Mawd

urgh just one more week and I can play it. I'm trying to decide if I want to race through and get into the pvp co-op meta as it emerges or take more time. I love the atmosphere of the Souls games but I also really adore the more temporary hustle and bustle of everyone forging on ahead with very little knowledge or familiarity of their surroundings. I'll try to stay away from magic but already I'm thinking of going Dex or I'll remake my beloved Caestus build.

I think World In Conflict managed to have a decent depiction of Russians in it. It was set during the 80's period of the Cold War but it seemed more humanising than many similar setups.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF2ed7ouU3o Found this after watching Lansbury's link

AAAAAAAAH I WANT IT I NEED IT TO MAKE ME FEEL HEATED I'LL SHAKE IT, CAN'T TAKE IT, MUST BREAK IT, BREAK IT OFF YEAH, WHAT'D I SAY? YOU DIED

Hey thankyou I'll check those out

I've been enjoying the game a lot lately but I've felt a bit frustrated with things like judging enemy line of sight or the way the camera can sometimes freeze on your last move during the entirety of the enemy turn or how reaction shots sometimes bug out by only playing the audio and freezing the victim in place for the correct animation length. Small things mostly. Anyway I've been having tonnes of fun the rest of the time and I came across this article of mods/quality of life changes that you peeps might appreciate. PCGamesN's Best XCOM 2 mods

People this is the wrong thread for that behaviour!

Ok cool I'll check it out! I listen to a few things of similar production quality and I do most of my listing at the desktop so it shouldn't be too much of a bother. Thanks!

With the lovely E-sports Today! podcast going on hiatus for a while I was wondering if there were any other great E-sports podcasts that were recommendable. Particularly around Dota 2, SC2, and CS:GO.

Yerp. I'm liking Perandus league and ascendancy a lot.

Holy shades of awful.

You could try out The Ancient World Podcast? It's by an enthusiast history fan rather than an expert. But I think it comes with a good level of quality. I'm in episode 4 or so and the host has covered the Sumerians, Elamites, Egyptians, Minoans, Neolithic Brtions, Norte Chico, The Akkadians and a few other peoples. It very quickly goes beyond that into many other cultures and he tend's to try to thread their narratives and contexts together as he can. Been liking it a bunch. Probably going to try out The History of Rome & Byzantium podcasts after TAW. Not sure if they're all by the same people but I've heard good things of those later two.

I've enjoyed some time with it. I do wish the art was more inspired. I mean that was one of the fun things about Titan Quest. Even if it did look pretty familiar right down to the Jason and The Argonauts inspired skeletons it still looked bright and inviting with a middle ground (not that I don't like grim dark or rainbow it's just that GD is pretty muddy.) The gameplay feels not too challenging once you've figured out some synergy with skills and what to gear. But I think finding what works between so many skills and options makes it quite the chore. It doesn't help that there's not a lot of brevity in descriptions for things. I also miss the social side of things. I'm glad the game has a lobby system like Torchlight's. I wasn't actually sure if the game went beyond local multiplayer. I do kinda miss having some kind of in game chat though even if it's filled with trash most of the time. I think I'll stick with PoE in the long run. Especially with the Ascendancy expansion being released on the 5th. Unlike GD I think it manages to have complex character development without making it utterly inscrutable. But that might just be Stockholm syndrome seeing as PoE's skillpoint system is pretty daunting to start with.

I'm starting to read openly gay fiction for what might be the first time; well, apart from William S. Burroughs. Now admittedly I haven't strayed from my usual genre of self indulgence -fantasy/sci-fi. But I've found the Nightrunner series by Lynn Flewelling interesting even if it revolves around at least one confirmed gay and another possibly bi (I haven't read too far) white dudes who as of yet have almost no real personality faults beyond being vain, preening, but usually correct or trusting, naive, with a strong moral compass. ... Okay it's not exactly winning awards for amazing depth and development but it's still weird to read even this. Next books on the cards are The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith and possibly a long coming reading of Barracuda by Christos Tsiolkas. In case one or more of these books are misguided or blown away by books of much higher quality I'm all ears for suggestions.

We got DX racers. They're tall bucket seat style computer chairs with a bit of cushion. They look a little goofy because they're marketed "for Gamers" but they're exactly the kind of thing I wanted for sitting up straight at a desk with an arm rest that doesn't kill my elbow. Anyway it's a great change from the horribly uncomfortable wooden sitting chairs we've been using for years that didn't do anything for our backs. Plus we ended up with a %30 (~$90) discount which the store held for us after the sale ended.

I'm a big fan of DnD is For Nerds which is even goofier than TAZ. It's a bunch of Australias from the Sans Pants Radio crew coming together to bumble about in vain self interested ways while routinely foiling their DM. I'm not sure if it starts off that strong so I'd recommend trying out some of the shorter mid season spin offs they've had as they gear up for their season 2 adventure. I'm bad at selling this kind of thing but srsly it's a lot of fun. I haven't found anything too uncomfortable with them and they're a different brand of goof than TAZ.

These chairs we bought are really nice. It feels a bit mundane but a) it's our first non crappy furniture purchase we've been using crappy student 2nd hands to sit in for years c) they feel really good :3

Awesome news SAM! The man and I just bought and assembled new office chairs. Here's to a future without back problems.

Would you like to try the bird? I'm sure I could find you some..

This game is fantastic. I'm pulling in 60 seconds after some time with it and I'm wondering how the heck a friend of mine is pushing in 190 seconds. It must be all the Quake he plays. Also it's really cool that you can just download and watch someone's run with that little eye button. It's still useful to collect those crystals btw even if the masks don't spit out more skulls.

I'm trying to get back into breakfast after skipping it more often in life than not. I'm doing corn flakes with fruit. My real breakfast love is Nutri-grain with oats or Saltana Bran but we have way too many of these flakes. Also a pot of green tea with cinnamon bark is calling to me.

I think looking back at the show it seems like everything about it is great in spite of Mark Rylance. I mean the amount of times that it seems like he's dead on his feet and people are just acting at him while he fumbles his lines is astounding.

We moved house and it's the first place I've really enjoyed living in for half a decade. We had an initial bummer with our keys being too long for our locks and there were no connections for our washing machine but both of those things cleared up early into the first week. I've put in 5 years of tertiary over two degrees and poor management and depression have led to a rough go at a couple of those. I ended up having to pay something like $7,000 out of my partner and I's semi shared subsistence level income and we just finished the last payment and it turns out 2015 was also a great year for me grades wise. So things seem to be taking a big turn for the better as I'll have access to a student loan again as well as a student allowance for the first time (which is a free income (not repaid) based on your parent's earning potential) so I can finally start saving again and repaying my boyfriend. Plus I'm a lot closer to my town's business centre so part time work should be a lot easier to find.

Going back to the latest (and possibly last) album by The Mars Volta is weird. On the one hand it still feels like great music. But on the other their whole catalogue feels incredibly hard to get back into despite how much their music meant to me as a teen. I don't know. Coming back to things I intensely liked in the past feels weird. It feels like calling back my own ghost. So to speak.

I thought this post was nice. Wait no, crap. crap crap crap crap