thefncrow

You can, with a caveat. The cutscenes are just videos, I guess, and therefore don't take character skins into account. So you can select the skin to play as a woman, but every time you hit a cutscene, it still shows male Talion.

You don't always get a mob with the Betrayal events. I had one trigger where it was just the Warchief and his 2 bodyguards on a bit of coastline overlooking the ocean. Luckily, I'd already turned both bodyguards, but there was no mob to back them up. Also, I didn't realize about the trophy for making a revenge target the new warchief before taking him out. I've already set most of that scenario up, so I might as well kill that guy and let his bodyguard who I've also branded ascend.

Characters that are invulnerable to melee, weirdly, are only invulnerable to YOUR melee attacks. Brand orcs nearby and make them fight for you, and the Warchief will not be invulnerable to their attacks. I think this applies for ranged attacks as well. Edit: Also, yes, fear of burning will turn his icon green when he's lit on fire. You should be able to grab him and finish him from that state.

So, between showing a friend of mine the first part of the first A Touch of Cloth, watching 2014 Wipe, and recommending Black Mirror to anyone I know with taste, I ended up back on a Brooker kick and ran through A Touch of Cloth 2 and 3. Those are both really stupid, and yet really hilarious. All 3 A Touch of Cloth series are recommended if you're the sort of person who liked Police Squad!

I don't think I'm actually going to go back and mess with it, but I now feel like I should modify my Top 10 list to include "The Jackbox Party Pack", because I just had a big group over for UFC and we played Fibbage XL and Drawful between fights, and goddamn that is one of the best experiences of the year. Everyone playing on their own smartphones is a stroke of genius that no one else has yet to match.

Dan's bugged me with his attitude on twitter recently, but it wasn't over that tweet. That tweet is kinda a continuation of something he said the night before, which specified much more about how good his personal life was for the second half of last year. But in that earlier string, he says these things: That right there is the crux of my problem with Dan. It's a strange variation on the dumb "if you try hard enough you will succeed" stuff, a sort of "if you just try hard enough to pretend that all the unfun horseshit doesn't exist, it'll just go away without anyone having to work to make things better". There was some comments he posted around election day this year: And kinda the topper, when someone sent him a link to a voter's guide that tried to explain the issues in simple terms so he could be educated enough to vote meaningfully (phrased something like as "Do you realize this thing exists?") in response to the bit about how he'd vote if the issue was simple to understand: Working hard guarantees success. Working hard to ignore something means it'll just go away. And if you don't engage, well, don't worry, things will naturally just get better on their own.

I actually feel like I got a good haul from this steam sale. I got: Mount Your Friends Super Time Force Ultra Shovel Knight South Park: The Stick of Truth Lethal League Alien: Isolation

Well, the explosion when Dan got hired was addressed in a letter from the editor written by Jeff, but it was a pretty weak response. It was very much of the "hey, if you're harassing people in our name, fuck you. we're against this harassment" sort and didn't remotely touch the actual criticism. And looking at that letter again, I'm reminded that part of it was a promise of new moderation policies coming that would crack down on the harassment, which I have zero idea if they followed up on. It is possible, though, given that Zoe Quinn posted a top 10 list as part of their GOTY stuff and I never really saw any awful comments on it (although you can kinda see a few places where what were likely such comments that were deleted by moderators). On some level, I can forgive the Dan hire because they were in a real bad spot when it came to on-camera folk for their content, which was only going to get worse when Vinny left. Dan basically fits immediately and can hit the ground running when it comes to the sort of content they produce. It doesn't mean I wasn't a little disappointed, but I understood it. That's an excuse they're not going to have this time. Yes, they just lost another member of the staff, but Patrick's loss makes the need for this new hire to be a diversifying hire greater, not less. Patrick was the member of the staff that actually took the time to dive into games and genres that the rest of the crew wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole and a leading voice on that staff for actively seeking out perspectives from people that weren't straight white males. I'm holding out hope that they're going to get this right this time.

Watching this now, I love that it features the return of Barry Shitpeas.

Have you watched the Christmas special, Black Mirror: White Christmas? Really good, features Jon Hamm. It's up on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Omq0xSP7tb0&spfreload=10 , but it's got a weird border around the actual show.

I ended up taking some time to think about a top 10 list from what I played this year, and came up with: Bayonetta 2 Sunset Overdrive Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Forza Horizon 2 The Fall Nidhogg Mario Kart 8 Far Cry 4 Jazzpunk Super Smash Bros for WiiU I basically bought an Xbox One for Forza and Sunset Overdrive, and the same with the Wii U and Bayonetta 2 (although Mario Kart, Smash, and Super Mario 3D World didn't exactly hurt it's case). I enjoyed the hell out of the first Forza Horizon, and Forza Horizon 2 did not disappoint, even if there was some occasional weirdness (and the microtransactions model doesn't help much either). However, the controls in that game just feel right to me in a way that many driving games don't and it's really hard to top driving around a model of the south of France and Italy in really supercharged cars, flying 200 mph down a coastal highway with the Mediterranean on your left. It's one of the few games where I actually prefer to drive in cockpit view, because I actually feel like it gives me a better sense of how the car handles. Sunset Overdrive is entirely about the traversal mechanics. It's one of the few open-world games where I really just have fun traversing the world. It's amazing how much more tolerable "go get items at 5 locations" fetch quests are when getting to all of those locations is an incredible amount of fun by itself. The boss fights in that game are amazing and actually play into what makes the game so fun, instead of doing the really lazy boss design of "OK, now you're going to fight a bullet sponge". Jazzpunk is a short experience, but it's a lot of fun while it lasts. It's just goofy all the way through, and it's actually funny. If I had to break Jazzpunk down to a description, it'd be something like "the Police Squad!/Airplane! version of a first person adventure game". I feel like there's a lot of 30 Flights of Loving in this game, even though it's not really doing the jump cut style that was so key to 30 Flights and Jazzpunk has way more adventure game puzzle solving that wasn't really present in 30 Flights. If that doesn't sound like something you think you'd like, then you're probably right, but for me, it kinda hits a sweet spot, and has the courtesy to get in, get its jokes in, and then get out before you have the chance to think "Ugh, this is going on too long." Especially great is (spoiler, seriously, don't spoil yourself on this if you even might play it) one of the mini-games: Of course, if I was quantifying this list by most played this year, my #1 and #2 would be some combination of Diablo 3 and Marvel Heroes. It really only struck me later this year how I was playing those so much just because it felt like there was so little out for serious periods of time.

Currently at the third anniversary party of one of my favorite local breweries, Peticolas Brewing Company in Dallas, TX. This has only reinforced the notion that this is one of the best breweries in the country. Holy shit.

I really love The Eric Andre Show in a way I cannot at all explain. Trying to reduce that show down to a description to tell someone I know just makes me realize that the description I could come up with makes it sound like something I would probably really fucking hate. And Hannibal Burress is just all around amazing. I've yet to watch Broad City, which I've heard is outstanding, but I managed to catch his stand-up set a few months back and was impressed as hell. Also, he was at a Cavaliers game last week for some reason as press for some reason, and jumped into the Cavs' coach's post-game interview to ask "Even though you guys lost the game, is there still a part of you that thinks, ‘hey man, it’s just a game, life is pretty chill otherwise'?”

To throw in a show that no one has mentioned yet, The Shield. The Shield is something I consider a The Wire-level pantheon show. Season 1 is easily the worst season of that show, so it's something you have to slog through a bit in the early going, but that show just goes for it. I'm having a hard time thinking of any other TV show that completely nails the ending in the way The Shield does.

Another voice for going back to look at SR2. Some of the story stuff is really questionable (including a mission where your objective text might as well be "fridge the bad guy's girlfriend"), but there's a ton of great touches in that game. SR3 refines a lot of what SR2 did, but it kinda does it by removing some of the charm of SR2 to make the game more standard and take those experiences from weird little environmental stuff and exposing them to more users by putting them in the critical path. My big example of this is singalongs. SR3 and SR4 had their missions that feature singalongs on the way to some mission, but these stem from the songalongs in SR2 that were basically just random occurrences and based on which voice you picked. They never happened at any specific time in the game, they just had a chance to happen when you were listening to something on the radio that your player voice had singalong content for. Someone found that the song with the most singalong content was A-Ha - Take On Me and assembled all of it to put together a video where all 6 voices sang along, and you could see where some voices had some lines but not others. Volition seemed to notice this video, since SR3 and 4 have had moments in the credits where they do the same, but it's less interesting because it's just 6 voices all singing every lyric. SR2 also had a complex clothing system that let you play with layers, which let you create some really complex designs. SR3 may still be the better game, but SR2 has so many amazing touches that were lost in the transition and seem highly unlikely to return. It's just sad.

Yeah, Dan's a smart hire in the sense that he meshes with the environment GB already had. They were down a couple people between Patrick moving to Chicago on his own, Vinny leaving for NY, and Ryan's death, and hiring Ryckert so they could just pump out more of what they've been doing made sense. I do wish they'd gone with a diversifying hire myself, but I get the logic of hiring Dan if the goal was to prioritize "produce more of the same" over "produce different things". That said, unless there's something really tragic that happens before the next time they can hire again, I'm not going to be so forgiving if they do this again. (Dream scenario for that: Cara Ellison seems to like the idea of settling down in NY for a while when she's done with the Embed With project, and a Alex/Vinny/Cara GBeast would be fucking amazing.)

Yep. The Bugle is just him and Andy Zaltzman, who it seems was his writing partner for some of his early UK work that I have basically only heard of through The Bugle. The Bugle is basically what got me to start listening to podcasts in the first place, so it has a place very near to my heart.

EDIT: Skipped right over where that was mentioned, somehow. Sorry.

Finally got around to watching Interstellar tonight. It's definitely flawed, but interesting. I keep asking myself about the editing, though, because I feel like there's a better movie there if you could trim some of the fat. For example: I'm not saying you make those alterations and you've got a world-beater, but I think there is a better movie underneath. Since I finally caught up on watching some things, I went back through a few pages: I watched Birdman at the Alamo Drafthouse here, and before the movies they show a little thing of video clips which are somehow related to the film. For the last few minutes before Birdman started, they just showed one of the really old original Birdman cartoons. Really strange to watch that after having gotten my initial exposure to the Harvey Birdman versions. On Birdman, it's a fun movie with some really great performances. I wasn't all that hot on it coming out of the theater, but it's a movie that's been stuck in my head for a while and I just keep thinking about. I feel like it's a movie I need to take a second run at. Do you listen to The Bugle? Because it seems like those episodes are going to be at least a little more regular until Last Week Tonight starts back up.

Just for clarification, the tweet encouraging that webcomics artist to apply happened like a month ago. That discussion kinda came back up this morning, which was when Wardell was trying to claim that Zoe was "still" lying about him. Even then, though, the offer was made after those horrible comics were released, so "he didn't know about those" isn't a defense here.

I finally got around to finishing this last night. I really enjoyed that game. I only really ever used the fast travel systems in times where my objective marker was on the opposite side of the city, because even if it was half the city away, the traversal is so fast and fun that it's not a problem making something that would feel like a trek in many games. The boss encounters are pretty cool, mostly because they take advantage of the traversal mechanics way more than the combat ones. However, that edgy writing style does stick around. It takes nothing even remotely seriously, cracks jokes about everything, and pretty much pretends the 4th wall doesn't exist. There's a spot very late in the game where the main character makes a joke about how NeoGAF won't like something. The game basically revels in how video game-y it is.

Individual prosecutors, maybe. Even then, the person firing them is the District Attorney, who is usually an elected official, and as such has political priorities in mind when directing the office. If the case has somehow been silently moved forward by a rogue prosecutor without any knowledge of any of his bosses, then sure. But more likely, when very weak prosecutions are being pushed, that's because of direction from the higher-ups, and the only way to change that direction is to vote the DA out of office in the next election. That's unlikely to happen with McCulloch, since he's the St. Louis County DA, and St. Louis County is 70% white and the DA election is always held as part of the mid-term elections, where the electorate is almost always more white and elderly. Basically, think of a grand jury like this: the prosecutor basically gives a jury the version of the facts available to him in such a way as to be maximally damning to the accused, and the jury gets to consider whether or not they think, given the facts described to them by the prosecutor, that there's probable cause that the accused might have done what's he or she has been accused of. It's less about being an important part of the process, and more about an opportunity for the GJ to say "And, so? Even if all the facts presented are taken in the most favorable light, how does this add up to <crime>?" There's a reason that the number of no bills issued is miniscule. For reference, in 2010, federal prosecutors prosecuted 162,000 cases, and in that year, there were exactly 11 instances of federal grand juries returning no-bill verdicts.

Ugh. So GG has been harassing Brianna Wu because her dog is dying. That seems like fucking non-sense, I know, but it's a thing that's been happening. Apparently, it's now extended to assholes sending her company's corporate email address photos of mutilated dog corpses. What the fuck. I think you may have that backwards. The storify has the quote about not putting it on Steam, but that is mentioned as out of date. It sounds like his decision is that he is going to put it on Steam after all, and Steam keys will be given out to any previous purchasers who are not affiliated with GG.

He has a history behavior that looks suspiciously like his grand jury presentations in cases of officer-involved shootings are intentionally weak in an attempt to get the GJ to not convict. Basically, he declines to do his job when cops are the ones being accused, which could have something to do with how his father was killed on-duty and he spent his whole life wanting to be a cop but had to settle for being a prosecutor after he lost a leg during HS. The thing about Grand Juries is that any no bill is basically because a prosecutor is being insane or throwing the case. There's a saying that any half decent prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. This is because the GJ process is basically completely closed to the accused. They can choose to testify in front of the GJ, but they have no right to legal counsel as they do so, which is why basically no one ever does. You might note that Darren Wilson did testify in front of the GJ, signifying that he either has the most incompetent legal counsel of all time, or he felt there was no reason to fear testifying without counsel present to protect him. The accused additionally has no right to present evidence or cross-examine witnesses, and the prosecutor has no burden to present any evidence that is exculpatory to the accused. The Grand Jury typically is given the most one-sided view possible of a crime and decides if that presentation makes it worthy of going to trial. Every single bit of news about this grand jury is that the prosecutor is doing everything to signal the jury that he isnt truly looking for an indictment short of holding up a giant sign in court that says "No bill please". There is an argument to be made that this sort of grand jury scheme is more fair. And if this was how every grand jury was conducted, it might result in a more fair system. But, of course, it's not remotely typical of how most people accused of a crime are treated, which means it's preferential treatment for police.

The number of movement options is kinda crazy. Just tonight, I found out about another option that I either missed in tutorial or just wasn't flat-out explained: if you go from grinding in underhang to overhang, hitting jump as you do that gives you an extra high jump. Had no idea until I saw it on a loading screen tip.