At an ancient PAX Aus, nearly a decade ago, I met the only other guy who likes Splinter Cell as much as me. We had a chance to play some together at a demo station, and hoped we could get something going when it came out; I never played any of Blacklist's substantial co-op content with the fantasy that we'd one day be able to do it. I mentioned that errantly the other day, and the motherfucker got hold of me on Steam! So I'm progressing far enough in the single player to unlock the missions we didn't play back then so we can get that going. I really, really don't replay games. But if I left a bunch uneaten the first time around. And it's still really, really fucking good.

In the end, there was no way Gribb could have resisted The Callisto Protocol - the cover has a haggard man in a craggy and unforgiving environment. Generally, that would be sufficient. But then, just to set the hook, he has an alien world figuratively - and literally, I guess - resting on his shoulders. He has no natural defense against this. This will pry him apart and devour the most tender part of him, which is frankly on-brand for this kind of Protocol.

Bing is whatever. I use Edge instead of Chrome because Edge doesn't crash my computer, which means that very occasionally I will end up using a Bing search inadvertently. Some of the stuff it does particularly around searching for YouTube stuff is weird, but again: who cares. I feel like Google's in the shitter as a utility, and it's only the inertia of habit and vertical, featureless edifice of its monopoly that keeps it in place. But… Bing is still annoying to use. I believe things deeply or what have you but don't inconvenience me even for a second.

I started playing Tacticus a few months ago when it came out and there has rarely been a day since that I have not logged in. It really scratches my 40K itch when I can’t play on the actual table. I’m excited to announce I’ll be doing an official sponsored stream for Tacticus this coming Monday the 9th from 3-5PT over on the Penny Arcade Twitch channel!

There are lots of arguments around level scaling; I think on the whole I dislike it, but primarily for aesthetic reasons. It isn't so much about what the game does, but about how it feels to be in some of these situations. There was a relatively famous run - for Alliance players, at least - through a writhing zoo of Level Fuck You crocolisks to get to some seaside fort with a Gryph point. You had to unlock it for each character, and so it was sort of a rite of passage around… level twenty, maybe? It's been a minute. All I remember is the terror.

I don't have a PS5. When I was thinking about getting one a little while ago, the price was "lie down in a bathtub full of ice while an amateur surgeon parts you out like a Toyota Camry." Now it looks like you can get the digital version with God of War: Ragnarok for $460. That seems better! That seems like a better price.

This strip is about two things: first, it's about Villainous, which was designed by local heroes Prospero Hall! Which is kind of cool, but it isn't as cool as the game. First off, everybody plays as the most wicked Disney/Star Wars/Wait That's Still Disney villains. The designers have somehow taken worker placement and card play and made them into something like an interactive model of each villain's psyche, making each one something like a custom game. Each character gets a unique deck, and these decks include their most hated adversaries to scheme against. It's just super, super strong.

Oh! Also, the strip is about the fact that young people are fed a highly redacted distillate of the previous culture. It's pretty wild!

We kept our power and lived more or less normally during the window of time that Gabriel's clan - The Clan Of The Midnight Moon - rose to prominence. What occurred to me the last time we lost power here is that without an essentially invisible web of human effort, "houses" are just caves. They are free-standing caves full of all the shiny things we found.

My doom, as I have said countless times, is that I understand what every person means when they speak. I know the irreducible part. I can understand them without agreeing with them, which is good, because this process is more or less instantaneous. If the process of understanding were inextricable from the process of believing, I would be in an incredible amount of trouble. So I understand Mike when he makes the case that the endpoint of widely available generative frameworks is a less human world. It's some Philip K. Dick shit, honestly. In the PKD version, of course, Mike would be an AI, worried about a new generation of simulated intellects. You wouldn't know that until the end! But yeah.

"Well," I said. "I guess we found your politics."

This new FTC is definitely the gritty reboot, huh? They belong on DC's Vertigo imprint in the late nineties. They're hardened bureaucrats from a future where we failed to curtail corporate power - and they're determined to right the wrongs of the past, in the present.

Dear Jerry, you are very hard to shop for so I drew you a picture. Merry Christmas!

The problem isn't snow, it's the Eloi who live here. They can't handle it when it rains, either. They can turn a half hour commute into a two hour deathmarch. They don't know what to do. Scare when thing fall from sky - big scare. Wet. Cold wet fall, and scare! I'm not some kind of fucking cryomancer, but I know what way to turn the wheel when the driving surface gives my car airs above its station.  Seattle people are timid, bristling creatures, but for some reason they'll also destroy your family's car just to beat you to a stoplight.  They're a whole-ass thing.

Gorbiriel is back to his old haunts, apparently haunting them himself. Although since he plays with Kara, my guess is nothing like this occurred unless it was something they already worked out between them. I don't know, I'm just throwing it out: her character is a night elf, and she's never been to Ironforge before? This is already weird enough to stop doing it.

Long ago, around the time my youngest daughter Ronia and I started playing tons of games together, I turned on a setting - I don't even know where this setting is, honestly - that automatically hid pervert shit on Steam. That's just not for me; I don't go there for that. It's a lotta VNs and games that were basically Bejeweled, Bejeweled in every single way, except for like… you know. The demon tits.

I suggested on the Tweeter that it didn't seem like the creators of the new Willow show had seen Willow, which I feel like would have been a solid prerequisite. We really like that movie in our house. When Brenna and I were dating, like… what. Twenty seven years ago? We both had a really bad fever and watched it. If you ever get a bad fever, put it on - and find yourself healed.

Just to save you some time, unless you wasted it already: there isn't some secret repository of cloaca related content here on Penny Arcade somewhere, as much as Holly Conrad would like that. She would love nothing more than to see Penny Arcade become a 25/8 display shelf for a bird's most sacred hole. And we'd do it, too. But we ran the numbers: she's the only one who wants that.