Bjorn

The KC location is in a historic theater, which is pretty awesome. Honestly though, other than the opening trailers, it doesn't feel significantly different than going to the fancy dinner theaters at AMC (although it is cheaper than the dinner theaters at AMC).

I'm in with all the cool kids and pre-ordered as well.

I refuse to name potentially losable soldiers after anyone in my life, it ends up actually affecting how I use them, in a way I don't enjoy. I only do that in RPGs or games where the character won't face permadeath. And god forbid the lady is watching me play something and I get "her" killed. I'd never hear the end of it.

It's really more about 1) our preferred style is just the two of us, even in games that support more. Like even in Divinity: Original Sin, we have taken the perk that prevents us from having companions because we like the role-playing element of it being just our characters. And sunglasses) our internet is usually laggy enough that we don't want to subject other people to a substandard experience (and at times even an unplayable one). Thanks for the feedback as well! I'm sure we'll pick it up. We've got a lot of ground yet to cover in Divinity, but not much else co-op in our queue after that.

Helldivers in on sale for $14, cheap enough to pickup. What are y'all's opinions on how well it plays with just 2 people rather than a full squad of 4? Most of the time we only play with one another. Also, if we were just going to grab a couple of the DLC packs, what are most useful? It sounded like all the packs weren't really necessary.

Call of Juarez is also really good. Totally fun western, not too long, well worth picking up.

I'm glad you're okay as well Mangela, miss having you around!

I thought about that, but the permadeath thing feels like it's playing it the way it was meant to be. And I can see why it could click with someone, I just think it would probably take me bashing my head against it for 10-20 hours to get there, and that's not something I'm interested in right now, not with XCOM 2 around the corner and currently having a couple of other games to play.

I didn't know there had ever been a video game version of the Birthright campaign. That was the only D&D campaign that I ever ran as a DM, so I've always had a lot of fondness for it.

The numbers on women attempting to self induce an abortion in Texas are staggering if they are anywhere near accurate. Which, they're so big they do set off my skeptic alarm. It's a small sample extrapolated to the whole state. But, even if the whole numbers aren't accurate, it does point to what should be a very disturbing trend to anyone in Texas, which is that the rate of attempted self abortions is going up as clinic access goes down.

I am super, duper glad I played this on a free weekend. Wow, did this game not click with me at all. Which, in hindsight, I suppose isn't super surprising. I found Fallen London to be an interesting, but ultimately off-putting, experience and this feels pretty much exactly like that. But instead of having to deal with limited turns per day, you have to deal with steering a super slow ship from port to port, and then you get to do that again and again reading the same text because you're going to die a bunch as you learn where things are and figure out how to play. Permadeath doesn't feel like a good match for the rest of the structure of this game. It doesn't look like anything changes from death to death, or at least not right away? Props to those of you who dig this, but it ain't for me.

Ended up ordering a new DS4, but then realized there are a bunch of people selling used Steam Controllers on eBay for around $25 (usually no dongle, so wired only). Went ahead and bought one of those, for $25 it's worth checking out, and if I hate it, I'll just sell it for a similar amount and it will have cost me a few bucks to check out.

Wasteland 2 was a mixed bag for me, I liked a lot of things about it, even though the negatives to it were enough to keep me from finishing it. Ultimately I think it just needed to be shorter and more focused. Cut out LA, release it as an expansion later maybe, but get the first half of the game perfect and I'd have loved it. At a 20-25 hour experience, it's deeper flaws don't become as apparent or as big of an issue. And I think that's a really reasonable length for a game of that type.

I'm bummed about the news with Arcen games. I haven't bought all their games, but I've bought and played several of them and I feel very similar to them as I do Ace Team, where I don't quite love their games, but I sure am glad that they exist and someone is making them. They've also had an odd interest in trying to find ways to incorporate co-op play into the majority of their games, which is something I always appreciate. Oh, I had a friend recommend that Buckley/Vidal documentary to me to the other day as well, I really need to watch it.

Yeah, I ain't touching it until it's out (I'm not sure if I even backed it at the level to get beta access, or if that's open to all backers, or what). I want my intro into the game when it is finished to be as clean as possible.

I actually liked the scripted/story missions of the first one as an interesting aside on the general nature of the randomized/systemic missions. Their primary value was in being played the first time when it was still mysterious/unknown, but they were definitely worth throwing some extra money at for me. I think the best example was the "ghost ship" that showed up in Enemy Within. It was by far the creepiest of all the missions I ever played, part of which probably comes from it being hand crafted rather than generated.

Before the kiddo moved out to Seattle, I had her PS4 around the house and used one of those controllers on the PC to try it out and it worked really well. A little bit of setup with the fan drivers, but once it was setup it just worked with everything. I think I'm leaning towards picking up one of those. I've always preferred the analog placement on Playstation controllers over the offset analogs on 360 (even though I've used 360 controllers a lot more over the years). Yeah, $150 for a controller, any controller, is just way more than I'm willing to spend on a controller.

I've had issues with the shoulder buttons and left analog stick breaking on my 360 controllers. My last two 360 controllers both ended up with a shoulder button shooting crap. I bet I've gone though 6 or 7 controllers since the 360 was released. But I may be particularly hard on controllers as well. Edited to add: Holy fuck, the Razor Wildcat costs $150. Razor, whatryoudoing. I can buy like 3-4 other controllers for that.

If you were going to buy a new PC controller right now, what would you get? We need to pick another one up and I'm debating what to get. 360 controllers obviously just work, with no extra divers/programs/etc. But I've found over the years that 360 controllers die on me faster than any others. I've used a PS4 controller, and liked it just fine. Not sure what the fan made drivers for it have worked up, like how many of its extra features can be used now. I have not used an X1 controller. Or are there good 3rd party PC controllers (razor, etc) that are worth considering? After doing a bunch of reading about the Steam controller, I'm unsold on it, just sounds like more configuration work than I'm interested in right now. I don't mind switching back and forth between KB/M and controller depending on which I like most for specific games.

I'm pretty annoyed at the DLC pack for XCOM 2, first that it's a pre-order for future, unfinished content and then that it adds 1 new class to the game and new weapons (not just skins/cosmetics). A new class and weapons to me feel like absolutely mandatory content, not something like the additional missions of the original XCOM dlc (not counting Enemy Within, because that was a whole expansion). I'm not sure how you balance something like XCOM with the knowledge that you're adding a new class and weapons within a few months of release.

This is having a free to play weekend for the next few days for anyone (like me) who hadn't bought it but wanted to check it out.

There is? I thought there was specifically no reward for getting all the stars? Or maybe it just hadn't been found back when people first started finding the stars?

That's funny, because I don't think the film holds together at all without that that whole sequence. Goodman's character isn't..like an alternate future for Llewyn, but he's a man who followed a similar path. In any other story, he'd be the magical, wise old man met on the side of the road (a quintessential Old Master role) who provides the right sage advice at the right time for Llewyn to get his shit together and let the movie end in triumph, or with triumph being able to be imagined. This ain't a magical world, and you don't find strange, wise old men on the side of the road. You find cranky old heroin addicts who are just as unpleasant to be around as you are.

Can you assign them homework? Make them go spend...oh, I don't know, 2 minutes in the comments section on any mainstream article about a trans person. Then ask them about American empathy.

I'm rather with Patrick on Inside Llewyn Davis. It's an interesting character study of a self-centered asshole, but I don't feel like it has as much to say as others do. But it also falls in a category of movie for me that is best described as: "I'm glad I watched that, I'm never watching it again." Though I suspect Gorm's argument about it being a snapshot in time of the character has a lot of merit as well, given the love and loyalty of a few people in his life that likely stems from a time when he wasn't as not-nice as he currently is. I seem to have a much more positive opinion on Hudsucker Proxy than almost anyone else. It's been too many years since I watched it last (10ish years) for me to give a critical defense of it, but the visual design of that movie is incredible, and when the Coens come up in conversation my mind is as likely to bring up some of the images from it as it is anything else from their catalog. It's also likely that it was a breath of fresh air to someone stuck in the cultural wasteland of Western Kansas when it was released, and I was in a period where I had been watching a lot of the reference material for it on late night television. I do remember it balancing worldliness, naivete, cynicism and optimism in interesting ways. It's unreal, certainly, but that unrealness (approaching Brazil levels at times) is something I like about it. This whole conversation reminds me though that there are a half dozen Coen bros movies I've never got around to watching.