Hot Heart

Fuck, I'm shit at this not spending money thing... but the prices were too good!

Yeah, it'll be available for an hour today, starting at 6pm over here. And now news that the beta won't end today but see some other (new?) stuff Monday and Tuesday.

Haywire I'd heard good things about it as "Soderbergh doing an action film" and, in ways, it's good because you get some alright action and there's no real camera fuckery. It plays to Carano's strengths in that the action looks sort of "realistic" in how people might actually duke it out, with grappling and elbows and such. Plus, she's real pretty. Since it's from the writer of The Limey (an old, good film of Soderbergh's) I was expecting something a little simpler. Instead it begins in medias res and concerns a convoluted conspiracy that is gradually revealed (until they lay it all out in one sequence late on). Basically, it's The Limey mixed with The Bourne Identity. There's some interesting uses of location though, with part of it set in RoI, along with all sorts of familiar faces (Channing Tatum, Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas).

City of Iron This game is a few years old now (but also saw a 2nd edition released last year) but I'd never played it before since it's one of those "maximum of 4 players" games that don't see many outings in our group. I'm glad I got to try it though, because it's pretty ace. It's essentially a civ-building game but with a steampunk theme (supported by some nice artwork) and a cool twist on deck building. Each player controls some sort of nation like Hogmen or Toad Inventors, with the option to use asymmetrical powers/abilities and perhaps an extra card or altered setup, which should mean they specialise in some area. The most appealing thing I found was that you have a deck of people that can be added to your nation at the end of each round, which are split across two categories: citizen or military. Each player starts with 2 of each and selects the order in which they are placed. This is also key because, unlike most deck builders, you don't shuffle your deck when you need to draw cards but flip the deck straight over, i.e. prior to flipping, you can reorder the discard pile to make a logical draw order. These cards will provide things like special actions, bonuses connected to other actions or have icons used to pay for other actions. So it's up to you whether you focus on getting Mayors, Explorers, Cartographers to discover new areas and found new towns to support all sorts of goods-producing buildings or whether you build up your military with Iron Soldiers, Wyvern Airships and Spies to conquer other towns (these come from a deck separate to player ones, although you can steal ones other people possess). Everyone has all the same cards available for purchase (with a few extras depending on the nation) but the cool thing is that each has artwork related to that nation. One of the main focuses and hence its huge presence in the middle of the board, is resources. This isn't wood, stone, etc. but turnips and glow moss and bottled demons, which is a nice if minor change. Buildings will boost a player's standing on these tracks (they don't actually generate spendable resources), with players rewarded points for 1st and 2nd place on these tracks at three points throughout the game, but 1st will also get extra income each round based on the rarity of the resource (all players still get +1 income per any goods-producing buildings they have). The building deck is organised so that the types of goods as well as cost and land requirements (your basic homeland supports 4 terrain types but others require deserts or tropical climates, for example) ramp up after each scoring card and put an emphasis on turn order (which has a bidding mechanic). There are all sorts of ways to score points based on how you specialise, along with plenty of endgame bonuses, but there is an emphasis on doing a bit of everything and finding a way to make your deck shine. While I was the "Cresarian Scholars" I pretty much abandoned this concept as soon as I saw no one else was opting to conquer the neutral towns. Three players were fighting over buying certain types of buildings while I was improving my military to take over these weak towns, which was also increasing my card drawing, income and getting 1st or 2nd on many of the resource tracks. We actually missed one of the rules where the left-most available building is ditched whenever a town is conquered, which might have sped up the game and hurt their strategies even more (possibly 3-6 points of my building-based bonuses too...) It was easy to see how I could craft my deck in a way that helped me keep a steady flow of everything I needed, while no one dare challenge me on my towns. Because I was drawing 1-2 extra cards compared to the others, I didn't have to waste an action (you get just 3 a round) to draw one if needed. Same goes for increasing my income rather than relying on my Tax Collector card as another action. And I had military cards that gave extra card draws, plus a way of generating "Science", a currency used for buying more advanced cards or buildings. Plus, that last one was actually aided by my "scholarly" exclusive bonuses (a "Genius" for getting 1 Science as a free action plus skipping the gold cost for my Scholar). That's not to say that the others couldn't improve their card draws (new towns give this automatically) or gain more Science (through academies), plus they could skip Science costs through certain prerequisite buildings as they easily developed larger towns than me; it's just that they were all competing in that department whereas I took over 8 towns compared to 1 each for a couple of other players. While they got endgame bonuses for most distance travelled, I was picking them up for most of 1 resource, most cards, most towns, etc. Anyway, great game that is probably more competitive if you play it more than once every blue moon and can familiarise yourself with the strategies and cards (you actually show/announce which cards you buy each round so others get a sense of what you have). The only gripe is that it really needed another pass on the proof-reading on the rules to avoid the little confusions and clashes.

Datto and some others actually looked at this and it's actually about the same based on recovery stats. I'm hoping that everything related to cooldowns on abilities, etc. is just because of low-spec armour (even though it's supposed to be legendary) and the strike boss feels a little spongey because you're still matched in light level (when you tend to exceed it pretty fast). The only other enemies I felt were spongey were Gladiators, but that's clearly deliberate. I'm hoping movement speed is a little faster though since avoiding Gladiators is way harder than the sword-swinging Hive Knights of old and that was with the lowest mobility set-up I always ran. It can be a little troublesome but there shouldn't really be any complicated jumping involved. You can shoot the first one from above, then the next one is clockwise round so you just watch the lower spinning baton that is also going clockwise and time your drop down behind it then sprint after it, sliding into the next recess in the floor if you feel you need to (I don't think it's necessary). From there, you're below the spinning batons and can safely shoot the turbine again. Once that's done, you just have to watch that lower baton again, wait until it passes overhead then jump out of the gap and follow it to the next recessed area where you'll find the final turbine to shoot.

Sounds like what board games have been doing for a while. Especially the hottest "new" thing Gloomhaven.

My early impressions having done the first mission, the strike twice and a match of crucible as a Warlock (plus, the first mission as Titan) is that I quite like it. The weapon changes with Kinetic, Energy, Power is pretty nice because it feels like a decent mix where your energy weapons can serve a general purpose but really reward you for matching the elements to shields (and enemy shields are nice, big spheres or cylinders now). It also means you can have "elemental primaries" that everyone missed after TTK, so I was packing an elemental pulse rifle or scout rifle once again. I'm not sure about weapons having the same rolls for the same type but at least you can still change the scope and stuff. One sidenote: I tried the scout rifle the Titan starts with and it feels a touch too weak for my liking. Maybe that's deliberate now but it pales in comparison to the relatively wild bullet spam of a pulse rifle even at distances. Could just be that one though, since the Warlock energy one seemed okay. I'm actually glad self-res is no longer a thing for Warlocks. It's way more fun to just use your super and get involved rather than feeling like you need to hold it in case. However, I'll need to look deeper at the subclass options because I couldn't see the Scorch ability where your melee gives you an overshield which was absolutely vital for my survivability in D1. That said, the healing rift has already proven itself very useful so that's a decent replacement if it has gone. As for the actual combat, I'm really digging it. There are bigger environments and setpieces, giving you plenty of scope as a fireteam, with way more enemies. They've got a few mixes of enemy types to keep things fresh (even if they're essentially Cabal versions of Knights, Sniper Vandals & Thralls). I noticed that Centurions now have a slower, more powerful blast weapon (and I think it's void instead of solar?) and Harpies now do a constant void beam instead of bursts of solar fire. And everything's just a touch faster without being overwhelming. The annoying thing is that I was running out of ammo at some critical points, however, and it doesn't seem as wasy to spot anymore. As for the crucible, it's early days but having not played D1 for 6 months, I think I got into the swing of things okay. For some reason, I regularly tend to go "the wrong way" at certain points in matches and miss hotpoints of action and in 4v4, I guess it's still going to be a thing. Crazy how much we were switching capture points as well (since there's no longer a neutralising step to capping). Interesting that they've actually brought back putting the names of the map sections on the screen e.g. Shrine, Gulch, etc. for the more professional players to do callouts.

Was just listening to this yesterday and drove past someone blasting it out of their car today, so now it's in my head.

Just wait until she...

Still a shit mod though.

It was a decent opener. I was expecting more to happen, since it's a longer episode and the seasons are getting shorter, but I suppose it does a decent job of mapping everything out (quite literally). The "Ed Sheeran scene" and the scenes with The Hound were good because they show what's happening to the "proles" which is something I'd heard the books did more: showing the impact this all has on ordinary folk, not just the lords & ladies. I think my favourite scene(s) however, were (spoiler just in case)

21-23 July for open beta players. Early access begins on the 18th for PS4 and 19th for Xboners.

If you have pre-ordered, you should have (been sent) a code that you can use on Bungie's site to then get a code for the beta, which you can pre-load. While I have plenty of reservations about it, I was hearing Luke saying how they value it as this social thing like poker night or whatever, and that's still the appeal to me. I have fond memories of getting together with my fire team every Tuesday to tackle the end-game content, particularly when it was the three-man Prison of Elders stuff, so hopefully that carries through at least.

Not a trailer, but anyone who hasn't seen Baby Driver can watch the first six minutes (the best bit of the film) thanks to Sony Pictures France.

I might be able to make it some point in the evening, I'm not 100% sure. Have a family thing to attend and I'm not sure when I'll be finished. As for the topic, well... *cough* I don't think it'll be anything great, but it's cheap enough now stock is in the UK, and it should appeal to my Rick & Morty loving group of friends and possibly even family.

Hehe. Kickstarters are "frivolous" (I actually managed to pass on a couple of board game kickstarters as well, recently). And I just said I ordered Destiny 2, gooooosssh! And you're the one who bought a bunch of TTS stuff. It's catching.

I backed Destiny 2 after playing the early access build (Destiny 1). I saw that Pathfinder game but decided to wait until release anyway. I couldn't see any decent extras without spending a bunch of money and I'm trying to cut down my frivolous expenditures anyway.

I preordered that the other day because I figure I'll still enjoy playing with my usual group. I think pre-loading for the beta is supposed to be starting today on PS4, or so I heard. I'm wondering if I'm meant to be getting a code for early access at some point soon (probably not needed either way since it's not a bunch of content in the beta)

That's how I figure "they" must be viewing it, although I don't think it matches with various instances of dialogue across the films. In Civil War, there's mention that the Avengers have been together 4 years... but that might just be the Russos viewing it as the films taking place when they are released, i.e. that's their approach rather than a general one. There's evidence of another director-led inconsistency from Gunn where Stan Lee in GotG2 makes reference to being a FedEx employee even though GotG2 is a few months after GotG1 and, therefore, before Civil War. I guess it's not major but it seems weird to mess up something like that. As for my updated rankings... 1. The Avengers 2. Captain America: The Winter Soldier 3. Captain America: Civil War 4. Avengers: Age of Ultron 5. Guardians of the Galaxy 6. Spider-Man: Homecoming 7. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 8. Iron Man 9. Thor: The Dark World 10. Doctor Strange 11. Thor 12. Iron Man 3 13. Captain America: The First Avenger 14. Ant-Man 15. Iron Man 2 Some of those lower down probably need a rewatch though, I think. Plus, the top ones are generally all equal but I shall resist this alphabetical ranks system.

So, in Spider-Man: Homecoming, there's an "8 Years Later" title that comes up when it switches from a scene of people cleaning up debris post-Chitauri invasion of New York to present day, i.e. it's saying Spider-Man: Homecoming is set 8 years after the first Avengers film. But the first Avengers film was 2012, and the later Marvel films tend to be set when they're released. Plus, Spider-Man: Homecoming is definitely set in 2017 because they make reference to a character being 33 while his rap sheet is on-screen showing an April '84 birth date.

I'll put the timeframe stuff in the MCU thread.

I saw Spider-Man: Homecoming last night. It was fantastic and I recommend it to everyone. ... serious post. Did a BD/SM double-bill. That's Baby Driver/Spider-Man, of course. Spider-Man: Homecoming As someone who never really loved the Raimi films, you'll get a sense of how to take it when I say that this is the best Spider-Man film. Maybe you don't agree overall, but Holland is definitely the best Parker and Spider-Man. On that I will fight you. I think my only gripe, which I'll put up front, is that it feels like he's thrilled with the idea of being a superhero more than wanting to do the right thing. I mean, he was brought in to deal with a rebelling superhero with no questions asked and he's obsessed with "more missions" (sidenote: did he sign the Accords?). I guess it makes sense since he's still just a teenager and that's probably more a consequence of not having the Uncle Ben stuff within the film. They have Ned saying, "You could have died" early on but it never really sinks in for Peter about how much it would hurt May if something happened until the end of second act low-point and even then it's immediately switched to "I lost the internship". I guess I shouldn't complain too much, since I wouldn't want things to get too maudlin... Also, the "8 Years Later" thing has me confused because, while I believe the early MCU films were actually grouped around a few months or a more condensed timeframe, the later ones have all been assumed to have been set when they were released. So, was the first Avengers film actually set in 2009 and not 2012? Anyway, all that aside, this does a great job of grounding Parker in his domestic setting and establishing those relationships and it's a lot of fun. Lots of great gags and moments throughout (I love the Enhanced Interrogation Mode scene and later callback) with a nice sense of escalation. Vulture's also a refreshing change as a villain, which I'm sure others have already commented on. There's the usual bunch of easter eggs and things to spot, but one that's maybe not obvious or even intentional is that (potential minor spoiler so tagged just in case) EDIT: Oh, and I forgot to mention that it has a great post-credits scene. Not that that you weren't going to stick around for it anyway.

I was thinking of putting this in "Good" but having gone over it, I'm going with "OK" Baby Driver It's a decent thriller with a cool soundtrack. I feel like the initial introduction to Baby is misjudged and undermines the core emotional element. I'd even say Ansel feels too wooden at times, while the romantic stuff is nigh on cringeworthy to begin with. I dunno, while Wright can nail the action and larger than life characters it just feels like his flare isn't a great match for the smaller, sincere stuff. I'm sure there's even more cool little things to spot on a second watch, as is Wright's style, but I'm not in a hurry to see it again.

Someone's made the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game in the TTS workshop. Neat. I bought Rock Band 4 but pre-owned because I'm still not 100% sure it won't be a sort of "downgrade" from RB3 thanks to licensing issues, etc.