Keyrock

Netscape, in a way, gave birth to Firefox, which ultimately got revenge on Internet Explorer, before being usurped by Chrome. I was never an AltaVista guy pre-Google, I was all about Ask Jeeves. I guess Ask.com still exists but it's just not the same without Jeeves. RealPlayer can burn in hell for all of eternity along eith QuickTime.

Well, it's official, the 2018-2019 NFL season is now 99.8% less handsome as Jimmy GQ is done for the year.

Apparently, it is now illegal to tackle the QB. Clay Matthews, several times this season, and now Tyrone Crawford have been flagged for what can only be described as textbook, exactly how you teach it tackles of opposing QBs. Nothing dirty, not late, not purposely driving the guy into the ground, not leading with the helmet, just perfect form tackles. But you are not allowed to tackle the QB any more, at all, I guess... Unless the QB is Cam Newton, in which case, go hog wild, pick him up and powerbomb him, go helmet to helmet, it's all legal.

Small sample size, but so far Patrick Mahomes is off to the best start to a career any QB has ever had.

Handsome Jimmy is ded.

The Josh Allen Era is upon us.

My favorite parts are that he just layers more thermal paste on top of the factory paste (if you're going to buy superior paste, get rid of the cheap factory stuff) and the fact that he shows off his new build by playing LoL. Nothing against LoL, fine game, but maybe not the ideal title to show off the graphical prowess of your $2000 build.

Keep in mind, kiting is a thing and it is glorious. l l l V Absolutely. I've done this very thing myself. You just need to be careful what monsters you pull toward whom. I've accidentally killed important individuals by pulling strong monsters toward them. Enemies will fight each other all on their own sometimes too. You better believe I take advantage of that when it happens and pick the bones.

If I haven't sold you on the game yet, you have a jetpack. Granted, one with very limited thrust before it needs to recharge. Still, though, jetpack. JETPACK! Anyway, this is probably my favorite PB game since Gothic 2. It may wind up surpassing Gothic 2, but I'm not ready to go there yet, since I don't want to risk blaspheming until I'm 100% certain.

I don't know that I would call what Telltale made from 2012 onward adventure games, at least not point & click adventures, in the traditional sense. Before 2012 they made those. Anyway, the fact that their games, post 2012, were generally critically acclaimed and the fact that they never bothered investing in updating their aging engine and always used the same technology yet they still kept losing money suggests to me that they either made some really bad deals in acquiring the rights to use the various IPs they licensed and/or that someone was skimming money off the top.

I've been going HAM on Elex during my few days off before I get back to truckin'. Man, this game is great. I mean, the production value is certainly not AAA (though the game can be breathtakingly beautiful at times) and there is plenty of jank, as you would expect from Piranha Bytes, but it's so much more rewarding and satisfying to play than your standard polished up AAA title. I think a lot of it has to do with level scaling, or, more appropriately, the complete lack there of. As is standard for a Piranha Bytes game, you start out as a PATHETIC weakling. You are not fit to fight anything beyond the weakest of the weak enemies out there, and even those will leave you a mangled corpse if you're not careful and patient. And, unlike some other games, Elex is not shy about putting in scary and powerful enemies in starting areas. Because in real life, even in a fantasy world, creatures wouldn't just conveniently segregate themselves into areas of relative power level, stronger predators would naturally appear where weaker creatures roam to hunt them. When you run into one of these stronger enemies early on, and you will, you need to turn tail and run, quickly, and in a serpentine fashion in case they have a ranged attack. You will need to run away a lot early on and you will die a lot. This will turn some people off, especially those used to modern AAA games where the game coddles you and holds your hand, stroking it gently and whispering "everything is going to be all right" in your ear. To grognards, like myself, the lack of level scaling and ruthless unforgiving nature of the game is very much welcome because there is a genuine feeling of progression. You can actually feel yourself getting more powerful as the game goes on, starting out as a pathetic, damn near useless, weakling, and, if other PB games are anything to go by, becoming an unstoppable God of Destruction toward the end. It's fantastic. Also, this game has the best combat I've experienced in a PB game. It seems clunky and crappy at first, but it's very much based around patience, at least when it's a 1 on 1 battle. If you try to button mash your way through it you will get your ass handed to you. It's all about learning enemy patterns and blocking and dodging until you get an opening, then only getting in an attack ot two before defending again. If you get greedy and try to land extra blows you will often get punished. Of course, if you are facing multiple opponents, you sort of have to be more reckless (to try to kill some enemies quickly) until you whittle down the enemy numbers to 1, then you can fight defensively again. My biggest complaint is that the target lock on can be a bit finicky, but it's still better than previous PB games in that regard. As in previous PB games, there are multiple factions out there and you have to join one of them: There are the tree huggers, the kool-aid drinkers, and the junkies. I plan to join the kool-aid drinkers; not because I believe in their theology, but because I want energy weapons to use (I'm practical like that). There are generally 3 or 4 different ways to complete most quests. Important people, including quest givers, can die. You have a ton of freedom in how you go about the game and your decisions have real impact. You can go into areas you should absolutely not be in and retrieve items meant to be gotten at much higher levels if you are stealthy, smart, and patient. It's just a really great game provided that you're prepared to get brutally murdered A LOT early on.

slow clap

Realistically, the dream of another Sam & Max game from Telltale has been dead for a long time, but now it's truly dead. Can somebody else get that IP and make another Sam & Max game please? Pretty please?

I've been meaning to get Tales From the Borderlands as I really like the Borderlands universe and its humor but I hate Borderlands' gameplay, so that game seems perfect for me. Maybe they'll hold a Telltale fire sale on the Playstation store and I can pick it up on the cheap.

Personally, I thought the Telltale formula for games had grown quite stale and other studios had taken their formula and made it better. That said, it's always sad to see people lose jobs. Hopefully they all find employment elsewhere soon.

Roy Clark goes full beast mode

No playable orcs. At least they have half-orcs.

This game has been in early access for seemingly an eternity, but now it's finally fully released. Looks pretty dang good IMHO.

You sir, are a pillar of iron. Its unheard of in todays day and age to work that long for an upgrade. I've been playing jRPGs since the 80s, I'm no stranger to intense grinding. It helps that the game has an auto-play feature where the game literally plays itself. Of course, the best magnetite farming is in the Aura Gate dungeon and you can't auto play that.

Have we reached the days of full realistic dong physics yet? If not, what's the hold up? Forget the whole ray tracing fad, we need to divert resources into dong physics r&d.

I'm home today for the first of my 3 days of home time. Hurricane Florence didn't touch my part of North Carolina, a benefit of living well inland, I guess, so everything was calm when I got home last night. It felt good to sleep in my own bed for a night, rather than the bunk in the semi. Today I took the car through inspection, paid my property tax and got the registration renewed, fueled it up, washed it, and waxed it. I also bought a car cover to use when I'm away. With all the car stuff out of the way, I'm just gonna relax for the rest of the day. Tomorrow I'll do laundry and pay off some bills. The third day I plan to do no work whatsoever and maybe enjoy a hike somewhere, weather permitting. Then back on the road I go.

Gah, looks like I won't be able to transfer Null Fire or Drain Fire to Susano-o once I fuse him. You can only transfer skills if another demon (which you sacrifice in the process) has that skill in a transfer slot and Resist Fire is the best I can get to the best of my knowledge. Oh well, it still shores up the weakness. All that is a moot point until I grind the 3 million magnetite I need to do the fusion. By my estimation it could take close to a month.

I heard Jim Sterling complaining that the new Tomb Raider doesn't have nearly enough combat and way too much climbing and such. Sounds like they finally made a Tomb Raider for me again. I like the clmibing/puzzle platforming/exploring to combat ratio as high as possible. I may have to check it out sometime.

In 99% of the cases you are right. But because of how some genres are very niche in Slovakia, and If you do not buy that kind of game on release date, it can take up to three weeks to get new copy in the shops here. Sometimes they are not able to get PEGI versions anymore after the first week. So for these reasons, I prefer to preorder these games. Digital games, I never preorder. I’ll buy them only for PC and only DRM free, when I feel, that I’d like to play them soon. Yeah, for physical goods, particularly limited supply items, pre-ordering may be the only way to get the item, or get it in a timely manner, but for digital goods there is no incentive to pre-order whatsoever, besides the trinkets AAA Publishers try to tempt you with. In most cases, you can wait for reviews to come out a day or two before launch, make your decision then, and STILL get the pre-order bonus trinkets.

I don't pre-order because it makes zero sense from a consumer standpoint.