Nappi

A year ago, I wasn't too happy with my fitness and decided to make some changes. First of all, I switched from spaghetti to other carbohydrates, because I couldn't help making a huge bowl of pasta after I came from work feeling hungry, despite always feeling too full and bad afterwards. I walked and exercised occasionally, but it was too easy for me find excuses for leaving things for "tomorrow". I solved this problem by looking for interesting podcasts whose episodes where about an hour long, and deciding to only listen to them while walking, which was pretty easy actually because walking is one of the few activities during which I can focus on verbal content for an hour at a time. I got semi-addicted to Radiolab, This American Life, and My Brother, My Brother and Me, Adventure Zone, and Cool Games Inc. and as a result started taking 6 km walks 5-6 times a week. This spring I ramped things up by regularly biking to work (2 x 6.5 km) when the weather is good, taking longer walks (10+ km) once or twice a week, and doing short calisthenics exercises most evenings. I have also tried to preparing healthier after-work dinners, e.g. vegetable wok, and reducing my craft beer consumption to one or two bottles each weekend. I also bought Fitbit Charge HR, which actually works as a motivational tool, because (1) I like collecting data, (2) it highlights how often I have ignored doing exercise for more than a couple of days (so far this hasn't happened though), and (3) because I'm a thoroughly predictable animal and enjoy getting recognition even if it is in the form of a webpage congratulating me for reaching my weekly goal. I also bought scales for the first time in my life. At the moment I'm quite happy with my fitness, and feel good in general and especially when exercising. I'm yet to take up running or going to gym. For some reason, there is a huge barrier to entry for those activities for me. I also probably won't bike to and from work when the weather gets bad. I could of course buy good outdoor clothes and take spare clothes to work, but I don't want to "poison" that hobby by making it not fun for me. I won't let my "healthier lifestyle" dictate my life, though. I haven't ignored going to bars or restaurants with my friends, and don't feel bad about every now and then dedicating a day to eating pizza, drinking beer, playing video games, and watching movies.

Hmm.. Interesting. I'm a bit surprised that they did not fight "Crises" to begin with. Anyway, I attacked my neighbor out of boredom, took some of its planets and vassalized the rest. Now I have sort of a problem with the separatists and am in an alliance with two empires that want to go to war with someone. To be honest, Overwatch has been more absorbing than Stellaris of late, but if I get back to fast forwarding my empire, I can report on how the the Thing worked out.

Ok, thanks for the clarification. Does that chain continue with new events or is that thing just going to plow through the galaxy towards me? I assumed that it would have unlocked a bunch of research to learn the true nature of the event but so far, I haven't gotten anything like that. I also cannot go probe it because of the border access issues.

Umm... Do you guys have any suggestions on how to spend my time during mid-game? I just started a war out of sheer boredom and obtained four new planets. The new subjects are resisting a bit but I don't think that will hold my attention for too long. There was one potentially interesting event chain recently, when but since that event took place at the other side of the spiral galaxy, I think I don't have to worry about that for some time still. Furthermore, hyperspace engines combined with the difficulty of gaining border access mean that I can't really explore the galaxy anymore. Will interesting events keep popping up or is this my space-life from now on? I can see now why people are looking forward to a bunch of DLC being released. With loads more systems, I would probably have my hands full just keeping my mess of a galactic empire from exploding into tiny pieces.

I have played a few matches here and there, and so far the game has been incredibly fun. I really really like how the game doesn't point out how shitty I actually am overall, but instead congratulates me about things I did well. I have gotten a couple of highlight plays and several commendations, and it always feels pretty good. I turned off the voice chat immediately, so I don't know how things are at the aural plane, but at least the text chat has been quite civil so far as well (mainly consisting of ggs and hfs). I have only played with randos so far, but I'd be interested to try how it feels to play as a part of a coordinated team. I have been most successful playing Torbjörn, but I guess that character is quite easy to do okay with, if you just protect and maintain your turret and correct the spare parts.

For the free period, I decided to make a jambalaya sort of dish:

Chris mentioning that pressing tab during the match does not show the standard ranked list for each team was the thing that made me finally buy Overwatch. I like occasional multiplayer FPS but usually feel like I'm not good enough to play them, so I really appreciate when a game does not actively highlight how shit I am at the game. I only played one match yesterday, got 11 kills, and have now idea if that is good or bad (probably not too good), but it doesn't matter because I had fun and felt like I was contributing to the team effort. So, yay! Go team! And so on.

I'm so glad the streams are back! Keep up the good work! I also prefer the streams with multiple people, but I understand that they can be hard to arrange sometimes.

I was not interested in this game at all until I saw some Quick Looks and heard it discussed in the podcast. I seldom play online shooters but it sounds like this could be fun even if I'm a complete n00b. Seriously considering buying this game now.

I reached what could probably be considered the (early) mid-game, where I had 6 or so colonized planets, no more habitable planets in my region, and not much room to expand or survey due to other empires blocking the hyperlane routes. In other words, things were getting a bit boring. Then two new early-FTL empires popped up, one of which prevented travel between two parts of my empire, and the other acting as a neat buffer between me and another empire with superior firepower. I decided to let at least the latter one be for the time being, although I immediately declared them as my rivals for that sweet sweet influence. Things changed when one of the more powerful empires declared a war on them. I acted fast, declared a war on the puny empire, and quickly took over their one inhabited planet before the other attacking empire could do anything. Elsewhere in my empire, I finally managed to research the required tech for uplifiting pre-sentient species and boosted some arctic-dwelling creatures into space age. As a result of these events, I now have two new species within my empire, at least one of which lives in a completely different environment from my original species. In other words, I can now colonize new planets within my system but will probably also have to deal with space racism (?). I also have to figure out what to do with the early-FTL empire that is cutting my dominion in two. Oh, and it seems I can terraform planets now. I think things should be quite interesting for some time now. Also this happened: I did not select the middle option because I got scared. Shortly after that, though, I decided to actively pursue interesting scenaries, so as not to get bored. I'm not really that interested in winning the game anymore, as the victory conditions seem to require a huge time investment.

Ooohh.. oooh... OOOOH. I adored the first album

Cool, thanks! I got the sector tutorial prompt but did not divide my empire yet, because I assumed that it would only affect the number of planets I can colonize without penalties. I will definitely try sectoring soon. Is there a way to preview what removing a frontier outpost would do, or should I just save and try it? I think the other way in which I fucked things up was expanding my boarders with frontier outposts and then building a colony in the region. I now assume that colonies can be build in star systems outside my borders? I hit a series of governor, scientist and admiral deaths and as a result I'm currently quite low on influence (maybe I shouldn't have replaced the leaders immediately), so I could definitely use a monthly influence boost.

I'm enjoying this game quite a bit, and am definitely in the "one more turn" mode even if the game isn't exactly turn-based. I really like the sense of discovery that comes from the anomalies, the fact that you have to study the aliens before you can understand them, and the non-obvious tech tree. At this stage, the systems feel manageable but still complex enough for me not to try to optimize everything board-game-style. Interested to see where Paradox goes with the game in updates and DLC. I felt pretty dumb when I finally realized yesterday that I can go to the unknown stars without waiting for them to be "revealed". I think the fact that the arrows pointing to these stars were greyed out in the solar system view was the source of this confusion. As a result of this, my frontier outposts are probably not as ideally positioned as they should be. I hope that I haven't fucked up my game entirely by building so many frontier outposts early on. I have +1 monthly influence left and I don't know to go about increasing my monthly influence income at this point. I have only met two other civilizations and I'm not sure if I'm ready to declare them as my rivals. I am also two tiers away from fully upgrading my planetary administration building (by the way, is the influence gain from that building per planet or per civilization?). Are there any other good ways of gaining influence? How the fuck am I supposed to conquer 40% of the galaxy this way?

I really enjoyed my first couple of hours with the game. The systems did not feel overwhelming, but it was impossible to parse the full significance of different discoveries, events, technologies, etc. Basically exactly what I wanted from a space 4X game.

I agree with all of this. Definitely my favorite Uncharted game. The fact that they got rid of most multi-wave arenas, didn't go apeshit with stay-puft enemies, gave me a companion for most encounters, let me have the element of surprise, made the unarmed combat basically insta-kill, and were really generous with mid-combat checkpointing made combat so much less frustrating for me. Hell, I enjoyed it quite a bit for most parts. There were definitely a couple of frustrating parts where I died over and over again, but then again I managed to beat some really tough feeling encounters on my first try. The decision to focus on the main characters and use the ancient treasure story only as a way to explore their relationships was a really good choice. The story - and storytelling - was way more interesting than in any of the other Uncharted games and, in fact, most other story-driven video games I have played in a long time. Again, the technical execution and the attention to detail in this game is fucking mindblowing. I wish they had gotten rid of the collectible treasures. Despite telling myself that I do not care about the unlocks, I still found myself looking for them. This meant that I often acted like an ass when hanging around with companions, and like a suicidal maniac when in danger zone. Yup, that was one of my biggest gripes with the game.

As I'm almost done with Uncharted 4, I will probably start playing Stellaris over the weekend. I want to experience the sense of discovery in the beginning, so I have avoided reading too much about the game. On the other hand, I don't want to "lose" 10 hours of progress just because I have fucked something up early on. Is there something I should know about the game early on that doesn't get explained in the tutorials?

Heh, that has been my experience with death from above jumps as well. Even if the combat is not my favorite part, it has been surprisingly frustration-free so far. The game checkpoints even during combat which is nice and hand-to-hand is really effective against enemies that try to get too close. My least favorite part so far has been the first encounter with the armored car in chapter 11. Good to hear that exploration will remain the main attraction even in the following chapters. Naughty Dog's technical mastery is pretty incredible. I mean, after playing chapter 10, I could imagine buying an off-road obstacle course game built on this engine. Also, the facial animations really help me get invested in the story and the characters. The cut from back to Nathan and Elena on the sofa was so jarring that for a while I thought I was looking at FMV.

Just reached chapter 12. I'm still really impressed about this game overall. The gunplay so far has been okay, but the combat (especially the arena battles) is still the least interesting part of the game for me. I like the fact that they usually let me try to get rid of enemies stealthily before engaging them in combat. I had forgotten how fast Nathan dies if caught in a gunfire. Really discourages me from attempting any badass moves such as rope based takedowns. The car stuff felt surprisingly good, though.

I agree that ideas are Philip K. Dick's strong suit. The prose is "nothing too special", many of the characters are quite thin, and the plots are often somewhat ridiculous or half-full of holes. Even so, Philip K. Dick is one of my favorite authors simply because his books give me so much food for thought. I read Man in the High Castle about four years ago, and the main thing I remember about the process is the general feeling of nausea I got from studying the various Nazi leaders mentioned in the novel. Contrasting the Nuremberg trial verdicts with the alternative reality where these men are not only not-hunted but celebrated, was pretty rough, and I can totally see why Philip K. Dick did not want to dwell on the Nazi mindset for the sequel. I don't remember much about the ending except for being slightly disappointed by it at the time. However, like Chris, I don't know what would have been more satisfying ending. I definitely appreciate that no one finds a weak point in the epic Nazi Götterdämmerung that causes the Third Reich to fall. The very nature of this book calls for the ending to be a disappointment, a whimper: "You done fuck up, this is your reality now, there is no going back. Actually, I'm sorry, it is nothing to do with you, you couldn't have done anything... but this is still your reality." People should definitely read more Philip K. Dick books. The recurring theme in his works is the questioning of reality. Any attempts to summarize the plots make the books sound like the groovy products of a 60s acid trip. The books are definitely hallucinatory, but in a thought-provoking and often extremely "uncomfortable" way which surpasses any "bad trip". I haven't read much about Philip K. Dick himself, but it sounds like he was schizophrenic and at times extremely paranoid. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Lem#Philip_K._Dick Reading these types of things help me understand what makes his novels so effective for me. It also makes some of his novels even more painful. For instance, VALIS is a novel about a writer Horselover Fat (yup) who receives vast amounts of information from an alien satellite via a pink laser beam aimed at his head. Turns out this part of the novel is based on Philip K. Dick's own experiences. As a results, reading VALIS was extremely uncomfortable at times, much more so than Man in the High Castle. However, it was still an experience that I do not regret in any way. Start with Ubik, though.

Played a couple of hours today (reached chapter 6). The action has been good so far. The story is much more engaging than in any of the previous games. The graphics are still great but they don't blow ones mind like Uncharted 2 on PS3 did. The facial animation and movement in general is absolutely fucking fantastic.

Downloading 1.6GB with install size of 3.5GB or so. Nice after-workout stretch for my network connection after downloading 46GB or so of Uncharted 4.

Sounds good, thanks! Pre-perched via Playstation store. God damn, the PS4 download speed is slow for some reason. Hopefully, the download is complete by launch. The discrepancy between cutscenes and gameplay has definitely been hilarious in previous games as well, reaching its height in Uncharted 2 (I think) when one of your allies was injured by enemy gunfire during a cutscene and then proceeded to absorb a shitload of bullets without any additional damage as you escorted him to safety. Also, Nathan Drake is a mass murderer in the league of his own.

I have bought all three previous Uncharted games but only finished the second one. I always get frustrated with late game focus on hectic gun battles and especially with the ridiculous Stay Puft body armor enemies. I forced myself through Uncharted 2 despite not having much fun in the final area, because I didn't want to add yet another unfinished game into my list. Because of this, I decided that I will probably not buy Uncharted 4 despite it looking pretty incredible. Then I saw Griffin and Justin McElroy's Polygon video of the game where Griffin basically precision bombed my concerns by saying that the enemies are less bullet spongy this time around and that the pacing is much better than in the previous games. So I guess, I will be buying this game after all... Does the combat feel substantially different compared to the previous games? For example, is there an aim assist feature?

Judging by the Giant Bomb Quick Look, it seems that this game has enough systems in place to produce feelings of discovery and wonder as well as really hilarious hijinks, while still remaining manageable. Might have to day-one perch this one. So, many good games this year... this is ridiculous.