hugthebed2

No!!! Now you'll never be able to reason out which comments were mine!
 
For the record here are the comments I remember:
 
Cryptic Command (which doesn't even fucking come up when I search for it in the new Gatherer, adding broken search engines as a common topic) - Normally modal spells give you subpar options but are playable due to flexibility. For example, Assault//Battery is either a sorcery speed shock or a green Hill Giant, neither of which is great on its own, but the ability to switch between removal and threat makes it playable. For Cryptic Command you get six modes, each of which is absolutely worth 4 mana, meaning that the value this card gives you is insane.
 
Jedit Ojanen - This card is kind of a litmus test to when you started playing. When he came out he was cool: a bit cat guy with a fancy gold frame and evocative flavor text.  Definitely something to get nostalgic about.  But everyone who played later realized that this guy wasn't even well costed for the time.
 
Order of the Sacred Bell - These guys were awesome in Kamigawa limited. The block was stuffed with high cost but low stat spirits with tricky abilities.  So rather than take part in that nonsense, you drafted these guys and smashed face.
 
Sinking Feeling - At a sealed event my opponent carefully looked over all my cards and then put this on my biggest creature... which was Morselhoarder.
 
Viashino Cutthroat - Don't think about this as a creature, but rather as repeatable burn for 5.
 
Word of Command - The art is just a closeup of the art on Howling Mine.
 
Iron Will - When your creature tries to block, show them that it rocks!
 
Crackleburr - If Thundermare is an elemental horse, how is this thing not an elemental fox? I mean look at it!
 
Arctic Foxes - It's funny that this is an Amrou Kithkin variant, and both ended up being the only creature of their type for years.
 
Foxfire - I don't remember if I actually posted this comment, but this is my favorite card art.
 
Master of Arms - For confused new players, when this card was printed tapped creatures would not deal combat damage when blocking. So the activated ability was at tricky way to prevent damage done to Master of Arms.  The sixth edition rules did away with this rule, making the ability largely pointless.  Then they later added errata to make it so the tapped creature wouldn't deal combat damage, restoring the original functionality in a similar way to what they did with old "continuous artifacts" like Howling Mine.  Then a few years later they removed the errata, making the ability pointless again.  So I guess five years from now they'll errata it to prevent combat damage again.
 
(They didn't.... though apparently they did make a fixed version in a "Mystery Booster" just to spite us.)

So I realized that the HD mod for Heroes 3 does not enforce expansion differences.
 
Each Heroes 3 map is marked with an expansion version, Restoration of Erathia, Armageddon's Blade, Shadow of Death.  if you load in a map from an earlier version, it will not spawn content from later versions of the game.  So for example if a map is marked "Restoration of Erathia" then it will not generate conflux creatures as random creatures or have conflux heroes available for hire, since these were introduced in the Armageddon's Blade expansion.  (They wouldn't appear in the map normally since you can't place them in maps marked as Restoration of Erathia, but without this restriction they could appear on heroes or creatures with random identities.)  Similarly, you can't make combination artifacts, since those were introduced in the Shadow of Death.  But it will keep later changes to the base game, like the ability to use spacebar to revisit a location or the changes to how moats worked.
 
I played Angelic Pride, a classic Restoration of Erathia map (since it was made before Armageddon's Blade came out.)  I realized early that the edition forcing wasn't working properly since the archery items given to me early on allowed me to make the Bow of the Sharpshooter, which made the early game easy.  I wondered if I should keep this, since it's basically cheating.
 
Then I got to the point in the map where the neighboring necromancers were able to break through their border towers into my territory and I didn't regret using the combination artifact at all.  You see, the map designer had placed the Amulet of the Undertaker, Vampire's Cowl and Dead Man's Boots. In Restoration of Erathia that bumps up the Necromancy percentage by 30%, which is potent but something you can deal with since it just gives more skeletons.  In Shadow of Death though that makes the fucking Cloak of the Undead King for those not in the know, this gives another 30% boost to Necromancy (total of 60% boost) and improves the type of creature it raises.  At expert necromancy (which necromancers will always prioritize early anyway) it raises liches.  A level 5 ranged unit.  Keep in mind that the 60% is a boost, with expert necromancy raising 30% already and the Necropolis town having a building which buffs this by 10%, so it effectively gives a necromancy rate of 100%.  Thankfully there was a nerf before Shadow of Death which requires that the creatures killed have enough hitpoints to equal what you are raising, so that you need to kill 30 peasants (1 HP) to raise 1 lich (30 HP), but it's still an insane ability.  And the map maker ended up unintentionally giving all the necromancer heroes one of these under Shadow of Death rules.  When I got attacked the enemy hero literally had over 700 liches, at a point in the game where having 700 of a level 1 unit would be impressive.  I can actually whittle down the enemy heroes armies by killing everything but the liches and killing 100 or so liches on top of that, but since after they win the battle they get another 100-200 liches, it doesn't really matter.
 
The funny thing is that to fix this problem I have to convert the map into a Shadow of Death map, since banning artifacts was not a feature present in the Restoration of Erathia and the map maker enforces that policy.
 
EDIT: That doesn't work since banning the Cloak only bans it appearing randomly.  It can still be assembled from its parts.  Looks like I have to go back to the original game...
 
EDIT2: Actually I tried this on a non HD mod of the complete edition and the same problem happens there.  I swear I had an install that was done by Restoration Erathia + Armageddon's Blade + Shadow of Death that didn't have this issue, but maybe I'm insane.

I just beat Star Fox for SNES again and now I have to leave my TV on for ten minutes to hear the secret music.
 
This is part of the contract you enter into when you play Star Fox.

The ideas persisted for a while.  I recently picked up a Hoyle's Board Game collection from the late 90's (after Windows 95).  It's Clubhouse Games but without quite 51 things.  It does have virtual opponents though, who will make various commentary on the games as you go through them. The game has a default menu for picking games (which resembles the aesthetic of Packard Bell Navigator):
 

 
If you click the spaceship, you get this instead:
 

 
Clicking on the buttons causes a hologram for the game to appear.  (Also note that an astronaut has randomly drifted by, why not).  You then click "engage" to play the game.
 

If you click the cabin you instead get this:
 

 
A prerendered 3D cabin you can navigate Myst style.  The games are scattered throughout.  You can see in this screen the combination checkers/chess board.  Click on the pieces you want to use and you'll play the game.  Something I didn't realize about this is that the game will actually default to changing seasons with the system clock.  When I first played this game it counted as "winter" and hence the background looked like this:
 

(The snow and fire is animated, by the way.) Here is another location in the cabin with more games:
 

 
If you play in this mode the background will carry through into many of the games:

 
(The bear talks, by the way.)  None of this was necessary.  The game would have been perfectly fine as just a collection of 10 board games.  But they did it anyway.
 
I think at the time the idea was that old people would feel more comfortable using a computer for games by using the cabin environment, and that kids would be more excited about things with the sci-fi environment.  That's certainly the explicit idea behind the Packard Bell Navigator environment.  (I have the disc for that too by the way, but it's designed to come pre-installed with a computer and as such relies on some files which are either not on the disc or which cannot be installed automatically.  So I can get it running to the point of showing off a location or two, but it will crash almost immediately.) I can see why companies stopped bothering doing this sort of stuff, but I do like this aesthetic a lot.  It makes the whole process of using the computer a fun experience.

I looked into a game solely because I saw Silent recently bought it (nubby's number factory) and it turned out to be something I've been wanting for a while. It actually started a while ago when I saw some random peggle video and thought how it'd be kinda fun to have a game like that to screw around with but it came back to the forefront when I was checking the steam activity feed (something I remember exists every couple of weeks during fits of boredom) and saw the most WordArt-looking-ass store banner ever.
 
 
It's funny how immediately an aesthetic is conveyed through the most basic graphic design (or lack thereof?). Even before I saw the game I knew exactly what it would look like

ALRIGHT Y'ALL! WELCOME TO THE DAILY AUCTIONING! SOOIE! SOOOIEEE!

Fellas I feel compelled to share that I became a dad recently
 
My boy is doing great and it has been awesome bar the tummy ache nights where me and my wife get literally 0 hours of sleep

We have a medical drama and a character is a loser gamer.  But as the character has just suffered a stroke, and can't say anything to indicate that  So how do we solve this problem?
 
Break out the Pipkin Pippa shirt:
 
 

I've seen like five different places in the last week use the term "crash out" to mean something like "have a meltdown."
 
This isn't really me bitching about new slang, since it's going to do what it's going to do.  It's more just befuddlement that I've never seen this term before and now it seems to be fairly common, at least online.  Literally like it sprang into existence fully formed on Monday.
 
After a more extensive search, I still couldn't find anyone using it before November of last year.  But if it is that new there should be some obvious origin from it rather than people just using it out of nowhere like they were programmed to do so....
 
...it's a TikTok thing, isn't it?

Some more creature sketches:

I liked it a lot, I ended up playing it while my sister and two friends watched (one who played it on the DS years ago). Perhaps I chose the wrong pomeranian to be my profile picture on this website when I first joined. I'm usually pretty bad about giving long gushing reviews for games (partly why I struggle so often to participate in the GOTY threads, my very few amount of new games played each year not withstanding) but I can at least talk about the highlights. The remastered soundtrack is absolutely fantastic, and the character designs/sprites are full of life and humor. We played it over the course of 4 different play sessions and discussed theories and the game at large between each, which was fun for sure. One of my favorite things about the game was 
 
I leave it off with a random fan art. Overall a fun game, makes you wish it was longer. I can sum it all up with something my sister said: "If I had played this game when I was a kid, it definitely would've been a formative experience for me".

https://x.com/cherriecore/status/1855293493650010356/photo/1

https://x.com/GOOMYLOID/status/1858633025799811223

I liked it a lot, I ended up playing it while my sister and two friends watched (one who played it on the DS years ago). Perhaps I chose the wrong pomeranian to be my profile picture on this website when I first joined. I'm usually pretty bad about giving long gushing reviews for games (partly why I struggle so often to participate in the GOTY threads, my very few amount of new games played each year not withstanding) but I can at least talk about the highlights. The remastered soundtrack is absolutely fantastic, and the character designs/sprites are full of life and humor. We played it over the course of 4 different play sessions and discussed theories and the game at large between each, which was fun for sure. One of my favorite things about the game was 
 
I leave it off with a random fan art. Overall a fun game, makes you wish it was longer. I can sum it all up with something my sister said: "If I had played this game when I was a kid, it definitely would've been a formative experience for me".

https://x.com/cherriecore/status/1855293493650010356/photo/1

https://x.com/GOOMYLOID/status/1858633025799811223

I liked it a lot, I ended up playing it while my sister and two friends watched (one who played it on the DS years ago). Perhaps I chose the wrong pomeranian to be my profile picture on this website when I first joined. I'm usually pretty bad about giving long gushing reviews for games (partly why I struggle so often to participate in the GOTY threads, my very few amount of new games played each year not withstanding) but I can at least talk about the highlights. The remastered soundtrack is absolutely fantastic, and the character designs/sprites are full of life and humor. We played it over the course of 4 different play sessions and discussed theories and the game at large between each, which was fun for sure. One of my favorite things about the game was 
 
I leave it off with a random fan art. Overall a fun game, makes you wish it was longer. I can sum it all up with something my sister said: "If I had played this game when I was a kid, it definitely would've been a formative experience for me".

https://x.com/cherriecore/status/1855293493650010356/photo/1

https://x.com/GOOMYLOID/status/1858633025799811223

That image basically sums up the reveal trailer for me. Like I never payed attention to all the leaks that are apparently true now, and I'm just....meh about it. Ever since the Steam Deck and other PC handhelds have come out, my Switch time has dramatically reduced. There's just no point in playing 3rd party on it unless it's some novel port like the Wii version of Force Unleashed or something. The novelty of on-the-go AAA gaming is no longer exclusively there, and I wouldn't have a Switch at all if it weren't for the 1st party line up. Especially considering their frustrating, archaic business practices and their Disney-esque stances towards emulation and fan projects. Their exclusives are the only thing Nintendo has going for them as far as I am concerned.
 
The main thing going for the 2witch* right now for me is the Xbox Series-like backwards compatibility, where the only OG Switch games not able to be played will ones that heavily utilize some obscure feature that no one really used, like the IR sensor or Labo, similar to how the Series can't play Xbox One's Kinect games, but otherwise, everything else is fair game. Now I don't have to abandon/re-buy my entire library just to play one or two exclusives. Though, like the Series, this simultaneously reduces the FOMO, but it also means I'm really am in no rush to grab one. I'm also worried it might lead to the current PS5/Series problem of 3rd parties releasing ports for both systems due to the super high install base of the current Switch, thus giving off the feeling this next generation not really "starting" with another extended cross-gen period.
 
My next concern is, of course, the Nintendo exclusives themselves. Like how is Nintendo going to top themselves this time around? How is the next Mario Kart going to top 8 Deluxe with the booster pass? How are they going to top Smash Ultimate, Mario Odyssey, Wonder, Luigi's Mansion 3, Metroid Dread, etc.? Because to me, these seem like the "definitive/peak" iterations of their respective franchises where Nintendo just went all out with their ideas. Like where do we go from here? Anything other than a major re-haul in mechanics/gimmicks for potential sequels would just pale in comparison.
 
Now, keep in mind, this is all just surface-level, knee-jerk reactions and concerns I have now that we officially know it really was just "the Switch, but again and bigger and more powerful! Hooray! " I'm just like....whatever about it, really. But that's just me. Barring any curve-balls in the upcoming direct in April, I'm probably just gonna outright pass on this one. I really don't need it. Who knows, I might get the mid-gen OLED refresh to store away just in case my OG Switch dies on me, like what happened with my Xbone. But that's years away.
 
But as of right now, I predict the 2witch will be the SNES to the Switch's NES in terms of sales numbers. Definitely successful, but Nintendo is not going to re-capture the lighting-in-the-bottle that was the Switch, and they're crazy if they think they can/should.
 
*P.S. I hereby mint and coin the term "2witch". Anyone who uses it will now have to pay me royalties in the form of TF2 hats, thank you.

Ok, I have a free evening. Where the videogames?
 
I played a normal amount of new games this year. I don't think I'll outdo last year for a long, long while, but that's ok since that was a huge outlier year for me. However... there's a little bit of cheating in this list due to games I've already played being released in a new fashion and thus earning a spot in the top ten. It's my list and I make the rules, though!
 
Honorable mentions:
 
 
TOP TEN:
 
 
The not very great...
 
Awards
Favorite Music Tracks:
 
Best girls:
 
Backlog:
 

Happy new year ol' subspuffers! I hope 2025 will be great for you all

They definitely tried their best to tie up all the loose ends.
 
I think after all this time, I think both Valve and the community are just relieved to have the closure. Not just for the lore, but even the game itself. I mean really, what is there left to do for the game realistically given Valve's current lack of interest? The bots are mostly gone, vscript and 64-bit has revolutionized the modding scene, and the final comic is out....The only thing I can possibly think of is the Heavy update and even then, if Valve just stopped updates altogether I'd be fine with it. We could argue endlessly about this weapon needs a buff or nerf,  or that Casual needs this feature or remove that and so forth. But at the end of the day, the game is 17 years old and has gotten more support than most games could ever dream of.
 
It's time for Valve to move on and I think the comic was their way of saying that they are. Now to be clear, I don't think the game won't still get maintenance. I think the way they have been doing updates post-Jungle Inferno with the whole yearly seasonal community content is what to expect at most for the foreseeable future. And you know what? I'm alright with it.

Basically I've been with vtubing since nearly the very beginning; I started watching Kizuna AI a few months after she debuted.  For a brief period after that I guess you could say that I followed "all of vtubing" in that I watched some stuff from the four heavenly kings (Nekomasu, Kaguya Luna, Siro and Mirai Akari) as well as from Eilene's crew.  But after that point the number of vtubers quickly expanded to the point where it would be impossible to follow them all.  So I just kind of picked and chose whatever struck my fancy at the time.  Some of them ended up becoming big; I started watching Fubuki's Animal Battle Royale streams long before Hololive was well known for example.  But mostly I ended up with semi-obscure stuff.  That is, for the most part stuff people who followed vtubers would know about, but not the "entry level" stuff for lack of a better term.
 
I say all that to note that I've been looking at what has become a very small slice of the industry, and one that was biased towards my personal tastes and towards creators who in one way or another valued putting in the work rather than getting a huge fanbase.
 
I've dimly been aware of the "normiefication" of the genre.  But I haven't really interacted with it.  Now I don't think that normie friendly is inherently bad.  For example, I think that Vedal's Neurosama bot has plenty of normie appeal, and Neuro streams are fun to watch with a lot of cool stuff being done by Vedal behind the scenes.  However, the average normie friendly vtuber is just basically a RL twitch streamer, and twitch streamers are largely insufferable.  I thought I had a good awareness of this from Filian, who is at the very limit of what I can stand but is fine when paired with the right guests.  But seeing the vtuber awards and it feels like that's 90% of the field now.  Just people awkwardly chatting while seeking clout and using an anime avatar.  It doesn't really work when you are using the avatar as a gimmick and nothing else, because there are so many people and this has been going on for so long.  Kizuna AI debuted back in 2016!
 
I think what really got me is that usually when I encounter new vtubers, it's one at a time, or in a collab with other vtubers I'm familiar with.  So even if the new vtuber is crap (which happens often) it is easy to say "well sure, there is a lot of crap anywhere."  But in the clips I saw of the vtuber awards it was like 20% "Oh I know who these people are" and 80% "who the hell is this."  And at least 70% of that 80% was cringe as hell.  So I can understand if you are coming in with no background that the hobby is going to look cringe as hell.
 
It's kind of like how Magic: The Gathering is a really solid game with many great sets.  But if you weren't familiar with the history of the game and just heard about it now, you'd probably go to the homepage, see tie-ins for Final Fantasy and Assasin's Creed with the last three "official" sets being Wacky Races, Furry Fun Time and Scooby Doo Haunted House, and you think "what the hell is this, some sort of Funko Pop collectible?"  That is, the quality has been buried by blindly appealing to the lowest common denominator.

In the 90's, we didn't have social media or virtual youtubers.  We had this instead:
 
 
 

My dad has usually always tried to fix stuff himself. I do the same for stuff I'm responsible for or using often, but I haven't lived alone yet to verify if I'd actually be a good handyman.

If I was an HVAC guy I would dream of having someone call me in to clean a flame sensor.  It's like five minutes of work, but you can charge $200 for it.
 
This brings up a valuable piece of life advice: if something in your house breaks and you don't know how to fix it, call a professional and just accept you're going to get zonked.  But follow the guy around and take notes.  If it looks like something you could have easily done yourself, do a little investigation to make sure that you aren't doing anything insane, and if not you can save the service charge on future visits.  You can chalk up the original visit charge as a class expense.
 
My first good boss literally had a full shelf's worth of notebooks containing information on fixes that he called in someone to do once, but which he then did himself from that point onwards.

When I am made supreme leader, it shall be law that any dialog with the option "remind me about this later" must also contain the option "shut the fuck up about this forever."

I keep getting requests for a single-time access code for my microsoft account and there's no way to disable the emails or that feature from happening.
 
Awesome system. It's rather unlikely they hit the 1 in 1 million chance to log in, but still it's a bit worrying.