This Week’s Gaming Vids

January 23, 2017Leave a comment

I started a new (short) series of a playthrough of the CLASSIC 1992 RPG/strategy game Dune, based on the book (and heavily influenced by David Lynch’s movie). It’s an AWESOME game. And also if you search “the spice must flow” on YouTube I’m number 18. (My most successful tag to date is “you have died of dysentery” where I’ve reached the Dizzying Heights of number 4 for this vid.)

My attempt to finish Skyrim continues with a trip to the Thalmor Embassy in the sixth ep of my Let’s Play Skyrim.

Who’s the cutest cygnet? (and a new vid!)

November 28, 2016Leave a comment

So the loch I try and have a daily run by is still frozen over, and some of the swans have taken to investigating the land. And this cygnet came up to me making ridiculously cute noises – I’d no idea swans had cute noises! And I snapped a few pics. (Mummy swan was not far behind and she was far less cute and much more “hissss – away from my child, human!” to which I quickly obliged.)

Also, new vid up today of another classic DOS game, Castles 2: Siege and Conquest playthrough. I LOVE THIS GAME. Also, it’s probably responsible for my love of siege weaponry and much other medieval nonsense. It’s ridiculously good for the time (1992), with politics, plots, castles, and a well-judgey Pope to contend with as you fight it out with a bunch of other noble houses for the throne of France.

If you have any DOS games you’d rec, let me know! I’ve a fair old list, but am always happy to try something new. And I love talking about awesome older games. Computer games are such weirdly ephemeral media. The great plays, and novels, and paintings, and such will get restaged and reprinted and replicated, but the great computer games, even of just 20 years ago get forgotten. Which is such a shame.

Anyway, Castles 2: Siege and Conquest! A classic, dammit.

Friday Flail of Yay

November 25, 2016November 25, 20161 Comment

I am sleeping so badly this week. And I know part of it’s down to ridic anxiety with the world at large. Not even mental health related anxiety, since I really don’t think it’s irrational to be anxious given the daily news of what’s going on. As my dear friend Deb Stanish put it on the Twitters “… And yes, it’s a cliche, but it’s the biggest truth I know: Be a light in the darkness. So have a piece of #%@&^ pie.” I assume she means fucking pie and not shit pie, cause no-one wants shit pie. And also the pie is pecan or cherry or even apple and not bloody pumpkin pie, the monster of pies. Not the good sort of monster. The bad sort. ANYWAY, in that spirit, I’m going to try and do a regular blog post on Fridays of Yayful Things I’ve done or seen during the previous week.

1) My YouTube gaming channel – I started making gaming vids. For it is most yayful and fun and I love talking about gaming but don’t really get a chance to do it all that much. My gaming friends are people what I game with and only game with, and that’s less about gaming chat and more about loot and killing stuff to get more loot. So, yes, this is me nattering away as I play some games. At the moment it’s a playthrough of Skyrim Special Edition, Dota 2 games where I’m trying to improve (I suck, but so much less than I used to; I now feel merely medicorely bad rather than stupendously bad), and classic DOS games from my childhood (also taking requests!). Please do take a look and subscribe if that’s your sort of thing!

2) Verity! talks animated Power of the Daleks – This week’s Verity! is a discussion of the brand new Power animation, and it was awesomely fun, and gosh, I bloody love Power of the Daleks. It’s such a good story. Top quality Who, and I hope more people get the chance to enjoy it now as the animated version is vastly more accessible than the audio or the recon.

3) Michelle Yeoh is a new Trek captain – So, despite not being a Trek fan, ahem, I am quite looking forward to the new Trek show. I’m not sold on the new movies, and having grown up in the Golden Age of Star Trek, I really miss having it on the telly. And the first bit of casting news out of the box is AMAZING. Michelle Yeoh. And then it turns out she’s playing a captain in the new show. I’ve also read that the star isn’t the captain this time but another character (who’s also a woman) which is fine. I care not. Michelle Yeoh. Who is AMAZING. Who is far, far better than we deserve tbh, and she’s going to be there, captaining. And don’t forget female captains are still relatively rare in the Trekverse. There’s only ever been a handful onscreen. And this is sufficiently good casting news that no matter what other nonsense comes out before we get to see the actual show, I am going to be totally rooting for it. Michelle Yeoh, people.

4) Margaret Hamilton, she who led the team that coded the software that got Apollo 11 to the Moon, has been awarded the USA’s Presidential Medal of Freedon.

5) This picture (it’s actually a few weeks old, but it is my favourite one I’ve taken of my local loch…those are starlings, I *think*):

Despite it being actually freezing, I’m still going out running. Yesterday the loch was frozen over, and the poor local birdlife seemed rather put out at their home being suddenly solid. Also robins have arrived! From somewhere! I hadn’t seen any until this week, and now it’s impossible not to spot a few every day. If pretty rural Scottish scenery and swans, so many swans, are your thing, that’s what my Instagram is entirely composed of.

6) We’ve recorded new Down and Safe! So if you’re missing your fix of tasteful Blake’s 7 commentary a new episode will be with you this Thursday coming.

7) My sister, niece and nephew are doing a Jingle Jog for Parkinson’s UK. Nephew is but a year old so Quite The Challenge for him, but I’ve been assured he will be walking the whole way. If you can spare a pound or two for a good cause, please do consider sponsoring her.

8) There’s been a stupendous archeological discovery in Egypt, a new city! Over 5000 years old! Amazing stuff.

9) Though not QUITE as amazing as the NASA report released about the electromagnetic propulsion drive, which could be capable of taking us to Mars within 70 days. To sum up “it works, but it shouldn’t”. Which is awesome. And totally not giving me Event Horizon vibes. If I was in charge of stuff, we would be building a GIANT ONE anyway, and seeing what happens. Nothing could possibly go wrong. Probably.

10) I’m trying to talk myself out of buying this even though it would clearly be a very sensible practical purchase.

Ten is a very good round number. I shall stop there, and wish ye all a happy weekend!

Farewell!

The Most Terrifying Thing I’ve Encountered in Fallout 4

July 11, 20162 Comments

There I was, just helping out a guy who’d locked his father in an asylum after he got an ancient artifact stuck to his head 400 years ago and lost his grip on reality, when I opened a door and there was this:

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In the post-apocalyptic world of Fallout 4, these bloody monkeys are to be found in various places. Normally I shoot them, despite getting neither XP or loot, because they are scary. But that is when they are alone. When this gang started flashing their DEVIL EYES and clapping their CYMBALS OF EVIL at me, I nicked the clean grey suit from the suitcase (not for myself, for my settlers, who are all well-dressed and have nice hats) and backed slowly out of the room, and ran away.

It’s still not as weird as that time in Dragon Age Inquisition, where I had to alt tab out in fear and confusion to ask the Internet what the dickens has just happened:

That is a large pork pie wearing a top hat. There was also creepy music playing. This DELIGHTFUL Easter egg was discovered after I fell under where Solas hangs out at Skyhold.

So, that ending to Mass Effect 3?

June 9, 2016Leave a comment

I’ve spent the past four years avoiding spoilers about Mass Effect 3, but now I’ve finished my first playthrough, I can go read as much spoilericous content as I like, hurrah! (This is a subtle hint there will be many ME3 spoilers in this entry.)

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10 Awesome Things About Dragon Age Inquisiton

January 10, 2016January 10, 2016Leave a comment

Last week I finished my first runthrough of Dragon Age Inquisition, and I loved it. Ridiculously. First, it’s Bioware, and I’ve yet to meet a Bioware game I haven’t liked, and secondly, it’s Dragon Age, which has my RPG heart. (Yes, I love Mass Effect, and think it is brilliant and fem!Shep is one of the top sci-fi characters of all time, AND generally speaking I want rockets more than wizards, but somehow Dragon Age was still the one I fell in love with.) *And* this was the very first PC game I’d played for over a year. Reason being, I was concerned about the amount of time I was gaming, and decided to quit for a year to check I wasn’t horribly addicted or something, and I was just making GREAT life choices with all the imaginary adventuring nonsense. Anyway, turns out it’s QUITE EASY to choose not to game, and while I had more time to waste in other immensely creative ways, I did miss the gaming. For gaming is awesome. And DAI was the last game I’d bought before I quit and I never had a chance to play it, so it had QUITE a build up in my head to live up to, and it did. So here are my ten most favourite things from my first complete runthrough. (On a first runthrough, I’m always a wizard (or whatever the glass cannon class is)…unless I find out part way through I can be queen if I’m a warrior/rogue noble human. Ahem.) And here was no different. Also female human. Also generally nice. I don’t like it when the pretend people judge me poorly. Anyway, the things!