Cbirdsong

In the Forbidden Forest, He is a

Last time copies popped up at a number of retailers over the course of a few days. I'd keep an eye out elsewhere if you missed it.

I've noticed that Bloodborne's super-detailed art does really poorly with any amount of video compression applied. It is very monochromatic compared to Dark Souls, but looks far better in person or in a screenshot than it does in any video I've seen.

I love the whip. Once you internalize the range and timing, you can do insane crowd control with it.

Did anyone else notice this super weird thing in the cathedral ward?

Yeah, early on, I picked up on a red lantern signifying doors/windows you can talk to, but I never noticed the one right next to

The first slot in the secondary one is a good slot for something you infrequently need access to, but when you do you want it quickly. I keep antidotes there. Click trackpad, hit X - almost as fast as just hitting square.

Has anyone encountered a strange hooded enemy in a place they didn't expect, and been killed and

Yeah, vials are a lot easier to come by, so I've been trying to keep blood bullets in the quiver most of the time. If you time it right, you can lose the health right before attacking an enemy and recover a good chunk of what was lost using the regain system. On the subject of bullets, it is so much more frustrating to die to a nearly-dead boss when resources are permanently consumed. After a close fight in Dark Souls, I would be a little upset but mostly thinking about how I can do better next time. In Bloodborne, frustration multiples with every consecutive loss, because I'm that much closer to having to grind for consumables. It's much less fun to learn by dying when learning/dying ultimately means I'm going to waste some time grinding for resources instead of doing something engaging. It feels a lot more like it doesn't respect my time.

Part of my annoyance with them is definitely from dying on the bridge with the two werewolves and being nearly out of vials, and assuming I had to beat the first boss before the Hunter's Dream opened up. I discovered that wasn't the case at the end of my session last night and upgraded my cane and bought some rad new armor, so perhaps it won't matter long-term. But: Even if it's easy to deal with, it feels like a strange regression in a game that is otherwise all about streamlining the fiddly uninteresting mechanics out? I just don't (yet?) see any interesting possibilities opened up by using this system instead of Dark Souls-style healing.

I haven't yet reached the first boss, but coming from experience with only Dark Souls, I'm finding the drop-based healing resources a really baffling change. Recharging on death meant you were never permanently punished for failing in Dark Souls, but the way Bloodborne works means as soon as you have trouble you'll have to farm for them. I might just dump a bunch of souls blood echoes into buying dozens of vials so I never have to worry about it again.

The graveyard/crematorium mechanics are narratively weird, especially when you think about what they imply about the average citizen's experience. A family travels across town visit grandpa's grave, only to find some city workmen loading the exhumed coffin into a hearse bound for the newly constructed crematorium. Tomorrow, a new coffin will be deposited in grandpa's plot, and grandma will receive his ashes in the mail in 6-8 business days.

Has anyone seen a mod to remove wind turbine syndrome from the game? It's not really a big deal to build around it, but it's super annoying that such a dumb pseudoscience-y thing was built into the simulation.

I play Carcassonne and Lost Cities asynchronously on iOS. They're both excellent. Carcassonne is best played as a two player game, and when playing asynchronously, doubly so. Five player matches can last forever if people only check in once or twice a day. I've tried Ticket to Ride, and it's not really a good fit for this style of play. There's not enough going on in each individual turn for it to be terribly fun. Most interactions with an async TTR game: Open app, draw two cards, check back in tomorrow.

"Snoods Used" is quite the turn of phrase.

We usually have accidental cheating in Hanabi, and when that happens the person is lightly ridiculed by the rest of the group and we move on, and over time we learned how to not accidentally state things that give anything away. Does your group just not care about rule-breaking? Learning how to succeed as a group despite limited communication is kind of the whole reason to play Hanabi.

I just learned Dungeon Lords with my copy of the anniversary edition. Excellent game, but overall structure of the game can be a little hard to grasp at first when just reading the rulebook. This Flash version is super ugly, but it was useful for making sure I had the broad strokes of the rules straight: http://www.dungeonlords.ukfun.com

I'd like to check in as another kid who told his dad he should stop drinking soda and driving.

Dan Ryckert's top 5 pizza toppings: 1) Sausage 2) Cheese 3) Bacon 4) Macaroni and Cheese 5) Pepperoni

The astrariums at least have a unique puzzle in each one. The frustrating thing about them is that you feel pressured to solve them in one sitting, because who wants walk out to wherever the astrarium is to try it again? So you just bang your head against it until you're not having fun. If you could work on the puzzles from anywhere and then travel back out to input the solution, they'd be a pretty solid side activity.

It'll probably be easy on PS4 since they always used an external dongle for the PS3 instruments. The 360 and XB1 are going to be much tricker since they used the Xbox 360 wireless controller standard and that stuff is all different for the XB1. I'd guess the only option would be some sort of 360 controller dongle. Maybe they can just use the one that already exists for PCs.

Mind posting an outline of events in a spoiler tag?

As I recall, Idle Thumbs #150 was during GDC and had all sorts of guests, and then a computer ate the file, and everyone was sad.

You weren't just tired - it is not the most mechanically tight game. I'm especially not sure about the balance with a betrayer. But, it is a nice experience generator a la Tales of the Arabian Nights. Comparing it to that game, it's weird that you read out the results of each decision on the crossroads(?) cards before you choose one. It makes it more about the mechanics than the narrative choice the group is making, which does not play into the game's strengths.

Just wait for it to be sold in a Humble Bundle and then slide the "Mohawk" slider all the way down: That still feels really shitty for all the other non-horrible people associated with that game, like Soren.