Raithe

Wrong time period, judo was the martial art of the samurais. Really wrong time period, Judo wasn't created until just before the turn of the 20th century. If you were talking samurai, then it was more jujutsu. o O (sorry, my pedant came running out there..)

Went to the workout. Warmup, gymnastic exercises, chest and core.. followed by a short jog with interval sprints... Still feeling drained. Now add thirsty. Going to drink a big mug of tea and ponder doing a ridiculously too-many-egg omelette with bacon and cheddar....

Trying to decide if I can / should make it to the workout in a couple of hours... but I'm just feeling utterly drained today. Not tired, just, really low energy levels for oomph. Just cooked up a couple of slices of bacon and pondering on a fresh cup of tea to help stir me onwards..

Murdered Soul Suspect. I thought it looked interesting so I gave it a go. It's somewhat moody and mostly atmospheric, it's got some interesting ideas, and the whole walking through walls thing makes maps a touch more confusing. It could probably do with some form of in-game map, especially one that shows the various clues/collectibles you've found. Although it's not that big so its easy to learn where you're going to and from and what streets are open and which are blocked off by various ghostly "memories" of old building and such. It's based around one medium-to-small "hub" that counts as the streets of Salem, and various locations around it that only open up once you reach that point in the story. The story is quite linear and will probably take under 10 hours to run through. It's fairly average writing, nothing too spectacular, nothing too bad. It tends to be based on : go to a crime scene / location, have a cut-scene, look around for clues, discover clues, potential cut-scenes of "memories" you pick up, a couple of conversations (some in cut-scene, some where you actually pick questions to ask), then a game mechanic for putting clues together to figure out what happened. cut-scene, then move on to the next part of the investigation and repeat. Occasionally broken up with wandering "demons" that are long lost ghosts that now try and drain all ghosts they see. That's mostly irritating, and I think put in to give some element of "combat" to the game. But it pretty much sucks. The demons all have fixed patrol routes, and you have to defeat them by sneaking up behind, pressing and holding R, and then at some random time you get a mini quick time event (random choice of a directional key + right or left click) and you destroy the demon. If you don't get it right, they turn around and kill you. I'd say it was that mix of somewhat entertaining, but disappointing because it could have been more. The didn't push the pulp noir aspect enough, it was too linear, the hub and areas could have been a touch more expansive, and the side-quests really needed to be fluffed out more - There were about five, and they mostly consisted of a short conversation with a ghost and searching the nearby areas for clues to relate to their death (said search usually being 3-6 clues you needed to find). A good idea, but somehow lacking in execution.

Remember you can use the Focus ability to slow time down even during car chases. That's meant to enable you to use those features. Also, if you get the flashing Q will go blue as you go past if it will neutralise people chasing you. So if you keep an eye out for that, you don't have to try looking behind you for the timing. I never found that much problem with the cop cars, if you whip down a couple of alleys and shortcuts, combined with hackable obstacles, they're fairly easy. The odd thing was that if they're a short distance away I could seem to outrace them, but if they're close to you, it's like they're glued. The pain comes with the helicopters. Even when you get the hack that lets you disable them briefly, it's a major pain to target them when they're directly overhead and you're in a car.

Having an idle return to Crusader Kings 2, fooling around with The Old Gods and the Raj of India...

For the kittens..

Star Trek Stabilised... What it actually looks like when the camera isn't shaking... http://youtu.be/5nKDQBwpCJg

..Okay, I was tempted to put that one in the Funny Things thread, but it was too hard to resist. To make up for it, hmm...

To wander into the cosplay.. and add nightmare fuel.. Edit: Yes, that is Transformers / My Little Pony body paint cosplay. And no, I really don't want to find whatever fan-fiction caused this amalgam...

I think SR2 has a more.. cohesive storyline in general. SR3 was a bit more patchy in that regards. But SR3 was a lot more balls out crazy in general in regards to all the things you could get up to.

Had a major headache flare-up yesterday, to the extend I actually "borrowed" some of my mother's pain killers. Dihydrocodeine can certainly take the edge off but that's the man-made opiodes for you, still I've then pretty much slept through till nearly noon today. Now it's pull myself together and figure out what needs to be done for the rest of the day. Hm, and see if I can make work-out tonight...

Heh, even Saints Row games give you more news reports on things you've done in game then Watch Dogs.. Or maybe you just need a really crappy reputation with the citizenry of Chicago. Anyone played that route yet?

Okay, with Watch Dogs.. I think things I would wish them to pay heed for the sequel (since its pretty much assured of going into franchise)... 1: Better inventory control method. Being in the middle of a gunfight and having to hit tab to open up inventory, mouse "wiggle" to highlight an option, then either mousewheel or arrow keys to scroll through that option - all while you're getting shot at... That gets a wee bit awkward. 2: More news reports about your activities. Or at least the results of your activities. Some gauge of what's happening in the world. There were hardly any snippets about what you did. Mission where raging third world war happens in a gang block the police don't go into and gang leadership decapitated? One brief mention and that lasted about 10 seconds. Until the last couple of missions there wasn't even any mention of the popularity of such of the vigilante, even though the "vigilante" was news from the very first mission. Note: The "big" side missions of such where you have a whole bunch of collectibles to gather and then a final mission to wrap up - like the serial killer, don't get mentioned. The sex slave trade only gets a short clip in the end credits, and no mention in game despite having been linked to a main storyline mission and explosions, gunfights, and hordes of cops descending on the docks. So yes, something more to make the world feel more alive and reactive to your actions. 3: Economy. Seriously, once you've picked up a few weapons, there's nothing to really spend that much money on. Even if you stop hacking random citizenry and stealing their money you end up with a ridiculous amount of cash that just sits there. There should be something to do with it. 4: Offline mode : If you've got it switched to offline mode you should stop getting the damn pop ups inviting you to accept online contracts. 5: Audio logs : Most of the collectibles and such involved background on characters and things happening in the form of various audio clips / diaries. Which is all fine and dandy for providing background fluff.... But when it reveals big kickers about things, but then your character acts completely oblivious to what you've discovered (in fact, not even recognising names and terms) it feels decidedly odd. There needs to be some form of reactivity, or at least not provide access to those sorts of logs until after events in the game where they get discussed. It's just, disconnecting to have a road map of what is really going on laid out to you, but not having it mean anything in game.

Yeah, I am be-puzzled. I'm afraid that one went right over my head in my state of disconcertment..

Were you in a railroad yard when the news story broke? No, there was no breaking news story. One minute I've been all quite and unknown and just "the vigilante" with no name, then I do the mission that has you meeting T-Bone.. and the cut-scene has my face plastered across the news. Next thing there's radio news reports about the manhunt for Aidan Pearce, but absolutely no mention of how they figured it out. Weirdness. Just a little disconnect I guess. Edit: Okay then.. and a few missions later, there's a big reveal of who you are. That's.. a little bit odd. Things seem a little out of kilter there.

Huh. Not sure if I missed something or not, but in Watch Dogs I've managed to keep a high vigilante rating, there have been no news stories about me, you go through a chunk of Act 1 and 2 making sure no-one knows its you.. and then suddenly a few missions into Act 3 and my face is on the in-story cutscene news, and there's radio news about the vigilante Aiden Pearce.... Hmmm....

Heh, I switched off the online play after getting annoyed with the amount of times it would do the "invitation to x form of online activity" then spend 3-4 minutes chundering on "looking for players" then telling me there were none. Instead I let my bout of ocd hit with the collectibles and such.. I will say the gunfights are pretty damn punishing. It really doesn't take much for Aiden to get killed, no magic cinematic mass bullet soak and the AI is pretty good. They communicate, they flank, they will take cover and try to work around you.

Huh. Went to play some Watch Dogs today, and found that for some reason whenever I get in a car, I suddenly suffer massive amounts of stuttering that makes it impossible to drive anywhere. Considering it was all good yesterday, I'm wondering what the hell has happened to cause that.

Playing some Watch Dogs, but probably not giving it the due focus it deserves since my stomach bug has me racing for the toilet repeatedly... Chicago is pretty nice, I would agree it comes across better then Liberty City. The dynamic weather and day/night routine is nicely done. The graphics are good, but nothing that really jumps out in an "omgz amazing" way. I've kind of done the puttering around on side stuff rather then throw into the main story missions, and there's a whole heap of random stuff to poke at and do. Some people will complain that there really aren't any radio stations to go through, and I tend to think the car handling is a bit..off. Something just seems a bit clunky about the handling. The hacking is quite entertaining as you improve your skills with it and pick up the way it works. I'm not sure what to make of the multiplayer aspect. It keeps throwing up invitations to the different multiplayer game types, but if you click accept, it whirs into a "searching for x" and spends 3-5 minutes doing so before telling me it can't find anyone. Of course, while it is searching for that, the majority of the single-player game stuff hides on the map so you can't spend the time poking at stuff.

It's always fun when a day you had planned out to be intentionally lazy and non-worked focused.. get's interrupted by a stomach bug.

As I recall, if you're dark side from early on when you hit Nar Shaddaa, you end up with Hanharr as a companion instead of Mira. So if you want to turn Mira into a dark side force user, you need to be fairly benign during that initial stage.