Bjorn

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Everything posted by Bjorn

  1. Unnecessary Comical Picture Thread

    Amazing!
  2. Feminism

    Unfortunately that is exactly the way a lot of guys react to something like this. If someone they respect suddenly disagrees with them, then that person gets branded as the "other" who now unqualified to have a legitimate opinion on the subject. Because, much like objective video game reviews, they don't have opinions. They know facts and everyone else is wrong.
  3. The 'Does this thread exist?' thread

    I actually don't see the problem of just posting a new thread. It makes sense to keep bringing things like the game threads back to life, so there aren't 30 Spelunky threads. But if there's an obscure thread from a year and a half ago that had 2 pages of comments, doesn't it almost make more sense to start fresh than to resurrect it?
  4. XCOM Enemy Unknown

    Anyone played around with any XCOM mods? I just learned that Not Created Equal and Hidden Potential can both affect your movement, but it's a hidden stat, so difficult to know when it's changed (particularly if it only goes up by one point, you might not even realize it in combat). The beta of this mod allows you to view mobility and view experience, along with a ton of other features. Most of which I wouldn't use. But being able to equip an Arc Thrower as a pistol and disabling some of the animations to speed up combat would both be really nice.
  5. Plug your shit

    I made it three comments in and my brain started hurting too much to continue. And seriously, congrats Tycho!
  6. FTL

    The Advanced edition is expected to come out soonish! Like "early 2014"! I like some of the additions they've revealed. At least some of them (particularly the new race) seem to specifically combat an over reliance on boarding parties for combat. I know that's the way that I got through every Normal campaign I played.
  7. General Video Game Deals Thread

    Unless an automated tool was used to buy and craft badges, that's probably 20-30 hours of clicking through screens and waiting on the badge crafting animation. And he's got hundreds and hundreds of level 5 badges.
  8. New year's resolutions

    Sometimes fucking up is useful though! I wouldn't be where I am today had I not fucked up considerably at various points in my life....and I realize that may not be a ringing endorsement for fucking up.
  9. Feminism

    I'm reminded of an epic 7 page argument on the Giant in the Playground forums about the etiquette of signing your name. It eventually ended in tears and bans. On topic, the NY Times actually ran a rebuttal to their review of the Last of Us by one of the developers, providing counterpoint to the concerns in the review about whether or not the game was negative in its treatment of women. And in sad nerdy news, Kevin Smith had to berate and lecture some of his fans after they decided to drop a misogyny bomb on a woman blogger for making a casual joke about Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
  10. New year's resolutions

    Congrats! Stick with it. I almost quit early in December. Got down to only smoking a few a day, rather than my normal pack a day. But then the holidays hit and I backslid.
  11. Plug your shit

    Please, please, please submit it to be included on Metacritic.
  12. General Video Game Deals Thread

    About half of those cards are probably received as drops, so it's less than that, but then you also have 1.4 million items crafted, many of which will go up for sale. They've made a few thousand dollars just on the fees for the TF2 "Precious" tier item, which sells for $120+. About 2,400 "Precious" level items have been crafted and 24,000 "Extraordinary" level items, which will continue to sell a few a day for a long time at a fairly high cost. You also have foil cards, which sell for about the same cost as a full set of regular cards. All told, I think a reasonable guess would be that they make up to a half a million from the fees for cards and items from the sale. And individual gamers make several million that is deposited into their Steam wallets, which is then (mostly) dumped back into the system by buying more games/cards/items. The self contained ecosystem it's generating is fascinating to me. I sold $12.64 worth of cards during the Winter Sale (mostly winter cards and cards from games I bought). That's from both of my accounts, so a few more of the winter card drops than the normal person would get. There are probably a few of the purchases I made that I wouldn't have, particularly the cheaper sub-$2 games.
  13. General Video Game Deals Thread

    I was looking through the stats on the card sales and F2P items crafted during the sale. About 1.4 million badges have been crafted so far. It's kind of ridiculous how much money Valve is making from their gamification of their store during these events. It's probably just a drop in the bucket compared to their overall revenue, but it's more money than a lot of game devs make in a year.
  14. Feminism

    Soooooo disappointed that you didn't sign that post -Twig out.
  15. General Video Game Deals Thread

    Man, can Steam not make the end of its sales confusing? Glad I double checked my wishlist this morning and picked up a couple of more things. All the sales ended except for the encore return sale. And as always, I bought more than I intended to: Thirty Flights of Loving - Don't know why I didn't already own this Papo & Yo Spacebase DF-9 PixelJunk Eden Shelter Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons Steam Marines Don't Starve Call of Juarez Gunslinger Unepic Guacamelee! Gold Edition LEGO Marvel Super Heroes La-Mulana Legend of Dungeon XCOM: Enemy Unknown: Slingshot DLC XCOM: Enemy Within Papers, Please Deadly Premonition: The Director's Cut The Stanley Parable And as a bonus, a gift of Just Cause 2 from a Thumbs forum member! I am still debating on FC3 at $7.49. I actually own it on the 360, but think I would enjoy playing it more on PC. 19 games/DLC packs for a final total of $89.49, but half of that came from just 4 games. And all of them are games that I really, really, really want to play or already love on console and want to replay on PC. Which is better than prior steam sales where I bought things that I was just so-so on because they were cheap. I bitch about Steam sales, but really, can you imagine walking into a Best Buy and buying 19 great games for $90, many of them contenders for Top 10 lists from their respective years. And a lot of them from this year. Good lord, Steam seriously spoils gamers.
  16. (IGN.com)

    No problem, you can always get fresh humanity by farming phantoms in the abyss.
  17. (IGN.com)

    That will be useful for linking to in future blog comment arguments!
  18. nidhogg - Steam release 1/13/14

    The animation and settings on that are more compelling than I would have guessed.
  19. Recently completed video games

    XCOM: Enemy Within: Finished my first playthrough of the new content on Normal/Ironman. It's one of the most impressive expansions I've ever seen. Everything feels like it fits naturally, freshens up the game and makes another playthrough or two totally worth it. Mecs and gene mods make some pretty awesome changes in how you approach each encounter. There are multiple new "scripted" story missions, all of which are a ton of fun. And the map variety is much, much, much better. I wasn't dreading shooting down UFOs the way that I had in previous vanilla games. My only complaints would be that the expansion doesn't address two of the flaws of the original. The satellite rush needed for success at the beginning still feels poorly thought out. And the endgame on Normal was laughably easy with the new super-soldiers. I was just going through the motions to finish it to unlock the other Second Wave options, as I had never finished a game on PC (originally played it on 360). Next up, looking forward to turning on a ton of Second Wave options (particularly Training Roulette that randomizes all classes skills) to see what that's like. Hoping for a Sniper with Bulletstorm and DoubleTap
  20. Spelunky!

    Those are hilarious. My fav: File this under: "Advanced techniques that it is unlikely I will ever have the opportunity to use"
  21. 2014 Predictions!

    Google begins contracting with cities to replace their police and fire departments with robots.
  22. General Video Game Deals Thread

    Weird, just checked and the DLC isn't on sale now (there's still time left on the community vote price for it). I wonder if the DLC being discounted was another store glitch.
  23. Intoxicated:

    Mmmm....Strongbow. I think I'm sleepy now, time for bed.
  24. Steam Trading Card

    I left Deadly Premonition running this afternoon to get the trading cards for it, and saw that I got the card for Swery65. The text for it is, "I never expected this to be loved by so many gamers...love you all!" I may actually have to craft the badge for DP, not sure I can bring myself to sell the cards.
  25. Spelunky!

    In Spelunky, you dream about going to hell. Nope, but is there any harm in just deleting your save file and starting over? Or at least backing it up and seeing if it's corrupted? If you've managed to get good enough to unlock multiple characters and shortcuts, it's not like you won't be good enough to do it again.