Gormongous

This. Unless you're managed to get a grant for writing a book, any research that goes more than six months without getting you an article published is an honest-to-goodness waste of your time.

No one else has got the courage to say so, but I laughed fucking hard at this and will be stealing it for the one moment, a decade in the future, when my friends want to watch Spinal Tap.

I think the game looks great, but it badly needs just one more usability pass. The hotkeys are few, unintuitive, and inconsistent -- G opens inventory, Esc doesn't close all windows, etc. You can't select to move to a space behind an ally. I spent two minutes trying, it's just not possible, not even if you click and drag. Why do I have to guess how far I can run with multiple action points? Why aren't the distances displayed faded in tiers? Doorways and corners don't count as cover, just block your line of sight, the rules of which aren't always clear. If a cutscene starts while you're in the middle of a move action -- for example, if guards burst into a room -- your character stops dead and you lose that action point. It's killed my PC at least one. Why does the game keep me in turn-based combat mode when I've killed everyone in the entire stage? It's not as bad now that I have three action points, but it took forever before. Of course, if I'm complaining about the UI and such, it's because I think the game itself is brilliant. Just like with Crusader Kings II, really.

Each speed is an exponential increase on the previous one, except for 5x I think. That one is tied to some physical system spec and just runs as fast as your computer is able, which with some of the event-heavy mods like The Winter King or The Prince & the Thane is barely faster than 4x.

Reminds me of this: Anyway, sorry for both job-losers in this thread. Unemployment sucks, you guys.

Well, weren't they bragging about an always-on patcher and downloader system-on-a-chip that would run in the background and let you play your games right away? I'm not surprised that takes four gigs to run.

Well, the colors represent different types of skills, so different characters are each using their own skills to meet different kinds of crises, with an opportunity cost giving up the ability on the card (except "Launch Scout," fuck that card is worthless), but if it doesn't click with you, it doesn't click. I mean, I love Arkham Horror, but sometimes the theme falls away and I realize it's all just "go to place, pick card, test skill" myself.

I hate to say this, but it sounds like your Cylons just aren't very good at what they do. In the five-player game, which is the best number at which to play, there simply aren't enough skill cards in the players' hands to overcome every obstacle, even if the one or two Cylon players aren't strategically sinking the different votes by adding the wrong skills to the piles. Besides, all the interesting decisions in the game don't come from the game itself, but from how much you can trust the people you're playing with not to be lying to you about whether or not they can help overcome the card using the skills in their hand. If you feel the only threat comes from the deck itself, someone's not doing their job. Plus some of the skill cards are hugely impactful, especially the one that reduces the difficulty by two, the one that forces people to add cards face-up, the one that adds two to a dice roll, and the one that gives another player a double turn in your place. Not to mention all the pilot and repair cards, which are pretty essential at times.

Yeah, I think what ebbs and flows is concern among the EA leadership for public opinion and the subtlety it requires. After the SimCity fiasco, several of the people high up in the EA chain of command made the rounds with some pretty aggressive and cavalier statements, which basically boiled down to "Shut up, it's for your own good and you'll like it once you stop squirming." Eventually, they'll figure the kitchen's too hot and go back to placating gamers again, at least until they see the next chance to make some money with a big ol' fuck-you.

I hate especially how I used to be able to click on "View News" to see what were the changes with which Steam was updating my games, but now it's just a bunch of PCGamer and RPS pieces on how awesome the game I already own is.

I can't recommend the Battlestar Galactica board game enough to a group of good friends. The basic game is nearly flawless with five players and requires absolutely no knowledge of the show or board games. Playing a learning game takes about three hours, but once everyone knows how to do their jobs it's over in under two, screaming matches and fistfights included. It's really nothing like the Game of Thrones board game, which has some pretty heavy strategy in addition to its social elements. I think the issue with Fantasy Flight is that they have a pretty strict release schedule and an unwillingness to start over on designs that aren't working, which means that a lot of their stuff is just slightly underbaked or bloated, if not huge and weird and unplayable like Android. They're fulling capable of making tight and well-designed games (see Battlestar above), but most of the time that's not where their money goes to and comes from.

Life is unfair.

Honestly, I would watch a movie about political intrigue among the petty kings of Ireland in the Middle Ages several times over, no matter what the quality. There are so many amazing stories there, but Hollywood wastes all its time making movies that are all like, "Can one man defeat an entire army to save his homeland, making some surprisingly modern observations about gender discrimination in the process?"

I have to say, it's pretty great having Nick Breckon do voices for a text-heavy game he's just a little too drunk to be playing.

Well, it wasn't my exam. I just proctored and graded it, and then drank heavily when only about two thirds of the hundred and fifty students managed to list countries that had been involved in World War 2 as primary combatants. It's really the professor's fault for spending two weeks spouting Holocaust denial (yes, yes) and only one day about the war itself.

I have to say, so far the tone and feel of the Shadowrun game is about as close as a computer RPG has come to a tabletop RPG. The fact that the writing's really not bad at all makes up for the non-live dialogue, almost. The only thing that really lets me down is the loot chase, which feels more like slotting perks than customizing gear. But it seems like a fair compromise and, as I get more options beyond just "shoot dude," I might not even miss it.

A proper complement of well-upgraded cities will provide half your wealth and most of your ships in the late game, in addition to contributing the vast majority of economic technology points. A rich capital with a a lot of open holdings can be made even richer by building towns there, though of course in the long run you'd probably be better off building castles to hold yourself if your Stewardship is high enough.

Yeah, it just popped up on my Facebook feed. Honestly, I have no response, it's so powerful and arresting to me.

Livejournal for cool people.

I have a Yahoo! account that I still use on occasion, but not for anything useful, because I signed up for it when I was eleven. That means that the account is permanently flagged as "under thirteen" and therefore underage, even though it's been seventeen years and therefore impossible for me to still be underage, even if I'd signed up for the account in the delivery room as I was being born. Yahoo! support just shrugs and tells me it's for my own good. I guess I'm a perma-baby.

I found it very human. I can totally hear this passage in Nick's voice:

Oh man, there we go. Congratulations all around, everyone.

There's also a comment on another Livejournal where a user calls him Nick.

That's a bummer, DMorsing. A outlander baby rarely survives to adulthood, since they have the maluses for a regency and foreignness. It just takes one more bad turn for the entire country to take up arms. Did the throne pass to another relative or is your game ended for good? Also, don't worry about playing on max speed. Most players of Paradox games who I know also do that, in between the years where they have stuff to do. It's not good to have too many goals, anyway.

Meanwhile, the Templars ditched their uniforms when the crusades ended. No wonder they're winning the secret war!