Bjorn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJkyFUpAnuk Edited to add: I have a real fondness for Robinson Crusoe on Mars, even though I don't think it has much in common with the Martian (no Earth side stuff at all). But I posted it mostly because of this ridiculous intro on the trailer:

Each of the DLCs introduced a novel mechanic. Riding all the pillars in the sunken king, stabbing the statues in the Iron king and finding the knights after the storm passes in Winter. I could also point to multiple other places in DS2 where an idea or mechanic is only used in one place (like fire resistance in Iron Keep to run the lava paths or having to drain the poison in Harvest Valley). So did you beat the kitty while it was invisible (apparently this is possible, and insane). That area already showed you that you may need to explore before a boss is beatable. I'm with Lork on this, I felt it was pretty obvious that you were intended to re-explore the area now that the storm had passed. I had spotted at least 3 different paths that were blocked off on the way to the lady. There were the empty chairs above the chasm with one dude already in place. Of course Dark Souls lets you go ahead and fight the boss, but it's a choice, nothing is particularly pointing you more that direction than back towards re-exploring. It's fine that you didn't like the fight, not every boss is for everyone, but it looks like you're trying to find some objective measure to justify your dislike of it, most of which can be counterpointed.

I really don't want to yuck anyone's yum over the Martian, I probably should have just stayed quiet. There's nothing wrong with Damon from an objective standpoint of the quality of his work, he just rarely does anything for me personally as an actor.

Yeah, I'm not a big Damon fan, and the idea of a film that's mostly him talking to himself, or people who aren't there, isn't particularly appealing to me. This however, looks way the fuck more badass than I expected. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unnLg1TPCYM&feature=youtu.be

I agree in a lot of ways. On my game that got corrupted, I had a buy named Billy Graham who I sent into the wastes as an unequipped level 1 to die, because fuck Billy Graham. Then the fucker turned around and managed to pick up a plasma pistol, a nice outfit and eventually brought back an additional 4 items, which was just crazy. Figuring that was a sign from god, I started renaming all my Explorers the Believers and turned them into a little cult following Billy Graham into the Wasteland day after day. That was neat enough to justify the experience of messing around with it.

I actually thought that boss was neat in some ways, in a large part because you could recruit help and it feels a lot like leading a small squad into battle (especially if human help is summoned). I agree that the real boss is on the lackluster side otherwise, but I appreciated how they attempted to make a significantly different boss fight in multiple ways.

Dammit, I want to watch Night Court now, and there are no easy/legal ways to do that.

Between the campaign and horde mode in 2, I can't count how many hours I spent playing it. 3 felt really off to me in multiple ways, and we skipped judgement.

Even with my kinda negative experience with Shelter (see the Quitter's Club), it actually did get me jonesing to want and play a Fallout game, either 4 or get around to checking out New Vegas.

Which boss?

Microsoft released a new "Mad World" trailer for the GoW remastered collection...and whoever cut this thing together either had no idea what made the original commercial great, or had some bullshit mandate from executives to make sure it had all the hip murder scenes that kids love. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwbYhvlrQbc

I think it's most interesting when some emergent narratives happen, but that's the kind of thing that really depends on your own imagination, and not every game will tap into that for every person. I ended up quitting it AGAIN this weekend. After talking to the lady about her game, we realized there must be a hard trigger on Deathclaws showing up based on either population or base size. She's played more total hours than I have, but has grown very, very conservatively, and has still not seen a Deathclaw invasion. So I re-installed and decided I would get just shy of what I thought the trigger was and just work on exploring and leveling people up for awhile. Got to that point last night, had some interesting characters and little narrative things going, was really digging it aaaaaand, my phone battery died which corrupted my save file. So yeah, not going to re-install and go through the hassle of rebuilding a base for the third time.

I ragequit and deleted Fallout Shelter this morning. I hit the point where I started getting Deathclaw invasions. They apparently have a chance to show or be attracted when you open your vault door. In the span of about an hour and a half of play time I: Brought home some explorers, spawned a Deathclaw invasion, which proceeded to ravage my base. Cost me a couple of grand to resurrect, fucked up my power and food production, chewed through my stims. So I got all that back up, and sent a couple of my explorers back out aaaaaand, fucking Deathclaw invasion. Cost me another couple of grand in resurrections, fucked up my power, food and water production and chewed through most of my stims. Recovered from that, basically out of money now, sent out the rest of my explorers aaaaaaaand, ANOTHER FUCKING DEATHCLAW INVASION. Ended up with fucked up productions, no stims, no money and multiple dead bodies around the base, which make people in the same room very unhappy. Dealing with chaos and successfully recovering is actually kind of fun, but to have that kind of shit happen that quickly, that many times in a row was just infuriating to the point where I couldn't bother with recovering.

Yeah, I'm pretty much with you on this Syn. TWAU was just begging for me to love it in so many ways (art, character, etc), but the actual interaction/game part of it ultimately left me feeling pretty lukewarm on the game. So many little frustrations that killed pacing and mood. As far as your spoilers regarding the ending: There are moments in the game that really shine for me, exemplifying the kind of game that Telltale is capable of putting together, but they are brief flashes in an otherwise annoying experience.

That stream is ridiculous.

Oh god, I don't want to watch that, but I probably will.

A former professor of mine was inducted into the sci-fi Hall of Fame recently, so that's cool. Gunn is a pretty amazing guy, and I highly recommend his work if you ever run across any. I'm particularly fond of The Immortals, which envisions a dystopian future in with the KU Medical center becomes a fortress like structure in Kansas City, where the rich pursue dreams of immortality while the poor voluntarily allow themselves to be experimented on just to eke out a living. The Listeners is also really good, telling the story of what is is like to be a scientist listening for the sounds of alien civilization (basically SETI), knowing that you could be dedicating your entire professional life to a goal that may never be achieved. His anthology series The Road to Science Fiction is probably my favorite collection of stories ever, charting the history and development of sci-fi. Okay, plugging of old friend done, please return to your regular programming

I glanced at this thread title and managed to read "turd management", which I got oddly excited about.

The Coddling of the American Mind So that Atlantic issue with the piece on comedy also has this really long piece on the...sensitivity of college kids? I'm not sure that's the best way to put it. I don't agree with everything in it, but it presents a more compelling argument than several other pieces I've seen along this subject. The increasing partisanship and antagonism of our culture, the generations of kids that have been way overprotected, institutional overreaction. I think the article misses or leaves out some influences, like the increasing amounts of pressure that kids and college students are under. How state budget cuts have affected the resources available to all levels of schools, and forced schools to look at students more and more in terms of their financial value to the school. I worry about trying to frame the concerns of minority or oppressed groups in terms of mental health, because that's the kind of framing that's been used as an oppressive tool in the past. But on the same hand, some of the phenomena described are certainly things I experience or observe on a daily basis in virtually all facets of my life (either from my own thoughts, or watching other people's reactions to things). Self-care for mental health ought to be as much a part of our education curriculum as teaching good things about physical health. But then I wonder if this isn't someone trying to take anecdotes and turn them into data. 20 years ago could you have found a similar number of extreme examples as these authors did if you had had the modern Internet available? We know that the access to all national and global news has skewed our view of reality because the normal is minimized and the abnormal/uncommon is elevated.

Follow the local newspapers and a few local activists is probably the single best way, anything worth knowing is probably going to show up in one source or another. I'm lucky enough to have a bunch of friends in StL, so my regular feeds more or less keep me up to date.

Totally agreed, I think you can find quite a few people here who credit this forums, and this thread and the Feminism thread specifically, for having changed their views, in some cases significantly.

It's very easy to sound or appear more aggressive than you feel in print versus voice, especially when just typing off the cuff. I'm sure I'm guilty of that at times.

Congrats!

Honestly, I really hadn't thought about some people preferring to not have any attempt to make them reconsider a game, since its not how I've treated this thread. It's useful to know for future posting here.