Keyrock

Usable tanuki? **** yes!

I think the Giants win is a positive for the Packers. I base that mainly on the belief that you were never going to catch them for the 5 seed anyway, neither was any other team besides maybe Tampa Bay/Atlanta (whichever team doesn't win that division). I think the Packers' ceiling is 6 seed, if you can't catch Detroit for the division title, and the Giants winning doesn't really change anything with that because I believe the Giants are going to wind up the 5 seed (assuming the Cowboys don't self destruct down the stretch and give the division away).

Cowboys finally lost a game after seemingly forever. I'm not all that surprised, it was bound to happen. Dak had his worst game of the season and that really bad performance every rookie QB has (usually multiple times) at some point, kinda crazy it took this long. The Giants D was really stout and they shut our offense down for most of the game. The Giants offense is still really suspect, relying almost entirely on getting huge plays from Odell, but if their defense plays that well, it can be enough. Cowboys will still very likely win the division and the 1 seed, but now they have to play hard the rest of the season to make sure.

I finished mission 5 of Shadow Tactics, which introduced the game's 5th and final playable character, Aoki. Aoki can disguise herself, assuming she finds a suitable disguise in the level, allowing her to go undetected by regular guards, though Samurai aren't fooled and will detect her. Once disguised she can distract regular guards by engaging in small talk with them, forcing their viewcone in her direction. I like that once she's disguised her manner of walking and running changes. I appreciate attention to detail like that. This game is freakin' great.

Game 3 of the Boston Major grand final was pretty insane. Not sure if I'd go so far as to call it the best game ever, like whoever put up the video on YouTube, but it was pretty spectacular. Ad Finem, in their first Valve sponsored tournament, making it all the way to the grand final was also a really great story. I haven't seen the new patch yet, but hopefully Icefrog nerfs the bejesus out of the SD/Luna combo. As good a patch as 6.88 was, I'll be happy if I don't see SD/Luna again for a really long time.

You're certainly not the first person to call me that, you probably won't be the last.

In a way, yes. I like not immediately being able to see all the dangers and having to work to find them and also having to remember the placement or routes of guards I won't be able to see from the camera angle I'm going to use when I execute my plan of action. Fixed camera does have the advantage of allowing the devs to use hand painted 2D backgrounds, though. Edit: Maybe it goes back to me growing up on point & click adventures (my first gaming love)? I got used to pixel hunting for stuff and I kinda enjoy it. In modern point & clicks where they usually have an option or a key you can hold down that highlights all clickable objects I always turn that option off or never press that key because I want to pixel hunt for the objects myself.

When I played the demo, that aspect was what irked me the most. I would have vastly preferred the game to feature a fixed isometric view. I'm of the completely opposite mind. I very much appreciate being able to freely rotate the camera to get a better look at things. It's not that it is a bad mechanic, but I never liked that in later Commandos games. To me, having a fixed camera limits where you can hide enemies in the level, particularly with tall buildings or cliffs. With a fixed camera you either can't hide enemies on the sides of buildings you can't see or you have to have transparency through the building (otherwise the game would be thoroughly unfair), which gives away where the enemy is. With a free rotating camera you can hide enemies wherever you like and it's up to the player to rotate the camera to find enemies that they wouldn't see from a certain camera angle. I guess I just really like casing the area and formulating a plan, and playing with the camera gives me something more to do while I'm studying guard routes and calculating timings in my head, it makes me feel more in control, more an active participant of the planning stage somehow, if that makes any sense.

When I played the demo, that aspect was what irked me the most. I would have vastly preferred the game to feature a fixed isometric view. I'm of the completely opposite mind. I very much appreciate being able to freely rotate the camera to get a better look at things.

Finished the 3rd mission in Shadow Tactics. It took me 1 hour and 48 minutes to complete the mission while there's a challenge to do it in under 15 minutes. Granted, I spent a lot of time scouting around, rotating the camera, devising a plan, then failing several times to execute said plan until I got the timing down just right. I suppose someone who had the level memorized and didn't suck at video games as much as I do could conceivably finish the level in under 15 minutes.

No need. Frank Zappa already took care of issuing that immensely useful public service announcement in 1974.

So far Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun is exactly what I wanted; it's Commandos in Japan with ninjas and samurai. Who wouldn't want that? For now I'm playing on normal difficulty and not trying to do anything special besides not killing any civilians. These types of games are hard so I'm just trying to get through the levels. Once I beat the game I may try hardcore difficulty and doing some of the challenges, like kill no one except mission targets, or never use any bushes for cover.

So much for CDPR making any more fun games.

I'm playing Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun is Downloading and the Bandwith is Crap. Why is This Downloading So Slowly? Grrr! - The Game. It's a pretty frustrating game.

Dallas' road to the #1 seed just got that much easier. Not gonna pop the champagne just yet since crazy, wacky stuff could still happen, but that game in East Rutherford next week just became significantly less important for the Boys, though still quite important for the G-Men. Now, would it be too much to ask for a C-Hox loss later tonight? Yeah, it's probably too much to ask for... I'm going to ask for it anyway. Elsewhere in the league, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers now lead the NFC South. It felt weird to type that. Also, the Skins' lost helping out the handful of other teams fighting for the last wild card spot, like Barty's Packers.

5 or 10 minutes might be too short of a time, I guess it varies from person to person and game to game. That said, if a game can't motivate someone to play it within an hour, hour and a half at most, I consider that game a failure. I don't have the time, nor the patience, to waste 5 hours on a game in hopes that it gets better eventually, I suspect I'm not the only one that feels that way.

Alchemy!

That's essentially what it is.

The Shadow Tactics demo is timed and I ran out of said time. I definitely wanted to keep playing but, oh well, it was enough time for me to be sure that I want to buy the full game when it releases, and that's luckily in only a couple of days. Back to Quern - Undying Thoughts until then. As is usual for me with these types of games, I make slow, sporadic progress. I play for a half hour, solve a couple of puzzles, then get stuck and turn the game off. I come back after I've cleared my mind and make a bit of more progress until I get stuck again and take a break. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I didn't know what to think of Death Stranding before and the latest trailer didn't help matters at all. It's like watching a high resolution Tool music video from the late 90s or early 2000s. Creepy looking stuff happening with presumably some deep metaphysical meaning somewhere in there that I can't even begin to grasp plus some digital famous people doing weird things and having emotions in slow motion with no context I can discern. I have no clue what this game is going to be in the slightest. For all I know, it could turn out to be a bullet hell shmup with scantily clad anime girls riding mechanical unicorns.

You're welcome. Very likely. I'm going to play a bit more of the demo before making a decision but I'm probably getting the game day 1. I'm having a blast with the demo. All the good Commandos and Desperados memories are coming back and this game feels like a worthy spiritual successor to those games. And yes to more screenshots, you'll likely get more from the demo before then too.