Bjorn

I went to report a spam direct message, and got a 502 Bad Gateway page.

That picture is amazing. Seriously. Also, the entire blog is so charming, thank you for sharing it Argobot, it really is a balm. It also reminds me that I should take more pictures. I'm the worst at ever taking pictures of things. I have no advice for you, because I've only briefly visited LA once. But this is perfectly appropriate to bring up here, people talk about a lot of serious problems they face on a regular basis here.

Please, feel free to post about this, it really is better to talk about it. I'm on the tail end of coming out of a long period of depression. I spent one and a half years really denying it was going on before finally going to get help. It's taken about 6 months for me to feel like I'm close to being my old self. I went on medication, something that terrified me, but was ultimately for the best. The medication wasn't a cureall, by any mean. But what I found is that it helped me avoid behaviors that were more likely exacerbate my depression (lack of sleep, overeating, obsessing about certain games) and helped me with getting back into good behaviors (better diet, exercise, more rounded leisure time activities, better work structure). I think it was finding the strength and energy to work on those behaviors that really helped me improve, but before going on meds, working on any of those seemed like such giant obstacles. I've backslid a few times, but it's been overall good progress. So stick with it, this is something you can get past. And if the first attempt at treatment doesn't seem to help, don't give up. Not every drug or treatment plan works for everyone, it may take a few attempts before you find what works for you.

Okay, I feel dumb, I thought you were talking about a character you could recruit. Yeah, in hindsight that section is fucking weird, and stands apart as just being thoughtless compared to a lot of the rest of the game. It didn't jump out at me at the time, but by that point I was really rushing through the last fetch quests and didn't give them as much thought as the earlier stuff.

I'm really glad I knew what that was before watching it, as I'd have been pissed to have it revealed as CoD at the end. I'm kinda mystified why it isn't a standalone game, certainly looks more than strong enough to support it's own title. Actually, it looks like its own title that some asshat crowbared into a CoD game.

I wishlisted it, thanks for posting about it, as I had never heard about it before. It certainly looks cool, and while clearly inspired by Gunpoint, it at least appears to riff on that design plenty enough to differentiate itself.

I'm too sexy for my meta, too sexy for my meta, above all your other metas. I'm too meta for this thread.

My friends with younger kids who have seen it have told me that it really hit home for their children, kind of capturing and communicating the how children experience emotions differently than adults might.

Borderlands is one of the few FPS series that feels like it's full of the worst kind of bloat that plagues big RPGs (which makes sense, as that's one of the things it is drawing from). I think I would love those games if someone took a thoughtful cutting knife to them. Does anyone ever mod games to make them smaller?

Sorry, maybe I worded that in a confusing way. You were talking about two different characters, right? One who was presented as possibly being Native American and then the truck driver. I was trying to figure out which character the Native American was.

We watched Magic Mike (the original, not the current in theater one) last night. For as terrible as it was...it was oddly really entertaining?

Not at all.

Mind blown.

I'm pretty sure Ultima Online also had a significant grapics overhaul at some point

I know I've referred to trash mobs in my head while playing a game, but since this discussion started, I've actually really struggled to come up with a good example outside of JRPGs and some RPGs.

So I just finished up last week's cast and immediately started this one (because I had forgot to finish 217), and it was so perfect that 217 finishes with Remo promoting the Life thread in the forums, and 218 begins with a lament about the sadness of adult life, something that would fit perfectly in the Life thread.

Hmm, each of the kids has their own lawyer, and none of the three lawyers for the kids objected to the placement. Which is...something. I agree that dad sounds pretty shitty, but everything about that case looks like a trainwreck.

I think she might even prefer to start in a quieter area. For the last 11 years, she's either lived in Lawrence (college town of ~80K people) or out in the country with us, which we're 25 minutes from Lawrence and about 45 minutes from the interesting parts of Kansas City. So she's pretty used to having to drive quite a bit just to go do anything.

Steam says I played for 22 hours, and I did restart once to change difficulty, so probably more like 18 hours once you figure in time left paused and stuff (because I do that a lot). I'm also the type of player who scours every nook and cranny of a game, and often unnecessarily backtracks just to double check something. It depends on what you consider a long game, but I thought it's length was overall very reasonable.

She just called me super excited, she was offered a job at a UPS Store in Tacoma (technically Lakewood). The woman was ready to hire her over the phone, given her experience, the recommendation from her current boss and her photoshop/design experience and training. She'll make a decision on it when she gets to see the store and area next week. I'm floored at how easy this is going for her so far. I'm used to people really struggling to find jobs when they want to move. But I've tried to really drill into her over the years that job success is often driven by your network and the respect of your peers, and that's paying off in spades for her.

I think you're just being a bit pedantic, it's just that we don't have good terminology for valuable non-boss enemies. The most obvious example of that is that there aren't trash mobs in good survival horror games. Since survival horror is often about resource and engagement management, even the most basic enemies can be a threat due to depleting resources. In games with functionally unlimited resources, the potential stress caused by trash mobs evaporates.

Happy birthday!

I thought the initial hate MGS2 got was because of the bait and switch with Raiden, which of course gaming babies threw a fit about, but in hindsight it's actually an incredible decision.

My definition of a trash mob would be any enemy which is highly unlikely to present a threat, quickly or immediately becomes boring to fight and offers little of value to the player (whether that is through actual reward, mechanical satisfaction of beating it, etc). Let's take Mass Effect 3 MP. The husks when fighting the Reaper faction are the trashiest mobs in the game. But they are still dangerous because they have one grab move that can temporarily immobilize you and they can distract you from from enemies that are far more dangerous. They serve a very specific purpose in every combat encounter. I've been watching ENB replay DS1 over the last couple of weeks, and watching that would make me argue very much against the Souls games having trash mobs. He's played DS1 multiple times, and he's still bit it to some early hollows because he was overconfident. The early enemies might be boring to fight once you've played the game multiple times, but they are always dangerous and they serve a pretty valuable purpose of slowly teaching you combat strategies as you move through the opening areas of a Souls game.

Google image search for the first 30ish results for CEO (no bullshit, I just screen capped this) Learned about that ridiculousness through a linked article in this WaPo piece about the sexism of Google's algorithm.