Tale

Impressions of Head Lander so far. Good fun. The gunplay gets some time to get used to, aiming feels a little slower than I'd like for how hectic things can seem to get, but as I play I get better and learn to adapt. Edit: Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 port doesn't seem the best. I, and others, have a sound issue where there's a persistent static and all the game sounds are muffled. And the keyboard didn't work right for me. To quit you go to a menu, click Yes, then press 1 to confirm. Odd for mouse navigation, but it's mimicing the gamepad exactly. Except when confirming quit, it wouldn't quit.

Been playing XCOM again. Sadly, I'm not as lucky as my last playthrough, random deaths are a regular occurence. And some not so random deaths, like that time I activated Mutons, Leapers, and Seekers at the same time. They killed everyone except my Colonel Sniper and Heavy Zhao. The Mutons were on their A flanking game. Sadly, I'll be moving on. Head Lander and Marvel Ultimate Alliance came out today. Given how much time I spent in UA2, I had to buy the bundle and give UA1 another try.

Tried some more XCOM Long War. I've decided I don't like it. Being on my fifth mission with nothing but rookies unable to hit the broad side of a barn is kind of frustrating. I had to deal with an Outsider and it took like 5 rounds because of misses and regen. Blew all my grenades, missed three flanked 80+ shots in a row, my only vet in the group never hit once. I basically had to finish it with suicidal flank attempts. It wasn't exciting. And then I get back to the base and have nothing to look forward to.

My GOTY so far. It has a NG+ mode with new scenes and dialogue. I got spoiled on the broad strokes of that. Looking forward to it.

Oxenfree Holy crap where has this game been all my life?

Excuse the crappy picture. I actually forgot how big he used to be, he lost half that weight. People like to talk about cats as loners, but he was always by my side at home. When he was young, I had to learn never to back my chair up while playing at the computer or I'd hit his tail.

RIP Gizmo Put the cat down today. Vet thinks he had cancer, but he'd taken up eating again. And he "only" threw up once a week. But this past weekend, we got two bouts of throwup in a row, peeing on the carpet, and he stopped eating again. And he was still losing weight, despite how he'd been eating twice as much as he did at his fattest. 6.8 pounds.

You did good.

Stranger Things is up on Netflix. I was sold halfway into the first episode. I'm halfway into episode 3 now and still enjoying it.

Ghostbusters. Someone else described it as the second best Ghostbusters movie. I can agree with that enthusiastically. I really liked it. Had quite a few laughs and was overall impressed with it.

SOMA instantly became one of my favorite games of all times when I played it. I've already double dipped, PS4 and PC. I've been shamefully playing Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;birth. The characters are fun and charming, which makes it addictive.

Pillars of Eternity Finished White March part 1.

There was a thai place near my uni that had absolutely the best tofu. It was fantastic. Not like the crud chipotle tried serving, which was some sort of overspiced slurry. Big chunks.

Transformers RPG, where you get to pick additional modes as you gain in power. You start off as just a robot, but then you become an alien car. Then you can become an earth car. Then you can also turn into a T-Rex. And then a rocket ship! And each new form modifies your stat progression in some way and grants new powers.

I ensured my liberal SJW credentials today by having tofu for lunch. Yum yum. I kind of forgot how much I enjoy tofu. Hard to get any decent stuff around here.

It's a spiritual successor to Limbo. Where you play a kid and violently die a bunch progressing. I kind of draw the spoiler line at the core concept.

The last thing we need is terrorists and mass murderers with the ability to use grappling hooks and parachutes to escape.

What do the developers of EVE have to do with anything?

Dallas reporting in. To say I have nothing special to add. I didn't even hear about this until this morning, but it is kind of all over the news, so maybe I've heard a bit more. Apparently the BLM protest was going swell and peaceful. The open carry gentleman pictured in camo earlier isn't even the shooter (though he is somewhat upset about having his picture plastered everywhere and getting death threats on social media as a consequence). I heard this all happened as it was wrapping up.

Played much of Inside last night. What is with these guys and killing kids? And I'm slightly ashamed to say I played some Hyperdimension Neptunia. Trying to figure out if the franchise is any good since I saw V II released. Well, it certainly plays like a VITA game got ported to PC... And it's lots of just two sprites making corny jokes.

He is literally sleeping with the fishes. Also, his Force of Anguish knock-back attack is the only reason my priest prevailed against the minions of Concelhaut. Steelspine Magus ... I hate them. Yeah, I found him last night. I skipped out on Force of Anguish, though. My cipher's got control down.

I feel like The White March is the Pillars game they wanted to make. No backer NPCs, Soulbound weapons, more scripted interactions, good pacing, musical score for the ages, no backer NPCs. Maneha the barbarian is hilariously lethal and Zahua the monk has the best voice in the game. I finally beat Concelhaut. Feels good to turn a lich into giblets. I'm liking Pelligina's voice in the base game and Devil of Caroc from White March. Haven't met Zahua yet. Spent most of yesterday going through the Endless Paths and realizing I missed like 3 levels because I hit a roadblock and just left instead of checking out the freaking stairs. White March keeps reminding me of Icewind Dale a bit. But I'm currently enjoying Endless Paths too much to really check it out. Kind of disappointed by how little there is to do with the stronghold, though. When I saw that I could send my idle companions on adventures, I expected to be constantly sending them out to do stuff and keep them up to level. Maybe with some risks, perhaps picking the best companion for the mission or something. Instead, once every blue moon a single quest shows up and I just send one person to do it.

Back to PoE for me. Now that the plot has congealed and I see where it's going, I like it more. Still wish the companions were more interesting. Durance is good and 'Iselmyr' needs to interact more. I guess the low budget's to blame here. Even Baldur's Gate just had weird throwaway companions to stumble upon and be interesting, even if they end up fighting the other half of the party within an hour of gameplay. I'm really liking Cipher.

Finished Zero Time Dilemma yesterday. The game ultimately lacked the charm of the first two. It's a solid continuation/sequel, but it feels like it's running out of steam. When you go into the game, knowing that time travel is going to come into play, and so do many of the characters, where else is there to go? It was nice to see more of those characters and their continued development, but I'm kind of hoping this is the last of the series. The only choices for its future are to become repetitive or jumping over sharks. The puzzles were fantastic, but they can always do puzzles in a brand new series.

Zero Time Dilemma is, so far, better than expected. It's actually more puzzle dense than I remember the previous ones being and they're pretty fair. The plot is also the most confusing to start with. But with knowledge of previous games, it kind of makes sense.