Coelacanth

Splinter Cell was primarily an Xbox franchise, so if you’ve got an Xbox of any kind that’s probably your best bet, assuming they’re still for sale. I believe they were all developed for Xbox and ported to other platforms. For Chaos Theory in specific though the PC port was pretty good, so if you don’t it’s not a big problem. Possibly some controller issues that need a fan fix? Though on the plus side you can find a wide-screen fix mod for modern resolutions. The first two games had worse ports, if I remember right. And the Playstation and GameCube ports were pretty universally bad I think, for all the games.

The one where the console version is really important is Double Agent, but that is a whole other can of complicated worms, because then it wasn’t just the matter of bad ports - they released two completely different games with different mechanics, levels and story executions (albeit the same overall plot).

I want to highlight two mod makers, instead of single mods. lStewieAl and WallSoGB for their efforts unfucking New Vegas. Being forced to pick a single effort, the engine optimizations is probably the most impressive. Honorable mention to all the various script extenders that make so many fantastic mods possible in the first place.

This would have been my suggestion as well. Cool instance, surely would be perfect for this.

The first couple games are really good stealth games, highly recommended. There is not really an overarching story between games, so if you’re just looking to dip your toes into the series I’d start with Chaos Theory. Honestly, if you’re into stealth games you should really play it like, right now. I consider it an all-time great.

After Double Agent the series started going into a more bland action style as Ubisoft felt stealth games were too niche I guess. Never played Conviction or Blacklist but as I said, I heard good things about the co-op in the latter so it’s on my list to try. I don’t really have a good candidate to play co-op with at the moment though, so it’s on indefinite hold.

The track is plenty exciting, just not for racing the current crop of F1 cars. Qualifying is still one of the thrills of the whole season, and I watched Formula E around Monaco a few years ago have an absolute barnstormer of a race with enough overtakes to make you faint.

I do agree that two mandatory pit stops is not the right solution for F1, though.

The John Oliver bit about the sound of Trump vs Drumpf was an alright punchline to a show ten years ago, before even the first installment of this madness. Those were simpler times, though, and fundamentally I agree with you.

Cooperative stealth is an interesting genre, not that well represented either. Did you ever play a Splinter Cell game with your friend? The earlier games had wholesale co-op campaigns, and I’ve heard really good things about the co-op in Blacklist too, though I never played that one myself.

I like the gradient on Williams. This kind of gives “I only brought one can of spray paint and this was as far as I got” to me.

Looks like utter garbage to me but I hear they’re paying astronomical amounts so 🤷 If you’re contributing 66% if the budget I guess you feel like you can demand plastering 11 logos over the car you sponsor.

Looks pretty solid I think. Nothing outrageous. Nice amount of color for a change, not too much exposed carbon fiber. I like the blue gradient. Will probably be considered one of the best liveries of the season considering the slop some teams are serving.

Good lord that’s God awful. They had such a nice thing going in 2021 too, then BWT came along and ruined it for everyone.

Too much black, they had a beautiful clean livery a couple of years ago and now it seems it just gets slightly worse every year.

I actually think they cooked with this one. A bit different, will stand out on the grid. I think it will grow on people. I’m into it. I still hate VCARB though.

The Marlboro livery was an absolute work of art. This… isn’t.

Have them race in spec go karts. There, problem solved.

As someone living in Sweden I’ve been fed a fair bit of Beganovic hype, but I’m not sure I buy into it yet. Will be interesting to see this year for sure, though. Agreed about Martins and Verschoor, though I guess with the big hemorrhage of talents from last year’s F2 it’s maybe not surprising that it was hard for teams to find better alternatives than those two.

I think the confusion stems from some people assuming an implied “turn up [the temperature of] the AC”.

So who’s got their finger on the pulse of the new blood? I only watched about half the F2 races last year, but with most of the bigger talents having moved on I’m not sure who to keep an eye on this year. Gabriele Mini looked good last year and I know Lindblad is highly rated, but that’s about it.

I have no idea how AC2 holds up, honestly. I’ve never replayed it and it was my first game in the series - I didn’t own a Playstation when the first one came out so I only experienced it through being over at a friend’s house and watching him play it, occasionally taking turns for missions. Playing AC2 was an incredible experience back when it released and I’m full of fond memories, but I don’t know how well it’s aged. It’s probably a less impactful experience now than it was 15 years ago.

I think it is pretty much confirmed that Unity’s poor launch led to the hard pivot to the “modern” RPG style AC games. I remember reading about it at the time. The only reason Syndicate wasn’t changed was it was already too far into production when Unity released.