Winter has arrived, it's cold and wet. But that's why there's egg nog and 500W graphics cards.


We took Lola and Kafka up north for Thanksgiving. I stumbled upon - but did not try - a culinary revelation: corned beef taquito. Now I need to go back to Glendale.


On the last 85 degree day, the GBES trekked from Circle 9 (home of an amazing pilsner) to Quantum, with a stop for grub at Common Theory.


Per tradition, Derrick and Kourtney wrangled the kids in front of a camera just long enough to get a few cardworthy photos. Balboa at 10:00 meant lots of postprocessing.



The 'baters are mixing RoR2 up with a few new games. Having enjoyed Monaco and Payday, we downloaded Barotrauma. It's pretty much the exact midpoint of Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime and Viscera Cleanup Detail: survival teamwork on a submarine with lots of clunky, micromanagey tasks.


E.g. you need to manage your power core, or assign an AI to do it.


Movement is accomplished through careful navigation of canyons using sonar pings that attract baddies. Again, this is best left to the AI, when possible.


What the AI crew is very bad at is fighting, moving, and repairing. So it's more like a very difficult game of whack-a-mole.



As ship's captain, it was my duty to handcuff unruly sailors, but like everything else the interface was hard and I instead handcuffed myself. After being stripped and having my identity stolen, the crew freed me.


The overall game looks large and sandboxy. If we can get over the learning curve it might be a good one. Other than being able to operate the submarine smoothly, the biggest challenge may be diversity in missions.


To switch things up from sub simulator, we've started Dying Light. It's pretty much the same as it was when J and I played it on PS4.



On the PS4 front, J and me are wandering through the characteristically-extensive BL3 endgame. In short:


We finished out the circles of slaughter. These are a nice challenge and great for loot on mayhem mode. As mentioned somewhere on Reddit, the fast, tanky rakks on cistern of slaughter are the absolute worst. On the plus side, mayhem is such a fantastic way to introduce challenge and give purpose to having a large vault of weapons. Kudos.


The event was good, I'm curious what the seasonal content will look like and what this means for the paid DLC.


The Maliwan Blacksite free DLC plays like Tediore Tower, all the way down to the electronic soundtrack. It also introduces a raid boss that we have yet to beat.


Likewise the trials feel like a mini-Tediore tower.


We're cleaning up sidequests, map by map. They're generally quite good, e.g. their sidequest riff on DLC, pay to win, and buggy games.


Playing through areas that we missed with the main quest, we've come across all sorts of neat areas, enemies, and easter eggs. Borderlands finds a nice middle ground between rails and a monotonous sandbox.



I've finally played enough Three Houses to know I've gotten it all wrong. Well, not critically, I still have a pretty competent squad and rarely have to use the rewind mechanic. But what I didn't get was that (from what I can tell) you need to have a final class in mind for each unit so that they get enough experience with those skills. Some of my units have skills that are a bit all over the place and now they can't promote without some grinding. The small number of final classes is somewhat disappointing, maybe something in the plot will change this?

As I've gotten more battalions, I'm really liking the addition. Abilities such as "Units only deal/receive 1 dmg for a round" allows some cool strategy and was integral in beating the death knight before you're supposed to.

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