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You sound like Trump going "you know a lot of people are saying".

Me not liking the game is all on me, because I skipped all the story, so I cared little after that. Combat was fine, but I don't remember much.

90h, finished Rogue Trader. Apparently my Iconoclast utopia was not acceptable, luckily Nomos saved me, apparently. Pretty sad ending to Yrilet romance but that was a good arc. Overall fun game, finally made Argenta into a killing machine, found some bolter with exploding shells. Works well until I ended up killing Abelard with it during the last fight, whoops. As most of my first playthroughs go, didn't unlock most stuff, the uber sniper rifle I had didn't get the 30% buff due to me being well short with my Iconoclast rating, shazbot. I should replay it, but that's going to be in a while. Fatigued mentally of thinking of all those fights to redo.

I didn't mind them too much until I tried reading the terrible, horrible novels. Before that, they simply had an elitist yet honourable air with their batchalls etc. Then you realise they send mechs against normal people for "training".

This is a story about sacrifice. It is also a story about nostalgia, but more than anything, it is a story about the sacrifices gamers make. We travel back to a time of low pixel count and greenish screens – specifically the summer of 1992. The radio that summer would blast SNAP! Rythm Is a Dancer and my cousin and I, shortly before our 13th birthdays, were in summer camp on the German island of Norderney. In the evening, after lights out, with eight kids per tent, obviously nobody slept. In our tent we did two things. Firstly, one of the boys had brought terrible horror novellas, and we read those. Over thirty years later I still have nightmares. Mostly because the story did not make sense – you can’t hide a whole labyrinth inside the walls of a bell tower! The second thing was eating chocolate and other sweets. And this is where this becomes a story of sacrifice. You see, the eating was predominantly done by the other six. The two of us would initiate it, but then we’d spend the night selling our stash to the others in the tent. In retrospect, we should have found a way to expand business to the other tents, but we were not even thirteen. There was a reason to this, which had little to do with entrepreneurial spirit. The camp organizers had permitted each kid a 50DM allowance per week for the two weeks of camp. Incidentally, as my cousin pointed out, 50DM was roughly the price of a new Game Boy game. Not eating chocolate but watching others enjoy my stash was not a choice. It was a sacrifice that only gamers will understand: others would eat so I could game. Everything went well. Until the very last day. It was hot. We were on our last excursion in town, killing time until we had to get the ferry. In the (heat of the) moment we decided to grab an ice cream. The worst 3,50 I ever spent. Also, one of the worst ice creams I ever had and most likely the reason why I still do not eat lemon ice cream. It almost put me off lemonade as well. An hour before we left, I dropped to 46,50. One, horrible tasting lemon ice cream was the reason I couldn’t pay for Gargoyle’s Quest solely through the chocolate black market. Mind, the entire process did turn Gargoyle’s Quest into one of my favourite games, even though it wasn’t really my thing – too dark in tone, too much jumping around spikes. In the end, the cool green daemon on the box cover turned out to be red! That was an unexpected plot twist. It highlighted something though about descriptions and plot relevance: how often do authors abuse the fact that in written format you do not have information until they give it to you? In comics, movies, and games, you see things from the start. Unless it is a greenish Game Boy screen and after hours and hours some NPC tells you: your skin is red. Two things I remember about Gargoyle’s Quest: how I made the money to buy it and how surprised I was finding out the protagonist was red. Also, the many spikes. Three things I remember about Gargoyle’s Quest: how I made the money to buy it, how surprised I was finding out the protagonist was red, the many spikes, and the gnarly trees, the inextinguishable flames, the different breath weapons… Among the many things I remember about Gargoyle’s Quest is that it is a game literally worth it’s weight in chocolate.

I'd be skeptical of anything reported in the Israeli press, based on something claimed by a TV company run by a prominent Phalangist family. Funny thing, Hezbollah people have this really weird tendency to talk to Israeli and non Shia Lebanese media and say exactly what said media wants them to say. It's almost like they aren't actually talking to real Hezbollah people... And for anyone wondering, yes, the Lebanese Phalange named themselves and modeled themselves after Franco's Spanish Falange, and are, literally literally, fascists who want to Make Lebanon Christian Again. Which is why they got on so well with Begin and Shamir's Israel. They were responsible- along with another former Israeli PM, Ariel Sharon, and the IDF- for the judicially proven to be genocidal Sabra and Shatila massacre, among many other atrocities. Far from alone in perpetuating atrocities of course, but theirs tended to be the largest and most memorable ones targeting civilians. Though as with their moral compatriots Al Qaeda in Syria they prefer to be known by a different name now, so as not to offend tender western sensibilities (--> 'Kataeb').

Tony Todd