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When you're in a wheelchair and still want to cosplay... I have to admit, I'm somewhat impressed...

That's a really old laptop. Also seems odd that it is marked with a really obvious sticker.

5 hours is a miniscule window to evacuate a city, so "right away" is still very accurate. Anything less than 24 hours can be considered breaking the ceasefire "right away". When a historian writes about this a century from now, that is how it will look on paper.

Lmao - I got past those archers on my first try on my first playthrough and didn't think much of them...and then proceeded to die like 30 times in a row on my second playthrough. There are definitely cheap moments that you could not reasonably foresee every so often...but most of them are not nearly so bad as that.

Yep, of all the flaws in nuTrek imo the biggest is the complete lack of memorable characters, even worse than the awful inconsistent plotting. At least people remember Neelix or Harry Kim, though they may wish they didn't. To be honest there's a pretty big lack of memerable characters too. Number of novel Discovery names I can remember after 3 seasons: Michael, Lorca, Tilly, Saru. I could probably remember the names of the engineer and his boyfriend, if put to the coals. Number of novel Picard names I can remember after 1 season: none. Number of random Blake's 7/ Farscape/ BSG/ old Trek/ random SW EU I browsed at the library/ computer game characters I can remember after 10+ years... multiple times more for each.

As you probably know, the Ring of the Marksman, the Harley pet and the Acina's Tricorn give some bonus to some weapon's effects, like the AoE of Citzal's Spirit Lance, WotEP, Amra, Keeper of the Flame etc. and also weapon's abilities like Thunderous Report and others. The Sharpshooter subclass give also +1pen and 15% crit chance with these effects, like other Passives from the ranger side (like Marksman). I made some test, so the fire damages from Keeper of the flame on myself have the +1pen from the subclass (<4m), but not from Marksman talent (>4m). In other side, Thunderous Report on far than 4m targets have +5acc from the talent, but not the pen bonus. That mean, for melee AoE weapons, the subclass is advantageous, anf for other effects (>4m), the class is beneficial. I thought that can be interesting to know.

I like it just because it doesn't waste my time. The "tutorial" was them writing a few messages for basic controls on the ground...that the player can choose to read or choose to ignore. 99% of dialogue is the player choosing to talk to NPCs. Trying to make sense of anything is up to the player and their ability (and desire to) interpret details. In a way, it's kind of a "have your cake and eat it too" style, because if you want to just play some damn video games, you can totally do that - if nothing else, Souls games are definitely the kind of game where you can just start up a new game and jump right into it without many annoyances or obstacles artificially getting in your way...but you can also engage with it to try to figure out the world to a degree. It's such a different kind of style from the more ham-fisted "PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU NOTICE EVERYTHING WE MADE AND WROTE" approach that is endemic to so much modern (triple A) gaming. It's not always appropriate for every type of game (and it's certainly not always what I want!), but I think it works for Souls. ...Now for the SonicMages of the world who say that it's all so totally deep and unique, that's a different discussion entirely that I won't engage with because of how patently absurd it is.

Cats are not merchandise, they're your owners.

That's one good looking merchandise, but the red thing with CDs on the right thwarts the view. You should post another picture without it.

New merchandise!

If a cat is hiding inside a fridge and nobody is there to hear it meow, does it make any noise?

To me, gameplay-wise, they're basically if you took the combat of a 3D Zelda game and made it a little more intricate and customizable on top of making it an actual challenge (which the 3D Zelda games are...decidedly not). I really don't think Souls games are as "unforgivably hard" as many people make them out to be - Dark Souls 1 in particular, which is the one I played first, I did not have much trouble with the majority of bosses on the first playthrough, with many being defeated on literally the first try. If you don't have much experience with 3D action RPGs, I could see it being too difficult to start off with. I love Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 1, and Bloodborne, but I don't care so much about the rest - especially Dark Souls 2, which I think is pretty much just a giant heap of garbage (though it is apparently many people's favorite Souls game...how, I could not possibly begin to guess).

Some birds are chirping, that Shoigu (uncovered wide spread corruption, etc.) will be a scapegoat and that Russians will hit a hard stop within 2 weeks as they will run out of funding for the operation and soldiers are beginning to get info, that their operation pay is now worthless... Wonder, how much of a truth that is and how real it may be.

It's not a cat, but common lizards are cute too. It was under yard debris we were cleaning up. Took 15 minutes warming up before it wanted to move out of my hand and climbed all over my shirt. It was almost pure black-looking initially then slowly turned color. I love creatures/animals/insects/whatever. Well, except mosquitos/fleas/simlar, and those mean and ornery paper wasps/yellow jackets.

Hey, man, that's my laptop right now. But yes the sticker's a bit too on the nose.

...The same exact thing as Biden but perhaps with significantly different rhetoric? Dems, Repubs, all the same, different tone.

Highly recommended. While the subject matter is much more adult than most anime you've liked, there's not much cheesecake and it's very engaging. Spend 10000 years at the gym.

I took a look into the gamedata file, and Scordeo's Edge ranged acc bonus work in the same way ; +30acc for the lance's AoE , maybe it is more dangerous than the first hit from the weapon ! I have to do some test to see what happen for spells you mentioned. Then the acc bonus work for everything that is an ranged effect from a weapon but not for spells. I tried many options with a cipher an a wizard. Maybe a MC ranger with Scordeo's Edge and Grave Calling killing skeletons can be very powerful.

From what I have seen it does seem like an improvement over the original, which had boatloads of issues. The fact that they fixed the broken attribute system is a huge sigh of relief. May pick it up on a sale later down the line.

Welcome to the club, I've made more than my fair share of such comments, and apparently in reply to the same posters.

Yes, because they by and large do not bother with traditional or direct storytelling, and what little there is of the latter is so incredibly basic that you'd be forgiven for not having it even register as being part of "the story". Instead, you get lots of passive storytelling for all sorts of different elements of the game where you have to try to connect little details and sometimes make assumptions if you want to try to weave together micro-narratives - why an item is found in a certain location, what's the deal with this NPC, how did this area get destroyed in this particular manner, etc. It's an especially appropriate type of storytelling for stuff that doesn't really matter because it doesn't waste your time on unimportant nothings when you don't want it to...but FromSoftware applies it to a lot of stuff that would matter in other games, so I get why it isn't for everyone. I do think it serves heavily action-based games pretty well when they're trying to have more of a low-key and less in-your-face approach, especially with consideration to how terribly obnoxious more 'cinematic' action games in recent years have become (e.g. the Horizon games). The main 'plot' may still ultimately culminate in the bog-standard "you are the hero...because you were able to do what everyone else couldn't", but the style and framing of how you get there is very different.

Hah, you know you have a weekend when you can waste time for mindlessly going through youtube. I've found a piece though, which is somewhat funny, because it actually speaks a lot of truth about Russian state of mind.

I dunno. Usually the only way for me to figure out the story in their games is if I read it in a walkthrough / wiki article.

I think we've had this discussion before, but yeah, FromSoftware is pretty good at passive storytelling and world-building - not plot or traditional storytelling, of which they largely make no attempt to really even do outside of Sekiro (...and even that pales in comparison to most other games in terms of directness and quantity). DeS, DS1, and BB all drew me in from a world perspective - the rest were somewhere between "eh" and "nothing". I have not tried Elden Ring yet, and I probably won't for some time to come...open world trash, .

Gosh dangit, majestic. I actually briefly considered not using that as my image for it because I also noticed the dress flying up, but I decided I didn't care because it's just a silly stylistic thing and was otherwise a pretty solid art piece for the show...well, besides the TERRIBLE "Blu-Ray Vol. 1" text, which is admittedly pretty shameful with how little effort was put into it - presumably, this was originally an older concept art that they ended up using for the BDs many years later. ...I also now notice that it looks like the frog is staring right at her... Wicked City (and Nanoha) was a mistake.

Charming fellow.

You will also have to consider that the whole situation may well be a result of Covid in the first place. I am not privy to what Putin is experiencing, but two years of near-hysterical isolation will not do you any good at all if you are inclined towards paranoia. Both of our comments are speculation, of course, and should be regarded as such. However, absolutely terrible historical ironies are a well-known fact, and this might be one. Who knows. Here's probably the most terrible historical irony: Adolf Hitler's anti-semitism saved the world. The exodus [sic] of Jewish scientists from Germany began in the 1930s, and was substantial. Without that, Hitler would probably have had the Bomb in 1942 or 1943. And we all know what he'd have done with it. Albert Einstein himself noted sometime around 1937/1938 that Hitler's anti-semitism will do his forthcoming war effort an awful lot of damage, which it did. But you're not likely to make people smile when you say, "By the way, Adolf Hitler's anti-semitism saved the world".

Just beat it. Overall I liked it. The story and characters were good. Combat was decent. Only thing I really didn't like was the ending. Not to spoil anything but the very last scene that maybe sets up a DLC made me the opposite of excited. Not sure if all endings have the same last scene I had

For those interested in history and background for the war... warning, long video, but very interesting. Bear in mind this is from 2015, covering post Soviet and Western relations after 1991, but could have been made yesterday. From the University of Chicago...

Bit weird, but I wonder if Covid actually saved us. I'm pretty sure without it f'ing everything up, Trump would have easily been reelected. It doesn't need a genius to figure out what he would have done in this situation.

Anyone wondering like me, why there was still no significant attack on the 64km long convoy, which seems to be stuck? It looks like they do not need to do anything about it yet. This tries to shed some info onto the matter. (click on Read the full conversation). TLDR - convoy is stuck in Mud, out of fuel (whole 17 kms of cars) and running out of food (allegedly, they were sent on their way with only three days worth of rations). It is highly probable, that they have also no power in car batteries. The commanding officer, who tried to "solve the situation" at the front convoy was killed by a sniper.

I'm used to the other house. It's more rational to live there (if only because it wouldn't rent for nearly as much...) and it's certainly more likely that we will end up doing so. But ...each time we've returned down here for a couple days, my mental mood immediately lifts upwards and I'm more "awake" again. The Bay Area Peninsula will always be "home." ...on the flip side ... Sac, house (more room/yard, they are very active kitties) means I could get some variation of these "grizzled black" chausie cats - I would like one of the 25-30lb ones, please. I would take it for walks around the block.

Because they didn't care about Syrian lives. I think that Russia is still hoping that after a victory or a surrender from Ukraine all of this will blow over. I really don't see how that can happen as far as the Ukrainian people are concerned. At best they will achieve a goal and demilitarize Ukraine, but the people will still hate them. Then again, I don't know what Ukraine's public opinion of the west is right, seeing as how they left them out to dry.

Brisco County - EP 2 Socrates' Sister Brisco captures Jack Randolph, a member of the Bly Gang. Jack hires Socrates' sister Iphigenia (their parents get top marks in the baby naming category) as his defense lawyer. This is a completely self-contained episode, it doesn't tie into the overarching plot with the orb at all. Pete is inexplicably back in this episode and no worse for the wear after getting shot and presumably killed in the pilot. No explanation is given, I guess it was just a flesh wound. I'm willing to overlook it since Pete is the greatest. This episode mainly focuses on Socrates, his sister, Brisco, and Professor Wickwire. Lord Bowler is in full-on comedy mode. Dixie doesn't appear in this episode, neither does John Bly. Overall it was a fun little adventure and better paced and structured than the pilot, even if if did nothing to advance the overarching plot (which will never be resolved anyway).

I mean combat and exploration, definitely. World building - yes. Story and characters in true FromSoftware fashion is barely there. Apples to Oranges

The Ukraine has fought an insurgent war against Russia before, so it's not like this is a novelty. Cf. Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

I have to be honest that I am very worried about the possibility of Owlcat being forced to close down on account of conditions inside Russia. I can even see many Owlcat employees deciding to get out of Russia while they still can, before leaving the country gets banned. Owlcat's games are the ones I love the most of all the RPGs being made right now, and it will suck if they're no more. I hope they can ride this out, but I am very pessimistic.

I only have one rarely used PC with a cookie capable of login after I lost my phone with the 2 factor login stuff on it.

Workin my job today. Work for a shipping company up in Minnesota, honestly it's the best job I've had in my life. Kinda strange.

If you boil someone's funny bone, does that make it a laughing stock ?

should be obvious by now open world are not a good design for most rpg blood and wine is the exception that prove the rule

This war of mine from GOG. To support red cross of course. Also Slipways also from GOG, it should go for Red Cross, unfortunetly it last only till 3rd march

Mmm, cookie.