Bjorn

I would buy and play a Far Cry game set in West Virginia (or Missouri). Preferably Missouri though. The Kansan in me relishes the opportunity to "liberate" towns and outposts from Missourians. Fuck, you actually could make Far Cry: Bleeding Kansas. That's a thing that structurally could easily exist.

That's not what we're already doing?

I agree, I love it because, and in spite, of how incredibly dumb it is.

I have a friend who at one point wanted me to go clear out a bunch of stuff from his house if/when he dies so his family wouldn't find out what all he's into. But in the last couple of years, he's decided that it will be much, much funnier if they do.

That's amazing. I love builder/contractor stories.

The first Conan is amazing, and I genuinely don't think it would work with anyone else. Of course, Arnold doesn't have to say very much. I'd probably rather go back and watch Arnold's 80s action movies versus some of the other 80s stars.

Sooooo, they just combined T1 and T2? Lame.

I kind of gave up on defending Transistor. It clicked with me both mechanically and thematically in a way that few games do, but clearly that wasn't the case for a bunch of folks. I keep hoping they'll come back to it and add some more challenge rooms or some additional stuff, but it doesn't (so far) look like it's going to get the post release work that Bastion did. I know I played several local co-op games this year, but it doesn't look like any of them were actually released this year. Seems like I'm usually behind on co-op games, as we just have a list of them and fire up whatever we are in the mood for, rather than pouncing on something at release like SP games. Probably because co-op focused games don't tend to have that zeitgeist element to it that other games do. On Broken Age, the only reason I'm not considering it is because of part 2. Otherwise I'd seriously consider it GOTY material, as I think it's one of the absolute smartest and most subversive games ever made. In many ways, it's Feminism: The Adventure Game, and a whole bunch of people didn't even realize it. It was a critique of gamergate before gg existed (in name, though in spirit its been around for a long time). If you've played BA, or don't care about spoilers, read this piece. The spoilered excerpt below could have literally been in one of the many pieces written about gg.

This at least got a good chuckle out of me this morning.

That worked, thanks!

Dark Souls 2 frosts the cake for me. Honorable mentions would go to: Binding of Isaac: Rebirth Banner Saga Transistor South Park: The Stick of Truth I'm glad to see someone else giving some love to Transistor, it got a pretty lukewarm response from a lot of people.

I haven't had my first cup of coffee yet, so it's possible I'm just being sleepy and blind. But do you have just a plain RSS feed for subscribing? Not seeing one.

Ugh...

Sith Lords: The special snowflakes of the force.

I have an idea that part of the reason for the myth of class mobility is that a lot of folks aren't very self aware about what class they are in. That there is an illusion that middle class folks (myself inlcuded) have that they are poor, and that it is part of the reason for the myth of social mobility existing. I genuinely thought my family was poor when I was a kid, because my mom was constantly stressed about money. Every penny of the family's budget had to be accounted for, minor economic emergencies were treated as disasters. So I thought we were poor. Turns out we weren't. But it helped create an illusion where I thought we were poor when I was young, and then I perceived us as being much better off later in life. I know other people who almost like to brag about how *poor* they were in college or in their early 20s. But again, that isn't like living in poverty. They still had a bunch of resources and advantages that someone who was genuinely poor never had. Then later on once they are established in a career, they perceive themselves as having gone from being poor to being okay, without recognizing that their earlier poor state was one that was highly likely to be temporary anyways.

Rubber Cement has become one of my favorite items. For being so unassuming, some of my favorite builds have come from it.

I just realized that this is the sixth main Assassin's Creed game, and they managed to work that into the title. Assassin's Creed: VI....ctory

I think you missed a pretty good "V for Victory" joke in there. Assassin's Creed: V for Video Games?

The villager is...special.

I finished it! Only took about 19 hours, which like Jon said, pretty short for a modern RPG. I understand keeping a boss from being stunned. The boss fight designs in South Park would have let you stun cycle a lot of bosses, keeping them from ever attacking you. Which feels wrong. I found bosses being immune to gross/bleed/fire more annoying, as my build was focused around DoTs. I'm super impressed with the design of the game though. I particularly loved how in most of the main story areas, you could approach enemies as a puzzle to solve (using the environment against them) or fight them directly. I also liked how each town exploration part was split up by a different kind of area, so you weren't always just running around town. Canada was fantastic. I actually thought about starting a second playthrough with a different class, but I don't think it's mechanically deep enough to justify a second run.

The Animus stuff is also the justification to let them be video gamey as all hell (death checkpoints, interactive maps, tracking collectibles, the encyclopedia stuff, a handler talking in your ear, etc) without them having to worry about making any of that stuff contextual to the era of the game. It really was a brilliant solution to a common complaint about period games, how common gaming conveniences felt wildly out of place.

Was going to a lecture tonight titled Rape Culture, and noticed after I got home that this is how it was presented in my Facebook calender update:

Sometimes I feel like the entirety of America's cultural knowledge is based solely on post-WW2 suburban culture, and they've just assumed that everything before WW2 was just like Leave It to Beaver, but with fewer cars.