dium

The invite doesn't actually seem necessary at all, I never got one. I just did this as per Doug's suggestion:

I dunno, the specific point being made by Zeus was about bad practices that actually do seem to be tied with those sorts of games. A minority in a vast sea of smaller budget games, sure, but despite this they're surely still the most visible section of the market. Especially from the outside in. And also, the types of games that people are usually talking about when they say "gaming is too expensive". So they're kinda the reason this conversation is happening in the first place, right?

And since the games that actually provide pre-order incentives, day one DLC, etc, ARE those AAA Call of Duty tier games, you are essentially agreeing with his statement yes?

I upgraded from 7 to 10 this weekend. I also did what a lot of people here seem to be doing and installed a new SSD at the same time. I opted for a full reformat and clean install, for that total new computer feel. I kinda understand Root's complaint about how "the same" everything is, because the most positive changes I'm feeling have nothing to do with the new OS. I mean: everything is much snappier and pleasant, but surely that has much more to do with the new hardware. Also, I'm enjoying my uncluttered desktop and menus, but those are mostly to do with the clean install that I could've done at any point in the past with Windows 7 if I wanted. This is compounded by how I've spent the first hour or so after installation disabling new features. I turned off everything that requires a Microsoft account (ie Cortana), made it so the search bar only searches my computer and not the web, etc etc. I may turn some of these back on at a later date if I feel like I might use them. I don't feel like I'm particularly naive nor paranoid about tracking stuff (I realize that everything tracks my activity nowadays), but I'd prefer these sorts of features to be disabled by default and opted-in incrementally (if ever). All that said, this is what I like about Windows 10 (from the perspective of someone upgrading from 7): Much simpler, cleaner, more "modern" looking UI across the board. Bells/whistles that aren't wanted are fairly easily removed or replaced. Tiny things like changing system volume just feels friendlier. In comparison, Windows 7 feels like XP with a third party transparent UI mod installed. I also quite like the tiled interface on the start menu (do we still say "metro"?). Admittedly, it's not much more than a slick-looking alternative to keeping shortcuts on my desktop. But I actually want that. I only wish the applications I use had live tiles, or at least let me manipulate the size of their tiles. 90% of my time spent on my PC is in Chrome or a Steam app, so I wanted to make those icons wider or bigger in some way. But nope, it can't be done. The new Edge browser feels like it could actually be pretty good! I like all the gui bits a lot; I was disproportionately impressed with how the downloads sidebar felt when I opened it up to find where my Chrome installer went (haha). It's such a bummer how there's no extension support yet... this was their one and only chance to get my attention, the only time in the foreseeable future when I could've possibly been tempted to give their new browser a trial. But no extensions is an insta-dealbreaker, and I'm probably never looking back. I haven't had a reason to type in another language yet but I'm excited to hear that language-switching is better. I've typed in Japanese in OSX, Ubuntu Linux and Windows XP/Vista/7 and Windows has definitely been the worst at it thus far. That language bar is so ugly! It cost nothing! Definitely the best feature of them all.

So you're saying that... Sounds legit.

Onion talk, not really very spoilery at all but I'm being careful:

I remember admiring endless eight for its audacity even as it was actively frustrating me. But the admiration is almost entirely for the concept and the bravery behind it; I don't remember any of the actual content they put on the screen with any fondness and I don't intend to ever revisit it.

Seconded on Tangerine. I saw it yesterday and I feel very enthusiastic about how good it was.

I watched all the endless eight episodes as they aired, didn't really enjoy anything about them, and yet somehow my overall memory of Haruhi is positive. How the subjective human brain can work this way is a wonder.

Also recently caught up with Steven Universe. I'm mad there isn't more of it. I'm ostensibly watching Bojack Horseman and enjoying that, but really all I crave is Steven Universe, which has gotten progressively better with almost every episode.

It's almost August again. It'll have been an entire year, and they're still around.

Kickinthehead: That story is terrifying! I'm annoyed by time wasting ads in most contexts, but I feel serious moral revulsion towards ads that target children. They're way too "effective".

Seems like I gotta go see this movie so I can read this thread.

This is how I felt about the Shantae game I've played (Pirate's Curse), which I otherwise thought was pretty good. It's not even that I think the art is bad, just unnecessarily fan servicey and uncomfortable to play in public. I guess that's the WayForward house aesthetic.

Finally got around to beating Broken Age, which I left about half way through Act 2 during a house-moving/otherwise-too-busy period in my life. It was pretty fantastic, I thought. It made me wish that I played it all in one go, since pretty much my only complaint with the game was that (mild pseudo-spoiler) That seems like something that wouldn't bother me if the game weren't bifurcated. The game left me feeling pumped about adventure games, and then immediately sad about how few of them there are of this kind and caliber that I haven't already played. That's about the highest compliment I can give, I think. An aside, I keep Steam in detail view and two out of three of the "recent news" for Broken Age is RPS's John Walker talking about how bad it is. Obviously I disagree, but it's not like many of his points aren't well made... I wonder what adventure games he considers good? Especially regarding puzzles, since he called Broken Age's "awful" and for me they were a highlight.

This is the true spirit and meaning of christmas the steam summer sale.

Don't Starve (with expansion) Massive Chalice Hatoful Boyfriend Not bad

Between years of these things bloating up my backlog, and my new job having substantially changed my available-leisure-time to expendable-income ratio, I really shouldn't be looking at this sale. I want to look at it, and I do look at it, but at this point it's a shameful experience. The absolute low point of the Steam sale experience, for me, is when I see a game and think "oh! I really want to play that, I should buy it!" ...and then I realize that I already own it, I probably bought it in a previous Steam sale, I never got around to playing it, and, even after just thinking "I really want to play that" four seconds ago, I'm probably not gonna load it up now.

T2 presents some tough questions!

Human Casualties: 0.0

The motion controls felt immediately superior to me. I think maybe because I've played very few post-Halo dual analogue stick shooter games, so I don't have that muscle memory to depend on or fight against.

My significant other also plays a lot of neko atsume. The name of the game, overly-word-for-word-literally translated to "cat collect", can't help but remind me of this thing.

I've played this a bit, I like it! I've level 6 in multiplayer, and just beat the second boss in the single player. NNID: danueb (I'm Dan in game) I'm surprisingly not the worst at this game, and by that I ONLY mean not the worst.

More video game podcasting: Patrick Klepek / Gita Jackson / Sam Phillips in an as-of-yet-unnamed thing. Extremely promising first 20 minutes (which is all I've heard so far)! Seems like they're open to name suggestions. Names are hard and I can't come up with anything that isn't along the lines of "best cast" or "good pod" or something else Jake Rodkin would say.

EDIT: oops wrong thread