Catfish666

I'm devout to Logitech G700.

I prefer Logitech for the 3 year guarantee, I last time paid for a mouse 2009. Gave in my G700 last week and a got a brand spanking new one.

G700 because it's got plenty of buttons and it's a convertible: The cord connects via mini-USB to the front, so it's your choice of cord or cordless.

It's been a long road indeed, but it's good to have you back Matt!

Others have said it, and I'll say it as well: The quality of your written videos at Screened were really outshining many others for the sheer planning and attention to detail. Any plans for similarly written content such as Besties/Remake Rematch/Half Good?

That or drunken appearances randomly in liveshows and your fans will be content.

I also been replaying Skyrim of late after long time. I had previously played:

- Warrior, 1 handed+shield, very tanky all in all. I played this on launch, 95% unmodded and min maxed it to hell. Got bored very fast.

- Mage, run of the mill destruction focused glass cannon.

- Rogue / Archer, focus in avoiding melee

This time I went with a class which would focus on the skills I found most fun, I ended up with a sneaky magic using assassin/thief. Something along the lines of Letho from Witcher 2. Stealth isn't perfect in the game, but it is way more fun than rushing in tank-style head first into every encounter, and can be made better via mods. I also think one should not do all quest storylines, but those that suit the character. For example, my dude finished thieve's guild and dark brotherhood, but I ain't planning on doing the Companions.

The biggest problem was getting stuck to routines and min maxing. Min maxing is dealth with single decision: completely skip enchanting and smithing, makes loot meaningful once again! Routines can be battled with mods such as Random Encounter Zones and replacing old loot with new, such as Immersive Weapons and Immersive Armors. Skyrim ReDone makes leveling fresh experience again and Interesting NPCs adds some life (and additional voice acting) to the world.

Someone already mentioned it, but I also encourage not dumping all the skill points to one tree, but rather spreading 'em around. For example, my sneaky assassin uses illusion spells constantly, but I've yet to invest a single point to the tree. This playstyle of using many skills also means I have favorited million of them, managing them with Categorised Favorites Menu makes life easier.

Also, avoid fast travel. I completely refrained from using it for first ten hrs or so of this char, and discovered new locations and encounters I had missed before. Try to make traveling fun, just avoid clicking yourself around the map. For example, Convenient Horses makes horsing around much more fun (can tell your followers to use horses and horse armor[!]). Lately I've been using Haste spell from Midas Magic to zip around, Skyrim ReDone also add reduce gravity and walk on water spells, which combo quite well with it.

Some of my favorite mods:

Midas Magic: Good spell collection, although some are clearly OP (force push esp.), I just avoid using them. Has a clever spell acquisition system of having to craft spell books using various materials.

Psychosteve's Dragon Priest Masks: Jus

Guard Dialogue Overhaul: Less of mocking queries of misplaced sweetrolls.

Ethereal Elven Overhaul: I won't touch the issue of graphical changes too much. Everyone has their own taste regarding the cleanliness of faces, and that's cool. But personally I prefer my elves looking bit more like elves than sinister aliens.

Acquisitive Soul Gems: No more petty souls in Grand Soul Gems! Hooray!

Project Reality - Climates of Tamriel - Weather - Lighting: I know! I said no more graphics mods, but just this one. Mainly because it makes nights darker, so you have to plan your traveling accordingly. Has several levels of darkness option during installation.

Install and manage mods with Nexus Mod Manager and optimise the load order with BOSS. Fun playthrough also consists of browsing, installing and uninstalling mods during the playthrough, so get out there and keep discovering cool mods! Skyrim Gems is a good mod compilation site, used it myself to find the majority of mods for this playthrough. Just remember that you can mess up your game with too many mods, if the memory leak issue happens, so keep an eye on your savefile. It should never go above 20 megs.

Haven't yet listened to podcast, but good call.

There really isn't anything sensible to discuss about Aliens:CM at the moment. All there is happening right now are outraged fans creating angry forum threads and sending angry tweets to Pitchford. Gearbox is technically on radio silence, because behind the scenes they're* still trying to find out who fucked up / scapegoat. We are not getting an official response for a long time, no matter how much people will bitch about it.

Frankly all this noise is just about as tiresome to watch as ME3-ending outrage. Best move on.

edit: *with "they" I mean all parties involved.

I hear you man, I think people acting outraged by "Randy lying" is just silly, because what else would he say really? Marketing and advertising is about making noise about your product and getting people excited about it. You don't start a job interview by apologizing, no, you act confident about yourself. Just as a head of a studio should act when asked about the quality of their projects. And we can be sure that all E3 demos are polished and doctored as close to the perfection as possible, because they'll be pitted in the same expo hall against hundreds of others demos, which have gone through similar process.

That said, Gearbox messed up royally and deserve most of the shit they're getting, but the question remains to be answered what really went wrong? I'm guessing some strategical gamble was made or maybe Sega just threatened with a lawsuit if the deadline wasn't met. But I doubt Pitchford is twirling his moustache and patting himself in the back for a job well done, like people who bought into the hype and got disappointed make it sound.

All in all I think the whole case serves as a good reminder to everyone to read the reviews before buying, and not supporting the frustrating pre-order trend.

Played a bit, wouldn't mind playing some more!

My nick is: Eminenssi

A bit late to the conversation, but I have to mention WH40K Dawn of War 2 series (The first game and its sequel) since no one mentioned them yet.

The biggest difference is that they're real time, instead of being turn based, but other than that they have alot of similarities; The RPG elements and squad equipment mechanics are even deeper than in XCOM, you can completely revamp a unit's role and behaviour with different gear. The only game mode is basically "iron man-mode", no saving mid missions, and failing a mission has negative consequences for the campaign as whole. Deployment on battlefield dictates the outcome of the battles, you need to use cover, utilize special abilities, keep melee units close to enemy and ranged units afar.

There's also a third game, DoW2:Retribution, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you already played and enjoyed the first two, which have a contuing (and IMO, quite captivating) storyline. Of course, WH40K universe games are sorta acquired taste, I'm automatically a fan having spent many hours and many bucks buying and painting small metallic figurines. If WW2 is more familiar flavor, then Company of Heroes might a better choice, being a technical predecessor to DoW2 series.

Waiting being done here allright.

Did something kinda similar recently. I also had the problem of the gaming scaring the living shit out of me, but I was intrigued enough to want to play it. I asked a friend of mine to "co-op" through the game over voice comm (Mumble in this case), so that we would progress at equal pace. We set the voicecom to stay on all the time, as we agreed that part of the fun was to laugh at your friend's reactions.

This worked out really well for us, asides just alleviating the tension, having another brain to help you figure out puzzles was handy. Several laughs were had when one of us would just flat out refuse to progress ("I'm NOT gonna do it, YOU do it!") or when we gave "helpful" advice ("Yeah, it's completely safe, no monsters on other side").

Of course, your method could work as well, but I can heartily recommend voicecom-co-op. The duders at GB PC gaming channel have a mumble server available, and there's probably folk there who haven't played the game yet.

"Eminenssi" on Origin in Finland (GMT+2)

Would be cool get some more coordinated gold runs. Or all-vanguard runs for funsies! Cool-duder-points if you use mumble for voicechat.