TAFAE

I think you should probably cut one of the museums. Last year (or maybe two years ago?) I tried to go to the MoMA around Christmas/New Years and the line to get in was literally hours long. So I would be cautious about that if you're planning to go on a day that a lot of people won't be working. You shouldn't have any trouble getting to see Nintendo World or the Highline (which is awesome). When I lived in NYC a few years ago, I spent an entire day at the Met a few times and still didn't think that I had seen everything. Can't say how crowded it will be around the holidays, but it's a huge museum and has a little bit of everything in it, including a modern art wing.

I listen to the Bombcast on the Google Play Music app, though I am subscribed in the app rather than using RSS or clicking the download link on the site. I have not had any of the issues you described with this week's podcast or last weeks, and I also have a Nexus 6P.

@retrometal said:

If it's obvious that review scores are inflated by the developer copying and pasting the same positive reviews for their games to someone looking at the Steam reviews to try to make a purchase decision, then it makes the whole review system seem unreliable and untrustworthy. I would imagine that Valve wants to keep the image of a good, reliable review system so that customers continue to post reviews and use them to decide what games they want to purchase.

I had a launch one that lasted for I think a year and a half before failing. That one was replaced for free, but after the second one died a few years later I didn't care to buy another one. My younger brother got an Elite at some point so anything I needed to do on a 360 I did before graduating college and fully moving away.

Interestingly, the first original Xbox I got died after using it for about 15 minutes, though the replacement one I got after returning it still works now.

This is generally a good idea, but I would say that you should also get your STR/DEX up to the levels you need for whatever early weapon you want to use before you start dumping points elsewhere. Generally, a couple points into your health isn't going to be worth as much as being able to equip a specific weapon.

Also on the topic of weapons, you will probably see more benefit in upgrading your weapon of choice with Titanite Shards than you will by pumping your STR or DEX, at least initially.

And on the topic of stats - all of the stats have levels of soft and hard capping where you will get less benefit (or sometimes no benefit) for putting more points into the stat. For the most part, the point of significant diminishing returns is around 40, though I have read that INT and FTH apparently scale reasonably well up to 60 and that VIG starts to have minor diminishing returns in terms of HP gains after 20 points.

@alphasquid: Awesome, thanks! Now I just have to wait until I get home from work to go find it, haha.

I'm looking for a specific type of shield, maybe someone here can help me? I want a 100% physical block shield that will let me have my RH weapon skill on L2 instead of parry or anything like that. Ideally it would fall into the medium-size Kite Shield-ish range, but I'm flexible so long as it's 100% phys block and RH weapon skill. I'm early on in the game (only the first boss down), anyone know if there's a shield like this that I can look forward too soon?

@masterswanny: I think Dark Souls looks about the same as Dark Souls 2 (if you're playing them on the same hardware), but without the cool fire/shadow effects that the torch brought in. I don't think either game is really great looking technically, but the art direction works really well for the style and atmosphere that From is going for and that stuff holds up.

Welcome to Giant Bomb, your home for video games 60's toy appraisals.

Buy it and, if you can, get an extended warranty on it that's long enough to guarantee that your modem at least lives to break even with what you would have paid renting for the same period. That way, you can't lose. Your modem probably won't fail before the warranty is up and you'll come up way ahead anyway, but with the warranty there's not even a risk.