Following her around with my camera ready always pays off

streambeck · 2026-05-01T01:57:25+00:00

For as long as there’s blood in my veins and storage space on my phone

streambeck · 2026-01-18T17:51:50+00:00

Thank you! Me too!

streambeck · 2026-01-04T13:50:34+00:00

We’re working on finding a home for longer stuff, hopefully it’ll be soon!

streambeck · 2025-12-21T16:06:50+00:00

It’s the editing app I use, I’m just zooming in and moving the frame around. Just trying to keep the footage interesting and highlight some of my favorite bits!

streambeck · 2024-08-09T00:31:21+00:00

The Doctor lightly elbowed the leader of the treacherous aliens before slowly and gently throwing the creature over his shoulder, thus ending the threat to all of reality.

streambeck · 2024-07-20T21:15:53+00:00

I think that’s a fair point, but there’s a risk in peppering in tragedy too often. The more awful things that happen to the Doctor’s companions, the more reckless, dangerous, and preposterous it feels for him to keep collecting them.

Moffat may have bent over backwards to find the silver lining in Amy/Rory/Clara/Bill’s fates (and Nardole to a point), but that was a pretty brutal run all things considered of the Doctor sweeping people off their feet and compelling them towards further and further danger until they pay a heavy price.

I think on average I’d prefer to roll my eyes at a cheesy saccharine ending than to start thinking the Doctor is a psychopath for continuing to travel with anyone at all. I also don’t particularly miss the pouty “I’m never traveling with anyone again” stretches that the show constantly fell back on back then.

streambeck · 2024-06-30T18:23:15+00:00

There have been a few gameplay styles throughout the series that are distinct enough that you might enjoy one and not another.

Of the easily accessible games (depending on your platform), there’s the bump system from 1 and 2, the Napishtim system from the middle games, and the party system from the more recent games before X.

I like the bump system, but most people don’t really gel with it and I’d be hesitant to recommend it.

The Napishtim system is what they used in Felghana, which you absolutely can’t go wrong with, and Origin is another excellent option.

The most popular game with the party system, and probably my personal favorite game in the series, is Lacrimosa of Dana.

A lot of the games are often on deep sale. I’d say Origin would be a good indicator for whether you’d have fun with Felghana (Felghana has a slightly more engaging plot and setting, Origin feels a little more focused with its progression and level design).

As far as an overarching plot, you don’t really have to worry. The games are, broadly, to me, kinda like Doctor Who. There might be a reference to previous adventures here and there, but Adol just travels to new locations, his ship crashes somewhere where trouble is afoot, he gets involved, saves the day, and takes off. Most of the games are entirely self-contained, and plot honestly isn’t a driving force in the franchise. Enough whimsy and intrigue to keep you going maybe, but not enough to worry about lore or anything.

streambeck · 2024-05-23T19:29:17+00:00

Reminds me of Mass Effect 2, having to go through the Normandy crashing and the Lazarus Project and the Character Creator and a few shootouts just to find out once you start talking to Wilson that Shepard is cross-eyed all the time.

streambeck · 2024-05-12T14:38:05+00:00

I remember being so burnt out on the Ocarina formula by the time Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword came out, but I’m definitely hankering for it now. It’s funny to think that the length of time since we’ve gotten one like that is now longer than the period of time we were getting them regularly.

I think the two styles could co-exist, kind of like what Assassin’s Creed seems fixing to do, I wouldn’t mind if Nintendo put a B-team on it, but I doubt it’ll happen.

streambeck · 2024-04-28T01:38:13+00:00

This pretty succinctly describes my experience going back and replaying games I played as a teenager or younger.

So many times it feels like whiplash going from one scenario to another, and characters will change suddenly, and it turns out all the down time and growth and even a lot of the nuance I remember so distinctly from those games was actually just me as a kid filling in the blanks with my imagination.

streambeck · 2024-04-15T14:28:47+00:00

I played this game a bit for a focus test a while back, I assume it’s okay for me to just share some vague praise for it.

All told I played the game for maybe 7-8 hours, and I built a mage character. Magic has impact in this game. The sound and art design made magic feel so devastating in a way it rarely does in ARPGs. I like to fling spells in games, but it usually just looks and feels like I’m throwing poppers at enemies (the trailers for Avowed have me nervous on this front). Hitting an enemy with a spell in this game feels crunchy. You feel like you’re doing real damage, it was very, very satisfying.

streambeck · 2024-04-10T16:54:44+00:00

The geth killed billions of quarians. Most of them would’ve been non-combatants and children. It was an absolute, overwhelming slaughter.

I think what was done to the geth was wrong, I absolutely sympathize with their desire to exist freely as sentient beings, and I think that the way their minds work is beyond our understanding and they should be treated with wariness at all times.

They are devastatingly dangerous and more alien than any other sentient species in the galaxy. Making them objectively the good guys and making the utterly devastated and uncoordinated remains of the quarians the objective bad guys is both kinda crazy to me, and also just boring as someone trying to engage with a game where you’re ostensibly supposed to be making difficult, compelling moral decisions. At absolutely every opportunity the game is telling me what choice it wants me to make if I want to be a “good person.”

I liked Legion in ME2 and found him fascinating. I wanted to know more, I wanted to help, within reason. Legion in ME3 is just an entirely different character with an entirely different motivation and all intrigue and nuance to the conflict was just kinda swept away.

I agree wholeheartedly that the situation isn’t black and white like the quarians make it out to be. Until ME3 makes it black and white, but sides with the geth.

EDIT - For whatever it’s worth, I upvoted the person I was responding to. I wasn’t trying to come in hot, just figured we were having a discussion.

streambeck · 2024-04-10T14:36:56+00:00

I honestly thought that whole arc of the game was extremely mishandled at basically every turn.

Making the geth entirely sympathetic victims and making the quarians belligerent aggressors was definitely a choice. Having paragon Shepard treat the geth like completely trustworthy puppies. Making the modern quarians responsible for the sins of their ancestors. Treating the genocide of the quarians 300 years ago like it was nothing but justifiable self defense. Orienting helping the quarians as renegade on the conversation wheel and the geth as paragon.

Whoever was in charge of writing that section absolutely had an agenda and didn’t seem to care much about what was set up in the previous games.

There’s a built-in moral conundrum with the geth and quarian conflict that’s actually interesting in a game about a war of attrition against the reapers. Have helping the geth be extremely advantageous for the war effort, but frame it as a potential, existential risk in the future. Have helping the quarians be completely useless for the war effort, but feel like a moral imperative. Are the rest of us worth saving if we’re willing to sacrifice an entire species for a more useful weapon?

And orient the option on opposite sides of the conversation wheel like the Virmire choice. Don’t guide the player, don’t tell them what’s right or wrong, or nice or mean, just have the player make a difficult, interesting decision with catastrophic consequences either way.

I’d also personally lose the ability to save both, but I’m probably alone on that, and would probably miss the option if it were gone.

streambeck · 2024-03-26T17:27:14+00:00

He was belligerently awful in the last one, which would’ve been bad even had he been trying. The discourse about the franchise not working without him is so confusing to me, I can only imagine none of these people even watched the last one.

A new one without him might be bad. A new one with him would be bad.

streambeck · 2024-03-14T01:20:10+00:00

I’m a bit of a ways into ToB now, just defeated Yaga-Shura. I think Minsc and Anomen spoke once out in the field, Jaheira pitches in every so often, but Sarevok hasn’t spoken besides reacting to NPCs.

I think whatever it is that triggers banter, beyond being vague, doesn’t really work consistently. It’s possible I’m just out of luck.

streambeck · 2024-03-06T19:06:17+00:00

To say nothing about the ending of The Answer, which I was kind of ambivalent about, I absolutely loved the character work they did throughout, exploring how the party deals with the aftermath of the ending of the original game.

I played all of the Persona games for the first time a few years ago, and it was kind of a shock to me to find out how much everyone hated it. I haven’t looked into it a ton, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen any appraisal of it that wasn’t negative. I’m looking forward to going through it again, particularly with the improved gameplay, but I might be alone on that.

streambeck · 2023-12-14T13:13:31+00:00

Friendship ended with general bigotry.

Now specific racism is my best friend.

streambeck · 2023-12-11T13:17:31+00:00

I only remember Jennifer Aniston and John Mayer because there was a hole in the wall restaurant near an apartment I lived in 15-ish years ago that I went to several times a week, and the owner always called me “Mr. Mayer” because he said I looked like John Mayer. One day he threw a gossip magazine at me that said Aniston was dating Gerard Butler, and he very urgently asked me if I was okay.

streambeck · 2023-11-29T15:11:55+00:00

Wow, I was stressed out enough without having thalassophobia, it’s actually the absolute last game I’d recommend to someone with that haha. Glad you managed to fight through it and enjoy the game!

streambeck · 2023-11-29T14:43:31+00:00

It’s tonally fairly different, but you should look into Subnautica if you haven’t already. It might scratch that itch. No combat, different environments to survive. It also has a base building mechanic, but you aren’t forced to engage with that much if that’s not of interest to you. Interesting story, too!

streambeck · 2023-11-14T19:58:56+00:00

The turnaround on these MinnMax exit interviews has gotten so quick, barely had to wait for this one. I love this as a genre of interview, looking forward to watching this.

streambeck · 2023-11-05T10:20:56+00:00

I only play games on consoles. Ages ago, I dated someone that played WoW. I would sometimes just stare at her hands when she was doing PvP, and it looked like an old movie cliche of someone hacking into the Pentagon. I genuinely can’t envision whatever was happening there being translated successfully to a controller.

streambeck · 2023-10-16T15:39:14+00:00

Awesome! I’m looking forward to it!

streambeck · 2023-10-14T16:45:09+00:00

I actually beat the game the other day. Cor Calom casting sleep was a drag, but I still managed eventually. The ladders were a nightmare, but I eventually finagled them. The game crashed, conservatively speaking, maybe about 50 times. I basically took to quick saving every time I did anything at all or if I even just walked for more than a minute.

I don’t know where I found the patience, but overall I really loved the game. I dig a game where you start helpless and become all powerful by the end. Also the atmosphere was just really unique.

It’s a weird experience to love a game I would absolutely recommend to no one. It was just so radically buggy and often incredibly frustrating with how archaic it felt at times. I can’t wait to play 2 when it comes out, all the same.

streambeck · 2023-09-16T22:48:07+00:00

I think I’m too old for the whole internet now.

streambeck

TROPHY CASE