Keyrock

The Council just keeps getting better. I'm waist deep in some Illuminati **** now and certain parties are manipulating me, or they think they are. For my part, I'm presently pretending to be their puppet while working to discover their true motives. Apart from some jank that comes standard with AA games (e.g. the sex scenes are Mass Effect 1 level quality) this game has been terrific so far. I have roughly half the game left, let's hope it keeps impressing.

I finished episode 2 of The Council. Really good stuff. I'm getting myself pretty deep into a dangerous game. Episode 2 was very puzzle heavy. Each of the 3 chapters had at least 1 logic puzzle. None of them were exceptionally difficult, but I did appreciate the dedication to themes and the overall clever designs of the puzzles. The game very much requires you to pay close attention and to pick up on little details. Anyway, episode 2 ended on a cliffhanger and I'm diving straight into episode 3. I can't wait to find out where this goes from here.

I'm also perfectly fine with imported from Japan. I'll take a pass on all the other ones though.

Classic letdown game for muh Boys. We're riding high on a 5 game win strek. We just got a big win against a division rival. All the media "experts" are sucking our ****s. Naturally, we **** the bed.

It would be even better if it was (a freshly turned) Anakin and those were deflated younglings with Santa hats or reindeer antlers on.

Had a really fun match of casual phantom draft in Artifact today. I was able to draft a deck that, at least in basic concept, operated similarly to a deck I'm conceptualizing and plan to construct in the future. Of course, it didn't have all the same cards I plan to put in the deck I will construct (even if I don't know all the cards I will use just yet), but that's the nature of draft, being forced to use cards you might not normally, it's a great teaching tool (also, drafting a good deck is a skill in and of itself). The idea was the same, though, stall out the opponent's initial attacks and make them waste resources while outmaneuvering them and eventually overwhelming them with sheer numbers. The match took a long time and I made a couple key mistakes along the way. Still, eventually I was able to capitalize on a couple mistakes my opponent made and do exactly what I set out to do, outmaneuver and overwhelm them with numbers. I learned a lot from that match. Like in Magic The Gathering, Blue has become my favorite color. It definitely shares a good number of similarities with its MTG counterpart. Artifact only has 4 colors (to MTG's 5): Blue, black, red, and green. Blue has the statistically weakest heroes in the gamer but also some of the strongest spells. It excels at stalling and manipulating. It is a control color. Black is very offensive minded. It excels at dealing a lot of damage quickly to single targets and at sieging, however it lacks defense. Red has by far the strongest heroes statistically, but it has relatively weak spells. The spells it does have revolve around buffing its already strong and tough heroes and creatures and forcing enemies to fight them, exploiting its statistical advantage. Green has heroes that tend not to do much damage but that are very tough and durable. It also has lots of defensive and healing spells and ways to ramp up mana quickly (blue can also ramp decently). The deck I plan to build will be blue/black, likely 3 blue heroes and 2 black heroes. It will definitely have Prellex and Venomancer (both blue heroes that continuously create more creeps) and very likely Bounty Hunter (a black hero that excels at gold generation for items I will need). As for the other 2 heroes, I'm not sure yet. I could go all in on creep generation and use Kanna as my 3rd blue hero, of course I don't have a Kanna and her card is relatively expensive (around $4) right now on the marketplace since her card is rare and she is very popular in the current meta. I could go with Zeus or Skywrath Mage as my 3rd blue, either one gives me some good AoE damage to help wipe enemy boards. For my second black hero I'm undecided. Phantom Assassin is currently recognized as the strongest black hero, but I might go with Sorla Khan for her sieging abilities. So many options. I like using heroes and spells not in the current meta, for several reasons. First, where's the fun in just copying a netdeck? I prefer to come up with my own ideas and experiment. For example there is a blue card called Whispering Madness, or something like that. The card seems super garbage (it stuns 1 enemy and also stuns ALL of your own heroes in every lane). I'm determine to figure out a way to make it work. I don't really see it right now, but where there's a will there's a way (usually). I'm trying to win matches, but having fun and experimenting is more important to me. Second, playing out of meta heroes and cards catch people by surprise. It's amazing how many people are not used to playing against Venomancer and forget about Plague Wards' passive ability. It's fun exploiting stuff like that. Sometimes I just like to play stuff for the comedy value. If at all possible, if I'm running Crystal Maiden, I like to have a claymore in the deck. If it comes up in the item shop and I can afford it, I'll but the claymore and equip it on CM. That may seem like a terrible idea (it usually is), but I like the visual in my mind of Rylai stumbling across a claymore lying on the ground, stopping, looking at the sword, then at her staff, then back at the sword, then back at her staff, then tossing the staff aside and picking up this giant sword that's likely bigger than she is like she's in a jRPG. Worth it every time. I'm weird like that.

I'm not gonna front, if Emily Freedawn asked me to attend the Hamburger Festival with her, I would absolutely accept.

I'm through 2 of the 3 chapters of episode 2 of The Council. This episode has gone heavy on puzzle solving so far, which is fine with me, since I am a 7th degree puzzle black belt. The story and intrigue are definitely starting to ramp up now. We're getting into some deep Illuminati ****, which is great since this type of conspiracy stuff is my jam. One pitfall I am trying to avoid is replaying chapters to meta-game it, even if not to change choices but to redo failed opportunities or limit unnecessary item use. So far I am doing well in resisting the temptation, though it definitely helps that I've yet to fail a confrontation (though I have definitely missed opportunities). I definitely plan to play through the game more than once (if only to hook up with Boobs McGee again ) so I am sticking to the let the chips fall where they may approach.

I definitely agree about KotOR2. Even worse is the first game, though that one had an actual ending. The KotOR games are massively overrated because Star Wars. Don't get me wrong, I went gaga for KotOR when it first came out too, but now my own inner Star Wars fan has died a long time ago (in a galaxy far away) so I am able to look at the games without synthetic Kyber crystal colored glasses on. Both games suffer from having an utterly terrible combat system. One that disguises turn-based as real time and somehow manages to be terrible at both aspects. KotOR 2 at least had interesting characters and a somewhat engaging story... Until it falls apart at the end due to being unfinished. KotOR 1's story is mediocre at best.

I'm in Nebraska stopped for the night on the way from Reno to Chicago. It's about 60 degrees Fahrenheit out here... In mid December... In Nebraska. You couldn't ask for a nicer day this time of year in this part of the country. It's too nice to just stay couped up in the truck so I went for a nice 40 minute walk. Now time to play some PS4 then turn in. Come 2 or 3 am the trip resumes.

So long as you don't say anything bad about Alpha Protocol we're cool, Shady.

So episode 1 of the council was mainly getting to meet people on the island, nothing super cereal happened. Episode 2, right off the bat

I finished episode 1 of The Council. Holy crap that was fun. If the other 4 episodes are this good then this is going to be a GotY contender for me.I've heard that the story goes full bonkers in the later episodes, which has me excited. For those not familiar, The Council is the answer to the question "What if someone made a Telltale style game but also with actual gameplay?". It's mostly a narrative adventure but with some point n click and RPG Lite elements in it. Supposedly choices actually do matter as people have reported seeing wildly different scenes in later episodes based on choices they made in earlier episodes. Anyway, I wont go into details in case anyone else here wants to play this, but I will say that I was given the option at one point of going to listen to a crazy young lady who may or may not be possessed by a demon or going back to my room where The Dutchess, who I have lovingly dubbed "Boobs McGee", was waiting for me. I don't think I need to tell you what I chose. Onward to episode 2.

Aww yeah! Muh Boys are effectively 3 games up (since we hold all the tie breakers) with 3 to play. 1 win or 1 loss by both the Iggles and Skins and we win the division.

I'm on the road to Reno to make a delivery and am currently going through Wyoming. It's freaking cold out here, but with the snow cover the mountains are really beautiful. It must really be something to live in one of the remote villages out here.

Yes that would be classic Cowboys, especially since we almost always split the season series with the Iggles, regardless of how the teams are performing.

I finished The Shapeshifting Detective and got a good ending where I caught the killer. I'm pretty sure the game randomizes who the killer is so I'm definitely going to play it again in the future. There are a lot of choices I want to change in the next playthrough. In this playthrough I was focused on strictly being a good detective, next time I want to poke my nose into things I probably shouldn't and break some of the rules given to me. Hopefully this leads me down a path of weirdness as there are subplots I didn't explore much because I was fully focused on catching the killer. Anyway, fun game if you're into FMV and games heavily based on dialogue. Next up, The Council. I also need to go back to Elex and finish it, but I'm on an adventure, mystery, detective game kick right now.

In Yakuza Team We Trust

The 5th and final episode of The Council is out. I've been waiting for all the episodes to release before diving in so I plan to get in as soon as I'm somewhere with good enough wifi to download it at a reasonable rate #TruckerProblems

Biggest game of the year coming up tomorrow. If we beat Philly we won't mathematically win the division quite yet, but for the most part we'll have it sown up tight. If we lose we'll be in a scramble to make the playoffs.

That Rage 2 trailer has me worried. It's all "We have a big open world. Look how big it is! And open! Did we mention it's a big open world?" Now I'm scared they're making a Ubisoft game.

I asked for a lo fi sci fi space western and by golly it looks like that's pretty much what The Outer Worlds is. I am quite excited.

I hate both and I want off this planet.Get in touch with Elon Musk and reserve your seat on the Mars mission. https://youtu.be/dAX2H0hpOc4

Aerial view of Bethesda's HQ:

PB has a long and storied history of marring an otherwise great game with terrible ending sequences, unfortunately. They are definitely not alone in that regard. Why is it that the final parts of games seem to be so tough for game designers to make well?