Keyrock

The D1ck Wolf coincidence is pretty doggone fantastic. It's things like that that make me think maybe God does have a sense of humor.

Holy ****, that supercut was hilarious. Not unexpected, that's par for the course for SVU's brand of sensationalist bullcrap, but still hilarious. The first person view in the final scene was a nice touch. I needed a good laugh today. The exceedingly ****ty weather we've been stuck with for 3+ weeks straight (when a Minnesotan pities you, you know you're having a rough winter), with no signs of letting up, combined with being under the weather, has made me irritable and depressed. That bit of unintentional comedy gold from SVU was just the pick me up I needed.

I like the idea of a RTS focused on something other than simply killing your opponents. It's not for me, since I'm terrible at RTSs, I just don't have the focus or the will to do all that micromanaging in real time. Were this turn-based, I'd be salivating at getting my hands on it, as I like strategy games so long as I can play them at my own pace (read: slow as ****), and I'm all about trading in games that offer it. Looks and sounds cool, though.

^ Gah, that formatting and that GIANT horrific font. It burns! It burns the eyes!

I have to stay away from Ubisoft games, not only because they're so often trash at launch, but also because they stuff their games with such a ridiculous overabundance of collectibles and towers. Sweet lord the mother****ing Ubisoft hard on for towers to climb. The completionist junkie in me doesn't allow me to simply ignore all that optional stuff and I wind up getting sucked down a 50 hour rabbit hole of menial chores every time.

This is the same ridiculous participation trophy, everyone's a winner argument that's already ruining (physical) sports and our society. It's turning the next generation into entitled brats, and this is what this is all about, entitlement. Some people feel they should be entitled to excel at competitive games without having to put in the hard work necessary to excel at said game, which is completely ridiculous. Competitive games, by their very nature, have to be very difficult to master. It's what makes them competitive. As for controller issues, that's a very real thing, and I feel for people with mobility issues. Unfortunately, we don't have the technology to control games with our thoughts yet. Until we do, this will always be a problem and the best we can do is include options to help lessen the problem to a small degree.

Inclusive /inˈklo͞osiv/ adjective Specifically catering toward the pet project of the SJWs in a manner completely consistent with their vision of how things should be

Still playing Dying Light. The game just keeps getting better. It's probably not going to win much in the way of awards, but it's a really fun game. While the story is at its best at the very beginning then quickly fizzles out and falls into a highly predictable paint by numbers ordeal we've all done a billion times now, from a mechanical standpoint the game starts at its weakest and gets significantly better as you level up. Much credit must be given to Techland for the skill trees. This game has some of the best skill trees I've ever encountered in a game. In this respect, Dying Light is the anti-Borderlands. Almost every new skill you pick up truly means something and often changes gameplay significantly. Almost every time you level up you actually feel more powerful. It's pretty fantastic. The agility skill tree is my favorite, since the more I put into it the closer to Mirror's Edge I get, but all 3 skill trees have great skills to pick up in them. The parkour element not only makes the game a lot more fun to play than Dead Island because it allows you to avoid a ton of battles, but it also makes battles more fun. Dropkicking zombies never ceases to entertain, and now that I can drop on top of zombies from above and insta-kill them, combat has just gotten that much more fun. It's not just about standing there and swinging away then backing up to catch your breath, it's about staying mobile and using your environment to your advantage. Hopefully they put out some decent worthwhile DLC for this game. I'll gladly pick it up if the content/value for the money is right.

Why? It's better than Skyrim. Not exactly a strong endorsement in my book.

Molyneuxs Gonna Molyneux

I'm not at all surprised Shadow Realms was scrapped. The little bit of the game they showcased last year looked, quite frankly, bad, and it's been mum's the word ever since.

Dying Light on the PC, I'm still not far in the story as I've been mostly doing side quests, and Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow on the Wii U virtual console, just getting started.

Not sure if this fits here as it's a board game, but anyway, here goes. Conan board game by Monolith Board Games. 70 hours left as of this writing. This one is already INSANELY successful having asked for $80,000 and it's gotten over 2 million. A ridiculous amount of stretch goals has been unlocked and each means more miniatures and character sheets free for everyone. I don't know how they're going to fit all of this into one box. I've been following this for a while and pledged to it yesterday for the King Box. I'm a huge fan of the Conan setting and how fraught with debauchery, lust, and selfishness it is. I also love asymmetrical games (this one is 1 vs 1 to 4). Keep in mind that you'll likely be looking at an additional $35 or $45 (if you live in the States or Europe) or more for shipping in addition to the cost. Still, the amount of stuff that you get for the price is freakin' astounding. I have thoughts of painting all the miniatures, but that's going to take months of work.

I gave Lords of Xulima some 6 hours, I'm done with it. Highly disappointing. The only thing this game has going for it is the "old school feel" but it's old school in mostly the wrong ways. The game repeats the same mistake so many old school games made of being at its very hardest (at least for the amount of time I played) at the beginning, forcing you to save and reload a lot just to get to level 3, when the game becomes manageable. The combat is okay, but very repetitive. The game is shockingly linear. The world is dull. Worst of all, the game pretty much forces you into a certain party composition and build for each character. Trying to stray from the "optimal" party all but guarantees failure. The game might as well pick my characters and level them up for me. It might get better later, but I'll never find out. If a game can't hook me in 5 or so hours, I'm not going to keep hate playing it just to see if it gets better.

To be honest, I'm pretty underwhelmed by this. I'll keep an eye on it, maybe a future update will convince me, but, as it stands, I'll pass and see what it looks like when it comes out.

So long as you're not expecting to play a Tomb Raider game. If you're down to play a cover shooter with a tiny bit of exploration and some insultingly easy platforming, then yes.

How the devil does anybody watch this simpering piffle? The ginger gentleman who ruined the recent Poe runthrough is moderately annoying, but that little squeaking Schreier chap is positively afflicted by all indications. Then again morons working for Kotaku, hardly a surprise. Still TB and the young lady were tolerable, but I could only manage a half an hour or so. You don't like Jesse Cox? I find him pretty funny and entertaining. To each their own, I guess. As for listening to it, it;s something I'll put on as background noice at work. I can have it playing and do my work (the work that I can do at my desk, anyway). If something catches my interest, I'll pause it and listen closer on break, otherwise it;s mostly ambiance.

Rogue Legacy is so good.

They talk a bit on the Co-Optional podcast about publisher events where they bring in youtubers to stream events and the ethics of how some they just let you film freely and in others there are some agreements about the content in place starting at about 58 minutes and going on for a while. That's as Gamergate-y as they get in the podcast.

This ****ing weather. We got hit for anywhere from a little over a foot of snow to almost 3 feet of snow about a week and a half ago. We got hit with another foot a few days ago. It's snowing again right now and we may get another foot Sunday night through Monday. The snow banks are piled up so high that cars can't see traffic at intersections very well and there's nowhere left to put all the snow, and we're only starting February, there's still over a month before we're out of the woods, we may get hit 3 or 4 more times. I hate winter. I hate Connecticut. I need to get the **** out of this God forsaken hellhole.

I've always had a love/hate relationship with the parkour in AC games. When it all works it's very elegant and flows beautifully, but there are so many moments when I'm trying to do something and the character keeps doing something else and I want to throw my controller through my monitor. In that regard, I think the parkour in Dying Light is superior. It's not as elegant and doesn't flow as well as in AC, but, for the most part, Crane always does what you want him to do. I'll take consistent and less elegant mechanics over inconsistent and more elegant mechanics any day.

This time Lara murders 500 brown bears rather than 500 Russians.

A lot of people saw this coming from a mile away. Tablets are mostly unnecessary. They have their strong points, but are far from essential. I'll admit it took the tablet bubble longer to burst than I thought, though.

Well, I finally got a new ship in Raven's Cry, a man o' war. It took almost all my money and it's pretty beat up and I can't afford to fully fix it, since I need to keep some cash for trading, so I'll need to be careful and avoid battles until I make enough to fix it up fully, but once I do, I will be the scourge of the seas, since I now own a proper war vessel.