Keyrock

Ugh, watching the Cowboys in the first half is like watching the Cowboys from 2 years ago and previous. Lead the game in almost every statistical category, except the scoreboard, because they can't stop shooting themselves in the foot.

I'm nearing the end of Crookz- The Big Heist, the story mode, anyway. I like the game a lot and I enjoy the challenge, though it is maddening at times, but there is one thing that really rubs me the wrong way in the game, the explosives mechanics. So there is a level I just did and there was a guard near a camera console that I wanted to turn off. I had neither the tools nor skills to knock him out nor sneak past him, so my only options were forget about the camera console or try to distract him to pull him away from his post. I didn't have a noise maker, which would have been ideal for the situation, so I decided to try improvising. I had explosives on me, they make a bunch of noise, so I figured they'd make a good distraction. You can't set explosives just anywhere, like on the ground, it needs to be used on an appropriate object (e.g. door, safe, cracked wall), so I decided to set them on the door to the room where the guard was, figuring it would pull the guard away to investigate, then I'd sneak another person past him to disable the console. It would have worked, except... Let me pose a multiple choice question: If you were setting explosives to blow up something, after planting the explosives and setting the timer/lighting the fuse, would you? a) Run for cover b) Stand right next to the explosives and wait for them to go off The characters in Crookz choose option b. You cannot move until a second or two after the explosives have gone off right next to you and destroyed whatever object. So, in my scenario, the explosives go off, the guard immediately turns looks through the hole where the door used to be and spots my character. *sigh*

Yes, but the pick in the 4th quarter at the worst possible moment is pretty much a Cutler special (as well as a Romo special, for that matter). Over/under on number of quarters until Sean Lee's season ending injury: 5 1/2 What ya got?

Max ain't exactly a nice guy in the movies either.

No doubt their cinematics are great, but I think CD Projekt RED can take the Pepsi Challenge with Blizzard in terms of cinematics. I consider the Cyberpunk 2077 trailer from a couple years ago to still hold the World Heavyweight Trailer Championship belt.

Panthers got a W in week 1, granted it was against the Jags, so not time to celebrate. I have to start getting into the mode of cheering for the Panthers as my #2 team (the Cowboys will always be #1) since I plan to move to Charlotte next year. I mean, getting tickets will likely be hard, but if I'm going to live in a city with a NFL team right there, I might as well try to go to some games. It's not a team I cared about in either direction before, luckily, they're not a division rival of the Boys, so there's no conflict except for 1 game a year at most (unless they both make the Superbowl).

Cutlers Gonna Cutler.

Man, Renowned Explorers: International Society is really hard. I think I might have to back down the difficulty. The default difficulty for the game, which is the 3rd of 4 difficulty levels, so basically "hard" is really difficult. The goal is to do 5 expeditions, I've never gotten past expedition #3 in 3 attempts so far. I've never even come close to beating the final encounter in my 3rd expedition, I've gotten MASSACRED every time I've gotten that far. I think they overdid it for default difficulty. It's cool a difficulty level like that exists (there's one above it too ) but to make that the default is pretty sadistic. Over in X3: Albion Prelude, I almost have my Split Tiger frigate fully equipped. I have maximum shields, all my turrets filled, and I managed to get 3 Incendiary Bomb Launchers so far. I found a IBL forge in a pirate sector and paid a Paranid tech on a station a sector away to hack its computer so that it will no loger be hostile to me. They had 3 IBLs for sale, so I scooped them up right away. Now I need to supply the forge so that they produce some more IBLs for me. The forge is actually well stocked on ore and energy cells, what they lack is space fuel, an illegal whisky. Pirates gotta drink, I guess, you can't expect them to make bomb launchers when they're sober. Even with just 3 IBLs I can do serious damage. I obliterated a corvette (granted, a less than fully equipped one) in less than 5 seconds. It felt good. Once I have the full 8 IBLs, it's going to be on like a pot of neckbones.

I'm pleasantly surprised by the amount of depth in Renowned Explorers: International Society. At first the game seemed pretty casual, but there are a lot of different skills and effects and moods and interactions with moods and abilities that can give you advantages or disadvantages. Don't get me wrong, it's not a super deep strategy game, but it's definitely a lot more nuanced than in looks on the surface. Mostly it works because it's goofy and doesn't take itself seriously. I mean, any game that lets me impress monkeys with magic tricks can't be all bad.

It will be interesting to see how this works out. It's a great idea, in my opinion, but my biggest concern is that the DM tools (both for setting up adventures and for adjusting on the fly) seem to be mostly combat-focused. I wonder if it will be possible to create heavily story-focused adventures?

They can and they do, but you can also alter stuff on the fly, which is what's shown here. I'm speaking from very limited experience, I only GM'd a very small number of times in my PnP days, I was mostly a player, but when I did GM I would make little adjustments to the adventure on the fly to offer the right amount of challenge to the players. That's the idea here.

Thanks, Mamo, that's what I wanted to know. I never played the Pools of Radiance remake/reboot/re-whatever, so no comment on it.

? What does that mean? I imagine more classes and races and other stuff will be added in future DLCs/expansions, assuming the game sells well enough to warrant them. The lack of orcs (or even half-orcs) as a playable race is something I hope gets addressed in a DLC.

To the best of my knowledge, this doesn't have a subscription fee to begin with. As for the game becoming completely free, you can wait a year or two and get it at 75% off on a Steam sale after the base price has dropped and it will be almost free, like with most other games.

The guy playing the DM here is the Dragon Age 2 of DMs, just spawning enemies out of nowhere around the players. Rest assured, if I DM in this game I won't be pulling that crap.

I can bring a luchadora on my expedition I terrified some sheep by cutting a promo on them and telling them in vivid detail how I was going to beat them up. Also, I engaged in rugby practice with some Scottish highlanders.

I finished the game. Great game overall, though I wasn't a fan of the final mission. It wasn't bad, but the game fell into the tired old RPG trope of having the final stretch be basically a crapton of combat. The combat wasn't bad, or hard, it's just... it was such a paint by numbers way to end a game that in many ways did things at least a little differently from the tired worn out RPG formula. They even did the tired trope of Anyway, I'll almost certainly play the game again at some point, especially since there is that one run I never did, so at least something will be brand new for me. That's for the future, though. For now, I'm a bit RPG'd out. I need at least a week of break from RPGs. The next one up will likely be either Sword Coast Legends or Wasteland 2 Director's Cut.

Final Fantasy V is coming to PC This is essentially the GBA version that was also previously ported to iOS and Android. It's a fantastic game, for the few that have never played it. I believe it was the second (?) time in the series that they used the job system.

Is there really any "Arkham style" combat system that's remotely challenging? Someone has to come up with one. That seems to go against the core tenets of the system. That combat system seemingly was specifically designed to be easy. I can think of several tweaks to the formula that would up the difficulty: Remove visual cues (button prompts, big brightly colored outline around an enemy attacking, etc.) Get rid of the time slowdowns Don't make the character invulnurable to all other attacks while they are countering

I started playing Renowned Explorers: International Society. I only just started playing, so it's way too early to make a judgement, but I'm at least keen on playing some more. It's kind of like a simplified Expeditions: Conquistador that got drunk and started telling jokes. There's a tutorial that was a bit buggy, but gave me some idea of basics, but mostly I'm learning on the job, which is fine since this game has rogue-lite elements where campaigns aren't very long and they're randomized and you're expected to play through them a bunch of times while unlocking things for the overall game. Learning on the job seems natural in a game like this and spectacular failure is expected at some point and just part of the process.

Renowned Explorers: International Society

Fess up, Nonek, you were just using that as an excuse to use as many mad synonyms as possible, weren't you?

I don't know what a thunderpoon is, but it sounds... dirty, and I like it.

Enoch is in mid-season form already. Anyway, word is that Romo looked... mobile during pre-season, I dunno, I never watch anything pre-season. If he can move like a human again that would be helpful. That said, I'll still cringe anytime he drops back to throw and there's a defender within 5 yards of him, because I know he's potentially 1 hit away from retirement.

Synopsis: Both sides have fair points. Gamers and reviewers sometimes look at games differently because of the situations they're in. Reviewers get the games for free, also they have hundreds of games to review constantly, so things like busywork are an obstacle to them getting to the heart of the game so they can post a review. Gamers have to pay for their own games and don't generally have the same time pressures reviewers do, so things that seem like busywork for reviewers may be enjoyable activities to gamers that extend their playing time and give them value for the money they had to spend. Also, Ars Technica are ****wads for going with a clickbait-y presumptuous title for their review. Also also, don't get hung up on scores, they fail to tell the whole story. Also also also, scores bad, mmkay? Edit: Ninja'd