I'm actually finding that the random encounter rate isn't super high, though that may also be a function of dungeons being nice and short. (It helps if you put the battle speed on maximum, though even then actions take a while to resolve.) You can turn off all random encounters with one push of F4 on the PC though,…

Even if bastards did count, I thought that Robert had dozens of bastards all over the place and Gendry was just one that we (and Ned & Jon Arryn) happened to meet. Even if he were in line, he wouldn't necessarily be up at the front.

Ghost for Lord Commander! Can't fuck it up any more than anybody else has lately.

Yeah, "Rosalina in the Observatory" is much more ballet-like, for lack of a better term, and I think that makes a fantastic fit for the first time you get to play with Galaxy. Who of us didn't spend a good chunk of time just leaping around experimenting with the gravity mechanics? But by the time you get to Galaxy 2,…

The Beatrix fights are a comparatively benign version of it though. They demand that you survive until a designated amount of time has passed rather than just waiting for you to be overwhelmed. (Or you can short-circuit things by just smacking her around, but she still automatically wins and you don't get any bonus…

I was gonna say, who makes a Vita-only game in 2016? Are they allergic to money or something?

It’s abrupt to the point of comedy, and an example of the show potentially learning its own lesson about long term planning and cutting its losses on a Dorne storyline that never worked last season (and which has only slightly more promise in its newly thinned-out version).

Oh my sweet summer child.

Keyboard Geniuses Leaderboard! [Link]

I don't love putting games on hold, but Dishonored: The Knife of Dunwall is in exactly that position while I barrel through Final Fantasy IX (Steam edition).

Re: Majora's Mask - have you acquired the Bomber's Notebook? That's all the guide you need for 90+% of the game. Anybody in Clock Town with a sidequest gets entered into it automatically, and it shows you what timeframes you'll need to do stuff for them in. It doesn't say what specifically you need to do for them (I…

On the phone front, have you tried Nonograms Katana? I've been pretty happy with that, though I've unfortunately plowed through all of the reasonable sized ones. 30x30 puzzles are kinda nasty on a phone screen!

And not just the wardens, he betrayed and effectively killed his own king. It's so petulant and counter productive - you really think a sketchy handoff of power is good thing to have when your already-reeling country is on the receiving end of a horde of orcs? Plus there's his beef at Ostagar being the eventual…

I think my favorite part of Solar is that if your wingmen don't have enough shields going into the level, they just automatically die since they have no way to mitigate the heat damage.

I swear that if one of those bastards ganks kills from me on Sector Z, I shoot them down myself. The medals are mine. MINE MINE MINE.

I enjoyed the non-rails and tank interludes in SF64 (boo urns to the submarine though), but there's definitely a lesson to the devs that those were interludes. Even with all the various paths through the game, you spent a solid majority of your time in the on-rails Arwing mode that people showed up for. Lose track of…

Obligatory "nobody plays Star Fox for the plot" disclaimer aside, it seems like a bit of a red flag that the storyline is once again about James McCloud's death and Andross's return. This is a 6 game series that has now done 3 different versions of that tale, and given that Star Fox Adventures was an unrelated game…

On the subject of Replay Mode, XCOM 2 has a really cool (mostly undocumented, not officially supported) tweak on the format. Rather than being a dedicated playback mode like Starcraft's, you can break off the replay partway through the mission and enter regular gameplay based off of its current state. So you could…

I'm in the same boat. I do find myself constantly throwing talked-about AAA games on my wishlist, but it's always weird to pick them up months or years after their moment in the hype cycle and experience basically a 60 hour shrug.

Hey, new reviewer! Hi Alexander!