Humanoid

I remember an old interview during the time of XCOM 1 where they explained the inverted difficulty curve was somewhat intended, because the retry cost for failing a campaign late in the game was crippling, whereas if you failed early it was no big deal to start afresh. With the ability to save scum (unless you play ironman), I don't know why that would matter? I pretty much create a new save after every mission, so if one wipes me out, I won't have to start again just to get back to that point. Ironman is the one true path! This would be true if not for game breaking bugs. If you play mods that's kinda common. It's a scary thought for long games I suppose. I did make bi-monthly backups of my Long War save, but fortunately never needed them even across ~350 hours of gameplay. I admit I did alt-F4 a few times, but it was for genuine bugs only. It didn't exist when I first played, but Bronzeman mode is a fantastic addition - like Ironman but you can restart the mission completely if the need arises. An Ironman game of CK2 will inevitably fall victim to a a good number of bugs as well, but I don't think I could play any other way there either. That said, the advantage of games like that is that bugs are unlikely to screw you over completely, just set you back a little. I could never play something like New Vegas in Ironman mode where a screwup is instant game over.

After I had a whinge in the World Cup thread about our non-scoring center-halves, it figures that we open the season with Jan Vertonghen's first goal in five years - especially with him being robbed of a couple in the interim by dodgy refereeing. Luckily for him, technology decided the goal this time and not the referee. (He was also lucky to not score an own-goal at the end, so it was most definitely his day) That said, Spurs were poor, especially in the second half, the match was so open that it's extraordinary that it only ended with three goals. Newcastle deserved a draw frankly so it's a great relief to come away with the win. Definitely undercooked this season after the exertions of the World Cup. EDIT: Also Poch looking super dapper with his weight loss and new haircut. Plus we got to play in our only non-awful kit this year. Goddammit Nike why are you so awful at basic design?

Finished third in the bafflingly stupid Belgian league system after falling away late and being more or less completely broke (not my fault guv). Apparently that's good enough for CSKA Moscow to offer me a job. Do I take it?

Honestly, and I say this as an Arsenal fan, I think Spurs have done remarkably well to keep everybody they already have, without even public sagas and the like. I don't think Tottenham's wage bill or prestige level at the moment can afford, say, someone better than Eriksen, or someone as good as Kane to replace him. We had a problem when we signed no outfield players in 2015, but that's because we had spent the last couple years with a dysfunctional squad with tactical and injury problems (and, uh, have continued to since then). I do think Tottenham are in a precarious place, where this might be their last chance to actually win something or risk having the bubble burst, but I wonder what world-class player they could have brought in that fit their budget & pulling power. It's a very hard market out there. If they had sold Kane for 100m+ or something, they could have tried to leverage that and improve the team. But like with the Bale money purchases, such 'trolley dashes' are high risk as well. Hey, you still finished second that season, although I don't care to re-live how that happened. But yeah, If we're still intact in three weeks time then it's not a bad result, sure. But there's still murmurs of discontent so who knows? Can't suddenly think Alderweireld and Rose are magically content now that the window is semi-closed. Vertonghen's contract expires this year and Eriksen's in the next which means we need to sort both of them out this year as well. Biggest hole in the squad is still in the centre of midfield, consisting of Dier, and aging and injury-prone Dembele, a raw and currently-injured Winks, and, um, Sissoko. If Lamela is truly over his injury concerns and resumes his final-day form then maybe we'll see Eriksen in CM at times I suppose. Beyond those we just have, erm, Josh Onomah who struggled in the Championship on loan to Villa last year. At least Son winning gold at the Asian Games this month would be like a new signing.

So, uh, I wake up to find the transfer window closed and find that not only Spurs are the only team in the Premier League to not sign a player, but that they're the only team since the inception of the transfer window some fifteen years ago to not sign any players. It's not as bad as it might be yet, because currently we haven't sold anyone either, but other leagues still have their windows open for up to another three weeks. So the rest of this month is kind of a ****ty situation where you can't win, but very much can lose. Hopefully the same thing happens as what's been happening the last couple months, which is nothing.

I'm happy with my recently-acquired PS4 Pro but by god, the physical design of the console is spectacularly crap, and changing the plastic of which it's made won't change that. Unwieldy shape, completely invisible disc slot, barely visible, flimsy and tiny power and eject buttons, hidden USB ports... I don't know what they were thinking when they designed this thing.

I remember an old interview during the time of XCOM 1 where they explained the inverted difficulty curve was somewhat intended, because the retry cost for failing a campaign late in the game was crippling, whereas if you failed early it was no big deal to start afresh. With the ability to save scum (unless you play ironman), I don't know why that would matter? I pretty much create a new save after every mission, so if one wipes me out, I won't have to start again just to get back to that point. Ironman is the one true path!

I remember an old interview during the time of XCOM 1 where they explained the inverted difficulty curve was somewhat intended, because the retry cost for failing a campaign late in the game was crippling, whereas if you failed early it was no big deal to start afresh.

So I didn't even know Razer (manufacturer of flashy but somewhat questionable-quality gaming accessories) operated a game store. But they do, and they have a gimmick where they have four selected games a week where you get $15 back as a store voucher. Overcooked 2 released just yesterday and is one of the selected games. You can get it for 25% off which is decent but not particularly remarkable. But then you can get another 10% off with code RGSITAD18AUG10, and then if you use the $15 credit (it's good for one month) for something else, you've basically bought a new release game for well under $5. That's an amazing deal. https://gamestore.razer.com/lp/razer-exclusives (The other selected games this week are Dragon Ball FighterZ, Bioshock Collection, and GTA5, but I have no idea how competitive those prices are) Note: The $15 voucher requires a $30 minimum spend in addition to the aforementioned one month expiry, but the prices on the store seem pretty much the same as anywhere else that sells Steam keys, so it shouldn't be hard to find something to spend it on.

And often they don't even have the decency to come with the already-planned DLC. As for the topic, I've never sold a thing, games or otherwise. I have all my 90s big game boxes somewhere in my parents' garage. Now that I have my own place I should probably move them here - only issue is that it's about a 700km trip.

Zwift means you can remove the quotation marks here. Needs a smart trainer though so the price of entry is pretty steep. Still, not much more than some other gaming accessories...

I only bought BG2 because I had a $20 Electronics Boutique voucher from a PC gaming magazine that I needed to use that month. I wonder if I'd even be posting here right now if that never happened, because I registered for the BIS forums to follow IWD2 which came afterwards. That of course only because I ended up liking BG2 way more than I expected to. Not a game I could play today though, my tastes have changed far too much in the intervening years. God, it's been almost 20 years since BG2. Hold me.

Ultima 7

I tried BG1 sometime after BG2 - probably after IWD2 too, and only got maybe a couple of screens out of Candlekeep. And that was back when I still liked party-based RPGs, something decidedly not the case today.

There's a reason I have several hundred hours in XCOM1 but just the one campaign worth 40 hours or whatever in XCOM 2. Didn't even bother buying the expansion. Granted that's probably not a fair comparison because realistically about 3/4 of the time in XCOM1 was with the Long War mod. Vanilla XCOM I did one normal campaign, one classic campaign, and one classic campaign with the expansion.

Just bomb disposal, which was horrible. Plus some DLC maps. And the escape timer for that one map, you know the one.

I liked playing with the "Perfect Information" setting in Long War because it kinda demonstrated that sometimes seemingly fluky things weren't actually that improbable. And it also puts things into context when I have multiple shots of my own (overwatch mostly, granted) hit at single digit chances. Remember, high cover is a linear -40% to hit chances and low cover is a piddly -20%. It's easy to overestimate the value of cover.

Can't be crit if you hunker down. Can't be hit if you're out of sight. Point blank shots won't miss, neither will grenades. XCOM has a lot of RNG but you also have a lot of tools to avoid leaving things to RNG.

There's also legendary Aussie actor Vernon Wells.

Never played either Zelda nor Dark Souls. I do like how the guy on the cover of Dark Souls 3 is giving a cheery thumbs-up though.

The Australian lifestyle is fine and I have no real complaints. The only real dampener is the relative isolation, making travel rather expensive and time consuming. To that end, I'd love to settle in Western Europe, which has a similar standard of living but with the bonus of having everything nice and close together.

It all seems a bit grim, grey and depressing to me. Nintendo and Ubisoft should make a Mario+Rabbids version of Dark Souls just like they did XCOM.

I still remember a childhood nightmare where I was in an undulating cartoon landscape being chased by axe-wielding McDonald's Fry Guys. Don't ask me how they managed to wield axes while lacking arms.

Maybe they should do a temporary job swap. Have some cameras follow them around in their new jobs too and sell it as a reality TV show.

The best parts of Deus Ex were just toodling around in the cities doing sidequests though. Screw the main quest "dungeons".