Nappi

I would definitely like to see Chris and Nick stream Stellaris, not only because it will probably be hilarious, but because I want to learn how to play the game without watching a bunch of tutorial videos. Everything I know about Crusader Kings II is because of the helpful comments by the chat during the Idle Thumbs stream.

Yeah sorry, I took all that shit. You will have to make do with expired spaghetti sauce or something. Spiking water or champagne may be tough, but it should work nicely with meals and Bloody Marys. Oh, and I also took all the coins.

Yeah, the unlocks only working if you were online during the mission is bullshit. At least the game marks the saves with an "offline" sticker if you lose the connection during gameplay, so that you know which saves to load once the connection is resumed. I went offline during one of the training missions and spent the longest time trying to reconnect to the server before realizing that, for once, I had actually lost the internet connection. I hope they don't do extensive server maintanance during gaming hours, because I actually like ticking off the challenges. Other than that (and the bizarre menus), I'm really liking the game so far. I appreciate how incredibly goofy the game is, as I might have had a hard time choking innocent people and brutally executing targets otherwise. I also enjoy the hilarious extents they are willing to go in justifying the targets not existing anymore. My first solution for Paris and for Sapienza Next, I will probably try some more elaborate assassination methods in Sapienza. Also, I can't wait for the next episode. The level design has been incredible so far.

Congrats on completing two of the most difficult challenges in Dark Souls 3 practically back to back, by first beating the Abyss Watchers and then figuring out the difference between dual wielding and two-handed*. Great stream, though. Looking forward to the upcoming episodes! Too bad I won't be able to catch them live due to the timing. Oh well.. Also, Dark Souls 3 has some super cool names that fit the destroyed and decaying nature of the game really well, like Champion of Ash and Lord of Cinder (one of which can become the other, I assume? Although, it is pretty hard to make sense of the story because Nick is so fucking good at skipping all the dialogue.) * Although, I admit that the weapon you had equipped made it a bit confusing**. ** Not that confusing, though.

I only played the game briefly yesterday, but so far it seems to be what I wanted out of a new Hitman game, i.e. more sandbox-y than Absolution and more context sensitive and "modern" than Blood Money. I appreciate that the game seems to let me customize the hint level to a large extent. I haven't fiddled with that stuff yet, but I think I will leave at least some of the systems on, because otherwise I will just end up Googling the solution to some of the opportunity stuff when I can't figure out how to proceed on my own. I hit a bug where someone noticed me every time I loaded a save and piano-wired the target in the first training mission, although no one had a line-of-sight on the action. I also doubt that the action was too noisy. After several tries, I finally gave up and just planted an explosive on the desk, exited the yacht, and triggered the explosion as I reached my fake getaway car. That felt pretty cool too. Also, what the fuck is up with the menu design in this game?

The first episode did not get me too excited about the game, but Sapienza looked and sounded so fantastic that I bought the game. I hope Marrakesh, Thailand and other levels will have similar attention to detail.

Simple burger with cheddar, pickled cucumber, red onion, basil, and devil's jam (chilli jam). I was really happy with the consistency of the burger, and the devil's jam was delicious (then again, I did not make it myself).

Holy shit those graphics are gorgeous! I never got into Bastion and gave up on Transistor after a while for some reason. Hopefully, this will be more up my alley.

Yeah, the stream was excellent and I find the series really fascinating, but watching Nick and Chris play reinforced my view that I should never ever buy these games. There are simply too many systems in place that are guaranteed to make me first frustrated and then infuriated at the game (whether the game "deserves" it or not) every time I pick up the controller. I don't want to feel those feelings, even if that means that I do not get to experience the elation of finally having beaten a boss after... what... an hour or so either. I really hope that Nick and Chris will stream the entirety of Dark Souls 3. I already watched Polygon Bloodborne longplay, and enjoyed it quite a bit.

Awww, yeah!

It's been a while since I read the book, but I remember being intrigued about the internal monologue (or whatever) of certain characters to an extent of googling it a bit. Yes, the most common interpretation is that their speech and thought processes followed the Japanese way of constructing sentences. It would be interesting to know if PKD ever commented on this himself.

I also have LG G4 and I have been very happy with it. I have not had any problems with Android apps, but then again I mostly stick to popular, known, and generally non-suspicious apps. There are definitely free flashlight apps and QR code readers that require you to give them strange permissions, which is why it is nice that Google Play lets you review the permissions table before you choose to install an app. In these situations, I have always been able to find one that does not need to access my pictures and contacts. As for differences in app variety between Android and iPhones, the biggest difference for me is the home screen widget support. I also appreciate the ability to thoroughly customize the GUI using apps like Nova launcher.

I got my fill after the first playthrough. I might play it again if they release an Enemy Within type expansion (which, come to think of it, I bought during a Steam sale but never played, oops), but for the moment at least I'm not interested in restarting the campaign, even though I enjoyed it a lot the first time around.

If you like Le Carré's writing and haven't read A Perfect Spy already, you definitely should. This is easily the most impressive book of his that I have read. It is a fantastic coming-of-age story centered around Magnus Pym, a British intelligence officer, and his relationship with his extravagant and ridiculous con-man father Rick. Magnus vanishes shortly after Rick's funeral and starts writing frantically, which understandably drives the intelligence officers crazy. Le Carré's writing of Magnus' writing is fantastic in that it is almost impenetrable at first – with him addressing by turns his wife, his son, his handler, and (if I remember correctly) occasionally his dead father; with the narrative focus quickly shifting between Rick and himself, and with him often referring to himself in third person as “Pym” – giving you a clear sense that you are witnessing a man who is determined to let it all out and fast. And oh boy, does he have things to say. Ultimately, the book is about father-and-son and other relationships, about trying to please everyone, about betrayal, and about destroying lives. Before I started reading the book, I was a bit put off by the title because I thought that this would be a very spy-ass spy novel. In reality, the book is practically devoid of tradecraft, and instead focuses on what it means and takes – psychologically – to be "a perfect spy". Apparently this book is very autobiographical, with many parallels between le Carré and Pym. For example, both lost their mothers at early age, both had ridiculous and probably damaging con-man fathers, and both worked in the British intelligence service. And both were driven to write about their lives, to some extent, through this book and the book within the book. I'm looking forward to reading more about the parallels between the two, because while the writing – on sentence level – is some of the most dryly humorous of any le Carré book I have read, the novel as a whole can be absolutely brutal.

After some 55 hours of gameplay, having reached the Fall of second year, I think I'm done with this game for now. I was able to set up a nice farm that produces on average about 20-30k a day and fill my greenhouse half full of ancient fruits. I got married to Leah, and finished the community center bundles. The last 10 days of so, I was just going through the motions and waiting for the Fall and those precious 3 apples to finish the last bundle. The rest of the explicit challenges, e.g. finishing Mr Qi's tasks or catching the legendary fish, don't feel that interesting to me, and I'm happy with the state of my farm and don't feel like just maintaining it. If ConcernedApe adds more "late game" content at some point, I'm more than happy to return to this game, though. Nevertheless, holy shit did I get my money's worth with this. Turns out I really needed Stardew Valley in my life, not just because of the stressful experience of XCOM2 but because of all the work, etc. crap as well. This was a lovely experience through and through. Truly a labour of love. My biggest complaints about the game is that managing the inventory was a bit of a chore at times, and that there seems to be no way of making Linus not feel shit about himself most of the time.

I obviously have no idea about the mentality of Konami execs, but as a purely financial decision that sounds pretty strange, considering how willing people are to support anti-capitalist messages through entirely capitalists channels (e.g. people buying millions of Rage Against the Machine albums published by a record company owned by Sony). Win-win-win surely?

And if you are looking for a super fancy (if quite expensive) edition, then: http://www.foliosociety.com/book/HCS/man-in-the-high-castle

Yup, agreed (in a non-trolly, non-ignorant way).

Really looking forward to this! Such a fascinating book.

Yeah, the UI in NBA 2K games have been horrible in my experience. I did not know that I can choose a nickname that the commentators would actually use. I don't even know what Frequency Vibrations is supposed to mean. Periodic frequency fluctuations?

Have you read Numero Zero?

I accidentally sold all my gold bars, some 30 of them, because I confused them with cheese in my haste. I noticed it only after I had sold a bunch of other stuff so there was no way to recover them anymore. Good times. Actually, it doesn't even matter. I got through the first year, fully explored the mines, built a good mid-sized sprinkler system, have done all but two community center bundles, and my . I guess my next goals will be to expand my artisan goods production capabilities (which will require some iron and gold mining), to upgrading my coop and barn for the second time (looking forward to those autofeeders), to finish the community center bundles, and to get married.

I haven't followed the development of this game at all, so only things I knew until today was that it looks and sounds really cool. Then I saw the comparisons to the Souls games and was immediately put off, because I don't like punishingly difficult games at all, especially if part of the difficulty comes from scarcity of checkpoints and the fact that failing makes you worse off in terms of your chances in the next attempt. Good to hear that the comparison isn't all that accurate. How does the checkpoint/save system work, by the way?

I had rough time with the mines around that point. I bought a better weapon, reserved the whole day for 5 levels of cave exploration, and brought bunch of food with me (mainly for energy). I do not remember how I dealt with the swarm, though. Exploring the cave gets a lot of easier after a while, and now my only problem is to find time for spelunking.