majestic

I can appreciate the production values of the episodes so far. One of my first thoughts when the Predator showed up in the first episode was "Woha, I wonder when we get a bottle episode, looks like they've blown the budget on the first episode :p". Just not digging the style too much. Adequate is pretty much it. The only Chibnall episode I really enjoyed so far was Power of the Three, but that can be pretty much chalked up to novelty.

Every time I've seen forumite's pictures (and Missy had a lot of them in the days of yore to gawk at) I was sorely disappointed that they don't look like their avatars.

I watched the second episode of season 11 of Nu Who. Let's just say I don't like the new look of the show. It's unecessary... edgy, for want of a better term. Even the inside of the new TARDIS is darkish. Jodie Whittaker does a decent job so far but all that jubilant motormouthing ends up being suffused in all the doom and gloom of the design and lighting. It's like they took the anguish of Eccleston's survivor's guilt ridden Doctor and made it manifest visually. The companions so far, save for the replacement Wilbur who is at least trying, are about as interesting as Martha was.

That's ancient, but as awesome as ever.

So who do you think it is? Just throw it in spoiler tags, I'm most likely going to read about it more than play anyway.

Finished the second season of the ReBoot reboot. In a revelation that shocked nobody in the history of ever the Sourcerer turns out ot be... Looks like during season 2 the showrunners figured out they were making dreck and just went with it. The cyberspace nonsene is so thick that the scriptwriters can't possibly wanted to be taken seriously. In one of the episodes the Department of Internet Security white hat hacker guy even said that the random bad guys showing up in the episode operate on the edges of the Deep Web where "data's hard to track". Now that the shock of what this really is has abated I had loads of fun with this. For all the wrong reasons. It's easily in the so bad its good territory.

Hollywood voice talent (including one comeback from Wing Commander) was one of the stretch goals. So, yeah, they might not make the game better but they were necessary, in a way.

The Kilrathi look weird.

If you can't stop yourself from watching sucking stuff, then it must be the good kind ;) Not really. Watching STD is a mix of masochism and the strange need to see what abject crap they come up with next.

Watched the first episode of the new Doctor Who season, which turned out to be all around sort of... okay. I'm really hoping that Jodie Whittaker will come into her own somewhere along the ride. I'm positively tired of the showrunners and actors trying to emulate Matt Smith (who in turn just jacked David Tennant's portrayal up to eleven, haha, eleventh Doctor, get it? God). The first half of the episode started with the usual post-regeneration shenanigans and of course a new sonic screwdriver that this time around looks like someone plated metal sheets on a ****. Then we get really creative. Haha, I wish. Right, so we're off to a really original start of a season that by the showrunners' own words won't include any iconic Doctor Who enemies or a story arc. I sure hope that means we'll at least be getting something else than rehashed 80ies b-movie plots. I don't really have an opinion on the new companions yet. Still, I find it somewhat hilarious that when Matt Smith became doctor and Amy his companion people complained about the actors and the show becoming Hollyoaks, and now DW is full of Hollyoaks actors... and nobody complains because it's overshadowed by the sex change. Can't say this episode left me excited for more but I'll still continue to watch. Oh yeah, and the production values seem to be way up. I wonder if there will be a bottle episode to make up for it.

The main quests have soft time limits. If you don't do them fast enough they will destroy your kingdom by spamming events until you can't handle them any more. Not to mention that they actively change the longer you need - and not for the better. In other words, do you questing, exploring and kingdom building in the lulls between.

The combat log breaks everything down, telling you what sort of equipment, feats, skills, buffs or whatever else is affecting the rolls. It's very detailed, just annoying to access. Looking through the combat log really helps when trying to figure out why encounters are going south and what you can (if at all) do about it. The presentation could be better though. One thing it doesn't show are perception check rolls you do in the wild to spot secrets. So the information is already there. Making easier to see would be appreciated. It's not a sign of decline to bundle all available and useful information into a readily accessible overview.

Stop reminding me of Mega Man, I'm trying to go a month without increasing my backlog...

So you guys always complain about the NPCs in this game being useless but Harrim just broke my game. He's the ultimate tank now, I'm just not sure how it happened. Best guess I have is that he should have (permanently) died while under the effects of level drain but didn't - and now he has 112 (yeah, in words, one hundred twelve) damage reduction with no exceptions.

Probably beats shipping parcels. They're paid 50 cent or less per delivered package and people complain about poor service. I wonder if that's connected somehow.

Mass Effect 3 has an ending that made almost no one happy. Does that count? It even works as a straight answer - the player does have the choice to let everyone die in this cycle after all.

Heh. That hotfix... I now have two Amiris available. It's the same NPC so it doesn't matter who I take with me but the game doesn't recognize that she's in my party when dealing with areas where she has quests. I went to the Hodag lair for her companion quest and she's standing there waiting. I can talk to her while she's in my party then I can party manage her in and out as much as I'd like, the quest trigger's broken. Oh and yeah, taking both of them doesn't work, the copy of her disappears immediately and doesn't respond to clicks. She can still be beaten by the Hodag tho. Hum...

I have heavily thought about restarting as well. I made my main an Arcane Trickster which is annoyingly enough exactly what Octavia is also set up for and there's no pure arcane caster NPC. Linzi is nice and all but she's a Bard and the Eldritch Scion's not really made for being your main artillery and buffer/debuffer. Lagging that one spell level behind needed to fulfill the Arcane Trickster requirement hurts a bit and outside of buying a sorcerer there's no real solution. I'm tempted to restart as Sorc. I also don't feel replacing Linzi with a custom made sorcerer would be much of a solution. Linzi's fine as a bard and a nice support caster. Ideally I'd remove the rogue/wizard from the party but hey, that's my PC. Woops. On the other hand now that I've found the Devourer of Metal Ekundayo is literally one-shotting enemies so what the hell... Anyway, is it just me or are the prestige classes a bit underwhelming?

Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor has to be up there with the worst casting choices ever made.

Wanna bet Shadow Warrior 2 ends up being the game we'll get? It's the only one I already have and I usually get lucky with these things.

I still remember when Ye (lol) posted this screenshot of an open Pirate Bay tab where he grabbed some music mixing software after complaining how much piracy hurts his album sales. Seems like legit president material post '16.

I didn't like that encounter to be honest. It relies purely on the stealth gimmick, it is however a great demonstration as to why the game seems way too difficult at times while more experienced players have barely any issue. The way it's set up makes it almost impossible to react to it (those rats must have some serious stealth skills) but once you know they're there and there's loads of fire damage involved it becomes a matter of prebuffing Energy Restistance and casting Glitterdust or some other AoE to reveal them. Sure they still hit hard but you're not eating 50+ damage in a single opening round of sneak attacks. Something I noticed is that the tooltip that says the teamwork feats are powerful isn't lying. It might just be confirmation bias but giving my frontliners 3 points of perception to unlock Back to Back seems to have really paid off, especially since the game's definition of "flanking" is "two enemies beat on the same character regardless of position".

Aw come on, they have an open relationship anyway. Who wouldn't be up for a threesome with a chaotic evil Half-Orc and his ladyfriend?