Nappi

Thank you for the clarifications. We have close to identical specs, so performance shouldn't be an issue. Shame about the bugs, though. Good to hear that the strategic layer is more forgiving this time around. I played the previous XCOM on normal difficulty and beat it on my first playthrough. I'm not the type of gamer who would happily start a new campaign after learning 10 hours into the game that he is completely ruined because he did not focus on getting satellites into the orbit early on. Because of this, I read a bunch of guides on how to get started with the strategic stuff before starting the campaign. This did not spoil the experience for me, and I will probably do the same in XCOM2 too.

I'm leaning more and more towards buying this game. What is the current performance situation? I understood that the game was quite buggy and glitchy upon launch. Has there been any significant patches yet? Also, how brutal is the between-missions gameplay (basebuilding, upgrades, etc.)? I.e. is your campaign totally fucked if you make a couple of mistakes early on?

Hmmm... GBE Playdate: Far Cry 2 today.

If I remember correctly, there are a few leisure activity buildings that are unlocked at some point similar to statues, etc. The DLC seem to add some more stuff (such as ice skating rinks). I think the idea is that cinemas, restaurants and so on are built automatically in commercial areas, and After Dark DLC enables you to plan commercial areas that specialize in leisure activities. I haven't tried that stuff yet, so I don't know how (if) it affects people's happiness.

I don't know if the traffic is still nonsensical (or if it was really nonsensical before), but I think I will find out soon. It seems, I learned very little from my earlier mistakes, as I did not pay enough attention to the traffic when I started building my city and am now facing severe congestion problems again. Quick Googling revealed a bunch of guides on handling traffic (for example, this one), and I'm planning on re-arranging my traffic using these guidelines. Most of the stuff, like paying attention to a well-defined road hierarchy and avoiding frequent intersections on multi-lane roads, make a lot of sense and you can see their effects in-game quite easily. At the moment, I'm quite optimistic that I can save my city by throwing bunch of money and bulldozers at the problem. I'm actually looking forward to making some drastic changes to my city layout. Also trams will probably be cool... Of course, it might be that after spending two hours building new roads, the traffic is more of a mess than it was before. In which case, fuck this game.

I played most of Crimes and Punishments and enjoyed it quite a bit. However, it never really felt like I was solving the mystery myself, just visiting every location, inspecting every object and exhausting all the dialogue. Eventually, I would be left with only one probable explanation. The best moments in the board game are those where you are not quite sure how to proceed because there are either too many or too few leads to follow, with some clever red herrings added to the mix. Regarding relaxing games. I like listening to podcasts, but I have found that if I don't busy myself with something else while listening to them, I will start to browse the internet. Eventually, I will find an article or a video which makes me stop listening. My best bet is to listen to podcasts or albums while walking, making food, cleaning my flat, or playing a video game that is not too intensive and does not require a lot of verbal stuff. Games like Cities: Skylines and Civilization are excellent in this regard, but not always very relaxing. The Witness was good too, but I finished it already. Last week I decided to try out American Truck Simulator after finally deciding that it probably wasn't a joke, and god damned if it isn't just what I wanted. Driving between cities is very relaxing but just demanding enough to keep me focused. Best of all, listening to music and podcasts is a perfect fit for this game, because that is exactly what I would be doing if I was driving a real car. (Of course, early on I took a huge loan to expand my garage, buy a new truck and hire a worker, and for a while there, I was worried that I would have to be worrying about money all the time. Luckily everything turned out fine.) Regarding RTS games. I like RTS games in theory, but in practice often find them too overwhelming and/or frustrating. I don't mind micromanaging – in fact, I quite like it – but I find chaoting situations where I have to juggle multiple units fast too stressful. Company of Heroes is probably my favorite RTS of all time, but I would probably have hated it, if it hadn't let me pause the game and issue commands at my own pace. This allowed me to execute beautiful schemes that I wouldn't have been fast enough to carry out otherwise. The game was still intense as hell at times, but because of the pause functionality, the challenge was in outwitting the enemy and not keeping up with the action without constantly stumbling and falling over. Also, I'm glad that The Witness never felt like work to me, or seemed like it was tapping my read-Russian-masters resource pool. There is about 0% chance that I would have been pursuing, let alone achieving, anything significantly more worthwhile in the 25 hours or so that I spent on the game had I not bought it.

I played the game for the first time since the release, and started a new city with both expansions and the winter theme. The increased demand for electricity at low temperatures almost got me, as I had used up all my money and loans, realized too late that I could not provide electricity for a large part of my city during -20C weather, and started losing people and money quick. I managed to deal with the situation by temporarily raising taxes to avoid bankruptcy until I was able to get a new loan and build a new coal plant. The heating pipes vs electricity mechanic seems quite cool. Otherwise the experience was quite similar to my previous city. In the three hours or so I played, I had some terrible traffic problems and was close to a total disaster a few times. Then I suddenly got my shit together and by the time I quit I had 30 thousand inhabitants, about 1 million moneys and was earning 20k a month (a week, a day?) Still, have to figure out the traffic, though. There seems to be cool new options for public transport now. I'm a bit disappointed that there are no seasons, just maps with permanent winter. It would have been interesting to see snowplow services shut down and ice skate rinks turn into football fields come spring. I wonder if there is any chance of that functionality being added later. Also, yay, saunas.

Where is picture/video of the robot? I can only see Philip K. Dick interviews.

Speaking of Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective and playing games the right way. I bought the game recently and have played it a couple of times with different people. Both times we unanimously decided that we should play the game as a team and not against each other. So we would decide which lead to follow together, discuss our theories freely, and only play against Sherlock's par score. I can't imagine enjoying the experience nearly as much, if I had been competing with the other people.

Yes.

Coffee sans cigarettes for me. I rarely eat breakfast.

Well, fuck. Umberto Eco dies at 84

I looked up the solution to one perspective puzzle (turns out I had missed an environmental thing), and checked whether one puzzle was bugged because I was sure that I had the right solution (turns out I can't count to five). I also looked up how to proceed to an optional area once I had beaten the game and unlocked all the lasers. Didn't feel disappointed with myself after any of these. Well, except for the counting to five thing. I avoided hints not because of pride, but because of the feeling I got after figuring out the solution to a puzzle that had me stuck for a while. In many of these cases, I had gotten stuck on one way of looking at the problem when a completely new take on the puzzle was required. The "Aha!" moment I experienced after putting some distance between me and the puzzle, then coming back, and solving it immediately, was immensely satisfying. The fact that this game is all puzzles helps too. I knew that the solutions were right there in front of me and would not be of the obscure use-bottomless-mug-to-stain-the-sunbather-in-red-wine-to-make-him-turn-around-then-use-cooking-oil-to-burn-his-skin-and-peel-of-the-tattoo-map* adventure game variety. In other words, I trusted the solutions to be fair and solvable, and in my opinion they were. Still, had I gotten stuck for frustratingly long periods of time, I would probably have used hints. I think I got lucky with the order I decided to tackle the puzzles. * Although, this puzzle was actually quite easy.

Those puns... http://store.steampowered.com/app/420610/

Yeah, I also have my doubts about people being able to do justice to Dick's weirdness in a video game or a film (though, I was really looking forward to Michel Gondry's Ubik adaptation at one point). Also, the user reviews for this game don't seem to be all that great. Might still check it out at some point. We'll see.

It looks cool, and is inspired by Philip K. Dick.

Had completely forgotten about this. I suspect that I will have to read Ubik again after playing this...

That is not possible, because Mark Rylance is the fucking worst.

How is the performance of NBA 2K16 on PC nowadays? The game was weirdly buggy upon launch, much more so than NBA 2K15 in my opinion. The commentary (which is absolutely incredible, by the way) would just cut off randomly at some point, and only come back after half-time, maybe. The game would also frequently get stuck in time-out animations, forcing you to watch the players backs or the weird miming coach for an infuriatingly long time without being able to skip that shit. The Spike Lee stuff was absolutely hilarious and completely pointless. Because of the story you were made to play a few games as a high school hoop god, which would have been fine, if you hadn't turned into the shittiest player ever to be drafted into the NBA after that. No matter how well you played the game, there was no way to be the promising newcomer the commentators were always going on about. Basically, the story forced you to become a huge disappoinment, but never acknowledged you being a disappoinment once you became one. The gameplay is still absolutely the best, though.

The Project B.E.A.S.T. episode before this one revealed Scott Manley in the "Next time on.." segment. If they had mentioned it before, I missed that (which is entirely possible because I skip forward quite a bit).

Hey, why not go to Mun and Minmus as well while you are at it?

That was it, I think.

I was wondering the same thing.

Should be easy enough. Just skip the hidden audio clips the same way you could have skipped the books in Braid. I'm surprised that the story actually prompted you to uninstall the game. Be very careful with those audio clips in The Witness, I guess.

Yeah, I sort of wish science mode had some sort of contracts. On the other hand, I find having to set your own goals quite refreshing as well. Pro tip: Normally you can perform only one science experiment per instrument per flight (unless you decide to transmit the data), but if you EVA, collect the science data, and then store the data, you can perform a new experiment afterwards. It is pretty dumb, but helps you collect science points faster. Anyway, back to topic: Can't wait for the Scott Manley special!