Keyrock

OG is looking super strong. They are the best team right now at recognizing when they have a power spike and taking the most advantage of it, often times just outright ending the game right away.

It's time for NoTail vs Fly The Grudge Match - Part 3

I love the old skool faces in different states of bloody next to your health. Why did games stop doing that? It's so much better than red bar or screen turns more red as you get hurt.

Here's the newest trailer for Spiders' latest RPG that inevitably will fall well short of its ambitions and be janky as ****, and that I'll play and wind up enjoying anyway. I'm so going to murder the **** out of the tree-hugger natives and Manifest Destiny my way across the New World.

Of course. You can also turn on the hand dryer, play the piano, knock paintings off the wall, shoot bottles, etc.

Muh Boys signed Jaylon Smith to a 5 year extension. You may remember Smith as a risk Jerry & Co. took in the 2016 draft, as the guy had a devastating knee injury in his final year of college that made him miss his entire rookie season. The gamble ultimately paid off as he's gone on to be one of the most important pieces of Dallas' D. The Zeke drama continues, but it's nice to know Jaylon Smith will be a Cowboy through at least 2024 (barring a trade, of course).

I started playing Ion Fury. Very quickly I was met with the indisputable fact that I am completely **** at old skool shooters (or any shooters, for that matter). I'm playing on the 2nd of 4 difficulties and I'm getting super murdered, but I refuse to play on baby's first shooter difficulty, because my ego can't handle that. With enough practice I will hopefully become slightly less **** at the game. Despite having my ass handed to me repeatedly, I'm having fun with the game. It's a decidedly mid 90s shooter where you play as Female Duke Nukem and progress through labyrinthine levels full of alternate paths, secret areas, and really ****ish places for enemies to come out of and horribly murder you while your character cracks wise. It's the Duke Nukem 3D sequel we never got. What's that you say? Something about there already having been a Duke Nukem 3D sequel? With all due respect, sir or madam, I don't know what you are talking about and you might be off your rocker. Lalalalala I can't hear you.

I'm home from the road for a few days and decided to drink some local brews. The Carolinas have a veritable embarrassment of riches, if you're into IPAs, but, if you're like me and prefer lagers, your choices are far more limited. Still, I picked this up: Pretty good. Fairly easy drinking and comes off smooth, but with enough robustness to satisfy my palette. It could stand to be a tiny bit more hoppy, for my taste, but overall it's the kind of no fuss, no muss, no spices, no fruits, no berries, old skool traditional lager that I tend to gravitate toward.

^ Gotta love a trailer announcing an announcement. Hopefully someone took this a step further on social media and announced the coming of the trailer that announced the coming announcement.

If the drone combat mode has you killing 80% innocent civilians, we'll know it's a true simulator.

Ion Fury

I don't remember the first 2 games having weird west elements, but I'm not opposed to them.

^ I tried hard seltzer about a month back, it was ok. I concluded that it would be a good drink if my aim was to get hammered and urinate a lot, on account of the fact that, while it didn't taste particularly good, it also didn't taste bad, and it was really easy drinking. Whereas the beer I usually drink tastes great, but is fairly robust and filling and something I generally can't drink quickly or a ton of, at least not at my age, not that I'd want to (different story 20 years ago ). I could easily see myself plowing through a 12-pack of hard seltzer without so much as batting an eye... Then regretting my life choices shortly thereafter.

^ I guess that's the video game equivalent of pivoting to an agile synergistic model to conceptualize the value-add proposition.

Did they at least license the Fugees song?

My boys on TNC got themselves an upper bracket slot. Chaos Esports and Ninjas in Pajamas eliminated. Chaos going out in groups was not a surprise. It's a recently formed and unproven roster. NiP bowing out early was surprising. That team had been together all season and had placed as high as 3rd in a major.

They looked solid on day 1 and should have no problem making the main event, perhaps upper bracket. The team I'm rooting for this year is TNC. I've been a Tims fan for a long time, and ever since they brought Heen in as coach, they've become a tier 1 team. I have them as a dark horse to win the whole thing.

The International 9 is upon us. Hilariously, Epic Games forked out $30 million out of their own pocket for a Fortnite tourney recently just so that they could have the claim of having the richest prize pool of any eSports tourney ever and show off how big their **** is. Shortly thereafter, the prize pool for TI9 surpassed that number the same way Valve gets the prize pool for TI every year, by making money hand over fist on selling battle passes (30% goes to TI prize pool, 70% goes into GabeN's pocket to Valve). TI9's prize pool is now just over $33 million. Anyway, day 1 of the group stages is over. Unsurprisingly, Team Secret, Vici Gaming, and PSG.LGD are all sitting pretty right now. Alliance, Chaos, Infamous, and Ninjas in Pajamas are all in trouble. The big surprises so far have been across the board good performances from SEA (Southeast Asia) teams and poor performances from Team Liquid and EG. Plenty of time left for the group stage standings to shake up, though.

Do you have those Wolfenstein blues? Are you tired of RPG and loot em up mechanics being crammed into every single game? Do you miss the days when shooters were just shooters? Good news! Ion Fury is out now. I'm probably scooping it up when I get home from the road on Monday.

I may need to scoop that up. Lovecraftian is the new zombies, in that now EVERY game has to be Cthulhu themed and I'm getting burned out on it with the quickness. That said, I'm kinda chomping at the bit to play a point & click adventure. I've been waiting, seemingly forever, for the 5th end final episode of Kentucky Route Zero to come out so that I can play the whole thing (I always wait for every episode of an episodic game to release before I start it) and who knows how long that's going to take. I may be waiting another couple years, for all I know.

Wasn't Dead Island 2 announced 80 years ago?

I went through all the escalations and the Embrace of the Serpent bonus mission in the Colombia level in HITMAN 2. The bonus mission is significantly easier than the main mission in Colombia, largely because there is only one target to kill (and a book to retrieve), so just completing the mission can be fairly simple. Completing the silent assassin, suit only challenge, on the other hand, was fairly challenging. It took me a good bit of time to formulate a plan on how to do it, then a couple tries to execute it properly, but I eventually got it done. Let's just say that there will be A LOT of people waking up with headaches... and one person not waking up with a head hole. With that, I have reached maximum mastery level (20) at the Colombia location, which got me the remotely triggered micro audio distraction tool, which should be quite handy as I move on to other locations.