Raithe

So women and children, bureaucrats not included? But yes, take care Woldan.

I admit, I'm so tempted to drop in a gif from the Rocky Horror Picture Show for laughs right now... But I'll be good, and let the weekend go with this assortment instead:

I can sort of see a potential reason for including Cullen in DA2... He presents a face of the Templars who has seen a Mage Circle go nuts. He has the history of the worst happening with Mages, and thus is a touch more understandable or relatable then Meredith or the others who just come across as utter jerks. The fact that he does that, plus is a cheap way to link in to DA:O is a twofer. Sure, they could have written a totally new character who had seen a Circle go nuts like that, and abominations run wild... But it's a fairly easy thing to link back and make it seem that DA2 actually relates to DA:O.

Hadn't quite realised all the modifiers that go into the Rune drops on Shadows of Mordor. So apparently when you kill an Orc/Uruk captain, you get an automatic rune of the same level as the Captain. However, if that Captain had killed you before, you get +1 level to the rune for "vengeance". If you utilise something the Captain hates, you get a +1 level. If you use something the Captain fears, you get a +1 level. If you have gained intel about the Captain before the combat, you get a +1 level. Finally, if you made a death threat against the Captain, if you don't get an Epic Rune drop, you get a +1 level to the Rune. And they're cumulative, so if you get a Captain up to 20th level first, have let him kill you, gained intel on him, make a death threat, show up with something he hates, and then use something he fears.. then.. (as long as he doesn't drop an Epic Rune), you'll get a 25th level Rune drop...

So do I. If blinking your eyes counts...

Wrapped up Shadows of Mordor last night. For my general thoughts on it: The gameplay in general - as has been noted - is a mashup of Assassin's Creed and Batman Arkham, with a lot more stabbity-slashy. If you enjoy the majority of a game being slaughtering Orcs and Uruks, whether sneaking up and brutally stabbing an Uruk 5 times to terrify his companions, or jumping into a mob to engage in rolling swordplay and multiple decapitations, this is probably one you'll enjoy. The stealth is pretty basic, and the running, jumping, and climbing doesn't have any serious flaws and it all has some very fluid animations. The Nemesis system is quite innovative, and yes you will develop connections with the various Uruk's and such that you encounter who manage to kill you or you kill. Sometimes you'll think you'll have killed one only for them to turn up again later with fresh scars or burns (in some way relating to your earlier fight). Plus the way they remember things, whether you fought them, whether you ran away, if they ran away, if you threw them into a fire, if you dropped a wasp's nest on their head... That's all a nice touch. The open world is split into two maps. You literally have half the missions, collectibles, and "side" missions on each one. Certain skills only open up when you carry out specific story missions - one of which is gaining the "brand" ability that basically dominates Uruk's to your will, and you only gain that at the start of the second map. So you will spend half the game without it. As a character you earn XP to unlock a chunk of your abilities, but those are on a set of 4 or 5 tiers which have to be unlocked by gaining Power. So you gain power by basically disrupting Sauron's army with killing the Captains and War-chiefs and disrupting the various events they do to gain more power. These are all random things the Nemesis system gets them doing. Whether holding a feast to impress their troops, going on a recruitment drive to bully other Uruk's into joining them, duelling each other for respect and position (quite often killing each other...). So you can jump in, and help or hinder them. Of course, for the first half you have no reason to help them. There is also a third set of upgrades for your attributes that cover how many runes your weapons can hold, your health, your focus ability and just how much elf shot you can carry. On a certain level the basic storyline is lacklustre. It has some good voice acting, the general mood is nice, and it does have a few moments of impact. But it also feels very shallow to a large chunk of the game. Then again, you can blaze through the majority of the 20 Story missions if you want, but the serious time will be taken up with the points where the story pauses as it were to let you deal with Uruk killing / manipulation on a grand scale.

Also , since I'm here...

"There is a reason the harem doors lock from the outside...."

Took an hour to install Shadows of Mordor.. then got into the general fun of orc and uruk slaughter... I did like the description "imagine if Assassin's Creed, Batman Arkham, and Skyrim had a threeway, this could be the resulting offspring..."

It's possible these two newsreaders have been working together a tad too long... http://youtu.be/S7ehlw_phys

One of these days I really should get around to doing an Operation...

You can also use Outdoorsman to rescue those people if you've got it high enough...

The one that I found interesting was that unpaid interns can be sexually harassed without a problem according to US law. A few cases last year where an intern tried suing for sexual harassment, but by definition of the law because they are unpaid they aren't technically employees, and thus are not covered under the regulations about sexual harassment. Now I'm probably missing a chunk of the specifics of it, but that was the general gist that the courts handed down on the cases...

Been watching through a few episodes of Crossing Lines on Amazon Prime. If you ignore the utter silliness of how they use the ICC, it's not a bad crime show, with some interesting characters and moments of quite good lines. "This better be good mate. You called me away from a woman of questionable morals and a staggering imagination..."

"Morality and Practicality should be congruent. If they're not there's something wrong with one or the other. "

dreamy, sexy, generally attractive and cute.

"One does not simply walk into Mordor. One pays a toll."

But a bit Have you ever played Sid Meier's Pirates! ? It's like that, but on dry land. But a bit less of a story. I found it addictive to begin with, but after a certain point it was just repeating the same actions again and again and again.

Had a weird weekend, kind of slid into that vague disconnected feeling/mindset from friends and work. Trying to pull things back into some sort of order and get my ducks lined up in a row.