Vasari

Yeah, the whole thing was really silly, I think people were trying to hard to spin it into "an evil jerk is ripping off our indie darling, what a monster!"

I graduated this week! I don't have much to say other than I was exhausted with education and I am so, so happy to be finished. So please forgive me for feeling incredibly self-satisfied about having a degree. And because I'm Scottish, I dressed appropriately for the ceremony.

Something is happening to Brad

Bungie's weekly update has some really interesting stuff about questlines in The Taken King. This screenshot caught my eye, it looks like they'll have a questline associated with every subclass.

Thanks to this discussion I tried to go back to World of Warcraft last night. I had a free trial sitting in my inbox, so I activated it and logged in, and the first thing saw was a message saying "HEY ALL YOUR ADDONS ARE BROKEN CAUSE YOU NEED TO UPDATE THEM", so I immediately logged out again because I realised how much work it is to get into that game again. I really love the boss encounter stuff in games like that, which is the thing that's kept me coming back to it over the years, but I don't think I can put in the time to get access to the raids anymore. Even the idea of raid matchmaking turns me off of it because I like the challenge and don't want to see easy versions of the fights. I think that's why I'm so into Destiny; it's really easy to get to the endgame content and find a group to raid with. It's the same kind of complex boss encounters but with a lower barrier to entry.

When this first got announced there was a big commotion about how it was a "ripoff" of Gunpoint. I think part of that came from the developer himself saying that he was inspired by Gunpoint and wanted to make a game like it. I think it does the game a disservice just to think of it as that though, because it's really unique in alot of ways. I actually got stuck at the point I left off from playing last night. I'm on the level where you have to kill the Officer, and there's a wide open area surrounded by two buildings with 11 guards scattered about. I can't see any way to stealth kill more than one or two and with that many guards it's hard to lead their shots to set up an attack on someone. I'm going to go back tonight and get through it.

Generally strength benefits you if your melee attack gives you some other special bonus, like the extra shield. I use blink strike all the time in PvP, but I have the perk that makes its cooldown 4 seconds long so that replaces any need for strength gear. One novel use for strength is to pair it with Peregrine Greaves in PvP, which turns your shoulder charge into an instant kill if they don't have any overshield or damage resistance.

George Osborne is smiling, and that's never a good sign.

I went to the dentist today for a root canal. My fifth root canal, actually. On the same tooth! I first got it done over a year ago, but they didn't get all of the nerve out so I still had feeling in it. My dentist had three more attempts at it before he eventually referred me to a dental hospital. I was originally supposed to have surgery where they pulled back my gum and drilled out the root of the tooth, but the surgeon decided he could do a better job than my crappy dentist and put me down for another root canal. At this point I'm just getting bored of them. I did manage to sneak a wee selfie on the chair though, so it's all been worth it.

I don't disagree that Thorn is too effective right now (I'm one of the arseholes who uses it and blink + max range/impact shotgun), but I think there's a problem with Iron Banner as a whole. With level advantages enabled, you're at a disadvantage unless you play at max level, so you only really see level 34 players in there. I guess that's also a function of the max level being much easier to compared to previous endgames, but I digress. I think the biggest problem is that the way things are balanced right now in IB, everything just feels like it does more damage. It feels like regular Crucible but faster. Video games is right that Bungie games (excluding Marathon) have always felt a bit slower and more deliberate than Call of Duty-style shooters. That makes Iron Banner feel less fun, because you kill a little quicker and you die a little quicker. And I'm not sure what the point of that is considering that everyone has the same level advantage as everyone else anyway. I imagine it's a gametype they came up with before launch that's just become a permanent staple, but it's not the kind of thing they'd design knowing what they know now.

I think there's a limit on how many embeds you can have in one post. Oh man, The Dead Weather have a new album coming out this year!

Some choice selections from my pictures folder:

What have I been telling everyone this whole time? Drew is Giant Bomb MVP.

Cheeto Dust Palace

Wow, that's impressive. What sniper rifle/perks are you using? I just tried sniping in the Crucible for the first time today. It didn't look anything like that.

There's also "Dix Against Humanity", where you replace the black CAH cards with Dixit cards.

Good news for anyone outside the US and Canada too, since we can't get codes over here. IGN has some weird Destiny news today, apparently David Cross was hired to punch up the Ghost's dialogue in Destiny, and none of what we wrote was used.

Turns out someone has figured out how the Red Bull codes are generated, it's incredibly easy to make up your own. I'll put it in spoilers since it's possible that any code you type in is one that would be printed on a can somewhere. I doubt they'd ban people for this but do it at your own risk anyway.

Sometimes I think the easiest way to make money is any to combine any two things that nerds like on a tshirt. My Little Pony/Ghostbusters. Mass Effect/Batman. Predator/Jurassic Park. Star Wars/Back to the Future. Doctor Who/Dragonball Z. They don't even have to be funny or clever combinations, just a picture of Darth Vader sitting in a DeLorean would do it. You could make a living doing these if you didn't have any shame!

Haha, it's settled then! We'll go on friday, at least 2-3 hours earlier would be ideal.

It's 2PM and I'm awake so I'm getting my regular sleep pattern back. I'm having an early night tonight so I won't be around late enough to play (It'd be 1:30AM in my timezone). I could do another day this week but I don't know if it's possible for you two to start earlier. Feel free to get someone else if that's easiest.

We lasted until the eighth page before the British thread started talking about the weather. It was inevitable but I'm proud of us for lasting this long

Chris's fallout shelter sounds awfully similar to the mansion from the end of 28 Days Later, so I'm not sure how much of a step up that is. I wish I could play this game and see it for myself but it runs like crap on my phone and crashes constantly. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to write a scathing piece of hate mail about how the Mega Drive version of Aladdin is superior to the SNES version (and how Mega Drive is a way cooler name than Genesis.)

While you're all having a heatwave, most of central Scotland was covered in thunderstorms tonight.

They're being pretty cagey about this. They've said the Ghost will have more dialogue, but they've dodged any questions about Peter Dinklage and VO in general. There was a brief interview at E3 with Zach Braff (Who's apparently a huge fan) and he outright said "Peter Dinklage isn't coming back, I want to do the Ghost voice!" I wonder if they're having trouble signing him? I wouldn't be surprised after all the jokes about his performance.