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Not a surprise to some of you, but I'm a huge fan of the big black vastness that is space and all that it contains, and occasionally I stumble on cool stuff. I thought it'd be cool to have a place for that cool space related stuff First cool thing. Not too long ago, NASA posted a tour of the ISS and I had to share it! So take the tour with Sunni Williams and be amazed! MEANWHILE, ON MARS. HI. Still actively taking pictures, I see! Ok, so they're mostly of rocks, but everything about this is amazing. (CLICK IT). This is an old episode of NOVA Science NOW which probably none of you space-hating fiends have seen. They tackle several of the issues we'd have to deal with if we wanted to put human feet on martian soil. The dangers of radiation, better space suits, food, faster propulsion and the devastating effects of meteoroids and more. Yea, science! Good. Ok. I'm done here for now, but there will undoubtedly be more. Yes?

It's an idea I've been playing around with for a while and since the cancellation of Monday Night GTA Thumbs, now is as good a time as any to try it out. Here's the pitch: We suggest any kind of PC multiplayer game that would be interesting/fun/hilarious/dumb/crap. We then dedicate a Monday game night to playing that game for a few hours, while enjoying the chatter of exquisite Thumbs. We'll be playing a new game on a biweekly basis and since it's not viable for everyone to keep buying new games for a Monday night of play, it's best if these games are either free or HELLA CHEAP. Add a game to the RANDOMIZER list! Please check if your game is not already on the list before adding something new The next randomizer will be: Bionic Commando Alright, tomorrow we're going to revisit Bionic Commando. Just as a heads up, you will need Hamachi as we'll be playing on a simulated LAN, since the master server is no longer around. As always, we meet on our Mumble channel! In hamachi you need to go to 'Network > Join existing network' and connect to the following: (Case and space sensitive:) Idle Ham 1 Idle Ham 2 Idle Ham 3 Password for all 3 of these: games If you cannot join 1, then it's full, so join 2 and so on. Let me know if you have any problems. The video games we play are secondary to Monday game nights. Hanging out with people from the forums, getting to chat with each other and have a good time while playing a video game is what these evenings are all about. Let's play some random games that we'd otherwise never ever play! We meet on Mumble at 8PM UTC. Monday the 8th of December we play the game! Past randomizers: RANDOMIZER #1: Bionic Commando RANDOMIZER #2: Plain Sight RANDOMIZER #3: Monday Night Combat RANDOMIZER #4: The Ship RANDOMIZER #5: Soldat RANDOMIZER #6: Build and Shoot (RE)RANDOMIZER #7: Bionic Commando

I also think most game playing folk (beyond maybe people who are deep into gaming/developing) have no idea who Chris Crawford is, or know/played his games.

We totally need to talk about this game and potentially get a Thumb crew going. When you first play it, you won't know what is going on and your characters life span will probably not be very long. I was sent to the frontlines and landed via drop-pod in, seemingly, the middle of nowhere. Nowhere, except the giant steamrolling enemy force that passed by. All I got to do was register that there was a giant enemy force and then I was dead. The game does a very poor job of explaining anything. In fact, it explains nothing and you just kind of have to figure out what everything does and means on your own. I'm glad I stuck with it, as this is a game of war stories and it's on a scale you've probably never seen before. Unless you played the original Planetside. One part in particular had me jetpacking from tree to tree, concealed in the leaves, absolutely devastating an enemy assault. I had to go back and restock my ammo at least 6 times, all the while in the chaos of the fight, no one had bothered looking up. I'm currently learning how to fly properly. Got my flightstick and everything, getting used to everything. In one of my first flights, I was just kind of getting a feel for things when, in the middle of nowhere there's a light assault trooper running around. So I'm thinking "Target practice!" and when he realizes that his gun and ammo supply is only gonna scratch my paint, he just keeps running. I swear to god, for 2 minutes, I'm following this guy around, attempting to shoot him. I didn't hit him once. I attempted to do a cool hover thing. I half succeeded, pressed the wrong thruster button and pancaked onto the scenery. I hope that person had a good laugh. I've gotten better though. It was an action movie moment, where a whole group was holed up in the room with the thing you gotta capture. Windows on 1 side. I hovered up, could see the wealth of fodder in the room and as they stood and watched me for a second the realization of what was gonna happen seemed to sink in and all of them dash to the doorways. I think I shot a good 8 dudes on that one run. It was great. So yes, let's go play. I'll teach you useful things and then we can be each others wingman.

Sounds more like you should find a higher population server? Or is there only one server on consoles? All this talk about Planetside 2 recently made me remember the Idle Thumbs Hot Drops Squad: Good times, good times!

They recently added a Wolven School armor set with some free DLC.

They also have cool names like the TwinFrozr X-TREME ULTRA COOL MARK II. And Sometimes they have a cool dragon or maybe even a jet fighter on the box!

Oh shit, that guy? I only just realized they were one and the same.

One of my favourite things to do and what I do all the time is check to see what trophies my friends got compared to what I got.

That particular quest can still be done I suppose I did have one quest fail for me, but it was one where I didn't really want to work with that character, so once the story progressed I guess something had happened to said character.

It will explicitly tell you when you get to a point where some side-quests will be abandoned, which only happens once and you're still a ways off from that point. Once you get to Skellige you can still fast travel between Velen/Novigrad and the islands, so it ain't no thang.

THREADSURRECTION:

Consider yourself validated.

I think they're aiming for a Q4 release, but I'm not sure. The last update on the project was back in may, where they announced they had finished some previously mentioned filming. Excitingly enough, they're doing FMV actors in classic Myst fashion and even filmed it in such a way that it works for VR and everything!

I got a bit of an Arma vibe from it. If it's a more arcadey style tactical experience, I'm so on board with that! We'll have to see though, as Ghost Recon: Future Soldier was pretty terrible.

This years E3 was great fun! So much great games and just all around good vibes.

Lorne Lanning on the couch at Giant Bomb Live day 3 reminding me why he is one of my favourite industry people.

Tested continues to do excellent VR coverage.

It's true. There is definitely a period of acclimation; getting your VR legs it's called. There are certain things I could only do maybe 20-30 minutes before my eyes and brain just started feeling funny, but after a few times that stopped happening. I can play Elite Dangerous doing pretty crazy stuff and it's fine. I could not read the editorial, I can't stand the guy's writing.

Quit playing games with my heart. My heart. My heart. I should've known from the start. .

Great news! Cara Ellison got a job at Arkane and is totally working on Dishonored 2, I just found out!

All in all, that was a pretty enjoyable conference from Bethesda; generally a good pace! And Bethesda really taking a page out of Blizzard's strategy book, huh... Doom looks like the kind of brainless violence I can get behind! I really enjoy some twitch action shooting! So Fallout 4. The things they showed look cool, but I got a thing with this brand of Bethesda game, which I think kind of reached a tipping point now that the rendering and lighting looks so nice, and they seem to be going for some stronger characterization. The animations still look like hot garbage and between that and the dead eyed npc's it is incredibly distracting to me. You could tell they did their very best not to show your characters 3rd person camera in combat, because it's going to look like the same janky Bethesda stick up your ass shit. Why is the whole animation side of things still on the same level as it was in Oblivion?? That said, man, I'm totally ready to dive back into that world. (Once the Fallout 4 GOTY complete edition edition comes out)

Rub those natural ingredients all over your lips.

Pictures of the thing.

Oculus Live event starts in 15 minutes, for anyone who is interested. http://www.twitch.tv/oculus