Professor Video Games

Thank you.

I have the sound Deus Ex guards make when being knocked unconscious permanently burned into my brain.

I think just these two.

I just recently picked up both expansions. Hearts of Stone seems very good so far and I'm really excited to get to Blood and Wine. And all the menu improvements are an added bonus. This game is just the best, except for Roach, which is still the worst.

I'll jump back in for the expansion for sure. Will it be time for another Idle Thumbs blind raid? Just looked at my heatmap. Aside from a brief Crota->HoW break, it was basically a solid year of what is for me pretty consistent play. I think at the end there I was trying to grind out materials to get one of the exotic swords and I had a total "fuck this" moment. Nice thing was at that point I had a full year's worth of other games to play

Pretty sure it's not Crossfit itself (well, maybe those pull-ups) but the cult-like mindset it seems to bring out in some people and they become very uh, outspoken about Crossfit being the one path to fitness or whatever.

Look at you guys and your fancy 770's. I'm still rolling with an AMD 6850. Unless some surprise comes along I'll probably pick up a 1070 this fall so I can rejoin the world of PC gaming. Wondering if I should upgrade my CPU as well..it's a i5-2500k, which is apparently still enough to hang in there these days?

Finished Metal Gear Solid: Revengeance. That game is bananas in a lot of great ways. A core mechanic is slicing dudes into many pieces (which you have precision analog control of), pulling out their cyborg-spines, and crushing them in your fist to absorb their spine-juice (refilling your health). Take that mindset and expand it to the rest of the gameplay and story and you get a very fun game aside from when the shitty camera gets in the way. It also doesn't do a good job getting the nuances of the mechanics across...I ended up watching a few videos on youtube to get a better handle on things. I played on Normal and the game is pretty forgiving of button mashing...I think it would be a good game to Get Good at and play through on harder difficulties, but alas I don't really have time for such things when there are Witcher expansions out there.

I dunno man I kinda like how he does a little twirl sometimes when he's turns...

Yeah that's why I don't listen to them all. I just keep an eye on the feed and download ones I'm interested in.

I don't listen to it every week, but The Next Picture Show is a pretty good movie podcast. It's made up of a bunch of ex-Dissolve writers and they take two episodes to look at an older movie and then a new one in relation it. For example the most recent one was Assault on Precinct 13 and Green Room. They have a good range in taste and are all really knowledgeable.

I've heard Crate and Crowbar is pretty good. Anyone listen to that?

Saw this last night. Jesus Christ y'all.

I finished a handful of games recently: Pikmin 3 - It's more Pikmin and that's good. The sound Pikmin make when they die still breaks my heart. I hope they keep making these forever. Puzzle Agent 1 & 2 - Mixed bag puzzle quality-wise, but I really like Graham Annable's art and the Fargo/Twin Peaks inspired story and setting was fun. Dropsy - Adorable. Great art and animation and a totally uplifting. Oh my god when he hugs anything it's just the best (and you can hug EVERYTHING). I did get stuck a few times (the day/night cycle especially led to some frustration) and the low-res images people "speak" in were hard to decode sometimes but not a dealbreaker by any means. Ending spoiler comment: The Unfinished Swan - Lots of cool visuals and it mixes up the gameplay more than I figured but whatever metaphors they were going for kinda fell apart by the end. Not a big deal though because I found it pretty engaging moment to moment and it's not especially long.

You mean most of the time

As a kid the idea of breaking a rule I didn't know about and getting in huge trouble terrified me. Seeing it as an adult, I came away from it thinking the resolution was really weak and the premise paper thin. Also how does the Prime Directive work when you are already openly interacting with a species?

The TF2/CS:GO talk reminded me of this article I saw recently about using gun skins for gambling on GO matches. It contains this fun quote:

Watch the Dark Souls 3 Monster Factory Agree on all counts.

I remember it suffering pretty badly from the same narrative issue GTAIV did. Namely, the main character is strung along by very bad dudes for ages and tricked or manipulated into doing things for them over and over and over. At some point it started to get a bit tedious. The game nailed everything else though (and had a great ending), so I was able to get past it. Looking forward to a sequel.

Yeah I watched for a few minutes a couple days ago and you seemed to be doing a good job talking about what you were doing, but I haven't played Dark Souls and want to eventually so I had to turn it off

The S7 has a micro SD slot doesn't it? I don't think it allows the new "merge SD card and internal memory" thing that Android allows for, but I've read mixed things on that being a good idea. Fixed battery though. I've got an S5. Touchwiz, the Samsung Android reskin, isn't amazing but it's gotten less obtrusive over the years plus with alternate launchers you can mostly avoid it. Like others have said, the ability to customize things really is Android's biggest strength. If this is just general phone talk, a problem I've had is that ever since my phone got updated to Android 5.1.1, it's been plagued with seemingly random crippling slowdowns. Apps will take ages to load, touch input will lag very badly, the keyboard will disappear/reappear, etc. Then for a while things will be fine and snappy. Very frustrating. It doesn't seem like any app is misbehaving and cache clears and device resets haven't solved it. I'm just hoping that the 6.0 update will magically fix things once T-mobile decides to release it (the real joy of Android use ).

Firewatch Announcer Pack for DOTA

I set up a twitch account ages ago to show a game to a friend, but recently I've thought it would be fun to stream while I play whatever it is I'm up to (which would be, like my twitter account, viewed by practically no one). So, with minimal expectations of me following through, here's my twitch account: https://www.twitch.tv/balbinus Will follow the rest of you jokers to see what you're up to at least.

Yeah, something about a Final Fantasy Bro Roadtrip just has me totally intrigued. I can't explain it.

I found the combat kinda clunky. Like, the timing for blocking and attacking had some strange delay to it and I couldn't tell how far away I needed to be for him to actually move in to attack or just stand there. Maybe it's just something you get a feel for over time? I haven't played any of the more recent FF games for what it's worth. I'm not really sure what they were thinking with this demo...the setting from the trailers had me kinda interested, but the maps in this thing are so boring and lifeless. That one in the house was like a shitty old Unreal Tournament map.