In lieu of today's Barnestorming/Cracked LCD

AC IV was enjoyable as long as you didn't do the main quests. The piratey stuff was great, and those fights against the legendary ships were exhaustingly challenging trying to figure out the right way to approach it.

Civ V wasn't bad and I thought the changeover to hexes was nice. But a lot of it falls flat and is a bit of a backwards step from IV, which I felt was near-perfect.

There's a great Civ 5 retrospective by the lead designer, Jon Shafer. He goes over how certain design choices were made and why some fell short.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonshafer/j...e-gates/posts/404789

I enjoyed the article and his critique enough that I kickstarted his new game!

EDIT: Watch out, it's a pretty long read so bring some snacks.

I think board game ruined Civ V for me. I really can't stand accumulating +1, +2%, +2... to get the tangible reward a few hours later.

Joebot wrote:

jpat wrote: He did say Enterprise was better than expected, so, yeah.

I truly believe that the key to enjoying Enterprise is having low expectations. With the bar set sufficiently low, the show is not-terrible.

I've been sporadically watching it on Netflix. I missed a lot of episodes in its initial run, and I'm finding it to be ... tolerable. I think the basic premise is solid, and I like the sets and the design of the ship and uniforms. I like decontamination scenes with T'Pol. Archer is kind of an idiot though. He gets kicked in the proverbial sack by so many hostile aliens, and yet he never learns any lessons. The next time they find an alien culture, he sails in with open arms, assuming they'll want to be best buddies. By the second season, his crew should have mutinied.

And then in season 3 he becomes Darth Archer.

Well, as much as he can, anyway.