Keyrock

Did they at least license the Fugees song?

My boys on TNC got themselves an upper bracket slot. Chaos Esports and Ninjas in Pajamas eliminated. Chaos going out in groups was not a surprise. It's a recently formed and unproven roster. NiP bowing out early was surprising. That team had been together all season and had placed as high as 3rd in a major.

They looked solid on day 1 and should have no problem making the main event, perhaps upper bracket. The team I'm rooting for this year is TNC. I've been a Tims fan for a long time, and ever since they brought Heen in as coach, they've become a tier 1 team. I have them as a dark horse to win the whole thing.

The International 9 is upon us. Hilariously, Epic Games forked out $30 million out of their own pocket for a Fortnite tourney recently just so that they could have the claim of having the richest prize pool of any eSports tourney ever and show off how big their **** is. Shortly thereafter, the prize pool for TI9 surpassed that number the same way Valve gets the prize pool for TI every year, by making money hand over fist on selling battle passes (30% goes to TI prize pool, 70% goes into GabeN's pocket to Valve). TI9's prize pool is now just over $33 million. Anyway, day 1 of the group stages is over. Unsurprisingly, Team Secret, Vici Gaming, and PSG.LGD are all sitting pretty right now. Alliance, Chaos, Infamous, and Ninjas in Pajamas are all in trouble. The big surprises so far have been across the board good performances from SEA (Southeast Asia) teams and poor performances from Team Liquid and EG. Plenty of time left for the group stage standings to shake up, though.

Do you have those Wolfenstein blues? Are you tired of RPG and loot em up mechanics being crammed into every single game? Do you miss the days when shooters were just shooters? Good news! Ion Fury is out now. I'm probably scooping it up when I get home from the road on Monday.

I may need to scoop that up. Lovecraftian is the new zombies, in that now EVERY game has to be Cthulhu themed and I'm getting burned out on it with the quickness. That said, I'm kinda chomping at the bit to play a point & click adventure. I've been waiting, seemingly forever, for the 5th end final episode of Kentucky Route Zero to come out so that I can play the whole thing (I always wait for every episode of an episodic game to release before I start it) and who knows how long that's going to take. I may be waiting another couple years, for all I know.

Wasn't Dead Island 2 announced 80 years ago?

I went through all the escalations and the Embrace of the Serpent bonus mission in the Colombia level in HITMAN 2. The bonus mission is significantly easier than the main mission in Colombia, largely because there is only one target to kill (and a book to retrieve), so just completing the mission can be fairly simple. Completing the silent assassin, suit only challenge, on the other hand, was fairly challenging. It took me a good bit of time to formulate a plan on how to do it, then a couple tries to execute it properly, but I eventually got it done. Let's just say that there will be A LOT of people waking up with headaches... and one person not waking up with a head hole. With that, I have reached maximum mastery level (20) at the Colombia location, which got me the remotely triggered micro audio distraction tool, which should be quite handy as I move on to other locations.

I went back to the Colombia mission determined to complete the silent assassin, suit only challenge. There are 3 targets, 2 of them are relatively easy to eliminate, but the third is extremely hard without a disguise. I can't even tell you how many times I had to reload the save I made after killing the first target (you only get 1 save on master difficulty), but it was a lot. Eventually, I got the job done. Then, instead of taking an easier exit out of the place, I stole their helicopter to make my escape . That's how I roll.

Very psychedelic. It would feel right at home on Pink Floyd's Saucerful of Secrets or Umma Gumma.

My condolences to you, it's gotta be really rough.

From the same folks that made Tower of Time.

I finished the HITMAN 2 main story. There were some nice reveals in this game and I'm pretty excited to see where all this clandestine tomfoolery goes next. Secret society conspiracy subterfuge is my jam.

I'm all about the Teladi lifestyle, but I still welcome a Split-focused expansion.

Burning (Wo)Man 2019

A quiet afternoon in Vermont. It would be a shame if this old man suddenly gave up the ghost... completely naturally, mind you Another day, another 2 people that died "accidentally". If you're wondering why some things are listed multiple times, it's because I play on master difficulty. For example, the silent assassin challenge is available for casual, professional, and master difficulties separately, and you get all the lower difficulty challenges of the same type if you complete it on a higher difficulty.

I've been playing HITMAN 2. This series is my jam and this is one of the better games in the series, classic and reboot. It's pretty much the same game as the 2016 reboot, just slightly prettier and with a little bit more interesting levels and missions. The biggest knock on the game is that the combat isn't the greatest, but that's mostly a moot point for me since I'm all about getting silent assassin. I will admit that trying to salvage stealth gone horribly wrong can also be thrilling in its own right, but my goal is always to have zero combat. I'm on the 5th mission (of 7 I think). Once I finish the main story I have a metric ****ton of escalations to do and also to go through missions again and better my score, get silent assassin, suit only, and figure out how to do some really creative and fun kills. Plus there are the elusive targets.

RIP Harley Race 8 time NWA World Heavyweight Champion. One of the greatest wrestlers there ever was.

I thought the lady could use a hand... ...moisturizing.

The kiwi is a squeaky toy, useful as a distraction. The key is a car key, it does what a car key does (open a car and make it beep so you know where said car is). The scissors are a lethal piercing weapon. The coconut works as either a non-lethal concussion weapon or a distraction. These are all items I picked up. The game shows your currently equipped item. When it's just a silhouette it means it is put away, if it's solid it means I'm holding it. Of those items only the scissors will work as a murder weapon, but not any sort of special kill, to the best of my knowledge. Not in either of those levels, anyway.