Tale

I tried playing Stellaris again with some add-ons. And apparently I'm still terrible at it. First game I got war deced by Xenophiles who don't take too kindly to my being a driven assimilator. I held them off briefly and was very happy, but never had the fleet to go on the offense. They eventually slipped past my blockade and conquered one of my planets. I then restarted and tried again, teamed up with another nearby machine intelligence. Then we both got wardeced by another alliance. And they came steamrolling with fleets 6k+ strong when I couldn't even hit 2k myself. They destroyed my ally heavily and ended up winning the war. I lost like 3 systems.

The government didn't really have anything to do with Hayes, did it? It was basically an attempt to reform Hollywood's image. In a way, the MPAA, the ESRB, and the CCA are all the same. Just attempts to make the industries look like they're being responsible so the common populace aren't throwing fits about it. Because the government's ability to censor media is actually not very strong in the US. Heck, all of these self-regulation bodies are entirely optional! You just can't sell in Wal-Mart. So optional in fact that the CCA is defunct now. And it has simply been replaced by "Adults" labels similar to what the music industry does. Censorship is hard for the government to get away with in the US. But there is a long precedent for legislation targetting gambling. I can't speak to whether the government should or not. I really haven't made up my mind there. In an ideal world, our education system would be where gambling is fought, not limitation on the gambling itself. But they're not showing any signs of a willingness to do that.

People love to blame publisher for decisions that are oftentimes championed by the studio itself. I still can't get over Bioware's insistence that we use Bioware points for DLC back in the day, even after everyone else dropped points.

Dark on Netflix. It's their first German original I think I heard. Actually quite good. It's available in English, but it's dubbed and comes with all the awkwardness that entails. I'd love to give the German with subtitles a try but I'm watching it at work and don't want to focus on it too much.

But doesn't Xenoblade Chronicles 2 have Kos-Mos in it?! I've avoided Xenoblade all this time, but the Xeno fanboy in me is getting his butt kicked.

Shadow of War I think I'm getting near the end of Act 2 because I've got achievements for finishing a couple of the collectible junk already. Had this really weird issue though in Nurnen where there was a constant flood of new enemy Nemeses. I'd go, recruit a bunch of them, then check my screen and they were gone. Replaced by yet more new enemy Nemeses. Hopefully this is related to the story quest I had waiting. So I finished that up and hopefully it's gone back to normal. Otherwise it's going to be frustrating. Edit: Googling it and my theory is right. But it turns out I'm not finished just yet. More story quests to do. A good amount of people are upset because some of their MIA guys are pre-order bonuses and high level Legendaries. Including guys with RMT buffs applied to them! I guess this explains what happened to my Necromancer. Man, he's the only one I've even seen, so I miss him.

Need more tactical mech RPGs. I miss Front Mission 2.

Shadow of War Feeling just like I remember Shadow of Mordor to be and no different. At least starting out. Hoping the balance and challenge is maintained over the long run.

I enjoyed building outposts in Fallout 4 perhaps a bit too much. And then building robots with the DLC. I ended up platinuming the game, but not the DLC.

If Claudia Black is in it, I'm there. I'm a simple man. I thought Lost Legacy was a decent-ish Uncharted game. 4 is probably my absolute favorite still, and it did not come near challenging that. The harshest I can say of Lost Legacy is that it felt like an obligation. But not an unwelcome one.

But I need to play Berseria first! And the Kingdom Hearts Collection! And Neptunia! And... help me... And .hack GU Last Recode just came out.

I've got a bunch of them, but have only played a bit of the first Trails. Funnily, I have both Cold Steel games for PS3 and haven't even taken them out of plastic! I think I need an intervention.

Really spurred on to continue Muv-Luv Alternative now that I find out I'm nearing the end. I'm not sure how this is the highest rated VN of all time, honestly. It's quite good, filled with moments of emotion and brilliance, spread out between moments that simply drag. And I do not want it to drag any more. But since I can get this out of the way soon, maybe finish before the end of the week, I can move on to Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth without any distractions.

No. I'm talking about you can only choose to do the Lethian's Crossing quest or the Burning Citadel quests. Two questlines and dungeons that exclude each other when they really don't need to. Because I chose Lethian's Crossing this time, I didn't have enough evidence to bring charges against Nerat like I did in my last playthrough. I also didn't get the Edict of Fire. And that's aside from me remembering that dungeon being pretty cool.

Finished my second Tyranny playthrough, this time with Bastard's Wound. Bastard's Wound itself was far less interesting than the new Landry, Verse, and Barik content. And I'm still a little miffed about Lethian's Crossing and Vellum Citadel being exclusionary. I still love the game, but I don't think I'll be playing a third until maybe the announcement of a sequel.

I can't tell if that's supposed to be the enhanced edition in the video or just the old one.

Homeworld Emergence is the one my eye's on, not on sale.

Star Wars Battlefront 2 Did I give a full review of the campaign? It's crap, that is all. Like they had a very much okay, but nothing special, campaign with high quality cutscenes and then were forced to use a third of the budget for pointless hero missions and expanded universe references. So the character development suffers and just feels jumpy, like something important is missing. Anyway, I'm enjoying the multiplayer a ton more now that I gave up playing Officer and started on Heavy. I'm a killing machine! Mow them down with Sentry, pop shield when I'm in danger, then cackle madly over all the bodies. They really need to fix progression though.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeees

EA disabled RMTs for all regions. The premium currency, crystals, were pulled from all stores last night. But not permanently. They will most likely come back after Christmas sales. Of course microtransactions are coming back at some point. They have plans for continued development and everyone shy of... I can't think of anyone since the early 2000s actually, has some additional monetization plan if they're also doing continued development. They said they won't bring them back until they've made changes. I know they've said they want to offer accelerated experience, or whatever, so hopefully that's just an XP or credit boost for the new system they change to and cosmetic skins.

Punisher

Guess you have to find out. Wasn't that the console exclusive one?

I don't forsee anyone else trying to make lootboxes a core non-optional system in a retail game, not after the blowback Battlefront 2 had. This was essentially throttled in the nursery and sometimes bad practices stay dead, like online passes. But we should beware of zombies. They bite.

Was the campaign for Bad Company better than the one for Bad Company 2? Because that was just as tacked on as this. Maybe worse.