Hartlebury Common is simply stunning at the moment. The denuded trees have all grown white leaves from the tiny icicles that have formed on them. Combined with the current sunlight that has yet to melt them - stunning. As you might expect I have no camera to hand.
An interesting piece by Enemies of Reason; it does get tiring - in local form how many times can I discuss Vale Road car-park or the Single Site?
However what strikes me is the tone of those he's commenting about. It's all about relativity - they had this income, now they have less. Instead of being to waltz around shops and pick up that marvellous handbag; or not have to worry about filling up the tank on the car as the business takes care or it; they now have to think about these things, something they've either never had to do or not had to do in a long time and it hurts (them) and they want to share their pain.
The trouble is what they're moaning, whining, or occasionally simply relating about is having to drop to a lifestyle that the majority may experience. As such they set themselves up with two groups targeting them - those that are miffed s/he is complaining about having to live like them and those that are miffed that s/he is complaining about a way they themselves can no longer reach due to the recession.
All these stories do is cater to those who are still comfortable in an effort to make them feel sorry for the writer while allowing them to spare not a thought for those whom this is a standard or desirable lifestyle.
As such they need to be pilloried at every opportunity to shake them from their self-obsessed complacency.
Okay Assassin's Creed Brotherhood was going cheap and I had a voucher satisfied :-P But that's it no more game buying for me - I've still got DLC in Fallout 3 to go through as well as a whole new neutral character to create. I've still got Fallout: New Vegas with a possible three runs there.
I've still got Medal of Honour and Frontline that came with it (damn you MoH) As well as Borderlands for sheer kicks; Prototype to finish once I can recall how to play the bloody game. I suppose I've got Oblivion to finish (it just got tedious, but I've made it more fun with my invisibility suit so I might just see how it ends now) and oddly Little Big Planet - sounds pitiful, but it got really hard and finicky in the later levels.
Sacred 2 - yeah just need an interrupted run there due to the stupid no pause no insta-save 'feature'. And I suppose there's some other games to tweak the trophies out of if I really want to (which come to think of it I'm not really that bothered about for most of them).
So what am I doing at the moment - playing Assassin's Creed 2 again. I only started it to get a save file (remember it's protected and so went poof along with my dead console) to see if AC:Brotherhood would use it - no it doesn't. But I thought "I'll just take it up to the bit where..." and then "Well I might as well get them out of Florence" [sigh]. Ah well I am 94% on the trophies so I might as well see if I can polish off Kleptomaniac, Fly Swatter (easy the pair of them) and No hitter(that's going to be hard) and thus receive the 'you've got them all' final trophy.
So anyway no more game buying for me... well until InFamous 2 and Bioshock: Infinite come out anyway :-)
For those who've never played it Fallout 3 features a Karma system - do good things and get good karma do bad things and get bad karma; it's even possible to try and stay neutral. Each path produces different results within the game world and if you've only experienced one you're missing out.
I've taken my good character to level 20; but my evil character (named Twonk) is now level 30. The trophies had been added to the game during my first run, so I went back and ran another good character up to near the end of the game; then started an evil character. Then the DLC was released which pushed the cap to 30 hence the disparity.
So what was different? It was disconcerting not to have someone running up to me in Megaton saying how wonderful I was and handing me a present; possibly because I'd turned it into a radioactive crater. I noted that I didn't get the same thanks in Tenpenny Tower (those who'd bribed me to blow up Megaton), but was pleasantly surprised when I visited the Slaver compound of Paradise Falls and had someone run up to me to tell me what a badass I was and to please take this. Also amusing to note when I bumped into someone it was all "I'm really, really sorry" instead of "Watch where you're going" Oh yeah me badass.
It also freed up my choice of companions I ignored Dogmeat (the dog) and picked up the former mercenary from Megaton; I also debated over taking the ghoul. Nothing really to stop me hiring them as a good character; just not in character to do so.
It also freed up some conversation choices, not only giving me specific "Evil Karma" choices; but allowing me to use some such as "[Strength] Tell me before I kick the shit out of you" which would have impacted negatively on a good character.
Also a joy just to see what happens when you kill every good character you see. I could have made the game much harder by killing doctors and traders, but they're useful to me so I left them alone I just killed their friends and family instead hah :-P
Being evil also gave me a free rein in my choice of perks - how can you take Cannibal as a good character? Or Sandman which allows you to kill sleeping NPCs instantly? I also found myself taking a more gung-ho approach - possibly due to my companion who would happily charge in whenever an enemy presented itself and that shaped the perks I took.
On a final note listening to Three Dog slag me off was interesting, made me want to revisit him and 'reward' him for his comments, but I decided I liked the free publicity of don't mess with me.
Unlike so many games that feature a good/bad dichotomy I can truthfully state that playing Fallout 3 as an evil character was totally different experience than playing as a good one. I await to see how I play as a neutral, but three games in one - that's not bad.
One Land rover type bumped into the back of some estate type car on the Dunley Road. As everyone was travelling at below 5mph I couldn't see any damage, but as you might expect it was on the outer edge of the bend so it was difficult to see oncoming traffic.
And someone shed part of their load in Vale Road. From the angles I'm guessing they came up Mitton Street did a sweeping turn and dropped something (some powder and hay?) off into the second lane leaving half a bag blocking that lane at the junction. This must have destabilised their load as another bag had fallen off into the third lane and unfortunately someone had run into it and had to halt to pull it out from the front of their car.
As is becoming the norm traffic was backed up through the town, over the bridge and onto Dunley Road and all because traffic can't get out into Gilgal. How many times have I got to state that a delay needs to be added to the lights in the morning to allow the, otherwise, continuous flow of traffic to clear. And again please don't tell me that a) vehicles shouldn't be crossing when the traffic's backed up and b) everyone should merge. Unless you're going to have someone monitoring it 24 hours a day people are going to do that and unless the corner is cut at Gilgal people won't merge even if they could find a gap in the queue.
Sunday dinner with one part of the family and afterwards their laptop comes out [sigh] they'd just switched broadband providers and wanted me to check their security was okay. To keep things simple previously I'd deleted Norton (which just saps the computer of all strength) and used XP's own firewall (good enough) and a simple AV.
The firewall was turned off, and the AV had vanished.Nothing had warned them about this because Norton the programme I'd removed, and wasn't there, was happily telling XP's security system that it had it all covered. Tick boxes and downloads and all sorted. However the next thing was - "While you're on there how do I get music?"
She's got an MP3 player, has happily ripped CDs using Media Player, and transferred them so...? Ah how does she get new music. Talking earlier about things they did on the computer I knew that they had an Amazon account.
So off to Amazon, onto MP3 downloads, and they're offering some freebies. I select one that sounds decent enough and hit One Click; download the Amazon downloader (one-off) and then the file. It adds the music to WMP and asks if you want to open it; and there it is.
"Oooooo" she says I'm looking for...." a song she doesn't know the name of or the artist, just part of the lyric. I show her how to do a general search, then show her YouTube which often features music and "that's the one" she notes the name and artist heads back to Amazon and finds it's only 79p OneClick, open, and WMP there it is.
"Oh that's so easy what else was I after?"
"Thanks a lot for that" says her husband to me
"They're only 79p" she tells him
"That's how they get you." I tell her "Micro-transactions. It's only 79p but you'll just have that one and that one and that one."
"No I'll only buy this one... and this one and..."
"Oh great" says her husband :-)
Apparently released at the end of October I spotted the demo on the Playstation Store and thought to try it. It's amazing... that someone can think to release such a pile of poo in this day and age.
My first "uh-oh" moment was seeing the Laurence Fishburne character in the opening sequence and then entering the demo of Case 4 with Catherine Willows. These are high-res Playstation 2 models aren't they. Ah wait this is also out for the Wii - yeah you've just upped the Wii models haven't you?
Well at least they've got the actuals actors voicing things too - except it sounds like someone's dropped them into a recording booth, thrust the script at them and said "We've only got the booth for a day, just read what it says" zero emotion.
Into a cut-scene and you can't skip any of it - damn it we paid to use these likenesses and voices and you'll damn well sit there and appreciate them.
But hey if the game's good who cares about graphics. Shame the game's not that good.
