Bjorn

It's been pretty high on my list to play, I thought it looked interesting.

Oh geez, Sad Bombs, Ipecac, Bob's Brain and Rubber Cement. That's brutal.

I lol'd hard at that. I can only image. I had another horribly long run on Hard, taking Isaac all the way to the Chest. I got the most defensively protected character I've ever had. Holy Mantle, Wafer, 3 orbitals, The Soul (new item that projects a forcefield around you that pushes a lot of projectiles away from you) and Infamy. I rerolled so many items with the D6, and good defensive stuff kept coming up, so I couldn't not take them. I was functionally unkillable, but I got absolutely dick for damage upgrades until the Chest, meaning every fight took forever. I also polished off my last Challenge. I wish there were more, the challenges are some of my favorite things in the game.

That's good to know. It's one thing that wasn't clear to me was just how divergent one play through would be from another.

Gun sales are spiking dramatically around StL as the Grand Jury comes ever closer to releasing it's decision. I went to a lecture/discussion this week held by the visiting Langston Hughes scholar at the local University on the intersection of black masculinity, black femininity and Ferguson. I had hoped to have something to write about it, but as interesting as it was, it was mostly a robust, open discussion freewheeling between Ferguson and how black men and women are stereotyped in different ways. Not a lot that's easy to write about since it pinballed around so much.

There's a component of gamergate that has insisted that the "right" person needs to review games. So someone who's not into JRPGs shouldn't review a Final Fantasy game, or an SJW shouldn't review a Baoynetta. So when a person of Native American descent reviews Never Alone, a game about Inuit culture...gamergate (#notallgaters*) thinks he shouldn't have reviewed it because he's biased. Because how can a Native American objectively review a game that stars a Native American? *To be fair, there are plenty of people in the thread disagreeing with the OP, but there are also people fully on board with the sentiment that Daniel Starkey shouldn't have reviewed it. Also, KiA is fucking insane. Someone suggested that the Mexican proverb "They tried to bury us. They didn't know we were seeds." was a fitting motto for gamergate. It's a quote that's been floating around lately due to the violence in Mexico, particularly with the murder of 43 student teachers by a drug cartel. Supporting gamergate is like being murdered for being a student protestor in Mexico. The link between the proverb and that massacre is noted in the thread, not that anyone seems to notice. They just mock the idea of cultural appropriation instead.

Back when it released, I remember lots and lots of people having to drop the difficulty down to Easy for awhile, as the default balance is definitely tough.

If you don't mind sharing, what kind of budget did you have in mind?

At this point, I'm worried that the emotional impact may have already been killed for me on this between Sean's recounting and a couple other accounts of it I've read. I wish I had been able to go into completely blind.

I didn't realize Never Alone was already out. Need to play that. That Mass Effect piece actually got me to tear up a little bit, particularly as I watched my god mother struggle for a long time with rheumatoid arthritis. She's been gone a few years now, and I miss the shit out of that badass old lady. I also like that he identifies that what we need are authentic female characters, not "strong" ones. It's a better word and descriptor.

All the Souls games, for sure.

I don't know why, but that gif makes me really happy.

The only thing I don't like about Taurus is the initial hit to your speed. I've gotten it early on slow characters, and it makes exploring or backtracking take forever. Other than that, yeah, top shelf item. I did not realize that's how it worked mechanically. That's crazy.

Everything about Pokémon is FASCINATING. And I've never played a single minute of it.

That's awesome! I have gotten Ludo + Brimstone, which has a similar effect, but haven't got it with Tech yet. And fuck Dr. Fetus. Fuck Dr. Fetus sideways with his own bombs. I have no idea why I picked him up last night. Slogged through most of the run with it (it's soooo slow), then got 3 rooms away from the end of the Dark Room on Hard, had a Chaos Card saved for the boss, and just could not get through this one room with two Adversaries even with what ended up being 11 total lives (Dead Cat + Collar worked twice). I'm kind of digging Hard though. It changes up your item prioritization, as health, keys and bombs are more rare. Enemies aren't harder, you just get way more champions, and are far likelier to run into a champion who does a full heart of damage in the early levels.

And parrots, they all had talking parrots, right?

Has anybody made a Tumbler Tumblr to showcase all those sweet Tumbling Tumble gifs?

More and more women are coming forward with stories about assault and rape from Bill Cosby. But Don Lemon on CNN had the jaw dropping audacity to suggest to one of Cosby's accusers that: Message being, you got raped because you weren't willing to bite a guy's dick off? I mean, I'm all for self-defense, but that's some serious shit to expect of someone. Plus what kind of danger is a woman who has been drugged putting herself into if she bites the dick of the guy who was willing to drug and rape her.

In the comments under it, someone says that it is one of Aurini's oldest videos. So it's really him, doing something. But god knows if he's being serious or not. Like Twig said, you can't really tell with im.

Zombie ashes, I foresee a future where massive, sentient flesh devouring storms made up of zombie ashes rush across the Earth. Man only ventures out when the wind is still. Kansas is abandoned, because the wind never quits blowing here.

That's funny. There's another one where they just send you a postcard guilt tripping you for not spending even more money.

For now I'm playing on my wife's account (zanasta-1) until I decide if I want a copy of my own. Feel free to add. Even if she's on playing SP, she might be willing to jump over to some MP for a bit. She doesn't want to play any MP with strangers until she's got a better handle on the mechanics. Edited to add: On PC.

Dr. Octoroc's 8-Bit Jesus has been my go to album for chip tuny Christmas goodness.

Karma looks like it ultimately provides discounts on buying guns, ammo and mercenaries. Because who wants rewarded in the next life when you can buy more sweet guns in this one!

This is the weirdest. You also can't plug a controller in after you've started the game (at least I don't think you can). When I did, the option to switch from K/M to Gamepad never unlocked. I had to restart the game to get it to recognize my controller. What game can't just auto-detect what controller you are using? Like this is a thing low budget indies have been doing for a few years now, and Bioware can't figure it out? Although, in 2012, ME3 launched on PC with absolutely no controller support at all. So this is kind of a baby step improvement?