DrEvilBrain

Relevant news post from DBG I'm not sure what you guys would think of this, but I've played Planetside 2 since the beta and picked up the first game when it first went free to play. It's a far cry from what PS2 became with way more variety of vehicles and cool factional differences. Hopefully the game spikes in activity before it officially dies off. PlanetsideForever is trying to at least preserve the game and they seem to be able to do account creation and character creation so far.

Crazy beats status quo any day... It'll either shock people into action, or fix the massive problems we already have. Of course if we really want a shitstorm we can bring out the CLASS CONSCIOUS WORKERS into FULL REVOLUTION.

Keep in mind the United States has not actually declared war through Congress since WWII.

Arch Linux is fun, but hard to get into for most people. Stuff like Debian and Linux Mint work well for people trying to learn, but most of the time its hard to teach someone how to adjust to the terminal. Most people are just too use to simple GUIs that do pretty much everything for them, but with some practice things are way easier and faster with commands. The Linux community recognizes this so they're perpetually stuck in a position where they just make software reliant on the terminal. It makes it harder for people to get into. The two hardest steps into transitioning to Linux is picking a distro and then learning terminal commands.

While this is important, I think making movies out of games takes a step in the wrong direction rather than pushing out things like esports or streaming. Games are great because there is no real set narrative because play interaction changes experiences. Games as a social gathering deliver different, unique narratives to many people. The issue with movies is that its a static experience. Of course the obvious argument would be that walking simulators would also give a fairly static experience, but I would argue that the experience is still altered by having player control whereas a movie is guided by some director.

I went and saw Iron Maiden live recently and have been listening to a lot of Book of Souls because of that. Empire of the Clouds is like a spiritual journey.

Personal boycotts are important for ideological reasons like any other boycott, but they won't make any impact on changing the issue, which is also kinda the point of a boycott. It doesn't mean we should not have personal boycotts, but at the same time we can't completely rely them for effective protest.

The best kind of distraction squads are a mix of Light Assault C4 fairies, suicide tank mine Engineers, and Wraith cloaked SMG Infiltrators. Add in a bit of coordination via VOIP and you get a deadly combo capable of stopping any attack.

Application is for defensive and recreational (fire range) purposes, and the specific firearm is a Beretta M9 vs a Glock 17. Basically comparing the handguns of Half-Life against one another (Glock without HD pack, Beretta with HD pack). This stuff is almost always just personal preference. Though I would much prefer a 92FS over a Glock 17, there's nothing wrong with preferring a Glock even if they look like dumb plastic squares.

Perhaps there is a limit as to where we should be augmenting ourselves, but I think that's more of an individual personal issue than anything else. Its your body and only you have the responsibility to take care for it. With something as controversial as implants I'm sure many politicians and the media will be scrutinizing it as evil and dangerous, citing books and movies that foresaw this kind of thing. Most people will probably have to agree since this fear of robots and AI have been so prevalent in pop culture. Most likely, legislation is going to try to limit these kinds of things if possible, citing it as a public danger. Regardless, I still think that implants and at the very least wearables are going to be prevalent within the next 20 years. Some transhumanists are already implanting LED lights, neodymium magnets, and RFID chips into themselves. In many ways you could argue that we're using smartphones to augment ourselves already, they just aren't attached to our bodies necessarily. One thing that is almost certain is that there will be, at least early on, a division between people who can afford implants and those who can't. Deus Ex Human Revolution dealt with this and Mankind Divided is probably going to be entirely rotated around this idea. Its hypocritical of me to be citing a fictional work, but its definitely something that makes sense. Implants can make you intrinsically better than a normal human at the cost of money. Of course early implants would be costly, similar to early adopter computer parts. The difference is that instead of giving our computers better processing power or more efficiency, we're giving ourselves more power and efficiency. There's a clear difference between someone who is augmented and who is not, though it doesn't have to be through appearance early on.

Maybe its because of how much I'm influenced by cyberpunk, but wearables are becoming adopted now and soon implants are going to be common. I think saying that augmenting ourselves with technology would make ourselves less human is silly and is propagated mainly by fiction. Of course, we don't have any concrete proof that implants would make us act strangely. In the same way, we don't have any evidence that AI would act any differently. Think of it like a wild animal. AI and animals have inherent behaviors that are ingrained into them whether it be by a programmer or genetics. They both can grow and expand and learn over time and they can be domesticated. Right now, animals are starting to gain rights, human rights. Once AI is gets to the point of being lifelike, they'll probably gain human rights too, most likely encouraged by corporations that don't want to be responsible for any end user experiences from their products. Perhaps they will be integrated and live within society and you can take that to whatever Blade Runner scenario you want. Alternatively machines could be out to get us, but what's the difference between that and a living being? Having no conscience? Being more efficient? But couldn't I just make a machine that will pull the trigger on a gun whenever it detects any motion? It all comes down to the programming and perhaps the real scare is having the ability to create life. I love talking about this kind of stuff and would like to hear different opinions. Obviously I'm quite biased towards futurism, but hey maybe we have some primitivist advocates here or something.

Uplink is a pretty solid game. I would also check out Hacknet if you haven't already.

Tape

I listen to this music so much. Its a real shame that the game is dead though.

I'm DrEvilBrain, the idiot that plays video games, talks about cyberpunk, and watches anime. I'm bad at programming and math but I like doing it anyways. Feel free to talk to me about everything and anything.

I feel like I need to contribute some more obscure material. EYE Divine Cybermancy is a cyberpunk RPG that deals with pretty much everything in the genre while packing it all into one convoluted and confusing storyline with an equally hard to understand UI and control scheme. Its really really good once you get over that initial barrier and the music is extremely nice. The official page for the game has all the music included in-game, but the composer, Olivier Zuccaro, offers a few more tracks. I recommend checking out QNR Extended, QNB, and QNF. If you really want the extra cyberpunk stuff from this guy, he also did . is more well known for being a really good tactical shooter with a steep learning curve that falls bit more on the extreme realism end of the scale. This game's music puts so much tension into a frenzied battle and its use of dynamically changing music allows for the mood to change as the situation changes. The game changes music according to your soldier's morale, completely changing the tone of the battle. The one bad thing about the official soundtrack is that its actually missing tracks that are played in-game. I don't know why people do this especially when those tracks are some of the best in the game. If you want the full soundtrack, there's the and the . is a personal favorite that's sadly not included in the official OST. is Red Orchestra 2 in the Pacific theater. Well that's it folks I think we're done here. It's the same deal as Red Orchestra 2 except now you have Imperial Japan and the United States. Lots more plucky strings, flutes, and brass than the more melancholy string-heavy Soviet and German music. Thankfully, I believe that the official soundtrack for Rising Storm 2 is complete and has all the tracks found in-game. will always remain as some of the greatest games ever made for me and part of it was made by its amazing ambient music. Hell, I'm assuming most people here has heard some of these tracks at the very least so I won't go too in-depth about it. You can download the remastered tracks in the Vault Archive album for free here. But you're now probably asking where all the obscure stuff is. "Hey man I was promised obscure stuff, but I've heard of these games." Well buckle up because now's where we get to the actually obscure things. is a solid sidescrolling beat-em up by MAGES., a company more well known for Steins;Gate. I'm sure that the anime-style art will bother some people, but it would be a crime to skip this title just for the aesthetics. Sadly, I can't find the full OST online. The full soundtrack includes 33 tracks of some of the best chiptune you'll ever hear in your life. I urge you to go and get this game if you like beat-em ups or just want really good music. It's $2.99 on Steam right now and you can grab the OST for $1.24. is not your average Japanese bullet hell (I know this will go down just fine with Ross). To be fair, I've never beaten the second stage of the game on normal difficulty and have never gotten past the third stage on the easiest, but I think we can ignore the difficulty for now and just focus on the music. The soundtrack found on the Steam version of Suguri is not the original one, but a remake. I recommend checking out Green Bird, Rendevous, Tough & Intense, and Impact. The Suguri series has a ton of music due to a cult following mainly in Japan. The game spawned 2 spinoff fighting/bullet hell games ( and ) and a prequel game called (which conveniently happens to be coming out on Steam on January 6). If you still think that isn't enough music there's also four remix albums. However I can't find a complete version of the third album, Sugurashi, online. You're not missing a whole ton much since the missing tracks are mainly just mashed up versions of two different tracks, but they're still very nice to have. Since a lot of this music can't be legally obtained anymore, here's a download link with almost all the music. If anyone really wants the full collection, shoot me a PM and I'll send you the entire collection. might not exactly qualify as an obscure title, but it certainly is quite a niche one. The game has a lot of unique charm in just about everything whether it be the story, characters, music, setting, mechanics etc... It uniquely utilizes the DS touch controls and split screen unlike any other game, making it one of the very few titles that feels like it can only belong on a DS. The music combines a little bit of everything from 2007 Japanese pop culture. You'll see some rap and hip-hop and then change to a little bit of rock. Some tracks even include both Japanese and English vocals. I would recommend checking out Game Over (Busy Dizzy and Lazy), Detonation, The One Star, and Twister (That Power is Yet Unknown) at the very least. Bonus mentioning for Chantelise's boss music which reminds me of the in Dark Souls.