Henroid

Oh god Japan what are you doing? https://vine.co/v/OxjBMgu07g5 https://vine.co/v/OxjzDZ3EvZn

Never seen Rick and Morty but I've got that video playing listening to their comments and... yeah, DotA 2 announcer packs have needed this kind of approach for a long time.

Or this:

Just a small note: A Shovel Knight amiibo exists, which is lending heavily to rumors that Shovel Knight is going to be a Smash Bros. character. Which is probably going to open a floodgate of people going, "THIS INDIE GAME CHARACTER SHOULD BE IN SMASH BROS." I've already started by saying Dem the Skeleton Knight should be in it. With the way Nintendo is handling Mario Maker content sharing, it makes me wonder if Nintendo is about to really embrace a lot of modern conventions / expectations in the business.

Read my lips: Tell me about the rabbits George.

I want to be indignant about the mostly-loss of Jake in this episode but the opening discussion about Acclaim's weird PR moves is too great. The Wiki article on the company actually includes a couple of those things in the "Controversy" section, along with the whole BMX: XXX thing that went down. Which I remember clear as day. Everybody saw through that shit.

So what you're saying is that war has changed.

The Adventures of Van Helsing This is one of those times I'm glad I got something for $5. I was always excited by the presentation layer of this game, but had heard more than once that it was a lackluster Diablo style game. Turns out it's not lackluster - but it is clunky as hell to play. And the difficulty is not scaled well at all.This is one of those things I'll try to get back to in the future, maybe, but not for a while.

Making the rounds in the news, Ellen Page confronted Ted Cruz about religion boot-stomping on LGBT rights. And Cruz's answers are as shitty and predictable as you can get. http://www.salon.com/2015/08/21/an_oblivious_ted_cruz_straightsplains_to_ellen_page_about_christians_being_persecuted_by_the_lgbtq_community_in_the_us/

It just so happens that Campaign Zero's website - which is impressive by the way and I encourage everyone to read it through - has a section regarding police contracts. The general site link is here: http://www.joincampaignzero.org/ The 10th item on the main page is the one about police contracts and pertains to what I was talking about. The police have two rules of conducts when it comes to crimes - the rules for everyone who isn't a cop, and the rules for themselves. And the rules for themselves give them a lot of unfair ground or methods for deceit.

I should've noted that Fallout Shelter is literally my first mobile game, ever. I had a specific creed to never get any games on my mobile. I wanted it merely to be my tool, and the most I use it for "play" is my satellite radio and watching YouTube during lunch breaks. So if this is on par for what mobile games do, that actually turns me off to the idea of them. Not that I'm gonna crusade on the net calling for their banishment. They just aren't for me. ... Neptune's Pride 2 being an exception because oh shit I forgot I can play that using my phone now.

Fallout Shelter is a weird game. It has a flow that took some time to get used to. Water seems to be the least used resource, with food the most used. Also not a fan of how easily you just send someone out to die in the wasteland if, say, you send them out, go to work in real life, and check the game when getting home and oh, now that person is dead and costs caps to get back. It would prefer it to be more forgiving. The game is built to be checked every four hours or so, it seems, which isn't a schedule people should be expected to be on.

Someone I went to school with was hit by tear gas during Occupy Oakland. Mind you the protestors were non-violent. There's more to Ferguson and Black Lives Matter than the proportion of police committing crimes against black people; it's also about how trigger happy the police are, the militarization of the police, and how it's somehow become okay to rob people of their right to assemble as granted by THE FIRST THING WRITTEN IN THE CONSTITUTION. Haven't seen it confirmed but the BLM movement received an email from an anonymous source in the St. Louis Police Department. The email outlined that the officers seen recording the crowds are doing so with the instructions to find any sort of wrongdoing on their part, no matter how minor, especially if it's violent. The SLPD are trying to justify their actions. Thankfully, the protestors haven't given in to being incited to violence. The letter also outlined that the reported fires were started by the cops in an attempt to blame the protestors, and that emergency services weren't allowed to put out the fires until the media had covered that the fires started. The fires were in areas protestors were not centered on. Lastly, the local PD has officers embedded within the movement for information gathering and trying to incite people to break the positive spirit / non-violent nature of the protests. Like I said, it's not confirmed, but I wouldn't be surprised by any of it. If anyone here is going to ask why the good cops don't come forward, it's because of the Blue Code. "Never snitch on a fellow officer, even if they are actually wrong and guilty." It's a code enforced by mob rules. As in, the Italian mob. You snitch on a fellow cop, then either you or your family is in for getting murdered.

Oh man, I was expecting to hear about the Nicki Minaj thing that happened. Also in which that Taylor Swift was being terrible.

The St. Louis police department is getting mad that their actions are being broadcast on the internet to be criticized. But they do nothing to curb their actions. Last night, and I still don't know what's been confirmed, two teenagers will shot and killed by them (one of the teens was just 13). The police then smoked the crowd with tear gas. I guess they didn't want witnesses.

I just need to be Mr. I Grew Up With A Sega Genesis here for a moment; Phantasy Star IV did combo attacks before Chrono Trigger did. The positioning stuff though, yeah, that was a legit CT thing. Speaking of the Sega Genesis though, time to represent: Beyond Oasis - The final dungeon If anyone didn't play it, Beyond Oasis was a top-down action RPG that had a lot of puzzle elements to it. And literally elements. Basically your character was able to summon spirits from water, fire, plantlife, or shadows, and use those in combat or to surpass particular puzzles. And the final dungeon is a bit of a big culmination of that, testing your creativity in a lot of cases - throughout most of the game when you need an element to pass a puzzle or room, a source for that element is provided nearby. But in the final dungeon you have to rely on other sources, like you can summon the fire elemental from explosives enemies throw at you. Gunstar Heroes - Dice Palace Again if anyone didn't play it, first of all you should, but this game was a side-scrolling shooter that was goddamn bananas and fun. There's two characters you can play as; one lets you move while shooting, the other stays stationary while shooting but thus letting you aim more strategically. Both have their advantages throughout the game. Also, the weapons you pick up in the game can be combined with others for unique effects, like the flamethrower and laser creates what is essentially a lightsaber as long as you hold the trigger. ANYWAY, the Dice Palace is a part of one of the stages where you are put into a room with a board in the background and a single dice you throw. Each panel on the board takes you into a brief stage, most of them with a mini-boss you have to fight. Gunstar Heroes - The Underground Mine Yes this game again. The Underground Mine is unique in that you're on rails, and can transition from the bottom of the screen to the top by double jumping (both sides have electric rails). And some shafts that run top to bottom change that to transitioning from the left side of the screen to the right. But that's not what makes this stage great; it's all about the boss. The boss of this stage, a guy named Green, has several forms he will fight you in. If you're playing on easy you'll only take on three of those forms, chosen at random. As you go up in game difficulty though, not only are the attacks from the bosses getting faster / hit harder, you actually have to face more of them, culminating in having to fight all seven on the hardest difficulty. It is epic as fuck. Sorry for cursing so much but this game is too good.

What does it say about me that I was absolutely enthralled with hearing about the BSOD still existing and that in Windows 8 it has the sad face emote?

Nice. They also make me think "album covers." IDLE THUMBS, the self-titled album. Back when Nick was in the band.

A lot of the patches have been making strides to make the game easier in the latter portions. I have no idea if I owe my success to that or just my natural learning curve. (That's not me saying I'm hot shit btw). Problems I've had in the past when it came to the game's natural design was shit like early levels generating cliffs I can't climb without 100k cost upgrades or whatever. They seem to have fixed their level generator. I have about 62 days left or so, in my playthrough. Just unlocked the casino area which leaves I think two more stages. The casino has some really intimidating things that I have NO idea how they work as far as detecting you or outright killing you. Which is tense and exciting as hell. So far I have no ranged weapon and I'm kinda glad for that. I don't think the game has any range weapons anyway.

The last almost-month at work has been... incredibly weird, and trying in a lot of ways. Through a bunch of weird circumstances, I am the head of my department at work all of a sudden. So I've been having to spend most of my time doing a lot of clerical stuff and figuring out things for the first time. Which, hey, my bosses are fine with all that. I just wish I was faster innately because we're understaffed. Which is about to hit a point of critical mass. There's a guy at my job that sometimes swings into my department, and any time he does he's doing things incorrectly or breaking my equipment. For the most part the equipment breaking was on accident since he doesn't know it well, but he HAS been ignoring my entreaties about not doing something if he doesn't know, and to never guess how to do something, and all of that is absolutely okay. Even with the bosses. If not especially. But today he was being an outright unprofessional tool. So I had to report him to the boss, because it was actually interfering with my department's flow of business. He got in trouble for it, and rather than take it to heart he spent the rest of the day trying to find ways to take his anger out on me. Which he did via breaking equipment in my lab on purpose. Now, that's not my personal equipment. I don't suffer financially for it. But it does interrupt me from doing my job. So, again as I was leaving, I had to report him. And he tried to confront me about it on my way out the door and I dismissed him with letting him know that what he's doing is not okay and that's that. The problem is, he has the ear of the one person on my staff that is present at work most. And she's actually good at the job. There's the occasional "bleh I'm 20 years old I don't wanna work" fit but whatever, I can deal with that easily. And even rarer, she's actually eager to learn more than what's actually required of her. So hey, that's a valuable employee. Except... she got to work, and he immediately mouthed off to her. When I was leaving and doing our usual cross-shift communication, she was all of a sudden hostile and uncooperative. Now I have a bad person in my lab who, at this moment, could be pouring random chemicals all over the place for all I know. So tomorrow is gonna be D-Day as far as me going to my employers about those two goes. I'm thirty years old and don't have time for this shit. I expect this crap from the guy because he's always been that way, so I don't care to see him go. But her, it sucks because she's useful to me, and also because she can actually set herself up with a long-term job. But she wants to give that up over a fuckface 'friend' like him. In all my years I've learned one thing to be 90% true; if someone isn't worth a damn on their job, they probably aren't worth a damn in other aspects of their life. He's already shown signs of the, "Hey I'll pay you back later I promise" routine so I feel confident about my assessment of him. I got a job to make a living, not to make friends. I will gladly hang people out on their asses if they make my job needlessly difficult or impossible.

There was some sort of GamerGate event going on somewhere and it received a bomb threat. Now, hey, as much as GG is full of shit that's not cool. ... but the asshole that I am wants to believe that it's something they planned to have happen to draw sympathy (ironically) and be able to point fingers. And even if it was legit they're going to point fingers anyway. I don't want them to die. But I would like it if they fucked off!

Well things aren't self-evident but they can easily be explained. In general that is. By the way, since Chris is still playing Fallout Shelter, just dropping the news here that the game is finally out for Android devices. I just downloaded it from the Google Play store.

I mean I'll definitely agree on one thing about watching esports - the barrier you have to climb to understand what's going on is tougher to overcome than athletic sports. I often tell people the best thing to do to get some context is to play the game a bit yourself. It doesn't even have to be competitively, just some bots or whatever. Even understanding movement of the game helps a lot. Junior Mints said it best via Twitter the other day - the best esport is probably speed running video games. There's no meta level of gameplay to learn there.

The broadcasters talking during the draft is actually one of the biggest context and helpful dumps you can get as a spectator of DotA 2. They explain what characters have good synergy, and while they may not always explain why, it should clue you in on seeing what those two characters are capable of and then figure out why. Hell, on the draft screen you can mouse over the abilities of each pick. It's all right there. Again, being a fan of a sport takes investment to figure out who is good and why. Spectating sports is different than watching Dr. Who or Bones or whatever TV shows are out there.

Felicia Day put out a book, and apparently Goobergate hate her for it. 'Cause you know, ethics in journalism or something, but instead they just end up calling her the c-word.