A collection of spines does send a message.

The Lance of Longinus has its uses.

Had a friend pick up the tab for lunch. We’ve been back and forth the past month with schedules always not quite lining up, so he was excited to finally chat so much that he insisted on taking the bill.

Who wants they prussic drank?

The first Mass Effect game was mechanically clunky. Some of that was really on display with the early combat, which might have been a big barrier.

Mass Effect 2 tossed a lot of the mechanics of the old game, turning combat into a cover shooter with squad commands for special abilities. At the time there was some complaint from the hardcore RPG community that combat was dumbed down, but overall the reaction was that it was smoother and less annoying even if it lost some nuance.

The story of ME1 was a bit of a deeper and more esoteric mystery. At times it could seem meandering, even if the high level ideas were solid. ME2 was “I’m building a team” as you assemble party members towards a clear and signposted final goal.

Deep Rock Galactic has nailed the formula with seasons as ways of adding things with using them as FOMO. Missed skins and loot from previous seasons used to just get recycled into the RNG loot. Now they added a system to toggle and play missions as if you were a in a previous season and earn the old loot.

Wasteland 2 and 3 will activate the same brain ridges as the original Fallouts. I actually would recommend starting with 3 if you don’t think you can commit to playing both games, as it has the most polished presentation, and you get all the relevant backstory quickly enough not to need to play the other games. WL3’s structure is all about supporting different, mutually incompatible factions, which can feel like Fallout New Vegas.

I’m currently playing Colony Ship, which is an independent game that makes no secret of being inspired by Fallout. It is very mechanically dense. Clearly it is intended to be played by a variety of character builds. I haven’t finished it, but it seems promising so far.

Underrail is another game that takes a lot of inspiration from the old Fallout titles, with a lot of social stratification and mystery about the world in the game and mechanically a lot of different build types.

Bloodborne. I just can’t click with the gameplay. I’ve tried and tried and tried. I’ve bounced off of it. Been filtered.

Not the game’s fault. It seems fantastic for what it’s going for, clearly very finely tuned. I just have never been good at doing these frame perfect 3rd person melee games. I just listen to loads of lore videos on it now.

Fool. Allow me to show you truth: https://timecube.xyz/

The X-Box 360 takes it for me as an overall winner. It had a great and expansive library of games, and aside the red ring of death (I never got one) it just worked.

I’d almost put the N64 as a second place contender because it has so many great games, but that controller has never been good. It might be visually iconic but it’s so clunky. 3rd part controllers exist now that are more shaped for human hands and I am baffled why Nintendo didn’t do that from the start.

It used to say that right on the card.

It’s not ideal, but it’s not an impossible hinderance. The picture has a low power variable scope. At magnified levels, the front sight post becomes a thin shadow in the lower half. Noticeable but doesn’t impact much. At 1x magnification the front sight post does reach to where the reticle is, but the target area is still viewable.

With an LPVO the front sight post isn’t usable since the 1x setting isn’t “true 1x” but has a tiny amount of distortion, however with a red dot, the front sight post is still crisp, which means that if the dot dies it is easy to look through the optic and use the front sight.

When shooting with both eyes open for close range with an optic you get so much information from both eyes that the blockage by the post is essentially edited out by your brain.

The standard service issue M16 and M4s have/had fixed front sight posts and have been issued with optics for decades.

“Here’s your soggy cardboard square, you’ll need it in 65 years.”

-statements dreamed up by the utterly deranged

That’s why my proposed solution is to take the phone though. Much more valuable hostage.

To a person like that a mere pen is basically worthless as a hostage.

I was in a museum last week that held some of the “greats” of modern and post modern movements, and I much preferred the other galleries.

Mark Rothko’s abstract expressionism:

Vs

Van Gogh.

For me, it’s not even close.

Fantastically original jokes everyone!

I wouldn’t push it…

The answer to the original riddle is “Sure, can I have your phone to make a demonstration. Great. I’ll sell the phone and pen back as a package deal for $100.”