Keyrock

It's not just Fallout, though, look at The Elder Scrolls. When is the last time that series had a good main story? I guess Morrowind. I mean, that wasn't a stellar main story, but it was engaging enough. That was 20 years ago.

ME2 was easily my favorite in the trilogy. It was a much better shooter than the first. On the other hand, it was also a worse RPG than the first game, in terms of mechanics, but at least they made class powers feel different from each other. I really enjoyed the setup with a ragtag group of misfits coming together to save the galaxy. The final mission was also terrific, even if the game lacked a strong main villain.

Bethesda can't write a main story nor main characters to save their lives. They can write side quests and bit characters well enough, but not main stuff. My theory is that side quests and minor characters allow them to get weird, goofy, humerous, and such, whereas comedy characters don't really belong in the main story, not in these types of games, anyway. Bethesda has trouble writing serious dramatic characters with anything remotely resembling depth.

I'm progressing further in Metroid Dread. I got Varia suit, bombs, grapple beam, diffusion beam, and speed booster, plus ammo for something I don't have yet (sequence break!), which I think is power bombs. Speed booster puzzles have always been fun in Metroid games and Dread is no exception. I was surprised to find out that you can morph ball shinespark in this game, which is all types of awesome. With my new found toys I've been going back to earlier areas to clear out everything I couldn't before. I have almost the entirety of Artaria (starting area) cleared out except one part with extreme cold zones. Varia protects from heat but not cold. I tried doing a hell run through the cold zones, but damage over time scales in this game, you take more damage every tick, so even with 6 E-tanks I died really quickly. Hopefully there's a suit that protects from cold because I intend to get 100% item completion on my first playthrough. I suppose I could try hell running that area again once I have 10 or 12 E-tanks.

Is it worth it? Is the haptic feedback life altering?

I usually play in handheld mode, but I decided to try the Switch docked (works great). I don't have a pro controller so I just used the joycons in the shell that turns them into a standard-ish controller. I'm sure the pro controller is better but I have no issues with the joycon controller; button are a bit small but it's perfectly comfortable in my hands. I'm pretty lenient with controllers, there have been very very few I've hated *cough* Wiimote *cough*. What really surprised me is how long the battery lasted. It went at least twice as long before the low battery alarm came up than my PS4 dualshock typically does (and did even when brand new). This is both praise for Nintendo and condemnation for Sony (seriously, splurge for a better battery next time, folks).

Metroid Dread The Kraid fight is pretty great. Edit: Kraid has come a long way since Metroid:

Metroid Dread first impressions: tl;dr Game is great Right off the bat, the movement feels really good, even without any mobility tools like speed booster or high jump boots. I haven't played Super Metroid in a really long time, so I can't compare to that, but movement definitely feels better than Fusion, Zero Mission, Samus Returns, and light years better thsn the original Metroid. This is important because when an E.M.M.I. spots you it's time to make yourself scarce, those robots are not slow. The devs seemed to have learned from the mistake that Prime 3 and Other M made, that being having you interact with too many characters. Normally, I'm all for interacting with characters, but not in a Metroid game. What gives the games tension is a feeling of isolation, it's Samus against the world. The only entity I have interacted with so far that wasn't trying to kill me is Adam, but that's a disembodied AI, it can't help me, it's just there for exposition purposes. Better yet, Samus is cut off from her ship, so there's no feeling of safety. She's alone and surrounded by things trying to kill her. You start off with a few missiles, the ability to slide, and the melee counter, which thankfully work better than in Samus Returns. Beyond more missiles and a couple E tanks I've so far acquired the spider magnet, phantom cloak, morph ball (which comes bundled with spring ball), and spazer.. I mean wide beam (it's still spazer to me, dammit).

My Switch OLED arrived a couple of days ago and fortune smiled on me today as my route naturally took me up I-85 through the Charlotte area with enough time cushion to drop the trailer at the tank wash (it's less than 8 miles from where I live), bobtail home, grab the package, and bobtail back. Anyway, I got the white variant, as opposed to Bokishi's red & blue variant. I don't have an OG Switch nor a Switch Lite to compare against but I can tell you that the OLED screen looks great; colors are vibrant and almost pop off the screen.

This looks stupid, but I'm not yet sure if it's going to be a fun stupid or just stupid stupid. Hopefully it's fun stupid because globetrotting adventure movies are my jam.

I can only imagine the games Monokuma will have the high schoolers play in that summer camp game.

I got a kick out of the pearl clutching.

Dead or Alive had proto-jiggle physics with bouncing breasts mode in 1996.

Does Dino Crisis have a thicc Jill Valentine wearing barely anything and with jiggle physics?

I've been playing The Crew 2 on PS4 and I've been very pleasantly surprised. I have Assetto Corsa Competizione for when I get a wheel & pedals rig set up at home, but I wanted something more arcadey, but not too arcadey to play with a controller on the road, The Crew 2 fits that bill nicely. One of the biggest anxieties I had going in was the live service model and the dreaded microtransactions. They are in the game, but I haven't found the game to be overly grindy in an effort to get you to spend money. Sure, if you want to get a Bugatti Chiron it will take you quite a while to earn enough in-game currency, but it's a freakin' Bugatti, you don't just give a car like that away. The game gives you some decent vehicles gratis to get you started. I wanted an Acura NSX as my main get around vehicle and saving for it took a very reasonable amount of time. I'm probably going to buy one of the packs in the game as a thank you to the devs because I got the game super cheap on sale and I honestly feel like I robbed Ubisoft given the amount of content I got for my money. The amount of content in the game is ABSURD. The map (it's a condensed and not completely accurate United States) is absolutely littered with icons, even by Ubi standards. Unlike in other Ubi titles, the vast majority of said icons are worthwhile and fun activities, rather that copy & paste collectibles and repetitive outposts. The amount of vehicles in the game is overwhelming, with something like 500 cars, motorcycles, trucks, planes, hovercrafts, and speed boats. There are so many different tracks and racing disciplines that it will make your head spin and the vast majority of them are really fun, including some goofy stuff like racing a Delorean against 50s hot rods. Ubi have steadily been adding content since the game released some 3 years ago and continue to do so still. The driving model sits roughly halfway between sim and arcade. Different vehicles feel decidedly different and you can upgrade any of them. This is where my biggest gripe with the game comes in, the upgrade system. You can't just buy parts, you get loot drops, which is stupid. You get loot drops very regularly, though. I suppose if you want to squeeze the last 1% of performance out of your car because you are trying to get #1 on the global leaderboards it could take excessive grinding to get the absolute best stat drops, and that's probably where they get you with microtransactions. If, however, you just want to casually have fun (that's me!) and make your car really fast (but not the absolute fastest) you will never feel the need to spend a penny. I was very relieved at how mild the rubber banding is in the game. I hate aggressive rubber banding, which thankfully is not in this game. There is rubber banding but you can absolutely pull away with a fast enough vehicle and good driving and absolutely get left in the dust if you suck. I am also happy that every vehicle has a schlongpit view, which is sadly missing from far too many racing games. A really cool feature is the ability to switch vehicles on the fly. You can be ripping through Miami in a car, hit a jump, swap into a plane in mid-air, fly over a lake, then swap into a boat and drop into the water. If that sounds awesome that's because it is. There are even some super fun races where you switch vehicles mid-race. They are rad as ****. You can fast travel to any icon from anywhere or drive or fly there yourself. It takes roughly 40 minutes to drive from Seattle to Key West. Amusingly, there is a really great dynamic weather system, but it doesn't respect geography, so you wind up with a snow storm in Key West (proof that global warming is a hoax? ). You can stay on the roads or rip through forests (preferably in an off-road vehicle). There are all sorts of activities to do just cruising around. If you are online other players will be on the map. You can group up with them if you wish, do events together, have impromptu races, or just mess around. I'm just blown away by this game; the sheer amount of content and how fun most of it is, how not overly greedy the microtransaction economy is, and how much sheer joy I've gotten from it. Ubisoft did a good?

The biggest advantage of PC is mods, so if you want to play as a redheaded Jill Valentine wearing a tiny bikini and being chased by a T-Rex, then PC is where it's at. The advantage of consoles is that stuff just works (Todd_Howard.jpg)... Except when it doesn't. I guess PC can also potentially have nicer looking pixels, but even last gen consoles have some really good looking pixels, so whatever. I mean, I think even SNES and Genesis era pixels still look quite good, but you go forward one gen to the early days of polygons and you get some really ugly pixels... I don't know where I'm going with this.

https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/damontae-kazee-arrested-charged-with-dwi Safety Damontae Kazee got arrested for DWI. There's the Cowboys I know.

Asteroids on Atari 2600 for me. As an aside, the Atari 2600 joystick: Still a better controller than the abomination called Wiimote.

As a Pole, I am of course familiar with the works of Stanisław Lem, Tales of Pirx the Pilot was one of my earliest exposures to sci-fi. Lem and Verne were staples of my parents' bedtime story repertoire. I'll definitely keep an eye on The Invincible. Edit: Add Dumas to that list. I don't remember if they read me the whole series, but I vividly remember The Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After.

I almost put the Pats in the Fart Noise tier, had the Bills won Monday night I probably would have. I can still see a path to the playoffs for them, as improbable as it seems. The one hopeful sign for them is that I believe they have their QB. I am a believer in Mac Jones.

We're 1/3 of the way through the season, here's my current tier list: The Legitimate Contenders Cardinals, Ravens, Buccaneers, Rams, Packers, Cowboys Outside Contenders Chargers, Chiefs, Raiders, Bills, Titans, Browns Hoping To Make The Playoffs Bengals, Vikings, Bears, Steelers, Broncos, Panthers, Saints Hanging On By A Thread 49ers, Patriots, Colts, Seahawks Fart Noise Dolphins, Texans, Football Team, Eagles, Jets, Jaguars, Falcons, Giants, Lions

@the_dog_daysHopefully Zach Wilson works out for y'all. The Jets haven't had a good QB since... ... I guess Brett Favre wasn't completely washed up in his Jets season. He wasn't current Ben Roethlisberger level washed up, anyway. I'd be at least a little concerned about the amount of hits Zach Wilson is taking. Y'all need to protect your young QB.

I'm so sorry. I want to tell you things will get better, but... /eHugs @the_dog_days

@BartimaeusIt feels good to be the heels.