Raithe

I like the petition that's currently reading about "Let's abolish the current legal system and establish a Hall of Justice with bike riding police acting as judge, jury and executioner". Last time I checked it had 950 something signatures.. And they say Americans don't see the appeal of Judge Dredd as much as the English do...

Yeah, I got tired of trying to sneak through security and just went ballistic. Planting a bomb next to the car also worked. I treasure the first time I managed Silent Assassin on that level..

Oh the memories of when everything went **** up in the whitehouse when playing Blood Money.....

Just arrived home after the weekend camping stag do. Checking email as I drink a proper cup of tea and try to stir energy to go run a long bath.. Interestingly enough I was feeling fine while out in the November winter woodlands..then halfway through the journey home , hit by mixture of aches and exhaustion. Picked up some general knife handling, axe handling, tommahawk throwing and firestarting bushcraft skills.. Although clearing the stumps on the friday so we could pitch tents was a real pain. And on the saturday night, the grooms phone managed to work well enough that he got a message and picture from one of his fiancee's friends at the hen party as he was about to sleep. A picture of said fiancee in some brightly lit pub, riding some random male's back, whooping and throwing an arm back as if about to chuck a lariat.. She is so not going to live that down.

That and "punching the dolphin of choice out of the ocean" has to be my quote for the day...

Okay... how's that different from ME3? Because the Star Child and multi-coloured endings didn't exactly feel as coherent and as much a part of the story. And as Gorth suggested, with ME2 (apart from that sheer sillyness of Human-Reaper) because there was more of the story to come it left you wondering which were story hooks, which elements were red herrings and just how it was all going to tie together. It left that anticipation and hanging on the edge of the precipice feeling as you waited for ME3 to come along and show you how it all connected. And then.. Star Child and multi-colour endings. I will admit, with the Leviathan dlc, the ending makes more sense. I really wish they'd actually shipped the game with that already in it as part of the main storyline. Rather then leave you waiting 10 months before getting that background and depth to what was going on.

From the cheap seats, I would say elements of ME2 were better then ME1, and elements of ME3 were better then ME2... Unfortunately by the same token, there were also elements that were worse.. So each one gained half a dozen steps forward..then fell back. I'd say that the ending of ME2 didn't get so much flak because the Terminator Reaper was the major silly thing. Apart from that, the rest of the finale was quite coherent with all the story that had come before.

But I'm still going to keep my subscription going for awhile longer....

I have to admit, at the moment I'm very unconcerned about GTAV. I've tried several times but I just can't get myself to complete IV. There are aspects that are fun, but eh, the story just grinds me down and I find myself completely unconnected or unconcered with it. Which kills my enthusiasm for pushing through it and wrapping it up. Nothing I've seen so far on GTAV actually makes me want to rush out and get it when it releases. It just seems to be sliding into that "maybe, if I see it on sale, and I'm in the mood" section of my gaming awareness at the moment...

Where did you see it that cheap? I would also like to purchase it at that price Amazon UK actually...

Although seeing Kingdoms of Amalur at a price of around £7 I'm tempted to stretch my budget this month and pick it up on the cheap..

Thats what the knives are for! And the hatchet! If you can't make some satisfactory home made spear in the middle of wooded areas, you're doing something wrong..

Caught a bit of tv catchup, poked at some work related things, fussed the dogs, and went out and picked up a few things for this weekend. Notably, camping mess gear, some energy drinks, general snacky chocolate/nut/raisin bars for the sugar rush, and a bottle of port to take along to enjoy around the campfire.. Also, in preparation for the whole B-movie premise and general rugged manliness of the event, I've forgone shaving this week so I have added protection from the weather around my face..

Yup, for the link I forgot to put in.. http://blog.bioware.com/2012/11/13/were-answering-the-call/

Heh, and they've jumped on the BlackOps issue. Put out a point of saying that the first 50 people to send them pictures of themselves holding the ME2 version of BlackOps2 disc will get a free digital download of the ME trilogy.

From the outsiders view of history, the slavery issue for the Civil War wasn't actually a key part. It was a part, and a highly publicised part, but there was a whole lot more to it then that. The economics of the day beyond the slavery were what really pushed the Civil War into happening. The industry in the North and lack of it in the South was a big deal.

Heh, for the random anecdote Hurl, I once sent an old Enid Blyton book to a friend's daughter (they live in North Carolina), her kid loved it, took it to school and her teacher suddenly discovered Enid Blyton from her... and then promptly got the school to order in a bunch of them so the entire class could then read them... I think I shall class that as one of my lifelong achievements. I addicted an entire class of american students to reading Enid Blyton adventures..

A somewhat amusing article by iO9 about 9 Reasons to be Grateful for Twilight... For no matter what way your feelings lay about the series, you can't deny the huge impact that Twilight has had on pop culture.

Part of it is also how many people get inspired by characters from fiction. How many times do you find the roguish swashbuckler who happens to know a couple of spells? Or the scholar-mage who can pick up a sword without slicing off his own fingers?.. Or the renowned fighter who left scarred from war retires to a monastary and becomes a monk... The kid who grew up on the streets as a thief, but then becomes some famous warrior adventurer.. While the main idea of classes are based around specific archetypes... A lot of fictional characters have a certain blending of abilities that it's impossible to pull off without some element of multiclassing. So if you get inspired by a few good books and think "yeah, I want to create a character with elements from that guy and that guy"... That can be balanced out differently in point-based game systems or such, but when you know a game is class-based, the question of multiclassing always has to come up.

I don't know what it was about Morrowind. The plot was forgettable, there were no really memorable characters, and the gameplay mechanics where cheesy bad for overpowering you, but there was something that could catch your soul and pull you into wandering around to see what was over the next hill and just what quirky bit of background lore you might discover... And then Oblivion looked pretty, had some good technical aspects..but was completely and utterly soul-destroying. Skyrim was much more .. self-contained? I guess I would say. It was more coherent in what was happening, but yeah, you run through it, you finish it, you forget about it. There's nothing that really draws you into the whole thing.

"If a man is not a liberal in his youth, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative in his old age, he has no brain."

3e and 3.5e multiclassing and prestige classes could work when you had a DM there to slap down players pushing minmaxing styles. When there were actual reasons for characters to dabble in other classes and part of the roleplaying of picking up new skills in x arena, or specialising in y aspect it can work quite well. Because it takes into consideration that you have a group of players and someone gamesmastering it who can apply the fuzzy logic to the rules system. When that translates into a purely crpg aspect, you lose the fuzzy logic and get just the strict by the rules which can let the minmaxing go wild with no real controlling hand to counter it within reason.

Caught the Firefly 10th Anniversary Reunion Special. Some interesting bits and pieces, and seeing how Whedon and the cast still get choked up talking about how it all went, when they found out it was cancelled, and when the Browncoat Nation kicked off and kept things flying..

Gaius Julius Ceasar was awarded the title Augustus by the Roman Senate, marking the beginning of the Roman Empire... The Medici family became official bankers to the Papacy... Ivan the Terrible became Tzar of Russia.. The League of Nations held it's first meeting... Adolf Hitler moved into his Underground Bunker Space Shuttle Columbia took off on it's final mission...

Recovered a bottle of some Jack Daniels variant that the dog took from my sister's room. I think her dog potentially has a drinking problem....