Slumber

I've been watching some people play the demo, and dammit. It looks fun. Haven't been into Soul Calibur in over 10 years at this point.

The Steelers have been consistently pretty fallible. Good, but always having pretty clear room for improvement, and their highs haven't been insanely impressive. They weren't running a clinic on the AFC at all like the Pats have. The NFC has also consistently been a much stronger conference as of late, and the Pats were the only team besides last year's Jags that looked competitive with the top teams of the NFC, and the Jags weren't always consistent in that regard.

How the Vikings can be doing better during an away game against one of the best teams in the NFL in the first half than they did in the entirety of a home game against one of the worst teams in the entire NFL is... nothing short of baffling. It actually hurts to think about. I feel like I should go in for a CTE scan.

I've gone water every gen except 7. I went with Litten.

If the next democratic nominee just pretended Trump didn't exist at the debates and never acknowledged a thing he said, I think that would make Trump unravel like never before.

I was in the 4th grade. We were reading Where the Red Fern Grows when the North Tower fell. Pretty good book, though I got sad when the dogs died.

"Hacks"

Uh. I guess Gen Z will probably be the most universally tech-savvy generation. That's a positive, right? Millennials have some patchy spots on the older end. Gen Z, meanwhile, grew up in an era where everything was a computer and everything was connected in some fashion. Also, I'll second the term "millennial" being dumb. Most people hear it and don't think "coming of age around the new millennium", they hear "Those damn kids born in the new millennium" even though older millennials were reaching adulthood around 2000. I've had to explain to so many people in my age range(Mid-20s to early-30s) that they're millennials. I've had to explain it to people pushing 40, though it's a bit easier to see why they wouldn't associate with that label. So any Gen Z-ers out there, before your generation gets a title, make it obvious what time period your generation is actually defining.

It's weird, but it makes sense to me. They're Mercenaries on horses, and they're meant to be the sword counterpart to Bow Knights(Bows), Axe/Great Knights(Axes) and... Knights/Cavaliers(Lances). It seems they want to keep with the "Knight" naming theme. Makes more sense than when Mercenaries/Heroes were fan translated as Forests, and their mounted equivalents were "Forest Knights". The "Free" part of the name at least alludes to the fact that, as Mercenaries on Horses, they lack the allegiance that other Knights have. They're "Free" Knights, and they can fight for whoever they want to.

Fair enough on the dominance of Intelligence. The game in the series that did this the best was probably New Vegas, where any number of your stats could come in handy in dialogue, and Intelligence was just one of them. The variety of skills coming into effect is still something present, though, and a large number of your stats can even alter the quests that get offered to you in 2. Without certain stats and skill levels, you can't get certain titles. Without certain titles, whole portions of the game can be obscured from you without it being obvious that you're missing anything. It's one of the most varied and replayable games I've played, because it really is one of those cases where you can play in two different styles and get two WILDLY different experiences in the game. How many people do you think knew that you could become a pornstar based on a high charisma score and high sex appeal? I mean, prior to it becoming one of the most infamous questlines in the game. I played through the game at least 3 times before I realized that. As for the tonal consistency/inconsistency of the tones of the towns, I feel like that's something the makes the game work well. While you don't get the baseline quality that you'd get with a single team doing it all, the idea of every down being wildly different seems like something that'd happen in a post-apocalypse. Some places would end up being way more closed off and broken, some would be more of a "Yee-haw, this is the wild west again" kind of criminality and insanity. The Oregon wasteland is as dangerous as anywhere else in the Fallout world. Unless you're a merchant caravan, a wanderer(Who almost all universally die in this series beyond the main characters), or belong to a criminal/military organization, NOBODY leaves their towns in these games. These towns are all going to develop in highly unique ways, contributing to their unique tones and feels. I still feel that the world is overall cohesive and has its own identity. It still largely retains the feeling of "What would the world be like if the America started taking different aspects of 1950s suburbia and developed them to their logical extremes?" And the references... It's kind of something I accept as a product of the time. Nerd jokes and references were all over the place in 90s game development. It's not as bad as something like we got with Fire Emblem Awakening, where there were a shit ton of references from The Lord of the Rings to Mystery Science Theater 3000 simply because the localizers, not the original writers, simply wanted them in the game. Plus, Fallout, at its heart is a comedic satire. I'll take a killer rabbit and eventually the Holy Hand Grenade being in the game because it's absurd. ... Anyway, back to the topic. I remembered that I'm also a big fan of the original The Evil Within, despite that game having a lot of problems. It wouldn't be so guilty of a pleasure if it wasn't for the bad boss fights and the complete shitshow that is the last few chapters of the game. It's one of those games where, especially when the sequel is discussed, I have a hard time going "Yeah I really liked the first game."

I'm not sure that there are any games that I like that I feel "guilty" about. Not even 2? 2 has possibly the best video game writing ever, and is a relatively good game to boot. 1, 3, NV and 4 all have some noticeable flaws(1 and 3 being barebones and kinda, with 3 having just a dogshit reinterpreting of 1's story and some smatterings of 2's story, New Vegas had basically no QA, and 4 just having completely ass-backwards priorities and terrible writing throughout the whole game), but 2 I struggle to think of anything that really holds it back as a game. EDIT: Oh wait Star Ocean 3. There's so much wrong with this game, but the things it does right make it just fun to play through. Every few years I get the urge out of the blue to replay it. And even though I like 2 more and think it's objectively a much, much better game, 3 is the one I ALWAYS come back to. It's in the small handful of JRPGs that I don't really get tired of playing.

It takes a habitual sadist to look at Natives nowadays and go "Hm. Yeah, these people definitely have it too good." It's impossible to support those kinds of people purely on principle. It basically telegraphs a complete lack of morals.

We paid Cousins big bucks because we needed a "consistent" quarterback. lmao Admittedly, the Bills played well today. We just happened to also play like dogshit. If you told somebody who hasn't followed football in 5 years that one of the teams on that field today had the best defense in the entire NFL, they'd assume it was the Bills.

Yeah, well. It's the Vikings' curse. You'll rarely ever see a team so good be so bad.

Well we've avoided that.

I can't. The Vikings are about to get swept by the Bills. I woke up today thinking "Well the Vikes will win, hopefully the Packers lose." Oh well, 1/2 isn't the worst.

Yes. Good. The Vikings are down by 17 points to the Bills 10 minutes into the game. Great. This Kirk Cousins thing is really working out.

Opinions on escalators?

Does something like Arrested Development, where there have been YEARS between seasons, count? Oh, it took me probably 10 years to finish Final Fantasy XII.

21-23 is kind of when I started feeling "fully grown up". Almost 27 now, and I feel like "Man, everyone under 25 is a kid".

Looks like a Ditto with a nut on its head.

Every "This thing a republican did is technically illegal" theory never gets followed up on. As much as I'd love for Kavanaugh to sink, I don't think this is how it's going to happen.

Cheesy power metal fits goofy medieval high-fantasy a bit more. Which I don't think really exists outside of power metal music videos and Monty Python.

I actually agree. DMC has always had metal music, usually a bit grungier/industrial. But it's actually a point of contention between me and a friend. "Which Vergil battle theme in DMC3 is better?" Friend: Oh, 2 is the best. It just sounds good and hits harder. Me: No, 3 is the best. 2 just devolves into the typical DMC butt-metal, while 3 just lets the composition shine. I like metal and I think *some* kind of aggressive tone fits DMC. Industrial metal... Hasn't aged super well and doesn't fit the series all that well. I just think it probably would have better suited for later Dante/Nero if they picked punk instead(Not in the way DmC tried to be "punk"). Or if they embraced the fun side of the games and went with cheesy, over the top fun music ala Metal Gear Rising or Devil Trigger. This theme song for Dante is like a full 5 degrees removed from what the series should sound like.

It was also just a sluggish, slow metal song with screamo vocals. Devil Trigger kind of set a kind of energetic tone with the music that this song just REALLY didn't live up to. There are hundreds of bands that likely would have fit better, still within the metal genre. Hell, Devil Trigger is so cheesy, they could have picked something like Machinae Supremacy, and it would have fit. I guess somebody at Capcom just really likes Suicide Silence.