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Finished the game. Was ok. Last levels had some stupid stuff. Skipped probably over half of act3 because I couldn't be bothered.

I saw it in the newsletter, but I said "If Mamoulian War doesn't inform us, I don't click the Claim Button."

For sure. This person is an idiot who wanted to play a game early and get attention. He apparently had about 5 copies to sell, which is worth a few thousand bucks? 12 years of hard time is not a reasonable sentence for being criminally dumb. He probably won't serve that anyway, but I'm not going to defend our justice system, which is punitive rather than restorative.

The disconnect between severity of crime and punishment in the USA is something bizarre too. IMHO.

Yes this is one of my main issues, although I wouldn't use the word 'perfect' to describe my expectations for any game. But also, my past experiences with mods were less than satisfactory, where adding the mod to my game was extremely cumbersome and aggravating, and then keeping the mod (and mod manager) updated was additionally aggravating. But here, adding the Unity Mod Manager was quite easy and problem-free, as was adding the UB mod itself. So, fingers crossed.

Finished main story of Shadow Gambit. It is another solid real time stealth tactics from Mimimi games. This time around more fantastical setting allowed them to shake up and expand their character roster. Some new enemy types as well, but nothing revolutionary really. As is the studio’s tradition the story, while pretty cliche, is better than one would expect. I didn’t always gel with humour of the sidestories, but it’s been overall a charming adventure. What I am less convinced by, is the new structure to the game. Rather than linear set of mission with pre-determined characters - we get multiple larger island, with couple missions in each, and for most missions we can pick our crew (up to 3) and landing/extraction points. It’s fun, and having different crew members does keep things fresh, but between powerful character kits and multiple ways of engagement, the game felt by far like the easiest (and therefore the least interesting to me) from their 3 games. More disappointingly, the maps didn’t feel particularly distinct - not being able to design level around specific mechanic (footsteps, water, darkness, specific character kit) means even with some unique features all levels played more or less the same. Even, now after just finishing the game I struggle to recall any but two setpiece missions, while I have clear recollection of multiple missions from Shadow Tactics & Deaperados3. I am also not a fan of locking replaying levels and badges until after one beats the main campaign. I just preferred the pace of previous titles - being able to take one mission at a time and 100% before moving forward. There is a reason for it (some progression will require to access to all of the characters), but I don’t really like it.

At least it has one positive income that he slip into your country. He can be hopefully extradited to Ukraine to face the court for his crimes against humanity.

RIP Minthara. You looked like a very interesting npc. For the few minutes you were in the game. Moonbeam did wonders as usual. I’m cleaning the goblin camp and had some funny interactions with the BDSM guy. Since Karlach had expressed some interested in his “penance”, I let her have it. There was some exclusive dialogue for Barbarians. The battles were some of the best so far. Plenty of exploding barrels, enemies moving into a combination of grease/web/cloak of daggers/moonbeam (or Call Lightning) and my first fireball killed five guys (who were enwebbed) at the same time. That is how it should be.

Having finished my P:WotR run I went back to Solasta. And I finally, after all these years, broke down and registered for a Nexus Mods account so that I could apply the Community Unfinished Business mod to Solasta. I mainly activated three things in the mod, exactly the three biggest gripes I've had with the game: a party of six, multiclassing, and removing attunement. Then I started playing the official user module, Caer Falcarn, that comes with the modding tools DLC. Now Solasta is sooooooo incredibly awesome! I'm so loving the game, and looking forward to playing Palace of Ice and also some of the more popular user modules out there.

Nah, seems like he wasn't a gamer at all, and Starfield was just a tiny portion of the stolen goods he was selling. Seemed more like the world's stupidest advertising stunt. The "theft of goods $2500-10000" item on his charge sheet is a massive underestimate. His seller page is cleaned out now, but it was still up for a good few days after the arrest and the retail value of what was there had to be approaching six digits, if not over. He was selling job lots of games, electronics, perfumes, power tools, etc, like bundles of 10 Go Pros, 20 Bluetooth speakers, 50 copies of Just Dance (as one listing, not 50 individual listings), etc. Check out the Wayback Machine archive of just the first page (of nine) and it's probably already $10k+ worth of stolen goods there. He's a warehouse been apparently doing this systematically so even the total value of the stuff he's got listed *right now* would just be a fraction of his total business over time. Obviously I'm not saying it's worth 12 years, but your estimation of what he stole is probably out by a couple orders of magnitude because the retail value of Starfield would only have been a couple percent of the total of what he had listed.

Goal number 8 has been finished One more game gone from backlog. GOG copy of Deep Sky Derelicts: Definitive Edition has been beaten after a little bit more than 40 hours. I had a decent amount of fun during the whole playthrough, but the last three Derelicts and Mothership have been more or less pain in the ass. The random nature of combat due to deckbuilding base of the game has shown some flaws and caused few Game Overs. Including the final bossfight, where I was completely obliterated during the first attempt, and had almost no issues fighting him on second one. I am just glad, that I was not playing on Hardcore, as I would be pretty pissed-off right now .

Why are you reading propaganda though? I think both sides are being careful with their tanks, for Ukraine they have to be mindful of the Ka-52s. Most footage I am seeing is IFVs getting wasted. One depressing one was a Ukrainian BMP that ended up face to face with a T90, got blown to hell.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/08/28/in-13-weeks-ukraine-has-lost-just-five-of-its-71-leopard-2-tanks/?sh=9e1c1ca185b1 Interesting link, only 5 Leopards have actually been destroyed. If you read most of the Russian and Vatnik propaganda they will tell you hundreds have been annihilated

Vampire Survivors is the greatest game since JA3. My son and I are pretty hooked on it right now. Right now the old man holds a slight edge on longest run, with me at 30:05 and him at 29:58.

There is no going back friend once you see the advantages of meaningful mods , the vicarious thrill of Loverslab awaits you

Agreed, on that point. What looks especially bad on the home front is that the new right-wing government is extremely keen to make entry as difficult as possible to quite a few people, especially "different" people, but then someone like this person was given permit just like that.

I don't really care all that much about Bioware anymore and I don't remember the last game they released that I really loved, ME2 maybe. It's been a string of disappointments of varying levels starting with DA2. Sucks for anyone that lost their jobs though.

Caused a production issue due to ****ing newline characters of all things Damn text operations

Hi! I love that you have created this tool and I am trying to get it to install. How long does the initial asset bundle extraction usually take? Ive left it running for a solid 15-20 mins now and it still hasnt shown me any content that its exporting, and I dont see a n apotheosis_exported directory in the PoE2 directory at all. Any pointers would be great!

Another GOG giveaway https://www.gog.com/en/game/hero_of_the_kingdom_ii

Interesting channel about movie trivia and easter eggs.

My position at work might be being eliminated due to the department shifting around but I have an interview for a replacement in the same organization on Thursday and another at an external one in the works (the latter would actually be several steps higher and a decent pay raise so I'm honestly more interested in that, although it also depends on who gives me what offer when). So, while the prospect of possibly being temporarily jobless isn't ideal, things could be worse given the situation and I'm also in a field that is growing rather than shrinking despite the questionable economy and job market.

This just in: Gaider likes it.

Ketheric Thorm is the main antagonist of the second act (3 acts in total), so it could be said that he is present, though my interactions with the character consisted mostly of Skip, Skip, Skip, Combat, Loot. The trailer: --- Continued my second playthrough. Haven't updated the game, so some of the things might have been fixed with the patch. I discovered that my Str Sorcerer can break most of the doors and walls, thus I got a rogue much later. I also was able to recruit Minthara, went with her to the Goblin Camp (to get the explosives), and told the guard that we were there to see Minthara (there was no additional Minthara). Somehow, I doubt that we were supposed to return to the area. The PC's facial animations are still ridiculous and it would have been better if the camera was pointing where the PC was looking at and shown only their back and shoulders. Also, now the party consists mostly of hirelings and it feels somehow jollier (no one threatens the PC). At some point the Dark Urge Butler (I forgot the name) appeared where the other party members could reach him and initiated a dialogue with the PC. The party got 10XP and the next dialogue with the Butler was just Dark Urgency standing and talking to himself with the Butler's voice. The final boss of the act was defeated with the help of the explosives and fire arrows and the party reached the third act at level 4 (Minthara at 6). Edit. Dark Urgency discovered his love for music and decided to learn to play violin (I wanted to get the expertise in Persuasion and something more melee-focused, like the College of Swords subclass, because, considering the play style, a Paladin Oath would not last long). The newly-hired wizard covered the casting aspect.

I thought this was generated by an AI, but apparently it's real.

It's really too bad Ylvis will be forever known as the guys with that silly fox song (to the broader public, that is - their elevator pranks are pretty funny). Ah, well.

been slammed with BG3 so this is a bit belated, but many congrats!

I am around 120 days into my dedicated Grounded save. Starting out the game I slowly realized the insane potential it has to grow. The bugs, the POIs and the mechanics coincide perfectly with each other to create an immersive world and story-line. I am taking my time with the game so I can enjoy every little thing to its max potential but I get disappointed when I realise that the amount of content is quickly coming to an end. It would be nice to get more content updates instead of holiday and QoL updates. This leads me to the main idea of my post... If there were to be a huge update this year it would be awsome to see the following things... I think the Grounded community would agree on this as well. I am no game developper so I am going to try and keep it simple based on my knowledge on the time it takes to make a game like Grounded... Futur Bug Updates 1. Combat mechanics update... I havn't yet played games like Elden Ring or any of the Dark Souls, but I caught an interesting theme in the weapons, armor and combat system. Its all set up like a game of DnD. Some armors are designed for Tank players, others for Support\Range and others for close up damage dealers. This does not matter though because of the parry mechanic. One could essentially beat the entire game if you perfect parry every single attack. So, it would be nice to switch up how bugs attack in order to catch the player off guard. Idea: **ADD MORE ATTACK PATTERNS AND MOVES TO SOME BUGS LIKE THE WOLF SPIDER ** An excellent example of a bug that has a near perfect move set is the Rolly Polly with its roll move and when it rolls up as a shield. An idea that joins everything together (bugs, story, POIs) Now this idea could be almost impossible, but it would probably win the game many prizes and triple the number of concurrent players. Yes, the current map is relatively big, for early to mid game. But, by late game, most players have the most sophisticated zipline system known to mankind. Crossing the map is no longer a problem and it makes it seem small. My base idea is... **Expand the map** There are many ways the game devs could do this. What I am suggesting is connect this backyard to the neighbor's. Make it so an event breaks a hole into the next backyard, but in order to avoid repetition make the other backyard a greenhouse, with a tropical biome. The idea of a bigger tropical biome like the Upper Yard allows the ability to add a bigger variety of bugs and to expand the story. Maybe, Dr.Tully's neigbor is an Ominent Agent and is studying stuff in his greenhouse. As I mentioned, expanding the backyard into a greenhouse would allow a bigger variety of bugs. In a greenhouse it is particularly humid. This could mean that more dew drops appear in the morning, a sprinkler system could cause small flash floods in specific areas. A humid environment allows for more bugs... 1. Vampire Ants\Bullet Ants (google it). They appear having jaws of an ant-lion and no queen. They could be an Ominent experiment released accidentally in the greenhouse. They would deal more damage than a fire ant but have the health of the black ants. Another alternative to this which would prove as a simpler idea to the public are Bullet Ants, they would deal strong poison trickling damage. Items: Ant parts (heads etc..) = Armor that has a thorns effect dealing damage to opponent when the attack Bullet Ant stinger = knife that deals insane poison stacking damage Benefit: No queen for either species so no boss. No boss = less development work 2.Centipede A fast multi legged bug that has similar combos to the Wolf Spider but lives in various dens around the backyard. Health wise it would be like a Rolly Polly but would deal poison damage like a Black Widow. Items: Centipede parts = body segments = centipede armor, tanky armor that has poison resistance Centipede fangs = poison resist smoothie and sword that has life leech and venom damage 3. Dragon Flies First ever mount in Grounded, that is all I have to say. 4.Butterflies Have a healing aura around them. Very rare apparition. 5. Scorpions Wolf spider with different combos, piercing damage + poison damage. 6. Water Scorpions (Google it) They stay at the surface waiting for the player to surface, poison damage. 7. Wasps and Hornets Basically Wasps = Orb Weavers and Hornets = Black Widows or Wolf Spiders Both deal poison and peircing damage, Wasps swarm and Hornets dont but are beefier. Conclusion I could go on forever. If you read this you would get the general concept. Grounded has insane potential. It is very popular with at the time of writing this has around 15 million concurrent players. But, it needs to stand out more. Make it the childhood dream to walk through the grass blades observing a small world where the bugs are the size of a school bus and one must survive and end Ominent's rein.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/shadow-gambit-studio-mimimi-are-closing-down-to-prioritize-our-well-being It was unexpected.

https://blog.playerauctions.com/starfield/starfield-leaker-facing-a-12-year-sentence/

It did show up on Friday, but I think another data change deceived me. Honestly such a stupid way we are doing filtering but eh.

5th ed items and infinite respeccing.