Raithe

For a few interesting points on the nature of open-world gaming. Gamesraddar - Middle--Earth: Shadow of War might solve open world gamings biggest problem

I have to admit, I'm amused by the mocking of Paul Ryan over the #pintgate mess from St Patrick's Day. Offending the Irish by holding a despicable pint with no head and a poor way of holding it. Just rounding off the amount of Irish'isms the Washington court carried out in an attempt to show their blarney.

Think how many potential flashbacks, hidden audio logs, and memory moments could turn up in the rest of the game. I get the feeling there's a lot more Clancy Brown used.

For the parents out there...

A philosophy professor walks in to give his class their final. Placing his chair on his desk the professor instructs the class, "Using every applicable thing you've learned in this course, prove to me that this chair DOES NOT EXIST." So, pencils are writing and erasers are erasing, students are preparing to embark on novels proving that this chair doesn't exist, except for one student. He spends thirty seconds writing his answer, then turns his final in to the astonishment of his peers. Time goes by, and the day comes when all the students get their final grades...and to the amazement of the class, the student who wrote for thirty seconds gets the highest grade in the class. His answer to the question: "What chair?"

Distractify - Cops interrupt group chat to get drunk home

Male and Female co-workers experiment by changing to use each others e-mail signature and name

To be fair, there's a big slice of "I barely knew my dad. He was always working/busy/away. Plus half the reason we're out here on Andromeda is because he did something that got his official military career ended in dishonourable discharge and it's part of the surviving family starting fresh" background to it as well. You do get the mix of options of playing it "I didn't know him" versus "I still loved him" For the devil's advocate role as well, both the Ryder kids have been hard trained in crisis management/pathfinder apprenticeships in a sense, so doing the whole compartmentalisation and dealing with the immediate problems at hand facing 20,000 people potentially dying in the relative short aftermath of his death isn't too hard a stretch. Hm, I wouldn't say the opening happens fast or makes little sense, it all pretty flowed in a logical manner (as Space Opera can get). Just in case anyone might find it too spoilerific:

Eh, I got the first.. 5 or 6 elusive targets but now can't stir the interest to actually go back.

Finally got around to starting to watch Taboo. Develops at quite an evocative way as the first few episodes draws you in. Tom Hardy's brooding anti-hero of a damned son returning from Africa to London in 1814 to his father's funeral, shocking everyone who had thought he had been dead for over a decade. Land grabs, byzantine power plays, assassinations, whores, spies and a simmering tale of revenge. Also thrown in for good measure, healthy doses of a very corrupt East India Company and the secret peace treaties between the United States and Great Britain.

That makes some sense, it's awkward to try digging into my own countries tax and budget, let alone Americas.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know off hand how accurate this one is?

Planet Scanning is back in a certain form. You don't have the irritating long pause slow scroll around the planet and watching graphs bump before launching a probe, it's very much more of a clear guide guide you to position and quite smooth and fast. But what's both a good and bad thing about it is there's a basic cinematic visual that plays when you zoom around a solar system to the planetary body / location in space each time. So on the one hand, it's usually a glorious visual... on the other, it could get quite annoying in the long term to go through that with every single planet in the galaxy... I've now tucked away about 7 hours of gameplay, so it took 2-3 hours to run through the first "planet" which was all priority mission and sets the groundwork for introduction, exposure, and pushing you on the path to be the Pathfinder. Then about an hour arriving at Nexus and meeting all the people, with a few of those local missions or hooks for future stuff, further exposure to other gaming mechanics, etc. You then get access to the Tempest - which I quite like the design of, and while I've only had a few conversations with the crew they seem generally interesting and have potential. Say half an hour to an hour of wandering and talking, and then you get to fly to a planet. Eos, as has been mentioned in a few things, is pretty much the starter planet but unlike (supposedly) the rest of the planets you'll encounter its fairly restricted at first. The main mission is further introduction to other characters that can become companions while again continuing with the whole introduction of game mechanics via story. But for story reasons, it's life draining to wander too far until you can get that set of missions handled. Supposedly once that's done, the "open world" becomes much more open. But the early access doesn't let you get that far into it - well, it took me about 3 hours of wandering along with some mild detours to hit that point. I'm getting used to the Nomad, at first it's a little clunky, especially with the camera view point sliding around the rear axle. But I do think it's one that you can get a handle on over time.

Forbes - Why its a bad idea for games like ME Andromeda to have piecemeal embargoes Some interesting thoughts from Forbes, which include:

Okay, having sat down and played about 2 hours of ME: Andromeda now... I am strangely getting deja vu feeling for the original Mass Effect. The whole opening sequence, first planet/mission on a linear track (with mild exploratory stuff), and then finally reaching the point it will start to open up and branch out galaxy wise. Is very much the whole Eden Prime / Citadel run through until you get your title as the special one. And not to put any serious spoilers to it, but yes, you do become special for... reasons. The graphics seem to bounce from quite lushly nice planetary stuff and then bizarrely odd facial looks (as shown by old tired face Addison). The combat is more pew-pew but with motion , so more the bounce around and dodge fire rather than just hunker down behind one piece of cover. The enemy will move and try to flank you and throw grenades and pull stuff like that rather than just come single file down a corridor. Once you try interacting with the UI in the sense of accessing the inventory menus, the codex, the journal, then it all gets a bit messy. Its very layered rather than within a few clicks. And while you get the "Your codex has fresh entries" exclamation mark showing up, it doesn't always highlight where the damn things are in the file structure, so you can end up clicking back and forth a whole heap of times to find that new one. Haven't had much exposure to the inventory management or research side of things yet. Just mostly the grabbing stuff and holding it because you can't do much with it during that opening. Also, no quick save button. And you cannot save the game during any Priority Missions. Which is basically the entire two hours of the start. It will do some autosaving, but beyond that, you're screwed. Once you get outside of anything titled a Priority Mission, you get saves as normal. The dialogue and writing are the typical space opera cheese fest of ME, so your mileage will vary depending on how entertaining you can find that. Haven't made up my mind about the new dialogue choices yet, have to wait and see how they pan out over time I think. On a certain level, they are very much more the subtle variations and tones rather than outright differences. The rational response compared to the emotional compared to the professional or the general humorous attempt. I think the differences will come out when you have npc's that (hopefully) react differently to the tones you take rather than what you're actually saying.