Badfinger

The whole wheat crust got a little blackened because we tried to cook both at once and so one was closer to the heat element. Anyone who has interest in making cheese ever, I highly recommend this kit. It has enough ingredients to make 35-40 pounds of mozzarella cheese, and drop dead simple instructions. I have 80% of the kit left and already made a bunch. Whenever I mention it to people, they assume it takes hours to make cheese and it's like 45 minutes tops.

You're not the boss of me and you don't make the rules! At the same time, you're not making your own cheese? Psh, what a rube! This post is sponsored by the Razzing Cordeos Committee. We happened to make pizza for Valentine's Day.

This is my time to step in and PSA everyone to remind you not to preorder games, like I have done. I think this game is gonna be the bees knees for me personally, but I thought that about SimCity too the last time I was this enthralled by a beta.

It's a loot-driven solo/squad based RPG shooter. There are group missions (think WoW dungeons), side missions, and other incidental world content in Manhattan at large. You get better levels, unlock new abilities and perks, and your guns and gear become a more favorable loot color what to do the shootin' with. The Dark Zone isn't specifically a PVP arena. Think of it like (again, WoW) a WoW Contested zone. You could help the opposite faction kill those ogres if you wanted, or you could kill the other faction because you are a Rude Dude. My understanding is that besides the NPCs roaming around in the DZ that are basically elites, there will also be story missions or at least quests that you'll eventually need to do in there. I feel like I get off track trying to describe this stuff: It has both a Dark Souls and DayZ vibe, but the lite version. You can be attacked at any point in the zone, and you can lose progress both in the form of gear not secured and you'll lose DZ EXP and Dark Zone currency. The Dark Zone has a Diablo Paragon sort of thing where your Dark Zone level is different from your "normal" level. There are gear restrictions, and at least at the outset it looks like most of the best gear is going to come from the Dark Zone. The RPG elements are very Borderlands. I cannot stress enough that this is a loot shooter. A better gun will make the numbers go up. This isn't Rainbow Six. I'm under the impression that there are going to be raid-type encounters based on hints that have been dropped, but nothing is confirmed. Dinosaurssssssssssss I am the exact opposite from you - M/Kb is the way to go for me. I wouldn't even consider playing this on controller on a PC. I'm way into this. I'm actually setting aside some time to play it at release, which is something I've never really done for a game before. I think the DayZ draw is the biggest. If you've never played DayZ, the very tense moment where you're 20 seconds from loot extraction but there are other guys around is exactly the dayZ vibe, but without losing literally hours of progress if you die and starting from nothing.

We made a baked egg with leftover naan for breakfast on Sunday. Very, very delicious. I usually have greek yogurt with fruit on weekdays. I honestly cannot fathom skipping breakfast, it's so important.

Whoops I haven't been around much this weekend, but the beta is running for about another 12 hours from this post if anyone wants to at least see what the commotion is about.

I thought about that as well, and then my brain immediately countered that none of those people were really characters so much as cameras into the vignettes Infinity Ward wanted to tell. Very effective, and something that's not used frequently in games, but not really character storytelling.

God I hope not. Games with zombies are played by me in spite of their inclusion.

Wanna weigh in one last time to be clear that my contention with the podcast isn't if someone liked or disliked the game. A hypothetical scenario- it's early April, an incredible patch has come out that resolves all the bugs, people are playing Ironman with no glitches, this podcast happens and people don't like it? Hey, disagreeing with critical consensus is some of the best podcasting. My frustration is rooted in things that are just objective inaccuracies in discussion that got brushed over and never really countered. Everyone's experience is different, but my base of knowledge seemed extremely different from the panel's just from watching a preview video or two in late January, and 5-6 hours of game time as of the podcast. That can absolutely be leveled as a criticism of the game, but it makes the podcast sound half baked. I'd love a return to the topic sometime in the future and see if opinion have changed, or if they've dug in and solidified. That would actually be a little exciting, because I rarely have as much hands-on experience with the games on the podcast as the panelists.

The hell are you all talking about!

The sectoids I've experienced appear to prioritize in this fashion: 1) Reanimate corpses 2) psionically affect your troops 3a) Movement 3b) Fire on your troops They've kind of become second priority for me in the early game. Make sure a trooper is dead to be reanimated, and then be in position to kill the sectoid before the zombie can cause any disruption to the battle lines. The very early game a single grenade will kill the stock trooper, so that's a strong opener. Worth losing loot to not lose soldiers. I'm curious if the sectoids have different priorities on different difficulties. I'm only playing on Veteran.

Yeah I kinda feel like the casual description of what he knows sells him a bit short. "Oh I studied Astronomy in undergrad" is wildly different from "I have an astronomical physics degree and a masters in Computational Physics and was pursuing my PhD in small heavenly bodies in the solar system." Correct me if I'm wrong, I also don't think anyone at any point in the series has said what "delta vee" actually is? Knowing that it's change in velocity and what it means is the ability to alter trajectories is a fairly big key in following all the kerballing.

My ~Hot Take~ is while it's wildly competent and informative, that was not a very good Project BEAST episode. I didn't laugh very much and no floors were swept.

Circling back around, I didn't really say anything about XCOM 2 when I commented. My comment is that I think XCOM 2 is a fantastic game that is absolutely hamstrung by its weird technical hitches. I am a player that will often get into analysis paralysis, and that was very true with XCOM. I was sometimes scared to go to that big ol' spinny globe and let the world rotate, because the only shit that would happen felt like bad shit that was going to make countries leave or get my soldiers killed. I think the game's absolute best strategy decision was its setting. Building up a guerrilla resistance to overthrow a hugely powerful foe works so much better for me than the strongest powers in the world collapsing against the weight of an invasion. I love the little poke at its own predecessor that you lost XCOM 1, contrary to panel belief. This game has invoked a one more turn mentality on the world map that I absolutely could not have predicted before purchase. This will sound weird, but I have gotten into a rhythm where I have nightly rage quits playing the game, and I mean that as a compliment. I am tired enough that I know I should go to bed, but I throw the dice one more time that I can get the next bit of research done before ADVENT strikes back. Inevitably, they do, and I roll in and tactically screw up badly enough that I get people killed. I throw up my hands, yell fuck it, and Alt-F4 because the game is still hard enough that you need to be invested in the tactical turns. It is my fault I screwed up, but the game makes me want to keep playing past the point I'm capable of playing well. The biggest flaws in the game are all technical. It's not that I don't want to do a retaliation mission, it's that I don't want to have a 90 second load and then have Bradford just SCREAM at me on turn 2 because someone got shot. The game badly needs a patch, and it does not get a pass for being weirdly filled with glitches and bugs. It is good enough to shine right through them, though. I willingly boot up the game to play even though I know that hitting the caps lock key cuts off 45 seconds of skyranger end of mission. I installed a mod that makes the turns 50% faster, and it makes Bradford shut up. It's a quality of life improvement that I shouldn't have needed, but at the same time the designers knew people would come up with stuff they'd never even think of. I'm excited to find that stuff when I get past needing the technical stuff. XCOM 2 is not a bad game. It's, in spite of itself, a great game that I hope gets even better when they fix the damn thing.

yeah it's shadows.

This mod has measurably improved my feelings about the game, which I already really liked. Central did not whine at me a single time on my most recent retaliation mission. Armor patterns look significantly cooler on predator armor. It's noticeable.

Lil' pile of rocks on top of the boulder pile in the mid-ground on the right. OMG A MOD THAT ELIMINATES PAUSES AND MAKES BRADFORD SHUT UP Stop Wasting My Time

Audio's good here. I'm a few minutes in. The argument being made that XCOM EU was some sort of paragon of identifiable strategic goals compared to XCOM 2 being a spaghetti mess is, not to be too hyperbolic, a hilarious heap of rose-tinted bullshit. XCOM: EU didn't encourage experimentation and learning about the strategy layer, it demanded you know its systems or you would fail. It demanded multiple restarts from the average player to figure their base out. I'd put myself in that bucket, average at very best. It compounded that by not letting you pull through by being a brilliant tactician. You could perform flawlessly on missions, but if you didn't have your base figured out you'd lose as the planet started abandoning you. However, once you knew how the strategic layer worked, if you started getting good dice rolls on your missions you were set. I don't yet know if XCOM 2 will allow you to win by sheer force of tactical expertise, but so far I've managed to bumble through what feels like an awful lot more of the game strategically because I'm winning a guerilla ground war. I love XCOM: EU, but the assertion that it onboarded you into understanding the strategic layer smoothly is the literal opposite of the experiences of me, everyone I know, and basically everyone online whose voices I heard who got their hands on the game. It was brutal because you didn't only have to play the game well, you had to play it RIGHT.

How many chips? I don't know when to ascend. I've never clickered cookies before.

I think they offhandedly said like 2 weeks? Maybe 2 weeks in that particular orbit.

Just listened to the 1st person/3rd person/strafe/look/mouselook discussion. Arma bridges the gap between moving/aiming/looking. It has a toggle to free your look without changing your direction or aim. It's not super surprising that Arma has something like that, because it's one of the most mechanically complicated 1st/3rd person sims, but I imagine it's a bear to implement and it does not make things easier to grasp. I have to imagine it's nearly impossible to do with a controller as well.

After about 30 hours of this, I now have a much better understanding of what the people who fell off of The Witcher felt like. The mechanics are immaculate, and I have less than no interest in carrying on with the story. I think I'm done with the game, and the metal gear killed it for me.

I tweeted this, but to expound in more than 140 characters, even if you are thoroughly familiar with the XCOM mechanics I 100% endorse playing the tutorial mission at some point. There is an awesome story beat that made my eyes bug out when I found out. Funny enough, it is much more strategically valuable from a gameplay standpoint to skip the tutorial. It's so worth it to see that stuff though, and would have cleared up a lot of Nick's confusion (probably, it's Nick).

Yep. Tygan's specifically don't bother me because they're short enough and generic enough that I can ignore the fact that everything is SO SCIENCEY, but I can 100% understand how they would.

Speaking of that, is there a way to reduce the amount that Central scolds you on terror missions? It's set up so that at least one dies every turn. Between the tuning issues of waiting too long between turns and the way he nags you almost every turn that IT'S A MASSACRE OUT THERE I am annoyed enough to just let them die.