Saving this to read after I get the game and finish it!

One of my favorite game publishers, this is wild (and not the Outer kind of wild). I’m super curious if the entire staff will start their own publishing company (which I imagine is harder to do without the financial backing of a billionaire’s daughter) or if they’ll split off and go their separate ways.

I’m also very curious if this will start changing the kinds of games Annapurna publishes or if they’ll still take interest in odd and niche games that need a publisher. I wish I knew more about the dispute here but time will tell what happens next at some point.

Mobius is pretty fascinating and Klein is hilarious! They all have their own quirky charm that makes them all fun to interact with, though I’m partial to Dr. 0 simply because it’s the same guy that voiced Dr. Venture on The Venture Bros. and the Wild Wasteland trait has him reference the “giant walking eye” as a nod to the show.

Whose your favorite out of all the doctors at the Big MT?

No announcement or confirmation from Night School Studio regarding GOG, Steam, the Playstation Store, or the Nintendo eShop as of yet. My guess is they would give a decent warning announcement if it were to leave those outlets as well, but regardless I did download my copy from GOG to my backup drive just in case.

I’ve got family members that have loyally progressed through this game over the course of years and they absolutely love it still. Great music throughout.

Cal: “You’re indeed brave Scout Trooper, but the fight is mine.”

Scout Trooper: “Ohh, had enough eh?!”

Cal: “What? Look, you stupid buckethead, you’re stuck in a wall!”

Scout Trooper: “Just a flesh wound!”

It’s happening again…

Definitely one of those games with incredible background designs that are worth just stopping and looking at sometimes. It’s one of the few games I’ve gotten 100% achievements on and a large part of that is I can treasure hunt a long time when the scenery gives me something stunning to look at.

Aside from the joy of playing Injustice as a comics fan, I really really enjoyed that I could find something fun about playing each character. My top 2 are definitely Green Arrow and Batgirl, but it starts to get harder to choose from there. I definitely would also put Solomon Grundy and Batman up there too, I totally get why you have them in your top roster.

I never owned Injustice 2 and unfortunately didn’t get to play enough of it to choose, let alone get to try all the awesome new characters they added. I’m sure a day will come at some point where I finally get a real upgraded gaming experience and can then get the sequel for myself!

It’s always nice to see someone else that really liked Dead Money! There’s something really intriguing about the challenge of surviving the Sierra Madre without all the fancy gear and weapons I’d been relying on for so long. Assembling the ragtag team of prisoners was fantastic too – Dog/God, Dean Domino and Veronica’s-very-own Christine was quite the cast. The only thing I didn’t dig about Dead Money was the VATS glitch with the Holorifle that causes the game to get stuck in the VATS combat animation with no way out. I didn’t confirm it as a bug until the third time it happened (but luckily after the second time I was smart enough to save immediately before testing the rifle in VATS again to see if that was the cause).

Follows-Chalk is a homie for life! “Like the shadow of a ghost” is one of the great sneak-mode lines.

I just used the built-in spoiler controls on the Eternity app which appear fine on there but must not be set up to work outside of the app?

Whatever the reason, thanks for the heads up! Turned my laptop back on to edit it as an extra precaution since I’ve never had a problem with the browser style controls.

I loved the different story paths and choices for Honest Hearts. The history of the tribes,

, such a blast.

And with the Wild Wasteland trait

.

“Goot”

“Captain, we now have the materials necessary to upgrade the ship!” -Adéwalé after every naval battle even when it’s not true

“I don’t want someone to beam me up, I want Troi to bean me up!” -Riker

As far as the basic concept goes, they are very similar though there are significant differences in the details that are mostly a blur in my memories except that the actress for Seven of Nine is significantly more attractive than Douglock.

The person reacting to your comment calling them a pigeon:

Definitely, in the show when we start meeting characters from their home city and really start to hear details about how they grew up it was such an eye opener. As soon as I heard there was a novella I smashed through it for the moment-to-moment details and really felt like I understood a lot about the character, by the end thinking “you know, all things considered, this character is actually far more well-adjusted than I gave them credit for initially” which, given the character, is saying something.

I squeezed in the first chapter of Leech earlier today and it’s very much the kind of “different” that I’ve been looking for! Getting these insights into how a character with a consciousness across multiple bodies thinks and feels is fascinating. Also, the description of the autopsy very much reminds me of watching Castlevania where I’m impressed and intrigued while also knowing there is no way I could read this book and eat food at the same time haha.

Hmm you might have also convinced me to check out The Host after this. I’d adamantly stayed away from it because I got sent the first book from the big series she’s known for in a care package and read it since the girl I was dating at the time really liked it, and it was one of the most miserable reading experiences of my life. Nothing against the swathes of people that loved her big blockbuster series, and I’m not saying reading them makes people dumber, but for me I found it harder and harder to think the further I got in and that terrified me. But, even the author herself said she wants to be remembered for The Host but knows people will only remember her big hit series instead. If it really is enough of a step up for her and others to say that, and it serves as a comparison to the kind of narrator perspective in Leech, I might just have to give her another shot.

I think that’s definitely one of the reasons Leech sounds so intriguing to me, I kind of just want to see how the unified consciousness is written as the main (instead of a side character) and as a parasite instead of a collective, especially in such an unusual mystery plot – it’s so different that I figure I gotta satiate that curiosity. After carefully checking out some non-spoiler reviews, I’m gonna go for that one first since I feel like I might need something light and fun like Starter Villain to recover afterward.

And I am with you on The Expanse books and 100% think it’s because we watched the show first – especially since that show brought the actual authors of the books into the writers room for the entire series (for anyone stumbling across this that are confused, the author “James S.A. Corey” is actually a pseudonym for the two people that wrote the books, Ty Corey Franck and Daniel Abraham). With the actual creators, plus an incredible showrunner that really helped them navigate how to keep the heart and stability of their story world while making some necessary changes for the medium, translated extremely well to screen.

But that also means we’ve essentially gone through the three main things that makes The Expanse so compelling already (at least to me):

1. First, the careful balance between “science” and “fiction” that considers so many details. It makes it realistic and believable while also understanding it’s an epic fictional story. Stuff like the muscle difference of people depending on how much gravitational force they grew up with is fascinating, with Belters having lived their lives in low gravity stations and Martian military training extra hard in order to withstand the same level of gravity that Earthers are naturally conditioned to. Normally that would be extremely fascinating to read, but because the show did such a fantastic job at explaining it, it was more of a nod and an appreciation for the elaboration on the effects of it.

2. Then, the characters. Even with the differences, it’s easy to see why so many people that read the books before the show ended up embracing the cast in its entirety after being initially put off. While Amos and Bobbie look a little more beastly in the books, most anyone that was initially put off admitted that the actor for Amos ended up being so true to that guy that him being too pretty for the part quickly faded from their minds. Same thing with Bobbie, as realistically the fact that casting found an actress with the height, ethnicity, muscle and real-world competitive fight experience to come close to the Bobbie character in the book is a miracle in itself (and my bias for having a massive crush on Frankie Adams as well as every actress in the show). For that reason, for the most part, instead of being fascinated by Amos’ adjusting and growing, Bobbie’s Martian education and patriotism and her exposure to the reality of the universe, and just wanting more Avasarala dialogue, it’s kind of just reminding you why they are such fascinating characters instead of pulling you in to understand them – after the show, in a lot of ways, we already were captivated at unraveling these people and already have done so.

3. Finally, the most compelling thing for me was the need to know WHAT HAPPENS NEXT! There are political stakes, thriller sequences, tough decisions, all done with the grace that causes someone to say “I can’t stop now, just one more episode” or “just one more chapter” and keep going. Because of the show, we, for the most part, already know what’s going to happen.

I found the books to be very well written, but with these three main draws already having played out in the show, they didn’t give me that addictive rush I usually get from a good book that turns me into a page-flipping fiend that just can’t put the damn thing down. That said, the elaboration is fantastic. I was confused by the guns on the space station in the show initially since they don’t explain there is different ammo until either near the end of the first season or even later. When the books clarified, in satisfying detail, the plastic gyro rounds used on space stations that are designed to puncture human flesh but not pierce the walls of a space station, and that normal bullets are still used in other environments, was great. All this stuff about reducing gun recoil for use in space, etc., all were a treat to read. Even when not perfect, the added details on top of the thought they put into trying to convey some realistic use of the laws of physics, etc., elevates the believability of the books to a new level. Other than that, it is a lot of just “spot the difference” for us that have seen the show. It’s interesting to say “oh okay so this is different from the show but I see how they’re going to get there still” or “ah so they must have realized these events weren’t enough to justify adding another character on the show with limited screentime, so they just rolled that character’s actions into Camina Drummer’s character, which worked well.” Extra tech, characters, bigger differences, etc., are all nice to bring you in closer to this story universe I love so much, but at the end of the day the need-to-know stuff is mostly already in our memories.

I also think that’s why, like you, I really enjoyed the novellas. They added so much extra to a story universe that I didn’t want to leave yet. The Churn was actually the first thing I read because the reveal of [redacted]'s upbringing was so eye opening that finding out there was a novella further explaining just what made this person who they are today felt like a must-read addition to such an interesting character.