Hurlshort

It's cool to be anti-religion, but when you say "outlaw religion" you are handing over control to the government. So yeah, stop being a communist.

I don't understand why so many of you are seeing Star Wars on day 1. You all kind of seem down on it. I mean, I know I will take my kids and have a good time watching lightsaber fights and space battles, but I still don't plan on seeing it until next week some time. What is with the rush towards disappointment?

I've got a major case of base builder's regret in Conan Exiles. Every time I start a new foundation, I find something I don't like about the area I have chosen. My most recent Savannah location is too hot, and my previous northern base was too cold.

What kind of tragedies? I'd be much more worried about the fallout of Trump being removed. How many far right extremists have already committed tragedies while Trump has been in office?

Yeah, I never understood the monopoly AA seems to have on dealing with addiction. It has a terrible success rate.

As gfted1 said, wait for the solids.

2019 in review, nice! I felt like I spent a lot of the year discovering games from previous years and falling in love with them. I am too lazy to give the screenshot tour like Melkathi, but here is a bit of my favorite time sinks from the year: Stellaris: I had this in my library for ages and never got into it, but after binge watching a few seasons of The Expanse, I needed a game to fill the void of space. I sunk 49 hours into it, and I loved that I could play it at home and on breaks at work with cloud saves making it easy to jump computers. Still, my game kind of just petered out eventually. I mean, I had an inside track on conquering the universe, but it was going to be a lot of work. Time well spent though. Elex: Pretty solid RPG with a good open-world to explore. The setting was unique and engaging. Took awhile to get into the gameplay, and it is a bit rough around the edges, but I look forward to future games from them. The Witcher 2: I'm not sure why it took me so long to get into this, but I finally got past the awkward love scenes and embraced the gravelly voiced protagonist. I ended up with a solid 30 hour play-through. Maybe next year I will commit to the 3rd game. I own it, but I am afraid of commitment, just like Geralt. Vigilantes: This was actually a solid little Jagged Alliance style game with a story taken from Punisher. I ended up with a dozen hours. It really is a lot like the original Jagged Alliance, and it was fun. Star Control Origins: Silly and fun, just like the original. Avernum: I had this game in my library for over a decade, and then suddenly I got hooked on it while road tripping with my little laptop. I ended up with 70 hours or so in it. It was a solid RPG once I got over the lack of graphics. Conan Exiles: Ok, this was the big one of the year. This is simply the best game I think I've played since I was hooked on Neverwinter Night. First off, they nailed the setting that Robert E. Howard created nearly 80 years ago. It is dripping with atmosphere straight from his stories and captures the best parts of the movies. Throw an amazing survival and crafting game on top of that, and you get a game I can't resist. Funcom has also consistently rolled out new content and there is an amazing amount of mod support. It's fantastic. The Outer Worlds: I was spoiled this year by these world building devs. The Outer Worlds is easily the best story I played through. Great RPG and I can't wait for more in the universe. Battle Brothers: I don't know how I missed this gem. I was looking for a mercenary game like JA2, and I found it in a medieval setting. The strange graphic style put me off originally, but that was dumb, because it turned out to be excellent. I sunk a ton of hours into this game recently.

Yeah, the seed looking stuff is pretty weird. You will never look at fancy mustard the same way again.

Santa Plissken needs to happen.

I'm hooked on Conan Exiles again. I started a new game with a mod called Age of Calamitous. I'm not big on the lore aspect, but I like the new crafting options and speed of play.

Congrats!

Eh, every time I write Sandler off, he pulls off some fantastically entertaining movie. Don't get me wrong, he's got a lot of hot garbage, but Murder Mystery was great. Honestly though he gets a free pass for life because he made Happy Gilmore.

Clearly a live-action Wreck it Ralph. My kids loved Pixels. They would watch it over and over again. Eventually I warmed up to it.

This President Trump versus a 16-year old girl stuff is soooooo weird.

Huh, I've found it pretty easy to disable messages on Win10 as they pop up. I get way more on my phone and watch. Yes, I would like the occasional local sports team update while cycling, but no, I don't need to know when teams exchange 5th round draft picks.

My key to success is to just let her have her way whenever possible. As to raising the boy, so far it's a lot less complicated than the girl. We just grunt at each other and go out for burgers every once in awhile.

Huh, didn't feel like a bad year, but I suppose I just didn't get to a few of 2018's titles until 2019. IGN did leave a couple good ones off the list. Surprised Greedfall missed the cut.

Yesterday I needed to go pick up my RV about 30 miles away. I had dropped it off to a renter on Friday and biked home, and it was a very nice ride filled with fall colors and a good breeze. But Sunday was supposed to be rainy and I kept hemming and hawing about taking the easy way and just having my wife drive me. But the sun came out around lunch time, so I decided to jump on my bike and go for it. The first 10 miles went great, with just a light shower of rain. Then I hit the mountain. Did I mention there is a mountain to climb on this ride? It's about 2500 feet over a 4 mile stretch. The first two miles are paved, so that was fine, but the last two miles are just packed base rock. The tricky part is to keep your momentum going and stay in the saddle, because once you lose traction, you are going to end up walking. It got even trickier on the last half mile where they had put down a new layer of gravel. It felt like I was riding on two flat tires. So I made it to the top with some effort, and I'm now 15 miles and an hour into the ride. The next part is a steep downhill, which I knew would be tricky in the conditions. So far it had been fairly dry, but as soon as I set off on the downhill, the heavens opened up. I got drenched. I was riding my brakes, shivering, barely able to see, all the way down the mountain. I pulled over at a small market at the bottom and tried to compose myself under an awning. I couldn't stop shaking. I had to actually take off gloves and wring out the water. I called my wife and briefly contemplated giving up. I was now only 10 miles from my destination, but the rain did not seem to be letting up. Finally the shivering subsided, and I decided to try and get through it. I put away my cycling glasses, put back on my wet gloves, and started pedaling. Eventually the rain let up a bit. I was still cold and uncomfortable, but the wind was helping me along a bit, and the last 10 miles went by fairly quick. I made it to the RV, dried myself off, and made it home safely.

What a perverse attempt at humor. It's not a competition.

I'm right there with you. I mean, I have a lot of other games on the stove right now anyways, so it's going to be alright to wait. These types of games need polish. I remember the JA2 demo came out like a year before the game, and I played it to death, bit Sir-Tech kept pushing back the due date to make sure the game was ready.

Fascinating, so you can have more than two parties in a government. Next your going to tell me something silly like they provide reasonable health care to the population.

I already bought it GD.

How many games are really designed to be finished, though? Sports games and online shooters might have a campaign, but it is secondary to the main reason people buy them.

So really you are saying Dem voters are more loyal to the party than the individual.

I don't know about that. Al Franken was a very popular democrat and ended up stepping away after a fairly minor controversy. John Edwards disappeared off the face of the planet after his election fund controversy. It seems like there are less democrat examples, for sure. I'm not sure why that would count against them.