sclpls

For the first Firaxis XCOM I ended up not liking the expansion despite the intial excitement because the game ended up feeling very bloated to me, and I rarely felt like investing in the new gadgets was worth the expense over tried and tested strategies. Do you have a sense for whether the game feels rebalanced, or is it just XCOM 2 with more stuff?

It is funny because in theory at least I really like the AR mechanic, but it also feels like a lot of "work" for me to get through these conversations. So I still haven't finished the game because I never feel like I'm in the right head space for it.

It is a bummer that a bunch of HL fans seem to have responded to this by negative review bombing other Valve games. :-(

Another excellent option!

I recommend installing the mod that removes the alien from the game. It made the experience 1000% better for me.

I think Rob just encountered a bug or change in the game state (possibly something to do with the Looking Glass display in Morgan's office?) because my wife is currently playing Prey and there is still the window looking out onto the atrium. I can understand some people being disappointed that there aren't like radically different endings or whatever, but I really like how the ending was handled. Prey presents some ethical questions for you to address, and never insists on what the right answer is. That open-ended questioning was a refreshing contrast from the polemics of a Dishonored or a Bioshock. I like that the game closes out with a recounting of your choices throughout the game, and then closes out with one final choice that you could read a lot of different ways.

I wrote a program in Javascript to solve the Soupstock Lode puzzle. What a good video game.

This game is hilarious. So is the Video Games Hot Dog podcast.

While the AI for the DOTA bot is very impressive, it is worth pointing out that it was just a 1v1 mid matchup with some artificial constraints involved. That being said there are some neat anecdotes about this bot: -The bot eventually learned to exploit a fog-of-war rule that the AI creators were not even aware of. -Arteezy mentioned that in one of his matchups the bot used a strategy that he had only ever seen one player ever use. So the AI has figured out some unusual strategies. It sounds like their goal now is to have a working team of 5 bots by next year. Should be exciting to see the results!

Yeah, Brood by design is cheese (like Techies, etc.). And to clarify I'm not anti-cheese strats existing in Dota, it's an important part of the game! But when cheese closes off the possibility of effective counter-play it makes the game boring. Running Brood mid on Dire and being able to farm the side camps and ancients was a little too strong. Probably just need to nerf some of her talents (which were all really good) or maybe change how spawn spiderlings works. Alternatively as Kyir alluded to maybe we just see some changes to the map and then Brood becomes less abusive, and this is all moot. One of the reasons Dota is in a great state right now is there are many effective methods to rebalance heroes. As a support invisible heroes cause enough problems to your economy. Having two fast moving units with permanent invisibility on the map? Give me a break! I think the wolves should work like the Beastmaster hawks where invisibility is based on not moving instead of not atacking.

Brood, KotL aghs, Lich laning phase, and invisible Lycan wolves are all things I'm hoping get the nerf hammer. Whether or not you consider those things cheese depends on your perspective I suppose, but I think they make the game not very interesting to watch so I hope they are all nerfed.

I'm happy for Kuroky winning even though I wasn't really rooting for Liquid. I do wish the grand finals had been between Liquid and either LGD.FY or VP. I think those would have been more competitive matches. Newbee seemed very ill equipped to deal with the Liquid high pressure style. Next patch should be great though. Time to nerf cheese!

Wow that is amazing, good luck!

I will be so angry if any other team lets Liquid have Kotl again.

Well it's Valve, so they'll either quietly release everything you could possibly want to know about the game 2 weeks before release, or else they will forget that they were working on this game and we'll never hear about it again.

Man, amazing closing match for today! Hope the grand finals are like that!

This is the worst result at TI for NA since I started watching DOTA. Trump's America.

Don't think LGD look that strong compared to some of the other Chinese teams, but dude, do not let Old Eleven play Magnus.

Shout out to Brad Muir. He did what so many others have failed. He left for Valve and actually made a game that is being released. I'm into the idea of a DOTA card game, but obviously we'll see how it actually plays. If it is just a Hearthstone/MtG clone I will lose interest fast.

God I love TI. Thought EG was gonna do some clutch shit in game 2, but instead they're out! Firewatch for the win! Gotta love that this is Reso's 2nd TI where he is just on some underdog team crushing dreams.

On one hand, I'd love to see Secret win the series because I love a good upset, but on the other hand I want Liquid to win because I played a lot of gold Liquid cards!

Reso's Void game was so next level

That ending was incredible. I love the commitment from Newbee to buy back to try and end the game even if they ended up forcing the issue too hard. Luckily Kaka.

Haha fair enough! I feel the same way about Tinker.

I don't think Alch is that strong right now, it was just the right last pick for this game.