Hot Heart

Another pre-order. Guess I'm buying video games this year, too. I actually get this free on PC, but my PC is rubbish and I might be able to play with my usual PS4 friends.

Hooray, this season isn't going slow at all.

Some pre-orders And I guess I'm learning how to play Heroclix.

Funnily enough, I think the film actually has three, "Come on..." gags at various points. Struggling to recall the exact ones now, but the first instance comes... While I loved it, I don't think the film is without problems... As for the credits scenes. The mid-credit one is alright, just a sort of wrap-up and... preview? The post-credits scenes is funny.

Saw it last night. Loved it. They're right when they say, "This isn't Avengers 2.5"... because it's pretty much Avengers 3. While it doesn't seem like it, it covers so much ground but gives everyone enough time without bogging down the pace. The Spidey introduction is jarring for a second then quickly falls into place. And the way they pair up certain characters, not just in action scenes but the dramatic/dialogue-led scenes is well-done, too. And, of course, it's got so many good bits of humour. Also, best Spider-Man ever.

Oh, you guys have a countdown. That's cute.

Forgot how much this album rocks (except for the fact that while the bassist is clearly very talented, every bassline starts to sound the same)

Short update. Birthday gathering (mine) yesterday. Tried out Ninja Camp when there was four of us. It's a neat little game where you each have 3 little ninja meeples who are placed on a grid made up of move cards and you start with two basic move cards in-hand. You then take it in turns to playing these cards to move your little peeps about, but each will have different requirements or movement patterns that you must be able to execute. The trick is that you then pick up the card your little guy just left, so the grid gets smaller and smaller as you go. The aim is to collect the most points via move cards that you grab (any you use go into a personal discard pile) before you can't do anything else and must pass. So, generally, you want to stay active for as long as possible to grab the most cards. The hard part is figuring out when to move which guy and which cards to grab (we were mostly winging it, really) to keep you in the game. There are high value (5) cards but they become really hard to actually use once the grid is smaller and everyone's hemmed in. However, I managed to win by just hunting down enough high value cards early on even though it meant I passed about 2-3 turns before the others (there is a special "animal power" each player gets but I didn't even get to try that). It was close though, with the top 3 scores of 31-29-29. Then we moved onto another campaign of Ghostbusters. Honestly, the more I play it the more I dislike it. Everything feels too stacked against you and there's little chance to mitigate a string of bad rolls (which don't have much variance anyway; D6 for most stuff). We wound up losing the second scenario in this campaign because of a relentless onslaught of ghosts. Then once our fifth player arrived, we went onto Firefly with the whole 'verse and a different set up card that emphasises jobs involving Rim Space (two extra board bits that go on the left and right) while using an old story card that rewards crime, smuggling, bounty-hunting and piracy. This was a pretty fun game and the two players who seemed to run into a lot of bad luck actually made out okay for a very tight finish. The aim is to collect 5 goal tokens and hold onto them at the start of your next turn after you declare victory. This is because as part of the story card, piracy jobs can be doubly-rewarding in that you gain a goal token for completing one and get to steal one off that opponent if they have any. So, one of our players had cruised to 5 goal tokens and was sitting pretty to win. However, it just so happened that someone with 4 goal tokens (even 3 would've worked) and a piracy job handy (that's the hard part) was within range to get them. This player had a strong bounty-hunting crew so they'd be good for piracy too. He started his fly action and was 1 sector away when they pulled the Reaver Cutter card. He managed to fight them off and the medic saved his casualty, then the evade that happens got him into the space. He successfully boarded and they had their showdown with him winning by 1. After that, no one could reach him or retaliate so he had stolen victory. And I don't think this player had actually won a game before. Hooray!

Until I heard the Whedon commentary on the first Avengers film, I thought it was pronounced "phage" or "phige". Totally was not expecting the actual pronunciation.

From what I've heard they really haven't shown a lot.

It's been mentioned that his character has some sort of arc to do with dealing with his "human-ness" so I guess regular clothes is part of that.

They haven't really used it in trailers, but there's a clip that slightly contextualises things here.

So I don't know if you guys have seen the "Tweet me" thing that the Captain America account has been doing on Twitter, but it's kinda cool. Basically, using this tweet, you can declare yourself #TeamCap or #TeamIronMan and then it generates a reply to you with a video. So if you vote Team Cap, you might get Cap himself welcoming you or you might get a very enthusiastic Falcon. Vote Team Iron-Man and you might get a grateful Vision, or perhaps a disapproving Ant-Man. And if you have your real name in your handle or username, there's a chance you get a slightly more personalised one. Anyway, I thought it was an amusing little thing. You can tell they've just grabbed a few of the actors and sat them down to improvise and record a load of little snippets in one go, but it's fun. No actual Iron-Man, RDJ himself though...

I liked what Elektra introduced and the Punisher arc is alright but, yeah, the last 2-3 episodes really drop the ball.

Yeah, I don't know if anything is planned but there are too many indicators that the development team is not completely ignorant of things. Once you've cleared the story there's an ECHO left by the main villain who says... Semi-spoilery

Yeah, it's a really weird beast. It has this strange thing where it is trying to justify its concept and gameplay but totally acknowledges that the whole thing is fucked up. I mean, the only available radio station is some guy ranting about how shady The Division is and there's subtle shades of something not right going on. Maybe there's a future rug pull planned, but it seems content to have a PMC as the main villains for now so at least there's someone actually bad. Gameplay-wise, I think the update was a really good change. The flow of both phoenix credits and high-end drops is enough to keep you working away on different builds, etc. and putting the emphasis on shooting things. The nerf to crafting wasn't actually quite as extreme as originally (and officially) touted but it's balanced right so you can still have another roll of that blueprint you have every now and then if you want to try and get something better. I'm well chuffed with a few things I picked up and crafted as well as some drops that helped me get the stat setup I need to get the most out of weapon perks. I think the rest of my team is lagging a little behind though...

I heard that the Doctor Strange stuff will tie into "Darkforce" elements which have also featured in Agents of SHIELD (there's the guy who goes after Amy Acker) and in Agent Carter (although, it's been labelled "zero matter" there). It's sort of magic/alternate dimensions stuff.

Ninja Camp A sort of hand-management, spatial awareness/movement sort of game. You use cards to move your ninja peeps about the grid of action/scoring cards, picking up those up as you land on them, then using them to try and stay active for as long as possible in order to collect the most points from those cards. The cards being picked up means your movement options become rapidly reduced and as soon as you pass that's it for the round. Big game in a small box. It also contains a deliberate Orgazmo/Hamster Style reference. Boners! I also rebought Space Alert since my other gaming group of friends would enjoy it. Sold it for £20, bought a new copy for £20.50. Bonus is this doesn't have any box damage, contains summary cards for the missions and replaces the fiddly little plastic things with wooden cubes. Win-win!

Cumberbatch's American accent makes him sound like Dr. House... which makes sense because of the Sherlock thing.... oh my god... Civil War review from Empire. Yesssss. Cannot wait. http://www.empireonline.com/movies/captain-america-civil-war/review/

Don't get too excited.