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I once had a customer forget a wallet with about seven hundred dollars in it at my counter. About three weeks worth of pay for me at the time. She was following a common bit of advice to only bring enough money to buy her planned purchase to avoid being upsold. It's pretty stupid advice, for exactly this reason. She wasn't an especially pleasant person. Anyway, I told a manager and he (probably) got the money back to her. I never got a word of gratitude from anyone. Still, what if I'd kept it? The good/evil axis of this kind of thing can be nebulous, but for example I could've given half the money to charity and kept half. The correct charity would probably have saved about 20 lives and I'd still have gotten a new game system. I can say with confidence I could've stolen the cash and not felt I was being a terrible person. Perhaps giving the money back was in fact the morally wrong choice. Regardless, the act of sticking my fingers in the wallet would still have been my act, not hers. To the extent there was fault, it would have been mine entirely. For me to feel otherwise would put me in the category of people who say "She deserved it for walking down that alley." As sort of a tangential example, imagine your stereotypical starving man stealing bread. Does his act somehow change in any ethical sense if the bread is guarded by a hundred soldiers? Does more shame somehow manifest because the bread owner took a high level of precaution? I'd say it doesn't. I know it's not quite the same thing, but I still think it works to show 'proper care' is NOT a good reason to adjust our ethical perspectives on any particular deed. That's all I have to say on the matter.

I get hit with the concept of people stealing ad money from Ross, and my mind starts chewing on itself. I really, really hate advertising. It's like a subscription model where you pay in annoyance and, for many people, viruses. About a third of the people who come to my workplace for computer problems have been tricked by fake virus ads. Advertisers are the biggest threat to online privacy in most countries. Advertisers are the biggest threat to getting valid product information and honest reviews. On the other hand, it's unquestionable that money being taken from Ross's work is money being taken from Ross. Even if one changes the voice work, there's the writing, the enormous amount of video editing, and the brand. Ironically I do respect the value of branding. Go figure. This is the reason I'm glad there are good online donation methods now.

That's it! I must have wandered into that after watching Arfenhouse 2. I'm very much the kind of person to follow links to homepages and look up references. Being like that is actually the reason I even found out about Ross. Back when Freeman's mind appeared to be abandoned, I googled Accursed Farms and then found out the rest of the story. Now I buy Ross a can beans every month. Curses. Incidentally, the Disaster Labs review DOES describe the ending. So I guess it was documented, then the document was lost except for the web archive. What a strange era we live in. "Ziltoid rocks? What does that mean? Ah. I'll give this a listen."

Perfect episode. You really outdid yourself. I swear I read a mocking review of this game long ago on something like Oldmanmurray or Seanbaby, but google's coming up blank. It might have been appropriate to mention Axe Cop. Heck, I'd like to see more professional content inspired by children or at least childlike ideas. Stuff like Monsters and Other Childish Things. As it is we have most professional content being dumbed down for children. You know, in this era of everyone being a content creator, it's almost come back to a point where MOST games are destined to be obscure.

Unreal Tournament 2004 is on sale for 2.49 on GOG, and should be until 3/12/2017 at 6PM est. https://www.gog.com/game/unreal_tournament_2004_ece

Best stinger ever. The cute presentation, attention to detail, and violence remind me a little of Trouble for Trumpets. I'd like to strongly suggest you try Eversion out if you haven't already. It's not a huge time investment; I got all three endings in 2 hours. I think you'll see why I think it's appropriate for you. There's a free version and an enhanced version on steam if you want to support the developer.

I don't approve of any form of online polling....but doing it here with people who've taken the time to resister is much less bad. Something I'd respectfully disagree with and could see some good points to.

I don't mind communities advocating for a game I don't like. Not that anyone anywhere ever explained in any detail why they thought game was good, but it's still not a problem. The problem, which I hope is apparent by now, is that online voting and reputation systems are less than worthless. You're more likely to get a bad result than with random choice. I suggest discontinuing the use of Reddit to solicit opinion.

What kind of story were you expecting from RotMG, an MMO top down shooter to have? Planetside 2 wasn't exactly Planescape: Torment either. You're right, it would have been pretty silly of me to be so negative if it were the only element missing from an otherwise awesome game. Thing is, you turned a comma into a period there. My statement was that the game seemed hit zero of the marks worth being interested in. Now if someone had said "Oh, I bet you charged off into the woods following quest markers, and that's no way to have fun. You'll have a BLAST if you...." Near as I can tell the community of this mmo can't seem to express why they like it. Quite a few say it's bad and give it a thumbs up, haw haw.

That's pretty much what I meant. It's a top down shooter with some upgrades, and I can't think of any higher level of complexity I can use to describe it. Of the positive reviews, I see many claims that it's good and has depth. And that's about it, faith based raves that the game "has depth and you can get better at it, trust me, I am a person on the internet with an opinion." It has, what, different terrain and attack patterns is what you're saying? Well, ok, but "Don't shoot the eggs in the nest." is not the kind of sublime complexity that can make up for being ugly and without narrative. I suspect this is yet another example of the game being the playerbase.

So, I've played this game for two hours, and seriously, what the hell is the point of it? Nothing's jumping out at me with regards to story, art design, music, or gameplay depth. It feels spiritually similar to the 2008 flash game Boxhead: The Zombie Wars with mouse aiming, multiplayer, and no fun.

So, uh, are you going to do Hand of Fate and Malcom's Revenge? Hand of Fate has a stupid intro, but aside from that I thought it was a lot more solid than Legend of Kyrandia. Zanthia's a much more interesting protagonist.

Ross, is Twitch Prime a potential revenue stream for you? Apparently all Amazon Prime customers can get it for free. It said something about supporting your favorite streamer with a free monthly subscription. I don't know if that means you get money or if it's just "hand for the band" kind of support, so I figured I'd ask.

Well, offering tobacco to spirits is totally legitimate in more than a few traditions. Dunno if that was what was going on there. What's the name of the video compression being used? I've never seen that shelf liner/anti skid placemant look before. I was expecting that to show up in the awards. It's incredibly pervasive, but I can't fathom how it would reduce information density. It's almost like a rasterized look, but it's present even on totally black portions of the video.

I loved the episode a lot, but you did such a good job editing the narration during the game intro sequence that it became kind of an uncanny valley thing for me. I think it was the combination of decent voice work and the unnatural pauses the game forced on you while waiting for the next dialogue balloon.

This was my first look at Human Revolution, and I was strongly reminded of Yahtzee's essay on Mary Sue protagonists. It kind of sounds like the emotional core of the game is "people are being constantly unfair to me." I'd like to think it's not so juvenile, but man, it's not looking promising.

Finding exploits is a common thing in gaming; surely all gamers are aware of the type who likes to spend twenty hours figuring out how to kill the end boss in one hit with a joke weapon. I've been thinking about how this has parallels with real world rules systems. Capitalism, I think, weeds out companies that can't find exploits. Starvation and civil war weed out societies that can't close enough of them.

Deus Ex: Revision isn't perfect, but I'd say it's three steps forwards and one back. Importantly, the step back doesn't hurt the story. It's actually hosted on Steam as a free mod for the goty edition, so there's a pretty reputable way of getting it. I'm currently trying out a realistic difficulty run with reduced inventory and the biomod gameplay mode. So far haven't killed anything, but that's more because I wanted to try that gameplay style out. Weirdest thing about the baton for me is that hitting the back of the legs is an instant takedown, but the back of the head just annoys people.

Old and dying mmo's fit many of the criteria for what you're after in group gaming. 1) Most of them have newbie zones built around anticipated swarms of new players from long ago when the game launched. 2) They tend to be desperate for players and have free trials or a f2p model. 3) By being on the brink of oblivion, exploring a fading MMO might be the last opportunity to publicly show the art assets/lore. Biggest disadvantage is that two hours won't even get your toes wet in almost any of them, especially if you wanted to try a new one per month. That said, sometimes a dying mmo will dump massive bonuses on everyone during the last month so any remaining players can experience all the content.

Well if this is Ross's Gordon Freeman he was probably thinking about eating that baby for the extra protein or sell it on the black market. Don't be silly. It's to keep people from taking his drugs. Seeing pictures of babies makes people highly unlikely to steal from any given container. Printing off some random baby picture and putting it in ones wallet is a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsela The most iconic thing about them for me was the big yellow pontoons they had so you could make a machine to cross a lake.

7 times in 10 sudden desktop intability is the power supply going. 300w draw on a corsair 800w supply? Doesn't matter. 7 times in ten.

Please spend my donations towards summer air conditioning.