Bjorn

Arrested, escorted out of the school in handcuffs, interrogated and suspended from school for 3 days. And the school, the police and the mayor of the city have all defended the actions taken.

It's getting super duper shit on in Steam reviews....which is a massive bummer. The first several pages of the default "Helpful" reviews are almost all negative. This does not strike me as being indicative of what the game is really like, but I've only got 2 runs in so far. Feel super bad for Skyshine if the reviews end up tanking their week 1 sales.

Promotional plug for a friend (Ethics in LGBTQ Documentaries!) So a friend of mine is having a documentary made about him, how he came out as gay in Kansas in the 90s while both being a Christian (whose childhood pastor was heavily involved with banning same sex marriage in Kansas, and the film will apparently feature a conversation between the two) and a football player, so two cultures which at the time were not known as welcoming places. Burt is now a medical doctor, and without a doubt one of the smartest people I've ever met, he should make a terrific subject for a film.

I guess...I just don't care. If they made unlocks available on Easy, that would be fine. But if they want to restrict them to Normal, also don't care. I just got their update from feedback from day 1 players. It sounds like they are taking a lot of feedback in and willing consider tweeking various elements of the game if they don't feel like it's delivering the experience they want the player to have.

Achievements: Don't care. They're achievements, everything about them is arbitrary to begin with. Unlocks...eeeehhhh....That's something I'm split on, I guess it will depend on how difficult Normal vs Easy is. I would philosophically agree that players should be able to get the full experience without the locked items being too difficult or arbitrary to unlock, but if their intended experience is Normal, and Easy is just included as training wheels, then I'm not sure if it bothers me. What's the difference between if they would have just shipped the game without an Easy mode? Binding of Isaac and Spelunky have unlocks, but with a fixed difficulty, many people will never see some of them. Does that design also strike you as bloodyminded? Or Crypt of the Necrodancer, whose "difficulty" levels are essentially governed by which character you use. The reality here is that I will NEVER unlock certain things in Necrodancer, even with the easiest character. Because I am bad at that game. Terrible, in fact. I am unlikely to ever even see the final credits roll, let alone unlock all the things, I am so bad at it. And that's okay with me. Is that an intolerable state to leave a game in, with a skill threshold so high that some of your players will never cross it? I'm not trying to pick a fight here (not sure what the tone that previous paragraph has), I'm genuinely curious if you have the same reaction to all those games, or if as sclpls says, you think if Easy modes shouldn't exist if a developer wants people to experience their "true" game as it was designed. Yeah, as far as I know, FTL always allowed unlocks on Easy, but the Crystal Cruiser was a fucking nightmare to unlock originally, which everyone pretty much hated because of how random the unlock conditions were.

RPS gave it a shit review? Fucking weird. I think I'll avoid reading it until I've spent more time with the game. Random Placement: I'm split on this. On one hand, YEP SUPER FRUSTRATING! On the other, the majority of the combat encounters I had were prefaced by, "Your people leave the dozer to investigate and AMBUSH!" So in those situations it actually makes much more sense to have units scattered, much more than than the traditional lines with you on one side and the enemy on the other. And in the few I can think of that were definitely not ambushes, My people were on the left side, and the enemy was on the right. This is a case where I'm not sure if making something more realistic is a good or bad thing. On the opening battles: My suspicion is that this as an issue will go away with practice, that once I've got a dozen runs under my belt, having poor opening battles will be a rare occurrence. I could see me getting good enough to start going into the early battles with just 2-3 people to get early bonus resources and focus on leveling a few people.

Shit, I left that part out, he wasn't really. I had known him for several years before I learned about his history, and it only came up because he had to make a trip back to France, because I think it was that his mother got sick or something and he had to go back to visit her, which then led him to actually tell me his story. Otherwise he always tried to present as being from this area and just got very vague if people asked about his family or childhood. I don't remember him ever actively lying, but there was a bunch of stuff he didn't talk about, because it would reveal his history.

My kneejerk reaction is, "Of course you can't fucking do that." But I'll admit I'm somewhat stumped on why that would be the case. I could make arguments about cultural appropriation, imperialism, cultural tourism, etc. But I'm not sure any of them is a perfect fit as a counter argument. Even from a "She couldn't possibly understand what it is to grow up black in America" doesn't make a lot of sense. Because a black person could grow up in Africa, or Japan, or the UK, then move here, still be black, and not understand what it was like to grow up here black. We let people shift identities all the time without commenting on it. I knew a guy years ago who, by all appearances and actions, was a Kansas cowboy type who had a deep love and interest in Native American culture. He volunteered with multiple tribes, spent as much time with Native Americans as he did anyone. Was an honorary member of a couple. Road horses, chopped wood for extra money, drove a shitty old pickup. Dude was French, born and raised in France, French citizen, moved to the US in his 20s and decided he didn't want to be French anymore, he wanted to be a Kansan, and live with Native Americans. And spent the next 20 years remaking himself into that new person.

I played through a couple of runs of this last night. I really like it! The final art is gorgeous, and the animations are fantastic. The game is fucking hard. On Easy, I failed my first two runs. There are 4 classes, and two of the four can be one-shot at first level. Soldiers will die, there's no stopping it. Veterans are worth their weight in gold. The world feels very well developed. There are obviously some side quests/stories that can develop (like I found a key that could be used *somewhere* but died before finding where). There is a risk/reward element with every single decision. You have 4 resources: oil, food, power and passengers. You can upgrade your Dozer to use fewer resources, but that takes power, which is also used to deploy powerful effects during combat that can make a massive difference. Don't upgrade your dozer, you might run out of resources. Upgrade your dozer, you might face a squad wipe. You can deploy 1-6 soldiers per combat. The fewer soldiers you send, the higher the rewards you earn (you get bonus food, oil, power and mystery bonuses for sending in just 1 or 2 people). But, there are salvagable resources on the combat boards. Collecting them can be very risky though, as action points are precious and spending even one to get a resource may get someone killed. Combat is interesting. Instead of cycling through your squad like most games would, each side alternates and gets 2 action points per turn. Those action points can be spent with any soldier, with any combination of actions (move 2 soldiers, move 1 soldier twice, move and attack with 1 soldier, attack with 2 soldiers, etc). So it's harder to predict which soldier your opponent will use, but it gives you a ton of flexibility in responding. Classes differ on their HP, attack range, damage and movement. Each one feels really distinct. There are unique Elite units you can recruit that fit within the existing classes, but have custom stats, animations, etc. I can see me getting into this as much as I did FTL. There are unlockable Dozers, which don't look like they add quite the variety that the ships in FTL did, but definitely give you something to shoot for. Next to Broken Age, this is by far the most polished and complete feeling game I've backed that has come out.

Obama's tweet was amazing though.

I can't comment on the tech stuff, I own 1 on PC, but only ever played it on console. The PTSD comment is interesting, as particularly playing Renegade, or a mix of Paragon/Renegade, does end up leaving one with the impression that you're playing a character who is a deeply, deeply hurt individual, badly in need of both medical and psychological help. By the time 3 rolls around, Shepard on the Renegade path is completely unpredictable, in a very unhinged way. I initially really disliked the renegade paths, but as the years have passed and I've reflected on the games, it's the far more interesting story.

Happy Birthday Qube!

Yeah, From has knocked it out of the park 4 times in a row now. I think they probably deserve the benefit of the doubt.

The Daily Show had an exposé on the coming super rich's move to Mars.

It's a bunch of rich guys who realized they are never going to be James Bond, and so have decided to be a super villain instead.

Fraternities have far more power, visibility and influence than their respective population size would generally allow for (which, I guess, pretty much matches how the real world works here as well). Technically, the percentage of the population at KU that is considered part of the greek system is 18 percent. But realistically, you're talking about probably closer to 10-12 percent of the population once you factor out the frats and sororities that are service oriented, professional organizations or exist to support specific groups (usually ones focused on supporting specific ethnic or cultural backgrounds). Those organizations are almost never the ones people mean when they say frat or sorority. All of the college friends I have stayed in touch with are ones that came out of a specific project, which ended up being a 6 month hell project in which everything that could go wrong did. But ultimately it was definitely one of those trial-by-fire type situations that made us all damn good friends. I have never heard of this.

I'm way to entertained by these 70s cocaine ads.

Wow, that looks really good. It reminds me of some of the shots from 3D Dot Game Heroes (which is still probably my favorite looking voxel game).

My annoyance is entirely a crafting issue, where the time to manage my inventory to really dig into crafting is just too much. If crafting supplies had no weight, it wouldn't be an issue. Which, since the vast majority of crafting supplies have a value of less than 5 caps per pound, it's not like they represent a significant profit center. Though in increasing my capacity, I did find some warnings to not go to crazy with it, as too much stuff on you at once can end up causing some pretty bad bugs (mostly corrupted saves or lockups). I'm generally surprised at just how much I'm enjoying this now. I'm even getting the urge to make another character, which is always the sign that a system has really got its hooks into me. I'd be curious to mess around with a very low Int character to see how that changes dialogue, since Obsidian brought back that feature from 1/2. And I want to try have Wild Wasteland turned on to see how that plays out, since I didn't realize what it did when I first started.

The consensus around here basically seems to be to doubt the seriousness with which the university is actually handling this issue, and that the task force at least partially represents a PR bandaid to provide cover for the federal investigation into KU's handling of rape and sexual assault cases. If you look at the specific ones they ARE implementing, they basically come down to 1) Should have already been fucking doing this, 2) take few or no resources to implement and 3) this sounds lovely, we'll definitely try to get around to doing this at some indeterminate point in the future, even as budgets are being slashed and the state is in the worst financial crisis it has faced in decades. I sympathize with the college that budgets are a fucking disaster right now, but on that same hand, it's not like this issue hasn't been building for years.

That fucking buzzsaw looks sweet. Unnnnnggghhhh, it sucks that I don't have a PS4 now, and no intentions of buying one anytime soon.

So these two articles just ran yesterday in the Lawrence Journal World (my local paper) Two different groups of men from fraternities were stopped by police taking women back to their frat houses who were so drunk and unconscious that the police felt compelled to call an ambulance and have them taken to the emergency room to be checked for alcohol poisoning. The men did not know the names of the women, where they lived or provide any evidence that they knew them in any way. The university will not be adopting any of the recommendations from a Sexual Assault Task Force that would have any impact on fraternities or sororities. Because obviously if you're trying to stop sexual assaults at universities, you wouldn't want to change anything about the frat system at all.

I think the best parts of DS have been about exploration and discovery for me, though the experience could definitely go the way of focusing on crafting as well. The worst part is probably food production, which can take up a fair amount of time until you get a good garden/system going.