Professor Video Games

4 has some cool things going on but it's pretty flawed, as you noticed. MGS3 is what I'd consider the high point of the series (I have yet to play five) and one of my favorite games in general...when you have a chance you should go back and play that one at least.

Not only does "snes" annoy me, but I'll go one level further because I always say "Super Nintendo". Fuck acronyms.

I dunno, I remember her being plenty skeptical about the events involved in his leaving the base and eventual capture. She had interviews from other officers and the Taliban. The last episode was about his first year as a prisoner, and aside from the Taliban guys confirming he tried to escape, there really isn't much to go on besides Bergdal's word, right? I thought it was pretty clear the whole thing was Berdal's take on how things happened and I'm not really sure how she could approach that part much differently.

I hope that Snoke guy turns out to be like three feet tall.

The lack of typos misled me.

Were the uh...players drunk?

Don't feel too bad...if you give her the witcher meds Ninety-Three, I'm not sure what you mean by railroaded. Do you mean that despite your actions or choices, certain things still happen? Because that happens a lot in this game. Geralt isn't always in control of how things go down and doing what seems like the right or good action doesn't always have the intended consequences which I thinks makes things a lot more interesting, personally. You're still very early on. You've basically just finished the tutorial zone (seven hours I know, but the game is very big). I'd say explore Velen some more and go a little deeper into the Bloody Baron questline and see if it clicks at all with you. If not, just chalk it up to the game's storytelling style not working for you and move on to something else.

Agree with what Badfinger says. I think the combat's fine, if not the deepest thing in the world...certainly not button mashy unless you're way overleveled. More importantly, if you don't like the writing and the worldbuilding, then the game just isn't for you. What I, and I think many other people love, is that game world is so well realized and populated with interesting, unique people that I want to learn about and interact with. The roleplaying aspect of this game isn't so much deciding what type of person Geralt is, he's an existing character, not a fallout style blank slate...it's more about things like deciding what information to give people or picking when to be aggressive or back off and then dealing with the consequences of those choices.

Good lord.

Lara Croft Go is on sale on the android/ios app stores for $0.99/$1.99 respectively.

By the way, the mental image I have of Geralt frantically eating a slab of raw meat while fending off a mob of enemies has continued to make me smile throughout this game.

Doubtful, because the kickstarter made it pretty clear it'll be an actual game that secretly is frog fractions 2 and that once it's discovered, the backers will get a copy of the game for free. If it's an ARG that people may or may not be participating in, I think a lot of backers would feel cheated.

Few key elements to combat. First is crowd control. If you get surrounded, you are screwed so always make sure you are on the outside of the group (use roll or dodge). Second thing that will help with that is signs like Aard that knock people back and stun them when you're getting swamped or Yrden to slow them down. That will give you a chance to reposition yourself. Second is to use the parry on human enemies (hit block just as they are attacking). That will stun them and give you a chance to counter. With monsters you usually can't parry and it's best to dodge...there's usually a window of opportunity after they miss (obviously you can use dodge with humans too). In general, don't just spam the attack button...look for times when you have an opening. There's a tutorial entry in the pause menu that has all the dialogues the game has shown you. In game it goes by really fast and you might have missed something. Regarding lore, I think CDPR put out some youtube vids summarizing The Witcher 1 and 2. If you haven't played them (or in my case, forgot everything), they should help bring you up to speed. I'd dig them up for you but I'm at work.

I dunno, I played a lot but I only had one character at the endgame. I've only got so much time, man. Plus, I'm sure plenty people joining post-TTK probably don't have all three classes maxed out yet and there will be a xmas influx too. It's good that this one at least gives you some subclass points because the buff that comes with TTK doesn't (level 25 and no double jump...great). Price is still bonkers though...

For $25 they should be getting me to 40 with completely filled in subclasses and a set of 280-300 gear. What they are offering is pretty damn weak.

There's no level scaling. If you do a lot of side quests then eventually you'll be overlevelled for the main story. Just do whatever you feel like and don't worry about it. My advice would be, outside the starting area, don't worry too much about checking out every single question mark on the map. Just hit ones that are generally on your way to your next quest location. For a bit I was running around trying to get them all, but there are too many and you'll get burned out (plus a lot of them are tied to quests so you'll go there anyway). Second thing would be to not worry about crafting armor/swords except for Witcher gear. If you find random drops that are better than your witcher stuff, that's cool, but it's not worth using resources on anything else. Also, remember to keep any Witcher gear around even if you've found something better because they're needed to craft the next tier of that item. Now I have a question. Does the crossbow ever get good? Is it ever worth putting skill points into?

I've been playing this a lot and it's real good but none of the secondary missions are throwaway garbage so I'm compelled to do it all and there's so, so much of it. I'm trying to bust a backlog here and this game ain't helping. On that note, yesterday I watched a friend of mine play some Assassin's Creed Syndicate, and the side missions I saw were just copy/paste "kidnap or murder a target" in various zones of the map. Some real low effort shit compared to what The Witcher is putting out there.

Three of my most anticipated games of 2016 come out within two weeks of each other. The Witness - January 26 XCOM 2 - February 5 Firewatch - February 9 It's too much. I'm just one man.

Sigh...nobody's perfect. Those essays seem good though, and reading them makes me want to revisit the show even more. They'll have to do I guess...

Have any of the Thumbs seen Deadwood? A Deadwood (Re)watch Cast would be so good. Too bad there's not a reason for a revisit like there was with Twin Peaks, aside from the show's GOAT status of course.

Now this, this I can get behind.

I seriously can't wrap my head around this one. Anyway, hard shell tacos are bad and dumb. Corn tortillas 4ever.

Love this.

Dan knows what he's doing. He knows his insane diet riles people up and leans into it. He's a dietary Heel. I think Alex was hamming it up with his bewilderment while Vinny, on the other hand, was genuinely exasperated but it seemed like his food science knowledge wasn't fresh enough in his brain to articulate why a fast food diet is fucking poison (not that it would have made a difference). I'm only about 5 minutes into the Beastcast, but Austin talking about how Montreal has an imagined rivalry with NYC while NYC doesn't even know they exist had me in stitches. Austin should guest on Idle Thumbs some day...it would be good.

I'm excited to play Psychonauts 2 when it's released in Fall 2020! Seriously thought Psychonauts was pretty great and I'm backing this with gusto.