Keyrock

I'm flabbergasted by this trailer. I guess my first question is why? I mean, the answer is money, but... *sigh* Who was clamoring for a 101 Dalmatians... prequel(?)? Who is this supposed to appeal to? What is the target audience? I am so confused. I hope the movie is better than the trailer.

My comfy bedroom: I feel the troll head really makes the decor

As an owner of a Thrustmaster T16000M I can wholeheartedly recommend it. It's a great flightstick with tons of axes and buttons. I used and loved it in X4 (once the 4.0 update and new expansion come out I need to revisit the game).

Valheim has that time vortex factor for me. I'll start playing it, intending to play for 45 minutes or an hour, suddenly where did those 4 hours go? It's an oddly relaxing game about surviving in a hostile Norse mythology world. I recently reached bronze tech level, which opened up a ton of new crafting. I'm slowly converting my gear from flint/leather to bronze. I've also reached stage 3 of trolls: Stage 1) Fear of trolls Stage 2) Hunting trolls for their hide Stage 3) Annoyed by trolls

I guess game studios have reached the same phase Hollywood reached a long time ago, the We're All Out of Original Ideas phase.

My new and much improved base: Shortly after I had just gotten started building it, when I only had leveled the ground, laid out the floor plan, and started building the bottom layer of walls, a troll came by, murdered me, and smashed up my work to boot. As you can imagine, I was none too pleased, but that's what I get for building in a more dangerous area. After retrieving my corpse and my gear, I slew the troll (it took a good 5 minutes of kiting and roughly 25 fire arrows). In addition to the wooden palisade I have begun digging a moat. There is a massive copper deposit very close to my base (the benefit of building in a more dangerous area). I'm digging the moat around the deposit as well, so that I can mine in peace.

Exploring some spooky barrows: I assume that's Yggdrasil in the distance: While I was busy taking these screenies a troll wandered up to me. He was not friendly. Relaxing at home after narrowly escaping with my life:

I'd be happiest if there simply was no item durability period. IMHO it has never been a positive feature of any game ever. It's always a negative. Again, in survival games at least it fits thematically, but why anyone would ever put it in any other type of game boggles my mind. Producer Nancy: "Hey Bill, what are you working on currently for our new game project?" Designer Bill: "A system that actively and repeatedly obstructs the player from having fun." Nancy: "That souns great, I'll make sure it's included in the final version."

A thing I like about Valheim is that they softened some standard survival game systems. The biggest one for me is item durability and it got me thinking. I HATE item durability and I feel it has no place in any game that is not strictly a survival game. Item durability adds nothing but tedium and frustration to a game, but at least in a survival game it fits thematically. If you are a game developer making anything other than a survival game and you shoehorn item durability into your game then you are an @$$÷*/÷ and I hate you. Honestly, I would rather not have item durability even in a survival game, but I get why it's there. In Valheim at least they make repairing equipment quick and painless. You just go over to your workbench, open up the UI, and click the repair icon. No materials needed and you don't even need to select each item to repair. You just clickclickclickclickclickclick and everything is good as new. It takes 5 seconds and you can go right back to doing something fun, because repairing equipment never is, never was, and never will be fun.

@LadyCrimsonSo far so good. Valheim definitely is a surprise hit, since the survival game boom ended a couple of years ago after the marked got flooded with a bunch of early access garbage that will never leave early access. I think one of the things it has going for it is just how polished it is. I guess it was on Itch.io (don't know for how long) before it popped up on Steam. The animations are pretty stiff, they could use a rework and the UI could use some love, but beyond that the game feels finished and polished. I haven't encountered a single bug yet. It runs fine and looks good IMHO. It's interesting how this game handles food. Food is your health and stamina, but not in the traditional sense. You can eat up to 3 pieces of food at a time, but they have to be different. You can eat a piece of cooked meat, a mushroom, and a raspberry, but you can't eat 3 mushrooms. Each piece of food gives you a certain amount of health, stamina, and regen for both. You can't starve to death in this game, but you will be weak as **** if you don't have any food buffs going. Combat is fairly basic but decent enough. You can attack, dodge, and block, and you have stamina. Stamina regens fairly quickly as long as you are rested and/or have food buffs going, so running out isn't crippling. My favorite thing to do so far is hunting deer. Deer will peace out if they spot you, so you need to be sneaky. Skulk around through the grass, listen for the deer, figure out where Bambi is, creep closer, line up your shot, figure in arrow drop, and let it rip. It's slow, methodical, and I find it quite exhilarating. I'm weird like that. I'm still on fairly low tech, so I can't speak to the extent of crafting, but supposedly the system is very extensive. Snapping pieces together is quite finicky, but it works fine so long as you are patient. I like that you don't have to snap pieces together, you can fit them weird ways and overlap them. Supposedly you can build ships later on, not boats, but full fledged ships. That's going to be badass. There are bosses. I'm not sure yet if bosses gate tech, but I suspect they do at least partially. You can wander into biomes beyond your abilities and get horribly murdered. The game will warn you "Are you sure you want to go in here? Maybe you should fight Eikthyr first to prove your worth?" but it won't stop you.

My first sea vessel: It's slow as ****, but hey, it beats drowning. The game's first boss, Eikthyr: Turned out to be a piece of cake. I'm pretty sure I was overprepared (better that than underprepared). I was wrecking him with fire arrows from my level 2 crude bow. I then finished him with my flint spear. I could have done the whole fight with spear and shield and saved the fire arrows, he doesn't do much damage as long as I block, but I didn't know that going in.

A new version of The Dark Mod is out for your old skool Thief needs: https://www.thedarkmod.com/posts/the-dark-mod-2-09-has-been-released/

Valheim I kinda like the art style. It's not quite low poly... medium poly, if there's such a thing, but all the textures are pixelated up close. There are some really great depth of field effects. The game can look stunning at times. My first real base of operations: This is all very basic stuff. Supposedly the stuff you can craft in this game later on is pretty bonkers. I'm sure it will be quite a while until I get anything fancy looking. Fun fact: I have died 3 times so far, all 3 were death by tree. Unlike in other games, when you chop a tree down it doesn't just burst into particles and disappear, it falls over. It will damage you, or anything else it hits on the way down, including other trees. I had one rather amusing debacle where I was on a hill and the tree trunk fell as such that it began rolling down the hill at me and I was Prometheus running away from it.

It makes me feel really sad & old that the person wrote "that guy from Pink Floyd" rather than "David Gilmour" so that people would get the reference.

The dreaded soft reboot.

I will say this for Star Trek Beyond, it was at least better than the dumpster fire that was Into Darkness IMHO. You know, I became a Star Wars fan years before I became a Star Trek fan, yet when Star Wars became a steaming pile of garbage, it didn't hurt that much. When Star Trek lost its heart and soul and became yet another dumb action franchise, that really hurt. Oh well, they're both dead as far as I'm concerned now. To those that enjoy those franchises these days, more power to you. I've moved on.

There was a brief moment in time, right after Star Trek Beyond came out, where Mike Stoklasa had a glimmer of hope for the future of Star Trek. That glimmer was savagely murdered by the fiendish villain Alex Kurtzman.

^ Yeah, I can't see Mike & Jay putting themselves through 4 soul crushing hours of Zack Snyder garbage. Is it really 4 ****ing hours long!?

The Snyder Cut Justice League trailer is out. Here's my synopsis: In the darkest dark of the dark a dark will dark the darkest dark dark dark. DARK! *EVERYTHING EXPLODES* Fun fact: That synopsis fits for multiple Zack Snyder movies.

R.I.P. Jazz legend and fusion pioneer Chick Corea.

@BruceVCWe operate in all of the lower 48 states, though I wind up on the east coast and in the midwest most often. My favorite state to travel to is Texas; I like the people, I love the food, and it's warm. I love the Smoky Mountains on the border of North Carolina and Tennessee and I plan to move there soon (I live about 3 1/2 hours away right now), but if I didn't, Texas would be my next choice to live, the Waco area to be more specific.

3 to 5 weeks

I made a big batch of my world country state county town household famous chili to take on the road with me. Chili is perfect for this situation since it's 99% as good nuked as when first cooked, it keeps in the (mini) fridge for a good while, and it's great in cold weather. I'm currently in Wisconsin and headed for Minnesota tomorrow, so that last part very much applies. I really nailed the spiciness this time around.

You jest, but $100 spread over 5 years works out to $1.67/month, so you may not be that far off from the truth.