Raithe

If you do perform a takedown, you will go into a 3rd person view of it. They will be different as you do them depending on the context.. ie; objects around you and exactly where the opponent is. The key thing you control is whether it's going to be lethal or non... But yes, the 3rd person cutscene is always going to happen from whats been said.

I've heard that the multiplayer aspect is very good... but that's not something I've played around with yet. Especially as they were heavily pushing the single-player storyline aspect of it. I don't know, I just expected it to be a souped up style of Freedom Fighters. Or at least some elements of choice within it. Not such a linear, controlled event. So yes, a disapointment.

Just finished Homefront. Disapointing. Installed the game. Then steam spends 2 and a half hours updating it. Then the single player campaign is about 4 or 5 hours long. It feels like they're either expecting to send out dlc that push it on, or have a sequel ready to go... They pushed the whole "you'll make choices and see how being a resistance fighter effects the civilian population around you"... and bollocks. It's a straight, short first person shooter with no real choices in it. Just from point a to point b with some companions and shooting whatevers in the way. Storywise, its quite good. (I mean, yes, its by the writer of Red Dawn and Apocalypse Now). They really do make you feel the horror of whats going on. The background effects of an oppressed citizenship... the brutality and such. But that's all just.. background. It doens't really connect to you, just events going on around you. Even the set piece where you end up hiding in a mass grave. The shooter mechanics are pretty damn standard. Although they are brutal. A few hits and you will die. Which makes the checkpoint system really annoying at times. When you have to listen to the same few minutes of dialogue before walking in a doorway and getting shot repeatedly....

This almost tempts me to dig out the old Conan Rpg stuff.. Although the Complete Works of Conan has a nice pride of place in on my shelves. They are ripping yarns.

The shift between 1st person and 3rd person seems fairly fluid when they go back and forth between cover/stealth and not. .. and dang it, it's making me even more impatient for August release to arrive.

Caught Battlefield Los Angeles (the hollywood one, not the SyFy mockubuster version). Entertaining for what it was. Faithfully visited the tropes with enough panache to satisfy without being bad. Not a lot of bloody violence, but an awful lot of sudden death. Some quite nice moments of tension as they move from point A to point B.. and then the sudden burst of Alien attention and another member of the squad dies. Throw in a couple of the requisite "speech in the middle of combat / in the pause between combats" accompanied by heroic music to re-affirm the nature of Marines. But yes, if you enjoy that style of movie, it's firmly in the good watching category.

There are some great truths out there..

The Dalish seem to have a weird mix of irish and welsh accents (depending on which one you talk to). I guess Bio went with the "their elves, lets hammer home the gaelic influence..." Merril, for those who might have noticed it, has the fairly strong welsh accent. But then she's voiced by one of the key girls from Torchwood.

You could almost see Shephard turning up as a Lensman ... Not to say Doc Smith's writing was bad, personally I think the guys one of the founders of space opera sci-fi and was fairly brilliant (if you take into account the time when he was writing). But that's always been one of the key things about space opera. It's meant to be that slight touch of operatic sillyness thats about being fun and adventure exciting.

Okay.. Health and Safety run amok. A guy face down in a duck pond. Two police cars, an ambulance, and a fire truck.. and none of the people would go into the pond to recover the guy.. they had to wait for the underwater specialists to get the body out for health and safety reasons. Along with the comment that "he wasn't moving so it was assumed he was already dead and there was no need to rush in to get him out." The duck pond at its maximum depth was about 3 foot. And the man in it was known to have had a brain injury that caused him to collapse at times. What on earth has happened to the emergency services?

Spent about an hour trying to actually get up after my alarm went off this morning. Seemed to be caught in that not fully awake, half dreaming state where you know its a dream..everytime you actually think about waking up and all its happening in the dreamstate but not quite awake enough to actually do it. That whole loop of "I need to wake up properly and actually do this, not just dream it"..

I had fun with the Ranger / Spirit Shaman setup with a bit of Rogue and Shadowdancer... But then I can be a sneaky minded vicious git at times..

So far I haven't been able to achieve a thing of worth today. Can't seem to find the discipline to focus on anything and keep procrastinating my way along. Like spend 10 minutes reading the same couple of pages over and over and still not actually knowing what I've read. Well, there was some cleaning up of a cat's hairball in the middle of the hall floor. That got done, but apart from that..

One of those days woke up from odd dreams and just can't seem to find my focus for the day.. Everything just has that oft-kilter feel to it. Here's to a few cups of tea to see if equilibrium can be found.

There's a lot I could really enjoy about DA2, but one of the most glaring issues is the repeated re-use of maps. It's not just re-pasting sections, or using bits and pieces to make up new maps.. It's entire maps used again..and again. and again. The 10th time you run into a mine / cavern / etc and it's the same layout just with a couple of "doors" blocked off. And it's not even a good block off, it's a stone slab in the door frame.... Then with the automap still showing all the coridors that you can't access... If you can get past that it's fairly entertaining. Although I do feel that for all the supposed "getting into a position of power" that they posited you never really get that mood. Sure, you get to talk to various people in power and you get a shiny mansion..but apart from a few people going "woo, it's the Champion.." I didn't feel as if I had any real political power in the city. Just the ability to annoy/kill/run errands for the people who did. One other thing that threw me.. Was it me or did Bio talk about how you'd see the game play being year 1 you arrive, then you'd see year 3, year 6, and year 9 and how events would change depending on your choices? I mean, I recognised year ones arrival and onto the Deep Roads expedition.. Then the jump 3 years on and the sort of position of respect.. year 6 and you were the champion and , well, the situation explodes. Where's the year 9? Or is that meant to represent the time frame that Varric is telling the story to the Seeker and that whole ending cutscene..? I can kind of see that, but it feels a very disapointing and lukewarm way... And yes, that feels like there's going to be either serious dlc follow-on, a major expansion beyond what Awakening was for DA:O, or a fairly direct seque for Dragon Age 3... Edit: And if you import an old DA:O save.. you do get a lot of in-smirky comments and lines about what you did.. such as the whole "the pigeon population in Ferelden has taken a massive downturn. Something seems to be killing them off..What monster would do such a thing?" if

So yes.. is there going to be any actual discussion of the.. you know.. game.. As opposed to general rants about Bioware and the demise of the rpg as we know it?

I managed to finish my first run through last night.. Went with the sarcastic/humerous rogue approach for most of it and ended up siding with the Mages at the end.. (and because I left Bethany with "mom" during the Deep Roads, she ended up in the circle and missing as a companion for the pretty much the rest of the game..) All in all, the combat style did feel quite similar to DA:O, just a bit more paced. The encounters well.. Hm, it's hard to say. They didn't have the total annoying grinding, mob feel that were in that...but some of the wave, wave, wave structure was annoying at times (and didn't always make much sense). And then every now and again there'd be some seriously nasty beast/monster/person would be some massive health sink.. The city, and the whole build up of consequences (both those you could see, and those you wouldn't even guess at) was really quite good. There were times I made choices based on "yeah, this is what he would do" even knowing that it was going to come back to bite you in the ass later. The recycling of maps.. Good god. I went through that first year exploring caves and they were all the frigging same..with some stone slabs sealing off different doors. That just seemed so..lazy. I mean, reusing pieces of different maps would be one thing..but it's the same..everything. Just..having you come in from different sides. Blocking off some tunnels, but still showing them on the automap... The city design was pretty damn good, but everything outside of that was (while pretty the first time you see it) is just so much gah when its the 10th time you see it.. Hm, I did seem to have some minor glitches towards the end of the game. A couple of sidequests and such didn't show up with map markers. And the "kidnapped noblewoman" didn't show up.. although there seemed to be a glitched "bandit leader" stood on his own who wouldn't react... But nothing that was a problem with the main storyline. Edit: Oh yes, and there were an awful lot of cameo appearances of the Hero of Ferelden's companions....

Well I locked most of the world out this weekend and distracted myself with a rather intensive playing of DA2.. I did like the amount of one-liners that got thrown around in the background... "Has it ever like, struck you..that life..and the world..seem to be getting simpler?" - Talkative Man

... About 3.30am .. wake up to hear a "rustle-rustle-thump.....rustle-rustle-thump" repeated over and over... and then I find out that it's the cat. Humping a plastic carrier bag, in the corridor just outside my room.. But now morning has broken.. so it's on to see how the day is..

I picked up a book a couple of months ago, which turned out to be the first part in a trilogy. The House War by Michelle West (otherwise known as Michelle Sagara).. got quite into it, but then found out that it's connected to a previous series she had done. Apparently x years ago she'd written a 6 part fantasy series (The Sun Sword), a nice sprawling epic woven over several years and multiple characters in different "countries/locales"... But the author has gone back and created this new trilogy which in ways is a prequel about one of the characters from the Sun Sword series.. sort of fills in some of the background hooks, further explanations.. and then runs along to do scenes from her other books..but from the point of view of other characters. Kind of reminds me of the way Webber's Honorverse has become. That creation of a grand timescale, detailed universe... and then different books telling seperate stories but connected by the same events.... all part of a meta-plot.. but with certain books that you can read stand-alone without worrying about the overall story (even if you would get a better understanding by reading them all). But I have to say I find myself straddling a line.. On the one hand I can be very cynical about that approach in a "this is an author trying to make as much money as they can" kind of way, but on the other I can actually find it works really well for creating a very fleshed out, believable universe and being interesting in how they create different perceptions and emotions. That and I've got to admire the effort put into keeping things consistent and having all those connections and cross-connections...

Sheesh. I'm glad that they've announced a date now..but.. hm, since when is August "early 2011"? I mean, they originally said it was going to be march..but then they wanted to shift it to "next financial year" for money/perception reasons.. and that they could leave the time just "polishing and debugging" for a longer time.. Heh. They've made a play about "choice and consequences" for the game..and the planned release dates gets shifted, they don't say when it will be out for a month or two..and then say it'll be out in another 5 months. And all the hype and marketing they were doing will have lost momentum by then since it was all times on the early new year.. Gee, I could almost get an Alpha Protocol deja vu feeling from this. What are the odds when it comes out people will play it expecting one sort of game and not realise what its meant to be?

There's something to be said for authors who enjoy getting down and grubby with their language..

I used that technique when I was a prosecutor. I gained 15 kilos in 7 months. So far I have been blessed / cursed with a frame that won't fill out. I've been bouncing between 9.5 and 11 stone (60-70kg) for the last 15 years roundabouts. That includes the 4 or 5 years of weightliftng and planned exercise... Of course, what bugged me with that, was there was a group of us that did it.. everyone else developed bulk and definition... While I lifted the weights.. I just got some tone and no bulk..

Managed a little over three hours sleep last night, so facing the morning with a bit of an Ugh. I will say however, that while mini-stollen might not be the most healthy of choices for some form of breakfast/morning nibbles.. the repeated mini-sugar rushes do help you keep going...

We hit that stage a couple minutes ago, but I just put on Remember me, and we've punched through the doldrums like a cavalry charge of angry bees through an old man's horrified face. Ah, I have no musical background at the moment.. Although I do have a snazzy pair of black & white two tone shoes upstairs...