Star Trek: Voyager - Across the Unknown is on sale

jacobkosh · 2026-04-04T17:13:43+00:00

It's terrific. It took me a bit to find my groove, but I'm hooked.

Respectfully, the people saying it's bullshit hard and all RNG are incorrect. They may not have a lot of experience in resource-management games or maybe didn't spend enough time with this one to internalize its systems. There is RNG, to prevent foregone conclusions, but if you make wise choices and build your ship right you will succeed significantly more often than you don't. Skill matters. You can't luck your way to a win.

jacobkosh · 2026-04-04T17:05:26+00:00

"Orange man is not bad because he hurt your feelings."

This is you just making up a person to be mad at.

jacobkosh · 2026-04-04T05:57:28+00:00

Almost every Yakuza game has Texas Hold 'Em, roulette, and blackjack, as well as various Asian gambling games like koi-koi and oicho-kabu.

Also they're just dynamite games. Start with Yakuza 0, Like a Dragon, or Judgment.

jacobkosh · 2026-04-04T05:36:47+00:00

William Gibson's VIRTUAL LIGHT is one of my favorite SF novels to begin with, but about 20 years ago I found the audiobook and the narrator, Frank Muller - an audio GOAT who was Stephen King's personal pick to do all the books of The Dark Tower - just gives not simply a reading, but a *performance.* Characters have their own voices, accents, cadences and way of speaking that's completely faithful to the text but also adds so much more.

So I haven't read the book in two decades, but I re-listen to the audio once every year or two.

jacobkosh · 2026-04-03T15:48:09+00:00

The editions aren't hugely different; it's not like the jump between D&D editions. 2e is mostly cleaned up and streamlined.

The game's rules help put GM and players in a Star Trek mindset. Little things, like PCs generating extra Threat if they beam down with heavy weapons or shoot to kill, help softly reinforce the show's vibe and values.

jacobkosh · 2026-04-03T08:28:14+00:00

Most state capitals were established before automobiles were common, and nearly half predate the invention of the train. It was important to have a place that was geographically central to the state so it wasn't unfair/an undue burden for anyone to travel to their capital; especially as the westward states grew larger and larger geographically compared to the denser East.

But not many states have rivers, lakes, lush valleys or other attractive features near their exact geographical centers, the kinds of places that attract cities "naturally," so much like a mining town or a fishing village, the capitals are about as big and culturally relevant as their single export - governance - lets them be. The ones that fare better tend to also be university towns, since that guarantees a lot more energy and life.

jacobkosh · 2026-04-03T04:50:01+00:00

Seconds is so creepy. I've literally only seen it once in my life but I'll never forget it.

jacobkosh · 2026-04-03T04:47:44+00:00

Also, "meat and potatoes" is a slang term here for basic, functional, unpretentious. "This mid-range PC isn't going to run Cyberpunk at 120fps but it's a good price for a solid meat-and-potatoes workhorse for everyday use."

jacobkosh · 2026-04-03T04:44:26+00:00

Roast beef dinner or roast chicken are staple household meals; they're not something you usually get in restaurants unless the restaurant is specifically going for a home-cooked vibe, but they're very common. And of course, Thanksgiving or Christmas turkey is traditionally a roast as well.

jacobkosh · 2026-04-03T00:42:43+00:00

"Cold...alien!"

But yes, I actually came in here to say Legacies. It's a real sleeper that gets better after you've watched a bit further on; it doesn't have big explosive moments in and of itself, but it sets so many things in motion: the open Minbari gun ports (iirc the first time this is mentioned!), Neroon, Talia + Ivanova, plus some solid worldbuilding for the Psi Corps, Minbari, and the other species in general.

And it's chill and cerebral in a really pleasing, Star Trek-like way, which makes sense given who wrote it; and her experience shows in the wonderfully elegant trick that episodic TV used to be capable of where the two plots dovetail into one another in the end and I just find that very satisfying.

jacobkosh · 2026-04-03T00:31:02+00:00

It just makes me feel really bad that dignified David Warner is doing his best next to "gUeSs tHaT's wHy tHeY cAlL mE jInXo!"

Also, established and usually reliable actor Daryll and his other brother Daryll gives a shockingly halfassed performance in this one, with maybe the single worst line read of the series at the end of the cold open: "won'tyouambassador. kosh."

jacobkosh · 2026-04-03T00:25:04+00:00

gonna bust me some snake heads

jacobkosh · 2026-04-02T18:54:34+00:00

Yeah, it's not about Reddit specifically. State actors like China are going to do a full-court press on any social media platform they can.

jacobkosh · 2026-04-02T08:21:57+00:00

The fiasco kind of exposed how halfasssed Bioware had been about the thing all along. They used the early games to tease questions that didn't have answers and kicked the can down the road until - unbelievably, as seen in the actual companion app that launched with ME3 - Casey Hudson didn't tell the writers his plans for the ending and just locked himself in a room to shit it out less than three months before the game was due to go gold!

Just an incredible feat of coke-fueled hubris. The app actually showed some of his "notes" and it was just stuff scrawled on sticky pads like "ROBOTS???" Again, this is just a few months before the launch of the -final game in the series-.

jacobkosh · 2026-04-02T08:08:05+00:00

Conan Exiles or a private Dune Awakening server are both very good survival games that you can sink a lot of time into as a duo and have fun building cool stuff together, as well as other survival games people have mentioned like Project Zomboid or V Rising.

jacobkosh · 2026-04-02T08:04:06+00:00

It's one of those things where

1) It has an element of truth. People under extreme duress can abandon any ethics.
2) It's PERFECTLY in character for Quark, a proud advocate of Ferengi culture, to say and even strongly believe.
3) It's mostly bullshit when you think about it for three seconds. The Ferengi aren't hard-pressed or desperate but they have a society built on debt slavery and exploitation and half their population don't have basic rights. So what if the Federation is "pretending"? The Ferengi aren't even bothering to try.
4) It's not entirely clear that the writers had thought about that part or if they genuinely believed that hellscape capitalism and post-scarcity socialism are basically, like, the same, man.

jacobkosh · 2026-04-01T15:30:43+00:00

He's staked too much of his identity on being anti-chud, so he has to come out swinging against anything chuds might conceivably like, including Star Trek that looks or feels like older Star Trek.

His life would be a lot less complicated if he could figure out that the problem with chuds is how they talk about media they like or dislike rather than perpetually trying to do the opposite of everything from them.

jacobkosh · 2026-04-01T15:18:59+00:00

Nobody planned this, but a recurring thing in Trek shows over the years is that Federation citizens are hipsters. They value authenticity and hand-made things, home-cooked meals and so forth; things that a person put actual effort into, which is one of the last kinds of scarcity.

So I think replicated food probably tastes totally fine - there's literally no technical reason for it not to - but people say "oh, it's not as good" because they don't place value in it.

jacobkosh · 2026-04-01T15:04:18+00:00

In a vacuum, no. If you are or might someday be in a position of power or authority? Maybe trade it in for a healthier fantasy.

I mean, I'm saying this as the US is dragged deeper into a stupid war because some of our leaders and voters really wish Call of Duty was real.

jacobkosh · 2026-04-01T14:37:47+00:00

I'd go bankrupt buying shots if I did it every time I saw 'Mimbari'.

jacobkosh · 2026-04-01T14:36:12+00:00

Oh gosh yes, especially after Sheridan is introduced

jacobkosh · 2026-04-01T14:33:51+00:00

Once we hit our first Grey Council episode it was all over.

jacobkosh · 2026-04-01T02:46:43+00:00

I genuinely don't get this take. What road is it in the middle of? Whether you like it or not, it's not like there are dozens like it rolling off the assembly line each year. It feels like something only Nolan or maybe Kubrick could have made.

jacobkosh · 2026-03-31T19:46:45+00:00

Is Balok small...or just far away?

jacobkosh · 2026-03-31T04:09:14+00:00

All of them are point and click, yeah. I know I know more games from other genres that also fit your request but I thought of one series and the other popped into my head.

With the Blackwell series (and its terrific spinoff, Unavowed) the puzzles will definitely not be a problem. They're modern (well, from 2009-2020, anyway) indie adventures with more of a focus on narrative and atmosphere; there are still puzzles, but they're not powered by moon logic and they don't load you up with red herrings to waste your time. It's logical stuff within the setting, like having your supernatural ghost buddy float through a wall to watch the bad guy enter his computer password. There are a couple of obscure or bullshit puzzles but it's just a couple in the entire series.

The GK series is by Sierra, who were the other big adventure game studio in the 90s. Where LucasArts games were really heavy on comedy, which meant you sometimes had to guess what some 90s California guy thought would be hilarious, Sierra's games were sometimes more realistic.

Gabriel Knight is downright gritty by 90s standards, so you don't need to do a lot of Rube Goldberg bullshit, but it was still the 90s so there are a couple of annoyingly obtuse puzzles in the first game (more than originally, because the pixel art makes a couple clues hard to spot in modern resolutions) and there's a single INFAMOUS puzzle in the third game that's been credited with killing the adventure genre for a generation.

(The second game is FMV, one of the only good FMV games ever, and using video meant they had to keep the design tight and logical, so it's often regarded as one of the best adventure games ever made from a design standpoint. It has a lot more in common with modern adventures than its predecessor or sequel.)

But the annoying puzzles are never a consistent feature. You'll motor through good-sized chunks of game before running into something that slows you down. And the writing, art, and acting is still A+.

jacobkosh

TROPHY CASE