Look at this fool:

My save got corrupted a while back and so far the only real difference is that my A-squad doesn't show up in the title screen anymore. A fact that bummed me out until I saw this middle aged Hispanic family man in pony tails and ballerina lace skinny jeans. That just made my whole damn day!

XCOM 2? I'm sorry I yelled.

XCOM 2 is the best game I never reviewed. Because as great as it is, make no mistake it's abso-f**kin-lutly amazing, it ran like crap. Like. CRAP. The gtx 980 was top o' the line and I was pulling 40-50 frames with the fxaa turned off! In layman's terms, the effect that makes edges less jaggy n' ugly was such a prissy performance hog, the forums basically told you to turn it off. That's some beta test version bullsh*t right there.

When the news came out that X2 was coming to consoles I choked on my coffee. This s**t barely ran on a relatively monster graphics card and processor. How in the hell did they get this thing up on what is essentially a couple of 7 year old gaming pc's?

So I checked back into X2... and I am pleased. I mean, I'll need to fork over $450 for a lovely 1070 to get everything running buttery smooth. But this, this is a solid 25% upgrade across the board. I want my nail-biting POV shots to run flawlessly. When my sniper is the last guy to take his turn and he lines up a shot on a faceless barreling toward my panicking medic, I want to be in the moment. The performance level right now gives me that. And thus, I am now content.

Pixar promises to lay off the sequels for a while.

Just one or two or three more hits. Tops.

Pixar has been hitting the sequels pretty hard this decade. While I'd admit that outside of the Cars series not one of those sequels (and even the good dinosaur if I'm honest) are "bad." Hell, I'll defend Monsters University as having one of the most devastating coming of age character arcs... ever. But it seems Pixar's golden years are quickly fading even after coups like Inside Out. Which was tremendous. But the C+'s are staring to out number the straight A's it used to have and I've been worried for years. Disney's chief animation studio, quite frankly, trounced Big P this year with Zootopia. The best film about American racial tension I have ever seen.

We just have to muddle through Cars 3(...nah.), The Incredibles 2 (I'm down) Toy Story 4 (No. Why?!) to get to P's solemn pinky swear it will try as hard as it did in the beginning. Hey, I get it. If I was a creative company with a payroll I'd seriously consider sure bets like Toy Story sequels to keep the great Disney beast fed. But since Disney can stand on it's own 2 feet now, I'm so jazzed Zootopia did as well as it has, Pixar now has the means to fight  the war to win the world's imagination. Again.

DUDE! There's been a significant breakthrough in battery life research, dude.

No matter how good we have it, people as a species are never satisfied. So what if there is a magical rectangle in our pocket that gives us immediate access to our friends, family, cabs, and the near entirety of all great works of literature? The battery life sucks. BALLS. Our garden variety lithium ion batteries break after only 7,000 charges.

If the apocalypse struck tomorrow nearly all electronic devices would be bricks within 2 years. But the intrepid researchers at UCI have found something. Using gold nano fibers in an electrolyte gel made of plexiglass... well let's just say they made it to 200,000 mutha fukin' charges.

This is still decades away from mass production, but I distinctly remember a TIME article years ago had scientists grumbling about it not being possible. Basically this is the biggest step forward for batteries since 1989.

Blade Runner in Glorious Watercolor.

Thanks, Daniel Scott Gabriel Murray!

This came up on the podcast a few days ago. Thought I'd enshrine it here:

First one's free....

The first episode of Outcast is on you tube for your demonic possession based pleasure. If nothing else (and this show is something else) the opening sequence is the best I've seen since Dexter.

DAMN It's good to be back.

After a little fun trouble shooting (one of the great joys of playing old pc games) I'm back in Darksiders II.  Most forgotten gems will get a shout out from me but little else. You're on your own, "Xcom: The Bureau!" But Darksiders II is the underappreciated hill I choose to die on. Sure it hardly has any original ideas and the 2 games amount to what is essentially just Todd McFarland's Zelda. But it's made up of so many moving parts that all fit together so perfectly! It also helps that it's got just enough wit and humor to make the bog-standard sword and sorcery narrative go down smooth.

It's art direction is, quite frankly, age proof. It's loot, combat, and platforming are all flawless. If you haven't given 2 a shot, please do. What else are steam sales for?