LadyCrimson

Paying bills and thinking about taxes. We made more money in 2012 than is our typical, so the taxman will be a bit harsher. Wondering how cheaply I could build a 3rd PC for ... not a "fancy" main rig but still enough to play games on. Seems like the biggest expense would be the video card, because I'm picky. Even the evga gtx275 (the old card of mine that hubby's using) still seems to be $200 these days. ... probably not worth doing right now.

Please note that I have zero insider information or anything, but my personal thought is that if there is ever any type of "private" forum it'll be when the beta rolls around. At the moment, I see no reason for a "backers only" forum, since there's nothing to discuss that has any reason to be private or privileged - but that's just me.

Neither of us has tried Commando's "nuclear" skill, but the other two work fine. It's nice to either have two turrets to toss out or to have the turret slag enemies, but the biggest difference is still when you get the rockets added to the turret, imo (mid-tier). One "problem" with the Commando is you can get too used to leaning on the turret (it's especially great that its kills count as a 2nd wind) and then get lazy, haha. Gunzerker - hubby hasn't gotten to the top tiers yet (we're lvl 32). But by lvl 20 or so hubby was liking the class quite a bit, when he didn't think he would. He uses the dual-wield thing fairly frequently for health and thinks it works great with large magazine SMG's. It's hilarious to watch. But the ammo regen is still hubs favorite thing.

Apparently we did enough nutty partying in our 20's to last a lifetime because we haven't cared to do anything wild and crazy for New Years since. Somewhere we got old and just like to stay at home and maybe drink a drink. I remember as a very young kid watching D. Clark's countdown on TV and that NYC "apple" falling. It was a big deal back then I guess, even to the W. Coast ... people gathering around to watch it, counting down, then running outside of their houses to whoop and holler with the neighbors. Er...at least that's what it was like around my parent's house for some years.

Hubby: "Borderlands has spoiled me too much." eg, it's the only game series he likes anymore. He looked at/tried a few games over the past week and nope. So we went through PT1 of BL2 with our Gunzerker/Commando combo. This time we did a lot of the side quests we haven't done before. But I'm going to get sick of BL2 again before long. heh. P.S. - either patches changed a few combats since we played before, or the game changes them when you're a lot higher level when you hit them. It was odd. Like in Angel's chamber, it was always 4 pillars that sent out lightning streaks. This time it was eight and impossible to avoid them initially. Crazy.

Looper. It was pretty good, but I was slightly disappointed by the ending. Just slightly. Common issue with time travel/altering timelines plots.

Spending as much time with the spouse as possible before going back to the more typical routine. I'm getting used to having the main PC in the living area. Maybe I should keep it there, at least during winters.

There is always hope.

Dear Steam: Fine, for $7.50 I'll buy the two Left 4 Dead's for a rainy day. And BioShocl2 for 4.99. Both sales purchased twice, in case hubby is interested. Probably not today/soon tho...the holiday week is almost over.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur25KP061PE

You can duel with other players, if they allow it. Have to hit them first to initiate a duel request, or something. Never tried it myself tho...I'm not into PvP. Will probably be playing more BL2 this afternoon. We stayed up too late last night however, so hubby's still snoozing. We have to finish Fink's arena or whatever that is. Did the first two rounds. Hubby doesn't like arena type stuff too much so he can't take it for long (I have to push to get him to do them at all), especially since he also hates grinding for items so we almost always have utter crap for gear (seriously). But that's what makes it fun (crap gear = crazy, frenetic fights)

I didn't say we ever had "major" issues with ammo. We're both quite familiar with Borderlands, the strategy and what's possible isn't the issue. You never truly needed ammo regen in BL1 either. It's just nice to not have to bother thinking about it, especially when you have a spouse who's generally a lot less "skilled" at gameplaying than you yourself are. I just see no reason to take that option out of the game in BL2. They could have done all kinds of things to make it much less overpowered than it was in BL1 (slow the regen rate waaay down), but still available to all chr. classes (via the class mods). If one doesn't want to use it, one doesn't have to.

Of the several 2012 releases I played: 1. Borderlands 2 (mostly for the co-op, this time around) 2. Botanicula That's it.

Hubs and I went back to Borderlands 2. I was Commando, he was Gunzerker. We had some fun....largely because of the ammo regen mod of the Gunzerker. Ammo regen+turret is a nice combo. I miss ammo regen mods for all characters. Neither of us likes the Gunzerker (not into that skill of his) but it's nice in co-op not to have to constantly hunt down and open stupid ammo boxes. You mean that it is disabled or that you don't put your saves there? I had savegame issues purely from not disabling it in steam settings. It's not enabled under the Settings ... all the little cloud icons by each game have a slash through it. I have no personal need/use for cloud-anything.

Feeding my cat Dorito's and sliced cheese bits whilst surfing the internet.

That would be nice ... let's hope so!

FNV is what finally had me install/use Steam. For a very long time that's all I had on Steam. It's been interesting, however, how for me personally, the less dedicated/interested I am in gaming as a whole, the more willing I am to purchase on Steam.....especially in terms of the uber sales....probably because I care less and less about whether I will finish a game, let alone whether I can (potentially) replay a game years from now. If that makes sense. So $5-10, less than a pizza, with instant gratification (no driving to a store) why not. That said....not much appeals during this Xmas sale for me either.

I don't mind a little DRM but I definitely don't like have to be online or have to sign up/install for some extra service to use it. I gave in and use Steam occasionally but if I eventually need 20 different Steam-like thingies to play games (eg, one for every publisher) I'm going to toss my hands up and stick to GoG/old pc games and jigsaw puzzles. So yeah, I know how you feel, even if I'm less hardlined about it. But between GoG starting to have more new release indies once in a while and Kickstarter, I have hope that there'll still be no-hassle games around for a while yet. You just have to look a little harder for them.

I don't use steamcloud, ever. DI let's you "continue" or "play" (where you'll find the list of chrs. you've made) and "continue" is greyed out while there's no chr. listed under Play. The odd thing is the save file is in the directory, but it never changes in size...it stays at 2KB. I have no idea if that's normal or if it's not actually saving (I tried to exit the game at a checkpoint each time). Anyway....no biggie. Not convinced I liked it enough to get much past Act2 anyway.

So I've made 3 characters in Dead Island. Each one is fine for the first quest or two but if I go farther, they disappear on me when I exit to desktop/restart. No "continue" or chr. visible at all in-game menu. If I try to backup the save file and replace/overwrite it when this happens, it just says "corrupted". So I guess the patch doesn't fix things for everyone. Could uninstall/reinstall see if that does anything but not sure it's worth the bother.

Hubs reached Act2 in Dead Island. As usual he's skipping some quests and not exploring overmuch and missing opening chests and stuff, which always drives me crazy when I see it. Getting his butt whupped repeatedly...is it mean if I laugh? But he keeps on going. Oh oh, he found his first gun. My method is exploring the first Act1 island to death. Not tons to see, but I must visit every hut, at least on first playthrough. Can't stand not knowing what's "over there."

-degree temps is why I'm never moving North. Heheh. Universal Studios was a lot of fun when I was a kid...haven't been to it in years tho. I'm sure it's vastly different now. Do they still have the Jaws ride? lol

It's currently 40F here (830pm). It's soooo cold! ... wat? Didn't feel like killing zombies today so I've been watching hubby kill zombies instead. He's not very good at it, but as always he's entertaining nonetheless. His opinion so far: "It's a little too melee for me."

Another Earth - slow paced, deliberate, moody drama with a sci-fi angle. Low budget but shot well (didn't need a big budget). Good acting by the two leads. I wasn't expecting much but it surprised me and I liked it. The very ending is ambiguous in a way that doesn't tick me off, so bonus points for that. Kinda nice to see a film that's not about big explosions and special effects.

Haha....I'm not sure I could get into a dedicated Garbage truck simulator myself. Not into trains as a hobby, and for my personal tastes I don't "get" realistic flying simulators either - sitting in a plane seat staring at dials isn't very interesting to me. Those things aren't my types of setting. For some reason, planting fields and raising cows is. If I can figure out how to play it.