Good luck with chunky son and video games! We’re just finishing year two of our own escort mission and finding time to play games just gets harder. I hear it might get better around year 4. :)
Little late to the party here, but I want to emphasize something Brad mentioned - if you are going to do this, if you use any RAID mode that isn't redundant, don't put anything on the combined logical drive that you aren't afraid to lose. Raid-0 or JBOD gives you zero tolerance for failure -- if any physical drive fails, the whole logical drive goes down, and there's a good chance you've lost everything on that drive. (Solid state mechanisms are usually more reliable, but that doesn't mean invulnerable. The legend of Brad's Xbox USB key has been told many a time.)
All that being said - I run Windows software RAID-1 on my main desktop PC at home for the past 3+ years, and it's been pretty solid. The quality of Windows Software RAID has come a long way since the early 2000s. Just really be aware of the pros and cons of what you're configuring, and always, always have a backup (or, at the very least, make sure everything can be downloaded again from the cloud.)
Man, I'm so happy that they are inching back into reviews. I love the giant bomb hot take, but the internet is jam packed with reactionary hot takes but very few can write reviews of this caliber. I think the review process strengthens the dialogue around the game and makes for better discussion on the site. I hope we see more reviews on the site in the future in whatever form they take!
This may be too far down into the weeds, but can you describe what actually blew up? Behind the scenes stuff is always interesting to me, and I'm wondering if it was the unlikely but much dreaded double hard drive failure (which happened to me once at work, which is why I have 4 copies of everything important to me), or if something else actually let the magic smoke out.
Sympathy to you Jeff and your family about the pregnancy roller coaster - my own wife had her own scares and complications... but 19 months after delivery and we have a very robust toddler who likes grabbing game controllers and running around the living room. :)
To a MUCH lesser extent its how I feel about the discussions on the outrage culture. Ben said something to the effect of "this months gamer outrage" as if those people are what we should be focusing on. Should we really give a shit if some twitter bot told another guy to 'go kill himself'?
Haven't gotten to the part of the podcast where they discuss any of this stuff yet so maybe I'm missing something, but yeah I think we should. Time has shown us that the old adage of "Don't feed the troll" is not effective. If anything, ignoring shitty people just allows them to fester and inspire more people to be shitty. We can't allow bad behavior to seem normal or acceptable.
This, totally agree. "Don't feed the troll" doesn't work when somebody is being subjected to hundreds of abusive phone calls or being sent unknown packages. (TBH, I've always been surprised that GB does mailbags - I'm assuming they're doing some sort of screening off camera.)
I can't understand the chain of thought that leads somebody to decide "Oh, hey, it's alright if I call this person every four hours and threaten their family", but there are enough people out there who DO decide that is acceptable behaviour. It's time to stop that bullshit.
The ESA is currently a burning tire fire (actually, has been one for a long time now), and deserves to be sent to the dustbin of history. A new organization will need to be formed though, because, as much as I hate to admit it, the video game industry is still going to need some sort of advocacy/lobbying organization. You might not want to hear about politics, but, politicians have been known to do some pretty stupid things. U.S. Supreme Court precedents aren't inviolate, to both the benefit and detriment of society, and there are plenty of countries around the world without the free speech protections present in the United States.
If you're going to use a Neti-pot or some sort of sinus rinse thing, also make sure that everything is clean, clean, clean - unless you want the sinus infection from hell.
I'm okay with more Borderlands. The problem with most of the more recent games is that, beyond a certain point, you need to commit to the game as a hobby as opposed to just playing it if you want to have fun with it. That's why I gave up on Destiny 2 and The Division after "only" 60 or so hours -- I don't want to grind raids or player events or whatever, I don't want to have to keep up with content balance patches, I don't want to have to deal with the hassle of finding gaming groups to see the really cool content.
I want to play a game where I can go "Oh hey, new gun, the numbers are higher" and then go and blow stuff up with it in a satisfying way - and I know that, when I come back in a couple of weeks, everything is still pretty much the same, so I don't have to relearn what the "Yammer Jammer FrostHammer" does again.
I've got 3-5 hours a week to play games tops, these days. I don't need complexity. I don't have TIME for complexity.
Now, I've got no problems if you want to do that, play games with modern levels of complexity - and, when I was 20 years younger, I would have been along for the ride. And I will concede that newer games, if you put the time in and if you belong to the right gamer group, are probably way more satisfying than what Borderlands 3 seems to offer.
But for me: Borderlands is like putting on the music you grew up with - outdated, no longer innovative, the cool kids make fun of you, but damnit, it's still good to listen to, you know exactly what you're going to get, and you're going to have a good time as long as you set your expectations accordingly. If Borderlands 3 ticks the same boxes as Borderlands 1 and Borderlands 2 (crazy loot, decent gun play, mobs explode and burn and dissolve in a satisfying way, story isn't too terrible) , my wife and I will be happy.
Tali's storyline in ME3 is really interesting, but, in the grand scheme of things, I think the overall global effect is pretty much the same regardless of whether Tali is in the game or not.
So, start ME3 with the current save, with Tali dead. Then split the timeline when you get to the key mission that Tali is prominent in and play that mission both ways, as currently setup with Tali dead, and as a 'What-If' scenario with Tali alive. (Being vague for the sake of spoiler management.)
I know it's extra work from a save management perspective, but that way you can see out your own personal Shepard story, but you can also see the difference Tali would have made.
Mass Effect, in general, is wonderful demonstration of the concept of the appearance of player agency versus actual player agency -- and this would be an interesting way to highlight it. (And this entire discussion is an interesting example of gaming and living with consequences within your game universe - what limits are you prepared to accept on your own personal power fantasy?)
TurtleFish's comments