Hot Heart

God, I hope whoever came up with the exotic sword questline got fired. In fact, I think pretty much all of the exotic weapon questlines are total bullshit. The only reason people did them before was because they wanted to complete a collection or get Thorn when it was an OP weapon. The sword quest is a fucking joke, especially before you could purchase all three different types and, therefore, had to repeat step 1 three times on three different characters. Here is how the questline breaks down once you've finished TTK's story, run around the dreadnaught to collect 25 hadium flakes, infused your new sword to over 280 light and unlocked all the perks: Step 1. Kill 50 Majors and 25 opponents in the Crucible. Killing 50 Majors (yellow health bar enemies) is no biggie but can just be a time-consuming endeavour. Killing 25 opponents in the Crucible, however, is a big ask because it is the worst weapon for PvP and requires picking up heavy ammo (spawns once or twice a game). The number of times you can simply miss grabbing the heavy ammo combined with the fact that if you get it, EVERYONE else is walking around with rocket launchers. Okay, so you can try and hide so you can wait it out until everyone's used up their heavy ammo (nice job supporting your team there, asshole) or just try and be sneaky and catch someone off-guard (good luck with that when there's a radar). And even if you catch someone without heavy ammo themselves, they could be just too far away that their primary weapon kills you in under 1.5 seconds or maybe they have a shotgun or a sticky grenade... Fortunately, there is Mayhem Rumble as a Crucible option where everyone's ability recharges (including supers) and the ammo spawns are mega fast. On top of that, heavy ammo is dropped by people when they die. It's a real mess of a game mode (probably more fun for people besides warlocks, since they don't have quick-killing, long-range supers) but you have way more chance of grabbing heavy ammo and finding a distracted opponent (since it's a free-for-all) And that's step 1. Step 2. Go find a guy on the Dreadnaught who can only be damaged by your sword. This one's a fairly simple step but it involves figuring out how to open a door on patrol since he's in a normally inaccessible area. If you didn't know what you were doing it would probably be frustrating. It involves killing three "Warden Knights" in quick succession so, basically, you have to whittle their health down then unleash a super (only one type will work for a warlock) to finish them off fast. Killing the guy is easy enough, assuming you have some heavy ammo already. Otherwise, you just have to kill some more mobs. Step 3. Bore yourself rigid. Okay, a more accurate description is "farm hundreds of planetary materials" while killing things with a type of ability. So for the void sword, you have to go down to Patrol on Mars and run around collecting relic iron from the nodes only (chests won't count). You need to collect 10 of a special material that might pop up when you collect some relic iron but seems like it works on a 1/20 frequency. So, yeah, you'll need to go and visit around 200 fucking relic iron spots. And the ability kills thing is time-consuming as well since you need 500 in PvE or 100 in PvP. I'd hate to have been a hunter trying to get a void sword. Step 4. Wait Yep, wait. On the one day of a week known as "Armsday" (Wednesday) when the gunsmith's stuff resets, you receive the final part of the questline. Step 5. Do a super hard version of a strike (probably no longer strictly "super" hard thanks to light level increases) where there are level 42 enemies and a special condition on the last boss. As well as the boss there will be three tough knights running around, each with a different type of shield. You need to leave the one that matches your sword's element until last. Then you need to make sure you can kill him and then the boss within 30 seconds of each other. I've actually done this before to help a friend and it's just a bit of a nuisance trying to make sure you don't fuck up and have to start the whole thing over. I'm sure other people have noticed how irritating the Chaperone, First Curse, etc. quests are as well.

A pre-order, really, but releasing early August. Since I have three friends who love Legendary Marvel and love Firefly, and I've heard nothing but great things about the Encounters games, it was a bit of a no-brainer.

Shaping up nicely. Apparently, there's a pretty funny Thor skit done by the Ragnarok director (who was also a writer, director and star of What We Do in the Shadows) that "explains" why he missed Civil War and it involves moving into an apartment with a guy called Daryl. And Brie Larson confirmed as Captain Marvel. Nice!

I'm surprised I actually liked them...

Summary of the first reveal stream for Rise of Iron. Yep, the Gjallarwing is a thing... *rushes off to pre-order*

Stumbled across this. It's an old thing (the Serenity one is also good) but I figured worth sharing.

Ghostbusters. While I don't do scores, the simplest way to describe this is, "It's a 3 out of 5." For the longer critique. It's alright but never going to live up to the original. There are good performances (I even tolerated Melissa McCarthy), good jokes and some cool effects. In its favour, things move along briskly so you shouldn't get bored by the stuff that misses the mark. I can't help but feel that a lot of the jokes needed another pass either in writing or editing. To elaborate... (I'll mark this as a spoiler but it's not really a major thing...) Anyway, it takes a new approach with the story (and the "ghost lore") and actually has a (small) character arc. Without going in to detail, I can see why manbabies would be upset by watching the film as well.

Turns nearly everyone missed all his appearances. http://kotaku.com/the-witcher-3-riddle-that-players-couldn-t-quite-solve-1747185043

It is a sad state of affairs. Frankly, as left-leaning, I feel stuck. Labour is a complete shambles and has this complete void between electability and principles. As an opposition it is completely ineffective because it's too busy infighting. Then as Thursday Next says, his EU Referendum effort was poor. I can respect not sharing a platform with Cameron after the obscene smear campaign against Sadiq Khan (whom did share an actual stage with Cameron) but nothing better was done. It's starting to feel like either David Miliband would've been a better choice and then Burnham over Corbyn. On the other hand, six years later, I'm still not sure I'm ready to forgive the Lib Dems for forming a coalition with Tories and their disastrous showing last year would suggest 2010 was their never-to-be-repeated high point anyway. Sure, Labour were considered poisonous after the recession, but history actually shows that Brown was actually getting the economy back on track before Osborne royally fucked it up. The most frustrating thing is that to win a GE, you have to court the racists and bigots. You have to win over the people who voted Leave because "I don't know anyone who's voting Remain." The real fuckwits of the country. You can't cut through post-truth politics with facts, statistics, etc. Even before recent events, people believed that Tories can be trusted with the economy despite over five years of everything worsening, and which is now EIGHT years after the recession. Even with this whole Brexit fuck-up, I expect people will continue with the same. I mean, after everything lately, still the Tories are polling ahead of Labour! And it's also a fucking shame because there are a great many people who have been hit by austerity and continually overlooked by the government and are then led to believe that it's the fault of immigrants. Then, after years of feeling like they're not being heard thanks to the FPTP system where everything gets skewed, they get given a simple 1 vote = 1 vote translation for the referendum and think, "Yes, have a fucking piece of this, government." I reckon even Corbyn agreeing to appear with Cameron wouldn't have made a difference since then the angry voters would just conflate the two and then it's "the establishment" that can go get fucked. In the same way that there was a tangible anti-Obama sentiment after that visit. "What does fucking Obama know about trade deals? I am completely oblivious to the effects of history and globalisation and am still under the impression that there is an actual British Empire that exerts masses of power across the globe!" And back to the Labour Party, the thing with Corbyn is that while he has inspired massively increased membership, it's not going to sway a GE. The numbers just do not translate to anything on a wider scale. And trying to appeal to the younger generation is fruitless because, sadly, time and time again it has been proven that young people just don't vote. My only hope is that a rumoured new party composed of Lib Dems and Labour is a reality and could somehow jettison the perceived shortcomings of both. I can hope. ... but right now I'm fucking angry,

I'm level 35 and don't have a decent chunk... I mean, I could have around 17k but I spent loads converting a bunch of runes since I never actually need much money. I'm not too worried though because I think maybe my friend meant the second DLC and I'll probably still make a load from selling more and more stuff I find while exploring.

The Witcher 3. I actually made myself sit down and finish it without getting sidetracked. Fantastic game and a great ending. Will have to get the expansions at some point but I think I'm going to explore the main game a bit more because I'm still finding cool little quests here and there. Plus, my friend tells me one of the expansion involves spending 30k straight away and I don't have that kinda dough.

My friend shared this with me recently and I forgot to post it here. So funny.

Decided to try and give the "newer" Muse stuff a listen (I went off them after Black Holes). Can't get into a lot of it, but this got stuck in my head.

Yeah, there's a lot of interesting "genericized trademarks"

Wait a minute... $1.00 plus VAT? That's, like, a hundred english pounds now!

Daaaaaaamn, that finale.

Mad Max Beyond Draw Distance.

I agree that Patreon would probably work better.

Haven't played much new except for... Firefly Fluxx I only bought this because there was an offer and it was meant as a starter game for my more casual friends. It's alright as far as Fluxx goes. It uses cartoony art and the cards are made to look weathered, there's some theming with the goals, card abilities and that a lot of it involves stealing. However, you actually have to be quite crafty with your thieving because there is a really fucking annoying Surprise card that means you get to steal someone else's entire hand whenever they try to steal a Keeper off you. It's won pretty much every game because the one attempting the steal was manoeuvring to win the game. And last night, my regular group had a go at the Star Wars: Force and Destiny RPG beginner set. One friend has bought all three of the new modules (I think there is also a smugglers one and rebels one) and was keen to try them out, opting for the jedi one was the best intro. As far as I'm aware it's set a bit before the original trilogy timing, with the destruction of the Jedi Order virtually complete and the Galactic Civil War ongoing. I think we were all a little skeptical about starting a new RPG and learning a new system, but it's actually pretty elegant. There are some basic stats that govern other things and ranks to take in skills, but it's all built around a system of seven dice. Just like a regular polyhedral set... but different! In this system you have mainly D6s, D8s and D12s and I think there's a D10 in there for Force stuff. At its core, you have certain proficiencies which govern which dice you roll, combined with the "difficulty setting" dice that oppose them. So your basics might be a couple of D8s but you might have some D12s in there if you're more skilled at something, then the difficulty of the task will add dice with symbols that might cancel them out. Combined with that are D6 conditional boosts or setbacks that you might get from allies or give to enemies, etc. So you'll be rolling Successes, Triumphs (not on the basic dice), and Advantages versus Failures, Setbacks and Despair (that never came up but is bad). It sounds confusing explaining it but, essentially, the more, bigger and better the dice you get to roll, the greater chances of success. And, although you might wind up rolling 6 or 7 dice in one go, the opposing symbols quickly cancel things out and simplify it to either a success or failure with degrees of advantages or setbacks relative to both. So, I might swing at someone with my lightsaber and miss but the Advantage symbols I rolled could be spent to recover strain (stamina) or boost an ally. Or I might make a massive hit against an enemy, but Setback or Despair symbols that didn't get cancelled out allow them to cause strain (this never happened in our game, but it seems the system makes it possible). I think the GM could also add little twists, like with critical failures and successes in D&D systems, but there's a handy table of what can be "activated" with different numbers of symbols. And in the system, you've obviously got your different roles with upgrade trees; so I could start using my strain to deflect melee and ranged hits, for example while someone else could improve their healing abilities. Of course, there's the joy of getting to swing a lightsaber around and boost your abilities with force powers and for the most part it's pleasingly intuitive. Some of the skills have some very vague names but I think actually seeing a one-line explanation in a rulebook would clear things up. Overall, we had a pretty fun time on a short adventure. A lot of that was from making silly jokes, admittedly, but then the game didn't bog things down or frustrate at all.

Well, fuck.

So close No... Damnit, Dean!

As far as I know the whole thing with Vader being Luke's father was a secret. Like, the shooting script had a different line entirely so none of the actors except Mark Hamill knew until they saw the cut with James Earl Jones' recorded dialogue. Don't get me wrong, Prowse sounds like a bit of a dick anyway (he supports UKIP...), but it seems like he at least has genuine reasons for being bitter over that.