Keyrock

I'm getting pretty close to endgame in The Talos Principle 2. I still can't open golden gates, I'm pretty sure I have to do all the star puzzles to be able to open them, perhaps something else too. Most likely those will be the endgame puzzles. There are 2 puzzles that have me stumped currently, a Sphinx puzzle and a Pandora puzzle. I'm not actively trying to solve them right now, but I will get back to them. There are a lot of different mechanics in this game, significantly more than the first game. I'm nearing the home stretch and they're still introducing new tools. The endgame puzzles where, presumably, they will make me use the full array of tools, are going to be complicated. /rubs hands together

If we're going to ultimately wind up with another establishment puppet that's going to further peel away the veneer of democracy (federal republic if you want to get specific) from the American Oligarchy underneath, can we at least have an interesting race? That's not too much to ask for, is it?

1.3 is out and this includes Bobby Ray's! I'm currently deep into The Talos Principle 2 and nothing is tearing me away from that until 100%, but I'll be returning to Grand Chien soon.

Given how long ZP had been going for, some... ... Over a decade, right? ... Maybe... 15 years or so? The point is that it was a very long running series. Given how long Yahtzee had been doing ZP, a drop in quality was almost guaranteed. You just can't keep up a high level for that long realistically. I still think ZP was pretty good toward the end. Not nearly as good as 7 or 8 years ago, sure, but entertaining enough. Here's the Second Wind introduction video:

After a long week of work, I was lazy today and didn't feel like cooking. I decided to order out, but I'm on the carnivore diet and didn't want to use a cheat day just yet. I decided to get wings from Buffalo Wild Wings and, in my hubris, ordered the blazing knockout wings. My experience has long been that when a place advertises something as "really spicy" the vast majority of the time it winds up at Tabasco sauce heat level, if that. Pfft. Let me tell you, these blazing knockout wings bring the heat. When I cook something with hot peppers I typically go with serranos, that's my preferred heat level. These wings are at a heat level well beyond that, somewhere in the scotch bonnet/habanero heat level. Nothing I can't handle, but, yeah, it's going to take me some time to eat all these wings. This is the price of my arrogance. I deserve this punishment.

RFK Jr. sits at 24% in the latest New York Times poll of the 6 battleground states, Trump is at 35% and Biden is at 33%. RFK Jr. is beating both Trump and Biden in those same states with voters under 45. This is significant because Ross Perot, the most successful independent presidential candidate of my lifetime never reached 20% in any state during his entire (wildly entertaining) campaign. To burst my own bubble a bit, 3rd party candidates traditionally fall off as the election draws near if and when voters feel he or she has no chance of winning and they chicken out and vote for "the lesser of 2 evils". There's a long way to go and things can, and will, change many times over before November 2024, but this should be interesting. If RFK Jr. could take even just 1 or 2 states we could wind up with nobody getting to 270 delegates at which point I think it goes to Congress. I'm not sure how it works, I've heard 1 vote per state, which would presumably favor Trump since there are more red states than blue, but I've never seen this happen, so I don't know if that's true.

I recently discovered MISTER MANTICORE This fella makes short... I guess, horror (?), supernatural videos. They're in this series called The Monument Mythos and it's alternate history America with extra-dimensional beings, possibly eldritch horrors, weird stuff. It's presented like documentary films. It's got a very SCP vibe. Totally my jam.

Last night's 3rd republican debate was a huge improvement over the 2nd one (not exactly a high bar to clear) largely on the shoulders of one man. It was worth suffering through parts of that just for Vivek Ramaswamy's GLORIOUS torching of RNC chair Ronna McDaniel. My dude had the big schlong energy last night, he came out swinging and was torching people left and right. Plus he has the most sane policies out of all the people that were on that stage, go figure. I don't know how genuine he is in his convictions, time will tell, I guess, but, if nothing else, he is entertaining. Mind you, not Ross Perot levels of entertaining. That guy was the greatest. ABSOLUTE. ****ING. LEGEND.

@LadyCrimsonCan you change the paint job on ships?

Yeah, except that prior to this war Ukraine was regarded by many as the most corrupt country in Europe. People have conveniently forgotten that and now I guess they're virtuous angels, except that corruption didn't just simply disappear when the war started. So forgive me if I don't give Zelenskyy the benefit of the doubt.

In a move that surprised nobody, Zelenskyy has cancelled the upcoming elections, because nothing says democracy like cancelling elections. Obviously, the war is used as an excuse, but plenty of countries have held elections during the height of war (e.g. Iraq, Vietnam).

Preorder the $150 deluxe edition now to receive a million in-game dollars as shark cards! Will there even be a single player game or will it just be GTA Online 2?

BioWare at this point needs to prove to me that they can make good games again, whether that's Dragon Age, Mass Effect, or Jade Empire. Just joshin', they'll never make a Jade Empire sequel because we can't have nice things. Anyway, I have no interest in whatever they are developing. After their next game comes out and if it's getting positive reactions, then I might be interested. But my hype train level is zero.

I certainly don't endorse the throw great numbers at an objective and if that doesn't work throw even greater numbers at it strategy. Even if I were cold-hearted enough to look at casualties as mere numbers that's still wildly inefficient. That said, if one has both the numbers necessary and the willingness to sustain MASSIVE casualties, and Russia has historically had both, purely in terms of achieving an objective it's proven effective. This is why Russia is so difficult to defeat in a war of attrition. They have the numbers and the willingness to throw said numbers into the meat grinder. I find it disgusting, but it does produce results. Maybe I'm just weak for putting value on human life?

Wherever we hear from Yahtzee again, it needs to be a place where he can swear like a sailor with no fear of demonization, repercussions, etc.

The Talos Principle 2 is ****ing awesome, it just continues to impress. I'm fairly far into the game now. Big ol' goose egg in golden gate puzzles, but that's because I haven't managed to open any golden gates yet. I've played enough of the game to say that unless something goes horribly horribly wrong in the second half of the game, this is a STRONG GotY contender. It's been 16 hours and 23 minutes of awesome and zero hours and zero minutes of less than awesome. It's a puzzle game, so it's not going to appeal to everybody, but as a gateway puzzle game it might work fairly well because the puzzles are really well done and the game is so fantastic looking folks could appreciate it just as a walking simulator. Seriously, they took all the graphics and they crammed them all in here. Well, Croteam did cut some corners, there's no deformation, meaning that when you walk through water you don't make waves and when walking on sand or in snow you don't leave footprints. It's just snow painted solid ground; really really nicely painted, but painted nonetheless. I'm not going to complain about it when the game looks this good (the UE5 games are finally here), but I had to point it out to be fair. There are so many different environments and they're all so big and ridiculously detailed. I mean, they reused trees and some small rock outcroppings and stuff like that, but all these environments are meticulously arranged. The puzzles are equally meticulously designed. I haven't found one I could cheese yet. In the first game, I'm pretty sure I did at least 2 or 3 puzzles not how they were intended to be solved, out of well over 100 puzzles that's not bad; zero so far in TTP2. I've encountered a few puzzles with decent challenge, a few that stumped me for 15 or 20 minutes, one that I slept on and solved the next day (I felt like an idiot because it was so obvious), and there's one Sphinx puzzle I haven't figured out yet. There are various types of puzzles. There are regular puzzles, these are walled off and self-contained. You are provided a set of tools with which to get to the podium at the end. The tools stay within the puzzle's arena, nothing goes in or out, only you can pass through the gate, nothing you are carrying. There are what I call delta puzzles because they have a delta/triangle symbol (I'm sure they have a name, I just never moused over the symbol, I guess?), these are just like regular puzzles, but they are not numbered and signs don't point to them, you need to find them with no guidance. Then there are 3 types of star puzzles: Prometheus, Pandora, and Sphinx. These can be anywhere, they are not walled off in their own rooms, they're just somewhere on the map. Prometheus puzzles are less puzzles and more scavenger hunts. You find his spark and you follow it back to him. It's really just finding the spark, following it is fairly trivial. Pandora puzzles are a receptacle you need to power somehow. Sphinx puzzles, fittingly, are the most riddle like. On the Sphinx monument will be a clue of some sort. It could be numbers, letters, a drawing. You need to figure out what the clue means then use said clue to find something. No clue what golden gate puzzles are like, on account of not having opened a golden gate yet. I can't imagine the amount of work that went into this. How big of a studio is Croteam?

Not the outcome I was hoping for, but holy $#!+ was it an exciting game. I'm honestly not upset after that game. Sure, I would rather we had won, but after the ass whoopin' the Niners laid on us earlier, I'm happy to see us essentially play even with an elite team.

Really good game in Philly so far. That was a top notch half of football, just 2 good teams both playing well. Hopefully the second half is just as good and muh Boys can sneak out of Philly with a W.

I took a trip to the Great Smoky Mountains. I do this at least once a year.

I feel your pain. I only have to deal with 2 air hoses and 1 electrical cable. I do my best to keep them tidy but they inevitably get more and more tangled up. I'll untangle them only to have them tangled up again at the end of the day. There's nothing AFAIK that can be done to prevent this. I feel like Sisyphus. Our air hoses connect to the trailer using gladhand connectors. I'm not sure what they use in your part of the world. I don't know why it took me nearly half a century to discover this, but I've come upon the practice of lifting weights on an empty stomach and it's a game changer. It seems counterintuitive. Logically, I would think that consuming something relatively close to the start of a workout, especially something rich in simple sugars, would provide me with fuel, and thus energy, for the workout. And yet, when I lift on an empty stomach I have considerably more energy and get a better workout. Go figure.

I consider The Talos Principle to be one of the finest puzzle games I've ever played and TTP2 has the potential to surpass it, it's certainly more ambitious. I'm still fairly early in the game. Were this a flight it would be after takeoff and the plane has leveled out but the majority of the voyage is ahead of me. TTP2 still needs to get through the rest of the flight and land safely, but so far it's been nothing but a joy to play. No really difficult puzzles yet, I've had a couple that stumped me for about 10 minutes before I got my brain to adjust its manner of reasoning and figured them out, but nothing truly challenging yet, I'm expecting those deeper into the game. I'm still being introduced to new tools and taught how to use them, first on their own and then in conjunction with other tools. If the first game is anything to go by, I'll eventually need to figure out new ways to use said tools that are not explicitly taught to me. As far as narrative goes, TTP2 is exploring the same types of themes the first game did; what it means to be human, the nature of existence, is there a purpose to any of this, that sort of stuff. The storytelling is much more robust in the sequel. In TTP you just had Elohim talking to you and a bunch of messages to find on computer terminals and QR codes from various sources from which to piece the story together. In this game you also have that (not nearly as much Elohim) but there are characters around you that you can physically interact with, not just a voice in your head, and there are a lot more of them you can have exchanges with, both in person and via the game's version of social media. It's a broader and somewhat more traditional way of telling a story than just trying to piece it together from audio logs and text files, though there are plenty of those too.