I found Heart of Darkness underwhelming the first time I read it, but it’s grown on my as I’ve taught the book. I think that the key to really getting the book is understanding that 1) he’s mostly taking the piss at the Belgians, who were actually really bad at the whole colonizing thing, and 2) the most horrible…

Huh, I just saw Super Robot Wars on the Steam page a bit ago ... probably because I live in Japan. I was totally disinterested — I love giant robots, and giant robot anime, but I’m really wary of jank Japanese giant robot games that, in my uninformed opinion, are both over-focused on stat grind and empty fan-service…

Really? That is really interesting. I put all my points into marine stuff, and pretty quickly started feeling strong and badass. Maybe it was my hyper-specialization that allowed it.

Hrmn. Backlog. This one is complicated a LOT by the fact that I’ve been a Humble Bundle subscriber for, like, two years now. Last year I made a point of telling myself, “Self, you’re not going to buy new games very often this year, just play your Humble Bundle games instead.” And so I did, to a degree. I played Assassi…

A couple weeks ago, I fell off BATTLETECH hard. Part of it was a trip. When I’m really into a game, and then go somewhere, I find it hard to jump back into the game when I return. But also, I was hitting some puzzling and frustrating difficulty spikes. I had been absolutely cruising along, and even handled the…

On this incredibly depressing evening, I’ll think back to the few bright moments in what has otherwise been an incredibly shitty year, for me personally and for the world as a whole. I actually played a ton of games this year, more than in many years previously. I managed to get sucked in to three separate games this…

I’ve continued to play occasional bouts of Company of Heroes 2, and find myself slowly getting used to the game again. Goddamn it’s hard, but it’s also just so awesome when you’re actually able to kind of play the game, and blow up the enemy tanks and keep your mans in cover and not let stuff die when you look away to…

Thank you for writing that! It was a fascinating read, even as it described a sort of game that I’ve never liked, and have absolutely no interest in playing. I kinda like shooters ... but I never clicked with Doom and its descendants, and didn’t really come around on the genre until Half Life. But this was interesting.…

I can guess it’s one of three checks I have in mind. Know that you can often boost the chance for those not just by grinding XP, but also by investigating other areas that may not seem connected. They’ll add bonuses to the check that can add up in significant ways. Also, failing the check will sometimes instigate…

This week, not a whole heck of a lot. I’ve been doing a bit of painting, and trying to keep up with the NBA season. I had to stay late at work twice. And I drank a lot last night. Oh, and the only games I’ve had much interest in are actually hard - Heroes of the Storm and Company of Heroes 2. I’ve been trying to get…

My first run was strong but dumb. I thought it would be cool to go back and be smart, but I found I just didn’t have the drive to replay the game. My story felt complete the first time, and I just couldn’t do it.

Engi was seriously strange, but I found I just really liked the drones and could get them to do work. Actually, I think I might have played both Engi variants until the end - the alt version with one crewmember and a bunch of drones was far, FAR more effective than it had any right to be.

I managed to get 3 or 4 winning runs. At least one with the starter ship and its “Dark” variant, one with the cube that had all the drones, and one with the green ship (Zoltan?). The Rock ship was useless, as was the Cruiser, and I never got the hang of the no-air robot dude ship.

I’ve not really figured out what to play since I beat Disco Elysium. This has happened before, and it will happen again - a transcendent experience makes it hard for anything to compare for quite a while. Still, it’s kind of annoying. I started to get back into Slay the Spire, but that’s more of a “game to play at…

I think FTL is just low-profile enough, and small enough, that it’s easy to forget. It was also a PC game at first, and this group seems to lean much more heavily towards the console side of things — not surprising as this also mirrors the general population. As one can guess from my list, though, I am exclusively a…

In no particular order ...

I finished DE last week, finishing off a week plus of almost utter complusive play. It was great! It’s so rare these days, as a bitter and burned out middle age failure, to really fall into a video game and wholeheartedly love it. 

Admittedly, being a hero is usually a crazy thing. Telling wannabe heroes that they should give up is also called being a good friend. The vast majority of the time, they’re right, and the wannabe just dies/fails horribly. It comes off as shallow and cliche in the way that most legit life advice does, but that’s…

I finished my playthrough a few days ago, and unlike you OCD save-scumming NERDS I just ate my failures and dealt with it. Because I hate myself and like to suffer. Sorry about that. /RP For a while, I figured I’d do a second playthrough just to see some other things, but now I’m not so sure, and part of it is for the…

From what I have seen, “cruel to ideologies” definitely seems right. Then again, an amnesiac ignoramus clinging to a clarifying ideology for security is probably not the best place to look for a nuanced and mature appraisal of an ideology and its practical applications in the world -- and I can’t tell yet how much the…