Erkki

good point, improving that potion creates annoyance rather than something useful. Still I keep doing it in all Witchers.

I stupidly bought a mid-range mic to try Cortana. Should have tried with a cheap mic first, it's not very good. Indeed just a way to do a search with voice input. Overall I like Windows 10 though (upgraded from 7). I also like how easy it is to switch languages now, although some things seem to be messed up in Spanish (like cortana config menu would open a different thing rather than what the item named). I switched both work and home computers to Spanish, but the fact that Ctrl+S is no longer save may make me switch back to English eventually. Apps: WTF Deezer app, what a useless crap. And a local news reel app that scrolls horizontally. Are all Windows 8 store apps so far that bad? Hopefully this will improve with Windows 10. Built-in apps e.g. Edge, Mail: good, although Mail app doesn't search in Gmail history. The new configuration apps are good, but I wish they would move everything from the old config panel dialogues to the new apps.

For a few minutes it sounded plausible, but then made me think about it... well Valve is independent enough that feelings like this could contribute to major decisions, but I doubt not being able to make Half-Life 3 perfect is the one single thing they would fear gamers would direct their anger at. The parallel drawn to Mass Effect 3 also seems to rely most on both having the number 3 in them and people's numerologic tendencies. I mean, haven't there already been cases where gamers get angry at Valve over some Steam stuff?

Clint Hocking is now working at Amazon Game Studios on unannounced projects, according to linkedin.

My intention wasn't to start an argument about who'se impression & opinion is "correct", just to show that the same game can be viewed very differently as well. But since you ask, I think (and it's all spoilers, you should also use the spoiler tags): I'm sure all of the sections could have been done a little better (yes the Sky Bastard part was a bit weak), but it seemed like the game made it's point in a lean way and to me it didn't need more filler to make it a complete game. Games are too long anyway.

While I can understand your point of view, for me it was well-balanced. Instead of getting repetitive and tedious with the object re-programming features, they were used a few times effectively. The scripted content that followed was not that great, but the final thing was kind of brilliant in my opinion.

I also purchased through the demo, then had to install from scratch.

Can't get The Voice of Chunk out of my head

I just saw "Hard to be a God". Holy fuck, this is a really unique movie -- at least I had never before seen anything quite like this. It's almost Mad Max Fury Road kind of refreshing, and surpasses it in attention to detail and even in the physicality of everything. I'm glad it is in black and white because otherwise I would probably have thrown up in disgust numerous times. [Right now I'm imagining it in color and I am feeling a bit sick] It's not without problems, but worth seeing even just for the camerawork and all the amazing props! Great movie!

A formidable list you have there. The ones you colored are the ones you already played, right? Sounds like you have some more specific goal behind playing them all "as they were" at the time (e.g. w/o mouselook). I couldn't play Doom or Wolfenstein as they were any more, but I might join you for Thief (Thief Gold). It is one of my favourite series, and I've started playing Thief The Dark Project / Thief Gold numerous times, but I don't think I ever finished it.

Hmm, Alchemists sounds like a cool game, and is pretty highly rated on BGG as well, I should find someone who has it or maybe even buy it for myself.

Yeah, looks very very similar to Gunpoint at first glance (I opened two google image searches in different tabs and at one point got confused about which one I was looking at), but if it plays differently enough and even Tom Francis says that then who cares.

On the other hand I agree with this as well. XCom the board game works really great (without the tablet app, you would probably have some complex and boring bookkeeping to do before each round), but I don't know any other examples where tech makes a board game better. But I would like to see some experiments. To get really cool mixes of physical and digital, I think we need a tech something like the Microsoft Surface the way it was initially advertised, where the whole table becomes a touch screen and can recognize physical items put on top of it. And we'd need some big publishers taking it seriously for people to actually buy such a thing.

Yeah, I'd like to see some board game type games get that treatment. Although I don't think it has to be Jackbox Games, I mean, aside from a couple of pearls their games aren't even that great and the concept of phone+TV could easily have a more solid implementation than what they have (where if you want to change the number of players for next game, everyone has to enter their names again and a new room code as well -- this is not necessary in a good implementation)

I have recently been discovering John Lurie. It started with my rewatch of old Jarmusch movies in the Winter, such as Down By Law and Stranger Than Paradise, both of which Lurie starred in. Onward from there, I found Fishing with John, then realized that Lurie himself made the music for that, and then discovered that Lurie was (as he doesn't make music any more) perhaps one of the greatest composers / musicians of our times (ok, well, I'm not really qualified to put it that way, but for me he seems to be totally unique). I had mostly listened to Marvin Pontiac so far, a fictional musician invented by Lurie. He also made the Get Shorty soundtrack. But today I finally started to listen to The Lounge Lizards, which I guess was the main vehicle for Lurie. Man, this shit is amazing! I almost never listen to jazz, which I guess this qualifies as, but this gives me tingles. Also reminds me of Moondog a bit.

Man, I also spent a lot of time on White Gull making. Another annoying thing about inventory-related systems is that when you sell papers you already used, such as the witcher gear maps, they start selling them to you again. But not selling them means always having to scroll down pages just to get at bombs and potions. Also I just randomly realized another annoyance I had with the world: White Orchard isn't much of a white orchard compared to the white orchards surrounding Novigrad.

I got the Blu-Rays of all seasons of the mid-80's Robin of Sherwood. Was reminded of it recently by someone who had also liked it a lot back in childhood and ordered it immediately when I found out Blu-Ray was available. Many consider it to be the best take of the Robin Hood legend on film, and it really is very well done, even if by today's standards some things seem a bit weird (I hate that stupid fake bow sound effect in the opening cinematic, while most of the actual sound effects in the actual content are well done). The Blu-Rays are not ideal, they messed up the order of some episodes and I was expecting an even better video quality. I guess it probably depends on the source material a lot, and it's ok, but in many scenes the background colors keep flickering while the human skin colors stay stable. Overall it looks really good, though. I have watched the first 4 episodes so far, and am really enjoying it. There are also commentary tracks for I think all of the episodes (at least seems like that so far), but I'm not sure if I'll get around to watching those any time soon.

MONETARY ADVICE (IANA$): Don't sell anything that can be used for crafting, unless you have a big surplus! The price difference between selling and buying things is way ridiculous, and you can actually use all of the money you accumulate in this game, for gear. After the endgame and doing some extra side quests, I decided to build all of the witcher gear just for the hell of it. I had about 40K Novigrad crowns. Spending time at the master smiths, I somehow managed to buy enough of various metal ingots and stuff (just cause I though I'd "probably need them anyway") that I very quickly spent all those crowns. That made me go run around selling stuff to various merchants to make back some money to spend on crafting. And I have no hope to get that much money again without killing thousands of wraiths or something. But anyway, especially don't spend or sell any of the metal ore and ingots and plates frivolously. I thought I was so rich I could do anything and built all the witcher gear that I wasn't going to use, then discovered the Wolf gear DLC and had to spend a lot of time getting back the materials I now needed again. Possibly there will be other DLC adding more cool gear, and now I have only 700 crowns left (ok, I still have some monster parts to sell, though, but not more than a couple of thousand worth).

Man, the Steam UX for getting the DLC installed is kind of weird. How do you even notice if there are new ones without actively looking for them? Anyway, just found that I have some new quests to do which is cool.

Catweazle is a shitty wizard

Catweazle

What wolven armor? Is it related to the Lambert quest? I failed that, and a couple of others, due to travelling at the wrong time probably.

I'm trying to keep playing but moving around an open world when the story is over feels so weird and empty.

Color me cautiously excited. I didn't even play Absolution besides the demo, but I've loved all the other games (well, the first one was kind of clumsy, though). Best of Absolution + best of Blood Money sounds like an ideal combo.

Finished the game. Ending and epilogue had good and bad parts. I disliked the narrator from the start and the voice volume was always too low as well, that kind of made the ending seem a bit sucky. I did all the side content I had left to do as well, now wondering whether to also try to do everything, like get all the Gwent cards or not. I already have all the witcher gear diagrams, but crafting them is a bit of a drudgery (have the swords left to craft) because I want to make the components from my inventory instead of buying them and then probably to sell everything I have left.