miffy495

Really? I'm gonna be the first one to say anything about the NHL Playoffs? Ok then. I wrote this on facebook after the game, but I'll copy it here. I am a Toronto Maple Leafs fan (grew up there before moving West) but they had a downright embarrassing season and didn't make the playoffs, so I'm cheering for any Canadian team that I can. In the series that have one Canadian team against another, I'm rooting for Montreal over Ottawa and was undecided on whether I care about the Calgary/Vancouver series. This is despite living in Calgary. I just never really felt any affinity for the Flames. Here is what I posted after watching tonight's game: "Years ago, I wrote off the Calgary Flames as a team of mindless bruisers who would bash their way to victory and not actually worry about playing well. In fairness to me, that was true for a lot of the last decade. In fairness to them, apparently sometime while I wasn't paying attention they turned into a finesse team. That was a beautiful win tonight, well-earned. My Leafs will always be first in my heart, but if the Flames keep up that level of skill-over-hitting play, I could actually see myself rooting for them this year. Made a bet with my students today that if the Flames make it to the third round, I will buy a jersey and wear it on all their game days. If this is how they play now, I might not even feel bad about doing that. Congrats to them on tonight's game." The Montreal victory tonight was also a beautiful game. That was a great night of hockey. Anyone else here actually care about it?

Did I mention that I also had a completely non-lethal, no alarms playthrough? That shit was hard.

Man, this thread is just a giant list of things that are going to go into the back of my mind and pulled out later to become horrible puns of some sort. Thanks!

Yeah, I replayed that mission a whole bunch of times to get the proper result. I was not well specced for it, but damn did I want that to end the way I eventually made it.

Do you have anything else plugged in? I know that if I have a 360 pad and a joystick plugged in at the same time my computer will only choose to recognize one...

I played through BL1 and 2 as Sirens. I really like the way they play. It's super fun. I just beat Kid Icarus, the 3D Classics version on 3DS. After getting linked to Anatomy of a Game in the Metroid thread, I started reading a tonne of them and the ones about Kid Icarus made me want to go back and check it out. I'd had the 3D Classics version on my 3DS for a long time, so I jumped in. I'd never made it through the first level before, so this was a big thing for me. It was actually pretty good, considering how much I'd heard in the past about this being a disappointing game. It's got a really rough start, but after the first two levels it's pretty fun. I had no idea that there were three maze levels, I'd always assumed that the whole game was the vertical scrolling style of the opener. Turns out that this is only 6 of the 13 levels. There are also 3 complex maze levels, some side-scrolling, and a forced scrolling shooter. This is a really varied and interesting design. I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. Good times.

Me too, Twig. Me too...

Apparently the school board was not taking enough off of my taxes for what they were paying me last year. Thanks to a build up of tuition credits from 7 years of university that it took to get the job, I didn't come out owing, but only by the skin of my teeth. I was really counting on that refund to finally and properly dig me out of the hole that I'd been clawing up out of since last summer when I had no contract and lived on my credit card for two months. Shit.

Every year Calgary's indie music festival has a different guest curator. Last year, Kathleen Hanna put together a great show, the year before it was Pavement. This year, Godspeed You! Black Emperor is curating, but I know nothing about them. What should I expect?

Funnily enough, I'm currently halfway through that stupid key hunt. I am very sick of GCN-era Nintendo doing that all the time. I'm thinking I'm probably past the best part of Echoes, but feel like I should keep going anyway. I don't like feeling like this is a slog to the finish at this point. It was SO GOOD up to the start of the keyhunt. All the bosses have been great, but damn is this ending dragging compared to the rest of the game.

Yeah, but the SA-X sections were the foundation for what became the awesome stealth in Zero Mission. It was already an experiment at the time and a risky thing in a Metroid, and they listened and improved upon it in the next game. I think all is good there. I'd forgotten about at the end of the game, SAM (SA-M?). Now you've made me really want to see a "Metroid 5" that follows up on that. In further Metroid news, I've been continuing through Prime 2 this week. Just got the Spider Ball, so I think I'm almost done the light world section of the sanctuary/fortress/hive/whatever zone. It's still an awesome game. The boss fights in this one outclass the bosses from Prime 1 in such a dramatic way. That giant moth thing actually felt like a real fight, whereas the bosses in Prime 1 were just kind of there to give me another item. Even the "sub-bosses" that have my gear have been mostly interesting. The first couple were dumb, but they were training wheels. The spider ball one just now was awesome. An entire boss fight that takes place in a morph ball maze? Yes please, more of that. It was a little bit finnicky, but really well designed regardless. I have heard tonnes about Quadraxis, so I'm really looking forward to finding the keys and taking him on. Everything about this game has been rad so far. I just found some luminoth lore that told me about 10 keys though, so I'm now dread-ticipating another artefact hunt at the end of the game. The maps seem a bit tighter and quicker to navigate than Prime 1 though, so maybe it won't be so bad? A final note on just how different a setting this current zone is from everything else in Prime so far should be tacked on here too. The wastes and bog both were cool but felt like something that could have easily been on Tallon IV, but this zone actually feels like something totally new. I like the contrasts that the Prime games have. My favourite moments in Prime 1 are when you find those pockets of technology in the middle of the natural zones (the Downed Pirate Frigate and the industrial zone in the Phazon Mines) and when I crossed that bridge into this huge tech fortress, I was floored. Awesome design in this area, and the enemies are pretty creative too. The quadrapedal robot that has a head that can separate from its body that you have to defeat by mixing up light beams, dark beams, and morph ball attacks is really cool, and the enemy that can actually freeze your visor and forces you to reboot your suit to keep fighting him is inspired. GOD THIS GAME.

I saw A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night a couple of nights ago. Very moody, interestingly shot film. Between that and What We Do In The Shadows, that's two vampire movies in the last three weeks for me. Both were awesome in different ways. Girl was very reminiscent of Jarmusch at his best (Down By Law or Mystery Train). That will be very appealing to some and very unappealing to others. If you are in the former camp, check it out.

"...until their betrayal by Den'nis Nehdri."

Just played a great game of Wreckfest with Wrestlevania, Toblix, and Elmuerte. This is probably my favourite picture from my time as a race photographer. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=413458243 You can check out the rest on my steam profile if you're interested. That was some good times.

Man, Enslaved was so good. Never played the DLC. How does the PC version do? I may have to go through it again, I don't remember it being that long.

Canada Dry makes a Raspberry one. Never tried it, but it may mix well.

It's in Gaming instead of Idle Banter. No one knows why. It has been that way since before the podcast existed. Also, welcome!

From top to bottom, this is Sebastian, Daisy, and Juniper. Sebastian belongs to my girlfriend's brother, the girls are ours. A friend of a friend was moving last summer and was going to have to give them to the SPCA if she couldn't find someone to take them, so we got the kitties. They're sisters from separate litters and dumb as hell, but really sweet. Juniper is SUPER neurotic, Daisy is incredibly chill. Good balance. We got them the kitty tower for Christmas and this photo is taken from them enjoying it on Christmas morning. Daisy's fat ass found the hammock immediately, Juniper found somewhere to hide, and Sebastian just likes to be included since he was over to visit.

I started playing Echoes on the weekend. I played about an hour of it on the GCN back in the day, but never got further in. I'm nearly done the Agon Wastes now on the Wii U and love it. Why is this game looked at as the low point of Prime? I'm having a great time with it. Gonna enjoy going through this a whole lot over the next week-ish.

I had no trouble with Great Bay. It was actually where I got stuck and gave up on the N64, so it was nice to conquer it in a sitting this time around.

Yeah, most things I've seen are that it has a passable-but-short campaign and nothing else really going on for it.

So after my post saying that I was on the fence about this game, I logged on to Steam to see that a super-nice Thumb gifted it to me out of the blue. Thank you so much, kind benefactor! I have now installed it, and as I have the week off school due to March break, will be playing it on a nice slow day while my girlfriend is at work. Excited to dig in!

Hey, that's my life right now too! Mine wake up an hour before my alarm clock every day and are super loud getting ready. It's JUST enough that I can't get back to sleep. I've talked to them numerous times about it, and they've been shitty enough in other ways that my landlady is kicking them out of the building, but so far nothing has actually happened. I haven't had a full night of sleep on a weekday since they moved in in November.

I didn't get my license until I was 23. I'd had my learners for YEARS but had never really lived far enough away from anything to need to drive there. Then I started my in-class training for teacher's college and had to travel all across Calgary to get where I needed to be every morning by 7:30. We are a GIANT example of terrible urban sprawl and an underfunded and terrible public transit system, and going from one corner of the city to another can take literal hours even if you're driving. One of the perks of living in Canada's oil capital I guess. You need to buy in to the local markets at least a bit, because not driving here is not an option. As it is, I have a 45 minute to an hour drive each way to work every day now, and I'm only going from downtown (as I said, I try to live central so that I don't have to drive too many places) to about halfway into the Southwest quadrant of the city. I was terrified of driving when I first got my license, but after so much time behind the wheel for the last several years, it's not really a thing any more. I actually quite like it when I'm not trying to BE anywhere. Driving around aimlessly is great, especially in light rain or something. Super relaxing. Driving to a place with a deadline sucks.

Ok, these screenshots are killing me with how beautiful they are, but I've never really got into a Sim City game beyond the tutorial. I just haven't been grabbed. Is there anything extra here that would pull me in? These pictures REALLY make me want to jump in, but I'm really hesitant given that the genre has never really done it for me when I get into actually playing it.