Raithe

It's all about the music... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TE05d0QyaZc

Reddit - I set up my raspberry pi to automatically tweet...

Just keep watching

Stealth is a lot more viable, but at the same time, you end up losing a whole hunk of xp for not murderising all those Trinity soldiers lurking around. The tombs are a lot better than on the island, as mentioned they are much more that expansive, larger puzzles. And they make sense for the environment/story side of everything in the game. The challenges (note, challenges, not challenge tombs) are.. yes, nonsensical in some ways - Cut down Flags, burn propaganda posters, shoot bullseyes that no-one else knows about.... Plus a pain in that you might encounter them but be told "you can't do this because you don't have x piece of equipment yet", so you have to kind of remember all the locations of things you couldn't do so you can try coming back when you have more gear unlocked. The animal hunting is sort of useful, but at the same time seems less bountiful or needed compared to the first game. The game does look very pretty. The switch between snow filled Siberian mountains and wilderness, and the hidden valley of forests and all both look great.

From what I understand this is going to be a two-pronged thing, first I've heard mention that in some form or another Lucifer is going to start "catching" mortality or some such, and two, Amenidiel (the angry angel dude) is going to be manipulating things as a way of pressuring/forcing Lucifer back to Hell. But I think a lot of people are just going to watch it to see how amusingly snarky/smarmy Lucifer gets rather than any actual plot strengths.

The point where you really remember why it's fine to hate auto-save/auto-checkpoint games. When you've spent hours playing through a game, get to the end sequence, face the final "boss", then as the big cinematic wrap sequence starts to tell you just how the story ends.... The cat startles you, your thumb accidentally hits the spacebar which skips the whole movie. Then the game auto-saves. Leaving you with no clue of what the hell just happened to tie things up, and there's no option to reload from before. Time to hunt up youtube endings I guess.

I've been idling my way through Rise of the Tomb Raider (pc) and generally enjoying it. It has much more of an archaeological / exploration bent, even if it does get a little murder festy in some ways. The mechanics are tweaked a bit better than Tomb Raider, and the graphics certainly keep things looking nice. There are more in the way of tombs and interesting caves and background to dabble in and all seem to have one specific form of platform style puzzle. The figure out ways to get from A to B, along with right shift of gears, or getting water levels to drop/rise, etc. Storywise, there were a few obvious beats, or I'm fairly good at going "that's going to be the twist" in advance. And actually I'm getting a similar vibe to the Tomb Raider reboot in sequence of events and specific notes on the delivery. Although one thing that's a bit off-putting is that it drops you in at the start with a big bad organisation and references to earlier things, that get no real explanation. I'm wondering if there's other media bits that tie in to what's happening.

Now that's a new one to me. I guess you can lump me with the rest of the non-Americans who caught the original incident and subsequent fallout, and just use it for pop-culture snerk humour ever since.

<whistles innocently>

MSN - Japan introduces negative interest rate to boost economy

Being amused by Lara's amazing living ponytail in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Seriously, they've put plenty of physics into how her hair blows and twists around when running, jumping, supposed to be in wind etc... But the thing magically animates even in the middle of caves with no wind. it bobs and twists, and curls around like some tentacle. I can't quite decide whether it amuses more than it distracts. And to be fair, I picked up the game because I had like a 25% voucher off and just thought what the heck.

So that begs the question, since I posted it, should I automatically "like" the same picture that Woldan posted?

RockPaperShotgun - Rise of the Tomb Raider PC Review

For the completely random... And idle moments of creativity: Draw your own Nebula

Hey. We're English. We use tea as metaphors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZwvrxVavnQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLBWu3LteIQ

Eh, you have Mulder's "wait, its not a conspiracy working with Aliens, it's a conspiracy of Humans using Alien tech". But I guess what I mean is, they haven't really modernised any of it yet. Not in a sense of making what is being done or how it's being done. You'd expect more about the use of internet/social media and post 9/11 surveillance. Beyond that single change, its' still the same old conspiracy that was there in the 90's. The Men in Black rolling up in the last five minutes to hoover up evidence.

The X Files seems sadly lacking. It's watchable and competent. But... I mean, it's nice and all to see Anderson and Duchovny together again and slipping into their roles, but it's coming across as a very 90's show rather than post 2010. Where is the update of the conspiracy? Why is it the same tired old stuff that it was when it should be fresh and new and with post 9/11 twists? Why isn't Mulder bemoaning the smart phone and gps tracking? They throw a mention of Uber but nada about personal data and security breaches? There doesn't seem to be any depth to any of the throw away references and by now everybody is used to the 9/11 Truthers, so why isn't Mulder better than this?

It's hitting that point where you have the hype.. but that portion of your head is going "It looks interesting, but I'm not willing to spend that much money on it. I'll wait till it's on sale 5 months down the line". The constant hype of games and then not quite deserving it for one reason or another is definitely reaching a saturation point. I'm not sure if this is because the older you get the more critical you are of things you spend your budget on, or if it is that hype is just getting even sillier.