Bjorn

Seeing them side by side, I actually like the original better. I don't see where it loses much in the inertia or power department (maybe a bit, but not a ton). But what it has is disorientation. Assuming that this is likely some sort of chase scene, the Falcon is going to be pulling some turns that would be disorienting to both passengers and chasers, and the "fixed" version loses any of that.

I'm enjoying South Park: The Stick of Truth WAY more than I thought I would. I figured it would be enjoyable, but I'm loving the opening few hours of it.

Damn, those just about sell me on it.

I've never heard of him, but holy shit this line:

Ewoks are the Hobbits/Halflings of the SW universe, obviously. If I can't have a dwarf, I would be satisfied if a Wookie Jedi were given a lightaxe. That would be appropriate.

I finally got Polyphemus! In the very first treasure room with Eve on a Hard run. I died two rooms later to a spider, because I had burned a heart to go into a Curse room. FML.

Yes it is, I think I paid about $100 each for my 840 EV0 120GB drives a year and a half ago.

That arrow actually makes it looks like his lightsaber has its own miniature lightsaber. Yo dawg, I heard you like lightsabers...

That would be a hell of a deal if there was anything in their store that was worth playing that I didn't already own. Dammit.

Dwarves rule, elves jedis drool!

We did a Thanksgiving with just friends yesterday, and it was a fabulous day of great food, great people and new games! Gravwell was the biggest gaming treat of the day. It's fascinating, kind of taking the idea of rubberbanding in racing games and building a board game mechanic around it. The game is "simple" in that you need to simply reach the end of a spiraling track on the board. Each round, players draw cards that dictate how much and where they will move. The trick is that your reference point for where you move is the nearest source of mass to you. So if you're in last place, and you play a "Move 10 spaces" card, you move 10 spaces forward. But if you're in first place and you play the same card, you'd move 10 spaces backwards, because there is no source of mass in front of you. All players show their movement cards at the same time, and the cards are resolved in alphabetical order (each card has an element on it). There are rare cards which draw all mass towards you, and cards that repel you from the nearest source of mass. Players get to move 6 times each round. Once per round you can deploy an Emergency Stop that cancels your movement. The result is a lot of chaos as each of the players bounce back and forth from winning and losing, and the skill/strategy is in trying to position yourself in the best location at the end of each round. It plays quick, and everyone always feels engaged in it. I was really impressed with it. Takenoko is a panda feeding game with some design element similar to Settlers (hexagon map that you connect with irrigation systems and collect resources from). Unfortunately we didn't get all the way through it. It's a longer game, and dinner was ready about halfway through, meaning we had to clear the table. But I liked what I saw of it. Alhambra did not impress me very much. It's a kind of tile/city building game where you are assembling your Alhambra palace thing. Players score points based on who has the most of certain types of tiles. It just didn't feel particularly engaging to me. There's no real player interaction. One person pulled ahead, and stayed ahead the entire game. Early mistakes can punish you the entire game. To be fair, I was a bottle of wine and several ciders into the evening when we played it, so that might have affected my perception as well.

If they just go full Tokien fantasy and have a race of space dwarves wielding lighthammers and lightaxes, STAR WARS WILL BE THE GREATEST FRANCHISE OF ALL TIME.

I just saw this week that his leukemia is in remission, and that he's planning to return to work by February, easily in time to cover the NCAA tournament. This makes me really happy. Also, Sager's shoes don't get enough attention:

There's a thread about Styx. Several people seemed to enjoy it.

That trailer kinda got me jazzed up a bit, which I did not expect.

I still kinda think he looks like an Anderson Cooper who raided Craig Sager's closet.

Bill Hicks faked his own death under orders from the CIA and transformed himself into Alex Jones.

Unfortunately, he couldn't have said anything else in that interview. That interview, and the interviews his legal team is doing, are only about being prepared for the federal investigation and the inevitable civil suit. If Wilson said, "Yes, I regret what happened and believe that it could have played out in a different way", then that could be used against him in a civil suit. Of course, that's one of the questions that a good interviewer should be asking is whether or not his lawyers have advised him of that. Anybody watch the video (or read the descriptions of it) of the Tamir Rice killing? The police's story is not matching up with the video, particularly not how the boy could have been ordered to show his hands 3 times in the 1.5-2 seconds that it took for the officer to shoot him upon arriving at the scene.

Jurassic World isn't out yet. He's going back to an IMAX Multiplex to see Interstellar for 26th time, using his all you can watch pass that would let him explore the wonder and mystery of it as much as he wants.

If you put them on, do you hear the sound of madness?

That's really fucking good.

Bananasaurus Rex shows just how ridiculous seeded speed runs are. Full run in 2:53. Spoilers, obviously, if you're new to Isaac. Tammy's Head and Brimstone are so insane.

That might just betray how terribly generic a lot of video game characters are, more than anything. With Gears of War, I think you could give Marcus any race or ethnicity and not change the character at all, and it would probably still work. I think that's probably true of a bunch of characters. I do see what you're saying though. It would be disappointing if Min ends up being so generic that he could have been anything and nothing about the character would change. There's clearly opportunity there, which may or may not be actually explored.

Nice pic! And yeah, a D4 run is a super fun, every 6 rooms getting a completely new build. I've done it twice, though the first time ended in disaster when I got a terrible, terrible build late in the Dark Room.