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Didn't think to post it at the time but a friend gifted it to me on Steam for my birthday a couple weeks ago. Looking forward to blasting some heretics! I even reinstalled the first game to replay it first. Just not sure when I'll get to it yet. I'm still not done with Metaphor and Ys X comes out on friday, so that's probably my next game.

Bought myself this little beauty (except with a rubber strap instead of leather, don't need animals to die for a watch). Ordered it November last year, but it only turned up a few weeks ago:

Silent Hill 2 Remake As someone who did play the original, I can say this is about as good of a remake as you could hope for of that game. The interface has been streamlined so you spend as little time in menus as possible. Swapping weapons is done on the fly now and James can dodge in combat, which makes encounters much more intense since monsters can also dodge and counter you, meaning you need to always be on your toes and you can't just mash your way through every encounter. Looking at the map is also done in real time now, which means you can be attacked while reading it if you are careless. Sadly, they did remove a couple of unlockable weapons (no Pyramid Head knife this time) but they make up for that by greatly improving the boss fights. In the original game you usually just had to run around the boss room with tank controls and turn around to take potshots whenever you had enough distance, but now they're much faster and more aggressive with their attacks, meaning you need to learn to dodge. One remade boss in particular doesn't really do anything more than charge you and try to grab you, but the new fight with it still has so much atmosphere and intensity that it's become one of my favorite survival horror boss fights ever. I bet anyone who has played this game will know which one I'm talking about. I really can't think of much to criticize about this game that didn't already apply to the original one. Not that many enemy types, limited weapon selection, easy to get lost if you aren't paying close attention. All that is just baked into the series, so if you already liked the original Silent Hill 2 then I see no reason you wouldn't like the remake. If you never played it, now's a great time to see what all the fuss is about.

No, we were only getting a car at all because we wanted electric. I had been looking into it and there are enough chargers around that even in Kansas it's very feasible now. It has a ~250 mile range, so like driving to visit my wife's family in South Dakota would take more planning than it would with a gas car to make sure we're recharging where we need to, but other than that it's far enough to easily go anywhere we might want to without risking being caught somewhere without a charger. We also have a whole home solar power system, so we'll be able to charge it off 100% clean power when we're at home, so I am very much looking forward to having a car that I don't have to feel guilty about driving.