Keyrock

I'm so proud of muh Boys for pulling out that W last night. There were so many opportunities to fold and it would have been completely forgivable; we were on the road with an undrafted backup who had previously thrown a grand total of 3 regular season NFL passes and we could afford to take a L because our division is trash. Cooper Rush gets obliterated on a sack and fumbles because Tony Pollard missed his assignment (as good a rusher as Pollard is, Zeke is a much better blocker). Right there the Cowboys of the past 25 years fold and lose the game 9 out of 10 times. Not this year. The defense stepped up, forced a 3 and out, and got the offense back on the field. Micah Parsons is blossoming into one of the best linebackers in the league. It seems like he had a hundred tackles last night.

@BartimaeusOur 2 teams are firmly in the running for the 1 seed in the NFC. I'd say your team is in better shape in the tie-breaker department by virtue of your win over the Cards and our loss to the Bucs. Kind of early to start talking about seeds, but it definitely feels like neither of our divisions is in question, barring something crazy happening.

Muh Boys did the right thing by sitting Dak and not taking any chances and we still won. The Vikings frequently loaded up the box to stifle our run game and dared Cooper Rush, an undrafted backup making his first ever start, to beat them. Smart gameplan but beat them Cooper Rush did. Well, it was the defense more than anyone that won this game. Still, ol Coop delivered when needed on the game winning drive.

The Lions might not just be bad, they might be historically bad. Yikes!

I solved a couple more shinespark puzzles in Metroid Dread, including one I managed to do much quicker than I anticipated. If you hit a wall while shinesparking the shinespark immediately ends, but if you hit a slope then you go back into running with speed booster and you have a small window of time with which to set your shinespark again before the speed booster charge expires. This gives you another 5 seconds to get into position to shinespark again. This sounds simple enough, but it requires executing a series of quick and precise button presses and for harder puzzles you have just barely enough time to get into position before the 5 seconds run out. Most of these just get me missile packs or ammo for something I don't have yet, presumably power bombs. If I was just trying to finish the game then I wouldn't bother, since I already have about 200 missiles, way more than I need to kill anything. I'm dead set on 100%, so I need to do every last one of these puzzles. I also had anothe boss fight with twin chozo robots. This fight gave me tons of trouble the first time I faced them, it was laughably easy this time around. Having a couple more E tanks helped, but the difference was definitely screw attack. Screw attack makes that battle so much easier; screw attack makes a lot of things so much easier.

I defeated Golzuna in Metroid Dread and acquired cross bombs. I've also been doing more shinespark puzzles to collect items (mostly missile packs). The hardest thing for me is doing mid-air shinesparks. I understand how to do it, but it requires several precise and quick button presses during the 5 seconds that you can store a shinespark. I can do it, but not consistently. Still, I've managed to get one item that requires a mid-air shinespark and I'm committed to getting 100%, so I will have to perform a couple more.

The only caramel I would include in A Rank would be Krówki, a Polish caramel fudge candy, buy I wanted to stick to common American candies since I assume the majority of people here are American. If I include Polish candy then Prince Polo (essentially better Kit Kat) goes in S Rank.

I like most gelatine or jelly type candies: Gummi bears, Mike & Ike, Swedish fish, jelly beans. 100 Grand is fine, but I rank it below Reese's pb cups and Kit Kat as far as chocolate-based candy goes. Edit: S+ Rank: Haribo cola bottles, Haribo twin cherries S Rank: All other Haribo gummies A Rank: Non-Haribo gummies, Swedish fish, Mike & Ike, Reese's pb cups, Peanut M&Ms, Kit Kat, Almond Joy, Starburst, Sour Patch Kids

I don't find peeps disgusting, but they're certainly not good. We agree on the fruit cake, that vile substance is vomit inducing. I also agree that candy corns aren't disgusting, but they are a bitter disappointment on Halloween. Going trick or treating when you get top tier candy like Reese's peanutbutter cups, Mike & Ikes, or Peanut M&Ms, you're excited. You get mid tier candy like 100 Grand or Hershey's chocolate, it's fine. You get low tier candy like Whoppers or candy necklaces you're slightly disappointed but it's whatever. Candy corn is in the absolute lowest tier with those dots on wax paper. You'll probably still eat it eventually because you're a kid and it's sugar, but almost anything else would have been better.

I agree circus peanuts are wretched, but are they a traditional food for, well, anything? Why do they exist? Peeps are pretty meh. As for dry turkey, you can drown it in gravy and it tastes fine. Turkey is overrated, though. Green bean casserole is where it's at on Thanksgiving.

I'm the only one here who cares about rasslin' so I usually don't bother, but tonight's episode of AEW Rampage was so good that I have to post sbout it. More specifically, the Bryan Danielson vs Eddie Kingston match that opened the show was incredible. This match could have main evented any PPV for any company on the planet and gotten rave reviews. The final few minutes of the 18 or so minutes of awesomeness these guys went had me on my feet, clapping, pumping my fist in the air (hitting the roof of the truck), and yelling. I wept manly tears of joy for how good this match was.

Almost everyone hates candy corns on Halloween. Almost everyone hates fruit cake on X-Mas. I've heard myths that there is such a thing as "good fruit cake". I have yet to witness this "good fruit cake", much less taste it. My question is, what is the worse holiday tradition: candy corns or fruit cake?

I wonder if Dak plays Sunday? If this were a must-win I'm pretty sure he would, but it might be wise to sit him another week. Losing to the Vikes wouldn't be the end of the world, losing Dak for the season because he played before fully healed would be.

I wasn't talking about playing every game in the series, I ain't got that kind of time.

Star Ocean is a JRPG series I have always heard about but never actually played. I should probably rectify that at some point.

Reactions to everything these days get blown waaaaaaay out of proportions. Social media is possibly the worst invention of the last 50 years. I mean, it's a tool, it can be used for good or bad, but in practice the bad has outnumbered the good by several country miles. There have always been extremists on every end of the spectrum, there have always been wackos, and there have always been trolls. In the past, these nut jobs were (mostly) confined to their little corner of the world. They might lose their **** at a town hall meeting, spray paint hateful messages on a wall, or whatever. This would be a headache for the folks living in that community, but that's as far as it usually went, outside of the few disturbed individuals ambitious and charismatic enough to become cult leaders. Social media has provided these lunatics a GIANT megaphone with which to pester the entire planet. Unfortunately, there is a decent chunk of the population that is easily swayed. So you get someone with a strong, possibly incendiary opinion. You have someone else with an equally incendiary reaction. In the past this would be a shouting match somewhere that may end with a fist fight (or worse in extreme cases). That would essentially be the end of it. Now you have scumbag profiteers jumping in online seeking an opportunity to gain power or profit from the conflict, trolls lighting fires on all sides because they get off on chaos, and a bunch of sheep me too-ing (no pun intended) because they are easily manipulated. To make matters worse, social media made all news instantaneous. Gone are the days of investigative journalism and fact checking. You gotta get the story out first. If you're not first you get no views, so just copy & paste that statement that may or may not be a complete fabrication, and post it as quickly as possible. If it turns out to be a lie we'll post a retraction that nobody will read, **** it.

Speaking of aesthetics, I don't feel it's a straight line. For a while the look of games got better and better as processing power increased, then in the mid to late 90s it went backwards, then it started moving again. I feel like the late-era sprite games from the mid-90s hold up really well, especially if you use a halfway decent scaler whrn blowing them up to today's resolutions. There were a few games during the early days of the Sega Saturn and Playstation, when everybody started making 3D polygon games, because it was the new hotness, that were still sprite-based, and those games look terrific, even today. Meanwhile, that first generation of polygon games has aged horribly, really I'd say the first 2 generations. There are, of course, exceptions where developers used a strong aesthetic with low polygon count that still holds up fairly well, but most polygon games from the mid-90s until mid-00s look pretty awful today. I feel polygon games from roughly 2006 onward hold up relatively well, but the decade preceding it... *shudders*

If you wind up playing more Sierra On-Line adventure games, I'd be curious to see how you deal with moon logic. I grew up on these games, Space Quest was literally the first PC game I owned (and thus began my love affair with Sierra On-Line), so I can naturally think in moon logic. For people that didn't start gaming until moon logic (mostly) was a thing of the past, it must be an interesting experience when you find out the solution to some of the puzzles.

Experiment Z-57: This is an awesome boss fight, best one I've played in any Metroid game thus far. It took me 6 tries to get the job done. 3 to figure out all the attack patterns and tells, 3 more to execute properly. And take your precious ring with you!

It's almost here. Excitement Level = CRITICAL

I don't care enough to click the link, but if it's a studio of 5 with no women then it's a non-story. If it's a studio of 100 then criticism might be warranted.

I'm probably pretty close to the point where I could finish Metroid Dread, though I have some work left to get 100% item completion. I got ice missiles, space jump, and gravity suit, so I can go almost anywhere now. I'm only missing ice beam, wave beam, power bomb, and screw attack from the full Fusion kit. Screw attack I'm sure is in the game because I've seen screw attack blocks, and I think I've seen power bomb blocks, but I'm not sure what that symbol was. Ice beam seems redundant since I have ice missiles, but both were in Fusion. Wave beam is whatever. I beat a few more bosses. Escue was a fun fight, phase 1 took me 3 tries to figure out the attacks, once I got to phase 2 it was laughably easy. Twin chozo robots was the most frustrating fight in the game so far. I've fought chozo robots before; one on one they've not hard. They don't do anything different in the twin battle, but having to deal with two at once makes life so much harder. In 95% of boss fights the adage "don't get greedy" holds true, but this battle is an exception. When both robots are around it's easy to get caught in a bad spot and get bodied by both of them, so when you have an opportunity where they are separated it's worth tanking a bunch of damage to absolutely unload on one robot and take it out. Once it's one on one, the fight is manageable, even at low health. There was also another chozo soldier battle, this one had a different second phase. It was quite fun. I have 2 E.M.M.I.s left to dispatch and at least 2 bosses, but I want to collect every last item before the final battle.

Open world, level-based, linear, metroidvania, I don't really have a preference. If it's good it's good. I just don't like the industry following trends, which happens all the time. Open world gets popular and suddenly everybody is making open world games almost exclusively. I like variety. Luckily, there are always indies to buck the trend.

I'm pretty deep into Metroid Dread. I recently got super missiles (they replace your regular missiles in this game) and plasma beam, so I'm getting close to end of Fusion power level. I know I'll need more than that since the chozo at the beginning of the game whooped my ass at full Fusion power level. I'm pretty sure he(?) will be the final boss. Speaking of bosses, I've gone through a few more. Droygyga was a particularly fun battle, as was the Chozo Soldier. Hopefully I get gravity suit soon, because I've encountered a good number of pickups and areas I need gravity to reach.

Yeah, you don't have to have a strong story in a big open world game full of exploring, but it can be done, and it has been done, just not by Bethesda.