shammack

Is this thread supposed to be reverse psychology or something?

Yeah me too. I hate this goddamn thread title.

I wish she would just entirely abandon the phony California accent (or whatever it's supposed to be) already. I find her real accent much easier to listen to.

I mean, I needed reminding of it and was glad to see it. But whatever; if people want to ascribe the worst possible connotations to everything the guy says then I guess that's their prerogative.

I don't think that's what he was saying at all and I think Sean's reply was incredibly obnoxious. In context I think it's pretty clear that he wasn't trying to dictate what games can or can't be; he was just saying that even though a bunch of awful shit happened around them, video games are still a great way to have fun.

No one should ever enjoy anything as long as there is anyone else anywhere not enjoying something.

This year's sale sucked. The only thing I bought was Legend of Grimrock 2, and that was only discounted by like 20%. They didn't even do anything interesting with the trading card crap this time. A shitty sale to cap off a shitty year for games. Bah, humbug.

At this point my opinion on Dan has pretty much completely turned around. He seems like a nice guy. Jeff's cynicism is becoming pretty unbearable, even for me, and I never give a shit about anything Brad likes to talk about, so I've come to rely on Drew and Dan. The Metal Gear Scanlon, Demo Derby, and Mario Party Party videos are by far the most enjoyable part of Giant Bomb for me right now. The thing that's refreshing about Dan is that he actually seems like he enjoys playing video games. I don't really share his tastes, but it's just nice to see someone actually getting excited about something. Some of his ignorance is still kind of irritating, but it just seems like weird gaps in his knowledge rather than thing he's stubbornly refusing to learn (for the most part), and I think he's kind of playing it up a little bit because he thinks it's funny.

I find the Logitech G27 to be more than adequate for my Euro Truck Simulator needs. (pushes glasses up bridge of nose)

I don't remember Donkey Kong Country being very difficult to beat, but I think it was kind of a pain if you wanted to get exclamation points on all the levels, because some of the secrets were hidden in pretty obscure places. I feel like the Donkey Kong Country Returns games are much harder than the original, but it's possible I've just gotten old.

My initial read on it was closer to SuperBiasedMan's, but

Yeah, people give it a lot of shit, but it did at least get my attention enough to make me pick up the box and look at the back of it to see what the hell the game actually was, so I deem it a success.

Banjoiest boxart

I was watching an episode of Conan O'Brien on the show's website today and one of the ads it showed me was for a game called Euro Truck Simulator 2. I'd never heard of it, so I looked it up and learned that it's from SCS Software, creators of Idle Thumbs favorite Bus Driver Gold. I also found this amazing trailer: Even though I hate driving vehicles in real life, I love it in video games for some reason, especially if you have manual control over fiddly things like turn signals, headlights, windshield wipers, etc. So I downloaded the demo and it's pretty fun! My first route was taking a shipment of cheese from Cambridge to Calais. I hadn't considered the whole "driving on the left" thing, and that combined with having to make extremely wide turns caused me some problems. The GPS took me to Dover, but it just stopped there and I didn't know where to go. It turned out I had to drive onto a ferry, but by the time I figured that out, I'd managed to miss the turn, try to do a U-turn and smash into a bunch of things, then go the wrong way on the highway, try to reverse back out, fail, wedge my truck across the highway, and cause a big pile-up that I ended up having to call for somebody to pull me out of. I did eventually get the cheese to Calais, but it was late and I got a bunch of deductions due to all the crashes. When you get to your destination, you can get a precise parking bonus if you manage to back the trailer into the dock, but thankfully you can also just say "fuck it" and press enter to finish the mission and forfeit the bonus. The points that you get from doing missions causes you to level up and get perks. I put a skill point into "eco-driving," so now I'll get better gas mileage. The game also simulates fatigue (if you've been driving for too long, your guy will start yawning and you have to stop at a motel or rest stop. Not sure what happens if you don't; I didn't dare try it), and you can put your own music on the radio by dumping it in a folder or put in a link to an internet radio station. It appears to be quite a nice little package. I'm not sure if I'll buy the full game (I don't like driving a truck as much as driving a bus, plus it doesn't run all that well on my machine), but it makes me really happy that games like this exist. I recognize that most people's reaction is just "ha ha, look at this game that someone made about a hilariously boring premise," and that is a factor in my initial curiosity about them as well, but then I usually end up legitimately enjoying them without any irony.

Persona 5 is coming out on the PS3 in 2015, so it might be the year I finally get one. Year of the PS3 confirmed.

Persona Q: I've only been playing this for about a week but it's easily the most engrossing thing I've played in a long time. For whatever reason, the Etrian Odyssey games never really clicked for me before, but this feels slightly more accessible because of the way you can swap characters' personas around at will, so if the party you created isn't working out, there's a lot of room for tweaking it without having to leave the dungeon. Plus, the "boost" mechanic that lets you change the turn order and cast your next spell for free if you exploit an enemy's weakness opens up a lot of possibilities for interesting tactical decisions. My only real complaint is that some of the characterizations feel a little lazy (did you know that Chie likes steak and Teddie likes to hit on girls? You will.), but it's still fun to hang out with these characters again and see them interact in a "Jetsons Meet the Flintstones" sort of way. This is a game that when I'm not playing it, I'm having a hard time concentrating on other things because I'm thinking about playing it, which doesn't happen very often anymore. Fantasy Life: This is the other game that was consuming my life before Persona. It's hard to explain why I like it so much. At its core, it is pretty much just "talk to a guy, go kill some monsters and maybe play a mini-game, then go back to the guy and get a reward," but it's really well executed and gives you a huge variety of different stats to level up as you see fit. And the writing is pretty charming. A great game for mindlessly grinding while doing something else (which I guess doesn't sound like much of a compliment, but sometimes that's what I want). Divinity: Original Sin: I burned out on this pretty quickly but really enjoyed the time I did spend on it. Euro Truck Simulator 2: Didn't come out this year, but is probably the game I played the most this year. Apart from that stuff, and Mario Kart 8 and Smash Bros. which were fine but the same as they always are, I can't really think of anything that stood out; this was a fairly shitty year for games as far as I'm concerned.

Oh yeah, that's another bonus; I can fall asleep while watching an episode and it will go idle and turn itself off when it's over, rather than continuing to waste power and bandwidth playing additional episodes while I'm sleeping.

I hope the Wii U Netflix app never gets updated because it's the only one that doesn't squash the credits into a tiny box and try to play something else if you don't stop it within 15 seconds.

That ape is very, very cunning, and he will do what he needs to to stop you.

Pretty sure this is my GOTY.

I got put on antidepressants again today. I've tried a couple of different kinds over the years and not had much luck, but I guess it's time to give it another go.

I just make hierarchical lists on Workflowy. I don't really have a formalized system and it changes a little on every project, but usually I break it down by milestones, then tag each list item by priority (1 to 3), whether I'm blocked on it by something else that isn't done yet, etc. When something's status changes I update the tags, or cross it off the list if it's done. If I'm really in trouble, sometimes I make a list of what needs to get done each day, and then at the end of the day before I go home, I go through the list and move each thing that didn't get done onto the next day's list, which is a good way of keeping track of just how screwed I am and whether I need to raise a white flag to the producers.

They're really missing a trick by not adjusting ticket prices proportionally to passenger weight.

I'm not going to play this, but every time I hear about it I've been wondering, is there any attempt in the fiction to explain why guys that you've killed keep coming back from the dead?