Hot Heart

Love it.

Yeah, I actually downloaded some newer episodes and then when it came to watching one, I always thought to myself, "This is forty minutes I could spend doing something else..." As much as I like Coulson in the films, he's a supporting character. Clark Gregg seems like a cool guy, but he's too wooden, or the character's just too dull; I like Skye, but they're doing a whole 'ongoing mystery' thing I don't care for. Amd I can see shades of them trying to make it like Firefly, but it just doesn't have the free rein it needs, nor the interesting world, characters or dialogue. Firefly episodes tended to be about something; whether it was juxtaposing the border planet life against the Alliance bureaucracy, or showing how Mal cares more about his crew than a father about his children. Too much of AoS was 'monster of the week' or 'ongoing conspiracy'.

Who ARE you?

I mean, if you want both Brothers climbing and then moving along a ledge, you're having to hold those buttons/triggers nearly the whole time as well as directing the sticks. I've never had a problem actually doing them, just that when it's so often it gets tiresome, especially when the climbing areas and doing those little jumps from climb-to-ledge can be so finicky.

Back for what's mine! My friends had another 'Game Day' yesterday and though I had stuff to take care of before I could join them, I took part in a good few games. First up, we had a go at Firefly with five players. Which requires a lot of table space. They were all prepared for it to take a while, but I assured them that once the first goal of the scenario was completed (become solid with 4 specific contacts) that the other two would go very quickly. It took a while to explain everything (as it does), but overall it took a bit over 4 hours. Fortunately, everyone likes the theme, and they enjoyed all the funny little oddities and whenever they get to set the Alliance or Reavers on one another. We played fairly ruthlessly when it came to screwing one another over, though one guy missed the opportunity to steal a few crewmates of his closest rival and leave him twisting without a well-needed pilot at critical moments (when Reavers attack, or so he could get a Keyword from a card that requires a Pilot). I made a few poor decisions with regards to which jobs to work earlier on (plus, forgot my leader's key ability for buying a sweet new drive core at half price), and then got royally screwed thanks to an unlucky card draw with Reavers. Meanwhile, I think some of the other guys were quite fortunate with their starter jobs and made good bank early on. Overall, though, it was good fun and future games should go quicker. Plus, it was pretty much neck-and-neck for two guys, right at the end. If one hadn't succeeded at the final goal attempt, the other (who got unlucky with Misbehaves) could've spitefully hired any of his disgruntled crew (of which he had 5), even if just to immediately fire them and set him back a bunch of skill points. I would say that if you're using the Artful Dodger promo ship (which you have to for 5 players), there needs to be somewhat of a handicap for that player. It gets 2 less cargo slots, but that isn't adequate recompense for the whole extra crew space and increased fly range it gets by default. The value of the ship is written as $700 more than the standard Firefly-class, though that never figures into the game, and the better drive core you have to pull from one of the supply decks has a value of $1200 or so (standard ones aren't given a value as you don't buy them though), so I'd suggest taking something between $700-1000 from their starting money of $3000. Or have a look at how much extra crew space is and get an idea of how much better that drive core is, to work out what to deduct. After that, we went for something lighter and simpler...Cards Against Humanity! Hadn't had a chance to play this before, so that was a lot of fun. One of friend's cracked up at some of our 'haikus' where we just went for the funniest three-card order we could find (The Honey Monster. Touching David Beckham's Hair, A Little Bit. Giving 110%) while I got an 'In a world...' task and just had to do it film trailer man voice, but with the comic twist of the Honest Trailers guy's voice, obviously. Though, I could barely get through that either ("In a world ravaged by Ethnic cleansing, our only solace is...A pretty cool hat"). What was odd is that the game was another close rivalry between two guys, and none of us had a look-in; even though it's not exactly something you can really aim to win. Anyway, great fun. Then we had another quick go of Quirkle, and that just seems boring by comparison. I'm no genius, sure, but I just find the mechanics too (unnecessarily) convoluted/complicated. Basically, if I were looking for a game in that vein, I'd much rather play Scrabble or Rummikub. Then, the legendary Carcassonne. I had no damn clue how to play this game, even when it was explained, and I sort of stumbled through, finally understanding in maybe my penultimate turn, having looked at the instructions along the way. I made a fairly decent move with placing a farm early on, but then the two more experienced players went and messed that up. Then I just got screwed over with a massive city that I didn't get to build onto, while the ultimate winner did, and he just ran away with the game. On the plus side, I didn't come dead last... After that, it had gotten pretty late and the three dudes who share a house buggered off home, so I played a game of Pandemic with the other remaining guy. We randomly selected our characters (scientist and construction worker) and did a game of 4/6 difficulty, i.e. 4 of the 6 infection cards shuffled in. Maybe there was a little luck with the initial cards, or maybe I managed to coordinate the thing so damn well, but we had two diseases cured in the first few turns and then the other two a little after that. And only two outbreaks overall. We absolutely beasted it. Though my friend claims those 4/6 games can go much worse. Pfft, I say!

Double Whammy Another film that was marked for removal from Netflix, though this one was actually alright. An early 2000s indie-type (but silly) comedy with Denis Leary, and a whole bunch of other recognisable faces and or cool people; Steve Buscemi, Chris Noth, Luis Guzman, Donald Faison, Liz Hurley. Keith Nobbs and Maurice Compte (Mike's sort-of Cartel equivalent in Breaking Bad) do a great job, too, though. Just a silly, slightly odd comedy in which Leary's detective makes a fool of himself when a madman attacks a fast food restaurant he's in and his back gives before he can fire. He then falls over and gets knocked unconscious while some little ginger nerd grabs his gun and shoots the guy, becoming a local hero. Though it then branches off into side stories regarding a chiropractor (Liz Hurley) that he starts seeing, Luis Guzman and his stupid daughter who manages to...I'm not sure, but she really wants a tattoo to fit in with these stupid girls at her school and so goes to these psychos who also agree to kill her dad, or just kill her dad anyway but not because of that usual crime drama reason of love, they just felt like doing it. Basically, that whole side to the story is so dumb, it drags it down a bit. Plus, it has some weird loose thread with another police detective knowing the daughter was involved and saying as much, yet the scene's right near the end and has no purpose besides undermining setting up Leary as the hero (which the story does at the end when he stops the psychos). Anyway, it's got Donald Faison and Keith Nobbs as these funny screenwriters, and the interplay between them is really good, and there's some silly, light humour throughout, so it all made for an OK watch.

Started playing Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Liking it so far. Nice art style and simple but affecting gameplay. Though, I'm not too fond of having to hold the action buttons to stay climbing or moving along ledges. Feels annoying more than challenging, and I don't think holding a controller in that sort of position is ever comfortable.

Well, a whole chicken and sauce would work out cheaper if you're making loads but you have to cook it, and you're weighing up shelf-life, storage and just how often you want to eat the damn stuff.

Mayonnaise is the one common condiment I flat will not eat. It's disgusting. By 'least offensive' I meant 'most lacking in discernable flavour', but you see my point. You don't want to be adding other stuff into that mix!

The idea of a spread or butter is as Dean said, to moisten it up a bit; especially since it depends on a family or person's budget and what bread they're buying (longer-lasting stuff is really dry). And it does 'glue' it a bit compared to just mustard or mayo since you don't tend to slather those on all over the bread. It would depend on what you're filling it with, though. If you want something like cheese and pickle, that pickle sure as hell ain't gonna hold everything together, and adding the least offensive condiment you can find, so mayonnaise, just wouldn't be the same. As for the packets of stuff, they're sort of the 'ready meal' equivalent filling for sandwiches. And they're not bad, actually. More for people who just want to make a quick sandwich, or when it's a bit more time-consuming to prepare and mix all the ingredients (egg mayonnaise, prawn cocktail, coronation chicken).

Who said that?

Wide Open Spaces Came across this one day while browsing Netflix and added it to my list for future viewing sometime. After all, it's by Arthur Mathews (one half of the Father Ted writers) and stars Father Dougal himself (Ardal O'Hanlon) along with Spud/Mullet (Ewen Bremner). And it sounds like an off-kilter style film, being about a couple of losers who wind up getting involved in building a 'famine theme park' (as in Ireland's 'Great Famine'). So, it transpires that this film would be gone from Netflix on 1st Jan, so I sat down on New Year's Eve and had a couple of choices. This or Outlander. I started with Outlander and watched for a little bit. That is, until the alien protagonist who crashes down in Norway around 709AD 'downloads' Norse through his eyeball and then loudly declares, "Fuck!" at the pain that process caused, before grabbing his highly-advanced weapon and just obliterating a tree as a test. After that I decided to cut my losses and switch to Wide Open Spaces. I can see that it wants to be like a bit like a Pinter play or perhaps something close to In Bruges but it's just plain fucking boring. There's the odd decent gag here and there, and I can't really fault the actors, it's just nothing much happens and it has no momentum at all.

Completed and won a solo game of Firefly. Went for the 'solid with 5 contacts' goal and did it with 5 turns to spare. It was pretty fun, though I must admit luck played a fairly large part in proceedings. For one, I managed to grab River after putting Simon on my crew during setup (solo allows you to pick up to 4 crew members from any deck up to the value of $1k, so I was Mal and took Kaylee, Zoe, Wash and Simon). River is useful if you're lucky with a die roll and she contributes the skills you need (doesn't always happen) and I rolled a natural 6 on two occasions which really saved my hide (otherwise, Simon gets to add 2 to the roll meaning a 4+ would've sufficed). Plus, I stumbled across a better engine right away as well as the Cortex Uplink from the first expansion which let me take some different jobs without having to revisit the contacts (as I didn't like a few Niska had given me). It was extra helpful because a single-player turn ends when you've taken each of the available actions or every time you fly, so I was able to get a new job while on the other side of the board. However, a lot of my turns were wasted moving slowly through Alliance Space so they didn't come for my illegal goods or wanted crew. At one point I drew the Reaver Cutter card while in border space, but was able to pull a Crazy Ivan and escape. EDIT: This is my thread now!

Beat LEGO Marvel Super Heroes. I would try and 100% it, but it has these stupid fucking flying races and the controls are horrendous, and with no way to do an immediate restart. Gave up on LOTR because of the 'quest' crap and some really bad platforming stuff. Shame to give up on this one as well.

Grabbed Storm Front, the first in the Dresden Files series (as per P4's recommendation) and The Fault In Our Stars as I'd had my eye on them and both were on sale on Kindle.

As far as I know, they say it was a collaboration between Tangerine Dream, Woody Jackson, The Alchemist and Oh No, then mixed by DJ Shadow It's pretty obvious that these specific artists performed different songs if you listened to the soundtrack. Plus, I know people like Deantoni Parks played on the soundtrack but for what songs? If it's pretty obvious then why don't you figure it out? All Rockstar have said is that it is a 'one-time collaboration' and the official site makes no distinction as to who did what. To me it really does sound like an eclectic mix of things thrown together, with a lot of electronic synth elements in every one. Pfft! I totally made the 2012 one! Apologies for any confusion, I meant the PXOD article side of things. (Why haven't you been banned yet?!)

I think he proposed some sort of best all-time game music bracket thing, yeah. But this an annual thing I've done the previous two years.

Ah, I'm putting together an article for the site and started collecting possibilities a while back, so you're probably thinking of the document on the PXOD GDrive (to which you're free, nay, encouraged to contribute).

Hooray, now you get to sample diving off the heli-carrier (with one of my favourite bits of music from the year)

Not sure if anyone's seen it (nor is there much to see), but someone recorded the teaser trailer while at comic-con, I think. So, not brilliant quality but better than nothing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1gaKoMYM4g

As far as I know, they say it was a collaboration between Tangerine Dream, Woody Jackson, The Alchemist and Oh No, then mixed by DJ Shadow Maybe you're thinking of last year's?

Mark of the Ninja got real cheap, and I'm glad I clicked through to the game page because otherwise I wouldn't have noticed the Special Edition DLC (or a bundle with that included) for an extra 50p. Sigh! More games...

Hey, everyone! Just as before, I'm putting together some of our favourite game music of the year, so it'd be great to hear some of your picks as well. To start things off, some of mine.

I detect a certain degree of auto-tune, but it's cool either way and a great song.