Why485

Iron Sea

Ace Combat 6

Naval Ops Warship Gunner

Independence War 2

Making environments and the game naturally dark so you can use additive HUD elements and get away with it.

Crudely drawn MS Paint graph with the X axis being Paradise, and Y axis being Saints. USS Enterprise is on the top right corner of high saintliness and high paradise. Deep Space Nine has medium saintliness, low paradise. USS Voyager is low saintliness, medium paradise.

Gul Dukat and Sisko in "The Maquis (Part 2)" Dukat is probably my favorite character? He's so interesting because he's like, clearly meant to be the villain of most stories he's in, but when it comes to the Federation (Cardassian internal politics are a different matter) he's been nothing but helpful to them. At least, as much as he can be while staying within the bounds of Cardassian society and rule. He's all in on the cause (or at least was, he's a bit shaken by the events of this episode), but he's always looking for a better way. At the same time, you still have no reason to ever trust him, and it's always safe to assume he does have some ulterior motive, even if his motives and the Federation's do often seem to be aligned, despite coming from completely different angles.

The last episode I saw was two parter of "The Maquis" and oh boy was that great. It was messy. Even the bridge crew were starting to get snippy at each other because it's a complex dilemma with understandable motivations and high stakes. This is the closest DS9 has felt to the best parts of BSG.

Screenshot from "Necessary Evil", Odo's origin story as the chief of security for Deep Space 9, and his first meeting with Kira. Also this episode played out like an episode of Columbo because it was written by a Columbo writer. Great episode.

It's SO different from TNG and VOY. Which like, yeah I know, that's the point. But still, the way that the characters actually matter in DS9 is nice and refreshing. Much as I love the crews of Voyager and Enterprise, they're not THAT interesting. DS9's crew are all flawed real people with problems.

Screenshot from Deep Space 9 episode Duet. One of the best episodes I've seen of any Star Trek ever. I watched it a couple years ago and rewatching it today in 2026 I have complicated feelings about this one.

A couple years ago I started watching Deep Space 9, but only got a few episodes into Season 2 before I stopped because of other things taking away that "TV time." I've picked it up again earlier this month and I'm now about 3/4s through Season 2 and to nobody's surprise, it's pretty good!

I last played BF6 3 months ago. It isn't a Battlefield game. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a competently made shooter, but it's the most generic shareholder approved designed by committee shooter that could possibly be made. Gone is the squad based combined arms large scale gameplay that was signature of Battlefield, replaced with nonstop action, shoving as many players into as small a space as possible, with a breakneck pace on an unlock treadmill which only further disincentives whatever vestigial team play was left in the series.

This is the most succinct way I can answer the question.

Got an extremely pointed survey email from EA asking "Why did you stop playing Battlefield 6?" It's very weird how specific it all is, but hey if they're genuinely interested, they've got a genuine answer from me.

It's happening as we speak!
This is Corala, and it's even got the nasty blur/bloom that Twilight Princess has that I didn't like at the time either 😂 Check out their dev blog it's really cool! They've even got hand painted vertex based environment lighting!
youtu.be/U2KWF1CwhVU

Blue sun from Freelancer. It has 4 "spines" which are the sort of diffraction spikes on the star, and a slight blue halo around it.

[star] nickname = med_blue_sun star_glow = blue_starglow star_center = blue_starcenter lens_flare = circle_blue_lens_flare lens_glow = default_lens_glow spines = blue4_spines intensity_fade_in = 0 intensity_fade_out = 0 zone_occlusion_fade_in = 1 zone_occlusion_fade_out = 1 radius = 3000 [star_glow] nickname = blue_starglow shape = glow2_ring scale = 6 inner_color = 0.65, 0.6, 1 outer_color = 0, 0, 1 [star_glow] nickname = blue_starcenter shape = LensGlowSpike scale = 2 inner_color = 1, 1, 1 outer_color = 0.6, 0.7, 1 [lens_flare] nickname = circle_blue_lens_flare shape = lenscircle2 min_radius = 15 max_radius = 140 bead = 0.13, 1.5, 0, 0, 0.4, 0.05 bead = 0.14, 0.9, 0.9, 0.3, 2, 0.05 bead = 0.21, 1.2, 0.2, 0.3, 0.8, 0.05 bead = 0.22, 1, 0.9, 0.3, 0.5, 0.1 bead = 0.33, 1.9, 0.5, 0.5, 0.9, 0.1 bead = 0.47, 1, 1, 0.2, 0.8, 0.1 bead = 0.55, 0.6, 0.2, 0.4, 0.9, 0.06 bead = 0.57, 1.5, 0.4, 0.4, 0.8, 0.1 bead = 0.58, 1.5, 0.4, 0.4, 0.8, 0.1 bead = 0.65, 0.5, 0.4, 0.4, 1, 0.05 [lens_glow] nickname = default_lens_glow shape = LensGlowSpike radius_scale = 2 inner_color = 1, 1, 1 outer_color = 1, 1, 1 glow_fade_in_seconds = 0.25 glow_fade_out_seconds = 0.25 [spines] nickname = blue4_spines radius_scale = 1 shape = stripe_narrow spine = 5, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0.2, 1, 0.4 spine = 7, 0.6, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0.2, 1, 0.3 spine = 5, 0.5, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0.2, 1, 0.5 spine = 7, 0.6, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0.2, 1, 0.5

Somebody created a catalog of all the different star designs to be used as a resource for modders building new systems. The "spines" are the coolest part, because they get occluded individually and just look cool. Here's the "med_blue_sun", and what its associated ini file looked like:

Screenshot from the hit 2003 video game Freelancer, probably taken from the 88 Flak mod. Pretty sure this is Sigma 17 and the remains of Freeport 7. All the Sigma systems were binary/trinary systems, so they looked really cool when you flew around.

Freelancer is one of the reasons I love lens flares. Every sun in the game had a different lens flare, and you could tell what type of sun it was based on the flare. They were specified in config files and created programmatically, so they scale/occlude very well and don't just look like a PNG.

H2 from Snowerunner climbing up a mountain with a VERY narrow road. Unbelievably, the very narrow track of this thing came in handy because if this thing was literally any wider it would have fallen off the more precarious parts.

Sitting on the top of the mountain, which unlocked a cool upgrade for my favorite stupid truck the Twinsteer. It was genuinely fun getting the H2 up here, and this kind of careful off-road rock climbing, as opposed to slogging through mud trying to read the textures, is I think the coolest stuff in this god forsaken game.

I can't help but cheer it on when I drive it into something that it's hopelessly outmatched by. Once in a while, it surprises me, and I can't help but feel a little bit proud of this stupid yellow H2, thrust into a world it's wholly unsuited for.

Look at this stupid chud SUV. It's trying so hard to look tough when it's actually completely mediocre. I shoehorn it into any ultra-specific niches I can find for it because I want to protect its fragile ego.

The Western Star 6900 TwinSteer, a truck that I still can't believe actually exists and was ever built. It looks kind of like a semi truck but it has 4 wheels in the front that all steer and an integral "trailer" that is completely fixed and is driven by 4 wheels in the back so it's basically a very LOOOOONG truck, like to a stupid degree. Like why would anybody build this long. An elementary school kid definitely designed this.

Crazy how I went from hating Snowrunner to kind of loving it? Just look at the size of this lad!

H2 Hummer from Snowrunner getting a little bit of air, though it was kind of mostly from the bounce, and not the incline itself. Also please Saber let me zoom in with the photo mode why is the game perpetually on a wide lens 😭

It's growing on me. It's useless in a kinda charming way.

The H2 really isn't that good, but it's pretty fun to drive on the rare pavement in the game.

The Hummer H2 is found on Alaska and it's as bad as you would expect it to be, especially given how off-roading and map design works in this game. It's still very funny though that it exists. I think it's also very funny that the Snowrunner cover art on Steam has the H2 being towed by a big truck because the H2 (even with upgrades) struggles on any terrain tougher than packed dirt. To be fair, the same can be said of literally any other Scout that looks like a mostly normal car, but the big nice cushy H2 being bad at off-roading will never not be funny.

2. The offroad gearbox is an absolute game-changer, and is such an essential piece of kit that I think it should be the default gearbox, or be one of the first things you unlock. The Low+ (analogous to first gear) and High (analogous to second gear) gears make a massive difference.

Exceptionally rare instance where I was able to use a highway truck (not with highway tires, that would be insane because there is nowhere in the game where you can get around reasonably on highway tires) to do a job, so I took the excuse and bought a highway truck just for this. It was mostly pointless and the same job could have been done all the same with any of the other trucks. There is nothing the highway trucks can do that an off-road or heavy or literally any other full size truck can't.

My two main complaints at this point:
1. Highway tires shouldn't exist. They are completely pointless and only serve to frustrate you at the start. Even All Terrain tires I would be okay with their complete removal, but it's fine to keep them thematically for the also mostly useless highway trucks.

The White-Western Star 4964 is actually pretty good. It's big, and one of the things I've been learning is that in Snowrunner bigger is almost always better. The bigger your truck (and tires) the less stuff you get stuck in and you can instead focus on the logistics of the missions and navigation, which are the parts of the game I find interesting.

Scout vehicles seem to be mostly pointless due to how easily they get stuck due to their small size. However the International Loadstar 1700 has been a pleasant surprise because it's big enough that it's almost halfway between being a Scout and an actual truck. It even uses the truck gearbox. I was able to complete a good number of missions in Alaska with just this Scout.

Driving the pretty large Azov 5319 through shallow water with a huge pipe on a semi trailer. While the game's first two levels are set in Michigan and Alaska, there's an uncanny valleyness to the whole thing because it's all very clearly filtered through an Eastern European or Russian perspective. There's more to write about this, but I'll just say it's funny driving these very clearly Russian (KAMAZ) trucks, or US/EU trucks with equipment on them that is clearly based on real life Russian equipment.

The White Western Star with the Royal BM17 hitched behind it. This is a whole story in itself, but I'll say this game would be MUCH better in coop, because having a second truck to help you get unstuck, or to make the logistics of a job easier would let you do jobs at least twice as fast and get a lot less stuck.

More Snowrunner insanity. I've gotten to the point where I'm mostly having fun. The game really is A LOT better once you get trucks big enough that they can mostly drive over your problems. More in the alt text.

Descent (1995)

E3 2000, so by this point it had turned into a PC game, but about a month after this trailer, Microsoft buys Bungie and then later announces it's going to be an Xbox exclusive.

On the other hand, I found it absolutely miserable to play until you unlock the parts and trucks necessary to bypass as much of the "gameplay" as possible. The hope that there had to be some kind of light at the end of the tunnel, was the only thing that kept me going.

This is such a weird game and I still don't know if I would recommend it or not. On one hand, it's an easy recommend if you think getting stuck in mud in cool and big off-road trucks sounds appealing. It's very physicsy and bouncy, and very soulful in visuals and details.

The Azov 64131 8x8 truck that is relatively cheap and can drive over most mud and obstacles with ease. I don't think I started to kind of almost enjoy this game until I bought this truck like 25 hours in.

The massive P16 carrying the specially designed log trailer. This thing also is just so big that it just drives OVER most obstacles.

The GMC MH9500, a truck that is not very good because it can't drive off-road very well, and is classified as a "highway truck" which means that it's only good on roads, a stupid classification for a game where you never drive on roads.

The deceptively good Royal BM17, a truck that judging by its ingame stats, drivetrain layout, features, and appearance, seems very unremarkable and like it wouldn't be very good but for some reason is one of the best trucks in the game. This kind of counter-intuitive logic is par for the course in Snowrunner.

Snowrunner gets good 30 hours in.

I've posted this before and I will post it again.

for the cost of one month of discord nitro, you can buy a copy of hit multiple goty award winning hit indie game Endless Monday: Dreams and Deadlines or a burger to give to your friends and family

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Chevy on top of a mountain doing that pose.

The Freightliner that's your bread and butter because it's the best truck you'll have for the first like 15 hours but it also kinda sucks and you're going to get stuck a lot.

I've been playing this on and off this past week and after 20 hours I still can't tell if I'm having fun. It's such a miserable slog with a deeply unfriendly difficulty curve. Apparently Snowrunner is the easiest these games have ever been.

Title card of Snowrunner with a big yellow truck driving in snow.

If you're a big fan of poison swamps, boy do I have the game for you.

YouTube video by Abao Ambience Riverside Train Ride in Gifu, Japan / 8K 60fps HDR / Natural Ambience (No Music)

God damn I know exactly what video that is too 😂
youtu.be/kKF5wGR8Luc?...

Yes it does.