lathany

Turns out I was very fortunate in picking my summer leave this year. The weather has suddenly improved, just as my commute stopped. I've a nice long time off and a few things planned. I also aim to spend my quieter days alternating various jobs (housework mainly) with reading, films and computer games.

Apart from our twice-monthly LoveFilms offerings,

bateleur and I actually got out to see a new film release not that long ago.

Prometheus - Roughly once a year we escape the house twinless to an actual cinema screening. This year, the film was Prometheus which I watched in 3D with bateleur and chrestomancy and discovered that 3D gives me motion sickness (I narrowly avoided puking on the cinema floor). And the film itself? A number of people have written/linked to excellent reviews (smiorgan and undyingking in particular) and so I'll try to summarise my own thoughts briefly. Compared to what I expected, it is disappointing. There are bits in there that look very forced and the death of one character almost at the end is just crap. It's slightly more satisfying if you try to read in all the symbolism that various optimistic reviewers suggest should be considered, although this doesn't make the film a masterpiece in itself. That said, it's a perfectly reasonable horror story with some lovely visuals. (Which apparently cause far less motion sickness in 2D).
Indie Game: The Movie - Haven't heard of it? Well, neither had I until bateleur proposed we watched it (he helped fund it and is in the incredibly long list of people in the closing credits). IMDB has an entry for it if you want to take a look at it. It's a documentary about a number of indie computer game producers (they aren't all programmers) leading up to them selling their first big hits. I found it interesting to watch, although only one of the group (Edmund McMillen) was particularly easy to empathise with (and not just because he did The Binding of Isaac which I've never played, but was happy to sit through several hours of bateleur's games last Xmas as it's one of those rare games for which I love being a spectator). Anyway, if you can handle the "documentary" bit, this is interesting to watch.
Drive - I was disappointed to discover that, despite the name, this isn't particularly heavy on car chases, but is more of a mobster movie. It has won a number of awards, but I wasn't terribly impressed myself. Ryan Gosling successfully depicts an unsympathetic, monotone main character, but his success meant I had a lot of trouble caring about him, or anyone else for that matter. Carey Mulligan is in it but, in my opinion, miscast (I loved her in every other film I've seen of hers, but not this one). On the plus side, there's a very brief appearance from Christina Hendricks (Saffron from Firefly).
Balibo - This film is based on the true story of the "Balibo five", five journalists who disappeared when Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975. It's not a bad film and I watched events unfold with interest as a sixth journalist tried to discover what had happened to the five. However, I'm not big on the "true story" genre as it always seems to consist of unsolved problems and you know from the start that they'll be no interesting sci-fi twists (we'll try and avoid them in future after this and Of Gods and Men).

Apart from watching films, I've been playing a lot of Diablo III and I'm approaching the end of normal (or, at least, I'm pretty confident that I'm now in the last boss fight).

The Good - I have liked the quests in Diablo III, they vary (or, at least, as much as they can in this genre) and mix the short with the long. I also like the character upgrade system - there is some choice of what version of character to play (although, as bateleur points out, less choice than in II) and there appears to be less scope to create an unplayable variant than in the previous game. I also like the various references to the previous two games - a revisiting of the old I Kingdom characters as well as places and people from II. In particular, a number of the bosses made some welcome reappearances (FRESH MEAT!)
The Bad - Before I really get into my rant, I'll put in the need for an up-to-date computer and the naff font (I can never read the pluses on magical items) in the bad list. Now for the rant - I think my biggest problem with Diablo III is the multi-stage boss fights. I'm not a big fan of them in any game and III has taken the worst option - the multi-stage approach without check-points or save-points between sections. I guess that the idea is that once you've beaten a multi-stage boss you have an incredible sense of achievement, but this doesn't work for me. Instead I have an incredible sense of boredom whenever I see the first stage(s) again as I have to go through them repeatedly to figure out how I'm screwing up the later stages (not helped by repeatedly dying shortly after entering the later stages). I vastly preferred the II approach. Admittedly, the last fight is made even worse by a certain absence that I wasn't expecting (and has meant I've had to rework my strategy rather a lot). Other bad stuff? Well, in many ways the game feels unfinished. For instance, there's a traitor that I'm fairly certain doesn't get dealt with (although, maybe it's still in the last part of the game I haven't finished). Also there's loads of things which are not yet unlocked (presumably because you're supposed to go from playing "normal" to playing the harder levels to unlock them), but it's a bit frustrating to be fully aware that there's game content you won't get anywhere near during normal play. Finally - I think I've complained about the being on-line bit before, but, it's bad. The servers sometimes glitch and are sometimes down. This does not make for an enjoyable playing experience.
Overall - I can now see why this game has thoroughly mixed reviews. It deserves them. However, still a fun game, although rather harder than the previous two.

There has also been a certain amount of roleplaying. The local group is currently playing Revolution (the game with pretty character sheets) and I am running the final sessions of Meteor. I suspect my campaign will be over in just two or three sessions.

Revolution - Rudy turned up and turned out to be working for the bad guys. Or to put in another way, anyone who re-writes history to cast their opponents in a bad light has some explaining to do.
Meteor (Natalya, Viktor, Sergei and Pen) - When the gods disappeared, this group decided to head over to the Meteor site and explore the spaceship there. First time this game that I've been able to play the Alien and Aliens music.
Meteor (Yanosch, Kateil, Stephan and Josiah) - When the gods disappeared, this party found the entrance to Heaven and decided to storm it. As you do. There are now a few more dead gods on the list (Soundtrack: Myst: Exile).

What else? At the start of this month, we celebrated our seventeenth wedding anniversary with food and alcohol. Details and pictures over on

bateleur's LJ.

Finally, I realised yesterday that I've been blogging for ten years. I wrote my first entry "Teddy-tipping" on 19 April 2002. I'm pleased that LJ is still here and still active, although perhaps less so than it once was.