majestic

Why would you not play a shooter on KB+M, peasant? edit: Anthem effectively killing PS4s is probably in the same ballpark as the Switch dock scratching the console. People confusing cause and effect, in other words that PS4 would probably have died soon even without Anthem and people scratching their Switch consoles in the Ninendo dock are most likely spastics. The crashing I'll buy immediately - console games are nowhere near as stable as they used to be and the technical underpinning of Anthem doesn't seem to be that awesome (and that it apparently hangs and freezes during matchmaking is telling). Still takes two to tango, Sony isn't entirely without blame here either.

Well that's easy: Real time stealth matrix.

I watched Behind the Curve recently. I'd recommend giving it a try. It deals by far and large with the flat earth community, not the theory itself. That they do debunk very well on their own, aside from the video already linked they've also acquired a 20k $ laser gyroscope to prove that the Earth doesn't rotate. Guess what? It does. 15° per hour. Who would have thought? edit: The documentry has a single standout moment that's not linked to flat earth theory in itself. There's this woman on YouTube, her name's Patricia Steere and she's been advocating various conspiracy theories and debating them for a while. By now people think that she's a plant - her name's PatriCIA STEERe after all. A CIA plant meant to steer them, get it? Get IT? Yeah. She bemoans that no amount of proof on her part convinced the others that she's not an agent and for a lucid moment contemplates if she's guilty of doing the very same. It passes in an instant though and she dismisses it. She knows she's not like that, after all. Heh.

I watched Sex Education on Netflix. Some background information: I fully expected to hate the show. This is because of two things. I don't like most comedies (I do appreciate parodies though) in the first place and I absolutely detest the sort of sexual humor this show appeared to be built around based on the trailer. Like a guy wanking on his ear, oh, haha, or someone doing an apple pie. Laff, laff. Hilarious. The only reason I even watched the first episode is because I saw Dana Scully and Mark Antony had roles. For the first six and a half episodes I was pleasantly surprised to be honest. I liked the characters, the humor wasn't the sole and ridiculous focus I expected it to be and when it happened it was either not outragingly annoying or clever enough to warrant a smirk or two. Then it suddenly morphed into one and a half episodes of Teenage RomCom Reloaded! featuring all the tired ol' tropes set to Crimson & Clover. What in the ever blazing flustercuck? Sigh.

Well you're from Sweden, that's kind of expected. The only reason why early HammerFall was even moderately acceptable was because Jesper Strömblad was in the band. I still listen to Glory to the Brave and Legacy of Kings with some regularity, didn't mean to imply I've stopped liking their early work. I didn't really like the stuff they've put out afterwards: Felt that Renegade was a letdown and Crimson Thunder barely any better, stopped listening to them for a while after Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. My record collection contains almost all swords & sorcery power metal put out in the 90ies. Except Helloween. Didn't like them too much. The Departed is great though: It's the perfect mix of pathos and awesome. Could listen to this for hours. :D

More specifically he's captured another Waru alien and is experimenting with its healing properties.

That's not really a dumb question, one would expect a decent single player experience in a BioWare game, but alas, no. At some point it is essentially unavoidable to wade into multiplayer because the campaign gets put on hold until you grind out a list of things to do in Freeplay. And that includes repairing three allied javelins (i.e. resurrect someone). It's not that bad, I spent a few hours in freeplay and am essentially done except for missing a single javelin repair, but it's annoying nonetheless. The campaign itself is mostly an excuse plot and the dialogue shallow. I mean, even for a BioWare game. I think I have close to 200, most of that in the multiplayer, though I did finish the campaign. I keep telling myself that I did it so you wouldn't have to. Ouch. I wonder to what extent the game's (technical) problems are down to the choice of engine. Are the shooter mechanics any good at least? How's the AI? The combat is like Andromeda without cover mechanics or the ability to switch your skills. Back at The Forge you can equip - depending on your choice of javelin - a certian amount of gear. A Ranger for instance can have various types of grenades and a missile launcher that you can fit with frag, fire, frost or seeker grenades or AoE missiles, homing missiles, poison darts or a laser beam but it's nowhere near as flexible as Andromeda was. There's combos you can set up and execute. The AI however is completely unable to deal with the vertical movement abilities in the game. Some areas circumvent that by Star Trekking your transporter system - forcing you to fight in no fly zones. It's Andromeda's multiplayer stretched over a co-op game with a campaign. The enemies are, well, dumb, and the difficulty settings apparently only scale damage and hitpoints. With longer range weapons you can even find spots where you can take potshots at enemies (including what passes as "boss" encounter) without them being able to target you. The caveat here being that I only tried Normal and Hard modes so far and I haven't unlocked Strongholds yet, which is what looks like Anthem's 4 player dungeons. The higher difficulties unlock only with higher levels and need, I assume, better gear. Strongholds with story progress.

I tried to play Anthem. Caveat: In the way the designers wanted me to, at any rate. When you launch an expedition into the world you have a few options, one is called quick mission. You're matched with similar players and randomly join a public mission in your progression range. Tried that six times. Five out of six times I was put into a dead game instance where the mission progression died for some reason. You join, notice that there aren't any waypoint markers, enemies or NPCs to interact with, wave at the others, and leave. Granted four of the five dead instances were the same mission at the same progression level, so there's a chance I ended up in the same instance four times, but that makes little difference. Once it worked. As with Andromeda you can see the parts being there. Flying over the terrain, dropping down with a bang, firing at relentless groups of enemies for a moment feelt like the invasion of Klendathu, except with a happy end and all. Also did some freeplay - an always public expedition where you fly around the map trying to find something to do. Which, without any help or markers, means you fly around aimlessly about the admittedly incredibly pretty world. It's pretty, but boring. Imagine Guild Wars 2 with only three other players somewhere else on the map and in order to find world events you need to get really close to them. The game also knows its loading screens are bad so there's an option not to load the story area (Fort Tarsis) after a mission, but to directly to the launch bay, a smallish map where you can do pretty much everything you could do in Fort Tarsis except continue the campaign. A nice idea... in theory. In practice the launch bay also is supposed to serve a lobby function and you're matched with other players in your range to facilitate social interaction. That matchmaking sometimes takes longer than loading Fort Tarsis. And it disconnected me twice. Oh yeah, and a freeplay expedition disconnected me. When I tried to reconnect it had already backfilled my place. Whlie you still keep the loot in that case you're not getting any alliance points or experience for it. This is more kaputt than SWTOR ever was at launch.

Gotta justify the 130+ hours I've spent playing it. In all seriousness, in spite of all its flaws I still played it for quite a while. It got tiresome near the end, that's for sure, but ultimately I've gotten enough out of it to not consider my time - and money - completely wasted. It's a nice showcase of lost potential but when I think of all the bad games I've played in my lifetime it's nowhere near gems like Ruins of Myth Drannor or Superman 64. I probably did spend way too much time playing terrible games. I mean I actually completed Ruins of Myth Drannor.

The only videos about games I watch on YouTube are Joseph Anderson's. It's refreshing to see an author and skilled player give games an evaluation. That makes his approach different enough to be worthwhile even if some of his videos are long. Really. Long. Well and Summoning Salt's documentaries, but these aren't reviews.

We Euro-Peons have Star Trek Discovery and Titans on Netflix. And the Reboot reboot but that probably doesn't matter unless you want to be entertained by a wave of so terrible it's awesome. So that's probably a Netflix trailer for Titans on Netflix in the UK. Whelp, I'm paying 200€ for my cable service. Per year. No premium channels though. And absolutly no US network TV obviously. Sky is offering some castrated versions of NBC Universal channels (E.g. Syfy and 13th Street, etc.) for the lovely price of way too f*cking much per month.

Mass Effect: Andromeda had terrible animation glitches and was generally lacking in quality control but it wasn't a bad game. Certianly not a good game either. Perfectly average with a dose of hilarity and some tired faces. Forcing BioWare to use Frostbite was a terrible decision. Apex Legends was built with Source, and surprise, it works well. Square pegs and round holes and all that jazz.

Add MacGyver and a few funny one liners to the new Discovery episode and it would have made a decent Stargate SG-1 episode. Star Trek... not so much. Just Netflix and Amazon Prime - and Amazon Prime more for the free shipping than watching videos, really.

It looks and plays a lot like Mass Effect: Andromeda without cover mechanics. I'm just two missions in, tried to do the third then it disconnected me. Loading screens are long so I quit for today. On the bright side completing the download made the game much more responsive and after a while even the flying becomes fun. I haven't played Destiny (2) beyond the tutorial so I can't reliably answer that question, but I expect the story missions to be somewhat similar in structure and the endgame's probably going to be a Mass Effect multiplayer style grind judging solely by the menues and unlockables.

I'm not sure yet. EA let's you play the game when it's downloaded 43% but that really just unlocks the tutorial mission with terrible performance issues. Played like 20 minutes and then the game went: Plx download fully for this content, kek, kthxbye. For what it's worth, it plays like Mass Effect: Andromeda with a full flight option that feeks as responsive as a hundred year old after too much weed. I'll fiddle with the mouse sensitivity some more but so far I'm just glad I didn't pay for the game. I mean, subscription costs aside.

Time to try Anthem since there's a 10 hour trial with Origin Access anyway. Just started the download, 30 minutes remaining. Apparently playable at 43% - so I'm guess I can try in 12 to 13 minutes if things stay the way they are.

If clippy starts singing sea shanties I'll buy an extra license.

Chatted with an old friend about the days of yore and some of the pranks we pulled at school. Our usual English professor was off promoting her artwork for two weeks and we were assigned a substitute that had just graduated. Our classroom had a row of lockers that were different from the regular ones that every other class had (in our school classes generally stayed within their assigned classroom, so the lockers were always inside the actual classrooms instead of in the hall). They were several times broader but only half the height. But most importantly that made them large enough to fit a small student inside. As luck would have it we had a smallish guy (let's call him Bob) in our class who also happened to be flexible enough to not only easily fit into the locker but be able to get in and out without help. Bob agreed to wait inside the locker until the substitute teacher called for someone to clean the board, then open it from inside, get out, hobble to the board like a deranged hunchback, wipe it clean and get back in. So, in the middle of class she called out for a student to clear the board, someone got up, knocked twice on the locker, which opened to reveal a really deranged looking and drooling Bob that hobbled towards the chalkboard, wiped it down, bowed, and hobbled back into the locker. Well that led to one hell of a bewildered look that transitioned into angry screaming and her not showing up for any of the other classes. Eh, and some reprimands. Edit: Looking back I'm beginning to understand why our teachers despised my class. Our department supervisor once said that he's got two problems. Us and a sore on his arse and the latter was likely to go away in a week.

...and the earth is flat, right?Oh you're one of those flat earthers? Strange, I've never met one. There are only two types of people who believe carbon dating is mental gymnastics: Young earth creationists and flat earthers. So, which one are you?

...and the earth is flat, right?

Yes, they did. When put into context with the rest of the Star Trek universe, no, not at all. Section 31 was Starfleet's Alpha Protocol back in Enterprise and it still is as of Deep Space Nine. It makes zero sense that it's an official part of Starfleet Intelligence ten years before TOS. Nor does it make any sense that the UFP would have an officially regonized and sanctioned Tal Shiar equivalent. To quote your wife: As for S02E05:

Behold! The work of nightmares. They laughed. Sneered. Called me mad. So what if a hundred souls died in pursuit of having the ultimate power at my command? Let's see them laugh now, when The Wrath of the Heavens burns them away. Mwahahahahahah! Or, in other words, I've been playing a good deal of Sunless Skies. Managed to craft what seems to be the ultimate destructive force in the game. Fashioned from nightmares. Literally. Ah, the joy of Failbetter Games.

When I think of Archer all that comes to mind is One Night In Sickbay. Not dissing Scott Bakula here. He did a fine job, given the circumstances. Most of the crew did, except maybe Jolene Blalock. If Disney hadn't created a new canon TFA would have been set around the time of Legacy of the Force. Darth Caedus (Jacen Solo) would lead the Galactic Alliance against a group of freedom fighters. Han, Luke and Leia would all do weird things that make no sense and excacerbate the situation instead of helping it. It even features a superweapon being destroyed. Centerpoint even worked similarily to the Starkiller Base by firing hyperspace laz0rs if needed. Eh... uhm... eh. Oh, right. Chewie would be dead. Can't have that.

You're right, it's not a good argument insofar as Star Trek isn't an established product that needs to fulfill certain criteria to be called such. I still think the analogy works well enough to showcase the issues fans have with Star Trek discovery and that they're not simply drinking your coffee black vs. taking it with cream and sugar type issues. Maybe cheese and vegan cheese might have been better. But it wouldn't have played as well off SM117's original line. Some style over substance must be allowed. Rule of cool and all. I'm fairly lenient when it comes to changes if the final product is worthwhile. Or at least becomes so, something that happend with e.g. Stargate Universe which arguably made even a worse transition from goofy fun sci-fi to a character based drama with a sci-fi background (because the new Battlestar Galactica was hot at the time). Fans didn't like it because it was too different from the other Stargate shows. I liked Stargate Universe and the new Battlestar Galactica (up until that final half a season at least). STD is... bad Star Trek and bad TV. By all rights I shouldn't even be watching this. I still do largely because I'm a little Sheldon when it comes to watching TV shows especially if they feature season or show spanning storylines and it's on Netflix anyway. I don't think Kurtzman knows anything at all. Everything he did resulted in being a jumbled mess with flashy visuals and Discovery is no different. Maybe they could hire Orci and Lindelof to help him for any further seasons, wouldn't that be aweseome? edit: With my recent Star Trek rewatching (currently in the middle of TNG) I've learned two things: TOS holds up really well, production values nonwithstanding of course. TNG's first two seasons no longer seem so bad after Tillybabble and Archerboredom.