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I'm tempted to order Glamdring and put "glows blue in the presence of orks" under "purpose"

ok, am having said more than once am not a fan o' puns, but we did chuckle at ms. carter's pithy offering. HA! Good Fun!

Eh, I don't know if it's worth that. You could get much of the same experience looking it up on YouTube. The Ironman mode thing sucks, I think one thing PoE definitely did right was separating that from its normal difficulty setting. Quite a few fights in BG3 could use some additional challenge and it'd be nice to get that without the one save thing. I wouldn't go as far as to say conquering all of the Hells, but the Hells do have a very large presence in the game and a big share of the unfinished business after the end. Not sure how that'd work with all of the (new) endings, but they could always change the endgame to be a transition to the hypothetical new adventure or something.

Nioh had a rather straightforward story - an Irish pirate has his spirit BFF kidnapped by a Japanese wizard and goes to save her, while participating in the most well-known historical battles in the region. Can't say that it was horrible (though, any "great unifier" is a genocidal maniac; then again, the concept of the human rights was different even 70 years ago), but the story was not particularly deep or compelling. The boss and spirit guardian design was probably the best aspect of the game if one is anyhow interested in folklore. In DS, on the other hand, there was the lore and the context of the PC's actions - basically, the Chosen Undead prophecy was sending the newly-arisen zombies to become firewood and to prolong the Age of Fire. I will probably get Lies of P when I am more confident that I can run it - the reimagining of the classic story seems like an interesting concept and I am fond of Souls-likes in general (though, not so much of the Sekiro combat style). Haven't played the newer ones, but Uncharted 1-3* were ridiculously dumb actions with a lot of explosions and cut-scenes. Might be fun, if the expectations are very low. *the first one was structured as "3 waves of enemies => cut-scene => running => repeat", so haven't finished. Uncharted 3 had some puzzles and more climbing at the beginning.

Competition is always good.

today were arguable the single worst day trump has had in regards to his numerous court cases. first: https://www.npr.org/2023/12/01/1216541738/appeals-court-trump-immunity-jan-6-riot-lawsuits Former President Donald Trump is not immune from being sued over the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, a federal appeals court ruled Friday, clearing the way for lawsuits filed against him in connection with the deadly riot. judge luttig thoughts on the matter: not only did the judge find the appeals court decision persuasive but he did not see any reason why SCOTUS would grant cert if trump appealed. judge luttig, btw, before he started to criticize trump, were arguable one o' the top three most respected living textualists (conservatives.) am gonna suggest the guy who were most instrumental in getting clarence thomas nominated by bush were luttig. nobody has ever confused luttig with liberals. also, for those not understanding how the arcane US judicial system operates, appeals court decisions create binding precedent for lower district courts, so were no surprise when... second: https://www.npr.org/2023/12/01/1216696071/donald-trump-election-interference-immunity-claims-rejected-tanya-chutkan Donald Trump is not immune from prosecution in his election interference case in Washington, a federal judge ruled Friday, knocking down the Republican's bid to derail the case charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 presidential election. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan's decision amounts to a sharp rejection to challenges the Trump defense team had raised to the four-count indictment in advance of a trial expected to center on the Republican's multi-pronged efforts to undo the election won by Democrat Joe Biden. larry is the preeminent con law scholar-- he literally wrote the book on the subject. that said, mr. tribe clear don't like trump, trump policies and the maga credo in general, so he might be indulging a smidge o' wishful thinking. luttig and tribe? two elder statesman o' the law who on paper appear to be natural adversaries agree trump had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. take it for what it's worth. HA! Good Fun!

You know he has to be REALLY crooked to be too crooked for Congress.

Expansion adds hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians to Medicaid HA! Good Fun!

Stop wondering and forget about it.

https://kotaku.com/cyberpunk-2077-phantom-liberty-2-1-update-metro-1851065622

legal expert maybe, political expert perhaps not so much

I always leave my car on the sidewalk. Gouranga.

Let me take a moment to revel in the genious design decision to have a record collection in Lies of P. As you are playing Pinocchio, it should be no surprise - and not a great spoiler - to say that by the end of the game, you can become a real boy. To do so one needs to make the right choice at a certain point in the game and to participate in certain game activities to increase a hidden humanity counter, basically behaving like a human, including lying your sweet butt off (including a growing nose, even if it is not on Pinocchio himself) and the aforementioned record collection. To score humanity points, you can listen to the records you find on a gramophone. However, you can only get the points after listening to each record in full, and as they're regular music pieces, their runtime is somewhere between two and four minutes. This process cannot be sped up, and make no mistake, what a mistake speeding up the process would be, otherwise why else would you be forced to take a break to appreciate the game's soundtrack to unlock the best ending. Have you ever experienced a better, more interactive way to appreciate a game soundtrack than to stop the game dead in its tracks, forcing the player to pause and take in everything they experienced? To put a soundttrack in front and center in game mechanics, even, is such a stroke of genius, that I find myself unable to express it in words befitting the idea, and that is before appreciating the genre of music you can collect, as it is perfectly fitting music for a Belle Epoque game. Not the usual grand, orchestral pieces with a choir, no, but intellectual music: jazzy pieces often including a bandoneon. How can it possibly get any better than that?

Not your average type of news, but about 6 months ago, this fella made this documentary called 'The Entire History of Video Games'. It's 5 hours long but definitely worth watching.

Act 3 (some spoilers)

The new patch dropped a new epilogue, which is another party in the campsite several months after. No really big additions or spoilers, but it leaned pretty hard on the prospect for a future adventure. Personally I'd be cool with Baldur's Gate 3: Descent into Avernus...Again, but we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/loongson-launches-3a6000-cpu-matches-14600k-ipc tl:dr - While the overall performance is still a bit lacking due to low clock speed, this is still pretty impressive performance given how far behind they were just a few years ago.

am in agreement, but... perhaps owlcat took a practical approach and assumed that as soon as the game were released, a few persons would start digging into code and even if nobody did, somebody would discover and then want credit for discovering. the reality is, the secret ending requirements were discovered extreme soon after the release o' the game. maybe you recall the ring of wizardry at the friendly arms inn from bg1? if you don't, many others hereabouts will. the only way to discover the ring is complete accident or individual pixel hunting... which is what a few folks did to find other curiously rando loot in bg. yeah, no doubt multiple somebodies would try to puzzle out the heavy breathing in the ineluctable prison, 'cause is improbable something like that is an accident, right? so am not doubting somebody figures out eventual, but is also inevitable other somebodies would dig into code and unlock all the secret ending requirements. am suspecting owlcat were perfect ok with either resolution and that they assumed that once the secret ending were known as 'posed to rumor, people would do find solutions via the online community. am agreeing some o' the secret ending clues weren't so much clues as just rando requirements, but here we are two years following the game release and near everybody who wanted to complete the secret ending probably did so. owlcat russian developers is perhaps predictable practical. owlcat knew it didn't matter if their trail o' breadcrumbs leading to completion o' the secret ending requirements were rational and reasonable, so why sweat such nuance? HA! Good Fun!

I had a bit more variety The best part was that I got a recommendation from Spotify for where I should move to find people with similar tastes as me. I need to move to Jyväskylä in Finland. That said, I didn't need to know that I had listened to Sabaton Attack of the Dead Men 171 times, or that I'm in the top 0.5% of Beast in Black listeners

1) am thinking it were a mistake to expel santos-- sets a new precedent and one which may be manipulated in the future santos should have quit, but he didn't. the thing is now you got expulsion for a non-traitor who has not committed a crime or been found guilty while in office. 2) kissinger. well... keep in mind anthony bourdain would probably not have been able to visit china if not for kissinger, and every person reading this board is living in a far safer world 'cause o' kissinger's undeniably instrumental efforts to normalize relations with china. am doubting anybody here is old enough to remembers (Gromnir ain't even old enough) and few people today has been taught or learned just what normalization meant. on a list o' post ww2 diplomatic achievements, kissinger's role in china has gotta rank near the top, 'cause china was a far greater threat than is north korea today. for centuries, china had two things in abundance: people and famine. china also had nukes. golly, what could possible go wrong? @Gorth and Gromnir has both mentioned how the fear o' nuclear apocalypse were omnipresent during our youth. we always knew we were one misunderstanding or mistake away from armageddon but Gromnir didn't particular fear china. (can't speak for Gorth) why? normalized relations changed everything. is literal impossible to convey what it were like to be living during the cold war. is similar impossible to imagine what china sans kissinger's interventions woulda' meant to world stability and safety. the power politics model of the cold war era remains the manner in which great nations interact--don't kid yourself. kissinger were an amoral and uncompromising advocate o' power politics. kissinger were a bad man, living in a bad time and he deserves your scorn. the recent deceased american diplomat made no effort to find a better way than a soulless and uncompromising application o' power politics stratagems. the thing is, he also made the world safer for billions. is ok to hate kissinger, but am thinking nowadays he doesn't get near the credit he is entitled to insofar as china normalization alone. many people today see the world in frustratingly simple terms: black and white; oppressors and oppressed; good guys and bad guys; right and wrong. am not sure where the certainty comes from. it should not be impossible to be disgusted by kissinger while simultaneous being impressed by a few o' his achievements. and heck, we took sh!te for pointing out days after kobe bryant's death that there were ample evidence he committed rape and got away with it. we were told, too soon. respect for the recent deceased. etc. HA! Good Fun! ps am not sure why anthony bourdain's opinion 'bout kissinger is more significant than that o' any obsidian boardie or the rando unintelligible ny cabbie. the deceased chef's opinion is no less worthy than __________, but am always perplexed people see value in celebrity. no special insights from wanting to punch kissinger, so why should we care? we don't get it. also, before the edit we had written, "cause china was a far greater threat than is south korea today." am thinking most k-pop is a crime against humanity, but we wouldn't ever suggest such amounted to a global threat similar to pre-normalization china.

Didn’t play Nioh, but player their more recent game “WoLong dynasty?” I thought it was pretty bad, and narrative was atrociously incoherent. I thought Lies of P was alright. Overstayed it’s welcome for me, but it was good enough to recommend. Not on the level of most FromSoft releases, but I probably liked LoP more than DS2. Some neat gimmicks, but they had little depth behind them. That said, for a studio’s debut it’s a really impressive achievement. As far as the plot goes: it’s still pretty light. I don’t think it adds much to the game - I never though FromSoft games would be any better with NPCs had cutscene saying “now you need to go to place X to find McGuffin Z”. Which is pretty much most that there is to it. You will have a better idea who you will be fighting and why, but I found myself caring less than in your usual FromSoft. DS1 was light on plot, but thematically rich, this one is the opposite. A lot of who, what, but not much “why”. Speaking of games with vague story: I picked up two Sony titles: Uncharted and Returnal. Uncharted will have to wait, but I gave Returnal a go. Eh, not feeling it right now. I thought it will be right up my alley - a roguelite with minimal meta-progression, acting like 3rd person bullet-hel. Initial impressions were great - the game controls great, fantastic utilisation of Dualsense rumble and adaptive triggers, it looks fantastic (though I had to turn off ray tracing in later stages, which made th game look much more plain:-( ). I do find the game rather boring so far. Procedural generation is very limited, so runs don’t feel distinct so far. They also take a very long time - compared to Hades when on full run could take about 30 minutes, here I easily spend an hour per zone. So far bullet hell was also rather generous though things do seem to be ramping up. So far, I am doubting if rougelite is a right structure for this titles - it seems it might work better as a more traditional linear structure. And while here is no blatant power grind, there is more subtle empowerment of the player. Early on you are set up to fail. That seems to be just how things are with roguelites that don’t quite have a depth and balance to ensure organic mastery. I do dig the vibes - it has a decent SF feel to it, and I wonder how the story will evolve. I just hope it won’t go full J. J. Abrams and do something trivial (like: this is just in your imagination dealing with pas trauma). It made me think of DS as it feels thematically dense, even if I am still not sold on it as a game. (If anyone else played it: FYI I finished “act1”, and reached second zone of act2).

Whenever adaptions come up, I always think of Sir Alfred Hitchcock. Threw out loads of stuff in his adaptions (Young and Innocent, for example, films the subplot of Josephine Tey's A Shilling for Candles not the actual plot of the novel), remade his own film, etc. Adaptions/Remakes aren't (IMO) the problem, inherently. I think King's problem with THE SHINING is that its a Kubrick film and not a King story. I seem to recall reading that he thought the film was good, but it missed what he thought was the point of the book, which is why he thought the TV miniseries was a better adaption of the book.

Fire Emblem: Engage - Maddening Every cutscene or dialogue makes me feel embarrassed and the (optional) skirmishes give the Pathcat Owlfinder games a run for their money in terms of being stupidly punishing, but the main route encounters are consistently well designed in a way that's tactically challenging but also fair for the most part. However I'm only about halfway in and the emblems I got are already starting to break the game so I assume when I collect 'em all my army of shonen stock characters will start to steamroll everything.

Well, you know what I think of Dark Souls fabled "story", although that is probably the fandumb's fault. For years before I actually tried the game I just heard two things about it, one is how hard it is, and two just how great the story of the game is. Imagine how disappointed I ended up being when the game was neither very difficult nor did it have an actual plot, the game is worse than Mass Effect 2 in that regard, and that is hard to achieve. It does have great world building and interesting (and bizarre) lore, yes, but story? Now, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed playing Dark Souls a lot in spite of my expectations not being met (which is a testament to how good the game really is), but the protagonist does not even have any motivation to do anything in the game. It starts with you locked in a cell with no explanation how you got there, someone throwing you a key telling you to get out, and that's it. In light of that experience, a Soulslike trying actual storytelling is all well and good in my book. Even if it is bad, it still beats Dark Souls because they at least tried. Hell, Hellpoint, for all its flaws, tried both, as you just spawn into the world moments after a disaster and try to figure out what the hell happened and fulfill your purpose, after all, an AI made your body for you to collect that information for it. Eh. Time to step down from the soapbox. Edit: I guess part of the issue is that I feel like the setting of Dark Souls was creative and unique, and it feels a little wasted on the game it houses. I don't really know if the second or third game improve on that aspect, but somehow I doubt it. Edit 2: Pinocchio being very uncanny valley is part of the game. He looks like he looks. Eh. Well, most of the time, you just see his back anyway.

Not yet. I keep wondering if I should try it. Edit: Tried it on my phone. Crappy run of the mill mobile game that has you endlessly upgrading heroes and hoping to find some ultra epic super-duper rare hero P2W.

Lies of P, just got the Rise of P ending. If you like Soulslikes and are not someone who needs exploration with any sort of depth or great rewards, this is definitely one to try out. The game is fairly linear, i.e. at best you have a secondary path with some loot or two along the way, which is a clear break from the usual From Software style. There are plenty of arcane stats and mechanics, although nowhere near as bad as they were in Dark Souls. Combat wise it is a hybrid between Sekiro and Bloodborne, but different enough to be its own thing. The game is a lot more rewarding - and probably easier - to play if you remove preconceptions from earlier Soulslikes. Perfect guarding (the term for parry in Lies of P) attacks can stagger enemies, but dodging has a definite place in the combat system too. Dodging a slow, sweeping attack that would knock you back even with a perfect guard gets you close to the enemie and lets you attack them, for instance. The weapon system is fun, being able to freely switch between movesets and special attacks by combining different handles with different weapon blades, but in one of the more arcane design choices combining handles with blades that were not meant for their combat style results in doing less damage than usual, and this is only inidicated by an easily missable and small double down-arrow on the weapon assembly screen. Guess it makes sense, putting a giant wrench head blunt weapon on a dagger handle is possible and gives you fast attacks, but it will not be optimal for damage. Might still be a good combination though. One of the patches along the way changed the behaviour of the combined weapon parts, so more options became viable, apparently. Never played before 1.3, so no first hand experience. A lot of things are straight up taken from the Souls series, like special boss weapons and boss souls ergo that you can trade in for special items. Anyway, as I never played it before the patches, I cannot comment on the difficulty of the game too much. I did not get stuck anywhere, and even the final three bosses, arguably the hardest in of the game, took only a handful of tries to defeat. They're all definitely easier if you're used to Sekiro-style parrying though, so maybe keep that in mind if you want to check it out. Oh, lest I forget, unlike the Souls series, this one has actual storytelling, which is always a great plus in my book. The Belle Epoque steampunk setting is also pretty neat.

Sorry for the late reply. Yes, Melee is strong. Late game weapons will smash or rip armored enemies apart. I think the only bad combat skill in Fallout is Throwing.

It's higher level and more epic than Through the Ashes and even has its own alt-mythic system. It ties back into the main story and as you do more "adventures" the timeline moves along and you hear about what the commander is up to. The 2 major NPCs (gnome and tiefling) are back and they added a third, an android bard lady who immediately tells you she's not for romancing. They added some interesting mechanics and even the new puzzles aren't completely terrible. Difficulty is all over the place but if you've been playing these for a while then you probably already know how to easily game the system... though I'm a big proponent of just lowering the difficulty if you aren't having fun.

I beat the Lord of Nothing just a few minutes ago and I really enjoyed it. I was surprised that it wasn't super buggy, though not bug-free, and I could complete it with no major issues. I liked the almost mythic system they put in and think the 3 NPCs from this might be my favorite of the bunch. Curious to play through the main campaign to chapter 5 and see what they added. E: I don't like that you can't stack dragon bloodlines anymore. I can still easily delete things but I had a groove and they're making me switch up things, the bastards.

Wait a couple months, it'll seem tiny again soon. I still debate with myself whether a 65" OLED could be made to work/fit n my computering room. ...I also debate whether I should buy another one before the TV's end up forcing you to connecting to the internet to even make the display simply function, thus ensuring you cannot escape their ads. I have never plugged the OLED to the net (directly), since it's PC/ps4 connected, and I'd like to keep it that way.

One of those plastic boots, kinda neat, can be removed so one can shower and such. Or in my case, sauna.

My favorite thing about this picture is the thousand-yard stare on his face. This guy has seen some $#!+.

Hubby is still into 3d printers. Not in the sense of actually wanting to print anything - well, except maybe for small tech parts/gears - but in the geek sense of always trying to improve build designs/workings, The printer itself. So long story short he's watched/been mostly a lurker of similar minded home 3d-printer nerds, and this month he finally contributed a build improvement thing. Don't ask me what, I understand none of it. But that community picked it up and featured it in some of their YT vids, and group forum posts, and one is using it in their own design now.... hubby seems quite pleased. lol. He's so cute.

Reading the daily vehicle inspection sheets that we fill out is like something out of funny youtube "customer states" videos. "Battery is bad, tractor is hard to start" (After a weekend) Next shift when I perform my inspection "Cabin light was left on" "Rear trailer hitch refuses to work properly" Me; "Cut-off valve for rear hitch controls opened all the way, rear hitch has been smashed repeatedly and now needs replacing." "Cigarette lighter socket doesn't work" "Disconnected cabin heater from cigarette lighter socket and changed the burnt out fuse"

And now an update about the 9th Extra Life Stream 9th Annual Extra Life Marathon Stream - Obsidian Forum Community

Mystary… mystary is good

During this visit to OBS got play a bit of a Mystary project ... so good. I think all will indeed be pleased! Also got to be reminded what 20 years with the community and OBS has seen artistically! Finally, Extra Life is this coming week ... super excited to be part of one of the sessions. Will post about that too!

Pizza! That is all.

The Fall of the House of Usher - Netflix I only caught the last 30 minutes of the last episode, but dang, it was a good 30 minutes! Then I peppered my wife with 50 questions about what happened in the first 7.5 episodes and now I want to go watch the entire season. EDIT: Whoops wrong thread.

I know @Guard Dog doesn't come around very often anymore and @ManifestedISO hasn't been around in forever but happy birthday nonetheless.