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After playing some 007 First Light I had the itch to rewatch Austin Powers and I have to confess that I paid $5 to rent it rather than dig it out of my box of DVDs in the garage. (In my defense it would've required a ladder.) I *really* should've ripped all those before boxing them up.

After playing some 007 First Light I had the itch to rewatch Austin Powers and I have to confess that I paid $5 to rent it rather than dig it out of my box of DVDs in the garage. (In my defense it would've required a ladder.) I *really* should've ripped all those before boxing them up.

Easy one: XCOM 2.

It's endlessly fascinating to watch commentary on 10/10 review scores. IGN gave 0 games 10s for 225 days, but then there were three (of completely incomparable genres) in the span of a month, none of which was a critical outlier. Suddenly, uninformed people claim IGN is handing 10s out like candy.

Oh so three-year-old hardware is now 50% more expensive and you still can't buy one even if you have money to burn. Very cool time we're living in.

I appreciate the people who think I’m gonna get shit today because I gave a game its lowest score but I’ll be fine, I don’t work at IGN so the internet won’t actually get mad at me for some reason.

I had a hard rule against these. There’s nothing wrong with including history where it’s relevant, but cribbing from Wikipedia is not an interesting or engaging by way to hook a reader who came to find out if *this* game is good or not.

There is nothing more irritating than game reviews that start with a history lesson. I know what the studio has done before; I am interested in the thing you played, not your perception of their past work. I don't need several paragraphs recapping that. Get to the point.

I'm trying to *finally* wrap up my old photo scanning project I started... five years ago? I came across a cache of unscanned photos from high school and for a lot of them I was like... yeah, some these can actually be not preserved.

Worst crossover ever: A Funny Thing Happened on The Way to The Matrix

These errors are reproducible so I asked Google how it can consistently get this wrong. The answer is actually interesting and weird: AI *doesn't read* and can't see letters. It sees every word as a unique number. It also has no if/then logic. Something to keep in mind when asking it for help!

For this cruelty and collective punishment against civilians, Marco Rubio deserves to stand trial in the Hague right next to Hegseth. And, of course, their boss too.

How embarrassing it must be to point a camera at Stephen Colbert and manage to lose money. How do you explain that kind of failure to your parents and peers?

It kinda sucks that I can’t take my son to the new Star Wars movie because he hasn’t seen all of The Mandalorian.

I started playing LEGO Batman with my son and realized he hadn’t seen Batman Begins. So we’re watching that now! He (10) was nervous about watching a PG-13 movie, but I told him that I am his P and giving him G.

Things are getting worse by the goddamn minute.

Exploitive BS. You'd be better off just starting your own blog than working for these scumbags.

He should be impeached and removed for this alone.

Came out pretty good. And by “pretty good” I mean every bite is like the best bite of most steaks.

This is an awesome idea I would love to see happen but you will need a big margin to do it. You'll lose at least a few moderate Democrats with any radical reform proposal and can't expect any Republican support at all. I worry people will be dejected if Dems win a narrow majority but can't do this.

I’m excited for tonight’s dinner. I’ve never tried this (or legit Wagyu) before but that marbling sure is purty. Gonna sous vide it at 130f for ~2 hours and then sear, and serve with sautéed mushrooms and caramelized onion with a baked potato and roasted broccoli. Will report back.

I will not be listening to Half-Life vs Golden Eye takes from people who did not play both contemporaneously. I did, at least a little bit, in that I played some Golden Eye MP at friends' houses (I didn't have an N64) and found the controls borderline unplayable. Half-Life wins by default.

Gabbard thrown overbard

I'm going to need some time to process that there won't be any more Stephen Colbert on TV four nights a week. He's easily one of my favorite celebrities ever. Whatever he does after he rests up and turns in his LOTR script, I'll be there watching.

Victory is mine! I put off watching The Boys' finale for an extra day so I could see it with my wife and managed to completely dodge spoilers.

No matter how well IGN has done over the years, Ziff Davis just keeps tightening the belt. Especially now, with cost of living going up so much, there's really no excuse for such paltry raises for a hard-working group.

I said it before but I still think we're headed toward an inevitable Star Wars reboot in a few years. They tried a soft reboot with the sequel trilogy but botched RoS way too hard. If you want to get a kid into Star Wars now there's a mountain of homework, and far too much of it is a chore to watch.

I think the reason I've been a little ambiently mad all day is because January 6th rioters are statistically the most likely group of pedophiles in the world and they clubbed a guy to death and they're going to be rich from the tax money that I give to the country I live in.

This also applies to reviews of kids' games. And look, if your kid doesn't care if a game is good or not, that's fine. Buy them whatever garbage you like. Just don't act like there's no difference in quality, or complain that other people like teaching their kids to be discerning.

The debate around reviews of kids' movies has always struck me as absurd because it assumes that kids who will love a movie even if it's super dumb care about or are even remotely aware of what movie critics say. They aren't the audience for a review, at all.

lol what. It’s like he reflexively does everything people tell him is the stupidest thing he could possibly do.

Woohoo, my Steam Controller finally showed up! Broke it in with a quick run of Hades 2's Dream Dives, which I hadn't done before. I did pretty dang well considering I barely remembered how everything works, so the controller can't be too shabby.

I say without hyperbole that this is the most brazenly corrupt action in US Presidential history. That it does not immediately lead to impeachment is a dangerous sign of how far the rule of law has declined.

As a *very* casual player I find Diablo 4's balance to be all over the place. 90% of fights in the open world I'm in no danger, until one bad guy suddenly hits super hard. Boss fights are absurdly difficult by comparison - I'm getting one-shotted by this Writing Hatred thing. Not exactly smooth!

Remember how *hysterical* Republicans got when Obama bowed to the Emperor of Japan in 2009? Well, here is Trump bowing before the President of China—and not a peep from the MAGA outrage machine.

Playing through Diablo 4: LoH (on Expert) as a Warlock and it seems even harder to tell WTF is going on than usual. Blowing up the whole screen is satisfying, but confusing. Also the lore is a lot. I'm not sure if I don't remember enough about it or if it never made sense in the first place.

2.1 hours in I'm... underwhelmed. There doesn't seem to be a hook to differentiate it from every other survival game beyond having to come up for air, which is kinda annoying. I think I'm moving on! Maybe I'll revisit when it goes 1.0. It's immersive, though, I'll give it that! (Get it?)

Henceforth, until an offical name is announced this must be called "The Lies of Pequel."

I'm about an hour into Subnautica 2 (I did not play OG Subnautica) and so far... I'm not really sure what the hubub's about? It seems like every other survival game. When does the good part happen?

Hey everybody I'm playing DOOM ETERNAL on my XBOX and I sound like a CRAZY PERSON.

Finishing up Maul: Shadow Lord and of *course* they have to bring back the character known as "Savage Oppress" because we can't sweep that on-the-nose character name under the rug. FFS.

If The Mandalorian and Grogu bombs as hard as it looks like it will, I have to imagine there will be talks at Disney about whether to just reboot the whole damn thing in five years. Even if Starfighter doesn't suck, the canon is too much homework to onboard new fans. My son (10) barely cares.

LOL now it's not coming until Monday, even though they say it was scanned in at 6am yesterday in my city. I'm getting strong "This is how they tell me some dude stole my package out of their facility" vibes from this.

It is bananas that there's a new Star Wars movie coming out *next week* and I'm only vaguely aware of it. And this is as someone who watched all of The Mandalorian and even suffered through the absolute train wreck that was The Book of Boba Fett. ...actually maybe that's why I'm not hyped.

Hey everybody I'm playing DOOM ETERNAL on my XBOX and I sound like a CRAZY PERSON.

No it isn't, they're just saying it louder.

Odds not looking good for my Steam Controller arriving on schedule, given that it’s not yet out for delivery but UPS still estimates it’ll somehow be here in 45 minutes. Makes me sad to think of my poor controller just Wilhelm-screaming itself to sleep all alone tonight.

Something I've noticed is that people who demand that game critics have "consistent standards" is that that they almost never lay out what those standards should be, other than "They should all have to like what I like and not what I don't."