Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla

Seeing as I’ve still got a few weeks left on my Ubiplay sub thing, I thought I’d give the new AC game a whirl. I’ve never been a fan of the series, mostly as I’d quickly grow tired of trying to wade through the fat Ubisoft incessantly padded their games in for no reason I can fathom.

But this is one lean cut of meat. Colour me impressed.

Destiny 2 – The Cold is Coming

I’ve loved Destiny since my miraculous entry into the first one’s Alpha on the PS4 many years ago. As a long-time Halo fan, the combat and setting were immediately familiar, and the whole space-wizard shtick was enrobed in some of the most amazing graphics I had seen at that point.

But it certainly wasn’t for everyone.

Art + Enter – Teeth and Ice Cubes

Not that I’d call it “art” exactly. Art suggests an underlying theme or concept given form by the skills of someone who has a modicum of skill or method. This is just me, sitting on the couch, playing with my tablet while Big Bang Theory dribbles platitudes in the background.

It’s an incredibly relaxing way to end the day though. If you’re looking for game-stuff, you can skip this one. This is just a wee diary of me trying to get to grips with drawing after a very long hiatus. 🙂

Watch Dogs Legion

As I am a very upside-down kind of person (Mass Effect 3 was my favourite, for example), so it only stands to reason that I loved the first Watch Dogs, and bounced hard off the second. So I was very wary of committing to the third instalment, despite the mid-high review scores.

Then I discovered Ubiplay+. 12 quid for a month? Yup, I’ll be bored of Watch Dogs Legion by then for sure.

Six years later…

It’s a somewhat grisly Monday. More lockdowns incoming, and I sit here, pleasantly warm. My fan heater is pointed at my ankles and the sky threatening more frigid rain. And as I sit here, waiting on a phone call (work stuff), the thought occurs to me to write something. Anything. So… yeah.

Welcome again to my world. It’s been a while. 🙂

Interstellar Drive – A Daydream

Reading up on Elite Dangerous has made me frisky. I have always had a tender spot for space-games, ever since I played Tie-Fighter way back in the days when they were plentiful (I still actually have the disk somewhere), I have bounced from each popular joystick-jaunt to another during my teens. I even played the original Elite on our schools old Acorn during my lunch breaks, and never quite getting the hang of it to be truthful. The notion of trading was a strange concept to my Command & Conquer addled mind, and I instead spent my efforts on trying to blow stuff up.

I still enjoy space-sims, despite the pickings being very slim over the past few years. The X: Beyond the Frontier games have kept the wolves from the door for the most part, but I have began to notice something missing from the experience.

The ships you fly in almost all modern space-sims are all terribly dull.

The Sub is Back – The Elder Scrolls Online

Old news alert! I wrote this a while back and promptly forgot about it. Imagine you are reading this just after the announcement for maximum interest. Ta!

The Elder Scrolls Online is climbing the gears as it’s beta rolls on, and I am still sitting here waiting on an invite. I’m not bitter or anything, but Bethesda are really starting to fray my washcloth. Much has been said about this attempt to bring multiplayer to the lands formerly stalked by a single dragonborn/chosen one, and as I can’t validate any of it, all I can do to feel involved is sit here with my pen and my checklist of ways Bethesda could screw TESO up, and play bingo.

They announced TESO would be using monthly subs, which means I can score out “Free 2 Play” from my list, thank goodness. That would have been a massive mistake.

Bioshock Infinite

No spoilers here.

It’s a strange setup for me to be honest, and I wasn’t expecting much. The original Bioshock was a game that I really struggled to like. The setting was amazing, and the sheer level of detail contained within the damp, dripping halls of Rapture was enough to send the literary munchkin in my head into spasms of glee. And yet, the actual game left me feeling blunted and somewhat miserable.

Would you kindly stop shooting/screaming at me for a moment? I’m trying to listen to this recording…

The Return (The Returning) Returns…

Hallo.

Well, it’s been almost five months since I last ranted incoherently on these not-so-hallowed pages, and in that time I’ve moved house. Twice. I also went a whole three months with no net – thanks, Sky Broadband! I also somehow managed to find myself living with some woman who claims to love me… it’s all a little strange and new. But she buys me cakes, so I think I love her too.

Of course, my writing (and gaming, and… er, other things) has been adversely effected by all this moving and rampant emotional upheaval, and for that I am truly sorry.

But, I’m back. And once again, words are fighting each other in my head, before spilling out on to… you know what? Screw the flowery nonsense. Here’s some of the stuff I wrote during my “break”.

OMG FTL FTW!

It’s probably something to do with my unhealthy fascination with Star Trek during my childhood, the prospect of captaining a fully-functioning star-ship always reduces me to a dribbling wreck of a geek. Artemis was a thing in my house a while back, until my increasingly garbled orders and over-stimulated monologues eventually started to disturb/scare my younger brothers.

None of them ever wanted to be “Captain”. I don’t blame them.