Keyrock

I hope Spock lives long and prospers in the afterlife. Since I need something to cheer me up after hearing the news, here's Leonard singing The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGF5ROpjRAU

I'm confused by the San Francisco comment. Unless you think I live in San Fran, which I don't, I live on the opposite coast, then that's a weird non sequitur. It's usually a white sauce with potato & bacon pizza in my experiences.

Bacon & potato pizzas are quite commonplace, at least where I live. They are insanely delicious, but they are massive calorie bombs, even more so than pizza in general. Even better is bacon, potato, and chicken.

Westbrook should be MVP. He's keeping OKC afloat while KD has been missing a bunch of time. On a serious note, this could be a blessing in disguise for OKC assuming KD's foot is all sorted out by playoff time. KD's going to be all types of rested for the playoffs and a lot of guys have been getting playing time they wouldn't have if the team had been at full strength all year. They may need those guys in the playoffs.

I don't feel like making a separate thread for this so I'll just put it here. We have some Brits on the forums, so I'm asking said Brits, transplanted or still in the UK, give me some crisps suggestions. I'm thinking about importing some across the ocean to try some out. I'm tired of the chips we have here in the US, I'd like to try something a bit different.

That looks cool, definitely something to keep an eye on. I love the art style on the backgrounds. The character models, not so much.

I had my first death in Hand of Fate last night. I was going up against the Jack of Scales (lizardman). The adventure started out well enough, but it was a rather long trudge and when things started falling apart for me, they fell apart quickly. I was never able to get much gold because it just wasn't in the cards for me, and whenever I stumbled across a shop, I was so low on food I spent all my gold to buy food. I was still doing okay until I lost my shield, then things went south fast. Without the ability to counter or reflect projectiles, I had to dodge roll like crazy, plus I was running out of food. I was just scraping by, trying to survive, almost got to the boss fight, and wound up dying in an encounter with goblins and lizardmen. I just wasn't prepared for what lizardmen brought to the table, as this was my first battle with them, plus I was already pretty hurt going into the battle, plus there were traps there. I got slaughtered but quick. It wasn't all for nothing, though, as I had acquired 3 tokens by then and got the cards from those. I'm happy to see the difficulty ramp up like this in the game. My one fear early on was how easy the game was, but it's not easy any more. The battles are more hectic, the encounter cards are more devious, and the dealer is more stingy with items to help me along. It's great! This game is a ton of fun.

I thought about doing some Let's Plays once (narrated) but when I tried to practice, I realized two things: --I do this mild/quiet giggle when I'm amused, and apparently I'm amused a lot --I sniffle/mini-clear my throat a lot (allergies). I can control the latter but I couldn't cease the giggles. The giggles might be endearing I've noticed I vary the volume of my voice too much. I have a tendency to say some things more quietly, under my breath a bit, which is obviously not good for a Let's Play. Gotta work on that.

New Colin McComb interview

Not harsh at all. Also, I welcome any honest criticism, harsh or otherwise. Yours was particularly constructive, thanks for that. I'm not looking to do any kind of schtick, I'm just playing games and doing my normal stream of consciousness out loud. I know what you mean. I still remember the first time I heard myself on a recording and how shocked I was. "That's what I sound like?" I don't have a very good public speaking voice, not much I could do about that. I'm using Simple Screen Recorder to capture the video and in-game sound and Audacious to capture the microphone sound (keep in mind that I'm on Linux, so Windows-only software does me no good). I then split out the audio from the video recording and mix the game and microphone audio together into one track in Audacious (this lets me adjust levels or make cosmetic adjustments like I did in my 3rd video). I then put the video and the newly mixed audio together and encode it using Pitivi. I turned the volume up in my 2nd and 3rd videos after noticing how quiet the first one was (I didn't link them here thinking linking just 1 was shameful enough). I may turn up the gain in postprocess on the audio some more in future videos. Thanks for the suggestion.

I hated Dead Island and I still love Dying Light. It's way better than Dead Island, it's what Dead Island should have been, and even with the annoyances of the pit battle and the lame as hell final boss QTE battle, I still loved the game and continue to play it occasionally to do side quests, challenges, and just parkour around Harran and slice heads off. As long as first person parkour isn't a turn off for you, you will love Dying Light if you loved Dead Island. Pro-tip: Get the dropkick skill as soon as possible. It's hilarious.

I actually like the setting the bomb mission, I liked the intensity and panic the time constraints added to it. The pit, though, I hated. Outside of the horrifically disappointing final boss fight, the pit was the most angry and frustrated Dying Light made me in the entire game. The Pit was annoying, but more so because of those stupid running zombies. The actual "boss fight" was relatively easy if it weren't for those running things buzzing around. Virals are really annoying and quite dangerous early in the game. They're a piece of cake later on when you have a powerful weapon. I've decapitated so many virals that I'm into the hundreds. They are a definite annoyance in the fight with the Demolisher, though.

I actually like the setting the bomb mission, I liked the intensity and panic the time constraints added to it. The pit, though, I hated. Outside of the horrifically disappointing final boss fight, the pit was the most angry and frustrated Dying Light made me in the entire game. I'm playing more Hand of Fate. I really like this game. This may be the closest any video game has ever come to recreating a table top gaming experience. Using cards to create randomized "maps" and loot drops is a brilliant idea and executed really well. Heck, even the combat has gotten more fun now that I'm fighting stronger enemies and have access to better equipment with special abilities, giving me more options during combat. It's still the weakest part of the game, but I'm having a decent bit of fun with the combat. Hopefully the game keeps getting deeper the further I go, like it has so far. As an aside, anyone have any advice on what codec and settings to use for youtube videos? I think I just skimped too much on the bitrate trying to keep the file size down, which resulted in a kinda crappy looking video. Is there a better codec to use than H264?

Hand of Fate, a weird combination of deck building, choose your own adventure, and brawler from Defiant Development. Also, this is an opportunity for me to shamelessly plug my first ever Let's Play video. As it's my first Let's Play, it's a learning experience. I definitely need to work on my audio levels and using better codecs, also, just getting more comfortable commentating while playing.

With a few exceptions, I almost never use guns against zombies, I save my bullets for fighting Reis' thugs. Once you get stronger melee weapons, you'll be slicing through most zombies (not the really big ones like Demolishers) like a hot knife through butter. I use guns for Demolishers, (sometimes) Goons, and Reis' thugs (also those spitting dudes if they're in a hard to reach spot), and basically nothing else. My electrified and flaming bastard sword makes short work of anything else. Outside of Demolishers (and Volatiles at night), combat is a piece of cake at higher levels.

During the first couple missions it's scripted, meaning certain events will always happen at a certain time, regardless of how long you take to get to them. This is done on purpose because that part of the game is essentially a tutorial and wants to show off trying to get to a safe location before night, surviving a night pursuit, etc. After that, time flows on its own and it's completely up to you whether you want to do something during the day or the night. Certain missions and challenges require either daytime or night time, but trying to do those won't magically move the clock, you just won't be able to do those events until it's the appropriate time in the game. Edit: Basically what Fighter wrote.

5, I believe. Thanks. I can safely shuffle that into the 2016 pile at the back of my mind, then.

How many episodes total? I'll think about scooping this up once the game is released completely.

Some The Order 1886 humor (strong language):

Finished the story in Dying Light. The story started out well enough, but very rapidly devolved into a paint by numbers, been there done that a million times ordeal. I think Techland had a contest to see how many cliches they could cram into one storyline. Luckily, the gameplay in the game is really fantastic and just keeps getting better... until the final boss fight, which is a freaking QTE battle. What. The. ****? What better way to cap off a game filled with great gameplay than in the laziest, most non-gameplay way imaginable. Oh well, I can now freely run around Harran and just **** around with no worries about the main story (I could do that before too). The side activities are for the most part a lot more interesting than the main story anyway.

Interview with Spiders' Jehanne Rousseau with (scant) new details on Technomancer So it is indeed a sequel to Mars: War Logs. That filthy mysoginist ****lord pig... What, Jehanne's a woman? I mean, that filthy house ****er! Fortified with 56% more rolling! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYnFIRc0k6E#t=62 Menage a trois possibility?

My new all melee party for supreme jerk difficulty: Obviously, Jack, Janet, and Chrissy, the OG 3rd roommate, had to be part of the team, but I was torn on whether to have Mr. Roper or Larry as the 4th member. I think Mr. Roper was the right choice. I tried to make them at least a little like they were on the show. For example, Jack has low coordination because he's a klutz. Janet has high intelligence. Chrissy has low intelligence and high charisma. Mr. Roper has hard ass and bargaining skills. Not the best strategy for min maxing, but I'm not trying to do that, plus I've already beaten the game on ranger difficulty. This is all about goofing around and making things very challenging for myself.

I'm 84% through the story in Dying Light. I have a katana that both electrocutes and sets enemies on fire, though that's mostly a moot point since 90% of the time I just slice heads clean off, so the whole burning or electrocution thing is kinda pointless. I just finished climbing a tower that would make Ubisoft green with envy. I should be able to finish the story tomorrow. Hopefully after I finish the story the game will allow me to keep playing so I can keep getting my Mirror's Edge on and going on murder sprees in Harran.

False. There is no correlation between the harshness of winter and my enjoyment of summer. It's a nice thought, but it's untrue.