Keyrock

Broken Age Act 1 had an interesting story but really easy puzzles. Act 2 had somewhat harder, though uninspired, puzzles and the story completely fell apart. Basically, story wise, Act 1 was "cool, I can't wait to see where this goes next!" and Act 2 was "This is where it went? *sigh*".

A little from column A and a little from column B? For me, personally, it's probably 90% column A. Yeah, I wasn't thrilled about Schafer's "jokes" and comments during the whole GG thing, but he's still a legitimately talented and creative video game designer, or, at least, he was. I mean, Schafer has been involved in some of my favorite games ever, games that have brought me much joy. For me, the money/project management is a much bigger concern. I just don't think he can manage money/resources/time, and not in a malicious trying to scam people take the money and run way, but rather in a he's a poor manager of resources and he can't make the hard and unpleasant but necessary sacrifices way. It's kind of funny, but with a lot of developers many gamers, myself included, imagine a beautiful utopia where they are freed from the shackles of their publisher and allowed to make all the calls on their own. With Schafer, I imagine a beautiful utopia where he's back under the thumb of a publisher with someone to keep him on track and to make the hard decisions for him.

I mean, if you like fun then Saints Row games are a good choice. If you're not into fun, I'd stay away.

I want this to succeed and be good. With that said, Tim Schafer gets exactly zero dollars from me in advance.

I started up Xenoblade Chronicles X. The game is, quite honestly, daunting at the beginning. There are so many customization options for everything and the world is so ridiculously big. It's just kind of overwhelming.

Par for the course for today's Konami.

I may do multiple playthroughs to see how the choices change things. I haven't had a meaningful choice yet, but I read that there are a number of them in the game that have real consequences. I've been having a great time with it. The combat is really fun.

Dorito Pope Says Kojima Was Banned From The Game Awards By Konami I didn't watch The Game Awards because it's an awards show and I'd rather smash my big toe with a 12 lb sledgehammer than watch an award show, but apparently Kojima was supposed to attend and Konami's lawyers nixed it. At this point, I'm starting to worry that Kojima's body is buried under the floorboards of Konami HQ and they're just coming up with excuses as to why he can't be seen in public.

After the Broken Age and Spacebase DF-9 fiascoes, I wouldn't give Schafer & Co. any money up front even at gunpoint. On the other hand, Psychonauts was the best 3D platformer ever made IMHO, so I'll be interested in the finished product, provided they can manage their money this time and said finished product lives up to its legacy.

Sweet. I'ma get my horny on in more ways than one. He seems like a noble guy, I wonder if I can corrupt him? Maybe if I sex him up I can get him to come over to the dark side. That would be awesome.

But are there hunky studs for me to sex up, right? Randval or Rhelmar, if you've met them. I have. Rhelmar is an elf, so he's out (yes, I am prejudiced). So Randval it is. I just defeated him in a duel, in fact. Can I go full demon and evil and still sex him up, or will that screw up my plus relationship points with him? I'm not sure how the sexy time works in this game yet. Can I buy him presents, BioWare style?

But are there hunky studs for me to sex up, right?

I'm playing Bound by Flame. As with previous Spiders games, there are scant few open areas and maps consist of a bunch of winding corridors with liberal use of invisible walls. The narrative and dialogue sounds like it was written by a 5th grader and the voice acting is mediocre (I guess it's a step up from the cringe in Mars: War Logs). The most disappoint thing, though, is that my female char has no ass, like zero ass. On the other hand, the combat is actually surprisingly good. The targeting lock on is a bit iffy, but the actual swordplay works really well. It's honest to goodness skill and timing based combat rather than mindless button mashing and, despite your character being limited to 2-hander, daggers, crossbow, and magic, you have a decent amount of different ways to approach combat depending on how you spec your character (I'm focusing on 2-hander and magic). With any luck, I'll be playing Xenoblade Chronicles X later today too.

Bound by Flame My character Grishka, though being able to name your character seems pointless when everybody just calls you Vulcan anyway. Getting my demon on. My plan is to go all out demon and all out evil on all my choices. I look forward to growing horns and other cool stuff. Gigantor. Gigantor from a little closer.

"You can take religion away from the killer and he or she can still kill people with a different ideology. If you take the killer way from the religion the religion does nothing." Except, when that ideology is steeped in hatred, intolerance, and preaches aggression toward heathens then said ideology does not do nothing, it creates new killers. And I'm aware Christians have committed their fare share of atrocities throughout history, I'm not giving Christians a pass, nor any other religion... except maybe Buddhists, I can't think of atrocities committed by Buddhists, though I could be wrong on that one.

I don't think guns should be banned, though I do think they are entirely too easy to obtain.

You can basically replace Muslims with Guns in this sentence. No you can't. That's an asinine argument. Don't treat me like I'm a ****ing idiot. A gun is a tool. You can take the gun away from the killer and he or she can still kill people with a different tool or even with their bare hands. If you take the killer away from the gun the gun does nothing.

When Muslims do this again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again the "Islam is not the problem" argument fails to hold water.

Well, looks like it's another break from Hard West for me. For me, the 1.2 patch has made the game significantly worse. The shadow flickering is still there, the disappearing UI problem persists, more importantly, the game still crashes, more often than before. I just had the game crash at the end of a battle, just before it saved so that I have to go through the battle again. I started the game up again and it crashed before I even loaded the game. I started it up again, loaded the last checkpoint (before the battle), did the battle again, and it crashed in the same spot, right before loading. It's really frustrating and I'm not willing to deal with the frustration. Time to shelve this for several weeks, if not longer.

Third Person Shooter

Shin'en have announced the release date for Fast Racing Neo, the game that is here to answer the prayers of all the people, like me, that have been begging Nintendo for a new F-Zero over the past decade. It's coming out December 10th and the price is only $15.

I didn't mean a MMO, I meant a single player (co-op at most) cRPG.

That was actually a damn good game. I kind of wish Bio had kept with that franchise. Please no , don't. I wouldn't want anyone currently on BioWare's staff working on the Jade Empire franchise. They've already ruined Dragon Age and did their best to ruin Mass Effect. I hope they leave JE be. While I am not a big fan of the current state of BioWare myself, I just want somebody, anybody, to make another wuxia RPG.

I made a Shantae skin for Volvo trucks a long time ago (in fairness I used an existing skin mod as a template and added my own photoshopping once I figured out how everything fit together). Not sure how to do skins for vehicle interiors so that you can skin dice hanging off the mirror.

Quadruple-barreled shotgun Octuple-barreled shotgun