Keyrock

^ Frank Klepacki is a legend. Dude can absolutely play these songs live, BTW, for anyone wondering.

I like Victor Vran a lot, but it's quite arcadey for a loot em' up (not necessarily a bad thing). It's more action based and a lot of fun, but lacks a bit of depth in the item and character progression areas. In those areas, Grim Dawn has an overabundance of depth (the amount of possible viable character builds is borderline insane), possibly too much for some people. Hence why I specified hardcore loot em' up.

Agreed. While I don't generally respec as I'm the type that doesn't really powergame, I make my character and don't care if it's sub-optimal, not having the option in the game is insane. Yeah, I don't really care about being the super optimal player in these game either but not being able to simply pick a skill to try it out, then respec into a different one if you don't like it... aye, I feel that is a must in these games. As I recall, Titan Quest suffers from the same. Which is a shame, because Greek Mythology is such a good backdrop. I haven't played Titan Quest in a long time so I don't recall, but Grim Dawn is made in the same (upgraded) engine and by some of the same people and it has a respec function and is IMHO the best hardcore loot em' up ever made. Check it out, if you haven't already.

Agreed. While I don't generally respec as I'm the type that doesn't really powergame, I make my character and don't care if it's sub-optimal, not having the option in the game is insane.

Nintendo sinks to new lows as they've now locked a difficulty level behind an Amiibo. At first I was okay with Amiibos when it was just cosmetics that were locked behind them. I changed my stance pretty quickly when Amiibos were made artificially scarce to drive up prices and Nintendo started locking gameplay items and features behind them. They are now very devious and sometimes rather difficult to get pieces of overpriced DLC. One of the many reasons I will likely never buy anything from Nintendo again.

Red Alert is still worth playing for the soundtrack alone.

On one hand, I can't hate on a guy for wanting to be the top guy on his own team, especially when he's one of the 10 or 15 best players in the league. On the other hand, it's hard for me to be on the side of a flat-earther. Those guys are even more ridiculous than 9/11 truthers.

I was tempted to wake up super early in the morning and drive out to the beach today (it's roughly a 3 1/2 to 4 hour drive to get to the shore from Charlotte), but I'm in tighten the belt and save save save mode so I opted instead to go to Freedom Park near downtown. Freedom Park is one of the fancier, more "civilized" of the many parks in The Queen City, there are more simple, here's a bunch of nature straight up type parks around the city's outskirts. There's a steam locomotive in the park right next to the giant playscape for the kids. I guess back in the day it used to be completely open and kids would climb all over it, because that's an awesome thing to do when you're a kid. These days, since we live in the Age of Litigation, it's all fenced off, though you can still go inside it. We had some cooler air move in late last week, bringing in spectacular weather. Highs in the mid 80s and reasonably low humidity are about as good as you can reasonably expect in Charlotte in July. It seems like the great weather is sticking around for at least the next week, if the extended forecast is to be believed.

Greek salad with romaine, radicchio, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, pepperoncini, kalamata olives, and feta cheese.

I'm really loving Pyre so far. It's such an interesting game. It's a choose your own adventure with RPG mechanics and battles that play out as a sort of sport most closely resembling basketball. The idea of battles as a sport is brilliant and it's executed very well. It's really tactical because only one character on a team can move at one time and they all have different abilities, so it's a game of strategically trying to bluff and outmaneuver your opponent to create an opening you can exploit. Plus your characters have skill trees that can add abilities or augment existing ones opening up new tactical options. In a video game landscape of monkey see monkey do, it really warms my heart to see someone put out something so different than anything else out there. No surprise at all that it's Supergiant who don't follow the crowd and make something unique and special.

I cannot overstate how amazing the artwork in this game is. Easily Supergiant's prettiest game to date.

Interesting that Bill Gates talks about Intel's despicable strong arm tactics in his book. I wonder if he also talks about how Microsoft used many similar tactics to gain and hold on to market dominance?

Pyre Supergiant definitely don't disappoint in the visuals department. FOr now the Steam Overlay is not working in the game (on Linux, at least) hence the Steam screenshot function doesn't work. I missed a bunch of cool screenshots because of this until I realized this and started using trusty ol' Print Screen. I'll get more screenies soon.

Wait, hold on a minute. 65k-150k for roughly 10 meters of stairs? What were they going to make the stairs out of? Platinum?

Releases tomorrow.

It's an amazing looking car (in its current concept form):

Celicas were nice, sort of the little cousin of the Supra. By that same token, I miss Mazda RX's. They are making a new one, the RX-9, in 2019, though I don't know if they'll make it a production car or if it will just remain a super limited production concept car. I kinda think Mazda will make it a production run, for a year or two, anyway. They seem intent on keeping the Wakel rotary engine alive.

I know this is something you can't control (you own the car you own) but an automatic would be so much easier for a first-timer (especially an elderly first-timer) to learn on. If you know anyone willing to let her learn on a 'matic to start that would help tremendously (she can learn stick later... or not). Edit: As an aside, I would have bought a stick shift except that I live in Charlotte, and a stick shift in a major city is a terrible idea, hence why I got a 'matic. It has sport mode and I can put it into manual too (not geared the same as a true stick shift, though), but I almost never use manual (except a couple times just to try it out) nor sport mode, because the car has plenty of get up n go for my purposes in regular 'matic mode (enough acceleration that if I pull into a road and realize that I just cut someone off that I can floor it and it accelerates quickly enough that I won't be too much of an ***hole in that scenario).

21 years later still arguably the single most awesome piece of video game music ever: Pure. Distilled. Adrenaline. I love how halfway through it changes from Metal to Industrial and yet keeps the spirit and remains just as awesome. Edit: The Red Alert series had some freakin' amazing music.

@ Barty & Shady - I was waiting for the hate to come pouring in. I was not disappointed.

My sexy Mazda6 now even sexier with tints: Made even sexier with a stylish, classy, tasteful America's Team decal:

Best. Chips. Ever.

I got the windows on my car tinted today. All the side windows, the back window, and the strip across the top of the windshield, everything as dark as is legal in North Carolina. I'd have gone a little bit darker if I had a connect with someone who does inspections so they would look the other way, but I don't so I went the legal route to avoid yearly bullcrap. I won't go so far as to say that tints are a necessity here, but given how hot it gets during the summer (it's 98°F today) and how much sunshine we typically get, it's very helpful. The installers did a great job and it was surprisingly inexpensive, so I'm very happy. Side benefit: My car looks even more badass than it did before.

I have nothing against RTS I'm just complete and utter **** at it. I can't do large amounts of micromanagement in real-time to save my life. I'm a slow paced gamer to begin with, I like to take my time and think things through from multiple different angles, hence why I generally prefer turn-based (both for strategy and RPGs).