Badfinger

They stressed in pre-release marketing that they were trying to spice up the game by making experienced players play with the hand they're dealt rather than optimizing a build path, and I appreciate that in many aspects they appear to have made good on that. You can't always have acid grenades, dragon rounds, and 10 supply soldiers.

I don't know who that person is, so I'm not entirely sure why I should be excited. I was excited because of Drew and Simulators.

I definitely saved up my pennies and bought a genesis with "my" money, but I don't actually remember if I had a game in mind that made me get it. I got sonic and I played an awful lot of sports games. It was totally worth the decision, although to this day I've never played more than a tiny bit of Mario World and my gaming life probably suffers for that.

My first game I started basically in Capetown, South Africa. This new game I started in Mexico. I knew that it will randomize that, but I'm still a little surprised and quite pleased with how that changes your build up phase experience. People managed to play hundreds of hours of unmodded EU so I never doubted that the game would have legs, but I suspect this will go even further.

I decided to restart using our collective knowledge. Didn't get to the blacksite yet but I feel like I'm in quite a good position overall. Skipping the tutorial is actually a pretty big deal. While I love it as a story mission, as a starting scenario it's pretty bad vs. the ability to take what you've learned and have a flawless first mission via ambush and collecting 4 squaddies in one shot.

Very cool. If it's not terribly larger in scope I probably won't play a ton more that close to release, but I'll definitely check it out. I'm less interested in another story mission as I am seeing more of the actual pieces of the player systems. I will see all the story missions soon enough. I guess they go hand in hand, because I bet you'll be able to unlock the opening branch of a new wing.

I bought a PS4 and almost exclusively played Destiny on it. I really liked what I played of Destiny, but I regret buying a $350 Destiny Box, even more so in the direction the game appears to be going since the fall.

Haha, you have given me the credit that I have gotten to the point where I've seen a chryssalid or sectopod.

yeah generally I'm opening with explosives to shred armor and cover. You should probably ignore everything I say because I'm bad, but it seems reasonable.

From what I've been able to gather, we (the division agents) are actually the second wave of responders. So the JTF was overwhelmed, they call in The Division, and then those agents disappear. They're off the grid, are they dead or carving out their own niche in an apocalypse, or top level agents are working in conjunction with the terrorists who spawned the disaster, or they are the terrorists. People are starting to formulate their own stories, but it seems entirely plausible that this, the most Black of Ops, is painting people who thought they were in it to save lives as pawns (or knowing conspirators) of government cells bent on shutting down the disorder by absolutely any means necessary. Basically, it's totally up in the air right now and I fully embrace the idea that The Division is absolutely not on the side of the people. Even if the overarching messaging for them is restoring order, we're the bad guys.

Even though I have sung the games praises and will continue to do singing, I still have about a rage quit per night I play. It's the very last mission where I'm tired and I'm in a good place and I click that button to try and squeak 2 more days out and get some supplies and there's a terror missions it won't let me go back to after the supplies, and I squad wipe and I rage quit and go to bed because I was tired and careless. This might be a positive for some but the game doesn't feel brutal or overwhelming, it feels brutal and overwhelming. I'll grant that at least part of it is borne of ignorance of the game's systems, but a lot of the time it feels less like the intended path of not being able to do everything you want and more like you can't do anything you want because as you're trying to make contact with a territory to get to the next blacksite base so you can push the doomsday counter down, you have to deal with two terror missions and a VIP extraction and now everyone is hurt and instead of pushing forward you have to go heal, just in time to start over. What I'm saying is the game is taking advantage of my inability to say no in video games because it's trained me it's always good when in fact in XCOM it's always bad.

THE END OF THIS WEEK'S PROJECT BEAST LEFT ME SPEECHLESS.

Fastpost rundown of different research stuff: Research Experimental Grenades & Ammo: Allows creation of those items in Engineering. Building one creates one utility item that one soldier can equip for a mission. Building more allows more to be equipped. The model from XCOM:EU. Think of them like a medkit. Research higher tech weapons and armor: Allows fabrication in Engineering. The build cost is expensive, but once you build it all your soldiers get access to that tech (class restricted). These are permanent upgrades. The exception are the items labeled "vest", which act like utility items. I'm not all the way through the game so it could still throw some curveballs. However, trying to just outline it so people don't get scared away from doing something the game doesn't surface. I know I shyed away from certain stuff I probably wouldn't have.

I am literally humming the "mission prep" music as I read your post and write my reply. It's so very, very good to have this very uplifting freedom fighter jaunt playing while you put a boonie hat and aviators on a sad lady. I have browsed around streams of people playing who are further along than I am in the game, and it shouldn't be surprising because EU was somewhat similar, but holy shit the intro to the game is just a completely different tactical experience than the mid and endgame experience. I have my soldiers in kevlar with slightly futuristic guns and a lil' hoverdrone shooting something that's basically opposing soldiers and gray aliens, and they have people completely encased in hover armor or I don't even know what shooting something that only barely resembles a firearm trying to kill a suit of armor that repairs itself. Just crazy.

Serious Eats is one of my favorite post-Good Eats websites. I highly recommend checking it out for learning about the techniques of cooking with a science backbone.

Beans! We made our bean dishes today. Because it's winter and The Big Game is coming up we made some chili. GF took the lead on this one, vegetarian chili. We substituted lentils for quinoa, and added some of the sauce from a can of chiles in adobo. Very hearty! I liked it a lot. Not spicy, but you could tell it had a little bit of heat. Nothing wild from bite to bite, though. I would love to actually have this with quinoa. She also only used one can each of beans instead of 3 cans total, and it could have stood to have more beans in it. I made a fairly straightforward take on the Foodspin chili recipe. I used frozen bell peppers instead of fresh (much cheaper), added the entire can of chiles in adobo, and used both black and kidney beans (4 cans total). It was much hotter than the veggie chili, probably from the poblanos and adobo. You could tell bite to bite it had some spice. It came out much more watery than I'm used to, for reasons I'm not 100% certain about! Possibly the frozen peppers? To combat that I added some cornstarch slurry and let it simmer an extra while. I'll be taking this to the Super Bowl party tomorrow, so between the extra doctoring and chilling/reheating for tomorrow I'm hoping it'll cohere a little better on Sunday. No pictures of this one yet because it wasn't finished when we sat down to dinner, might add some. I made some cornbread to go with the chili (How To Cook Everything is a fabulous cookbook everyone), and we mulched some avocado on top. Other chili is done! Poached some eggs on top of it for breakfast. Still too soupy for me, but it tastes totally fine.

Has anyone ignored one of the angry red missions yet? i feel obligated to do All The Missions because that's how I play video games, but it's probably healthier for all my soldiers to maybe let one pass ever.

That happened to me as well. I went right up to the officer, the last remaining enemy almost assuredly, and jammed my probething into it assuming it would end the mission like if you stun an alien. I went from having 3/4 squad members to a wipe. That was my first tired ragequit. I'm in South Africa. Just knowing that the geography changes is pretty fun.

The What It Is actually follows the previous Giant Bomb What It Is's. Jake and Chris are on the couch with them.

Yeah, my suspicion is that it is a Quick Look where Jeff finally learns what Firewatch is. Ratamero, in Vinny's article he made a joke about approving timesheets so I'm hopeful he is getting paid.

I think the game looks great, and I really enjoy all the little UI tweaks that make things more fluid. I am comparing straight to XCOM:EU, as I didn't play Within or Long War. I think the idea that you're building up resources instead of trying not to lose them is a fantastic tweak for me personally, because the metagame always made me panic about satellites and other stuff, sometimes afraid to push the next turn button and get a UFO that I couldn't deal with. I like being disabused of the notion that you can save your lil' toy soldiers, because the very first game I played of 2012 XCOM I went literally hours without losing an officer, and then lost my highest ranking one who had never even been injured in the last 2 turns of the first base assault. I was so distraught I don't think I ever came back to that save. However, doing an optional objective that I thought was going to end a mission that instead caused an entire squad wipe was a fucking unpleasant surprise. I didn't go Full Vanaman and delete local content, but I did hard quit the game on that one. It was late, I was tired, and it pissed me off, but good news I still really want to jump back in and play.

This game is beyond brutal. Forget casualties, I am lapping the number of deaths around the number of missions I've completed. I'm playing on normal. Maybe literally no squaddies 3 hours in is too hard.

idlethumbs.com/bear

The bad thread is for me. Ah crap sorry responded in the wrong thread

You could give some to Sony instead if that's what floats it for you.