Keyrock

If they open sourced it, people would find out about the microchips before they were already injected with them and it was too late.

Bruce Leroy, ah the memories! Part kung fu, part blaxploitation, and part magical adventure, what a great combination.

Ion Fury expansion coming this summer.

Once in a while I try to go back and play Wizardry 6 again. I can't do it, those early levels are just so brutal. I have long been curious to try one of the Japanese Wizardry games. Fun fact: Wizardry was one of the biggest if not THE biggest inspirations for early jRPGs.

Kind of a harsh and clickbaity title, but this does confirm the early Anandtech review. tl;dw: Really hard to see the value of buying this in almost any scenario over Zen3 or Comet Lake. Intel does cut into AMD's lead in production workloads, but AMD still leads, even when core counts are even. This does nothing to move the needle on gaming, even slightly regresses vs Comet Lake in some instances. It's weird seeing Intel at a process deficit. I've been building my own PCs for over 2 decades and Intel ALWAYS had the process lead, even when AMD had better chips, like the good ol' Athlon 64 days. Intel really needs to get their fab situation in order so they can compete with AMD TSMC on more even footing.

I'll recommend M&MX to you, though I'm not sure if it's what you are looking for. The devs' inspiration was World of Xeen, so it's turn-based and grid-based, though it does have some modern QoL improvements. Anyway, I enjoyed it, so if you liked the early turn-based M&M games (1-5) then this may be worth a play.

Aaaaaand it's here. The hotfix has arrived just as predicted. It's almost as if I have been playing Egosoft games for well over a decade and have been through this exact situation numerous times. Downloading now.

I would eat a pepper encrusted garlic clove. Thankfully, with my job no one would have to smell my breath for most of the day.

I made a small adjustment I thought was fitting.

^ It would take a veritable mountain of pepper to have too much pepper.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Valheim programming. My village is mostly done: I almost feel like the ruler of a fief. If only the game had NPCs I could place, even if just static ones, to liven up the place. There's a big update coming soon. Fingers crossed that they add NPCs. Bonus non-village screenie: IMHO Valheim does weather effects and lighting effects as well as the highest budget AAA games. Light shafts, depth of field, ambient occlusion, etc are all used to great effect. In particular, the way the depth of field transitions from blurry to sharp when you focus on something in the distance just feels so right. I don't know how to describe it any better than that, you kind of have to see it in motion.

Shouldn't every week be anti-racist week?

What's there to script? Johnny Depp is going to wear a lot of scarves and act wacky, Orlando Bloom is going to look handsome, and Kiera Knightley is going to purse her lips.

It's pretty sad that we've reached the point that the games industry is remastering 5 year old games.

Aww yeah, it's my boy Jenks! (He's Detective Blackwell in this game but he'll always be Jenks to me) Of course you can come in; you're always welcome, Jenks. This actor is the freakin' best. I'm taking a brief break from Valheim to play The Dark Side of the Moon. I'm looking for something on the short side, a brief interlude, and I don't expect a FMV game to be particularly long.

I'll wait for the inevitable 4.01 hotfix coming in a few days before downloading the new expansion and jumping back into X4.

Kinect did deliver some quality unintentional comedy: So, I guess it wasn't all bad.

I just had the realization that it's been a little over a decade since Microsoft introduced the Kinect. What followed was several years of the most god-awful games ever. Microsoft even tried to shove Kinect down our throats by bundling it with the Xbox One. Kinect was thankfully silently abandoned shortly after that. Good riddance.

In terms of combat I was thinking more along the lines of Bayonetta. I'm not sure how that would meld with RPG mechanics, hence the potential for disaster, but let Platinum handle the combat, PB builds the world, and they can collaborate on the writing since Platinum's tongue in cheek dialogue works well with their flashy combat, plus they're way better at humor than PB, but PB is good at reactivity and melding narrative and environment organically. I mean, it probably wouldn't work, but I'd like to see them try.

I actually like that about Elex and PB games in general. I HATE level scaling with the fiery passion of a million suns. I like starting out as a weakling and crushing enemies beneath my boot at the end, it's why I overlevel whenever I can in a game when I feel the endgame coming. That said, Elex may be a bit extreme, even for my tastes, in this regard. I actually walked across the map to the Clerics' base about an hour into the game, probably 7 or 8 hours earlier than intended. It took A LOT of save scumming to make the trip.

Yeah. As much as I love PB, and I most certainly do, they deserve criticism. My biggest gripe with them is how $#!+ the combat always is. In a weird way, Gothic 1 has the best combat they've ever made, at least when compared to their peers of the time. Pretty much all action RPGs had janky garbage combat back then. Since then PB's combat design has taken half a step forward. Meanwhile, the industry as a whole has taken 5 steps forward in terms of combat design. Edit: Could we get PB and Platinum Games drunk and have them make a baby game together? It would either be utterly brilliant or a Hindenburg-level disaster, but I GUARANTEE it wouldn't be dull.

Gothic 3 at launch was a complete train wreck. With all the community patches and add ons it's quite enjoyable. That doesn't excuse the launch state of the game and a huge chunk of the work to make Gothic 3 playable and somewhat complete was not done by PB.

Both Bethesda (developed) games and Piranha Bytes games are jank, just in different ways. Bethesda games look beautiful (nightmare fuel faces notwithstanding) and polished on the surface, which makes them appeal to the unwashed common masses. However, they are jank and somewhat shallow deep inside. To be fair to Bethesda, they also tend to have some legitimately fun and/or amusing hooks and are very moddable. Piranha Bytes games are jank on the surface and definitely lack polish, but they are full of substance deep inside. They don't immediately grab your attention like a shiny AAA game does, but they are very rewarding if you are willing to look past the jank and the always poor combat.

Me remembering the last Gothic game not made by Piranha Bytes.