melkathi

I finished the main plot in Hogwarts Legacy. Overall I think it is a good game. A bit too Elder Scrolls like perhaps and a bit too collection focused. I think every bit of content overstays its welcome just a tad. The good thing is, for the bonuses you don't need to do everything. Just over half the Merlin Trials unlock max inventory. You can ignore the other forty something trials. The game doesn't force you to do every repetitive thing. The writing works. The plot works. The endless hordes of enemies do not work for a game that is focused on such a small area. The hundreds of poachers you kill mean you basically depopulated the wider area around Hogwarts and Hogsmead. Some comments the characters make are very on point. When your character wonders why nobody has looted the chests in the dungeon, even though you known it has been explored before. When you wonder why your professor has very specific ingredients for a potion on hand. Whoever wrote the story has felt those plot quibbles themselves and isn't above some self irony when they find themselves in that situation. It's the exact type of little thing that wins me over. The combat is fun. It is far more involved than a lot of action rpgs. The different spell combos and the way different spells may uniquely interact with different enemies are great. I still need to figure out how to hit a troll with their club. I don't like all the voice actors. I understand criticism that it is less a game about going to wizarding school and more a run around kill stuff game. I don't know how a school simulator would have been fun though.

Nope, it just means that Disney are lazy. They think they need to add one very scary scene into almost every movie because it is their shortcut for emotional responses. Just as they so often kill off a family member to make the audience bond with the protagonist - they use shortcuts. The Lion King is not so complex a story that a five year old can't understand it. But a lot of five year olds get scared at that one scene.

I was in the alpha for that, just never actually had time to do any testing at all. I feel a bit bad about that

Incidentally, every parent has to do that with Disney movies. Everyone loves the Lion king, but everyone who has watched it with a smaller child has fast forwarded past the scary badlands scene.

That is one of those annoying things that make me certain developers aren't gamers: Let me disable the unfun things and enjoy your game.

When you get one of those emails telling you you received money and all you need to do is check the attached file, then you hover over the sender - out of curiosity - and the address is @ troy The file comes from Troy? So it is by definition a Trojan file? In a way I don't even begrudge them any money they swindle out of people.

While they are both called sumthin Colony, they are rather different games.

It created this whole genre of movies and at the time was something completely new. But when you look at plot, character depth (wet footprint stepping out of the shower), weeeell we had seen better even then. And when you compare it to the James Bond movies that came after, when the movie makers knew this was something people wanted, you can see how much more effort they started putting in for those.

I watched Dr No in the outdoor cinema this year. I didn't remember how bad that movie actually was. But it made history. So many things in later movies were directly inspired by it, including the villain dying in a tank of liquid, with just the hand above the water as he dies.

Tonight they are showing Casablanca. You may of course not have heard of this movie as it is ultra contemporary. It is basically about the current state of the world, talking about resistance against fascism as well as the plight of refugees trying to reach the USA.

Last thing I watched in the cinema was Barefoot in the Park with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda...

I just got my first vivarium and tamed some beasts. Need to meet Sebastian at the village to visit Anne. The first movie was really good. It did a great job at introducing a magical place and have it feel magical. You miss nothing by not reading the books. What stands out to me with Hogwarts Legacy is that unlike so many AAA titles aimed at an older audience, Hogwarts Legacy managed to have different body types. You have some people lean, some people with a bit more weight. You have old adults, you have young adults, you have children in their early teens you have children in their mid teens. Yes, predominantly they use one bodytype, especially as there is basically one human for all the poachers/ashwinders, but that is only because they created one enemy model, not because they generate every npc from one model as other games do.

It is getting to a point where they might as well bring it out as freeware..

I just got to the point where your teacher teaches you how to do stealth kills.

Hogwarts Legacy is a very disturbing game. 1) "Why are the goblins evil?" "They are starting a rebellion demanding equal rights." "Oh, how dreadful! Let's kill them!" With the player character making some actually very gaslighting comments on defeating them. 2) The player killing spiders with remarks on the lines of "If only you didn't look so disgusting". Killing wolves by the dozens. Then killing poachers (human beings) and stating "Now beasts are safe." The irony. And the people you kill are the dark wizards? 3) The school giving you a magic guide book that keeps track of your progress, and which the teachers can review to assess your progress. This quest log, journal etc, of course keeps your kill count. So it is a Hogwarts where Professor Weasely sits in front of the fireplace with a glass of wine in the evening and goes "Oh, my star pupil has killed 17 people today. That is 8 more than yesterday. They are really improving fast. I better arrange for them to learn some more spells."

I once forgot to turn my old wind up alarm off properly when I was living in halls of residence. After lectures I met with friends and didn't come home till late. But as those alarms didn't differentiate between AM and PM, in the evening it started ringing and didn't stop. My flatmates called campus security to unlock my room and check on me. They were worried I was lying dead in a corner, since I didn't hear the alarm

Age of Wonders 4 did a faction creation contest. They were going to pick three submissions to win stuff, have a fourth get a gift through community reactions, and a fifth by random draw. They apparently expected only some forum regulars to participate. They got a thread with 18 pages instead. So today they announced they'll do more winners.

Trying the Terror from the Void mod for Phoenix Point. I don't think I'll last long enough to see if any of the changes/additions from the mod are any good. The changes to classes and skill trees gets a meh - whatever rating on the internationally recognised melkathi scale*. The non-vanilla human enemies, where every group of scavengers, every squad of jericho troops, has a leader granting an ability to their team, and they all have cringeworthy squad names gets a please go back to writing Harry Potter fanfiction rating. Adding npcs to staff the initial base instead of having everything AI run, gets a thumbs up. But is that enough to get me to care? * often described as a jaded, grimdark version of the popular BruceVC game rating system. Just from the perspective that people are useless amateurs until proven otherwise.

I have the post for November with another ad already planned The UK at the time had good video game ads. I remember watching those when I was in Birmingham at uni.

The evil twin of Random video game news ! Today in video game history (and completely written without AI) : 27th of August 1999 27th August 1992

Using my phone since around 2014. Before that I had a small alarm clock freeware on the PC. That was a time I'd wake up to Sugabases - Too Lost In You; which ironically I do not listen to under other circumstances, only as an alarm The old alarm clocks were always so annoyingly loud.

Talk to Fionavar. You write it. He posts it. We read it.

Saw a Sally Rooney novel in the supermarket. Bought it just so I can say I can't travel to the UK for fear of getting arrested. I don't think I'll enjoy reading it

I am afraid you'l be right, and it will be one of those souls-action games. On the other hand, nothing in the trailer prevents it from doing a complete plot twist and have the characters travel forward in time to bring their rivalry into the current era to battle it out at a music event as K-Pop Idols. Then the game would be part life sim, part music industry management sim, part dating VN Unlikely, One can hope.

I don't know what to watch since I don't really like anything. I think last time I liked something was Ted Lasso, and before that Stranger (the Korean crime series). Or was it the other way around... I need to make money to make my own shows...