Bartimaeus

yep, that's pretty much what I was mentioning wanting in my original post. alas, it seems as though we will likely be stuck with mediocre difficulty settings in perpetuity.

Most of the time, it's not even clear what a difficulty setting does. I prefer enemies doing more damage/the player having less life if I'm increasing the difficulty setting, whereas I pretty much always hate enemies becoming damage sponges/the player doing less damage. And difficulty settings where it affects BOTH are usually especially crappy, because then you pretty much have to stick to normal/easy unless you're a masochist. Also, yeah, realistically, the AI in most games that aren't real time strategy games are usually at their smartest on all difficulty settings, but additional options are the ideal.

I wish games had modular difficulty settings. Thinking about games like Metro 2033 or Stalker vs. something like Mass Effect - increase the difficulty settings on the former two games, and you receive more damage with every hit...but so do enemies. Increase it on the latter game and you take more damage...and enemies become bullet sponges, too. I wish there were like three different basic difficulty settings - level of intelligence, player life, and AI life. Most of the time, I would probably play with intelligence and player life on the hardest, but with AI life on medium or low - so everyone, player and AI alike, can kill each other and get killed quickly in a fast-paced and dangerous experience. I personally hate bullet sponges - they have a tendency to ground the game to a very dull and boring halt - but I also hate feeling like I'm invulnerable. In a lot of games with difficulty settings, there doesn't seem to really be much of a sweet spot and you kind of just have to settle for whatever the default or "normal" difficulty setting is, which is usually just a compromise between everything.

I can't imagine they're worse than the Steam hub forums. You would think the developers/publishers would have interest in moderating what's basically their forums, but I guess the endless flow of garbage is just too much for them to reasonably handle across many games.

the enemy of my enemy is also my enemy, but it's more ideal when they're enemies towards each other too, rather than in bed with each other plotting against you ​ ​personally, I will miss the days when my flaming trash heap of an ISP (who already puts data caps on me as it is and charges exorbitant prices for it and especially for going over) could not arbitrarily throttle my internet for non-corporate-approved downloads and streams, as I will miss the days where they were not legally empowered to outright restrict the usage of internet protocols at their leisure entirely. I think Zoraptor put it best like a week ago: an industry with lots of competition and little regulation is usually fairly ideal, an industry with no competition and lots of regulation is perhaps less than ideal, and an industry with no competition and no regulation is hell for everyone besides the monopolies. ​ ​here's a fun thing to look at: portuguese mobile phone plans without net neutrality today. I look forward to the day that all our phone and internet plans work the same way.​

yeah, for example, I thought it was supremely mediocre and just didn't really get it. my loss, I guess

lying (e): he was previously one of verizon's lawyers that fought against the FCC under the obama administration. give me a break

Yeah, I didn't know he had had a stroke and was wondering what was up. He's 48. What the hell. I don't think the movie was Psych's best work, but it wasn't close to their worst, either. A decent sendoff and conclusion...was nice to see most of the gang back together.

she got them gollum eyes

Looked like a Stranger Things video game to me as best as I can tell.

Not exactly a resounding endorsement. I've still yet to try Torment...

Yeah, Undertale was my GotY last year.

I was thinking a Shadow Tower remake or sequel.

I don't think there are many AAA RTS games that allow you to do that. All the Battle for Middle Earth games, all the WarCraft and StarCraft and Age of Empire games, etc., always had you alternate factions after finishing one of the campaigns. (edit): The Command & Conquer games, too. How do you write for a story in a campaign when you don't know which faction the player will play? Can't really write for every single faction.

are great axes (or anything like them) even a historical weapon? seems like they'd be unreasonably difficult to wield even for men...off to wikipedia (e): and after like a minute of looking, the answer seems pretty much like a no.

Special interests > the people Call it pro-business and ignore all the complaints. What are you going to do? Vote Democrat? Unlikely Regulatory capture.

you're sending mixed signals here

"This is difficult and by yourself it's a bit of a rage game." oh c'mon, it's not THAT hard. on the other hand, if you're playing 4-player co-op with each person controlling one limb...

and there it is (e): although sadly it isn't the worst ever

What am I a dance critic? She's hot! That's enough for me. But doesn't the awful cinematography and editing take away any from that? ...No? Well, agree to disagree.

Not with those nauseating every second jump cuts, you won't! Talk about devaluing a performance... Aw, who am I kidding, there's probably good reason they had to do that. Does anyone know where one can find the absolute worst cover of Santa Baby? That should really get the holiday cheer going!

I finally finished MOTHER 3 (EarthBound 2) after starting it many months ago. I liked both M1 and M2 a lot more, especially seeing as the first third of M3 was kind of dreadful, but it was a decent play.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUYtIpqB7t0

It was pretty much the complete opposite experience for me. Overbearing and super cringy characters and story (with absolutely none of the charm of previous entries), horrid controls and many wonky/bad gameplay mechanics centered around them, really weird and generally unappealing art style (Link's design is pretty easily the most unappealing of all the 3D Zeldas besides maybe the crappy 3DS remasters of the 64 games)...I never finished the game because of how much I disliked virtually everything about it. Fi makes Navi seem like the best companion in existence in comparison - there should've been a "turn off Fi everywhere" option somewhere.