Keyrock

Nothing weird about this, but I didn't want to start a separate thread just for this. Here's Kacy Katanzaro's EPIC American Ninja Warrior semi-final run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfZFuw7a13E#t=14 I still can't believe she got past the Salmon Ladder (and didn't completely burn her arms out in the process). She's got some INSANE grip strength. That would be amazing if she wound up making it to Sasuke.

Well, so far so good. Through about, I'm guessing, a quarter of the game, Deadfall Adventures has continued with about a 50/50 split of puzzle solving and exploration/combat. I'd prefer something more like 80/20 puzzle & exploration/combat, but I can live with 50/50. Also, in just the few levels I have played, I've already spent significantly more time exploring ancient ruins and solving puzzles than in the entirety of Torture Porn Raider. As a bonus, no one has tried to rape me or my feisty female sidekick yet either. I'm even enjoying the combat more, probably partly due to there not being quite as much of it, partly due to it being first person (which I much prefer to third person), and partly because they break up the monotony once in a while and give you something special and fun to use like a Sturmpisotle or a MG 34. I have to admit, mowing down Nazis with a MG 34 was thoroughly fun (Sadly, I didn't get to hang on to the MG 34 for very long. Admittedly it's a rather large weapon to be lugging around while doing adventurer type stuff). It's already a much better game than Torture Porn Raider as far as I'm concerned.

Gray Matter has been out for several years.

That party will work fine it's 3/4 the same as the party I first beat the game on. I had a shaman instead of a druid, the rest of the party was the same. You should have no problem beating the game with that party, on whatever difficulty, I didn't with my nearly identical party. The game actually gets easier once you hit about level 20 and even easier once you're nearly maxed out. As others have written, don't try to be a jack of all trades, pick a handful of skills for each character and specialize in them. Magic is actually not very good in the game used purely for offense, I find it;s best used for defense and to debuff enemies. You'll want to get access to burning determination and regenerate as soon as possible as both those spells are extremely useful. Whispering shadows is great too for finding secrets, but you could always use scrolls and later a companion for that purpose.

Deadfall Adventures - So far it's about 50% FPS and 50% puzzle game. That's a split I can definitely live with, though I'm early in the game, so it might change (hopefully it doesn't get too combat heavy). The only part of the combat that's at all "different" is that when you encounter mummies you have to Alan Wake them with your flashlight before shooting them does anything. Other than that, it's as generic as generic gets, though the gunplay is decent enough with different weapons feeling distinct and the firing feeling nice and meaty from the weapons that should feel nice and meaty. I like that there are separate difficulty settings for combat and puzzles. I set combat on normal and puzzles on hard. I've yet to encounter any combat that was the least bit difficult and I've yet to encounter a puzzle that was the least bit difficult. Still, I'm just starting off so I imagine (hope) things get more challenging later on. The game features some cringeworthy dialogue and voice acting, particularly from the protagonist, and some hilariously bad animations during cut scenes. Other than that, the game looks pretty good, not amazing, mind you. It's been pretty fun so far. As long as the game keeps throwing in a lot of puzzles and doesn't just have me kill nazis and mummies for prolonged periods of time, and so long as the puzzles actually present a bit of a challenge eventually, I think I'll be happy playing this. I just want to travel all over the world to cool locations and poke around ancient temples and catracombs solving puzzles and avoiding traps and hopefully not having to kill TOO MANY mooks in the process.

That explains why it feels so disjointed.

That trailer felt oddly disjointed, like it was rather haphazardly thrown together. The elements of a good trailer were all there, but there was little rhyme or reason to how they were put together.

3 starred Shell Cup in Mario Kart 8. 3 down, 5 to go.

That whooshing sound you hear is the joke going over your head. Of course I wan't being serious, hence the emoticon.

Who's to say it's even real? Some say it's just a chemical reaction in the brain. Some say it's just lust explained away to make it sound more wholesome. Others swear it goes deeper than that. Here's a video that can explain a lot better than I can: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhrBDcQq2DM

Yes! YES! YEEEEEEESSSSS! I finally 3 starred Flower Cup on 150cc. That cup includes my worst track, Shy Guy Falls, it's the last track in the cup. I can beat the other 3 tracks, Mario Circuit, Toad Harbor, and Twisted Mansion, blindfolded while getting blue shelled into oblivion. I routinely win those tracks by almost a quarter of a lap, but Shy Guy Falls gets me every time. I'm talking pro wrestling style screw job complete with the ref getting "accidentally" knocked unconscious and a guy running in from the back and hitting me with a steel chair a dozen times in the head. After 7 or 8 tries, I finally managed to get 1st place on Shy Guy Falls and win the cup with 3 stars. Here's the video of my triumphant run, complete with me getting hilariously red shelled just after crossing the finish line. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b9OZ6RkiN0

Messi or Suarez puts that ball in the back of the net 98 out of 100 times. Heck, Higuain puts that ball in the back of the net 90 out of 100 times. He had the ball on his foot in the box dead center several yards past every defender. The only thing a keeper can do in that situation is charge him and hope he shanks it, which is exactly what happened.

I'm undecided as to who got the better end of the deal.

Higuain is going to have nightmares about the gift wrapped goal Kroos handed him that he failed to put in the back of the net.

Ideally, far enough out so that I can see everybody on the screen at the same time, all allies and all enemies. Or, at worst, so that I barely have to scroll to see everybody.

Football is a simple game. 22 men chase a ball around for 90 120 minutes, and at the end, Germany always wins.

Ze Germans score!

This is going to go to PKs, isn't it? Please tell me this isn't going to PKs.

Hoewedes lucky to still be on the pitch. That absolutely should have been a red. Studs out to the knee and nowhere near going for the ball.

What a terrible giveaway by Kroos and Higuain fails to make them pay for that horrific blunder.

Klose pulling a Robben. Nothing came of the free kick, though.

Still doesn't zoom out nearly far enough for my tastes.

Early access is evil, isn't it? Ever since I bought Grim Dawn I've been drooling at it, trying to fight back the urge to play it as they are still adding stuff and tweaking the existing. At least Wasteland 2 is supposed to come out next month. I personally think Grim Dawn is a game that's perfect for early access. I have no qualms about playing it before it fully releases, and I have played it. There are several reasons for this. The first is that it's not a story-driven game. While the game does have a story and already includes more narrative than Titan Quest, the story doesn't drive the game. It's driven by loot and combat. Second is that it's the type of game that naturally lends itself to running through the same content again and again and again, either to grind for particular loot drops, or to test out different builds (or both). It definitely helps a bit that the map and champion enemies are at least partially randomized so you're not running through an identical map every time. Third, a loot em up like Grim Dawn benefits immensely from the feedback of the people playing early access. Not that other types of games wouldn't benefit from feedback, but loot em ups, in particular, go through hundreds upon hundreds of iterations as the loot, classes, and skills are balanced, and rebalanced, and rerebalanced, and rererebalanced, and rerererebalanced, and so on in the name of allowing as many viable build combinations and gear setups as possible.

I don't know if it was just because it was indoors, but it didn't zoom out nearly enough to make that view point particularly useful. Hopefully you can zoom out further. If not, someone could always just mod the game to zoom out further, I guess. Outside of that, I wasn't particularly thrilled about the chip away at the boss' ridiculous life bar for a while, kill off a bunch of adds, chip away at the boss' ridiculous life bar, kill off a bunch of adds, lather rinse repeat boss fight. Though DA:I is hardly the first, nor will they be the last, to use that tired old boss fight trope. I mean, that kind of fight was cool a couple of times, but it's gotten super stale when 80% of boss fights in 75% of RPGs follow that same exact pattern to the letter. Who was it that first unleashed that plague on us? Was it a MMO? I bet it was a MMO.