Raithe

Ros, that pretty much screams out as a "Lex Luthor" moment kidnapping Lois Lane. Just what are you up to???

On book news.. Iain M Banks is now deceased, and has joined that great library in the sky...

I think that's where you fail to pick up the extreme Englishness of Dredd.. You see him as bland, where he's more a force of nature who lives purely by a set of white/black rules and never compromises them. The Stallone film was fun as a movie, and it tends to follow the more zany elements of the comic, but it lost out the grittyness that always balanced out the wacky in that quest to make it all summer blockbuster popcorn action. Dredd 3D leaves the wackyness and focuses more on the extreme crime and core nature of the Judges. The new Dredd drives back to what Dredd actually is. In most stories the protagonist undergoes some form of character evolution, they change and learn something from what they've undergone. In Dredd, there's only one thing that changes. That's his willingness to accept that Anderson has what it takes to become a Judge. Apart from that, he's exactly the same type of character that started the film. Stern, unforgiving, exact in what he does, and pretty much the walking stiff-upper lip. You see the villainess as one note and boring, and I think they captured the idea of that type of gang leader quite well. Former prostitute turned underworld crimelord by being smarter and more vicious then anyone around her. There might be certain elements of cliche to it, but that doesn't make it one note. It comes down to perception and what you take away. You took away that, I came out with a different view. Stallone Dredd - fun but silly. amusing lines and cheesy action. Entertaining and I wouldn't flip the channel if I found it on tv. Dredd 3D - enjoyable, grim, mayhaps a little claustrophic, captured the Dredd I know from the comics. One I plan to get the dvd of sometime in the near future.

Finished off Remember Me. Eh, yeah, flawed but interesting. That's where I'm going to settle on it. Very linear, very little actually getting to "feel" the world around you even if it does look quite glossy and nice in the background. One thing that's kind of disapointing is that the whole "remix people's memories" thing that they were pushing, only happens 4 times in the game and is strictly story related. I was hoping there'd be something a bit more to it then that. There's some cluky dialogue, although I have to say that the voice work for Nilin is pretty damn good at capturing the mix of emotions through the story. The "your choice of combining these moves in all sorts of wonderful ways" really isn't that impressive, and the combat starts to bog down at a couple of points where it's all "swarms of enemy".

And the French are still annoyed that it's based off GMT and not Paris time.. It seems every decade or so they make another attempt to get it changed...

Well from my understanding, the author of the book actually based half the characters on people he knew. And especially around a girl he'd been in love with but couldn't do anything about because of the difference in social levels and money.

Played a little Remember Me, just got in an hour or so of it so far. Nice art direction, but you don't really get to do much wandering around. It's much more linear with a few small nooks you might notice just in time to grab some "collectible" but nothing really letting you "explore" the word. The combat's nice enough, but doesn't flow quite as smoothly as certain other games (i'm looking at you Sleeping Dogs & Batman). Lots of little interesting bits to it that kind of suck you in, right before something jars you out a bit, and the camera can be a little weird. But I think the good outweighs the bad, I'll have to wait until I've pushed further into it but it feels like it's going to be one of those "flawed but interesting" games rather then a breakout or a crapout one..

Hm don't think this has been thrown up here yet.. http://www.nixxes.com/nixxes/newsdetail/20-uk/news/158-we-re-working-on-thief

It wouldn't be a Saints Row game if they had any shame about anything in it..

Heh, I just had a copy of Remember Me turn up in the post. So I thought I'd set it up to install before I headed off to the bank.. But even with a physical disk in my hands (well, in the dvd tray) I get the "cannot install this game, because it's not released yet" message...

Well to swing back with another impressive background shot that I quite like..

Meow.

To be balanced by.. "Late night cat napping"

And to follow on , I shall present a cat in sunlight, lurking....

Just to allow everyone a cheap laugh.. Going through various things and discovered a bunch of old photos. I present fancy dress costume during my first cruise holiday.. When I was about 7 o r8 and on the Canberra somewhere on the seas by West Africa.. Edit: And actually, hm I think the guy in white was actually Lee Evan's father. He was the guy in charge of cruise activities on board back then.

Heh. Remember I mentioned that girl in Mexico that I had to feel aggravated over because I did the principled thing? I just found out she had her 17th birthday last week. I'm trying to decide whether I should still get the happy ego boost over the incident, aggravated that principles got in the way of a rather cute mexican girl and insisting I actually escorted her back safely, or guilty for how good she felt when she did plaster herself against me.

so they laid the groundwork for this story awhile back in the novel, and only just got around to doing the game to tidy up those threads.. ipad and iphone..

Had an aunt turn up , which sucked away a chunk of the afternoon that was planned. Now trying to stir up some enthusiasm and focus to poke at some banking details, terminology, forms, and accountancy related gubbins..

Heh, seriously, that abbreviation is the title. But it happens to stand for: "National Terrorism Strike Force - San Diego - Sports Utility Vehicle" Each episode is like a 15 minute crampacked pisstake of all the "thriller/procedurals" on tv, kind of mixing 24 with CSI, the Wire and various others. Then just being extremely silly with it.

Warm sunny day. Just got back from helping mow the lawn over my grandmothers. She's definitely beginning to look a little frail.

"I wish I could sleep. But my damn ADD kicks in and basically, one sheep, two sheep, cow, turtle, duck, Ol mcDonald had a farm....heeey Macarena!"

Yup. Book 5 & 6 can take a turn for the slow because it's starts getting into that stage of laying more background plots/arcs and characters on the world stage rather then purely focused on the core group. Jordan died after completing book 11, Sanderson finished off the final 3 books, although Jordan had sketched out everything, including a serious mass of notes, sketches, assorted databases of all characters, goals, plots n plans. And Jordan's wife was the editor and recorded him talking through the final of the story. Oh, and Jordan also wrote the epilogue to the final book so Sanderson knew where he had to get to and how to get there.