Bjorn

Man uses 'Zelda' sword in brawl with girlfriend's ex

What are your current stats? I'm assuming you are a Faith build. If this is mostly focused around co-op, I might think about going with whatever basic weapon you like, and buffing it with Sunlight Blade. Not that great for PvE, since it's just a one cast, but terrific for co-op and PvP. Or what about the Crescent Axe? It would only take 2 more points of Dex for you.

Yeah, I'm going to end up doing the same. I'm way to impatient to wait a potential 6 weeks to jump in! Yep, me too! I did a lot of Demon's Souls blind, but checked the wiki for a fair number of things in Dark Souls. I'm going to try and see how far I can make it before hitting a brick wall. The only caveat to that is I will probably check to see what all you can make out of boss souls, since that's not always easy to learn in game (or any other very unique seeming material). Of course I'll probably end up running two characters, which is what I did in DkS. I had a main Strength build, then a Dex/Mage hybrid that I would use to check out the items and spell my main character couldn't use.

Jolly cooperation incoming!

That's a great read. This jumped out at me: "Quite frankly, we wanted the women in DD’s universe to be adventurers first and runway models second. This adjustment turned out to be startlingly non-trivial – you’d think that a bunch of supposedly conscious, mindful individuals would instantly be able to nail a “good female look” (bonus points for having a woman on our crew, right?), but huge swathes of our artistic language tended to be informed by sexist and one-dimensional portrayals. We regularly surprised ourselves with how much we took for granted."

Half Life 3 is a camping simulator where Gordon decides to say fuck society and goes to hide on a mountain.

Yeah, that's one thing that should be looked up even if you're trying to avoid spoilers. There's just no easy way to know what all a soul can do without looking it up. I'd also say be careful with any ore Chunks. You can buy *most* of the shards and large shards, but there is a fixed limit to the number of Chunks and Pure stones that you will get in one playthrough. I finished it up this weekend. We had some terrible weather (brutal cold and more snow), so I just ended up gaming a fair amount. Finally gave up on gathering materials and doing some of the side quests, just chewed through the last few levels in a hurry to get it done. Only 8 days until Dark Souls 2 is out! Still no confirmed PC release date, though the current rumor is pointing to late April based on some leaked Namco promotional materials for Asia.

Also sorry to hear about Cabot. Losing a kitty blows.

I found Exalt to have a nice difficulty spike on my first playthrough, but in my next playthrough they really just felt like gimme missions once I was familiar with them. The first time it was mostly due to not prioritizing their heavies, and taking a couple of rockets to the face unnecessarily.

Seems likely that people are going to keep using this thread anyways once it comes out. Or we can make a new one, either way is fine by me. I had forgot just how maddening the second level of the Tower of Latria is. The incessant beating seriously gets under my skin and unnerves me through the entire level. I'm so much better at melee combat this time around in DeS. I was terrible at it the first time around. Used a bow or magic to kill everything. Got through the Maneater fighter in 2-2 with just melee, which would have been unthinkable on my first game.

The Google image search for his hair is pretty amazing.

Spent about an hour this afternoon playing Calculords. This is pretty good stuff. Needs a steam release!

Is there anybody who keeps track of interesting daily runs, so you can see in advance what's coming? I'm not playing every day right now, but if there were a run where the Plasma Rifle dropped early, I would fire it up just for giggles of that.

Meh, this is a case where I just have my personal experience. I see plenty of liberals that have their own giant blind spots, same as everyone else. It does seem like businesses like Whole Foods and the pseudoscience pharmacy departments tend to fall in those blind spots.

:tup: :tup: :tup: :tup: :tup:

Ha! Running into the two phantoms was awesome. Nice job not getting stunlocked and crushed there.

Man, I'm super bummed now. I just learned, in the weirdest way, that my favorite bar in the world closed and sold to someone else. I was reading this article, from Boston of all places, about Wichita State basketball. It quoted the owner of Scott Rec, a pool hall in my home town. And I was like, "Who the fuck is that guy? Jim owns that bar." Turns out Jim sold the place a couple of months ago. I'd been going to that place for more than 20 years. Played pool and shuffleboard in the afternoons there when I was in high school. I only get back there a few times a year now, but it's a requirement to drop in and have a beer, chat with the old regulars and catch up. I've known some of the regulars there since I was a toddler, since they were friends with my old man. It's the only place I've ever felt like Norm from Cheers. I'm bummed I didn't have a chance to go back and have one more drink before Jim called it quits.

The original IT guy also posted a defense of the post on their forums, which didn't necessarily hlep. The worst part of it was that if you're someone who occasionally wants to take a weekend off and not be on call, tough shit, you can't. The on call expectations for a lot of IT folks are completely and patently ridiculous. Doctors, cops and fire fighters have better on call plans than IT people.

From the bit I pay attention to European regulation, yeah, it could actually have an impact. Though the stated goals here are pretty limited, it's a start to ensuring some consumer protection for F2P games, which has just been a wild west.

Ha! Edited to add: To be fair, we all die in dumb ways occasionally. But the number and variety of blood stains in 1-1 my first time through was pretty impressive. My two dumbest deaths so far were back to back at the start of 2-2 because of a Crystal Lizard. I saw the lizard that's visible from the archstone right after beating the boss, and figured I'd snag it real quick before warping back to the Nexus. Went sprinting off after it, forgetting just how many blooding miners there are down that hallway. Revived, though, okay, I still want that thing, I'll just be a bit more careful this time. Successfully killed the lizard, was feeling pretty good, and then got a friendly reminder about the other nasty surprise waiting in that room. Greed will get you killed.

Worth pointing out that if you go through that thread, you'll find that the original piece was one of 7 different views on the role of YA fiction published at the same time in the NYT. It's still a troubling opinion to me, but I feel that in context his extreme tone makes more sense when you view it as being presented concurrently with many other views.

You've just convinced me to never record a Daily Challenge, which I had been considering. Maybe not though. I worked in college media for years (audio, video and written), and did a bit of professional journalism work (all newspaper) before moving away from it. I rarely had the anxiety about the work that I put out to a wide audience that I do with one-on-one or small group conversations. I wonder if doing something like live streaming would feel more like that professional work, like something more personal, or something completely different? I may have to try.

I'm relatively extroverted, and still do the postmortem bit on conversations I had, replaying them over and over in my head. Mostly I hate it not for the anxiety it creates, but for the ridiculous amount of mental energy it wastes.

EU Commission holds meeting over free-to-play concerns