Hot Heart

"Hi, guys, I came here seeking an active gaming forum" *whole page of posts about pizza*

I can understand why you'd be unsympathetic, because you're constantly being made to question him; you're never 100% behind him (unless you're a right-wing nutbag maybe). Alfred berates him for the destruction he causes in the Tumbler In Begins, he denies himself a future with Rachel, he becomes the "war on terror" in TDK, etc. He's a fascinating character, but not necessarily an "ideal" and even he knows it.

I love Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, so I had high hopes for Iron Man 3, but I just couldn't get into it as much as I'd hoped. It's still got the zingy dialogue and inventiveness, but it feels too much like distinct parts pulling against each other (as you'd expect with distinctive directors on blockbusters). Plus, I think the plot was partly quite stupid and also the same twist they did in IM1 (which, I'm to understand, already took many of its cues from Extremis). It's terrorists behind the whole thing! No wait, it's just a pissed off businessman. It's the same with the Spider-Man films, where it's almost the same villain everytime. Okay, that's an exaggeration... but there's not much new being done. Heroes don't need big character arcs, but I just expected something more. Age of Ultron spoiler And I don't care about fidelity to the source material. I didn't need to have an actual Mandarin with magic rings, but neither did I want some hokey, fire-breathing businessman nonsense. Anyway, it's an entertaining watch, for sure, and I don't dislike it, but it's not something I'm as keen to revisit as much as others.

So, I don't know the full story, and maybe he just figured it was time to step away (he did sound a little burned out), but Joss Whedon deleted his Twitter account. However, what can be seen in relation to the incident is an ugly strain of "progressive" people that were sending criticism (labelling him racist, sexist, transphobic; the whole list) and just general harassment his way. And that bothers me. It's nowhere near the level of GG bullying, etc. but it's sad to see such mob mentality and people being judged as not the "right kind" of progressive. And I checked out some of these accounts, who seem to really love characters and these fictional worlds (these are the sorts of people making weird tumblrs and shipping characters, etc.) so it's also disturbing to see such hate and mindless aggression. Maybe this is partially related to my thoughts on the Charlie Hebdo racism claims, in that there are people misinterpreting things (not to mansplain things but she refers to herself as a monster because of the "killing" part. Did everyone forget the "red on my ledger" thing from the first Avengers film?). Also, that reminds me. Fuck open letters.

In other words: Ethan, you're a shit mod.

Last weekend, I had a couple of gaming sessions with friends. Started playing five-person Android at 8:30pm on my birthday, against my better judgement. Fair enough, we didn't have anywhere to be the next day, but it takes a good 45 minutes just to set up and explain everything before you even start playing. It got so late that we decided to end it after one week instead of two, which probably doesn't work too well. Either way, I was enjoying myself, and I had been doing well with a different character. Funniest, however, is that my friends once again assumed I had scored for my guilty hunch when I had a strong feeling I hadn't... and I was correct; the same guy who won last time did. I could see us trying a Sunday session of that sometime. Onto the Sunday and we started with the jailbreak scenario for Firefly. I was enjoying it because I got to try the new leader, Murphy (who has medic and mechanic keywords) and all four of us were on level-footing in the standard Fireflies, but the story card wasn't brilliant. I mean, I played well... barring a complete screw-up early on, starting a job without realising I'd not met the needs, so forfeiting a great chunk and a few turns in the process. I stole a disgruntled Jayne and assembled a decent crew overall. However, because of the way it's structured, you work up to the first goal a bit, and then there's no stopping anyone after that. One person got fortunate with some big paying jobs (though, I got fortunate in other smaller ways) and managed to win by one turn. If I hadn't messed up earlier, who knows... D'oh. Still, more testament to how tightly balanced it can be for such a sandbox-like game. Then we had a go at Conquest of Planet Earth A very "trashy" game about an alien armada invading Earth in a B-Movie style. This can be played competitively or cooperatively, and I opted for the latter because it has a bit more going on. At its core you move your ships around, discovering locations and fighting the resistance there to conquer them and score the associated points. This is done by comparing the strength of your ships against the resistance and then rolling a die for each. There are all sorts of wrinkles with the different alien races having different strength values, extra abilities, etc. and the fact that a roll of 6 is an automatic crushing victory for that side; in other words, your giant APOCALYPSE CUBE (black object, just in shot, mid-right of photo) can be destroyed by a lone fishing boat if you get unlucky (and have no cards or abilities to prevent it). It's a fun theme, with silly goings-on and fun moments; you can do the whole "we come in peace" surprise attack thing, unleash a deadly contagion, resurrect fallen enemies to fight for you, etc. One player got his hand on loads of allies (giant robot, warlord, godzilla-like monster) while my particular race of aliens spent the whole time discovering barely anything. If you look above, I found coastline and grassy fields along with just small towns, with most worth zero points (the green population value), which led us to think that perhaps I'd received the wrong landing coordinates for this invasion. As well as that, you feel the tension mount up as the human's bring out more resistance to retake locations, forge new deadly tech, and the fact that you have ten rounds to accumulate a score eight times the number of players. Little did we know, I'd actually chosen the "brutal" difficulty by mistake. Still, we won and it felt good. That said, it takes too long for what it is and there were so many little things you had to consult the rules about (mostly timing of stuff and how certain abilities relate to co-op play). A competitive game would go far quicker, but I also think we'd be a lot faster now in future. After that, we played Legacy: Gears of Time I spoke about this almost exactly a year ago, and this is our first time playing it since (it's four-player when our group is usually five, so doesn't often get an outing). Either way, I still really enjoy it and it's a clever little game. Turns out we weren't playing with the "Fate" cards before (and now) but they sound too trashy for this sort of thing. Also, I remain undefeated. I'm red in the photo above just before the scoring for round 3 of 4 takes place, and grey shoots way up (partially due to black claiming half for an invention of mine) but I clawed it back in the final round thanks to getting Genetics established, and stealing all grey's influence on other techs after he travelled farther back in time before me (since turn order changes, always go last in the final round if you can). All in all, though, a fun time!

I rewatched A: AoU the other night, having read this guy's "tweetnotes". He's a professional script reader/editor, so these are like proper scriptnotes, i.e. SPOILERS It's actually a great watch when you look at it through that lens. In the way that Deus Ex: HR had everything, from its side missions to its main ones, connected to the transhumanism theme, everything in this is equally on point. Oh, yeah. Guess it's our re-ranking time again. Having rewatched Winter Soldier and GotG, I actually don't think I could pick between my top... three now. My attempt: 1. The Avengers 2. Avengers: Age of Ultron 3. Captain America: The Winter Soldier 4. Guardians of the Galaxy 5. Thor: The Dark World 6. Iron Man 7. Thor 8. Iron Man 3 9. Captain America 10. Iron Man 2 Unseen: The Incredible Hulk.

All they need to do is say that they've added the option for "THWOK!" "KRAK!" "KAPOW!" bubbles in combat and I'm sold.

Could be one of the Jedi Knight games? That does ring a bell...

Maybe this is a slightly odd "confession", but I have a weird phobia of diving/swimming underwater in games where enemies might/will appear. I think this goes back to Tomb Raider 2 and that section with the sharks that were hard to spot (because of PS1 graphics and their sly matching colour). I just feel so vulnerable. I hated it in Duke Nukem 3D, and that bit early on in Resistance 2, and I was dreading having to do it in GTAV (luckily, it's easy to spot them and kill them beforehand and it never forces you to leave the submarine in other bits). I'm slowly making my way through AC4, but dreading diving bell and shark stuff if that comes up...

HOUSE PARTY THIS WEEKEND ALL WELCOME BUT WATCH OUT FOR THE TRAPS!

Thanks, guys! I am happy to have finally saddled myself with a huge amount of debt. It feels so liberating.

Yep, I bought a whole block of flats! Okay, just the one... Just had a mortgage agreed (after some initial hassle with Natwest. Never get their call centre clowns to do an agreement in principle. It's worthless). So now I actually own my own place, after having saved for ages and ages.

Hehe. I was actually going to comment that that was one of my favourite "gags" but... there are so many good ones. Plus, there's kind of another level to that particular one, but I won't say more. A random thought: SPOILERS

Avengers: Age of Ultron Amazing. It is packed full of great stuff from start to finish (and it's a long film) and has so much going on that it feels as if Whedon has pulled off a miracle in pulling it all together. To give you an idea of how it zips along: remember that bit in The Avengers when you finally get that tracking shot that flows from one hero to the other, when they really pay off that whole team thing? This time, that's almost the first shot of the film but now there's so much more going on. You definitely couldn't complain about it looking too "TV" now. The action is fast, frantic, and does a lot more with the characters and their powers. If there's a flaw it's that by doing so much, nothing is given time to breath and there might be areas you wish were explored more in favour of others. However, I think the stuff I was interested in is being set up for future events... but I couldn't say any more. Also, as I've seen others mention, there isn't really a true singular "fist pump" moment like you saw in the first Avengers film (it's lots of great, smaller ones). That said, this is definitely more like the Empire Strikes Back kinda sequel (yeah, I went there) in that it isn't going so much for the big moments but lots of character stuff all over; everything's an even boil rather than a gradual build. Which is the right approach, really. We've already had our big Avengers team film, we want something different and to hit the ground running. Anyway, all the new additions are fantastic (even if some of the accents are... odd), there are gags galore and you won't even have a chance to get bored. If anything, you'll want time to process everything afterwards, and I kinda want to see it again already. Hell, I was half-tempted to add some spoiler-y section with further comments but wouldn't know where to start; plus, I think it'd be good to wait until the US gets a chance to see it too.

YES THAT WAS THE CAVEAT GOSH ETHAN

Hehe. I can't remember the exact amount but I remember thinking it was relatively cheap (it was either 50 or 250 glimmer). The exchange rates in general looked rather good. Thing is, it's actually rather easy to get hold of ascendant materials once you reach a certain stage. The daily heroic story missions (which can usually be done in about ten minutes) will give you 1 or 2, depending on which difficulty. Which is where the 'certain stage' thing comes in, since it requires you reach a certain level first. Thing is, I'm actually sitting on something like 120 ascendant shards and around 90 ascendant energy because it's so easy to get hold of the stuff when you're playing the high level content (even 2 levels below max is high enough). You've got the Vault of Glass, which'll give you a fair few; the Nightfall which might give you some; the exp boost for beating the Nightfall, which helps you level up vanguard/factions for packages which can give you materials or gear to dismantle. And the Roc strike playlist is very generous with blue engrams for things like motes and strange coins (as well as levelling up cryptarch rank for another package). It's just that it does require probably at least 1 hour a day along with the Tuesday reset events of the Nightfall to really get anywhere fast.

Same. I thought it was okay.

So, just watched a Twitch stream which showed off some of the new stuff. I missed some of the beginning, but I got the jist, and it all sounds promising. - Everything can be upgraded to the new max level and it won't reset the progression at all. That means your old Vault of Glass gear will be relevant again (and it's much prettier than the Crota stuff), your old weapons will find their former glory (Shadow Price, woo!) and you won't have to go through that friggin' Xur upgrade, stat reset, exotic shard crap. It's done using the new endgame material called 'Etheric Light' (Fallen love them some glimmer) which comes from the PvE, PvP and Nightfall stuff along with glimmer and a little bit of weapon parts/class mat. Essentially, it means everyone will look very diverse now and you can put more emphasis on getting the right mix of perks from your gear rather than just rely on raid stuff. Which feeds into... - All the new weapons can be "reforged", which is the same as with the Iron Banner gear. Essentially, you reroll the perks to try and get the ones you want. - The Speaker now offers all sorts of currency exchanging. Shards for energy, energy for shards, shards for glimmer, shards for motes, etc. Well needed, really. - New vendor/faction gear (and not just recolours) and most should be selling all sorts of sets. I've probably missed some details but those were the major ones for me.

I saw the details, and it sounds cool and all. I'm just struggling to find any actual excitement for it. That and I'm as confused as anyone as to how it would fit in with what happened in ME3.

I still play regularly. I know Strangelove does too. I'm only really logging in for the weekly event stuff now (Nightfall and Heroic strike) and then occasionally to level up some stuff or help out with a raid. It's still a great game if you can find a regular bunch of people to play with, but definitely in need of some fresh content.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2015/04/20/art-director-shows-us-the-hidden-world-of-deus-ex-mankind-divided.aspx

John Wick It has finally seen release in the UK. Not gonna lie, but definitely way overhyped for what it is. That said, it's got some good action, a decent throughline, and I like that bizarre "hitman underworld/lore" thing going on (even if it sits weirdly with the drama). Also funny seeing a bunch of TV villains (Game of Thrones, Daredevil, etc.) as the bad guys here.

Regarding my concerns over the combat, this actually sounds promising. http://uk.ign.com/articles/2015/04/17/kicking-ass-with-the-witcher-3s-complex-combat-ign-first?abthid=55312d9dadf8e2721000001f