Keyrock

Methinks it's time to start up a new game of X3: Albion Prelude. I need to build a new galactic empire. The nice thing is that my old custom flightstick profile is still saved, so that's 15-20 minutes of setup saved.

Through the Woods demo

It just never got that big final day push that most Kickstarters get. I mean, it did better the final day that the previous couple weeks, but only marginally so. I think it was pretty bad timing with E3 grabbing everybody's eyeballs and ears smack dab in the middle of this campaign, plus Yooka Laylee, Bloodstained, and Shenmue 3 ravaging a lot of people's wallets. Plus, The Bard's Tale might just be too old for a lot of the people to get that same nostalgia rush they got from Torment, and there is the matter of the recent-ish Bard's Tale comedy game being the first thing people think of when the words Bard's Tale are mentioned, and, while I kinda liked the game myself, a lot of people didn't think too highly of it. Still, they got a million and a half, plus InXile can kick in profit money from Wasteland 2 and, hopefully, TToN too, assuming it sells well. I'd like to think we'll still get a meaty game, thy'll just cut back on some bells and whistles; maybe have less voice acting and cutscenes.

I'm tempted to jump up to $65. I need that code wheel. I must have that code wheel.

Actually you kinda do Tale of Tales, because correlation doesn't speak to causation. There's a correlation between shark attacks on humans and swimming in the ocean, but that doesn't mean swimming in the ocean is the cause of shark attacks on humans. That's pretty standard procedure for elitists types. Present a statement as fact without any factual or academic evidence to back it up (in this particular case there is mounting academic evidence to the contrary) and if anyone questions said statement or asks for evidence then act outraged and claim that said statement, which is clearly not self evident, is self evident. For bonus points they'll throw out the name of a famous (likely Russian or Chinese) philosopher to show off the size of their culture pen1ses, likely without any true understanding of the works of said philosopher and what made them great.

"Attacked by a gamer lynch party"? Who are these mythical people that have been attacked by a gamer lynch party, pray tell? Edit: Now I have a pretty hilarious image in my head of greasy, overweight, pimply gamers frothing at the mouth and smashing hipsters with pink hair with XBOX 360 controllers and choking them with the cord. Come to think of it, maybe that is the reason behind the move to wireless controllers?

The Mother****ing Anthem

You don't, just skip over the posts about him.

The Road to Gehenna an expansion to Croteam's thoroughly great puzzle game The Talos Principle is coming July 23rd. Color me excited, I loved The Talos Principle and July 23rd is almost here. Woohoo!

How is this relevant? The 2 seconds he says "it's a AAA game so we have to give it a good score"? Because otherwise it's 12 minutes of a guy yelling and swearing, basically doing the shock jock routine of voice an unpopular opinion, sprinkle in just enough truth to get people interested, then be as belligerent and insulting about it as possible for shock value.

I've long had the suspicion that Star Citizen is going to be one extremely lengthy crowdfunding campaign that never actually produces results, at least not results anywhere near in line with expectations. I do hope it does some day fully release and is awesome, but I'm very skeptical. If it were to fail spectacularly, it would be humorous from a schadenfraude perspective, but it also might effectively kill crowdfunding once and for all.

With Portal Stories: Mel completed I needed something else to play, so I went back to playing Strife and decided to learn a new character. I decided to try to play as Iah. So far I'm liking her a lot' she's quite versatile. Primarily she's used as a support as she can help the team in a variety of ways in a team fight with her ability to crowd control, buff allies' resistance and attack speed, and heal allies. She's also one of the better split pushing heroes in the game since she can summon sand elementals. The elementals don't do all that much damage and they only stick around for 6 or 7 seconds (or less if they're killed), but she can have 2 of them going at any time, they don't cost particularly much mana, and the ability has a super low cooldown (2 seconds), meaning she can spam them out indefinitely, as long as she doesn't run out of mana. The elementals will tank tower hits for her, meaning that Iah doesn't need to wait for a brawler wave, she can siege without one. I mean, theoretically anyone can siege without a brawler wave, but they'll take tower hits, which are detrimental to their health, and tower damage scales with level, so they're always a danger, even at max level. I give her warp boots, an essential item for split pushing, as it allows you to tp to any ally or allied structure, Hexbane, a useful item pretty much always (it hexes an enemy for 2.5 seconds, making them unable to use any ability), and I try to give her mana and mana regen items early to get her to the point that she can spam out elementals forever and still have enough mana for her other abilities comfortably. I overdid it last time with mana regen items; I got to the point where I was regenerating mana much faster than I could possibly ever use it, so next time I'll back off a bit on the mana regen and get her more power or survivability.

Sorry I don't recognize pin up model nationality by body, I just thought it was a funny picture. *shrug* Better?

Seeing as we know essentially nothing beyond the game's existence, the answer is I don't know.

Murica, son. Ya best recognize.

Thank goodness they give you an option to use modern controls. The main reason I could never bring myself to replay the original Resi games is the horrendous tank controls. I hated those controls so much, even back in the day when they originally came out.

Probably because developers feel they have to do something unique for the grand finale. That's the moment when they try to invent something new that wasn't done in the game before or was rarely used. That drives me mad when developers do that. Hey, you know everything that you did and learned throughout the entirety of the game up to this point? Throw that out the window, it doesn't apply to the finale. It's particularly maddening for a puzzle game. Over the course of a puzzle game you learn various mechanics and tricks and apply them in various ways. The finale should be a culmination of everything you have learned during the game. Specifically, in the Portal games it's all about using your brain, wrapping your head around the different mechanics, the physics behind them, and how to apply combinations of them to overcome obstacles through logic. Once you figure out the solution the execution is quite simple as Portal isn't a twitch game, it doesn't require split second moves or precision platforming or precision aiming. Everything in Portal Stories: Mel up until the very last challenge is like that, it's all about using your brain and wrapping your head around combinations of mechanics to overcome seemingly impossible obstacles with logic. In contrast, the final challenge, from a logic standpoint, is dead simple. The execution is the challenge, and not because it requires difficult jumps or aiming, but because the mechanic used is inconsistent and extremely touchy, making a simple job frustrating. I need to again stress, though, that I really liked Portal Stories: Mel. 95% of the game (everything before the final challenge) is really great.

I finished Portal Stories: Mel. It's a really well made standalone (ish) mod and quite meaty. It's more or less the size of a full game, which is damn impressive for a free mod, and the puzzles and well designed and thoroughly challenging. Unfortunately, the final challenge is terrible (why do so many games falter during the finale?). It's a decent idea and makes sense in the context of the game, but, unfortunately, it centers around the single most inconsistent and touchy mechanic in all of Portal (largely because in the base game it was never meant to be used as a game mechanic). Portal works because its mechanics are consistent and predictable, basing the finale around a mechanic that is inconsistent and making it time sensitive to boot was a big mistake. Still, it was a really great experience overall. Everything before the very end was quite fun.

We Happy Few is already funded and in the last day and a half of its campaign. It's sort of a stealth/survival game, but a very different type of stealth/survival game. The game takes place in a dystopian alternate reality 1964 England where all the citizens of the city are living in a drug-induced delusional world and you must escape before society completely collapses. The idea is to hide in plain sight as you hunt for food and formulate an escape plan. You need to figure out how to conform so that the other citizens don't catch on to you not being on the drug. The city is procedurally generated and different every time. The game is being made by Compulsion Games who made the game Contrast and coming out for PC (Windows/Mac/Linux), They are looking to do console versions later, but that's not part of the rewards here.

MCA should show up unannounced and cut a heel promo on Feargus and challenge him to a cage match for the Obsidian Entertainment Heavyweight Championship.

Things can go poorly if you try to go for a drive with a really huge package.

I'm not going to read too much into it. I mean, if I had just very recently left a job, even if it was on amicable terms, I wouldn't want to appear at a function with my former bosses/business partners either; it would just be awkward.

Nothing worse than a man flaunting the size of an artificially inflated package.

That he did, KaineParker. That he did.