Hurlshort

Trip Report! I took the family to NYC this last week. It was the first time for all of us. My wife just turned 50, and my daughter is going off to college in the fall, so I figured this was a good reason to celebrate with a pretty big trip. It was a stretch financially, but I did my best to make it a special trip. Here are some highlights: Skating in Central Park: We actually packed our ice skates for this trip. An entire suitcase was dedicated to bringing our hockey skates across the country. It was worth it. We got out on the Central Park rink and it was beautiful. The hole park is amazing and I ran through it every day, despite the temperature feeling like it was in the low single digits. Skating with my wife and kids was my favorite moment. Dungeons and Dragons 20-sided Tavern: This was a fun improv show a bit off broadway. It was interactive. You chose whether you were a warrior, rogue, or wizard, and then you used your phone to vote on decisions for the party. My son really enjoyed this one. They were amazing at improv. The Great Gatsby: I'm actually going to talk about the show on a separate thread, since it affected me more dramatically than anything else I've ever watched. But needless to say, the whole family enjoyed it and it was a perfect Broadway show. We stepped out of the matinee show and it was snowing in Manhattan, so it was a pretty magical moment. I still feel like I barely scratched the surface of what Manhattan has to offer. We went to the Bone Museum in Brooklyn, we took the Subway, we visited the 9/11 Memorial. I ate bagels every day. But there was a lot I didn't get to. Hopefully someday we will take another shot at it. Maybe when the weather is better too.

Do we deserve it? PoE 2 sold less than the original. We did this to ourselves.

The combat in Avowed seems greatly improved from Outer Worlds.

It's not like WoW, although I wouldn't say it is as developed as Dishonored. You can sneak around, and you have a silent ability takedown.

I disagree. K:CD2 and Avowed are tremendously different types of games. Sure, they are both RPG's, but that's about it. One goes for historical accuracy and tries to recreate a living breathing medieval world. You aren't a super soldier, your just the son of a blacksmith who can't hold his liquor and has lucked into some nobility. It relies on minigames and precise combat controls. Avowed is high fantasy set in a fairly alien world. It's weird and otherworldly. The combat revolves around fantastical powers. I don't know how that runs counter to the first 2 games. You were literally tangling with gods in the games. Avowed compares more to Skyrim in that regard, even though I dislike those comparisons as well. I can see what you are saying if you feel Avowed lacks the complexity of K:CD. On its surface, it does seem to be a simpler game when it comes to mechanics and extra stuff. I feel like Obsidian has made a concentrated effort to not overextend itself. I haven't played enough to see if there is more to it. It has cooking and crafting, but it isn't as crazy as other games. Anyways, I love that we have both of those games on the market. They are both great and play very differently.

I made my character pretty light on the shroominess. You can also choose to hide it, but for purposes of the story, people need to be able to tell you are godlike. I'm sure a few people will be turned off by it. But there's also dumb people turned off by a pronoun option, so you can't please everyone.

Avowed - It's fantastic. It looks great. The intro area is really well done. I just reached the first city.

The fact the forum is still running and hasn't crashed means it is doing better than previous releases.

I haven't played a ton, but there is a super easy combat mode that you can set separate of the puzzles. So you can set the puzzles to regular or hard, but breeze through the stealth and combat stuff. So it might be worth a try.

Nice. I'm taking the family to NYC next week for the first time ever. We are staying in the theater district and catching some shows. Glad to hear you are doing well.

Ok, the Indiana Jones game is pretty dang good. Is this the rebirth of adventure games? I know there is some action, but really the best part is the puzzles and exploring. It might be time to re-launch Dr. Brain.

Woke go broke is such a dumb movement. They love to cherry pick the games that do badly while ignoring all of the massive hits. Dragon Age clearly had unrealistic sales expectations. It was a long dormant IP that had little buzz around it. The expectation seems to be that it needed to compete with BG3, when the reality is it is closer to the Divinity series. I'd guess the sales of DA:V were probably close to the first Original Sin game. But Bioware was already pretty much dead before this game came out. It had nothing to do with politics. They messed up Andromeda and Anthem and now they've ended Dragon Age. It sucks. Make sure y'all go buy Avowed.

I decided it was time to set aside my Battle Brothers play through and get ready for Avowed. So I re-upped my Gamepass account for $11.99. Then I splurged on the $25 pre-order so I can play it in a few days. It was still a lot cheaper that the $70-90 on Steam. But now that I have the Gamepass, I'm thinking I might give Indy a try. I downloaded the massive game overnight, so we'll see if I have any time to play it before Avowed drops.

For the first time in about 12 years, I don't actually owe money in taxes. This is a huge relief. Buying a house made a massive dent in what I can deduct. Sure, it means I paid like $50k in interest, but it is still better than throwing away money on rent.

I'm no legal expert, but I'm guessing the pardon won't protect against all the lawsuits that will be filed by all the people his made up agency is targeting. There will be plenty of judges and lawyers happy to go after him civilly. Which considering how fragile his ego is, might create some tragically comic moments.

This Elon Musk stuff is so weird. I wonder if he will be as good in court as Teflon Don.

New trailer for one of my favorite games. It's come a long way.

It was fun to restore a brewery and get a decent bar going in the game, but my only customers were goblins, so I got bored of it pretty quickly.

I enjoyed American Primeval quite a bit. Reminded me of Revenant in that it really depicted the brutality of life on the frontier and how difficult the elements were. One of the actors remarked that they shot on site and the weather did 90% of the work, because they didn't have to act miserable. While not super historically accurate, it shone light on an interesting time in history. One that I'm sure the Morman church would rather we all forget.

Battle Brothers is the way.

I had no interest in watching American Primeval until I read the Morman church called it dangerously misleading. Now I am dying to watch it.

I love GoG and prefer it for purchases, but Galaxy still sucks for me. I mean it works, but it has some weird updating error that never seems to get fixed. It's also just not that easy to navigate. But I still use it for a couple reasons: 1. I love the preservation of classic titles 2. My son has taken over my Steam account.

I've watched a few movies recently. American Underdog - The Kurt Warner story. This story is actually one of the most fascinating in sports, so the fact they turned it into a fairly average hallmark movie is disappointing. Is it a football flick? A romance? A christian movie? Kurt Warner is pretty one dimensional and Zach Levi plays him as such, so I think they needed to go broader to make this a better movie. Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent - Sooo good. Nic Cage plays himself as an unreliable narrator and it breaks a bunch of rules. Very absurd and fun. Back in Action - Cameron Diaz and Jaime Foxx had a lot of chemistry in this action flick. Two former spies deal with their teenagers. The teenage issues were extremely well written. As parents of two teenagers, I felt like the writers had taken notes on our daily stuggles. It was fun and set up well for a sequel. The kids outacted Cameron Diaz, but it doesn't matter. It was fun to see her back in action.