majestic

If you somehow stumble into the romance with Camellia... It was probably written by a 13 year old psychopath, or a mid 40ies housewife who thinks 50 Shades of Grey is the bee's knees. Not sure.

Kinda don't know how to get out of this mess, but I also want that romance achievement, so unless some other option comes up, ugh.

There's a bunch of bugs that keep happening for me, and some I don't even know if they're intentional maybe, or not, but I guess at least some of them are attributable to the game not working as written. My Angel Oracle got access to level 8 and 9 spells while unlocking Mythic levels 4 and 5. Not that I'm complaining, being in Chapter 4 and having access to Storm of Justice and Wrath of the Righteous makes clearing screens easy even on Unfair, it's just a little odd with my Oracle level being 14. I guess this has something to do with the game believing my caster level to be 18 (because Wrath deals 180 damage to Demons). I guess that's part of being Angel-overpowered. The Brown-Fur Transmuter keeps losing Arcane Reservoir charges during map transitions, it looks like they're either set to the base value before any modifiers or vanish entirely without using them. Not a big deal since Abundant Casting provides enough fodder for him to restore it as needed before big fights, but annoying nonetheless, given that the entire reason for having this character is to use otherwise personal Transmutation spells on the frontliners. Impassable doors in Turn Based mode were a problem too, but that disappeared for the time being. Turns sometimes spaz out during frame drops. Chapter 4 certainly doesn't get any less annoying when playing on Unfair, but it's fairly smooth now that I can pretty much spam room clearing spells that knock most enemies out of the fight in one cast. Also the first time I'm doing Camellia's quest stuff, and that girl ain't right in the head. I also probably should not do them as Angel, but eh... who cares, really.

Every time I see ridiculous capitalization like this it reminds me of Trump tweets and our own SonicMage117s running around here. What the Hell?

I find your lack of commitment disturbing.

Yeah, my cousin had one of those too. Well, a local variant, but they were all the rage back in the very early 90ies. Give them a bottle with water, then they make a mess of the room, sort of. I mean, yeah, in theory they were supposed to have diapers, but tell that to a four year old boy, he really liked spraying people and the room more than doing what he was supposed to. That makes Futari wa Pretty Cure look so pale in comparison it's painful. How many episodes does Emi have?

Ah, perhaps I misunderstood then, I seem to recall a conversation that hinted at you playing shooters with a gamepad because you can do so from your couch. It was about Mass Effect 2 at the time, but perhaps not limited to ME2. Anyway, point still stands, albeit slightly changed. Playing shooters with a gamepad is an excercise in frustration.

Some people wouldn't recognize greatness even if it bit them in the arse. Know that I shall henceforth ignore your opinions on input devices. Not that I didn't already after you said you prefer playing Mass Effect 2 with a gamepad to keyboard and while back, but even more so now than before!

To be honest I absolutely hate this trend towards having more and more and then some more buttons on gamepads, and I hate most gamepads to boot, so screw having another to or three more buttons to press. It doesn't enhance the gaming experience for me, at all*, and all it does is make the developers even lazier with control schemes than they already are. Four face buttons, two analog triggers and two shoulder buttons are the upper limit of what I can stomach (not enjoy, but... live with). Gamepads peaked with the GameCube for me**. That one was comfortable to have in my hands, didn't have an excessive amount of buttons, everything was easily reachable and hey, the games could be played just as well. Speaking of FromSoftware games, it's not like they playtest their games with the gamepads either, or else I can't really imagine how they think it's a good idea to default the healing items to the d-pad like it was for Sekiro (not sure if that was like that for DS too, I don't think so). If a fight goes sideways enough to need healing (happens to to the best of us ), and you already slow down when using healing, do you really want to let go of any of the other buttons or sticks? *WoW-gameplay doctrine from Cataclysm going forward. "Players enjoy having more buttons to press." Yeah, maybe, like, damage dealers do. I didn't. I enjoyed making the best use of the buttons that I do have, which is why I always played healers. More buttons, more stuff? Eh... please Blizzard, balance the buttons we already have. **But what do I know, people think the DS-style controller layout is fine. Maybe it is if you don't have spindly and overly long fingers, but with that layout, I can choose between "clawing" at the buttons and sticks (i.e. arching my fingers all the time, which is hellishly uncomfortable after a few minutes) or having my fingers touch all the time. Especially the thumbs when having to use both analogue sticks. Not cool.

Yes, there is, the newer XBox gamepads all die after a couple of months of use.

I'd rather not talk about what goes on in my mind when I look at this manga volume cover. Let's just say it's not pretty. It's also not really making me want to check it out. Neither the manga, nor the anime.

Oh, no, that was a bit different. So far, while I didn't like some of the villains and found their reasoning stupid, they were at least consistent with their characterization. Shounenpads already defeated the girls and could have just killed them, but the endless mockery of his compatriots about being weaker than a pair of 14 year old girls made him give them back their transformation devices in order to defeat them in fair, "honorable" combat to prove that he is indeed the stronger fighter. He lost and died. Predictably, because he didn't have a chance in any of the fights before. It was still perfectly in character for him. Dumb-as-rocks was just dumb and had little to show other than brute force. The lady villain was smart about everything and came really close to defeating or even killing the girls, and would have, if the other boy on the villain squad didn't interfere. She was eventually pushed into a direct confrontation and, well, lost. Kiriya, meanwhile, just liked Honoka more than he should have, and with Honoka refusing to fight him at all, he just gave up and left. The last, pretty creepy guy on the squad is the only one so far who held his own in a fight with the two. So far they've always just been stronger than the villains or could rise to the occasion, unless being tricked or separated. I mean, that's one of the more consistently nice things about this show, the way the villains aren't complete morons and realize the position they are in. Creepy mage guy was already beaten in an episode prior, but only just barely, and he surprised them in this one. Leaving after having gathered the knowledge where the stones are isn't as senseless as I made it out to be, perhaps, but it's inconsistent, he should have at least tried to push his advantage while he had it, but the episode runtime was out... granted he'd just have lost becaues how else would this go, but still, yeah.

Futari wa Pretty Cure, episode 22. I recently didn't have the time or, ah... inclination to watch that series, and now here we are. The episode was, uhm, yeah. Eh. I dunno why, but even in a magical girl series with talking weirdo magical animal companions, two regular dogs talking to each other like it's nobody's business is weird. Overall it was okay.

Yeah you can do that, @KP the Torque Dork does that all the time. Go to your account settings in your profile and click change, then confirm your password and set a new display name.

After the second episode, I'm fairly sure Rich will suffer for that in some way. More than usual.

Oh, it gets better. The Confederation is going to hold "Eradication Day", a celebration of, uhm, mankind's enemies being eradicated, of course. This year's special execution is going to be the Borg Queen, and General Picard already requested to be granted the title of Borgslayer. I wonder if that's going to be the storyline for the entire season, because unlike the Discover mirror universe episodes, this isn't goofy, campy fun, but deadly serious and utterly cringeworthy. It's also not the mirror universe, of course, or even a mirror universe, but just a branched timeline. Imagine of the Brotherhood of Nod and the Federation from Starship Troopers had a bastard child without any fun, camp or satire, and here you are. Ugh. I think Westwood needs to demand royalties here. Can someone with decent Photoshop skills give Picard a goatee here? Please? Oh, before I forget it: Legolas starts chopping up people again, Picard shoots up a stage, uhm... things are back to normal. I was worried I'd have to like this, for exactly one episode. Phew.

Five minutes into the new episode. Q spews overwritten dialogue that would make Chris Avellone blush*, quotes actual Star Trek episode titles ("That's so Yesterday's Enterprise of you!" and "Through a mirror, darkly!") and actually whacks Picard in the face, telling him "This is penance, not a lesson." It also references climate change, I think. Not sure yet. May or may not play in the Mirror Universe, considering Through A Mirror, Darkly did... and Picard suddenly has Romulan slaves. Anyway, unless something changes drastically, that fell off a cliff faster than expected. Managed to get through the first episode without facepalming and almost without groaning, and now I'm already doing both. Plenty of times. Man, you'd think after all this time and all the terrible tripe I've watched, Kurtzman would be unable to surprise me. Turns out not so. There's always something new. And always something worse. Do you remember a time when Q was fun and silly? Also, it's now Picard's turn to swear around. *Let me give you an example: Picard: I am no longer your pawn! Q: Oh, you're not just a piece, but the very board on which the entire game is being played! Why, thanks, I hate it. edit: Seems to be a new sort of Mirror Universe, and Picard commands or commanded the CSS WORLD RAZER. Wow, that name for sure is even cooler than LASERVELOCIRAPTOR. At least when you're a thirteen year old Twilight fan. Picard has skull collection in his trophy room, the skulls of Sarek, Martok, Gul Dukat and a few others. Man, this is so edgy and awesome. Did I mention his ship is called the CSS WORLD RAZER yet? The C stands for Confederation by the way...

I'll just quote the Wikipedia article: No wonder the flame jets on the bridge set come always from the same point and look like heavy metal concert pyrotechnics. Wouldn't want to damage that screen, huh? Picture of the thing in "action": I guess that's one way to make a bottle episode out of everything, at least set-wise. edit: This is from the spoiler part of last week's Discovery post. I honestly had no idea how accurate that caption would turn out to be.

Didn't George Lucas just film everything in front of green screens? Discovery apparently films in front of very large LCD screens that serve as set backgrounds... with the result that the depth of the shots always feels extremely off, and it explains why everything looks so weird in close ups (becaus the background of the set is literally a flat plane that cannot produce any real depth). More so than in the prequels even.

Wow, I really, really need to... to... not make myself an unperson right now. Carry on, Imma head out.

My alarm goes off at 8. The first one, that is. I ignore it and sleep until 08:40 or something, then drag my hide out of the bed. Work day begins sometime between 09:30 and 09:45, depending on how long I need to do the daily Swedish-style crossword in the newspaper. Yep, it's a rather short commute, back when I needed 45 minutes to get to the Office I was there at 10... or even later. Morning meetings are the worst.

Close to midnight now, and I've sent a work related mail to a guy in South Korea, and he immediately replied. It's not even eight in SK yet. I don't like early bird IT guys. They're creepy. It's wrong. Like looking at the Great Old Ones.

Star Trek Discovery Season 4, Episode 12: "I have no idea how this happened" Not the actual title, but an okay episode. It's still saddled with all the baggage of being Discovery, but there's some non-stupid technobabble, they get the distance from the Sun to Mars right, and start communicating with the creators of the negative space wedgie the season is about by using simple base emotions and mathematical equations. I also found out why the "sets" in this season look so terrible. They've been filming this in front of video walls that show CGI for whatever they need. Yeah, now it all comes together. Well, luckily, next week it'll be over, at least until it returns with season five. Tomorrow we'll see if Picard stays watchable or falls off a cliff. I'm expecting the latter.

Hey, what can I say, at the time I really liked broken goth people. Teens gonna teen, ey? Heh.

Unfair is unfun enough without any nerfing tweaks applied to the game, so I'm good. I doubt I'll ever play the game on anything but normal afterwards. Not even Core.