Hey everyone it's me, Scrooloose, and welcome to another WRUP. The Olympics are in full swing and aside from some questionable judges scoring choices things are mostly going smoothly, as it would appear from the outside anyway. That's not to say we're not seeing controversy. The very first team ski jumping event has seen five women disqualified due to suit infractions. The measurements for the jump suits must not exceed four centimeters from the body and it seems that some have gone past the mark. It turns out those ski jumpers come to the games with seamstresses/ers that will make adjustments on the day of the jump to make sure things fit as bodies change from day to day. It's evidently a pretty tight metric to follow.
Then there's the ROC figure skater who has tested positive for a banned substance and the way it must be handled is very confusing. The substance in question is used to treat vertigo and migraines and a few other legitimate medical needs, including helping the heart perform better with less oxygen. That last bit makes it a performance enhancer as one could do a program and be less tired than without the medication and that could effect the outcome. There's now way to know whether the skater in question took the medication consciously or if she was "doped", but her coach is known for some pretty unethical treatment, if that's any clue to go by. The complication comes from the fact that the skater is only 15 years old and in the Olympics if you're under 16 you can't be held responsible for your own medications and so on. There's every possibility that the ROC skater has a legit reason to take this medication, yet the substance in that medication is banned and surely she would have known that, or at least the persons responsible for her would. As a result the Russian Anti Doping Agency banned her from further competition and she's under investigation, but the ban was quickly appealed and overturned. The IOC (International Olympic Committee) and World Anti Doping Agency are also looking to act, but the question is how exactly to go about that. As of now she has not received her gold medal from her performance in the team skate and is awaiting a decision to come before Monday when she's supposed to compete next. It's a mess. On the one hand I feel for her because she's obviously worked hard to get where she is and if she was unaware of taking a banned substance then it's hard to hold her accountable by banning her from competing. On the other, she still has a performance enhancing substance in her system, or at least did at the time of winning her gold medal and that's straight up unfair. On yet another, maybe she knew all along and due to some bad ethics from a coach was taking it anyway under the impression that she had to or something of the like. But how do you prove any of it? For now her position is still in question.
I like the Olympics a lot, I'm usually glued to them when they're on but the politics and bureaucracy are just abhorent and I'm sure tons goes on that we never hear about. In any case, I remained glued.
There's also a football game in LA this weekend, I think... A very large bowl of sorts. Or 56 large bowls. I'm not sure. Something about goats and wild cats.
Right, right --the Rams are a CA team and as such I feel like I should take their side, but the Bengals are a childhood favorite of mine. I also haven't watched much more than a drop of football this year so I find myself generally unexcited. Still it is the Superbowl and I always watch that. Go Rams, I guess.
Okay let's take a look at some more typical stuff here.
Some of you may have heard by now that there was a serious security issue found in the multiplayer portion of Dark Souls that could let hackers all up in your rig to do all manner of nefarious deeds. Gives new meaning to being invaded. Bandai Namco have said that until they completely resolve the issue and make sure it's not present in Dark Souls' sequels, the online PC servers will remain offline until the official release of Elden Ring on the 25th of February. More here from The Verge
Well, NVidia's ARM deal may have fallen though but AMD has succeeded in obtaining Xilinx for a paltry 35 billion dollars. A drop in bucket for any of us. I'll take two Xilinx please. It's likely to more about R&D than anything as Xilinx doesn't actually make chips. But it's bound to be a boon for AMD to have the extra science behind more CPU's and GPU's we can't buy any time soon. Another Link to The Verge will tell you in detail.
Speaking of GPU's, it seems Best Buy is looking to capitalize off shortages by locking your new graphics card behind a $200 a year subscription. The sub service is called Totaltech and provides access to various levels of support on top of pay-walling the newest tech -at least the GPU's so far. No telling what else they may decide to put in that special place. Read about it at tom's Hardware
Horizon Zero Dawn has really made an impact since coming to PC and has surpassed 20 million copies sold. This is of course an over all total, not just PC but that's still pretty huge. Take a look at the PlayStation Blog for a little on that, and a new cinematic from HZD's soon coming sequel.
Alright, what the hell is going on here?
Yoda: Still really enjoying Dying Light 2, need to see if I can snag the grappling hook soon. But Lost Ark also finally hits the west this weekend, and I've got that puppy all preloaded and ready to dive head first into that this weekend as well.
AJ: I recently acquired Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master for the Sega Genesis and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters for the SNES, both via ebay, so I'll probably give those a go this weekend. I may also play some Tecmo Bowl or Madden '95 to get ready for the big game on Sunday.
Greywolfe: 4if game 1/4 is complete! i beat guacamelee! but at great cost to my sanity, so now we're playing a laid back point and click game called 2064: read only memories. so far, i quite like the world it's set up and i'm definitely enjoying the characters. there's only been one or two very mild puzzles, so it's more of a visual novel and less of an adventure game, but that's fine, because it's a great way to decompress after how COMPLETELY SILLY guacamelee! turned out to be. [seriously, that game was sold as one thing and turned into quite another. not always a good thing.]
Scrooloose: Well I'm not doing 4if exactly, but I am playing SnowRunner still. I guess I could call it 1if because there's no way I'll be done. I could call a goal of finishing Amur finally. So there we have it, that's my plan. Otheriwse I'm waiting for Elden Ring to launch this month. And Sunday is Superbowl day so I'll be watching that.