Irishjohn

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Posts posted by Irishjohn

  1. Posted

    I started Dota 2, against my better judgement. It's quite interesting, really. I'm squeezing a game in here and there while my six month old son is asleep while the occasional voice I hear belongs to someone much, much younger than me.


    I've been doing okay. I'm interested in support (seems less intimidating as a new player and I like the idea of the role) and have been going warlock. I've been decent in a couple of games with people dropping out. Had my first "real" game today, in terms of actually having a team up against us that seemed to know what it was doing. I got called out for not being there for teamfights. In my defence, I wasn't aware that was a thing. I was focusing on not feeding. Also, in other games people had settled into 2 each lane plus a mid. This game was weird. It felt like there was constantly three players on each team roaming together and mid was very busy.

     

    Anyway, a little bit of info from an uneducated player. I will never rise above casual interest for skill and real life reasons but I'm surprised by how enjoyable Dota 2 still is. I had ruled it out for a long time because I didn't have time to "learn." It's not THAT intimidating, at least at the moment. I'm still using limited hero sorting options and things like that, mind.

  2. Dune

    in Books

    Posted

    I remember Heretics being the most action-packed of the series, though maybe it's only later on that it picks up. There's a lot of Miles Teg doing bullet-time space karate in that one. 

     

    Things definitely get weird with the people from the Scattering. This is where the weird sex stuff starts, which gets pretty creepy in the final book. I think a lot of people lost interest at this point in the series. I like to imagine that there would have been a great payoff in book 7, had it been written.

     

    Yeah, the sex stuff was always there I suppose but it felt different semantically. More talk of love (in the case of Jessica) and breeding (in the case of Bene Gesserit strategy). I'm not against the sex coming more to the forefront, but it doesn't quite work for me even as far as I got.

     

    I don't know. I think bullet time space karate just fails to interest me at this point. The Bene Gesserit were more interesting to me as a secretive group that had tools like Voice. The fact they're all actually Cirque de Soleil with bloodshed, less so. And Waff's story! Maybe it revives and goes somewhere, but I was done unfortunately.

  3. Dune

    in Books

    Posted

    Yes, but Dune is like a prequel of sorts.

     

    I think of it more that Dune is its own thing, Messiah and Children follow as a pair with God Emperor of Dune as the clearly planned sequel to those two. After that... I love what Herbert did, I just thought I would enjoy reading it more than I did.

  4. Dune

    in Books

    Posted

    I'm afraid that after two separate prolonged efforts, I'm giving up on Heretics of Dune. It's just not an enjoyable book.

    I stand by my love of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. God Emperor of Dune is also an interesting book. Heretics feels like the beginning to a whole new series though. A series where nothing much happens.

  5. Posted

    This is the worst - 

     

     

    For me, "consistently annoyed" is a wild understatement.

     

    I accept the logic that there's a reason there are separate competitions for male and female tennis players (to use one example) though I don't really think he's thought that through. Thing is, even if you accept that as a blanket position, um... where do men have a physiological advantage when it comes to APM and macro/micro? We're getting into boys study maths and girls study home economics territory here.

    I guess the moral of the story is that girls ruin everything. THANKS ladies.

  6. Dune

    in Books

    Posted

    • This is my own hobbyhorse, but it totally rejects Herbert's philosophy of history in favor of a pulpy "great man" take on the subject. Instead of history being this incredible and impossible force that a single man, even a messiah, struggles to control, to the point of sacrificing his humanity, every single plot point in the prequels is the direct result of some character's conscious decision to steer events that way. It's ridiculous when you think that unintended consequences are driving force of the elder Herbert's Dune books. So yeah, one of the evil cyborgs kills a baby because he finds it annoying, then the baby's mother becomes the leader of the Butlerian Jihad, which is called that because her surname is Bulter, and it's nothing like the strange, inexplicable, and even mystical event alluded in the original novel. I can't actually tell you how the Legends of Dune trilogy ends, because six hundred-plus pages of workmanlike prose playing out the most obvious interpretation of everything cool about the Dune universe killed any desire to read more.

     

     

    Excellent point. I teach history in university and only read Dune as an adult. I find the book hugely inspiring. I'm actually extremely skeptical of historical fiction (it's frustrating, as I know there are a lot of great books out there but I have yet to beat the hump) but Dune nails it. Herbert did something really interesting: he basically presented a theory of history within a work of science fiction. I love it. The scope, his willingness to handle the fact that the future is unknowable and the product of infinite (or near infinite) causes... it's all wonderful, really.

     

    I'm glad you liked Dune Messiah. I was too shy to say so in this thread, but I think it's an excellent distillation of and epilogue for the themes of the original novel. Children of Dune is good, too, but unless you're one of those people for whom God Emperor of Dune just clicks, and there are quite a few for whom it does, it's all downhill from here, becoming a cliff after the son takes over.

     

    This is a great description of Messiah. I agree on God Emperor. I don't know that it clicks for me... ultimately I like it because it's an interesting exploration of what I've just described above. It's as if Herbert decided that enough was enough, he was going to write an entire book where his main character considered the concept of time and the future constantly and that would be the whole book. And then there's a love triangle involving clones, spies, conflict between sexuality and the lack thereof, and lots of weirdness. Lots and lots of weirdness. I'm finally halfway through on Heretics of Dune after giving up a year ago (things start happening the page after I gave up last time!) and I think I'm mostly persevering because I want to see what happens.

     

    I like Argobot's comment on Dune vis a vis the Star Wars prequels as well. Spoiler below is for Children of Dune so be careful!

     

     

    Leto II's transformation at the end of Children of Dune is flat out nuts. He embraces this transition into a monster in order to something necessary for the greater good of humanity. This comes to full fruition in God Emperor when he has long since become enslaved within the Worm body. So damn weird and wonderful. Really shows up the Darth Vader transformation in my opinion, if we're sticking with the Star Wars analogy, though to be fair the prequels ballsed that up so completely (along with everything else) that I guess we shouldn't be surprised.

     

     

    Finally, I really love Dune Messiah largely because of how it treats Paul Atreides. I like his journey more than I like Leto II's, the tragedy of it feels more personal and immediate.

  7. Dune

    in Books

    Posted

    Gosh, I love Dune. I finally got around to finishing Chapterhouse (the final "real" Dune novel) recently, and quite liked it as well. I think it's time for me to reread the entire series.

     

    I can totally understand people not being into the sequels, but I found them all interesting. I guess it depends on what you're looking for out of more Dune.

     

     
     

     

    I read summaries of the Brian Herbert/Kevin J. Anderson books out of morbid curiosity, and it turns out computers are illegal because a robot literally murdered a baby by throwing it out a window. I don't think the current wardens of Dune have quite preserved the subtlety you so enjoy from the original work.

     

    One (very dorky) thing I did was to participate in a long-running Dune RPG campaign (using GURPS); it was fun to explore the setting in our own way, rewriting history as we went.

     

    Oh, one thing I want to add is that revisiting Dune in ebook format is frustrating, because the kindle edition (at least when I last looked) is riddled with OCR errors from top to bottom. (edit: did a little research, and it appears that the current version on offer is improved, but still far from perfect.)

     

    Man, the Butlerian Jihad is so cool in my mind (as is the whole post-feudal Europe in space thing). A robot throwing a baby out a window doesn't seem very imaginative.

     

    I was only ever in one GURPS campaign and it was rubbish. That sounds great though.

     

    I read the same ebook version, I think. It was very frustrating.

  8. Dune

    in Books

    Posted

    Have said this to Argobot on twitter, but the Dune series goes batshit after a while, so I think mileage will vary with the sequels. I loved the first book too, to the extent that I'm not sure how I took so long to get around to reading it.

     

    God Emperor of Dune is probably a book too far for some, I'm currently on Heretics of Dune so I'm done. It's over for me.

     

    Anyway, for those of you that have read the first game, Dune Messiah is probably my favourite Dune book so you should read at least one more. Interested to hear what people think of it.

  11. Posted

    Right now, I'm still in optimistic territory. Vinny could make Giant Bomb East much more of a "thing" with its own "real" podcast that makes it feel more like a division of Giant Bomb rather than a niche spinoff. Jeff, Brad, and Drew have plenty of personality to go around, but I do think they need someone new to fill the niches in interests in that side of the team.

     

    I feel similarly, though the Bombcast fell out of my rotation over a year ago. That's more a statement on my current listening habits than it is any kind of comment on the cast's quality, though I was a little tired of Jeff's schtick. That site can be weird, with a lot (a LOT) of users using photographs of the main contributors as their avatars and the like. It's probably just me but I felt that had bled into the cast a bit.

    While saying that, Vinny was always good and I'd be hugely interested in small-scale cast led by him. For one thing, it might be less than an hour long so I could get it into my rotation!

  12. Posted

    I plugged into the Wildstar Beta and was bored senseless quite quickly. I very much wanted to get down to the actual planet. I've heard good things about Wildstar but have mostly ignored actual information on it. I booted up the game, and...

     

    I know this is an old chestnut, but come on. Please don't build in an hour or two of me learning to play your game when your game is essentially WOW anyway, a game that I got sick of playing years ago. It sucks on the dev side I'm sure, because you don't include this stuff and people bitch that core mechanics weren't clear. I guess my biggest issue is that Wildstar didn't show me why it's going to be fun quickly enough. I assumed I must be done with MMOs, and that's partly true, but since quitting the Wildstar beta (a few days ago) I've mucked around in Guild Wars 2 a bit (though it's hard to find your feet again, and I might actually be done with all the questing and whatnot) and even enjoyed a bit of Rift.

     

    Rift.

     

    So I feel a little bad about it and I can't help but wonder if I'm missing something amazing, but I'm out on Wildstar. Maybe I'll give the Neverwinter MMO a go, I heard it was fun. Mostly it was difficult for me to put any time into Wildstar because they're going to run on a subscription model. I really wonder if that's the way to go from what little I've played.

  13. Posted

    Hey, I'm new here! These forums are big and scary, and I wasn't sure where to make my first post (Don't know if there's a 'welcome' thread anywhere). Anyway, here are my favourite podcasts (Apart from Idle Thumbs, of course):

     

    Crate and Crowbar

    Not a Game Podcast

    Daft Souls

     

    Welcome!

     

    I've started listening to the Grantland pop culture podcasts a fair bit incidentally. My own cast, which I've plugged here before, is chugging away. Two of us are considering putting together a Star Trek: DS9 cast for the fun of it. BECAUSE THERE AREN'T ENOUGH OF THOSE IN THE WORLD, DAMN IT.

  16. Posted

    It's been a long time since I listened to the Giant Bomb guys regularly. I had been a huge fan of the Hotspot (my first ever podcast!) and I was a fan of those guys and found them entertaining. When the energy drink reviews became a bigger chunk of what they did, I was in on the joke but it was a little much for me. Over time I've lost interest, partly because I switched to playing PC games exclusively but also the length; I have a rotation I really like now for exercising and commuting, and three hours is a big chunk of time. With the possible exception of Spelunky now and again, I don't have a game I'd be okay with muting while I play either. 

    Actually, Idle Thumbs replaced the Bombcast for me, and I found out about Idle Thumbs through a recommendation Brad Shoemaker made on Giantbomb.com. I still find those guys very entertaining, so perhaps I should try and figure out a way to get back into it. I just don't feel like doing my own hour long edit.

  19. Posted

    Yeah, GTA V's ugliness ultimately turned me off. IV wasn't the fantastic piece of storytelling people made it out to be but at least the story was front and center. Playing GTA V, all I could think was "are these really the guys that made GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption"? The game was just so bloody puerile. Rockstar's "satire" just felt sad and angry in GTA V. It made it very difficult for me to keep playing and so I gave up. 

    It was also odd how dead the game felt. It just didn't feel like a lived in environment the way that IV (and even San Andreas) did. The heists were great but not good enough to keep me slogging away.

  20. Posted

    I'm not really sure what motivates me to record my playthroughs...it's not like they get more than a few views that are generally under a minute (mostly people from here skipping to the end, I imagine). I think mainly I like to go back and listen to myself lose it when I die or have a close call. And then I figure why not share that stupidity with the Internet. The thought's crossed my mind to figure out how to stream on Twitch, just to learn how to do it, but it's another level of effort I don't feel like bothering with right now.

     

    Yeah, I got into a run of not being able to record for various reasons, but I'm still playing most days and think about starting it up again. Even though I have no intention (or desire!) to really have a lot of views or anything. Still, it's fun. I like watching other people's vids so I'll probably start making my own again.

  21. Posted

    Yeah, I linked my laptop up to the TV and Spelunky was unplayable for me. I was worried I'd get motion sick.

     

    I wonder if it's a resolution issue... my laptop has a native resolution of 1600x900 and seemed to be ok on its own. Or maybe I noticed lag more on the TV... Skyrim was playable but the slight lag was nagging me enough to just want to go back and play it on the desktop.

     

    But I should muck around some more. It would be kind of cool to play XCom in bed.

  22. Posted

    I just got into the streaming beta in the last few minutes. I can't really muck around too much (I'm supposed to be working) but I decided to fire up The Witcher 2 on my Lenovo laptop (SSD, Intel HD4000) and my mind was immediately blown by how well it worked. Can't wait to much around with it later and get a clearer sense of how it performs for longer than a few minutes.