Merus

Reddit has one of those threads every six months, including women nodding understandingly because we've all been there right ladies and all the men being shocked because they never cared to find out.

Has anyone mentioned talking to the school? Because I reckon the school would be rather interested if a random stranger called them out of the blue and started asking pointed questions about their anti-bullying initiatives. I was bullied at school, but because I'm defective and didn't really respond satisfyingly, my bullies had to either step up or give up. One of my bullies stalked the school all day, and his efforts to make me pay for antagonising him led to the school calling the cops. Another one got her family to throw pig bladders at me while I was riding home from school. The other one I remember did neither, and it took about a month for me to ask my mum what was going on with the guy who kept getting in my way while I was riding to school. She followed me the next day, and once I got past the bully and he was alone, she pounced. He didn't bother me after that.

So i'm getting close to the end of Legend of Korra. It's... it's still not good, guys. I mean, it's not Season 2 bad, but their attempts at reaching for a more mature Avatar series just highlight how completely ill-equipped the writers are at handling it. The Last Airbender worked largely because it evoked the sense that there was more to the show's world, but our core characters were essentially goofy kids in a conflict with very clear sides, so it didn't really matter that their grasp of politics was weak. Legend of Korra doesn't have that shortcut - and the philosophies of the characters are still extremely surface-level, so now everyone just looks like thugs. I have a special bone to pick with Zaheer, who does at least get the chance to have a short conversation about his reasons for doing things. Problem is, he's an anarchist, and the writers clearly intend him to be an anarchist, but the writers write him as a libertarian. Korra's arc is her coming to terms with the use of her power and that rushing in and kicking ass isn't a wise approach, but the treatment of her trauma is so bare-bones it's embarrassing, and it constantly feels like she's there to be the audience for a monologue rather than pushing back or responding to what anyone is telling her. She's an intensely frustrating character - much more than in The Last Airbender, they really enjoy having Korra lose and lose badly, but she keeps losing because she's incompetent, not because she was outgunned or surprised or the enemy got a lucky break, and she never seems to learn from her mistakes. The vibrant worldbuilding and the philosophical differences between cultures from The Last Airbender appears to have swallowed up by the twin evils of a shortened season and globalisation. Airbending's just another colour of attack now. The different cultures appear to have been totally subsumed in two generations, the only trace being set dressing and the political structure. It hasn't escaped my notice that they keep introducing goofy characters because the core cast is so dour and humourless, either - I'm baffled that the people who deftly manage to balance Varrick on the knife edge of goofball/villain/highly competent engineer couldn't spend some time giving their core cast personality. Really disappointing.

Yeah, but part of the problem with GG is they have no interest in forming a coherent narrative, as befits their status as a reactionary mob who can't come right out and say that they don't like women doing things.

The hub areas end up being important for the star puzzles; many of them rely on the existence of other puzzles to solve them. There are puzzles late in the game that get very difficult, and at that point it's most welcome that you can go and do another puzzle and hopefully come back to it fresh. I also think the writing's sharper than Portal - Portal is really unambitious in what it was trying to achieve, and The Talos Principle is reaching a great deal further. I'm relatively satisfied, so far, with how it's coming together. Also how weird is it that this is Croteam, makers of Serious Sams.

This game is so very good. I appreciate that unlike most puzzle games, the very hardest puzzles are challenges not to execute with more pieces, but to break existing puzzles to send them into a state that shouldn't be possible. There's a part in the game where you are on a beautiful, peaceful floating island. There's a castle in the distance, or perhaps a tomb, and to open it you have to solve five tetromino puzzles, at least one of which is quite complex. The game runs on hypothesis forming and testing, but not these tetromino puzzles, and alongside the puzzles is a very conspicuous collectible that plays an audio message from one of the game's characters, towards the end of her life, and it's clear from context that she doesn't have long to live, and nothing she has done will have any meaning unless some post-human intelligence manages to find it and comprehend it. The music is funereal, and the atmosphere is eerie. It is an experience to have your brain fired up, ready to put two and two together, and be deprived of material other than contemplating oblivion, as you carefully try and solve puzzles in order to disturb the... dead? the sleeping? I don't know if this was intentional, that the most depresing audio logs were paired with areas where that's the only thing you can think about, but it worked.

Maybe they are being uploaded to EA's Origin servers, and they will be released once Campo Santo manages to get the ticket picked up by someone competent?

They've settled into a groove where while there are external sources of conflict (burning legion/Lich King/Old Gods) they largely inflame existing tensions. There's a strong thematic element of power and influence being inherently corrupting - the leaders who manage to hold power without being super racist or just straight-up evil are basically saints (and likely also doomed), and almost universally, anyone who covets power will use it for bad ends.

Don't forget people raised in the stew of American-style conservatism who are incapable of seeing those who disagree with them as being humans with good intentions worthy of respect!

I think there's a big difference in tone between Warcraft and Warhammer; in Warhammer, everyone's terrible, and it's a fight between the bad and the worse. In Warcraft, there's a lot more well-intentioned factions, but their intentions lead them catastrophically astray.

I tend to start with theme and build out how the game will work from there, so I doubt a 'roguelike' with me involved is actually going to end up looking much like Rogue, but picking a random episode title gave me The Divine Exodus of Snakes which definitely sounds like a roguelike.

I think it would be grand if the two teams were tuned to be their respective fitness levels, so the Idle Thumbs team are at the game developer/podcaster fitness level, and the professional footballer team are at the level of professional footballers.

I'm interested in joining a team, I have programming chops and can do things in Unity and GameMaker. I can probably stumble along in basically anything else - it might not be pretty but I should be able to get things to react to things.

Gunzerker trees: Gunlust is your morr dakka tree, the idea is that you're constantly swapping guns. Rampage makes your gunzerking longer and more effective. Brawn is a tanking tree.

Her silence might be an indication that she's on holiday in Scotland and making the most of it

I think my final opinion on this is 'yeah but what amateurs announced the name of their product and didn't make sure they had the domain name'. Literally anyone could have had it once the name was announced.

What stats you prioritise depends on what class you pick. If you let me know, I can pull out the book and give you some solid pointers so long as you don't do it in the next 8 or so hours while I'm sleeping. Otherwise someone else will likely beat me to it.

I'm reasonably sure 'if you think that, you've got another thing coming' is an eggcorn; the original phrasing was that you've got another think coming, but that's kind of awkward to actually say.

I think if games handled lore like Failbetter handles Sunless Sea/Fallen London lore, where it's largely there to ensure the writers are being consistent but the players see almost none of it, we'd all be better off. Then again, that's sort of cheating because Failbetter has significantly better writers than almost anyone else. (I'm reminded of all the Sunless Sea interviews where games interviewers ask them how much they were influenced by Lovecraft, and then they say 'a bit' and start talking about Coleridge, Borges and Calvino.)

I know some of the puzzle F2P games I have had an 'unlock all' purchase that locks it at a full version.

Why would you play a digital version of Talisman Play any RPG and every time you have to make a decision, flip a coin, and sabotage yourself if it lands on tails

Well, it's a trout and an apple I hope that answers your question!

I... don't get it? Like, the joke appears to be taking Ghostbusters and turning it into Ray Parker trying to get in your bed, but that's the only joke, if you don't count remixing the iconic riff so that it doesn't have those moments of release as a joke.

The one where he breaks down the Hugo slate and reveals that some of the leading Sad Puppies were two-time losers is incredible. Also, pissing off GRRM was a terrible idea - starting a beef with the world's most prominent science fiction and fantasy author, one with the smarts and the memory to actually address arguments, one who has a deep love and respect for the Hugos, who rarely expresses a negative or even novel opinion, whose wildly popular TV show is returning for a new season this week, and about whom the papers are desperately trying to find anything to write about to address that rabid demand for more Game of Thrones news, was tremendously ill-advised. You could not start a more one-sided beef with an author if you were trying.

Oh yeah, I understand that complaint, but I find that most of those resources matter in terms of quests, which are non-optional if you want to win, and which resources you have easy access to does matter for the kinds of quests you like because of the tight theming. I wish the conversion mechanic wasn't just a straight 'these are worth 1 point, this is worth 0.5 points', especially since what that mechanic actually is doesn't matter in the slightest. Get one of each class, that's 5 points per class. Have the most money, you get 5 points.