I wrote an article for Baseline back in 2009 about different technology lifecycles: firefly, underdone, conveyor belt, and landfill. I haven’t quite decided where Microsoft Kinect fits in; it seems to somewhere between ‘firefly’ (“promising wondrous things but never really materializing into usable tools and…

Why are half almost all of these from Mario games? That’s pretty much the antithesis of “scary”.

Still having fun with XCOM 2: War of the Chosen.

It was never a “morality” meter — it was a “chaos” meter, with the result being either high or low chaos. The ultimate consequences were not based on whether your choices were moral, but how much your choices disturbed or disrupted the rest of society. Thus, if you had the full ‘Shadow Kill’ power — so that all…

I had forgotten about both of those aspects. Heh. I may have to dig it out of my files now.

I loved and miss SPI. I mostly picked up their SF/F games, but I did get “AirWar”, their fighter-pilot-vs-fighter-pilot game. It wasn’t a ‘big’ a game as TCFNA (I’m not sure there’s been a game as big as that), but it was incredibly tedious, with turns measured in (IIRC) fractions of a second. I studied up on the…

Still playing XCOM2: War of the Chosen. And look who are now besties in my current campaign:

XCOM 2: WotC. Some of the things I really like:

1) The side missions for the resistance groups. This is something I had long wished for in XCOM 2, namely a way to build up experience and levels for ‘rookies’ without endangering my regular soldiers by taking them along on full-blown missions.

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen, which is just too fun for words, except when your absolute favorite soldier, with massive skill upgrades, gets killed taking out one of the Chosen. (Sob. I still miss Nox.) Also, I’ve had to unlearn XCOM 2+Long War 2, which I’ve been playing since January. (“Wait — where are the rest of my…

I finally installed this today, thought I’d see how it is...and it’s now 2 am. I love XCOM/XCOM2/XCOM2-LW2, and this is my new favorite. I agree with Nathan’s thumbs up; here are few more thoughts:

OK, who else saw the very first photo — Toranomon (2007) — and thought of “One Punch Man” and Saitama’s apartment? (Looks around.) Uh, just me, then?

Now: substitute “physics”, “science”, “information technology”, “hacking”, “actual history”, “actual biography”, etc., for “Japan/Japanese”. Notice a pattern?

“Avengers 4: Thanos in the Friendzone”

I’ve played Scythe, which is an excellent board game (and I remain very jealous of my friend Nick’s deluxe Kickstarter-backer edition, no longer available). This looks like fun.

Endless Space 2, while smoking lots of meat (50 lbs of pork shoulder, 46 lbs of brisket) for a large organizational dinner tomorrow night.

I was 48; my wife and I were living in Washington DC (Cleveland Park area). I had started my own business that summer and worked from home; I was in my home office (doorway adjacent to master bedroom doorway), and my wife was in the bathroom doing makeup and hair stuff. The TV in the bedroom was on and tuned to cable…

Yes! Women should be allowed to go sleeveless! So should the men! Would make all those televised hearings far more entertaining.

(Seriously? This is a 15-year-old policy, and it get a post?)

(Pssst. It’s a book. OK, several books and several movies, but it’s a book.)

Still looks remarkably just like a somewhat prettier version of Planetbase.

I had set down Dishonored 2 about halfway through last November, and I just now have gotten back into it. I’m also racking up serious hours with Endless Space 2 (hint: the Overcolonization Rebalance mod makes the game less grindy in the mid-game), and I continue to work my way through an XCOM 2 + Long War 2 mod game.