Raithe

And to think about 15 years ago the budget for those non-elected officials was somewhere in the millions. There are times I really do feel that all the non-english members of the Labour party were going out of their way to screw over the country. But then I have moments of severe paranoia and extreme cynicism.

I'm not a huge mmo fan, but I'm looking forward to see what happens with The Old Republic.. What I find amusing is that the ToR boards have some serious arguments going back and forth over things such as whether the game should let the pc's have custom lightsaber colors so that jedi could have red and sith could be using blue/green/whatever.. Internet arguments can really start up over some bizarre things..

For something slightly different... I "watched" Doctor Who at the Proms. There's some very nice orcehstral music they've done over the last few years... and seeing the full orchestra playing it in the Albert Hall with lights flashing around is kind of funky...

Picked up a slightly tattered "Collected Verse of Rudyard Kipling" that was published in 1912 from a charity shop. There's something about reading Kipling from faded, yellowing pages that are practically falling out of the binding that makes it feel more.. solid almost. As bizzare as that might sound.

After a week of no gaming, I just did a quick run through of the Lair of the Shadow Broker dlc for ME2.. Firmly on the well-written side of the ME universe.

Shephard : "Remember the days when you could just slap omni-gel on anything to get it to open?" Liara : "Yeah, that security upgrade annoyed an awful lot of people...." It's nice to get little shout-outs to make you smile..

They did it with Ron Hubbard. But he did start with a following of his own anyway....

Well had the wakeup of a neighbour mowing the lawn with a serious petrol lawnmower.. it's something like the 5th day in a row I've found a headache to be rolling in and out.. I'm guessing something with the weather changes is doing nice pressure fluctuations.. Sorted out a little banking, laundry and general tasks around the house. Tis a grey and very windy day here, psyching myself up to go out and get some prescriptions picked up and filled out for my mother before the weather turns nasty. Hm, although does seem to have the feel of one of those slightly depressing, bang head against the wall sort of days. But we'll have to see how it goes...

Hey, it did do quite well at providing that.. star wars space opera atmosphere. And while we can look back and see some of the flaws, at the time.. it was a fun game. It's still worth the odd playaround when you're in the right mood. And frankly, the ending cinematic if you go dark side is quite good..

And hey, sometimes it's fun to sit back and watch a film that's light family entertainment..even if it's geared to kids. I mean, who hasn't gone back and re-watched The Goonies or the like, even if they're heading off into the far side of "adulthood"? Which was something I saw a little bit ago, and had the dvd commentary going for it.. which was entertaining. They actually had video of the gathered group of goonies and director chatting away up in the corner of the screen as the film played and there was some amusing chat and rememberances over it all...

6 actually. 18 actually, if you count the history of middle earth. But it was published as three volumes.. just each volume was a couple of 'books'.

One thing that you might have missed if you hadn't played the first one.. The drive out to the suburbs, say a line, and shoot the old geezer?

It's a fairly solid 14 hour shooter/driver. But I can't really see where they put 6 years in it.. It's solid for what it is, but it's nothing brilliant or heavily engaging. And apart from breaking into the safe without alarms going off, or rescuing Leo without being caught.. theres no real reason to replay anything. But it's engaging for what's there. It's a popcorn-for-the-brain game. Fun, but you don't have to really engage anything mentally/emotionally to play it.

Or was Obama seen paddling away with a match in hand? Sorry, cynical humour went out there...

Hm, the Collector's Edition of Tron Evolution has been announced.. it comes with a model lightcycle and stand..with a slide out drawer you can put the game in... Of course, it's only going to be available for PS3 and Xbox360 apparently. And comes with the hefty fee of $130....

Hm, the other thing (just to highten the geek) was that Horrid Wilting was a necromancy spell.. Fireball, Meteor Swarm etc..are all evocation spells aren't they? Mayhaps that also has something to do with it... (happy now Oner?.. One simple typo...)

If memory serves.. that was the Tome of Magic.. (which also introduced Wild Mages for 2nd Ed).. Just for the geek points.

Dynamics Interview Hm, so you're playstyle should have some background affect.. if you go full frontal assault type you will get different reactions from your boss, and things like news reports will shift 'public' perception of you in-game..

Talking of brogues.. I caught Finding Neverland over the weekend. Jonny Depp putting on another wonderful take of a scottish accent merged with londoner.. An interesting little film loosely based on JM Barrie's creation of Peter Pan. I have to admit, the flights of fantasy where it spins from the "reality" to what's being seen in imagination did put me in mind of Terry Gilliam more.. but I liked that.

It's a solid 7.0 / 8.0 game. Depending on things, it'll take you between 10-15 hours to go through the story. It's quite linear, and the "open sandbox" doesn't provide much to actually do. The ending feels a little watered down, almost as if it's waiting for DLC to come along and add to it in the future... If you liked Mafia.. it's probably worth it. If you're just interested in the general "style" of game, I'd wait for the price to drop a bit. I picked it up with the Amazon rate of

Well I finished a run through over the weekend... The story isn't too bad. Although the latter half seems to have a lot more of the mafia cliches then the first.. Fairly enjoyable for that short weekend game. So for the most part the gameplay mechanics are solid, but nothing truly outstanding. (and yes, if you don't take cover a couple of bullets will end your life..) Hm, didn't see the lady with car trouble that's supposed to be somewhere in Chapter 2 (Home Sweet Home).. First thoughts, Vito really isn't as.. sympathetic a character as Tommy was in the first one. And for someone who started off worrying about his family and such.. apart from about 3 specific story moments, there's no mention/interaction with his sister. You can't even go visit her and meet her husband when you get out of jail... The autosave feature..(there's no actual choose to save), it resets to the start of a chapter.. so if you want to try redoing any elements within a chapter.. you have to do _everything_ up until that point. So if you've played halfway through a chapter and then have to exit the game.. you've lost everything for that chapter. The driving's not bad, but when combined with some of the extensive cutscenes.. you can end up with about 5 minutes of cutscene, 6 minutes of driving from point A to point B..and then have 3 minutes of action followed by another short cutscene... And one mission is a shout out to the ending of Mafia... almost makes me want to go back and see it from the original point of view again.... The open city is pretty.. but there's just no real reason to explore it beyond "'its pretty" and the cop AI isn't that great.

And it works for Heston Blumenthal.. As shown in the Perfect Christmas Dinner...

I guess it's a natural response. They give you a wide open sandbox to play in..but then there's nothing to actually do. The atmosphere is all built into the storyline.. and the story is linear and (from the sounds of it) if you're just rolling from one 'mission' to the next doesn't require you to really roam around.. and if it's all 'go from point A to point B for this mission, then you'll be shooting things up in a building'..... Apart from being 'pretty' in the background, there doesn't seem to be much actual.. purpose to the open world. So either they could have put all that effort into improving other features... or actually put something in there for you to do. <shrugs> But then, the original Mafia was basically the same. So I can't see why people would be that surprised. And the original was damn good with the storyline and the way it played. It just didn't make much sense to spend that much time roaming around.

when i see plots like this it makes me wonder about the fate of humanity. then again the day of the triffids sounds like an utterly ridiculous premise and yet its actually pretty damn good so what do i know... As mentioned, Weber has done things that were tongue-in-cheek humour then all the way in the other direction of fairly hard core military/serious.. and I'm not sure which edge of those it'll fall into.. but it'll be interesting to see.

Well I had one of those nights when insomnia hit.. so I ended up reading it through till morning. Light on action as you said, and some of the talk on technical hardware aspects could get a touch overlong for my sense of rythym..but still entertaining for the building blocks. The way the honorverse has expanded and you've got the last few books are all on the same "time frame" but from different perspectives is interesting in its way... I can't quite decide whether I like it for the way it 'builds' the sense of the universe..or dislike it for the back and forth nature it can throw at you.. Still, I'm looking forward to the next book in the series. To think that he'd originally planned to kill off Honor and then do all the Mesa/Manpower about 20 years in the future with her kids.. Of course, Weber has that new book coming out in a month or so that looks like it could be amusing.. 'Out of the Dark' - Aliens invade earth, the rebellion forms..and then gets help when 'vampires' come out of the shadows to help.. Since Weber has done military sci-fi, space opera sci-fi, humerous fantasy, and a few genres in-between I'm not quite sure how it's going to read..but it should be fun.