Keyrock

My theory is that Flat Earth Theory, and I'm talking recently, not hundreds of years ago, started as a group of trolls on Reddit, 4chan, or whatever message boards, and more trolls joined in. Then some really gullible people came along (and history has shown again and again that there is no shortage of gullible people) that were not in on the joke and failed to recognize that it was a joke, and they jumped on it. The trolls, recognizing that they had a bite, set the hook and reeled the dumbasses in and the whole thing has taken off from there.

Along those lines, that's what makes Flat Earth such an absurdly preposterous conspiracy theory. The crazy number of people that would have had to be in on it, the ungodly amounts of money and effort it would take to keep up the ruse over all these centuries, and for what?

Is it too early to declare Luka Doncic as the 2019-2020 NBA MVP?

For me no offline mode is a 100% deal breaker because I drive a truck for a living. Sometimes I park for the night in an area where I get a weak connection or no connection at all. Any always online game becomes unplayable at that point and it's just 60 gigs or whatever of wasted space on my SSD.

The biggest issue I had with the controls was accidentally pressing diagonally down and right or left when I tried to press down on the d-pad to use my regen and the game scrolling to a different item rather than healing. That's on me, not the game, though. Using gifts was weird at first since you gotta hold down a trigger and press a button, but I got used to it and it became second nature. I try to map all the gifts that I actively use during battle to the face buttons and buffs and such that I usually only use before or at the start of a battle to the d-pad, that way I don't have to take my thumb off the left stick as much in the heat of battle. If you don't mind, pop on over to the screenies thread and show us your Revenant.

I'm roughly 1/3 of the way through my NG+ run in Code Vein. I have defeated 6 bosses of 17 (at least 1 of those is optional). I'm having to grind levels more than I did in the standard run to try to offset my gear not scaling at all. The last third of the game is going to be especially rough. I'm also trying to get the true ending this time around. The game has 3 endings: bad, neutral, and true. I got the neutral ending the first time through. If I manage to beat NG+, and that's a big if, I highly doubt I'll attempt NG+2 and go for the bad ending. It will be miraculous enough if I manage to beat NG+. I have no idea how people manage NG+6.

I was actually interested in Diablo 4 for a hot second... then I saw that there would be no offline mode. Interest level immediately plummeted to zero.

While waiting for Resi Revelations 2 to download (takes a long time on random wifi connections) I'm pushing on in my Code Vein NG+ run. It's really tough going but I'm making progress. 4 bosses defeated, many more to go.

I highly doubt I'm going to make it through NG+ in Code Vein. The jump in difficulty is huge. I'm having a slightly harder time with enemies (especially bosses) than the first time through, and I'm not going to scale nearly as much as I progress in the game, which will make the late game bosses nigh impossible... for someone of my skill level (read: garbage-tier). I can gain more levels and my HP still scales well, but damage scaling has diminished and stamina scaling is mostly non-existent, I already have some of the strongest gear in the game, so unless there is NG+ exclusive gear for me to get, my gear won't scale at all. Edit: I've beaten 3 bosses (of roughly 16 or 17) in NG+ so far, so I'm making progress, I'm just anticipating the mid to late portions of the game are going to be brutal because I'm not going to scale that much. I'm going to give it a shot, I just don't expect to succeed.

Some old skool Solid Steel:

I scooped up Resident Evil Revelations 2 during the Steam Halloween Sale for some properly spoopy October gaming.

A side benefit of not having purchased anything from EA in nearly a decade (not because of some ethical or political stance, I just don't have interest in games they publish) is that this news doesn't matter to me at all.

You can make up for you abscence, Melky, with some screenies.

I lied. One more Code Vein screenies post. I decided to switch up my look for the New Game+ They added some Halloween themed items, so, naturally, I decided to put on a hilariously oversized witch hat and make it as gaudy as possible. Also, snakeskin coffin lapel pin and glowing sunglasses (sadly, no stunna shades available).

This is likely the next game I'm scooping now that I finished Code Vein. This game seems like someone set out to make a game specifically for me. The only thing I'm waiting for is for Steam's Proton support for the game to mature a bit. Currently, the reports from people with similar specs to mine are that the game runs but with workarounds and poor performance. Given the astounding pace at which Proton has been advancing, I fully expect it to be running well out of the box in a matter of weeks, if not days.

One of my all-time favorite bits of unintentional comedy:

I beat Code Vein, so this will be my last screenies post of the game until an expansion or a sequel. Rejoice!

I finished Code Vein. tl;dr game good According to Steam it took me 46 hours to complete. Someone better at Souls-likes could definitely knock some time off that. I enjoyed the game, it was a very well made Souls-like. My main previous Souls experience was Bloodborne and I will say this game is definitely easier than that, which is good for me on account of me sucking. A lot of what makes this game easier is the companion you can bring along. The companion AI is solid and they are very helpful in combat, healing, buffing, doing damage; they're a lot more than just a distraction. Of course, you can choose not to bring a companion with you, for that hard core Souls experience. Combat is quite good, the controls are responsive, and stamina usage feels well dialed in. Build customization is excellent. At the end of the game I had around 25 or 26 available blood codes (classes) and well over 100 gifts (abilities) to choose from and I acquired another new blood code for beating the game. I will probably give New Game+ a try, though I expect to get my ass handed to me, as I've heard that NG+ in Code Vein is more like NG++++ in Souls games. The story is quite interesting and most definitely leaves the option for sequels. Given that this is a good game with no microtransactions that delivers a full experience for $60, and that it's a very interesting world, I very much welcome any expansion and/or sequel. Given how the game ends there is definitely the potential for Bamco to allow you to import your character into Code Vein 2: Bloody Boogaloo, though not necessarily as the player character. No I will not explain myself further, beat the game yourself or watch a YouTube video of someone beating the game if you want to understand what I mean. The game ran like a champ on my Linux lappy via Steam's Proton. It would stutter when loading new areas, but otherwise ran butter smooth on nearly max settings, and that's via a compatibility layer. I can only imagine it runs even better on Windows. In conclusion, this is a good Souls-like that I can recommend to anyone who enjoys the genre. It's also an excellent starting point for anyone who wanted to try Souls games but was intimidated by their difficulty. Thank you Bamco for putting out a good, full game that isn't full of bugs and doesn't try to rape my wallet. It's sad that games like this are increasingly rare these days.

I'm struggling with the Skull King in Code Vein. I can get really close to killing him, but that last bit is really difficult. It seems he has 3 phases. The first phase is easy enough for me at this point. I know all his patterns and the timing on dodges and when I have openings to get in and do some damage. At around 50% health he goes into phase 2, which is mostly just a stronger and faster version of phase 1 that also adds blood damage to his attacks. It's much harder than phase 1, but he still seems to obey the same rules I have to during this phase, with his stamina eventually running out, giving me a small opening to get in and do some damage. The problem is that around 15% - 20% health he goes into phase 3, which not only introduces a couple new attacks, which are, quite honestly bull**** (I don't think it's right that a "melee" attack should have range greater than any ranged attack I can do AND swing in basically a 360° arc). On top of that, he seems to have limitless stamina in phase 3. Maybe he tires out eventually and I just haven't lasted long enough, but I've had him in phase 3 for a pretty long period of time and he just keeps going. I get that this is (probably) the final boss and he's supposed to be hard, but you still need to provide players with some kind of opening to get in and do damage and he simply doesn't seem to give you any openings in phase 3.

I'm at what I believe is the final boss in Code Vein, the Skull King. He's kicked my ass 5 times so far, but I've come fairly close to finishing him a couple times. His second phase isn't much different from his first, there's 1, maybe 2 new attacks, but mostly it's the same as phase 1 just faster, stronger, and tougher. I'm going to grind out a few more levels, that should hopefully be enough to knock that last 15% of health off him before I run out of resources.

"Hold my beer" is a phrase used when someone does something really stupid or crazy and then someone else comes along and seemingly tries to one up them by doing something even more stupid and crazy. The idea is that someone getting hammered drunk sees someone else do something really foolish that gets attention and, in a drunken stupor, decides to one up them and asks the person next to them to "hold their beer" while they proceed to do something even more foolish.