Penny Arcade

The wonder-working power of the personal computer as a game platform has continued to unfold, a fluid neon origami trick, in Gabriel’s life.  Among other things, which include the absorption of indie excursions I wouldn’t even go near, he’s now in a position to try Overwatch content while it’s still dough in the middle.

He’s always had a soft spot for Symmetra.  The bifurcation of duties here tends to make it so I am (in broad strokes) “the story person,” but Overwatch - with its lush art and characterization - is a type of attack which he has no natural defense toward.  Symmetra is a character he gets because I think he feels like Symmetra feels, separate from others, more at home with abstractions.  That fed into her playstyle, for him.  He’s excited about some of the frankly insane stuff she’s capable of in her new iteration, and excited by the fact that she’ll probably see play now in the League, but…  it’s interesting.  He had a kind of relationship with a person who wasn’t real, and she changed.

Also, a store thing: our Merchandise Manager Lidija has figured out how to do sorcery with our store backend, and she has used this dark power to offer a boon: Every time you purchase one of our new tanks or Ryan’s ridiculous Donaar apron, you get 25% off our rad socks with cat popsicles on them - up until they’re free.  I have no idea what Satanic horseshit she had to do in order to make that work, but it is very cool.

Gabe is out this afternoon, so around 2pm PST Ryan Hartman and myself will be continuing our Twitch playthrough of Doki Doki Literature Club.  This is our first time playing the game, we don’t have any idea about anything, just that we’re starting to feel weird about allllll of it.  We read the whole thing sort of like a radio play.  Ryan will be reprising his role as dickhole protagonist Tommy No-Chill, Josh plays the marginally wiser narrator, and I am all other characters.  I have no idea why this is as fun as it is but it IS.

(CW)TB out.

I think I might know sort of what people were trying to say, but I’m still pretty a pretty young Paladins player so I see a lot of things where it’s like…  what bin does this go in?  Is this a play suggestion?  Or is it just a racist epithet I haven’t seen yet?

There is no way to know.

You can see me there as Furia, a rad healer with a gun-sword who summons pillars of hot judgment, and Gabe as Terminus who is an Axe Man with a self-rez.  We have discovered a truly odd bug where when he comes back and kills four or more people, the server freezes.  Usually it sends us all back to the menu, but once when he did that it took us to a victory screen.  Bug… or feature?!

In the vein of the Bus Stimulator 2018 strip and post, boy oh boy do I have a treat for you.  Get ready to shit, motherfuckers.  Farming Simulator 19 finally has John Deere tractors.

Not having John Deere tractors seems like a huge oversight.  I can’t think of a single other company that even makes tractors.  I assume people in previous games were just harvesting wheat with a scythe.  If you saw the Bus Simulator video - and you should have - that one was a produced, aspirational affair.  It’s impossible to know precisely how much of that joy leapt from an authentic heart.  This John Deere shit is all streamers watching the E3 trailer just fuckin’ losing it. I long to be this… full, this complete, at some point in my life.  I want to find my John Deere.

(CW)TB out.

Obviously, I was forced to engage in chops-busting.  If I see a chop, I go in.  That being said, I mean…  I don’t give a fuck what he’s got in there as long as he’s got his hand on a mouse.

In truth, as much as I may not like it, that 1050 he has in there is more than enough for whatever we’ve been playing.  He’s not going to do any Cyberpunk on there, not in any upright and moral way, but he’d be playing that on a console anyhow - that’s not what this PC is for.  His PC is designed to manifest Steam darlings and skim indie cream, and it is exemplary for this task.  We play Paladins every night, and talk on Discord.  It’s like a dream I had, once.

Every now and then cross-platform play would enable us to both get what we wanted; Star Trek: Bridge Crew let him play on PSVR while I was on the PC and that seemed almost magical.  Technically speaking I don’t know how magical it is.  It’s just, like, packets.  For PVE games, crossplay should really be the norm.  For virtual reality titles it’s the only way to maintain a playerbase, but philosophically speaking it’s just good sense.

And, look.  It’s a 1050.  Yeah.  But let’s say that he did find a game that he wanted to play, or wanted to play with us.  The Division 2, let’s say.  He can just put in another card!  Now that he has the box - which is to say, now that I’ve won - the rest is trivia.

(CW)TB out.

Today’s comic is sort of the reverse of this comic strip we did back in 2014. Jerry doesn’t care about televisions and listening to him talk about shopping for one was enough to give me a migraine. When I decided to pick up a gaming PC I knew I could ask him for advice but I didn’t think I needed whatever supercomputer he was gonna try and talk me into. I just wanted to play some PC games and not spend a bunch of money. So I bought my setup in secret and I’ve been having a blast.

First of all I should let you know this isn’t an advertisement or anything. Sometimes people send me free shit and I always let you guys know when that’s the case. This is honestly just a computer I went and bought on my own. I told Jerry that I spent about $1200 on my setup and he was not impressed. When I casually mentioned that price included the monitor he was apoplectic. If you’re curious, here’s the package I ended up getting.

I know it’s nowhere near the top of the line but I’m having a great time. It runs all the games I’ve tossed on it beautifully. Currently my desktop has shortcuts to Dauntless, Raft, Overwatch, Realm Royale, Paldins, and Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire on it. All these games run great and even if I can’t always crank the graphic options to “ULTRA” I’m still having a good time.

I did splurge on the accessories though. The keyboard and mouse that came with the Omen PC just were not cutting it. I reached out for some advice on Twitter and ended up going with the Corsair K70 which has some incredibly clicky keys and the M65 gaming mouse for all my headshot needs. I absolutely love the Corsair gear and I spent way too much time using their customization app to configure an elaborate light show that plays across both of them.

I’m sure Jerry will use his newspost to shame me, but he can’t complain too much. We’ve been playing PC games together most nights since I got this new rig and my guess is that’s a win in his book.

-Gabe out

The story is true, unfortunately.  Unfortunately for him.  For the rest of us, we get bloomed-out, nostalgic imagery to enjoy.

We have a lot of strips that feature doctors of various kinds.  This one was five years ago, and lead to a host of startling outcomes.  His particular weak point in this context is specifically The Dentist, a context I have only positive associations with.  Brenna and I schedule them for the same time so we can go to the dentist together and then we have lunch.  It’s a whole thing.

But this was a dental visit that involved needles, needles going into your gums, and that’s not for me.  Needles are my Dentist equivalent.  I can’t even imagine that sort of thing happening in real life: I think this is what happens in The Empire Strikes Back to Han Solo after the weird robot goes in and the door closes very, very quickly.  When needles get involved, I experience something like a stretching of space and time - I feel as though there is a tiny version of me operating this massive body and it’s so big that the signals I send to control it are attenuated.  The nurse tried to steal my blood about five times and I kept reaching out involuntarily to “defend” myself.  Eventually somebody else had to come in; I laid back on the bed-thing and talked about how much I liked PAX Aus for awhile and then it was over.  It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the act, it’s the anxious sheath that contains the whole thing.

Anyway, if you didn’t throw up all over yourself and two other people and then get a root canal while covered in vomit, maybe today went okay.

(CW)TB out.