emumford

I didn't really do much. I haven't really done much of anything big for my birthday because I don't want to spend the energy organizing a party or anything. I dunno I just don't really care anymore, as long as I get a nice dinner of whatever I want and a cake, I'm good.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/qKmbnn

I'm about £30 over your budget but this system has a pretty strong midrange CPU while also providing you decent room to expand down the road if you chose to do so. Here's a cursory glance of the parts in the list and my reasoning why I chose them.

Spend more time in VR this year than last year. Also to play through more of my backlog of games that I own. I've been trying to finish Skyrim for a while now, but I can't stop getting stuck on a loop of modding the shit out of it until it stops working then no picking it up again for a few months. I do need to sit down and play through Fallout 4 even though the lack of dialogue options really rubs me the wrong way.

Maybe I'll try to get A Tale of Two Wastelands working and play through Fallout 3 and New Vegas..

I've been on a 1 year rotation cycle so far for the past three years. Granted not everything is getting replaced but major items are being swapped out as newer stuff becomes available and or if there's a sale on. Last big round update I ended up swapping out the CPU/Mobo from an intel 6700K to a Ryzen 1800x. I decided to chunk some extra moolah into it and purchase new ram and a new NVME drive so I can have my old 6700K PC up and running on it's own as a full system.

I have a feeling if Volta is released this year I'll probably be swapping the GPU out for one of those, but if it's just a slight performance boost with a new number I'll probably hold off.

MEAT Vision! The ability to turn any object or creature into a random fully cooked and ready to consume chunk of meat the same size and volume at will by focusing on it with my gaze. Take that villainous vegetarian scum!

I can't see it possible to harm a robot, let alone illicit an authentic response from the robot to warrant the prevention of any negative behavior to said robot. I figure in a few hundred years or unless there's a drastic break in technology and software development, I don't think I'll ever be within a position to cause harm to a robot even if I intend to.

But for the sake of the argument no, I don't find it wrong to hurt robots. If we can justify doing harm to one another, then we can justify doing harm to robots.

Spam is great when fried. Cut it thin so it crisps up just right and you've got a proper sandwich sized slice of bacon. I mean there is nothing wrong with spam it's simply pork shoulder meat that's too hard to cut into meaningful sizes. I'm actually happier that it's a thing instead of letting all that meat go to waste.

There again I'm one who typically enjoys processed meats, most have a nostalgic place in my heart (possibly a literally one too). I mean spam itself is quite tame, bigger question would be who enjoys eating Scrapple?

My first drink was Coors Light and I absolutely hated it, luckily the buddy I was hanging with had Jack Daniels on hand so I got to experience the delight of mixing sweet tea and Jack together. I'd suggest staying away from light beer, until you've developed a taste for beer itself I'm not sure a watered down version of the stuff is the right way to introduce yourself to it.

Surprisingly I'd suggest trying plain old Budweiser, it's like a good starting point since it's got no real extreme taste or flavor to it. It's like the vanilla of beers in my opinion, and the nice thing about it is it's rather easy to find in most locations. I'd start with that before trying most of the light/cheap-o beers, mostly because you get less of any harsh alcohol or nasty after tastes.

If you find yourself enjoying beer, I'd say branch out to try the other regular beers before diving down the path of Malt Liquor and light beer. I've found myself partial to German beers mostly, the flavors are richer, there's no harsh chemical aftertaste with them, and outside of getting beer farts I've have no negative impacts from drinking german beer.

If you really want to venture into 40s territory I'd say find one that is still within a glass bottle, and grab yourself a fast food burger and fries to go with it. I've found Colt 45 and a Whopper go beautifully together, but just keep in mind you'll probably have to take bigger swigs of the 40 to enjoy it all while it's still cold.

I nabbed:

• The Long Dark
  
• XCOM 2 + War of the Chosen expansion pack
• Sid Meier's Civilization VI
• My Summer Car (God Help me)

I'm still on the fence about Destiny 2.. Not sure if it's worth it.

Mass Effect: Andromeda. I am a big fan of Mass Effect 1 and 2, (I am lukewarm on 3) and I kind of kept a blind eye to the game for the most part because I did not want anything spoiled for me, I wanted that experience I had playing ME1 for the first time and going into it completely blind (I didn't play ME1 until 6 months before ME2, only picked it up because of a co-workers recommendation). But after the gameplay trailer got out, I couldn't help myself and checked that out. Got excited to see the refined gameplay and how smooth the action was and I felt that maybe they got it right this time, if a game has that smooth of execution of combat there must of been a decent amount of effort put into the rest of the game considering how long it's been since ME3. Hearing the news that ME:A was a technical mess, the writing was on a junior high level, and seeing the clips of the games goofs, and that video Brad shared of the T posing cut scenes, it was rather devastating.

Agents of Mayhem. Seeing the next Volition project roll out as a technical mess, with no multiplayer was extremely disappointing. My buddy and I were looking forward to causing trouble in the next sandbox stylized comedic world crafted by these talented folks that brought us the Saints Row games. But I suppose it just was not meant to be.

Strafe. Oh man, the marketing got me hooked into this game hard. I loved the visual style this game had plus the promotional material they created for this game hit all the right notes to grab my attention. I was pumped for a FPS arena shooter that just focused on shooting, gore, and the fast pace super twitchy gameplay from the 90's. But hearing about the games clunky generation and technical issues, unusual gameplay design choices that to me seemed to be counter intuitive to what the proposed premise was to be; I was left feeling they spent 90% on flair and 10% on substance.