Year: 2018

Yep.

Spotted a meme again and I must complete it ! Wot da meme ?

As usual, click for bigger and legibility. Here goes !

1 – Very first video game. Not sure here, quite likely to be Kingdom on the BBC Micro, this came with the machine. May also have been arcade video games.
2 – Favourite character. Commander Shepard of the Normandy. That’d be Femshep, as Jennifer Hale has a voice with gravitas. You can wholeheartedly believe that Femshep could take on the galaxy and win, plus that voice has been amazing throughout many of the games I’ve played.
3 – A game that is underrated. Hmm … perhaps Planetbase. People didn’t like this one but I found its moon base building to be captivating … once I figured out its foibles and intricacies.
4 – Your guilty pleasure game. I think at the moment this is Battletech. A lot of that is down to the sound design. The weapons sound properly chunky and befit their size. They’re 1 tonne, 5 tonne, 20 tonne lasers, missiles and cannons and when they hit an enemy mech, it properly sounds like irresistable force is meeting immovable object. I just love the sound in this game.
5 – Game character you feel most like (or wish you were). My Elite captain commander. Because I would like to be cruising the spaceways, plying my trade amongst the distant stars. Perhaps this is one motivation towards wanting to live on a boat.

6 – Most annoying character. Any character that you have to escort. Case in point today while doing a Battletech escort mission. The characters you escort either linger behind slowing you down or race off ahead into danger that you can’t get them out of. I only lost one of the escortees today but that still smarts.
7 – Favourite game couple. Mordin and Eve from Mass Effect 3. Enemies from history who come to know each other in an immensely touching way.
8 – Best soundtrack. There are a few … Machinarium has a couple of gems, Factorio has a lovely ambient, FTL has an excellent intro that switches on chill out mode for me. But Battletech’s soundtrack superbly sets the mood and the Stellaris soundtrack is particularly stellar. So to speak.
9 – Saddest Scene. Mordin going up into the Tower. I’ve played through this myself and watched two streamers play. I will tear up at this scene and the emotional power of this and other scenes in Mass Effect 3 are probably why I have only played that game once.
10 – Best Gameplay. Deus Ex Human Revolution. It doesn’t do everything but it does it in a fashion that was definitely not repeated in the follow up game.

11 – Gaming system of choice. PC all the way. It has the flexibility that consoles don’t have.
12 – A Game everyone should play. Star Wars Pod Racer. Especially for those who hated the movie.
13 – A Game you’ve played more than 5 times. This is an odd one because there are story based games which don’t benefit from this and high score type games where you go in again to beat your high score. In terms of playing through a story multiple times, I’d call up Neverwinter Nights, which I played repeatedly with different character types. Perhaps once or several times with mage, warrior, rogue, cleric, paladin etc. For high score games, there is Moo, Moo2, Stellaris, Defence Grid …
14 – Current video game wallpaper. My desktop is told to point at my Elite screenshots folder. There are lots of very pretty images in there.

15 – Post a screenshot from a game you’re playing right now. Well … no game at the moment (I … kinda need the screen for writing this? 😀 ) but :

Mech Battalion on the charge.
16 – Game with the best cutscenes. One thing about World of Warcraft were the epic cutscenes rendered in the engine. Memorable.
17 – Favourite Antagonist. The moment when the Reaper Sovereign reveals itself in Mass Effect was incredible. Here it is. Our heroes come face to face with an implacable machine intelligence utterly confident in its own superiority, its mission and its assurance of success with that mission. A mission that will lead to the extinction of all spacefaring life.
18 – Favourite Protagonist. I think this has to be Paragon Shepard again, with the paragon being the choice of heroic actions, to save the galaxy in style righting all wrongs and helping all those who need help.
19 – Picture of a game setting you wished you lived in. To the Elite folder again !

Elite is quite pretty.
20 – Favourite Genre. One that isn’t done so much now, although it’s coming back. Space flight games. I’ll also indulge in the empire strategy games, usually in space again, plus tower defence as an unexpected choice here.
21 – Best story. Mass Effect … hands down. The Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3 story is legendary.
22 – A sequel that disappointed you. After loving Deus Ex Human Revolution, the sequel Mankind Divided was far too buggy and I gave up on it early. Also Mass Effect Andromeda … because it was messed about with too much by EA and … it just didn’t work. Too grindy and a weak story.
23 – Best art style. Couple of things here, you can judge a game by how it looks now or how good it looked compared to the capabilities of the time. Doom and Quake looked great when they first came out but are horrifically bad now. I’d actually describe Battletech as plain, the graphics could have been better … but its gameplay is very good. I think Deus Ex Human Revolution here, it looks amazing in its stark neon orange style.
Edit – a bit more thought and : World of Warcraft. It has a characteristic cartoonish style with massive shoulders and various exaggerations. It looks great and watching a couple of streams of it made me remember the draw of the game, which is partly down to how it looks.

I need to find my best WoW screenies again.
24 – Favourite “Classic” Title. Hmm, PC classic would be Master of Orion 2. Atari ST – Elite. BBC Micro – either Elite or Revs.
25 – A Game on your list to play. I think this has to be Surviving Mars and Deus Ex Mankind Divided. Both games are ones I should get a lot out of but I bounced off them hard when I first played them.
26 – Best Voice Acting – anything with Jennifer Hale in and Elias Toufexis (Adam Jensen) is rapidly joining that. I love Claudia Black’s voice in gaming too, she played Morrigan in Dragon Age Origins plus an insane Quarian Admiral in Mass Effect. And then there’s everyone’s favourite Quarian, Tali’Zorah. She joins the crew as a girl/young adult on pilgrimage and grows into a leader of her people. And throughout, the face is hidden behind an environment suit mask but you hear that wonderful voice :

One reason why Mass Effect has its special status with gamers is that voice acting. It is incredible.
27 – Most Epic Scene. I’m going to have to be careful or this will be a Mass Effect love in. A lot of the closing scenes from the 4 games quality here. They’re amazing. Yep. Climax scenes of Mass Effect 1, where you have a battle raging outside the station, with your character fighting their way through the inside of the station. The two battles are interwoven and I choose the first game because the scene comes to a very satisfying conclusion. I wasn’t quite so taken with the climax of games 2 or 3.
28 – Favourite Game Developer. At the moment I think that’s Paradox, although they’re more publisher than developer at the moment. Honorable mentions go to Playsport Games for Motorsport Manager, Harebrained Schemes for the Shadowrun games and Daylight Studios for the Holy Potatoes games. I must play Holy Potatoes, We’re In Space (a game I acquired via Humble Monthly)
29 – A game you were surprised you liked. Tricky, because I don’t acquire games unless I’m sure I will like them … and I will have checked out the game play before hand via videos. Star Trek Timelines and Idle Champions here. Timelines is one I enjoyed but walked away from due to pay to play mechanics. Idle Champions is one I keep running far more than is healthy.
30 – Favourite Game of All Time. Oh my … which one to pick ? XCom is amazing. Stellaris had me solidly addicted until v2.0. Moo2 is legendary. Neverwinter Nights was a solid favourite. Then there’s the Pod Racer game, Tie Fighter, World of Warcraft …

The list goes on. The thing is to not have a favourite game of all time and just stick at that game, that’ll get boring. Be open to new games, new genres, new styles. Enjoy the gaming. I loved Mech Commander 2 … and Battletech is a natural progression. I’m hoping the forthcoming Mechwarrior 5 Mercenaries will be good as I really enjoyed MW2 Mercenaries. The various Elite games have been excellent progressions on the games that came before.

It’s a shame they stopped making XWing and Tie Fighter games, with the apex of that series arguably being Tie Fighter (the games that came after introduced unnecessary and annoying complication). Moo3 and the new Moo aren’t as good as Moo2.

Best game of all time – MASS EFFECT !

You knew that was coming right ? The game I’m playing at the moment though is Battletech, with a hint of Skyrim and Kotor 2. I don’t think I’ll play the Mass Effect games again, although they do have the memories.

I think it’s time to stop posting and grab more snacks. Enjoy your gaming !

I’m mourning my Battletech campaign.

(picture credit – a Lt Saatch on the Battletech tabletop game forums)

It has hit its end due to a gamebreaking bug. It has a monthly cycle where you pay for upkeep including the wages for the pilots and the maintenance on the ship and mechs.

Trouble is, there is apparently a (hopefully not too) common circumstance where the counter can break. The monthly counter then goes into negative numbers, blocking the queue for repairs to mechs and upgrades to the ship. Yep. It’s a game breaking bug.

I think what caused it with me was having a pilot die in one of the story missions, when the monthly counter was rolling over. Oh well.

The thing to remember is – it’s just a game. Even if you’re quite well addicted to it and are not quite sure what else to dive into … it’s just a game. (Video game addiction can be very tricky, I’m avoiding Stellaris for similar annoyance reasons but I know that if I try Stellaris again, it could well be a 4am or later finish).

But an untimely end to a game campaign doesn’t mean you can’t try and have some fun with it as a last hurrah until they patch out the bug.

Enter the Locust Horde.

One of the achievements for the game is “Plague of Locusts”, where you aim to win a 4v4 skirmish with the lightest mechs. I refitted mine with flamethrowers. Heat is a mechanic in this game, fire jump jets or weapons and heat will build up. Too much heat and ammunition can explode and the mech will shut down. The internal chassis will melt.

Good times.

And toasty fire.

 Satisfying fire.

Kaboom fire.

I ran 3 skirmishes involving these mechs. They managed to take out one enemy in a random battle and although they damaged the rest of them, they couldn’t bring any of them down.

I tried a fight with long range Locusts vs these little devils … they melted. So I switched the sides around and got the win and the achievement.

Hopefully they patch this particular bug soon. If not, it means an unsatisfying time save scumming (reloading to erase failure or mistakes) to avoid pilots dying and even there, the bug can trigger. I’d been trying to avoid that this time around, accepting the occasional death of pilots as part of the story. Dekker died in the first battle, Medusa soon followed and later poor old Samnite who went out in a blaze of glory, rushing the enemy captain in her mech and melting it like the Locusts were doing above.

The tactic worked … but it cost the company a Samnite.

The story of your characters and mechs is part of the charm of games like these. The faithful mechs that keep on dishing out the pounding. The ones like Breath of Tiamat which did a lot of damage but also needed more time in the shop than any other. Light of BB-8 (a mech with big lasers) was doing well, as was Howling Thunder, Hissing Typhoon (first Heavy mech) and the Light Light Show.

I know, my selection of names is really, really bad.

Like the availability of plastic recycling ! (How’s that for a seismic shift in subject !)

I took my empty plastic bottles to the local supermarket on Thursday, hoping to get rid of them all. Imagine my surprise when … the hole to put the bottles in is smaller than the bottles.

That’s just plain weird. And it’s indicative of stupid policy when it comes to environmental matters. It’s why we throw things in the bin instead of disposing of them as the crusaders would like us to.

(I have a likely solution and it’ll probably involve the cinema on Friday pm, so all good).

I’m watching gaming and reading tonight instead of diving in for more but I suspect the bug in Battletech will mean my Skyrim and Kotor 2 characters will see more time put into them and their story.

It is frustrating when bugs like this happen. But it’s just a game.

It almost happened tonight ….

I did another bit of laptop scouting as part of “I’ve burned my own dinner the last few nights, let’s have someone else do that for me tonight” and headed off to the Mall again.

You can do internet shopping to check for prices but there is no substitute for getting your hands on stuff to see how they look and feel. And tonight, the result of the touch and scout were :

Acer – spongy trackpad. Incredibly unresponsive. I believe a tranquilized sloth would have been more responsive. This immediately drops them off the possibilities, spec will vary but keyboard, trackpad and often screen will be common across most of a company’s laptops.

HP – didn’t touch them this time. They have serious issues over quality and when I’ve looked before, their trackpads are better than Acer. As in, still very unresponsive. Sloth standard.

Dell – solid but uninspiring. Overall competent but the screen was dull. It’s like my choice of cars … if you can have Good or Excellent and Excellent is the same price, why do you settle for Good ? The Dell is Good.

Lenovo – one thing that the online reviews told me to look out for was screen quality and the Lenovo that I looked at had inconsistent bands of varying bright and dark across it. This is Not Good Enough and instantly confirms those online reviews.

This is a comment for the shop as well actually. If you put a laptop on display then customers will use it as an indication of quality of the product. If you permit a display piece to show obvious quality issues, then …. WHAT ARE YOU PLAYING AT !

MSI are too expensive.

The Asus laptop though … had the best features of all of the above. Nice keyboard, responsive trackpad, excellent crisp looking screen. (The other laptops had blurring, this was sharp).

(Essential disclosure note – I ain’t gonna be getting freebies from Asus any time soon).

You’ll notice that I haven’t said anything about spec yet … Spec is a secondary consideration behind :
Quality – is it going to last, are bits going to HPfall off it, what is the user interface like.
PRICE ! Don’t spend too much.
Size – I do like the littleness of my Macbook Air but I’m prepared to sacrifice that for more capability out of the laptop and in this case, it’s more spec.

Ok – that’s the S word out in the open … Essential spec for me is :
Processor : i5 at least or AMD Ryzen. The AMD chip is only just starting to come to laptops though.
Memory : 8GB

More Megabites are good. Unless it’s a certain Costa coffee place that gave me a shortlived tummy bug on Friday. Nuff said about that.
Storage : Either SSD or SSD + conventional drive. I’ll need the space, so I’m looking at SSD + conventional as a minimum. Apparently the reviews don’t like the Hybrid SSHD solution very much … The speed and smoothness you get from having Windows on an SSD is unbeatable … (This is because around the time of Vista, Windows became very broken on disc caching and they haven’t fixed that yet)
And this one have good onboard graphics too. This wasn’t part of my original spec but … I’ve crept that a bit.

Yep. Nearly bought it tonight but I’ve held off. Maybe until the end of the week.

That speed thing is very important. People who are used to SSDs and are subjected to machines without them will know what I mean. I’ve reinstalled Battletech to my SSD and the difference is :

Conventional drive – go refill the coffee mug while it’s loading. You’ll have time.
SSD – update the iTunes tracklist, look back, it’s done. (I don’t update it much)

That’s the advantage of an SSD. It does this by being a memory device … and memory chips tend to be far faster at finding what you need than an archaic storage system that depends on magnetic chemical compounds deposited on spinning platters read by an arm that floats above the surface of the platters.

That’s the curious thing about tech – if you explain the practical nature of things like hard discs, people would go : Why is it done like that ? That’s NUTS ! But it works and it’s simple to make so it’s the cost effective option.

In other news …

I restarted my Battletech campaign at the weekend and so far they’re doing pretty well. I’m adopting the following strategy :
Pilots are going for Gunnery and Guts – they are very accurate with shooting the guns and they can take a lot of damage.
And this is a game that’s all about soaking up damage while dishing it out.
Lower numbers of BIGGER guns – because there is a skill that ignores the damage reduction if you shoot things with only one weapon. And a big gun means the damage is on one area instead of many, which means more chance of penetrating the armour and hitting something soft and squishy.
Getting the morale up quickly when it’s cheaper.
Doing more non-story missions to build up the characters and the money.

And … enjoying less downtime between missions when it’s loading stuff in ! Definitely enjoying it much more now that I’m not waiting for the game so much. I have joined the Meme Of Dekker though. He’s one of the Mechwarrior pilots that you start with and he gets put in a very squishy mech. You have to be very careful or he gets :

The Meme of Maim. And the AI in this game is merciless, if they detect a weakness then they will focus down that weakness and murder it. In this case, Dekker, in the lightweight Spider … with a headshot. It took 2 and a half months to repair that mech …

Not tonight though. The Battlemechs are in the mech bay while I finish off the latest event on Idle Champions. Hopefully Catti-brie has it in her to complete this mission on her own. And without it taking too long !

Oh and the rumour that there is a Red Dot Projector in this laptop is …. just a myth.

Despite procrastinating like hell over the Star Wars may the fourth weekend … I didn’t actually buy any Lego kits.

Well. It technically isn’t a kit :

It comes assembled and glued, so not-a-kit.

Nifty though. I may have bought something else little on there too but no kits this time. I’m still feeling a bit deprived of the Lego … (The new kits aren’t interesting and the offers weren’t good enough. I have no interest in the Y-Wing UCS kit and not enough interest in the Snowspeeder)

What’s happening ?

I’m needing another quiet weekend. Dunno why I’m so tired these days. I’m not getting as much sleep as I need, which is part of the problem. That’s a combination of staying up too late and more insomnia yawning into the pillow. I should address the first bit but I don’t have any good ideas for the insomnia.

Idle Champions has been keeping my attention for background play and then there’s the continuing adventures in Skyrim. The character can still be fragile but also hits fairly hard. I’ve learned the game better with this third character.

Red Shirts by John Scalzi is a book I’d recommend, although he is a massive troll with his endings. I have a Coda chapter of the book to go and then it’ll be figuring out what book 18 will be. An enjoyable read and I’ll be reading more.

I’ve reinstalled the Battletech to my SSD and I’m considering recording a restarted playthrough … Yep. Might record the gameplay thing again. This does feel like it will be a long drawn out campaign though.

Back to me and my outsides are definitely improving still, although they’re very delicate and prone to me redamaging them too much. But there is steady, consistent improvement. Hopefully when my outsides are better, the rest of me will improve too and I’ll get some of the energy back.

We shall see.

For the time being, finishing book tonight, dinner’s in the oven, procrastination will continue over laptop and I’ll have an easy evening with Idle Champions being started up when their weekend thing becomes active.

Oh wait ! Laptop :

I think my intended spec has definitely shifted, it’s just finding a manufacturer who will give me good quality with that spec. The idea is to look at what isn’t listed in the spec, to check if the value is in the quality rather than the bits. Because if they sacrifice quality, you get a laptop like my last HP which had really poor build and which lasted literally 10 months before expiring with a dead fan. (And I got done with the warranty there too).

So the new spec is still : i5 processor or AMD Ryzen, 8GB, SSD+HD, IPS screen. Gaming graphics.

The gaming graphics is the new item there and the gaming laptops seem to be higher quality too with more likelihood of having the SSD+HD combination. It’s looking like selling the soul to Windows as well, just to make the compatibility easier with iTunes. The iTunes software is just too important for managing the music library, although I refuse to use versions newer than 10.7.

Laptop probably coming in the Black Friday sales now, although I’ll keep my eye on offers. That’s the thing … don’t buy out of impulse, buy when it’s the best time for you to spend the money.

Back soon.

First up,

More books ! I finished reading those Last Legionary Of Moros books again. I enjoyed them yet again but more of that in a bit.

Yeah, it’s gone warm again today although I was in my pooter chair instead of being on the sofa. Back to work tomorrow again. Haha, admit it, how many of you resemble the picture above on this cold, warm and hot Bank Holiday weekend ? Probably more than a few.

I’m feeling the tireds again (already!) so I planned a quiet weekend again chilling out and intentionally not doing too much. Sooo …

Friday – work until lunchtime (I work extra in the week for effectively a 4.5 day working week … but will hang around on the Friday if tasks demand it). And then it was me disappearing into town for a lunch and a chill out wander around the centre. Didn’t buy anything but objective achieved. (The canteen at work happened to be closed so it was a wander in town or the local coffee shop. I should really check them out at some point).

And then a bit more chill out before heading out for weekend supplies and …. pizza. Pizza is good. It just happens that the better pizza shop is by the place I get my supplies from. Convenient.

Saturday had me watching the 6 hour race at Spa, among doing other things (like the laundry!). It was a good race. I’m wondering what will happen at Le Mans because the LMP1 non-hybrids were closer to the Toyotas than I expected. That could be good at Le Mans with the longer straights where the non-hybrids will have an advantage on the straights when the batteries on the hybrids hit their charge limits. And the rest of the field had good battles all day too.

That’s the thing about endurance racing, there are usually good battles all day and all the way down the field. They’re still very dependent on aerodynamic assistance for going around the corners but not nearly so much as Formula 1, which is wrecked (in my view) by the cars having their cornering performance severely hampered by following other cars closely. So overtaking is very difficult in Formula 1 and lessens it as a spectacle.

The weekend has gotten hotter as it’s gone too and I’m not one who subscribes to this theory :

I do tend to suffer in the heat. It’s much tougher to cool down than it is to wrap up warm.

Still, it’s cricket season so the rain will be back soon.

Lots of game playing has happened this weekend with Idle Champions occupying the PC a fair bit but also a few others :
Motorsport Manager – a couple of races and getting the Backmarker to Best achievement where you deliberately start a car at the back of the grid and come through to win. You need hefty superiority over the rest of the field to make that one work. One issue is that when you get that kind of superiority, the challenge and fun goes out of the game somewhat. Not many races left in this playthrough.
Skyrim – a little today and a few more quests done. My hybrid of a stealth archer and sword and board character is doing nicely.
Battletech – a few more missions completed, although I’m considering restarting my game so I can level the characters differently. I want characters who can shoot straight and I’m feeling that the current ones miss too much.
Kotor 2 – continues to be enjoyable escapism but it feels very linear compared to the original game and most Bioware adventures of its type. Maybe it’s just taking a while to crack it open.

Lego is intriguing at the moment. It’s the May the Fourth Be With You Star Wars discount weekend and I’m feeling deprived of Lego. I actually have a bunch of it but I want more. But I have no clue as to what I want to get. None of the sets on sale at the moment really appeal. I want the Star Destroyer key chain thing though.

Book ? Book !

Books 14, 15 and 16 are the second, third and fourth in the Last Legionary Quartet by Douglas Hill. This is a tale of Keill Randor, who is the last of his kind. The last Legionary of the Planet Moros. The rest of his people have been murdered by mysterious forces and our boy is out for answers and … revenge.

This tale is told over the first book and then :

Deathwing over Veynaa – a first infiltration of where the Galactic Warlord is attempting to influence a conflict.
Day of the Starwind – a race against time to accomplish a dangerous mission before all is swept away by extreme atmospheric conditions (massive wind forces) induced by the close approach of a wandering planet.
Planet of the Warlord – the conclusion of the tale where Keill finds his nemesis.

I’ve intentionally not said too much there to avoid too many spoilers but the books are still worth a read even after all these years. They are short and sweet. There is recap at the start … but instead of being chapters long (I’m looking at you Mr Turtledove !), the recap is done inside a couple of pages and then it’s into the story.

At just over 100 pages a book, these are quick reads but still pack a fair bit in. There’s probably more than enough here to fill out a miniseries or a 12 episode or so TV series. It’s good stuff where the action and the story rattles along at great pace.

They are dated somewhat by mention of things like magnetic tape but … these books were written in the early 80s when the compact disc hadn’t been invented and I’m not sure that hard discs were in too wide operation either.

It was good to go back to these old ones. I may read some of the other series written by Douglas Hill again soon too.

Time to disappear again now though into the remains of that long weekend. And I’m totally not about to watch a Brickbuilder video about the Lego Snowspeeder …

Maybe.

It’s a weird feeling isn’t it !

I think I’ve been a little more careful than I have been in the past with the buying of new games but I happen to have and be interested in playing far more games than I have time to actually play …

(if that’s your pic, please do let me know ! It’s awesome, I’d love to give you credit but the site Google sent me to isn’t giving any accreditation)

What are they ? And before I start, here’s the obligatory (it really is obligatory, you get in trouble for not disclosing freebies) disclosure that all these are games I bought with my own cash.

First up and getting the attention is the new Battletech game. I’ve mentioned this one a few times already, it’s a strategy game set 1000 years from now where you are the commander of a mercenary group of Mechwarriors. I’ve been really enjoying this one. The turn based gameplay gives me a chance to look, pause, ponder, juggle the playlist on the iTunes (this is Important!) and tell the people what to do.

It might help a little that there are big long pauses while the computer goes off and does its thing loading in the next mission or loading in the spaceship again. This was definitely a good preorder. It looks like they’ve introduced a huge amount of the scope possible in the Battletech universe and tabletop games and I’ve been enjoying testing out different configurations of Mech and Warrior. I’m currently looking to have a mixed team of Melee mech, Short range gun mech, Sniper mech and medium range slugger. Switching out for a second sniper might be handy and I’m probably running too much armour on the sniper.

This is what makes a strategy game great ! If there are a bunch of different strategies and they are all viable while keeping the challenge in the game. Challenge is fun.

Talking about strategy – Motorsport Manager is on the back burner but this one again is a game where it rewards the best strategy with better results in the races. Do you fuel long and use slower tyres in order to have fewer pit stops ? Your cars lap slower but lose less time in the pits. Or do you sprint between faster stops and pit more often. More time lost in the pits, less time spent for each lap. The optimum strategy is different according to conditions.

I kicked off a game of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2.

That’s actually from the first of the two games but the graphics are similar. Spartan, fitting the capabilities of the day and enabling a great story to be told. The two games are set a few thousand years before the Star Wars movie at a time when the Sith Empire is at war with the Galactic Republic. One of Bioware’s better games.

I’ve gone through the first area of Kotor 2 and quite enjoyed it. I should go in for more ! (If I wasn’t addicted to Battletech at the moment). It’s a good sign when you can go back to an older game and find it still very playable and not particularly aged. Although look at the 4:3 aspect ratio. That dates it. (Kotor 2 was released in 2004).

I opened up Skyrim again … A pretty game.

A not so old game, originally released in 2011. A massive game. A game you can lose yourself in with the side quests and completely ignore the main story if you want to.

I have 103 hours in Skyrim across three save games and 12 hours in the latest. The drawback of the game is that while the game world is massive, it doesn’t really change much outside of the monsters levelling up as you cut a swathe across the country. There is still huge amounts to do though. I should dive back in ! After Kotor 2. After Battletech.

Stellaris is on the back burner at the moment. The changes made in the 2.0 patch were a bit negative in my view and I’m actually tempted to roll the game back to 1.9.

The number 1 rule applies : If you are not enjoying something that is supposed to be fun, do something different that you will enjoy.

Surviving Mars is one that I definitely have to give more time to. I think this one came out at a time when I was feeling particularly burned out so it didn’t get the time it deserved for me to learn the game.

Duskers is another of those, where you play the last survivor of a doomed universe charged with figuring out just what in the universe happened to everyone else. This is a superbly atmospheric game where you are limited to working with unreliable, fragile drones.

And there are more games too.

Not enough time ! No gaming tonight as well (ok, Idle Champions is on but that doesn’t count). I’m watching the finale of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, there’s a Heychrissa stream going on the laptop, I’ll have gaming videos on in the background and I’ll be charging through the Douglas Hill Last Legionary books.

Have a great evening !

PS I totally won’t be looking up laptops. I am very tempted. I think the temptation is heavily due to it involving the learning of Linux again. Something new. Something not Microsoft or Apple.

2 books today !

I’m still behind on the 52 books after getting held up a bit on Revelation Space but I’m catching up again with the aid of a few shorter books. Totally not cheating.

The two books share something actually, they both lean well to being adapted into TV type series. One already has …

Book 12 is the 5th book in the Expanse series, Nemesis Games. I’m wondering where they are going with these books. I’m not convinced the authors really do know ! That’s not fair really, they’ve said there is a plan for the 9 books in the series and after that, no more. So the story should be all done and dusted in the next 4 books.

This one feels a bit like a bridging book. The style of the books has the chapters split up between central characters and in this one, it’s the crew of the Rocinante splitting up to do their own thing across the solar system while the usual star of the Expanse (the ship !) is getting fixed up. So whereas some of the crew can seem to be a bit bitpartish, they get their centre stage again in this one.

And it adds a lot of background to all of these characters while moving the background story on quite considerably with some earth shattering events and the emergence of a new power. The sad thing for me is that it does start feeling a bit contrived in the “How come no one spotted this building up ?” kind of way.

Still well worth a read though and I’ll be picking up book 6 at some point soon.

Not yet though … I’m reading a series of books from my childhood. It’s the Last Legionary Quartet by Douglas Hill, first published in 1980 through 1982. The edition I have is all 4 books together in one paperback.

Book 13 – Galactic Warlord opens with our hero and central character Keill Randor searching for those who murdered his world.

He is the Last Legionary of Moros, an elite soldier, quite possibly the best human soldier in the galaxy. Yeah, that sounds a bit contrived … this is a series mostly aimed at young adult so they do take far more liberties with the science side of the fiction than a series like The Expanse does. More believable than Trek or Star Wars though.

Anyway. This one sees Keill finding out about the great galactic conspiracy and teaming up with a mysterious group of scientists who save his life in return for him becoming their emissary.

I’ll be charging through reading the remaining 3 in the series, although I don’t think I have the prequel book which saw Keill growing up.

The Legionary series always struck me as books that would be ideally suited to a TV adaptation. You have a galactic conspiracy, you have the martial arts fights so favoured by TV now, you have space, you have scifi and the timing is well suited to telly as well.

Perhaps this will be the latest series of books to be mined for the telly …

Douglas Hill did more series too, his Huntsman trilogy telling of the aftermath of an alien invasion of Earth was good (we lost badly) as was the Colsec trilogy. He’s definitely aimed at young readers but Galactic Warlord has aged well in the 30+ years since I first read it.

Whereas some books overdo the description and end up padding out their books unnecessarily (I’m looking at you Revelation Space !), the Douglas Hill books are stripped right back to narrative while still giving enough description to keep you in the picture of what’s going on.

A great light read for a younger reader. (Although the Fraxilly Fracas was a bit pants)

I watched Infinity War today …

I’m not going to do the spoilery thing but that movie is a ride. An emotional ride. They pack a huge amount into it. And if I say any more it could definitely go into spoiler space !

The latest Jurassic World movie trailer was good though and I saw more trailer for the Solo movie before which makes that movie look very promising.

The temptation is for a laptop. Or is it for more books. You can never go wrong with more books. I finished off Expanse Book 5 last night. More about that in a future post (I like to do the variation thing, so no consecutive book thingy posts).

Not sure what’s next just yet. It could well be a Douglas Hill series called the Last Legionary of Moros. That series of 4 books takes me back to childhood and it’ll be curious to see how it holds up almost 40 years after the first book was published in 1979.

After getting back today, a few hours disappeared into the Battletech game. I’m enjoying learning its nuances as I get deeper into the game. (I’m not too far in yet). It’s a proper slug fest instead of being the much quicker, less detailed type of strategy game that people may have been expecting. This is no bad thing …

Poor Panda Avenger took a beating there but is almost back in the fight. Panda is a little battlemech so is likely to be nearing retirement as my Lance gathers heavier mechs. It’s handy having the little ones around because you can run them around, flank and hit enemies from the back where the armour is weaker. But the little mechs also pop very quickly when faced with enemy fire.

Striker Omega has replaced the Panda in the lance while the Panda is being repaired. Yep, more Pacific Rim inspired names.

What’s the laptop thingy ?

I saw something going on a clearance offer yesterday. It had a pretty decent spec :

Intel i5 processor, 8GB memory, SSD + HD, IPS screen, nice keyboard, 1050 graphics chip, Windows.

I think it was £750 which is quite affordable for me and that’s a tasty spec as well. Not too much to be silly, while still being capable of first person shooter type gaming which tends to demand good all round performance. But …

Intel i5 processor – want this. It’s the right level between just enough and too much.
8GB memory – considering that my desktop spends most of its time using between 5GB and 7.8GB, I’d see 8GB as a minimum.
SSD + HD – the SSD drive makes it fast, the HD gives it space. I have over 100GB in my music library now so a 256GB drive would get very cramped, very quickly. It’s rare that the laptop makers give the opportunity for both types of drive.
IPS screen – essential. They’re clearer and brighter than the older technology of display.
Nice keyboard – don’t underestimate this in a laptop. Sure, you can get separate keyboards and mice but … I don’t use those with laptops. The keyboard and trackpad that come with it have to be very good.

So that’s the good bits … what’s bad about it ?

I don’t game on laptops except in circumstances where I’d be otherwise incredibly bored. (In which case I’m watching the videos or reading on Kindle instead). So a 1050 graphics chip built in is a complete waste … at about £200 on the price of the laptop plus a knock on effect on battery life and heat output. Don’t need the graphics.

Windows is continuing to cycle down expectations of quality and increase the nervousness of things going wrong unexpectedly. A few months ago I wrote that my main dvd/bluray player app on my desktop had stopped giving out sound. I couldn’t fix that (it did do sound to my monitor … but not through my main speakers).

Turns out that the problem there was a rogue Windows update, as the sound is now back. (This is corroborated by seeing how other people have had problems which have mysteriously fix themselves on later Windows updates). Software as a service is only any good if it doesn’t interfere with what we’re wanting to use out machines for. At the moment, it’s Software as a Disservice. Windows just keeps breaking stuff.

So my next laptop is likely to be running some flavour of Linux. The make or break though is the music … I’m pretty confident that I’ll be able to switch to playing music via a Bluetooth link but I need an equivalent to iTunes 10.7 and its Party Shuffle/iTunes DJ feature, an automatic playlist where I can queue up a bunch of songs and have iTunes pick out more random ones when the ones I pick run out.

Oh and it was also a laptop made by Asus, who in my opinion bought their reputation through relentless marketing rather than actual quality. I’ve been burned by Asus a couple of times before I switched to an Asrock motherboard and my mum had an Asus Transformer tablet which was just … rubbish and also broke within a year. It’s not just us either, I know of other people who have problems caused by dodgy Asus hardware.

So the laptop will stay on the shelf. Very tempting, actually too shiny for what I want/need.

I think that’s enough for now !

Great film;
Enjoyable game (even if I did have to save scum a few times tonight to save my pilot from injuries !)
Temptation …
Avoided.

If you’re buying stuff, make sure it’s what you need … which isn’t necessary what you want :-). After all, the price difference between that Asus laptop and the one I have in mind from PC Specialist (not-an-ad) is enough to …

BUY LOTS OF LEGO !

Remember what’s important :-D.

Perhaps a cheeky one this but …

It’s a 454 page art book !!! There were huge numbers of pictures but I think that counts.

What was it you ask ? I’ve done what you shouldn’t really do with gaming (again). Preorder. The game in question is the new Battletech game, where you are in charge of a Mercenary corporation hiring out your Battlemechs to those who are willing to hire you.

Have Mech, Will Travel.

I’ve definitely been enjoying the game so far and I have an EnterElysium episode going in another window. The Merc company is going well so far. I think in the last mission, it was my 4 against 2 enemies sure but we came out unscathed. Which means barrelling straight into the next mission. Tomorrow. Or Friday. Or at the weekend. Tired now so I’ve come out of the game.

Pictures ?

As usual, click for bigger.

The idea is, Big Robots, Big Guns, Lots of Missiles and a few lasers too. I really enjoyed playing Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries in my first years with a PC and MechCommander 2 was another highlight of a strategy game. Starsiege was a good one as well for Big Robot Fights, although that was set in another universe.

The book ?

I picked up the Digital Collectors Edition (disclosure note – I paid, wasn’t a free copy) which had the art book with it, plus a 60 track soundtrack. Lots of value there. What’s in the book ?

A decent amount of concept art;
Drawings for the stars of the show, the Battlemechs;
Building concept art;
Character art … including a few spoilers;
Spaceship art.

You can probably predict that I quite liked this art book. 454 pages !!! Of course I’m gonna like that :-).

I am knackered now though or I’d have stayed in for just one more mission … I’m in early days so far. I have managed to name my mechs though.

There we go.

Yeah, I need to work on my names and maybe even look up a few of the names from my last post. From left to right it’s :

Shadowhawk class : Peregrine Avenger
Blackjack class : Fury Iceangel, this is my character’s (Iceangel) ancestral mech so the name followed
Vindicator class : Zen Liberator, a few lasers
And the Spider scout : Panda Avenger

Too many avengers perhaps. And that movie is definitely one I want to watch before the spoilers come out. Maybe tomorrow evening depending on how I’m feeling !

Legoland is a possibility on Friday too. I have a bunch of flexi credit saved up and I don’t think I need to be in on Friday.

We shall see. For now though, Enter Elysium video, iTunes music, HeyChrissa stream and a bit more reading of The Expanse.

Oh ! Back to the games I abandoned at the weekend. I was finding them annoying and tricky to play. An interface that got in the way instead of being intuitive (especially with Satellite Reign !). I’ve gotten on well with the Battlemech interface so far. It’s properly turn based so it gives you time to do what you want to do.

That’s for another evening though. Back to the Kindle !

This post could go anywhere today.

Ooo ! Shinies !

I’ll start by saying that I’ve watched Ghost In The Shell tonight, the original anime version. There are similarities between this and the live action movie even going as far as nigh on replicating certain scenes. And then they’re both looking into the distinction between physical biological intelligence and electric artificial machine intelligence. If a machine becomes self aware, does that validate artificial intelligence ?

I have to admit that I preferred the live action version. There was a bit more to its story and I was taken in by the investigation of the backstory of the main character. I must watch it again soon. And I didn’t think that the main character absolutely positively had to be of Japanese type origin, as some fans of the anime would demand. That said, Rinko Kikuchi (Mako in Pacific Rim and that’s an IMDB link for you) isn’t in enough movies and she’s a little marvel. I think she would have made a great Major Motoko.

Talking of Pacific Rim and its Jaeger Mechs … The new Battletech game unlocks tomorrow and I may have pre-ordered it. I’ve been enjoying the Enter Elysium playthrough (youtube playlist link) and he’s been doing his traditional thing of naming his Mechs after people who subscribe to his Patreon. Naming things like that definitely adds something in games. It certainly gave me an attachment to my soldiers in the XCom games and a grin when finding a particularly good name in Elite.

What were the Elite ships again ? I finished in this ship :

The black Python known as Shipka 3.14159-Thon. My other ships in the game were (quick peek at the Inara page !) : Humility, Dignity, Algebraic the Adder, Ranger, Pathfinder, Dorothy Drake. Then there were the space trucks called Lisa Kelly, Art Burke, Alex Dewey. The ones named after the Youtube and streamer community people : Elizabeth Sparrow, Chrissa’s Potato, Katherine Of Space, Nik’s Hammer, Space Viking, Owner Jms Vas QwibQwib. And those named after people close like Queen Skye, Shaname’s Sword, Skye Searcher and there would have been a few more of those if I’d stayed with the game.

I think I’m done with Elite now. There isn’t enough variation or story in there to hold my attention. There is a feeling of having done everything in the game already and I’ve never been one to grind out the time in a game. There are better games to play that don’t involve grinding. So if you were looking for your name above, there were names like Queen Karen and Queen Jenny coming later.

But those are spaceships. One thing about Pacific Rim was the names given to the Mechs. They sounded probably epic and had a certain weight about them. Names like Gypsy Danger and Gypsy Avenger. Striker Eureka and Striker Omega. I think my Battlemech mechs need similar names. Let’s see :

Iceangel Alpha, Kitten Cyber, Yankee Tango (that may be tea related). Gorilla Demon (guess what album I’m listening to at the moment !). Keela Shadow. Space Viking could come out again. I know a streamer/youtube community that would love that. Iron Elysium. Curmal Ghost. Hopefully more names will come later. Crazy Queen is a good one too. Or Toller Bob for … reasons :-). Marine Dragon.

I’m quite looking forward to the Battlemech game. It looks like a cracker. I was hyped for Frostpunk as well, which comes out soon too. However with that one, as I watch more gameplay I get the feeling it’s another game I’d bounce off without playing much. I was doing that yesterday with short sessions in Satellite Reign and Rebel Galaxy before getting irritated and coming away from the games. Knights of the Old Republic 2 (Star Wars) held my attention a bit longer.

Enough about games. Deletion ?

There’s a lot being said about Facebook and the general slurping of data it has been doing since … day 1. The response seems to be to walk away from Facebook and delete everything they hold. I don’t think this will be particularly useful as they appear to have been cleaning up their act lately and complying to the various Data Protection things that are out there. And besides, most of your data will have been hoovered up long ago, plus you won’t have realised quite how much of your data is exposed to them.

Yes Facebook. If you pop up an advert on my laptop that is suspiciously related to something I looked at or searched for on my desktop, then you’re being very creepy. Make no mistake about it, there is an information war going on where the hackers, the Twit/books, the Googles are all looking to harvest our data for their own means.

So what can we do ?

The big thing is to be very careful about the picture we present to the internet. I don’t give my actual date of birth any more when Steam asks me, I give the year. If you take pictures with your camera or your phone, be very wary about location services. The place where you took the picture could be getting saved as metadata in the picture and that geotag data can be extracted later. I think I’m safe from this but I should really check seeing as I take pictures outside the front door. Of my house. This is why I never take pictures at work.

Geotagging is a real threat. My phone has popped up train times occasionally when the bus takes me past the train station. It’s not data that I asked for but in being Helpful, the phone tells me that it has been programmed to continuously monitor my location and use my data bandwidth to look up possibly relevant data. That’s part of what they call a digital footprint.

Be paranoid. We are being tracked and data on us is being collected without our express consent.

The thing to do is to not make it too easy for the people collecting the data. Think about what you share on Twit/book. If it isn’t something that you’re happy for a Crazy Random Internet Person to know, don’t post it.

A lot of the people who are saying “OMG DELETE FACEBOOK!” have done that a little too late. Their data from oversharing will have been harvested by the various apps that they and friends have allowed to have permissions.

That’s another thing – beware of the permissions that an app is asking for and if you’re the least bit suspicious, don’t allow them. I’ve backed away a few times from those Fun Post sites because I didn’t like the permissions they were asking for.

I’m not going to be deleting my Facebook. There are a few people with whom I value their communication immensely and my primary means of communicating with them is via Facebook. I’m not going to lose that due to the hysteria that says Delete Facebook. But I have considered it, mainly due to their policies on the News Feed. There are very odd algorithms at work there, posts you would expect to see are filtered out and random posts from advertisers are sifted in.

Twit/book has far too much advertising and not all of it is gotten rid of by web browser ad-blocking software.

I don’t pay as much attention to the news feed any more. There’s only so much that your attention can actively monitor. Trying to keep an eye on too much will lead to stress and madness. I realised a while ago that while I follow groups and people that I’m interested in, a lot of it is garbage and not worth my time. One of the Twitter accounts posts and reposts the same stories – scroll past. The Elite group on Facebook has been overtaken by idiots – scroll past but not before blocking the instigator of the troll post.

Haha, I thought this would be lots of random things about many random topics but it’s been :

Ghost in the Shell – enjoyed both. Understood and preferred the live action version. Yes I am a heretic and will burn in digital hell when they upload me.
Mechs and epic names for them – Ivanova Fury, Zen Liberator, Prospero Nimoy, Viper Apollo, Robinson Danger, Solako Grave. How many of those do you recognise ? 😀
And a bit about the dangers of Twit/book.

Don’t make it easy for people to find out about you ! Unless you want them to of course :-).