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Happy New Year!

The pig is for generosity and wealth. Have at it, pig!

It is also the time of the Steam Lunar New Year Sale. Looks like everything on my wishlist is at least 70% off. Somehow, I don’t think this is the path to prosperity, pig!

I have superhuman restraint and I limited myself to one: Assassin’s Creed Origins, a purty open world game set in ancient Egypt.

And now it has downloaded. Goodbye!

Comments


Comment from Janna
Time: February 6, 2019, 12:06 am

Did you put a ‘human’ eye on that pig? Creepy.


Comment from Weaseltablet3
Time: February 6, 2019, 12:47 am

No! In fact, I made it more pig like. It was even creepier in the original clip art I stole it from.


Comment from Skandia Recluse
Time: February 6, 2019, 1:34 am

So, I’ma DOG! That explains everything!


Comment from Timothy S. Carlson
Time: February 6, 2019, 1:57 am

I stumbled across Steam yesterday (I was watching a Half-Life documentary and was inspired to find a copy to play), right into the lap of their Chinese New Year sale. I bought a Half-Life bundle (Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal) plus Cuphead, then received a p120 discount for a purchase over p700 – and got out of there for p660 (~$12.70). Cheap! Now I have lots of toys to waste my time on. Last time I was into these games was when I was in my 30s (25 years ago), and I wonder if it will be as frustrating now as it was then.

At least my daughter enjoys watching her father being killed over and over and over again.

Annnnd … I’m a pig. Born in 1959. A pig AND a Leo. And much hilarity ensued …


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 6, 2019, 2:05 pm

I’m a rat and a Taurus, so there’s that.

Timothy, the two Portal games together comprise probably my favorite work of fiction, ever. Honestly, they’re works of genius, as much as a story can be told as experienced at the pace of a computer game. I put off playing them for years, even though I loved the Half Life games, because a) I don’t really like puzzles and b) I mistakenly thought making the protagonist female was forced diversity.

Half Life and Portal take place in the same universe and share lore. To understand the story as it unfolds, I’d play Half Life, then Portal, then Half Life II and Portal II. But you dasn’t haveta.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 6, 2019, 2:17 pm

To add: you learn the story bit by bit, picking up objects, listening to the narrator chatter and reading posters on the walls. Over the course of the tens of hours it takes to play through.

I’ve often thought of untangling the story and rewriting it as a novella. It would be a fun exercise, but it would probably be unremarkable written as a conventional sci-fi story. Also, pointless.

The Haunting of Ethan Carter is the only other game I’ve ever wanted to disentangle and re-write, as a way of expressing how clever I thought the premise was.


Comment from DurnedYankee
Time: February 6, 2019, 4:00 pm

Sweasy – Mrs Durned is also a Taurian rat.

I’m a Sagi-Scorpian male chicken.

And you people are tempting me sorely with these STEAM sales.
Dammit!
Now I’m going to have to go look and see if there’s a “first-person” ground level view Napoleonic game on sale.
I have a hankerin to defend Hugomont, or chase the “shopkeepers” out of it, whichever, because I like both sides.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 6, 2019, 7:37 pm

I don’t know much about war sims, Durned — but I know there are a lot of them, and their fans are super pernickity about accuracy!

Janna, here is the unedited pigface:

I thought it was super creepy.


Comment from DurnedYankee
Time: February 6, 2019, 8:28 pm

I bought one that covers Gettysburg about a year ago, and Mrs Durned lost me for about 1 week as I learned to maneuver companies, battalions, divisions and corps – I decided Army level command was just too bothersome, so I stopped at corp commander.

And then she lost me for another 2 weeks while I re-fought the 1st 2 days (both sides).

It’s cheating to take the ‘eagle’s’ view of the battlefield, but much easier to win!
It’s much more interesting (and realistic) to get ‘reports’ from your subordinates and move your officer around the field to see first hand if they’re full of shit and if they’re doing what you told them to.
(I had to keep taking units away from Dan Sickles and John Bell Hood).

They did an excellent job with the terrain mapping so you really do have to ride to where they could ‘see’ what was happening.

And playing it in ‘real time’ was a blast.

But US uniforms are soooooo dreary and dull – Napoleonic units on the other hand…
plus heavy cavalry – SCOTLAND FOREVER!


Comment from Timothy S. Carlson
Time: February 7, 2019, 11:05 pm

I’ve done the Half-Life thing before, but never Portal. So, I’ve started with that and I’m having a blast!

Right now, my character is bobbing between two portals that are on floors – jump down into one, come up in the other, gravity takes me back down and through, and so on, and so on.

Surprisingly, no inertia lost transversing portals, so I think this could go on forever, if I let it.

I love this puzzle stuff.

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