majestic

Ah, okay. Didn't know the EGS servers died when GTA V was free. I mean I got myself the game, but I have no intention of playing it. The GTA I loved died with 3.

Fits with your commie YouTube suggestions, comrade. Anyway, I feel slightely cheated, not sure if Amazon or the publisher is to blame but I've read three of the four The Old Republic books now but the fourth - Annihilation - is not available for Kindle as a single book, only as part of a four book collection that I don't need because I already have the others. The hell?

Speaking of NZ and Schlongs... xD

Seconded!

I found that the one thing that works consitently with virtually every encounter were alchemical bombs. Ranged touch attacks with a high rate of fire, switchable damage type, not subject to spell resistance and the way flanking works in the game just makes every tough encounter tame. It was extra fun during the time when the game had the bug that restored bomb charges whenever you saved the game, but it works well enough without. I too would have gotten stuck somewhere having opened a door with an enemy behind that my entire party could only potentially hit on natural 20ies, with spell resistance through the roof if I hadn't - purely by chance - taken Jubilost with me. Jubilost got all the tough kills. It's hilarious.

I'm basing this squarely on the average download speed I'm getting. And that is always the maximum possible speed (or very close to) for EGS and Origin while Steam is middling around and GOG varies wildly but is on the slower side. The EGS launcher isn't the best, that's true. The only feature I'd like is achievement support. While I generally am of the opinion that achievements shouldn't replace content I think they're nice to have. I probably would not have 250 hours played on Dead Cells if it weren't for all the "legendary" and "epic" achievements that tell me that the average player sucks. Apparently REALLY sucks.

EGS has easily the best download servers of all the storefronts. Followed closely by... EA. Dead last is GOG. Unless you meant something else. Haven't played the the same or much of Total War outside of TW: Rome.

Wow, the forum software just ate my 10000 word essay on how I can understand why The Inner Light and Darmok were left off Mike and Rich's respective lists. Sigh. Not going to type it up again, but I argued that The Inner Light was a great episode but "merely" an interesting sci-fi story that could have happened in any other sci-fi show as well and that Darmok has a premise that is too similar (even if executed in a wildly different manner) to Arena and that the popcultural impact of Arena far exceeds that of Darmok. TNG's Arena would be Best of Both Worlds. So, anyway. No mention of Schisms, The Chase or Frame of Mind. I'd put one or two of those on the list. edit: I think Mike's approach to creating the list based on episodes he looks forward to the most during a rewatch is sound. Might be a fun exercise. There, called it! Sort of.

I was involved in guild drama situations in both WoW and SWTOR. In WoW it simply was not possible to replace or remove the sub par DPS that was directly and identifiably at fault for not being able to beat heroic Ragnaros and in SWTOR, we had my usual healing partner gone for the first six weeks of the Dread Palace release. That further complicated things by having one of our regular DPS shift to healing. That he was a better DPS than healer which just exacerbated the problem. Less healing than usual and less DPS, and we were always a bit DPS challenged to begin with. We also had a benched tank sowing discontent. He was arguably a better player than our second tank but he had, let's say, lapses of concentration that caused too many wipes, and having two Assassin tanks wasn't great setup wise either. The WoW guild tried to solve the problem by benching me and adding another DPS. Which resulted in them still not being able to field enough area of effect DPS for the fight and suddenly not having enough healing. They even moved the entire guild to a different realm to be able to recruit from a different pool of players, but not even that worked. I can't work if you need to carry dead weight that just happens to be the Shadow Priest's significant other and he won't play without her on the roster, and the raid leader won't play without the Shadow because he's good (and playing a ridiculously overpowered FotM spec). They even let her have the legendary staff while the mage on the raid cried in the corner. Because, why NOT roll the dice for the quest? Right? The SWTOR guild drama involved the second raid of the guild and someone who accidentially made the wrong person an officer who in turn promptly made screenshots of the officer chat where they were discussing dissolving the second raid group. To be fair to the officers, they did kind of suck. To be fair to the drama queens that caused the drama then, our guild leader really was a Wipe Club* level arsehat at times. Oh, and yeah, it didn't help at all that he was one of the underperforming DPS of the main raid. Which in turn caused our actual DPS to leave and everything to fall apart rather quickly. *And for everyone who doesn't know Wipe Club, well, have a look: Language warning. Throw more dots. MORE DOTS!

I quit my addiction to MMOs cold turkey after an epiphany (read: guild drama so bad it makes me physically ill to even think of entering multiplayer with any form of required interaction with other players). It feels good, it gives you more free time, but I still don't play more - or replay any even though try I might. I'm not sure why, but at least my Kindle is getting more use. Here's to hoping Wasteland 3 will be interesting. And with me having refused to participate in any prior playing even though I was eligible I'm still hoping they dropped the requirement of a master's degree in character building from the game. People said AD&D 2nd edition was confusing. Try WL2. Sheesh.

Joe originally wanted to post his entire Witcher analysis as one single video. It broke YouTube. So now it's three parts, and each one longer than the one before. So, guessing, the third one's gonna clock in at at least 6 hours. edit: Goes without saying and at the risk of sounding like a shilll: His videos are lengthy but well worth it. Might not always agree with him but he definitely knows what he's talking about. edit 2: Also, in REALLY random news I just got my Wasteland 3 CE box. The game won't be out for two more weeks though, so not sure what's up there. This is a first for inXile, the last batch of CEs were delayed a bunch. I mean, yeah, the entirety of Tides of Numenera was delayed, but the delivery of the goods even more so. Oh, yeah, and just like with everyone else the box was shipped without any prior notification. At least SOMETHING went wrong, would have been weird otherwise. What's next, a bug free Obsidian release? Hehe. I'm kind of wanting to open it to see if the key already works but who opens CEs?

That sounds familiar. Oh, right, one of the last games I backed on Kickstarter. It seems I chose a Steam key though, why would I do that? Or was that the only option at the time? Hmmm.

Play roguelikes (or roguelites). That way remembering things isn't in the way. But I can empathize. I too seldom find games to come with a lot of replay value, even if they have (seemingly) a lot of choices and appropriate consequences. Remembering a lot of details doesn't help either, sure. Did you know that Fael in Baldur's Gate 2 has 40 copies of History of the Zhentarim in stock? Heh.

Beans are nice insofar as they have complex carbohdydrates and a lot of protein. They're a good substitute for meat, but they're generally not low carb. I used to consume a lot more carbs than I do these days. Nowadays I prepare dinner with a kitchen scale. 50 grams of whole grain bread, a hundred grams of protein (usually some lean ham) and whatever fresh vegetables I have at hand and pickles if I have none. The idea of having twice as much ham (or any other sort of cold cut or sausage) than bread in my sandwiches was ludicrous at first. It gets easier... in time. As will having less rice. *nods sagely*

20XX was free on Epic (I think last week) so I went and checked it out. A Mega Man roguelite seemed too good to pass up, although initially I wondered how and why they could get away with such a blatant rip off. Yeah, I guess they got away with it because it plays like arse. Them jump controls are awkward. Press A, jump, so far so good, but it just feels wrong. Pity. Back to Dead Cells then.

Isn't that four letters? I mean you ARE talking about Majestiy, right?

Wow, my brain hurts from reading that thread on the GOG forums. Seems like there are two issues: First that this is a giveaway where Linux users miss out on wallpaper artwork (!) due to not having the Galaxy client even as an option. I'm sure Keyrock and the other guy on the planet who is exclusively playing on Linux will be fine with that. And if not, they can voice their protest by not buying from GOG. I'm suspecting building and maintaining a Linux version of Galaxy might cost more than the expected increase in sales or usage will rake in. The other one is sharing your stats on social media. Which I get, and is the reason why I am not participating. If nobody participates then promotions like those will go away on their own. I'm sure a hell not sharing my GOG stats with the world, then everyone would see the thousands of hours I've put into Master of Orion 3. Talk about embarrassing. There's a third ridiculous complaint that I see all the time when it comes to development. People who say that they should not spend their time making silly promotions but rather finish Cyberpunk. Yeah, sure. Because CDPR's game developers double as marketing team, right? Sigh. edit: And before someone from PETL (People for the Ethical Treatment of Linux :p) comes around and berate me for passive-agressive penguin hate - I've been an avid Linux user for longer than most. It's kind of a requirement in my line of work, although it's been a while now, I just never bothered playing games on it. Except Tux Racer.

Was freey available for a while as a pick me up in Nazi Germany. Seems like a good idea.

Out of curiosity, did you watch A Night In Sickbay and if so, what did you think of it?

Played a bit with the new Dead Cells patch. I see potential in stacking bleeding sources. I just trashed 1.9 Giant with a Blood Sword, a Cleaver and Open Wounds. He only got two attacks off before dying. The only time I saw Giant die that quickly was with a Networking setup specifically tailored to kill him. Promptly skipped to the Throne Room to properly die to Hand of the King, of course, but I think I have a new favorite build.

Oh, the sound is still there. Just a lot... and really, A LOT less than it was at launch. Smugglers and Agents where essentially laughing maniacs depending on their specs. Scoundrels and Operatives were also capable of stunlock/instagibbing anyone regardless of tankiness from stealth while giggling like that. People complained. A lot. And so Bioware toned down the laughter and nerfed the stealth burst, removing the one thing that melee Smugglers/Agents excelled at, leaving them playing healers or bringing their team down in PVP for a long while. Well, for as long as I played., not sure how the balancing is right now. edit: The melee spec of the class was pretty useless in PVP outside of the stealth stun/burst, and that had a cooldown of two minutes. They never recovered from that nerf in the years that I played. Bioware managed to fix the class for PVE though - as much as you can fix a melee spec in a world of MMOs where every boss encounter seems to have been designed with the prime goal to make melees as useless and difficult to play as possible in mind. If it weren't for Bloodthirst we'd have gladly dropped our Marauder. Nice guy, sure, decent player even, but eh. Yeah...

To be fair, they also removed the Agent's laughter. Well, or toned it down, really. But it was fun in the beginning when every procc caused the sound effect for everyone around you.

I'm curious how it will continue. I expect Inner Light and Darmok having prominent placements on both lists. Can't have a TNG best of without them, right? I have to admit that I've seen Inner Light so often that I'm almost tempted to skip it whenever it comes up at a rewatch. Used to be that whenever I caught an episode of TNG on TV, it was... Inner Light. The Drumhead and Measure of a Man was already there, also Best of Both Worlds. Hm. I'm almost expecting Mike to troll Rich and put Sub Rosa on the list. edit: I'm curious if one of them has Schisms on their list. I love that episode, probably a bit more than it deserves, but the first time I watched it as a kid it was creepy as hell.

I just found it extremely hilarious when you meet the Jedi that are hunting you as a LS Sith Warrior and you can basically tell them that revenge isn't the Jedi way, then they look dumbfounded and start arguing with each other. Had me rolling on the floor for a bit. That and one piece of voice acting from my Imperial Agent on Taris. My agent was someone who was very much pro Empire but, let's say, sceptical of the Sith, the story starts out with the Sith silliness almost ruining your very first assignment after all, and you'll meet a guano-insane one on Taris who talks about fire and her children - meaning the Rakghouls. One of the reply options to this is "You're insane!", and I of course clicked on it, and the IA says in his incredibly awesome voice in an absolute deadpan: You really are Sith, aren't you?

Like the others said, Imperial Agent is really good. Sith Warrior is a lot of fun if played light side. Stay away from the Consular and Bounty Hunter for the moment. They're among the weaker ones.