Twig

I also have Windows 8 Pro for free for the same reason (although I'm technically no longer a student! shhhh). These impressions are pushing me over the edge a bit. U: But I just did a fresh install of 7 when I got all my new hardware! ):

This is great. I love it. It's the kind of thing I always want to do but never actually do. U:

Oh man, this is my favorite one. Love these kinds of jokes.

Depends on your definition of "special". It's probably mostly that America ignorance is infinitely more likely to show up on YouTube. Although I see now that Tycho already covered this for me. U:

I was being silly, too. I was hoping the last statement in that post would give it away. U:

Fine. Everything I've heard of or heard examples of. I'm really very open-minded when it comes to music, though. I have trouble believing that someone could find a genre I don't enjoy on some level.

TRY ME There are definitely some artists I don't like, but I can find something I DO like in every genre. Although, to be fair, I only consider genres on a very broad level. When you get down into discussing the deep, dark levels of Math Doom Opera Metal, I lose interest and fall asleep. EDIT: I would probably listen to math doom opera metal if it existed...

I don't know what to say other than quit being a baby? Dunno how you got through life up to this point if you can't tolerate people finding joy in things you dislike. But then, I enjoy literally every genre of music. So I'm allowed to lord my smugness all over your hating behind.

Except for the fact that that statement is wrong, it's completely correct!

I had a major freakout moment last night like I haven't had for many, many years (i.e., since I was a small child, and still actually had/remembered my nightmares). I woke up in the middle of the night, as one does on occasion. My blinds were open. I glanced out the window at the street lamp (level with my window - I'm on the third floor). Suddenly, this floating mass of writhing thread-thin tentacles flew at my fucking face. I freaked out, literally shouted "What the fuck?", threw my pillow at it, jumped out of my bed, snapped the light on, and started digging through my sheets looking for whatever it was I saw. After... calmly thinking about it, I realized that it was just the street lamp and drowsy-eyes creating a weird illusion in my brain. I warily crawled back into bed, but couldn't sleep for another half hour because of this itchy feeling all over my body. Anyway, I have no idea if it was Hotline Miami that caused this, but it was the last thing I did before going to sleep. The game is pretty rad. Fuck that Russian mob boss with the panthers! ):

AAAWESOMENAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUTS

Most of my thoughts about Arthur Gies were formed from a ton of incredibly ignorant generalizations about PC gamers and PC gaming on Rebel FM, which, as a proper PC gamer, I am of course offended by. Not really, but it did leave a bit of a sour taste before I eventually gave up on the podcast (for a multitude of reasons, none of which are really relevant, shutting up now). When he wasn't talking about PC stuff, he seemed like a decent dude, I guess. I'll give some of the stuff a read-through this evening. U:

Awesomenauts actually does have a surprisingly good soundtrack. The music is just so fun.

I love The Life Aquatic. I think I'm one of four people who does.

Actually, no, I didn't! I didn't get into online gaming until my mid-teens-ish, when I first played Day of Defeat and The Specialists. I could and did and can and do play non-team-based games without voice chat, obviously. For team-based games - especially a LoMa, where coordination is paramount to success - I would never want to play without voice chat, or at the very least text chat. Because of what I said above. There is no system that can perfectly replace the complete freedom of saying what you want when you want to say it. I understand that you don't care as much about that complete freedom, but it's very important to me to be able to express myself to the best of my ability. The best systems are actually those that have stuff like what you're talking about ALONGSIDE voice/text chat. It is when they work in tandem that video games become Video Games! Whatever that means.

It might be reasonable to you. It's crippling to me.

You forgot LoL. That sounds utterly awful... I'd rather suffer the few assholes I encounter than not be able to communicate in a reasonable manner.

It'll never snow here. I don't like it. EDIT: I said "It'll never know here." What.

WHAT IS GOING ON

I like your wacky moon logic. All I know about Elemental is this: http://www.unamommer.com/?p=109

ow

I'm in a similar situation. Wheel of Time was so engrossing to me as a younger person. I've been rereading it, too, and I guess I'm sort of hating it because of what you said? Sort of. Robert Jordan takes chapters and chapters of describing every single minute detail of every character the current point-of-view character sees, when 99% of it isn't important to anything. Fantasy authors, in general, are awful in that way, but Wheel of Time is one of the worst examples. Sometimes the authors seem to prefer spending a lot of time describing their characters and the world they've created, to the detriment of actually telling a story. I'm actually not sure if that's what you were talking about, now that I reread your post and mine, but hey. I think both subtle and nonsubtle writing styles have their place. Wheel of Time is just bad for its own specific reasons. Man, I'm kind of upset I started rereading it. The first few books were good (if nothing special), as I remembered, but they just keep growing more and more longwinded. Less and less happens per page. Yeurgh. I enjoy the story, but the writing is turning me off big time. I think I need to stop reading it.

Well, I haven't played it, but it seems kind of lame. I'm all for the idea of short, specific scenarios (AKA "challenges") in a game like this. Another example might be Civ scenarios, I guess. Unfortunately, more often than not, they fall flat and leave me wanting. When they work, they work well, but when they don't...

Who's to say XCOM the shooter won't be incredibly systems-intensive? We still don't know much about it. Less than we did before it turned into a third-person shooter. That aside, I've always been a huge proponent of creating different games with different styles and different stories within the same world. It's always a shame when a fun world is "wasted" on a single game that may or may not actually be any good. But... this is going way off topic, so I'll shut up now. U: