Agiel

The first game I ever got denied for trying to buy because of my age was Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory on the PC (back when you could still get PC games at what was then EB Games) back in 2005 (I was 16 then). At that moment, another clerk stepped in and relieved him to go on his lunch break.

I can't help but feel somewhat incensed by the implementation of RNG for getting certain schematics as loot drops or in chests as well as the seeding of the Masterworking success, even if a part of me tells me that I shouldn't feel that way given that the Infinity Engine games totally did seeded unique loot drops.

Whatever "alliance" between China and Russia, be it economic, military, or both, would inevitably result in the Russians playing second fiddle to the Chinese. And this is just one of several reasons why I don't believe for a second Putin would settle for that. Putin is in the FoPol game to "win", and not (if he can help it) turn Russia into a de facto vassal state of the Chinese.

The tweet associated with this image: source: https://twitter.com/shadowmar/status/534262866455441409/photo/1

It's great fun. The planning phase has a lot of tools I wish I had playing old-school Rainbow Six and to see a plan come together is totally visceral.

...and Yes, Minister stays relevant to this day:

Picked up Door Kickers on the Steam sale. This brought a smile to my face:

A tiny bit late for the Tommies and Jerries, but Merry Xmas all the same.

The Adders are being launched outside of the "No-escape" range, which is the range where the missile is guaranteed to have the kinematic energy to hit the target even if he were to turn tail and run. You can fire a Fox too before the "Shoot" cue as well as it extends your own timeline (the missile has a substantially lower chance to hit a maneuvering target, but it forces the bandit to go defensive as well, as it will hit if he "stays the course" as it were). Rather mysteriously in the fleet defense missions the Ticonderoga cruisers and the Arleigh Burke destroyers don't do jack about the inbound vampires, but I suspect there wouldn't be much in the way of excitement in that mission if you let the AAW duties to the "skimmers".

@500MetricTonnes Strictly speaking, you have a very decisive advantage over the various Flankers and Fulcrums in the form of the active radar homing AIM-120C AMRAAM (it's in my sig!) allowing you not only track-while-scan, but also launch-and-leave capabilities over the Russian fighters' semi-active radar homing (meaning not only can you simultaneously engage multiple targets across a roughly 75 degree axis, but it also forces the enemy fighters to go defensive and lose the track on you, causing their own missiles (if they launched them) to go blind, and if your Slammers didn't score a hit on them you have a decisive advantage in the merge. Seems you're having some problems against the Sunburns due to not mastering the AN/APG-73 radar with look-down, shoot-down capabilities specifically tailored against supersonic sea skimming threats. There was a very helpful interactive website that can help you with that: http://home1.stofanet.dk/baskat/mainpage.html Good luck. Jane's F/A-18 and Jane's F-15 were my next favourite sims to Falcon 4.0.

In my recent playthrough of Icewind Dale II in the "Tic-tac-toe o' doom" in the Ice Temple I used the "ctrl-y" command for the fights I was quite reasonably sure I would beat handily. My Barbarian was built for it and I wasn't going to waste time resting and buffing her up for every round.

Trying to do the puzzle in the Dead Hand cave in the Exalted Plains... Jesus Christ, how do enough people like these kinds of f***ing puzzles that RPG developers keep insisting on putting them in their games?

There was a mod for Shadow of Chernobyl that included a sleeping bag that sort of gives that functionality. Clear Sky had a "sleep" function as well, though that could only be done at the "inns".

"I said come in! Don't stand there!" "Get back in here, Stalker."

Cease and Desist order in 5... 4... 3... 2...

Thoughts on the combat? Overall I thought the systems were worse than they were in DA: O and II due to the paring down of the classes and abilities. That said, the encounter design for actual quests I find to be a lot better than II's (thanks to parachuting enemies and hordes of encounter trash largely being omitted), though still not as good as Origins'.

Hardest fight for me was the last boss for the "Here Lies the Abyss" quest, since up till that point I spent all my Inquisition Perks early on to unlock Persuasion options and the lockpicking perk, not on more focus and extra potion slots (and the healing grenade would have been extremely helpful for that). I spent the last third of the fight with my whole party at a point where a single hit would kill them, reviving them as they went down. And I have to say I genuinely like all the companions so far, and I especially love the Blackwall story arc, not just from a writing standpoint but from a cinematic standpoint.

It comprises 85% of the composition of the main structure. http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20090007797.pdf

Virtual tour of the front and back seat of the "Habu": http://www.nmusafvirtualtour.com/media/068/SR-71A%20Front%20****pit.html http://www.nmusafvirtualtour.com/media/068/SR-71A%20Rear%20****pit.html And interviews with pilots. Great listening at work.:

International Metal: Faroe Islands China

Kind of holding out hope that there's going to be an expansion that does for Inquisition what Awakening did for Origins (notice that I didn't say "DLC") that stars the HoF and his/her travails that were hinted at in the game (and if not the HoF due to sacrificing him/herself, the surviving Warden from Origins, and if he was offed, then maybe the Warden Commander from Awakening). Would be a huge pain for scripting everything properly and getting all the lines recorded, but all the voice work done for Inquisition was already way more than what almost everyone anticipated even from Bioware.

The Christmas Truce... in the multiplayer FPS shooter "Verdun":

Hear, hear for the first part! For the second, as a proper, civilised PC gamer I'm holding out with mouse and keyboard until Bioware delivers on those claims they were looking into M+KB fixes.

That makes me sad because that is how I play a rogue, with two swords or a sword and dagger. Now reading over what I wrote, I should say "can't dual wield longswords as a rogue in Dragon Age anymore". Perhaps limiting the dual wielding rogues to daggers makes it easier on animators since introducing a new moveset that includes swords to rogues means more work (that said, some of the melee animations for archer rogues and mages from Dragon Age 2 are conspicuously absent). Or more likely it's the sad product of Bioware progressively pigeonholing the classes into their own specialisations with little room to try out different builds a la DnD. I played Origins as an Elf dual wielding rogue prestiging in Duelist, Bard, and Shadow (since it was the closest thing to a 40K Harlequin I could make) that could dish out amazing damage *and* was next to impossible to kill with conventional attacks.

My bosses had a private word with me today to gauge my interest for a supervisory position at the company. Since I genuinely enjoy working where I do I told them I'd take it up in a heartbeat, though they gave me the caveat that nothing was set in stone, since they had to check in with their bosses to see if payroll can manage it. Still, I was so elated by this development that later that night I accidentally backed into somebody else's Saab in office parking lot.