Murder

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-12905626

There's enough going on in the world right now that I rarely pay much attention to local news. This week in particular I've just been digging in to work and not really paid anything much notice. However the story linked above happened only just down the road from me. I'd noticed the police presence over the last two days and had wondered what what going on but did not give it much more thought than that. There were CSI teams investigating the grounds all around here. It was only this afternoon when officers called in here canvasing for witnesses that I actually found out what had happened. It's not often that you're so close to such incidents. I can't help but wonder though at the un-glamorous nature of a job with CSI: South Yorkshire.

Puzzles

I picked up my game of The Longest Journey again. This has distracted me from thinking about what to post. Now I'm stuck on a puzzle and not sure what to do, I need the cop's cybernetic eye but I don't think he's going to want to part with it.

Nothing New

I have nothing new or important to say today. There is of course new DLC for Mass Effect 2 which has just been released today, but I've not bought or played that yet. I'll probably save that until next week. It's about time I finished my second play though of Mass Effect 2, but I'm letting MoG dictate my gaming a bit. If I leave it until next week then it will become the focus of April's video rather than a minor game in March's video, which as you could probably guess will have quite a lot of Dragon Age 2 footage. In the meantime I think I'll go and do what I mentioned yesterday and experiment with video recordings.

A New Plan

It came to me in a dream. That's not true, but it sounds more mysterious. It's been a while since I posted a new video on my vlog channel because I was either too busy or too ill. However a couple of days ago I some ideas for how I could improve the quality and style of my videos which will hopefully lead to more and better content. So now I'm going to do some experimentation and hopefully there should be a new video up in the next day or two.

F1

It was a good start for Vettel and the Red Bull team winning the first race of the season. But where was all the promised extra excitement and overtaking? There is new fancy technology such as Kers & DRS and there are new tires which supposedly have to be changed more often, yet the race didn't feel any different to last year. I still enjoyed it as I have done before, but if the FIA are trying to inject some new life in to the sport they seem to have failed. Still many more races to go though, perhaps things will change.

Eve Is Forever

Along with Playlist Live and the new F1 season there has been another event this weekend which I almost forgot about. That event is the Eve Fanfest, a gathering of players and developers at CCP Games HQ with games, discussions, talks and parties all in celebration of the game. It's another event that I'd like to attend one day but is a bit limited by distance. Although I suspect from here it would be a lot easier to get to Reykjavik than it would be to get to Orlando or Melbourne! so that's a lot more likely. This afternoon I've been watching some of the live Internet footage from the talks but it's not quite the same. Still there has been some interesting things announced for the game. There were a couple of nice videos showing upcoming updates to Nebulae and Turrets. However the most interesting was one the called "A Future Vision". This is an example of how things might look in years to come once the spaceships are tied together with station interiors, planetary interaction & ground combat all coming together in the same universe.

After The Fall

Following the success of the Buffy Season 8 comics from Dark Horse, IDW Publishing approached Joss Whedon to do the same for Angel and the result was "After The Fall". Just like with Buffy Season 8, I'd read the first few issues as scans when they first came out but then lost touch for some reason (I don't remember why). So after I'd caught up with the Buffy stories I picked up the Angel ones as well, but I didn't read them right away. That is because IDW's paperback publishing schedule seems to be much slower than Dark Horse. There are 43 single issues of the comic (not including spin-offs). The first 38 have been split into 8 volumes and released in hardback, but only the first 8 issues (2 volumes) have been released in paperback. There's still no sign of TPB volume 3 on the release calendar but I finally got around to reading the first two volumes anyway.

In a similar way to the Buffy comics much has changed since the TV series due to cataclysmic final episodes. So the situation is very different here but the characters are all here, in some shape or form. Joss Whedon has not been as directly involved with this series as he was with Buffy Season 8 but main writer Brian Lynch is obviously a fan and has done a good job here. Artist Franco Urru does a great job on the main issues here while the guests on the "First Night" shorts offer some nice variations. It's a bit early to tell where the story will be going but these serve as a nice re-introduction. Now if only IDW would just pick up the release pace.

Playlist Live

It's a big You Tube conference / gathering / event this weekend. Lots of people who I'm subscribed to have been mentioning it for weeks now. It's one of those things which sound kinda fun but of course is taking place on the wrong side of the globe for me. Although if I'm honest with my workload this week I probably couldn't go even if it was in the UK. Still it should mean there will be some interesting videos this weekend.

What To Say?

No ideas today. Nothing interesting happened to me today and that's all there is to say about that. Watch MysteryGuitarMan play rulers instead:

Illness

Being ill and diabetic really sucks. In order to help your body get better you need to keep your blood sugar levels low and under control. As I've mentioned before I'm still not the best at that. However on top of that simply being ill raises blood sugar levels so you have to keep an eye on things even more than usual. As you can probably imagine that's a bit annoying when you'd rather be taking some time off and relaxing. It's not like I even feel that bad but my cold keeps coming and going and I can't seem to shift it. It keeps moving around as well and today it's affecting my ears. Ah well, it will clear eventually but in the mean time I've not been very inspired with topics to write about here as I've just been plodding along with work and watching TV mainly.

Completed: Dragon Age II

For my first play though of Dragon Age 2 I choose to be a female warrior using weapon and shield rather than two-handed. Since then I've started a second game as a mage, but I've not got very far with that one yet. I'm going to start off by stating that I enjoyed the game a lot, I'd have to in order to get through it in only two weekends. I say this to begin with as I've seen quite a lot of negative comments online about various aspects of the game. Some complaints are founded while others are down to personal opinion. I'm going to try and address what I can here. (as always, screenshots can be clicked for larger versions)


The first item to discuss is the framed storytelling angle. While it's a concept often used in film and TV, at the moment I can't think of another game I've played which uses the idea. A couple of opening narrations come to mind which sound like someone telling the tale after the fact but I don't recall ever seeing cutscenes between the acts showing the telling of the story. Some people have said that this diminishes your role in the story if it's just Varric telling the tale rather than it occurring to you directly. However the way it was presented here I didn't feel it was a problem and I thought it worked quite well as the bridge between the acts. In fact there were a few times where I would have wanted a little more information, but I'll talk about that later. It does mean you know throughout the game that Varric won't die but there are still many other unknowns to discover and investigate.


One of the biggest differences from Dragon Age: Origins is the lack of racial choices in character creation. The reasons for this I shall talk about in a moment but lets consider the effect this has on the game. People's opinion on this will differ depending on their play style, but for me the major effect this has is on re-playability. The RPG I have replayed the most in the past is the original Neverwinter Nights. In that game there are 11 base classes and 7 races to choose from in various combinations. Although some of the differences are only minor, for each of those combinations there will be some unique content in the game. This gives each play though a slightly different feel and I enjoy exploring and seeing how things turn out differently. Now for Dragon Age 2 there are no race choices and only 3 class choices. There is also a gender choice but that only really affects the romance options. So while I've played Neverwinter Nights around 10 times (not always to completion) it will only take perhaps 4 times to cover the majority of the Dragon Age 2 content. On the plus side this does mean that the developers can focus more and not have to consider the multiple variations so much. I know what a pain that can be from my days spent modding NWN. The beginning of my second play though has already shown the results of this when a different member of my family died during the prologue. I had presumed that was fixed but it turns out that is based on the class you pick.


Now the main reason BioWare reduced the character choices will have been so they could provide a spoken voice for the player character. This is the change which I have been least sure about and I'm still undecided on. In Dragon Age: Origins we had a silent protagonist and chose the exact text from a dialog tree to which NPCs then responded, it's the way RPGs have worked for many years. For Dragon Age 2 we choose a tone/concept from a dialog wheel, your character then speaks a line which matches and fits in with the current conversation. This is an extension of the system created for Mass Effect and I quite like the addition of icons showing extra information about what that choice represents. I hope something like that makes it in to Mass Effect 3. Some people prefer to read the exact text in their head in their character's own voice. Some people don't like the dialog wheel because you don't know exactly what will be said until you've clicked it. I can see pros and cons for both methods and for me they're about even, I've enjoyed games using both methods and so I still can't make my mind up about this. For Dragon Age 2 I think it works well along with the more cinematic cutscene style and dynamic camera movements. Jo Wyatt did a great with the voice of female Hawke as far as I'm concerned. Other than in the demo I've not played as male Hawke yet so I can't comment on Nicholas Boulton.


The biggest issue, which disappointed me the most, is the amount of area reuse. Now I understand that the game takes place in and around the city of Kirkwall so various places play host to multiple events, such as the Chantry, the Gallows or the throne room. That's fine and makes sense from a story point of view. The big problem is with things like mines and caves. There are only a handful of these locations and they are reused regardless of where you entered from. It doesn't take long before you start to recognize these, "Oh, this is generic cave #2 but we're entering from the other end and corridor #3 is blocked by a rock". I understand how much development time this will have saved but a little more variety would have been nice. There are rumours going around that this is because EA pushed BioWare for an earlier release date that they wanted, however it's just a rumour, we'll probably never know the exact reasoning behind these choices.


Story has always been one of BioWare's strong points and I don't find Dragon Age 2 to be an exception. It's definitely different from Dragon Age: Origins but if you just want an exact clone you may as well just play the original. There's no overall evil to be defeated here instead we have the personal story of Hawke and his/her journey from refugee to champion over 10 years. The only fault I could mention here is the time jumps. You don't play for the entire 10 year span, instead each act is separated by a jump in time of about 3 years. The thing is, after each jump it doesn't actually feel like much has changed or much time has passed. This is where I think we could have done with more exposition from Varric, even if it was just padding a few more tales of events during the jump would have made it feel like more time had gone by. It does feel like this game has suffered a little by being the middle child. After Dragon Age: Origins did such a great job of introducing us to the world of Thedas it seems like the job of this game in mostly to increase our knowledge of the world and the political situation and prepare us for Dragon Age 3. There are quite a few hints of things to come, probably all out war.


In summary, did I enjoy the game? Yes.
Is it the best RPG ever? No.
Is it different than Dragon Age: Origins? Yes.
Does that actually matter? No.
Is it perfect? No.
Is it still fun? Yes.
Have I lost faith in BioWare? Absolutely not!
Am I still looking forward to BioWare games? Definitely yes!

Fallen Dragon

While I may have missed my gig yesterday I did do something more peaceful and finish my current book, Fallen Dragon by Peter F. Hamilton. This is one of his few stand alone stories, not part of a larger series or trilogy. Still it's got everything you'd expect from Hamilton as an author. Multiple characters and story lines which all build separately and join together over time. Unexpected twists along with well realized worlds and technology. That continual feeling of having to know what happens next. This book has all those things and more. I enjoyed this book a lot and I'd definitely recommend this if you're a fan, if not I'd say you should start with one of his others, probably The Reality Dysfunction.

Sonata Arctica

I was originally planning to go see these guys live at Corporation this evening, but in the end I decided to skip it. I thought my cold was going away but it was back with a vengeance this morning. It's not so debilitating that I can't sit at the computer like usual however going to a gig when you've got a headache and can't breath normally is probably not going to be a lot of fun. So I shall have to catch Sonata Arctica next time they're in the country. At the beginning of the year I picked up tickets to five gigs, so far I've skipped two of them which is not the best start! Hopefully all is well for the next one, on Tuesday.

Commencement

"The events of this story take place approximately 3,964 years before the Battle of Yavin"

That seems like a rather exact amount of years for an approximation. Anyway this is the first volume of Dark Horse's Knights of the Old Republic series which turns out to be set before the games take place. The story mostly consists of meetings and set up. We've got a young Padawan who is framed for a crime and ends up on the run with a shady dealer type alien, a young women who is (for now at least) quite hostile toward him, a crazy old engineer and of course a robot. It all seems to be a bit generic, which is a shame. Along with that the artwork is not the greatest I've seen either. If has some interesting moments and with all the set up out of the way is has potential for the future. Unfortunately overall that made it a bit disappointing, it's just not very exciting. Even though it had the locations, the species and the technology I just didn't get the Star Wars vibe from it which I think is the biggest problem. I'm sure that like many things it could take a little time to settle and find its feet so I will pick up the next volume and give it a read at some point but I'm no longer as excited about it I once was.

Boss Fights

Based on my schedule over the last couple of months tonight should have been a cinema night. However there wasn't really anything on this week that I fancied. There's Battle: LA but that's still a bit new, I like to wait for them to quieten down. So I thought that maybe I'd watch one of the DVDs that I got waiting. Of course what actually happened was I kept working until late and then played more Dragon Age 2. Which brings me to the subject of the post, boss fights. They are a feature of nearly every game you could think of, especially FPS and RPGs. You get to a pivotal point in the plot and you end up in a duel with an overpowered evil dude who is really difficult to beat. Maybe I suck but I nearly always find these very frustrating. I never seem to be prepared enough. It might be that I've not upgraded my armour or weapons recently or perhaps I've simply not got enough health potions yet and it's often at a point where turning back and nipping to the shop it not an option. It always takes multiple attempts to get it right with the precise amount of attacks, along with a good bit of luck. It's actually one of the biggest reasons for me not completing some games. You get to a particularly difficult part and fail so many times that it stops being fun. So you quit and do something else then end up not going back for months. What's really odd is that often when you return months later you'll breeze though it on your first attempt and wonder why you had a problem in the first place. As you may have guessed I've just reached one of these points in Dragon Age 2 having died twice just before writing this post. I've not given up yet, I'll go back shortly, I just stopped to write this. Now time to put the kettle on and then have another go.

Not Well

I've acquired a massive cold from somewhere so I'm not feeling particularly inspired this evening. An early night is in order I think. Back tomorrow hopefully with less snot :D

Side Effects

Time for one of my rare diabetes related posts. Like many young males I spent my youth avoiding the doctor at all costs. Eventually this led me to being hospitalized with Diabetic Ketoacidosis after ignoring the symptoms indicating the onset of Type 1 Diabetes. That was six years ago and looking back it seems a bit silly. Since then I've seen a doctor at least every six months as part of my ongoing diabetes treatment and I've also been extra times to my GP for non-diabetic related things. In all those times I've always done my best to follow the recommendations of the doctor, until now.

A patient's level of control over their diabetes is generally noted as a HBA1C percentage, 6-7% is good, 12% is bad, my last one was around 9%. So while my control is still not perfect it could be a lot worse. One problem I have is that my body is actually quite resistant to insulin which leads to me taking quite high doses to keep my blood sugar levels down. For this reason my doctor suggested that I try taking a drug called Metformin. This drug is primarily given to patients with type 2 diabetes as the main method of control but it has uses in other situations, like mine.

However now that I've got my prescription I'm not sure I want to take it and that's because of side effects. Reading through the leaflet put me right off. More than 1 in 10 people will experience nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, abdominal pain & loss of appetite. What's "more than 1 in 10"? 2 in 10, 5 in 10? I presume it actually means between 1 and 2 but they could be more descriptive. The doctor did warn me about these possible symptoms and said they will decrease as your body gets used to the drug. Still I'm not sure I'm prepared to go through that. Rarer side effects include anaemia, hives & hepatitis. That's only 1 in 10,000 but it still seems like quite a risk to me. Then there's the possibility of lactic acidosis which, while the rarest effect, would require a trip to casualty!

On top of all that alcohol increases the chances of lactic acidosis so you are not supposed to drink while taking Metformin. Now I don't drink all that regularly but when I do it tends to be quite a large amount. With all that in mind I think that this is not a drug for me and honestly I wonder how others are willing to put up with all those side effects. It doesn't sound particularly healthy to me. I will have to work harder at the lifestyle changes instead.

Dr. Horrible...

And other horrible stories. This is a compilation of five short stories fleshing out the backgrounds and origins of the characters from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Dr. Horrible, Captain Hammer & Penny obviously all get a story but so do Moist and Bad Horse. Each story has a different artist but as it's all written by Zack Whedon and as the stories are slightly linked, it still feels like one thing. I enjoyed it all but of the five stories I think the Dr. Horrible origin was my favorite. One thing I've seen mentioned in a few reviews (even in a quote on the back too) is that the only problem is you can't have any songs in the comic version. This is true but taking my brain back to that world still left me with "My Eyes" playing in my head.

Fate of the Galaxy

It's about time we got a release date for Star Wars: The Old Republic other than "when it's done". There does seem to be more game play footage coming out recently and as the new trailer from PAX East shows it is looking like we're quite close now. This is the first trailer using all in-game footage and it is looking promising, even though I'm still a little unsure how it is going to work as an MMO.

Wedding

That's where I'm off to this evening, technically just the reception I suppose. That doesn't leave me with much time to post anything. I could have posted something earlier but I was of course distracted by Dragon Age 2.

More

Time for some more DA2 that is. It's been good so far with the exception of a couple of glitches, but they were fixed with a driver update. There is not a lot else going on here for me at the moment so instead my thoughts go to anyone affected by earthquakes and tsunamis. That's more important than anything computer game related today. Still here's a screenshot to fill some space.

First Impressions: Dragon Age 2

Or at least it should be. Ever since I started this blog I've done posts titled "First Impressions" when ever I started a new game, the idea being that you could search for that phrase to bring them all up if you wanted. The are two reasons why I'm not going to do this for Dragon Age 2. The first reason is simply that most of what I would say about it has already been covered in my post about the demo from two weeks ago. The second reason is the fact that I've not started playing yet. I ordered the retail disk copy rather than getting it on Steam and it was delivered this morning. Unfortunatly the publishers seem to have copied Steam and introduced a time lock authentication system meaning it can't be played before the release date. So I have to wait until midnight. It appears that publishers simply don't trust PC games to not be pirates anymore, it has got to a guilty until proven innocent situation. If I'd bought the XBox or PS3 version I'd have been playing by now. I've got an original disk and a CD key both which I've already linked to my EA online account and validated but still I have to wait to play. I don't understand what the point is! Who is this helping? What is it stopping? The game has only been out in the US since Monday and there's already a pirate copy available online, as there usually is on day one. The only thing these checks are doing is frustrating their actual paying customers. Well at least there's only an hour and a half left now and there's the little Dragon Age: Legends Facebook game to pass the time with.

I Should Post Something

However I have no idea what and I have run out of time. Sorry, normal service will resume tomorrow.

Too Many Games!

First a little background. You many have seen me complaining about computer issues on my Twitter over the last few days but the problem I've been having has actually been going on for a few months. The problem (minor random short freezes) was annoying but could be put up with and it was on my games machine not my main work one. For a long time I was convinced it was a software issue, which my Google research seemed to back up. I was led to believe that when Service Pack 1 was released for Windows 7 that it would be fixed. That turned out to not be the case. So at the end of last week I finally sat down to try and figure out what was the cause. Reinstalling Windows didn't help, the problem was still there. Reinstalling without updates didn't work either. Knowing that I finally started to look at the hardware and after a lot of trials and deduction I found that my main hard drive seemed to be causing the problem, although I still don't know why. However with that knowledge I could buy a new hard drive and begin the process of reinstalling all my programs. As my old drive had not completely failed I still had access to all my old save game files. In the process of restoring those files you end up firing up the game to check that it's working and restore correctly. This leads to thoughts like "Wow, I've not played this for ages" or "I really should finish this game", but when that happens 10-15 times you begin to wonder where to start! Still at least all is back to normal now and that choice will become irrelevant sometime in the next two days when Dragon Age II drops through the letterbox.

The Guild

Even though it's a different format this comic still feels a lot like the series. I suppose it helps that Felicia Day wrote them both. What we have here is a compilation of three comics which tell the story of how the Knights of Good originally met and joined together. The biggest difference from the series is that the comic get to spend a lot of time actually inside the game they play. We get to see some of the world directly rather than it all being inferred by reaction like in the series. It's a great little story which takes place mostly from Cyd/Codex's point of view. I see they're doing other books for the other characters, but last I looked there were no TPBs for those yet. The only slight problem I could see if that it would only work a prequel not as an introduction. I don't think it would work as well if you've not seen the series. So watch that first if you're new to The Guild. Of course if you don't play online game then neither would probably make much sense, but I guess most people reading this at least have some idea. Now I just have to wait for season five of the show to air.

More Comics

As you may know I have a fairly extensive DVD Collection. The problem with that, which I am now facing, is that I have pretty much reached a limit in what I can store with my current arrangement. A seemly unrelated fact is that nearly all the books I read now are on Kindle not printed. These two things mean that when I find myself an Amazon these days I tend to start looking at the comics and graphic novels rather than the DVDs and books. I picked up three last week and suspect they will all get a post later this week. Two are standalone complications, one a prequel to The Guild and the other stories related to Dr. Horrible both of which I've been meaning to read for a while. The third is the start of a series called Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I've always enjoyed that era of Star Wars so I thought I would give it a try before moving on to the new The Old Republic series.

Bad Start

And for the first post of a new blog year I'm going to have to have a short nothing post! Among various things I'm busy reinstalling Windows on one of my PCs and have not had the time to think of a topic.

One Year

It's been one year since I first created this blog and it still amazes me that I've kept up with it and posted something every day for an entire year. Admittedly some of those posts have been little more than a sentence but I like to think there has been some good stuff too. When I first started I had no idea what it would be about or where it would go. It came out of a desire to not spend so many unproductive hours on the Internet and to give something back instead. It seems to have worked quite well. According to the Blogger stats I've not got many regular readers but I'm still enjoying the process. It seems most of the random visitors I get find me through Google Image Searches matching one of the images on the posts, screenshots from Lair of the Shadow Broker are the most popular.

I think that I've got in to a flow with this now and so I'll be continuing for the foreseeable future. I try various other things but I think this blog is always going to be at the core of everything. I don't have anything else to say about this anniversary, I should have probably planned something special, perhaps next year.

Paul

How could someone like me not go and see a film about two sci-fi geeks whose pilgrimage takes them to America's UFO heartland where they meet a real alien. Add to that the fact that the two geeks in question are played by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost brings it up to "must see" level for me. I was not disappointed, but comedy is a strange thing. I enjoy various comedy films but it takes something very particular to make me actually laugh out loud, but Paul managed it a few times. I guess the biggest reason against laughter is nerdy self-consciousness, but I suppose when that's who the main characters of the film are it's easier to put yourself in their shoes.

The CGI for Paul was not exceptional but was perfectly adequate. I think because the brain knows what you're looking at doesn't actually exist helps you to ignore any instances where things are not quite photo-real. After saying saying in my Green Hornet review that I'd not seen much of Seth Rogen now within three months I've seen him twice, although technically it was only his voice this time. He seemed to do a good job injecting some life in to a CG character.

Probably the best part of a film like this would be the many references and in-jokes from other films. There are of course the obvious nods to ET and Close Encounters but the audience I was with seemed to miss the Star Wars and Alien references and I'd bet many people younger than me have never even heard of Mac and Me.

Recommended for any sci-fi nerd, probably a bit less so for anyone else but should still be entertaining.

Moments of Gaming (February 2011)

For a while I wasn't sure what music to use this month but then I noticed that there was a brand new album out by PeerGynt Lobogris. Of all the composers I've sampled while making these videos I think he is my favorite. I've used his work twice before, one video has two tracks of his solo work (September 2010) and another uses a track from a band which he was part of (January 2011). There are other people whose work I've used more than once before but PeerGynt Lobogris now holds the record for most used. It seems that he's quite a well known name in the area of creative commons music. My September 2010 video (the Bioware one) still gets views from people searching his name rather than for any of the featured games.

For February I didn't actually do a lot of gaming so I was a bit short on footage. Most of the game play this month is from the Dragon Age 2 demo, along with a dash of Civ 5, some Droplitz and a bit of Wolfenstein 3D. That does mean that I can linger on shots for longer so I can get more use out of the footage.

Now the video has uploaded it seems I've been hit with a copyright claim again. This time the claim is from EA. If EA are making claims now then I doubt I'll be able to do this for much longer as they're the biggest publishers of games at the moment. Still I suspect the claim is based on the end of the video. Although it is played at the end of the Dragon Age 2 demo it is just a copy of the official trailer. I must remember to stick to game play in the future and avoid and fixed video like that. At least this time they have not blocked distribution in any way. Although nothing shows up for me, it probably means that when you watch there will be an advert in the top right, so that's not too bad really.

Watch the video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKAlFrPW6U8

March Already?

February went by just as quickly of January if not more so. At this rate 2011 will not last very long. Nothing much eventful has happened today so I don't have a lot to write about. I've been working on February's Moments of Gaming but that is not finished yet so I'll have to post that tomorrow.