briantw

Ah okay. Pretty sure I already have that quest. Just haven't done it yet.

At what point do you get the thing in your spoiler? Is it after a specific temple? I've only done the Wind Temple so far. I just got to the Goron town, so will probably knock out the Fire Temple (presumably) this weekend.

The nice thing is that fuse can theoretically make any fight winnable, at least so long as you don’t get hit. Some of the enemies can one shot you even after you’ve added a few extra hearts, and I haven’t even fought some of the more powerful enemies like those three headed dragons or the lion things.

Tears of the Kingdom effectively addresses just about every issue I had with Breath of the Wild. The combat is more dynamic and fun thanks to all the crazy shit you can do with fuse and ultrahand. Getting around is significantly faster and less frustrating than it was in the first game because of the towers that rocket you into the sky, the ascend ability, and being able to just teleport to a checkpoint on some sky island near where you're trying to get to and skydiving down to it rather than climbing a whole ass mountain. Puzzles often have a variety of solutions or can be skipped entirely if you've got a rocket strapped to one of your shields. The vast majority of weapons you find lying around are no longer completely fucking useless, as you can use fuse to attach a high damage item to them and make them formidable. The items monsters drop now have utility outside of making elixers, as some of them drop the high damage items you attach to your weapons. Further, there's now a legitimate reason to fight tougher enemies, as they give you weapons with a better base damage (that you can improve further with fuse) and also tend to drop the more powerful fuse items. Similarly, bows no longer feel wildly underpowered. I use my bow far more than melee weapons in this game, and in many fights I don't even bother switching to a melee weapon at all. There also just seems like far more to do. It's not so much that the first game was short on content. There was a metric fuckton of content in Breath of the Wild. But the vast majority of it lacked any sort of narrative to go along with it. In this game, every one of the dozens or so stables has at least one main side quest and several smaller things to do, like help the sign guy or a korok get to his friend. There's also, like, an actual story in this game, and a bunch of cut-scenes. It's not on the level of fantastic narrative works like The Last of Us or Portal 2, but it's at least more interesting than anything I remember from Breath of the Wild. It's definitely the best game I've played so far this year.

Probably the easiest of the early games to remake. The first two would basically require ground up reworks like the first few Resident Evil games did, but the third was essentially already a third-person shooter by the time Kojima had tinkered with it enough.

What’s even more inexplicable is that they let you swap two of the buttons, but it’s not two that make the scheme make much more sense.

So far the toughest enemy in Tears of the Kingdom is the controller. Whoever decided to reverse the A & B buttons can fuck right off. I've died at least three times because the buttons are so ass backwards.

Yeah, the two new Zelda games definitely veer more toward Dark Souls in difficulty than the Zelda games of old, which were challenging at times but very gated. With how open the world is and how little restriction you get from the outset (at least after leaving the tutorial area), it’s easy to run into enemies early on that can obliterate you in one hit.

Yeah, the show has been pretty up front about when scenes aren't actually real. If it's not revealed in the scene itself, it's revealed before the end of the episode. I don't think there's any reason to suspect that the shots in the past are the product of unreliable narration outside of the moments where characters are very obviously having starvation-induced hallucinations or something similar. Further, what purpose would it even serve to have Misty's character not remember pushing her friend? Misty is, on a macro level, already responsible for every single death that happens out there in the wilderness that wasn't a direct product of the plane crash. She's the one who prevented them all from being rescued. So whether she pushed her friend or not is entirely irrelevant because she caused the death either way. We also saw Misty kill someone in cold blood last season, so it's not as if we don't already know she's a killer.

I decided to look it up on Steam and apparently I already own it? Which is strange because I don't remember buying it, or ever having heard of it before.

Seems like a great deal for Cleveland.

I really enjoyed Firewatch. Played it back around when it came out. I was a little underwhelmed by where the story ended up going, but it was still a great, atmospheric game with gorgeous visuals.

It takes some getting used to and is a bit obtuse, but the game is mostly pretty slow-paced and so it's rarely an issue. Time only advances in the game when your ship is moving, and so for the most part you're safe when stationary (outside of certain areas), which allows you to take the time to fiddle with your inventory or prepare for an expedition into dangerous waters. The game's atmosphere is unsettling and there are some enemies that can very easily destroy your ship, especially early on before you upgrade it, but for the most part it's a pretty laid back experience.

Dredge is a fun little game. I haven't had the proper time to dig into it, as I've been on vacation and then had my parents visiting, but I've made it to the third of four islands in the game. I love the art style, and the game is equal parts peaceful fishing adventure and Lovecraftian horror.

Love basically pushed his toe into the guy and ground down. Green lifted his foot and stomped down, then jumped off of Sabonis. Green's is clearly worse.

Yeah, and the league has been incredibly soft on player discipline under Adam Silver. He particularly seems to let the marquee teams get away with murder. Green should have gotten at least two games. That's what Kevin Love got for stomping on another player, and his stomp wasn't nearly as hard.

If Draymond got stomped, he’d deserve it, but whoever stomped him should still get a suspension. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. The simple fact is that grabbing a guy’s leg isn’t sufficient provocation for him to lift his leg and stomp you. It’s a foul, but not a suspension worthy foul.

What Sabonis did was certainly a foul, but he was properly assessed a technical in the game and it should be left at that. That’s especially true since it’s difficult to tell if his grab was intentional or just a product of him protecting his face. Green’s stomp, on the other hand, was very obviously intentional. The way he acted afterward should be a one game suspension in and of itself.

The refs absolutely gift the Raptors three free throws in a three point game on one of the worst calls I've ever seen and the dude misses two of them.

That could still be true, but eighteen million is eighteen million. He wasn't getting anything close to that from anyone else and he took the bag. I don't blame him. It's probably his last big payday. Looking forward to when his dad starts cutting together footage on Twitter of Huntley not getting him the ball.

Supposedly he called the Jets and asked if they’d match it and they laughed. Well, I assume they laughed. I would have if 2023 OBJ asked my team for eighteen million. I would have sent him the Robin Williams “what year is it” meme. So yes, the Ravens were definitely desperate and overpaid by a lot.

I think you need to separate QB from all other positions. QBs are far more likely to survive their contract than any other position. Realistically, most other positions get two to three year deals that have reasonable outs for the team after that, even if most big contracts are technically five years. But as others have stated, there is zero way that Joe Burrow isn't getting every dollar of the next contract he signs unless he suffers some sort of career ending injury. So why not just fully guarantee it?

My point is that someone could become available a year from now that is worth sending some real assets for even if that person isn't someone you'd expect to become available that quickly.

Situations change fast in the NBA. Utah went from a perennial mid-tier playoff team to rebuilding pretty much overnight. Mitchell and Gobert weren't available two years ago. Then they suddenly were.