Dewar

With a bunch of Birthday money, and my wife's generosity, I received an Oculus yesterday. It's pretty much everything I dreamed of. I played for 4 hours or so, barely any motion sickness, so now I've ordered the touch controllers to go along with the headset. Minecraft Win10 edition: There's disclaimers all over this thing that it's still in beta, and I see why since it was the only game that made me sick at all. I turned on the VR turning and had to sit down rather than stand, but I got used to moving forward with the analog stick and it was fine after that. I definitely can't play the extreme mode though. Lucky's Tale: I'd agree with folks earlier in this thread and say it's a really nifty way to show off VR. Relaxing and gentle. DarkNet: I was looking at this ever since I saw it at PAX, but it came out VR exclusive, so I haven't had a chance to play until now. It's basically a timed puzzle game and there's no reason it really has to be in VR, but the developers use the VR aesthetic so well that I can't imagine play it any other way. Elite: Dangerous: I didn't end up playing a ton of this, since I've been putting a lot of hours into it lately, but man it's breathtaking. At the same time, the visuals are probably the least crisp of any of the games I played. That's understandable since the other things I touched were going for a more cartoony look, but I've been looking at some tips to get it looking better so we'll see how it goes.

It's pretty funny seeing him on screen with "normal" humans. Maybe he mutated from spending too much time on mushrooms.

Going through that blog post, the first thing that jumps out at me is "region free." That might make the sale to my wife easier since we'll be able to import Japanese games. Edit: Not much actually confirmed for launch though. This might be a Christmas time purchase for me.

I have a friend who's been playing a bunch of Elite Dangerous in VR, so I'm looking at the Oculus Rift again. I don't have much room in my computer room. so I wouldn't be able to play room-space type stuff, but it seems there's a ton of cockpit type experiences out there that would be pretty cool.

Hmm, only two months to complete my ME2 and ME3 hard play through.

My online friend is playing this again, and it's so tempting to jump back in.

I just need a Truffle, 3 Apples, and a Rabbit's Foot to complete the community center. I finally had to look up where to catch some of the fish, and I was lucky enough to get a couple of other misc items from the pig cart.

I eventually beat Puzzle Quest, both by finding a good combo of equipment and abilities as you suggest, but also by being careful that every single move didn't even offer the possibility of a skull, 4 of a kind, or 5 of a kind match for my opponent. Thinking that far ahead was constantly exhausting, and I can't imagine trying to do that again.

I noticed that as well, but I ended up chalking up the housing system as something that I can pretty much ignore. I feel like I can't do enough about it early in the game, and I don't have time for it later in the game (once neighborhoods are available) when I'm aiming for a victory condition.

I started playing this again after Giant Bomb East put up a two hour video. I apparently stopped in the doldrums just before the game went crazy with a bunch of things to do again. I've just completed my second spring.

Frankly, I really enjoy those bits, but that might just be because Jeff's opinions on games tend to match up with my own quite often. I enjoy his critical views on things almost as much as the things that he's excited about.

Here's the Waypoint article on that. It's brief, but has a video. https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/after-nearly-two-years-of-searching-players-found-aliens-in-elite-dangerous

It's been a long time since I've played a grand strategy game with AI that can keep up without cheating. I blame it on the general impatience of players not wanting to wait for extensive calculations. In the GalCiv 2 days, we used to wait a minute or more for CPU turns, and we liked it! </oldman>

It always impresses me on these holiday Beastcast specials that Alex, who I'd probably peg as least likely to play a tabletop RPG, goes for these rolls with such gusto. I think he really might have a future as an improv comedian if his careers as a game writer and a drummer fall through,

Trolling the viewers like this without letting on it's joke is also his MO though.

I've seen AI using religious units extremely sneakily and tactically, but other times I've seen the sort of stuff that you're describing. I think it might have something to do with the AI deciding that it is no longer able to achieve a religious victory, but isn't willing to disband the units that it has created either? That's just supposition really. The sheer number of systems in Civ6 seems to be a reaction to all the folks that play Civ5 for thousands of hours and complain that they've mastered it. I can say that each game I've played so far, I've gotten noticeably better at balancing these systems and, while I found my first game frustrating, my fourth game was very interesting and satisfying. Also, having watched some multiplayer games on YouTube, the way the various system interact provides different (and sometimes surprising) avenues of attack against other human players.

My understanding is that the terms of the contract are different each time, and developers are prohibited from discussing the terms of the contract.

I'm 75% sure that he was singing bad on purpose. I posted this on the Rocket League thread, but I just finished the Rocket League Rubber Match this morning on the commute and it's pretty damn good.

The Giant Bomb Holiday Rocket League video was pretty great and made me kinda want to play again. I'm also bad though. Edit:

Later in the game, you do have the ability to create corps and armies which are double and triple units. I really felt that Civ6 actually did a ton of things new to the series, especially around city building, but then I didn't really like Civ5 that much so I might be coming to the table with less to compare.

I wasn't a huge fan of the yearbook stuff, but It also seems like Waypoint may not have had the time or production team to do anything really big this year, especially after the 72 hour live stream just a couple of months ago. Maybe next year we'll see more?

Hmm, after playing with the new update over the last week, I might add No Man's Sky to my list.

I lost a great deal of my weekend playing survival mode in No Man's Sky. It's really tough to start out. Your life support doesn't recharge on its own and your ship takes it's entire load of thruster fuel when you launch, which makes every visit to a planet a risk that you might not take off again. Later in play when your fuel sources are a little more secure, the base building sections come in, sending you to dangerous planets in search of special crafting components. Oh yeah, and when you die you lose all the crafting components you're carrying, plus having to repair bits of you suit. It's not for the faint of heart, but it really makes all those extra upgrades that used to be useless feel really meaningful.

Waypoint is doing something interesting with their end of the year coverage. https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/waypoint-high-fanfic-overwatch-dogs-save-the-prom I'm not sure that's what I'm really going to Waypoint for, but at the same time some the stories that Austin makes up about situations in games (such as his Sol Trader stream) really make watching him entertaining.

I really fondly remember the "Curtains Down" theatre level from Blood Money. That's when I really understood how much work the developers put into making everything work the way you expect. After many failed attempts to sneak the real gun in to replace the prop gun, I gave up and simply went up on a third floor balcony to shoot him with my silenced pistol. That's when I found out that if you shoot him at the exact moment that the trigger is pulled on the prop gun, it registers it the same as if the prop gun had been swapped. It's a really cool thing that they didn't have to add, but made me feel so clever.