Raithe

And..the gag reel from the upcoming Avengers dvd.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0TZcBjZSNM

I do have to say, the Expendables 2 has a few in-jokes about the actors as much as the 80's action genre. A nice throw-in mention about Gunnar (Dolph Lundgren's character) having that Master's in Chemical Engineering and such like. And the whole introduction sequence of Chuck Norris is full of win. The combination of events, tank distraction, walk in from the smoke with old cowboy music twanging away... "I heard you were bitten by a King Cobra." "I was.. but after five days of untold agony.. it finally died."

I have to say, one mildly aggravating bit about Sleeping Dogs combat... You get some nice moves to break limbs as you "level" up skills, but apart from the immediate lowering of health, and the intimidation value it does on all other enemies involved, the breakage means nothing. You can break their leg, they'll be stunned for 5 seconds, then its boom, they're back on their feet and dancing around you trying to kick you. I'm not saying they should be "immediate kills" or some such, just that if you break a guys arm, he shouldn't be able to grab up a knife with that arm and attack you with it seconds later...

I can do solo/2-man content to a degree, but frankly if it requires communication faster than typing, I'm not gonna be bothered to do it. The majority of the dailies are totally solo-able. 5 missions on Ilum, about 8 or so on Belsavis. And then there's another 5 or 6 on Corellia at the Black Hole you can run just for the money, loot and daily commendations you get. Sure, Ilum has 1 Heroic, Belsavis has about 5 heroics, and the Black Hole has 1 (which you have to do for the Black Hole commendations), but the plain old missions are totally do-able. Hell, if you catch it at the right time (ie, no worry on respawns and mass-crowds) you can run through Ilum's dailies in about half an hour and be ahead about 100k credits, and the Belsavis "run" takes about 40-60 minutes if you ignore the Heroics and that'll net you another 100-150k. And of course, the dailies all reset at a standard time, which makes it quirky if you get the timing right. One morning I ran Belsavis solo, then a guild member came online and wanted to do them, the dailies all reset at around 11am GST, so I grouped with him and re-ran them. So after about 80-90 minutes of play total, I had a stack of daily commendations earned and had made about 300,000 credits. Unlike a few people I know, I don't grind the dailies constantly. Just every now and then run through them with Guildies, and to boost cash reserves and send them around my various characters.

And for other movie trivia, apparently they're looking at making a "Snow Whiteand the Huntsman" sequel, but have decided to look around for someone other then Kristen Stewart...

Okay, so I've got a maxtor 750 gig harddrive that's suddenly started to act up. As in, it's not always showing up in Bios or Windows, then it will show up, but when you go to click properties it might hang. Or it might actually let you explore it, but then decides to crash out explorer. Then it'll let you schedule a disc check, but the moment you restart the machine it disapears from bios again... I'm guessing it's pretty much toast, but does anyone have any suggestions for how possible it is to access and get things off it?

Well one thing the end-game content of running dailies is good for is building up a nice stash of credits that you can send to your new characters and pick up some of those Character Perks available via your Legacy.. That and easily making sure you have the filthy luchre for your speeders..

Heh, I haven't gotten any character yet to reach the 750 social points you need for the first rank you gain on Social. Hm, one thing I've noticed over the last month is that suddenly you'll get social points for completing bonus elements in missions while you're in a group. I can't remember seeing that 3-4 months ago..

Well, if you're still running on Corellian Run, I've got my assorted toon's there. Republic have Smuggler Dhar and Jedi Knight Ehtiar, whilst Imperial Side is Sith Inquisitor Drayke, Bounty Hunter Khayul, and Sith Warrior Khael.

Apart from the flashpoints and heroics, you can do pretty much everything totally solo. And even then, if you're x levels over, you can do most of the flashpoints and heroics. They've geared it so that you can do each class storyline with no-one along, just for those people like enjoy that. But you can just as easily group up and handle it.

Got my SIth Warrior to 40th.. which meant I could outfit him in some nice mixture of Armour of Savagery / Entropic Assault that I'd stocked up on via warzone commendations earned during the 30's... Currently have to decide whether to do some Taris bonus missions for the companion gear, or just head to Quesh. Hm, although I'll probably take a break and push my Bounty Hunter through Voss and onto Corellia first before I do that.

Sleeping Dogs is fairly good for its type. I mean, none of the single parts are done better then any other game, but the combination works quite well. And it pretty much drips atmosphere, and some of the tension of the hong kong action/thriller story. The fluid fighting is pretty nice, and the environmental aspects are fun and add a certain something. The driving is a touch more arcadey then realistic. Hm, actually it doesn't have any wacky humour thrown in like a lot of open-world types have, but it doesn't get grindy or too grim and gritty. I only had one brief glitch where the cars would suddenly "sink" into the streets and start falling. But a simple restart and that's never cropped up again.

heh. Square Enix has announced it has "extensive plans for DLC for Sleeping Dogs" over the next 6 months. And every piece of dlc they've mentioned.. is purely some weapon or costume to wear. I think I'm getting a little sick of those sorts of dlc being thrown out.

So is there any cunning way, or some setting I'm oblivious to.. that will actually let you play a game that's on steam.. and still let it download stuff in the background? This automatic "pause" to all downloads whenever you play games is kind of annoying...

Well I would be playing Sleeping Dogs.. but it took about 30-40 minutes to install from the disc, then Steam decided to spend another hour downloading further bits of it.. I log in, only to find it doesn't automatically do the hi-res pack and you have to download that seperately.. which is apparently going to take another hour...

Well my Sleeping Dogs arrived, so I shall probably be playing that at some point later in the day...

I'm guessing there'll be some HK influence when you get the HK Droid Factory thing going which is somewhere around then.. if I understand the TSLRCM..

But the Light / Dark items available aren't really that great compared to other elements you pick up during the end-game stuff. I mean, sure some of it's nice fluff, but it's more of a useful aspect when you can pick them up earlier in the game. By the time you get to end-level, there's better stuff available from pvp'ing or operations and the like. It's kind of interesting that a lot of the Imperial "Light" side choices are actually around being honorable and not abusing Imperial troops under your command (or that you're working with). Even if you're approaching it from the angle of being a ruthless bastard who is looking for the long-term benefits to the Empire and your own power base.. you get them as Light side choices rather then dark. Of course, if you listen to Lucas, Light/Dark isn't actually about the choices you make, its about the emotions you're feeling when you make them. I mean, technically, if you were serene and at peace with it all, and not feeling anger and hatred and fear. you could kill a whole buncha folks and not go Dark Side...

Talking of Bio writing.. here's some of the more amusing dialogue (at least, to my mind):

Also, apparently the latest "event" is going live around now? Some sort of Treasure Hunt with the Chevin?

Well it starts out with you being the new guy put into the Republics Elite of the Elite special forces group, otherwise known as Havoc Squad. That's about how far I managed to get into it during the beta trial weekend last year before the game was released. Since I did that then, I've been leaving the Trooper as one of my last toons to play since the game came out. The companion you first get is an officer busted down to nco, who has a chip on his shoulder. He tends to be a ranged tank if I recall. Then you get the cute girl - combat medic type, who used to be an Imperial but defected to the Republic. So there's all those trust issues brought up. The third companion you pick up is that Droid featured in the above video. He being a mean prototype stolen by a group involving one of the Havoc squad defectors, and you manage to restore his original programming.

I do wish they hadn't used Jennifer Hale for both Satele Shan and the Republic Fem-Trooper. Also, it means that Fem-Trooper does come across a bit too much like Fem-Shephard

For the day's weirdness... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPcapo5ZB_o

The fun of insomnia reducing th joys of the day, and then leaving you poking at a few half-healed emotional wounds in the silence of the night.. Joy. And to further increase the fun, one of my harddrives has suddenly disapeared from Windows and Bios.. So I shall have to have a poke and see what's causing that and if the whole drive is trashed or what.

Last few nights haven't been able to get to sleep till going 4-5am. So kind of having a few off-days of not being quite so sharp and aware.