Keyrock

Ultros demo: It's a metroidvania with a very vibrant, striking art style.

Soulmask demo: It's a survival game, you swing your axe at trees and you build stuff. The game does look really nice. I was worried because the character creation screen was all types of stripped down, janky, and really low res, but once I got into actual gameplay, it looks great. Plus it's got capybaras and tapirs. Another nice touch is that you are actually wet after going in the water. I feel like this is something I shouldn't have to mention in 2024, but the amount of games, including AAA releases, still coming out where there are no wet effects, your character is just instantly dry after swimming, is downright embarrassing. It will take more than just pretty graphics to join Conan Exiles, and to a lesser degree Valheim, as the only survival games I've liked, though, and I haven't seen anything in the demo yet to make this more than just swinging an axe at trees. I haven't gotten any story so far. Side-note: No capybaras were harmed in the playing of this demo. I'm not about to kill them for meat. I did kill a couple of wild dogs, but they attacked me first.

It teleported me back to the auto shop, which seems to be your base of operations in the game.

Pacific Drive demo: I got a Firewatch vibe from this right away because of the art style and the faceless voice you hear. You're in an exclusion zone, much like the one around Chernobyl, except this one is in the Pacific northwest. You drive around in a piece of **** station wagon and scavenge for parts to keep your car running and build stuff to progress the story. I'm definitely interested.

@LadyCrimsonbeat me to it, but I also played the Outcast 2 demo: There's a lot of optimization work ahead. While I would mostly get a good framerate on my fairly high-end system, there are HARDCORE frame stutters and hitches aplenty. The game does look nice, though. Well, the environment looks great, the character models... See for yourself: The animations during conversations are quite stiff. The combat is functional but uninspired action combat: On the positive side, you have a jet pack that doesn't suck. I can think of another game that could benefit from a jet pack that doesn't suck (stares at Bethesda). You can even use the jet pack to swim really fast, like a motorboat.

Guild Saga: Vanished Worlds demo: Turn-based tactical RPG with 16-bit-ish Pixel graphics. Really nicely made, though, a lot of attention to detail. The camera zooms in and focuses on a person when you talk to them and it's very smooth and slick. The animations are nice and there's all types of idle animations; capes fluttering, people shifting their weight, that sort of stuff. It's not only turn-based but also grid-based. That will be a turn off (no pun intended) to some, but I'm a big fan. I like how in grid-based you can give specific shapes or directions to spells and abilities, like the movement of chess pieces. It makes positioning even more important. What surprised me is that it's always grid-based, not just in combat. This doesn't bother me, but it might you.

From previous Next Fests the demos had remained in my account and playable so long as I didn't uninstall them. Once I uninstalled they were gone and no longer available if Next Fest was already over. So if there is a demo you want to play again later just don't uninstall it.

Nikki Haley lost to NOBODY in Nevada by a margin greater than 2 to 1.

Dangerous Men (2005) - This film began filming in 1979 and was not completed until 26 years later. It's a revenge tale of a woman, Mina, who goes on a murderous rampage after her fiance is murdered by a biker. The brother of the now deceased fiance is a police officer who is looking for Mina and the leader of the biker gang. This movie is a Frankenstein's monster of stitched together scenes and questionable choices. It begins with the music. The main theme is a funk track that sound like something straight out of ToeJam & Earl. It's played multiple times throughout the movie and is never appropriate for any scene that it's in. In fact, this movie is chock-full of bizarrely inappropriate music. There are so many utterly bizarre scenes. The best way to exemplify this is with the ending of the movie:

There's a demo on Steam as part of Next Fest. I haven't tried it, not my type of game, but anyone interested can try it for free right now.

It seems like they're going to have most, if not all, of the building pieces in the entire game available on Dondoko Island. There are already people trying to recreate Kamurocho on the island. It's impossible to make an exact replica because the layout of the island(s) is different and there isn't a big enough rectangle for the entirety of Kamurocho anywhere, but you can probably remake sections of it fairly faithfully. The end goal is to get your resort up to 5 stars and there's probably some manner of boss battle at the end. I'm currently at 2 stars and I'm not particularly concerned with layout yet because I don't have access to all the building pieces right now. I plan to reach 3 stars then go back to Honolulu and play some more of the main game because there are building plans to pick up in the main game. Once I get to around chapter 11 or 12 I'll go back to Dondoko Island and finish it out and when I'm near the end I'll redesign the whole island to have some manner of theme and coherence.

Speaking of terrible Canadian filmmakers. Things (1989) This movie has a reputation as the worst thing ever made. After having watched it for myself it's hard to argue against that. This is a complete dumpster fire on every conceivable level. There are no words I could write here to truly convey how terrible this is. It has to be witnessed to be believed. As far as a plot synopsis goes. These 2 ***holes go to a house way out in the middle of nowhere which belongs to the brother of one of them. The brother and his wife wanted to have a child but they couldn't so they had some shady doctor impregnate her and then she died when a terrible rubber puppet critter burst out of her. The rest of the movie is them awkwardly fighting off the terrible puppet critters. My synopsis makes this sound way more coherent than it deserves. This is an incomprehensible mess. It's a crime against humanity. We have some Canadians on these forums, explain yourselves. What the **** went on in Canadia in the late 80s that something like this could be produced?

Soup-o-rama continues. I made a clean out the fridge special jambalaya. Delicious. Kind of hard to **** up a jambalaya.

I've been spending the last several hours, and will continue to spend many hours on Dondoko Island, which is a "mini"-game within Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. It's a mini-game by virtue of being a game within a game, but there's nothing mini about it. It's an entire full-featured Animal Crossing game, not in any way, shape, or form stripped down. There's also an entire full-featured Pokemon game inside LaD:IW called Sujimon, but I haven't messed around with it much beyond the introductory tutorial, and likely won't. Nothing against Sujimon, but there are only so many hours in my life and LaD:IW on its own, without either of these 2 "mini"-games, is already a rather lengthy game. Rather than half-ass either "mini"-game, I'll mostly ignore one and go whole hog on the other, and Dondoko Island, I choose you. Anyway, Dondoko Island is pretty great. There are these bad guys who have ruined this resort island by dumping garbage on it. Your task is to clean up the island and rebuild it into a thriving vacation destination. The bad guys are not keen on this, they'd like to continue dumping waste on this island and thus will try to stop you. There's only so much you can do in a day so it's about figuring out what you want to prioritize, whether that's beating up bad guys, cleaning trash, fishing, catching bugs, building, etc. I'm still in the early stages but it's very enjoyable so far. I like that there are different style scores you can increase: Elegant, rustic, pop, and sleaze. Naturally, I'm going full-on sleazy. My Dondoko Island is going to be a den of debauchery. I have a slogan set up and everything: Dondoko Island: Down To ****.

Mr. Plinkett made his 70 minute Phantom Menace analysis palatable by having a hooker tied up in his basement. I'm assuming there are at least 10 hookers tied up in the basement of whoever made this video.

If it's the same game I saw on Twitch today then it's probably for all the ****ing particle effects. Yesterday I caught a stream of the new Suicide Squad game and I could barely make it through 10 minutes before I had to change it because it was a particle effect bukkake constantly assaulting my eyes. Different people have different tolerances, for example I don't usually get motion sickness in situations other people do, but this constant visual explosion of colors in my face was legitimately making my head hurt. Not to be outdone, I saw a stream of Granblue something or other today and I barely lasted 5 minutes. The characters were level 30ish, so I can only speak about what I saw, maybe other portions of the game are different, but the ludicrous amount of colorful explosions constantly covering the screen was brain-melting. To make matters worse, there was constant non-stop chatter from the companions, to the point that they were practically talking over each other. Just a non-stop attack on my eyes and ears. Had I not turned the stream off I would likely have had a stroke. It was a ****ing nightmare. Developers, y'all need to chill the **** out with the particle effects. Completely filling the screen with colorful explosions to the point that you can't understand anything that is happening is not a good thing.

Me personally, I loved seeing The Nerd Crew again. I think it's very cool that even though they no longer have embarrassing Star Wars movies to make fun of... Until the next embarrassing Star Wars movie, they can still make fun of embarrassing comic book movies, though. Too bad they're not a vidya game podcast, then they could make fun of the embarrassing comic book live service vidya game that just came out.

He's Predator handshaking God in heaven.

I got a new waifu: Handy with a sledgehammer AND will threaten people with a drill? Keeper. I'll also post the following screenies with no context whatsoever:

I'm not looking at discrete GPUs for anything besides pure curiosity any time soon. Barring a hardware failure, I have zero reason to replace anything or build a new system. My goal was always 4K at high or better settings and mission accomplished with my current hardware. I don't see the point in 8K unless the screen size is 100" or bigger and I wouldn't even consider purchasing a 100" 8K TV until they become affordable (read: $1000ish), that ain't happening any time soon. I don't even want to look up what a 100" 8K TV costs right now. I'm guessing it's 4 digits.

Saw this at my local ABC Spirits, never seen it before, so I decided to give it a try: It was fairly cheap, I'm guess is a fairly new distillery and they are trying to get their foot in the door, hence the low price. It's not the best Irish whisky I've had but it's better than the entry-level Jamison's, Bushmills, or Proper Twelve IMHO, and cheaper to boot. Sweet with a definite caramel finish. I doubt it will stay this cheap once it established itself, but at the current price it's an easy recommend.

In any other game series I would be quite surprised by a multi-part crustacean love story quest.

I'm assuming what you meant was if someone didn't enjoy one store in a chain it's safe to assume they wouldn't enjoy another. For example, if you didn't enjoy the McDonald's on 3rd street you won't like the one on western avenue. What it seems like you wrote is that if you didn't like one chain of restaurants it's safe to assume you won't like another chain of restaurants. For example, if you don't like Popeye's then it's safe to assume you won't like Chick-fil-A. If you did actually mean the latter then I definitely disagree.

Seems like a good fit for a small form factor HTPC.