Bartimaeus

pretty meh also, wrong section also, wth is this crap

yeah, maybe it's just crappy writing for a series that got way too big for its britches past the original trilogy. terrible writing happens regardless of agenda (or lack thereof).

so charge them by the bite

IIRC, Satan is not the master of hell, but simply another one of its inhabitants. Don't think he has anything to do with punishments or anything of the sort, though it is a popular myth (but not based on any scripture, from what I recall). In fact, I believe the entire idea of "hell" is pretty fuzzy and ill-defined in the Bible to begin with. I remember more mentions of simply "the second death" (presumably perdition, but it's not perfectly clear) than anything about a hell.

Nah, I'm pretty sure he's Lawful Evil I think it would be difficult to wholly characterize Satan as either Lawful or Chaotic. Certain aspects of him (e.g. the Prosecutor) were obviously very lawful, but others (e.g. his role as the bringer of knowledge and the patron of the various different types of want-on sins and all the chaos that come with both) I would say rather seem the opposite. So I would think Neutral Evil is probably more fitting for him, as it encompasses his seemingly multi-faceted nature. (e): It also really depends on which Testament you're looking at, and possibly even from which book within those. God in the Old Testament would seem to be best characterized as Lawful Neutral (he was a real "my way or the highway down into a pillar of salt" type of guy), while in the New Testament, I would say he's more Neutral Good...so if Satan is supposed to be an opposite of sorts, then Neutral Evil seems like the best fit for the New Testament.

Yeah, I have arthritis in both of my wrists as well. I've even had surgery on one of them in an attempt to fix it, but it never heals. I look forward to 20-30 years from now when I'm dying from a host of auto-immune diseases, seeing as they tend to multiply as you get older.

Heart health can be so stupid for some people. My mom can't do anything to get her cholesterol down - they recommend that she does lots of exercise and eats healthy. She's virtually a vegetarian and her job makes her work on her feet every day *and* she works out on top of it, and of course avoids all the foods that are supposed to be bad for her cholesterol, but nothing she does seems to put a dent in it. Doing everything they keep telling her to do besides taking the terrible pills and none of it seems to do anything.

I've always thought learning how to parry in Dark Souls was kind of a waste of time for the most part, especially since the netcode in PVP is so janky that it makes it super difficult to rely on even if you get really good at it. The knights (both silver and black) and one other enemy you haven't come across yet so I won't say, however, are probably the one big exception. However, it's easier just to fish for backstabs on both of them and not bother, .

Yeah, it's pretty much agreed upon that playing any sort of magic on your first playthrough for a Soulsborne game is "easy mode". The only game I'd recommend that for personally is Dark Souls 2, but that's just because that game controls like such hot garbage that I can't blame anyone for struggling with it. But hey, if that's what you need to enjoy the game, so be it. Those crappy archers are infamous - the easiest way to deal with them is to just rush all the way up to the top, approach the one on the right and make him pull out his sword, and then start backing up (but not too much that he takes out his bow again) and then get him to fall off the edge when he tries to attack you. The first time I ever went through there, I did it without a problem...but the second time I went through, it took about 15-20 tries before I figured out what to do.

Well, I played the original game with M+KB, and it worked better there than the remaster did, which is not exactly a good sign for the quality of a remaster. Not that the original's inventory system was exactly a bundle of joy, either, but it was at least functional. Anniversary, when I played it, was borderline non-functional when it randomly refused to listen to keyboard commands and you'd have to repeatedly exit out and re-open to try again...and then sometimes it would do it again. Fun.

It was considered to be a bit of a cashgrab at the time of release. It had a ridiculously bad UI (think inventory and quest log - they had serious functionality issues, especially for M+KB players), had random costume "DLCs" that were really bad, while the improved graphics were a bit of a mixed bag. I played it myself and was really impressed that they somehow managed to screw up the UI that royally without ever testing to see if it actually worked. I don't know if they ever fixed that - if they didn't, I'd unfortunately be forced to recommend the original over it due to its terribleness - at least for anyone playing with M+KB. Otherwise, it's pretty much just a below average remaster.

Report came out that Anthony Bourdain was...actually clean at the time of death. He was, however, trying to quit smoking and was taking Chantix, which is known to have some pretty terrible side-effects for some people, including increased risk of depression.

Yeah, I thought the consensus problem with Ubisoft-developed games is that they're all fairly similar sandbox-type games that share a lot of mechanics and have loads of copy+pasted content.

Agreed: 15% is pretty small. Wouldn't read much into it except that Obsidian wanted to get in on and appear in the Steam Sale.

Though Calibre is rather janky, I've never had that specific problem with it.

I vastly prefer bad players who are good people vs. good players who are bad people. This applies to even non-team-based games like Mario Party - spoilsports can really ruin what should be a competitive yet lighthearted atmosphere. Good company is way more important than how skilled somebody is with the exception of playing at the professional level - which none of us are, so let's try to have fun, shall we?

It's on Steam. People on this forum don't like Steam equals troll stating how great Steam (and by extension, Valve) is at every turn. Heh. Back in the late 2000s (when I actually liked Steam to some degree), I remember when a bug with the Steam chat window started occurring, where it would erroneously say that the person you're talking to was typing a message for forever when nothing had been typed at all. Some of my friends and I all noticed it starting to occur around the same time, and a couple of times it occurred to both of us at the same time, so Steam would tell us both that the other was typing for forever when neither of us were. Incredibly, it still has not been fixed in all that time since - about ten years. It's just such a little thing, but in hindsight, I guess that was a pretty good sign of the things to come from Valve.

Since you're enjoying Deadfire and that's my only point of reference, and I rather dislike Bethesda(-developed) games, I guess Tyranny, .

Not sure how you can say that the same sale that has occurred roughly every 6 months for the past...decade? is phenomenal. It's fine, it's whatever, it's expected at this point. The allure of giving Valve piles of money for piles of games I'll only seriously play a minority of faded many years ago for me personally. Now I just mooch off of ShadySands while occasionally buying indie games instead (preferably through other outlets where available, though), .

And that's why I never play team-based multiplayer games anymore unless I already have people (i.e. friends) to play with that aren't terrible, . Online gaming - for virtually every game - has just gotten sooooo incredibly toxic and awful that I cannot stomach trying to be teammates with random strangers. It's a shame, too, since there are still some pretty decent people out there...but there are just too many not. Older games where the community is smaller and more tight-knit can be an exception, but anything even remotely newer can almost always go straight into the trash can.

On that note, I wish games (singleplayer shooters especially) had difficulty settings more like Metro 2033's, where playing on the hardest difficulty means both the players and enemies have like no HP and die in only a couple of shots.

​ Uh...what?

If you're buying on Steam, there's always the two hour refund window. And...you can just go into offline mode where time doesn't accrue anyways (I THINK?) if you want to extend it a little beyond that to figure out an edge case.

Planet of the Eyes. It's a 2D platformer that basically only has atmosphere to really go for it, since the actual platforming and puzzle elements are pretty minimal and it plays itself most of the time. Pretty similar to INSIDE, actually, but probably less striking. It was pretty short (an hour), and it was basically okay. I like my platformers more Super Mario Bros. style, though, and this was not that - though I had already guessed that, I was in the mood for some kind of platformer. Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight. I played this a while back but never wrote about it (I don't think). A fun little 2D Metroidvania game that I thought was actually pretty good, and I usually don't care for Metroidvania games. I may try out the previous entries at some point. Thanks to ShadySands for both.

I gave it a whirl when it came out. I thought the music was the best thing about it. Did not think much of the gameplay, main character, or world - I was really, really bored and annoyed for about the hour and a half I played it. I heard that it gets better the longer you're playing it, but much of the game seemed to be the antithesis of what I'd ideally want to be in a 3rd person action RPG to me (and still contained many of the problems I have with other 3rd person action games out there already), so I did not continue. Very disappointing.