understand the intricacies of British politics but it doesn't seem like Britain is in a very strong position to deal with this right now.

So how long is it going to take for an angry mob to burn your president at the stake? Because it's feeling long overdue at this point.

I love this game and it's one of my favorite shooters of all time but there is one thing I miss from Doom 2016 that I hope gets added back in when they do the DLC episodes.

Wasn't planning to get this until much later but this seems like the perfect time to get absorbed in a lengthy JRPG.

Gate's open. Dodo code is 44SQ4. I'll leave it open for a few hours but I might idle from time to time.

Here's my friend code so I can have a better idea of when everyone will be on SW-2093-2714-0238 I know I said 5 PM but nobody's around so I'll do it a little later, I think. Maybe 7 PM is enough time. Unless someone else opens up first.

I spent some time with the Battlemode multiplayer of Doom Eternal and it's actually pretty cool. You definitely want to go through the tutorials or you'll probably feel lost when you start but this is a fun, unique multiplayer experience. It's a 2v1 system. Two demons vs one slayer. The slayer has access to most of his abilities, guns, and mods and he can also heal himself by doing glory kills. The demons, besides having a numbers advantage, can also summon NPC demons to attack the slayer and have class abilities but the trade-off is that playable demons are weaker and less mobile. I went into this thinking that the demons would have an unfair advantage over the slayer but a good slayer can clean house. If you can beat the campaign on ultraviolence then you should have more than enough skill to hold your own against the demon players. Conversely, demons who use their abilities and summons wisely are plenty capable of winning, though there's pretty much no demon class who is gonna beat the slayer in a 1v1 duel unless the slayer is really bad. The way to win as a demon is to apply pressure with your summons and either attack the slayer from a distance while he's distracted or take him by surprise with a high damage close range attack. Don't dismiss this just because "Eh nobody cares about multiplayer in Doom." You might be surprised at how well it works.

I'm available. I'll open my island around probably 5 PM EST or so and post a Dodo code for anyone who wants to meet up. I have the Able Sisters shop open.

I'm on the east coast so I guess I ought to do it. I could just leave my gate open all day in theory and let it idle but some general plan would be nice. Mal, I already got you so who else would come?

So how many of us have this game now? I'm counting maybe five or six people, including myself? We should try to meet up in someone's town sometime so we can all get added to each other's friend lists. Still think it's stupid you can't add people without physically meeting them first but what can you do.

Sounds like everything worked out for the best, then.

Bruh I just sold a bunch of tarantulas for over 400,000 bells. Also, Ethan, digital is the way to go. You don't want to have to switch the cart out every single time you check on your town.

@danielpholt Fish bait just instantly spawns a fish in the water if there isn't one already.

Mal I'm super jealous that you got Cherry on your island. Meanwhile I started with Rocket, who is my least favorite animal in the entire series. I'm opening my gate. Code is G6SBK. I've focused more on expanding my town than decorating my house so it's not very impressive yet but might as well establish that link. Oh yeah, I have a couple extra pears and some bamboo if anyone needs those.

If anything the T-virus is less deadly. At least that thing only spreads through direct contact and it was only a single city that got fucked by it.

It looks like, at least in my state, Gamestop is still semi-open. I say semi-open because the stores themselves are closed to the public, but they're still doing curbside pickups for orders that have been placed online or preorders that were made prior to the closings. I'm torn about this policy. On the one hand, it's hardly an essential business and even with the distancing measures in place there is always going to be a risk of exposure when you go outside. On the other hand, this also means all the employees aren't stuck at home without any pay for who knows how long. Theoretically this means I could probably pick up my FFVII preorder (can't cancel it, already asked) but I can't help feeling like if I do that I'm part of the problem.

Cheat codes. Honest to god cheat codes. Remember when those were a thing? Doom Eternal remembers. Granted, you can't just push some buttons or type in a password and cheat your way through the game. Cheat codes are collectible secrets and you can only use them when replaying missions, but they don't disable progression so you can have them on while going back to get all the secrets you missed. They're also a ton of fun. I'm not the type to cheat my way through a game the first time I play it, but they're a great way to have fun just dicking around once you've beaten it.

I've seen that argument before but the difference is that mass shootings, while terrible, only have a direct effect on a specific community while the coronavirus is affecting absolutely everybody in one way or another whether they get it or not.

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by that but there are more environments with more variety, bigger spaces to fight in, and much greater variety in enemy types. A few levels also have death traps you can exploit.

God I don't even want to think about this thing lasting 18 months. That's an absolute worst case scenario. At least for now I'm keeping an eye on June. I don't think it'll be gone by then. In fact, that's when people are saying it's going to peak. If it peaks then, however, then even the slightest sign of the rate of new infections starting to decline afterwards would be extremely encouraging. Right now it's nothing but stories of the virus accelerating faster and faster and it's pretty disheartening. God only knows when it will come to a head but the country will seriously need just some sign that these measures are working even a little bit. The optimist in me likes to believe we might finally have a serious chance of getting a universal health care bill passed. One way or another something is going to change when this pandemic is finally behind us, whenever that is. There's no way in hell we're all going to come out the other side of the tunnel and collectively say "Well let's just pretend that never happened and go back to business as usual."

Doom Eternal Okay so this is probably the best modern FPS game I've ever played, and when I say "modern FPS" I'm going all the way back to the original Half-Life. About the only shooter that can compete here for me are the original Doom games. It really puts its competition to shame. This is much more than Doom 2016 with a few tweaks. They practically redid the entire philosophy and design of the game and made it better than it already was. The levels in this game are huge. In fact, they're so huge that they give you a fast travel point at the end of each one in case you need to grab some collectibles you missed, of which there are a ton. The biggest change in this game compared to the last one is a greater emphasis on platforming. Platforming in an FPS sounds awful, I know, but id actually found a way to do platforming that not only works, but is a ton of fun. You'll be jumping, wall climbing, swinging, and air dashing in ways that would make Mario himself proud. I could hardly believe sometimes how much ground I was able to cover just by smartly timing my double jump and my air dash. The best part is that unlike the last game, this time if you miss a jump and fall into the abyss you simply lose 20 life points and get teleported back to where you were instead of dying and having to reload. I had to redo quite a few jumps but I never actually died from falling so it never got frustrating. The weapons got a face lift too. Also the pistol is gone. You might miss it at first but soon enough you'll understand that even if it was there you would never use it. The demons in this game are absolutely relentless and way more aggressive than in the last game. In fact, this might be one of the hardest FPS games I've ever played. It starts off simple enough but just you wait. They're throwing arachnotrons at you almost right out of the gate and those are considered the easy enemies! Demons also come at you in greater numbers now and you can't run circles around them like before. You can dash to put some distance between you, but there's a short cooldown after every two dashes. It's only a second or so, but that's long enough for the demons to gain ground on you. There's a bunch of brand new demons too and they will seriously mess you up. One of them in particular is so tough that it would be a major boss fight in any other shooter, yet here it becomes a normal enemy in the second half of the game. Some people were fooled into thinking this game would be easy because it has extra life power ups, but you will fucking need them. Fortunately, the demons aren't the only ones who are stronger. The Doomslayer has so many new tools to even the odds and you can not afford to ignore a single one of them. While there are health and armor packs lying around as always, I'm telling you now that they will not be enough. You will be running out of ammo and life CONSTANTLY, and the best way to replenish them is with fodder enemies. Fodder enemies are basically zombies and commandos who are weak and easily disposed of, though they can still overwhelm you if you ignore them because they spawn infinitely until you kill all the elite enemies. You'll be glad to see fodder though because they'll be your primary source of power-ups and what you get depends on how you kill them. Need life? Glory kill something. Need ammo? Use the chainsaw, which now regenerates fuel after each use. Ammo caps are a lot lower now so you'll be using the chainsaw more than you ever did before. Need armor? Use the shoulder mounted flamethrower. On top of that each glory kill charges up something called a blood punch, which is basically this game's version of berserk mode. A single blood punch can kill multiple weak enemies or severely wound a strong enemy. Balancing your various resources by making use of all these tools is extremely intense and everything is happening around you so fast that sometimes you might forget to use your chainsaw or flamethrower until you get used to it. Demons also have weak points to exploit now. Sometimes a demon is weak to a specific weapon or sometimes you can shoot off a specific body part that will drastically weaken their offensive capabilities. The point is, you can't just spend the whole game relying on the super shotgun anymore. Hell, even the regular shotgun stays useful until the end of the game and that's never happened before in this franchise. This is honestly the closest thing to a perfect shooter I've played in a long, long time. Everything is so fast and furious that it makes other FPS games look like day cares with bullets. Hell, even Doom 2016, which I still love, doesn't compare to Doom Eternal. About the only thing I can really say against it is that the multiplayer might not be for everyone. It's basically one Doomslayer vs two player demons and a horde of AI demons. It's not bad, but don't bother looking for your traditional team deathmatch because it ain't here. If you mostly play shooters for online multiplayer then I guess you should stick with Call of Duty or something, but if you want a near-perfect single player FPS experience I can't point to this one hard enough. However there was one really shitty thing I can't ignore, and I bet this wasn't id's fault. You cannot start this game if you don't have a Bethesda.net account. It won't even let you go to the title screen until you either register for one or sign into one and I think that's downright appalling. Maybe it's possible to bypass this by disconnecting, but why should I have to do that just to play a single player game? It's ridiculous. It took me over half an hour to start playing because I had to come up with a unique username that wasn't already taken and that shit pisses me off. It's just a good thing the rest of the game is so fantastic. I would have been livid if I'd grudgingly given my email to Bethesda and then the game turned out to be a piece of crap.

It's a relaxing and generally comfy game. It can even be downright therapeutic. The thing about AC is that you're not meant to marathon it for hours at a time, at least not once you get going. You can if you want, but at a certain point you play for maybe an hour a day, but you play it every day. Your town progresses in real time so you're watching it slowly build up from a big patch of nothing to a thriving community that you helped put together. Because it's in real time, your animal neighbors also act accordingly depending on what day it is. They'll remember your birthday, celebrate holidays with you, and react to the changing seasons. That's not even getting into all the stuff you can collect to decorate your house. Also you can have a mortgage with no interest and no payment deadline and how great is that?

Going back and forth between Doom Eternal and Animal Crossing. Animal Crossing is nice and relaxing which is just what I need right now but progress feels much slower here than in previous games. Since you have to craft everything now it means you can't jump quickly dump bells into new public projects. I'm currently building houses for my neighbors but it'll probably be several days until I finish. It gives me something to work for I guess but it also means I don't have a lot to do in these early stages after I finish gathering the days' materials. Thankfully I have another game to fill the gaps. Doom Eternal is the SHIZNITE. This game fucking rocks even harder than Doom 2016. I love it.

Onward It's out on streaming already thanks to the coronavirus so I figured what the hell. I mean, I'm going to be watching a lot of movies for the next couple of weeks, if not longer. I debated putting this in the good movies thread but I think it just barely misses that mark. Most of the stuff in this movie is just okay, but it's a very solid okay if that makes sense. I didn't love any of the characters, but I liked them well enough I suppose. They have their moments, they're just not especially original or memorable. The same goes for the setting. Urban fantasy is a cool idea, but it's mostly just used as window dressing and the setting isn't really explored or fleshed out at all. Maybe that's asking too much for a movie that's less than two hours long, but I can't help being a little disappointed that the world didn't really live up to its potential. It's fine, though. The story is fine. The characters are fine. The jokes are...not that funny, actually. I didn't roll my eyes or anything but I only laughed once. The relationship between the brothers is what keeps this movie afloat and the last 20 minutes or so are pretty strong. In fact, that's where the movie feels more like classic Pixar instead of decent Dreamworks. I doubt I'll feel much of an urge to go back and rewatch this one like I do with Wall-e or Toy Story but I am glad I watched it at least once. I don't think it deserved to bomb at the box office but thanks to unfortunate timing this film just never had a chance.

Well he plans to do daily briefings on the coronavirus starting Monday to provide a counter to the horseshit spewing out of Trump's mouth so maybe he's gathering information or something, I dunno. Biden was never my guy but I do appreciate that he's making an effort to spread important and accurate information during the worst pandemic of our lifetime. Did you know that it's more dangerous for young people than everyone previously believed? A 32 year old from New Jersey with no underlying conditions just barely recovered from it and now he's carrying around portable oxygen at all times. This shit is scary.